River bank – east of the Tower north bank only
Old Blackwall, East India and Poplar.

This post is north bank only on this square

Post to the south Blackwall
Post to the west Canary Wharf
Post to the north Poplar
Post to the east Leamouth

Ashton Street
Named for Ashton who was a previous landowner
Bricklayers' Arms.  Built by Robert Snell of Limehouse and completed in 1814. I had a skittle alley. In 1912 it was purchased by the London County Council from Whitbread in order to rebuild the Woolmore Street School. It was then used as the schoolkeeper's house,

Aspen Way
This is the main road that runs from the Limehouse Link Tunnel eastwards, and is the A1261. There is a junction with Cotton Street and Preston’s Road.  It passes over both Blackwall Tunnels and goes to a junction with Leamouth Road and the Lower Lea Crossing. The East India Dock Tunnel joins the road from the A13

Baffin Way
This is a new road, built in the 1990s, across a built up road grid.
1 Hotel Ibis


Bazely Street
This was originally Bow Lane. It was named after Revd Thomas Bazely, rector 1839-1860.  The street dates from 1686, was built up by the East India Company in the early 19th. Poplar Council built housing in the 1950s on the extensive bomb sites. The route the east, was Bow Lane, which continued northwards then curved around to join Robin Hood Lane
45-51 a terrace built in the 1830s by Hugh Mackintosh, East India Dock contractor and named Mary Place for his wife.  They reflect the prosperity resulting from development of the area in the early 19th by the East India Company.
Union Chapel. This Baptist chapel was built in 1813 and was demolished in the 1840s. It stood on the east side.
Bow Lane School. This was built by shipbuilder George Green on the site of the Union Chapel. In 1867 it was named St. Matthias School. In 1878 it was moved and the building sold to the Ladies Charity School as a girls and infants school but was closed following a London Council Inspection in 1904.
Poplar Synagogue. This was in the old Union Chapel/School building 1923 - 1948.  It was demolished in 1954. 
Premises of the Sisters of St John the Divine.  The East London branch of the Nursing Sisters of St John the Divine, was set up in 1880 by Julia Childers and Julia Lake. The sisters first came to Poplar in 1866 during a cholera epidemic. They lost everything when their nursing home was demolished during a V2 attack in 1945.  The matron is said to have survived having been buried for 2-3 days. Their nursing home, initially in Montague Place,   is said to have been on the corner opposite the Pavilion Cinema – may actually have been in East India Dock Road.
28 Greenwich Pensioner Pub. This was built in 1827.   It replaced another tavern on the same site.  There is a cut bench mark in the wall.
Esther Hawes Almshouses. Esther Hawes was a widow in 1685 who left land here as an endowment. Two single-storey ranges, with six almshouses, facing each other across a courtyard were built.  In 1933 the almshouses were threatened with demolition as slum clearance and in were sold to the Borough Council. The Second World War delayed their proposed demolition, and they survived. By 1953 they were derelict and were demolished despite much discussion as to whether they should be preserved.

Biscayne Avenue
This new road goes from Blackwall Way to riverside flats on the site of railway sidings on the site of the Midland Railway Goods Depot, previously a shipbuilding site. The route of this road is shown slightly differently on various maps and as it gated with a security guard we are never going to find out anyway. Biscayne as a name is probably from sites in America (US)

Blackwall
Blackwall – the name is self-explanatory, from Old English and refers to the colour of the river wall. This name appears in the 14th...  It lay to the south-west of open fields known as the East Marsh of Poplar where a community of fishermen lived 14th. Blackwall became a useful anchorage where moorings were protected. From the 15th Blackwall was the place where many embarked and disembarked, and was a victualling point for outward-bound vessels. In the 16th it was the point of departure for many of the great voyages of discovery and in 1606, the Virginia Settlers. During the 15th fifteenth and 16th it became a centre where ship repairs were carried out.  Residential development began during the 1620s and 1630s, and continued as the demand labour in the ship yards increased. From the mid 16th inns had existed here to serve the needs of travellers. In the first half of the 19th Blackwall had at least nine inns, five of them on the riverfront.

Blackwall Basin
The Blackwall Basin was the first impounded dock entrance basin ever built. In effect it was a big entrance lock. Ships could be locked into it at high tide and then lock into the docks when they wanted without affecting the water level in the docks.  It was excavated in 1800–1.  Its banks have been altered, but it still remains close to its original shape. Apart from the addition of some jetties it has had little change
Saltpetre Warehouse. Saltpetre was imported in the 19th and needed secure isolated storage. In 1828 a special warehouse was built on the south side of the Blackwall Basin. It was designed by John Rennie and built by Jolliffe and Banks. Following damage and some demolition it was used by the London Graving Dock Company as a platers' shop. It was bombed in the Second World War and rebuilt.
Guard House. This was built at the west end of the basin in 1821 for the Military Guard. It was designed by John Rennie. Later it was used for Customs officers and demolished in 1875
Lascar House. Accommodation was provided for Asian seamen following a 'disturbance' in 1839. This was built near the Blackwall Basin. It was converted into an engine house for the Junction Dock building works in 1853 and subsequently demolished.
Cut Wood shed. In 1857 a shed was built in South Dock.  In 1902 it was re-erected as a single-span structure, on the north side of the Blackwall Basin, a piling ground for soft wood since 1853. It was demolished in 1949, following wartime bomb damage
Teak Sheds. In 1893 large timber-framed open-sided sheds were built and a shed was sited south of the Saltpetre Warehouse and west of the Graving Dock. Electric cranes were installed here, the first use of electric motive power for dock machinery in London following discussions at the Victor Engineering Works at Holloway. The teak sheds were extended westwards in 1898–9 but were badly damaged by Second World War bombing, and were cleared in the 1940s
Engine House. Two Boulton & Watt steam engines were used in the building of the West India Docks from 1801. The larger pumped water from the excavations from an engine house north of the Blackwall Basin; there was a small reservoir on its north side. This was converted into a gatekeeper's house in 1808
Figurehead for Docklands. This statue by Anna Bisset in 1997 is beside this marina (part of Blackwall Basin marina).
Jamestown Harbour. This housing development extends round two sides of the basin. (See Lovegrove Walk below). There is other housing development to the north.
Marina. This consists of 27 residential moorings and additional narrow boats. There is a facilities building and other amenities.
Rafts for common tern


Blackwall Dry Dock
Dry Dock. Shipbuilding and repair had not been allowed within the West India Docks but in the 1850s the Victoria and Millwall Docks had integral ship-repair facilities. Donald Johnson & Co. approached the East and West India Dock Company in 1872 with an offer to build dry docks. They proposed a single large dry dock off the Blackwall Basin and a site was leased top them in 1875 with a frontage on to Preston's Road.  The West India Dock Graving Dock opened in 1878 and was one of the largest dry docks in the country, and only second in size to Thames Ironworks London. It was soon in financial trouble and it was mortgaged and passed through a number of company changes.  In 1890 the lease was assigned to A. Chivas Adam, a shipowner, who set up the London Graving Dock Company, The area around the dry dock was developed with new buildings, facilities and plant in 1891. The site suffered heavy bomb damage in 1940 but by 1943 new offices and a fitting shop had been built. The damaged dry dock remained in use but was reconstructed in 1948–9.  When the ship-repair industry was nationalized in 1977, it was made part of River Thames Ship repairers. However its continued use depended on use of the wet docks and the caisson was removed and the workshops were demolished in 1985. A permanent bridge was erected across the graving dock in 1988, as part of a housing development.
Housing development (see Lovegrove Walk below)
LEAP. Sculpture. In the graving dock from 1982, by Franta Belsky, of eight stylized dolphins spouting water.


Blackwall Entrance Lock
Johnson's Upper Dock. This was a small yard with just one single dry dock. In the 17th it was called Coldharbour Dock and was held by Henry Johnson. In 1678 Johnson applied to the Thames Conservancy to build a wharf here and previously James Avery, had done work for the Navy here. The site was later taken by the West India Dock Company and became the site of the Blackwall Entrance.
The entrance to the new West India Docks from the river was the most critical point of the original dock system. In 1799 it was decided to build a lock and excavation began in 1800. It was to be the largest lock in England and work continued apace. Within months of the opening John Rennie reported here and some collapses and as time went on it required many more repairs, showing the haste with which it was built. The lock gates were replaced in 1812, and again in 1864. The pier heads were improved in 1824–5. On the south side, a timber jetty was added, and a section of river wall, was rebuilt in brick. As ships grew larger its size became another problem and in 1870 the rebuilt South Dock east entrance became the main entry to the dock. The Blackwall entrance lock was rebuilt in 1892–4 and later after a lot of discussion and more failed work three pairs of lock gates were constructed and erected by the Thames Iron Works & Shipbuilding Company. Many of the fittings of these still survive. The rebuilt lock opened for business in 1894 and still survives. It became much less important after 1929, when another new South Dock east entrance was built along with passages linking the three wet docks. It was closed from 1940-1950, reopening only for barge traffic. In 1960–1 John Mowlem & Company made some repairs but the lock was last used in 1968. The London Docklands Development Corporation removed the middle gates and permanently dammed it under a bridge in 1987.
Impounding Station. An impounding system was part of the improvements to the Blackwall entrance lock in 1893–4. This was to maintain the depth of water in the older docks for larger ships. H. F. Donaldson designed it in 1893 as a plant with four pumps and specially designed outlets at the bottom of the Blackwall Basin. The impounding station stood on its north side and to the south was the engine house. It was made redundant in 1930 and in 1936 the building was leased to become part of the Northumberland Wharf oil and grease factory. From 1952 it was Raleana Works, the premises of the Thames Welding Company, and was demolished in 1986


Blackwall Tunnel Approach
The approach system is made up of a complicated set of roads.  Roads leave the northbound ‘old’ tunnel and enter the southbound ‘new’ tunnel. There are slips from East India Dock Road and a footway above the ‘new’ tunnel approach.
A road tunnel here was projected by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1887 with a design by Bazelgette. In June 1890 the London County Council commissioned Benjamin Baker and Chief Engineer, Alexander R. Binnie for a single-tunnel design. 
Northbound Tunnel. Built in 1891-7 and designed by Alexander Binnie of the London County Council. Driven through mixed water-bearing strata by Greathead shield and compressed air - the first time these techniques had been combined. Four shafts were sunk in steel caissons built by Thames Ironworks. The shield built by Easton & Anderson of Erith was driven forward by hydraulic rams, and excavation was by hand. The carriageway is 16 ft wide with a footway either side, and there are 5 sharp bends. It was ceremonially opened by HRH the Prince of Wales in 1897. 
The Southbound Tunnel. By the 1930s the old tunnel was inadequate and the London County Council obtained an Act in 1938 for a new tunnel. However construction work did not begin until 1958 under the Greater London Council Directorate of Highways and Transportation. The new tunnel is used for southbound traffic and lies about 700 ft to the west of the earlier tunnel. The consulting engineers for the bored section of the tunnel were Mott, Hay & Anderson who drove it under compressed air with the ground consolidated by grouting from two pilot tunnels. It was opened in 1967 by Desmond Plummer, Leader of the Greater London Council.
Northern Gatehouse. The original on the Blackwall side was demolished when the second tunnel was constructed. In effect it was similar to that remaining on the south. It had a flat over the archway. The facades were decorated with shields with coats of arms of Middlesex, Kent, Essex and Surrey, and bronze plaques. In 1899 public toilets were provided by the London County Council in a small building adjoining the north entrance gatehouse, in a sympathetic style
Service Building. A rectangular administration building was built between the two approach roads on the Poplar side. It is has Offices and a traffic-control room with a garage and yard below.
Plaque.  This is by Alfred Drury and dates from 1897. It shows and shows two allegorical women and the head of Father Thames. There is a diagram of the tunnel construction below. It is by the foot entrance to the southbound carriageway bus stop.
Sign. There was once a sign asking drivers of horses to be quiet going past Poplar Hospital
Entrance to East India Docks. The East India Dock gates were alongside the present tunnel approach. It was situated by the north-west corner of the East India Import Dock and 70ft high making a local landmark. It was designed by the dock engineer, Ralph Walker, was a triumphal arch plus metal clock-and bell tower. The top storey contained the East India Dock Company's board-room. There was a large inscription about the dock and its supporters. This gateway survived until 1912 and the widening of East India Dock Road plus the trams. In 1913–14 the Port of London Authority built a facsimile in ferro concrete using Hennebique's system. This second gateway was demolished in 1958 for the new northern approach road where the replica inscribed blocks remain t
Plaque. This is on the corner wall by the footpath above the slip onto the southbound carriageway from East India Dock Road. It is a replica of the giant inscription plaque, from the main gate of the East India Dock which once stood in this area.  It has been moved more than once.
Tunnel Gardens. The footway above the southbound approach leads along a remnant of a playground and raised terrace made in 1902 by the London County Council. This site was kept for future road widening. In 1901 the London County Council converted it into a playground. Half for boys and half for girls and infants, with a gravelled tree-lined terrace for adults. It was opened in 1902 with trees and play equipment. Most of the gardens were cleared in 1958 for the new approach road although a handful of trees planted by the London County Council and part of the raised terrace remain – there are also some ‘optimistically placed’ benches and the man who shouts at the traffic every day.

Blackwall Way
In 1618 William Burrell bought a strip of land from Poplar High Street to build a Causeway, connecting the High Street to Blackwall Stairs and the river. It has also been known as Blackwall Causeway, Brunswick Street and currently Blackwall Way. Travellers from the river could disembark here Blackwall and take a coach to London. Burrell leased it to the East India Company who put a gate on it and exacted tolls. Pedestrians went free but only via a ladder style gate. Sadly Blackwall Way no longer goes to the riverside and there are gated developments in the area.
Lower Wharf. This was to the east of the Causeway, beside Blackwall Yard. During the late 18th it was used by Thomas Newte. It had warehouses, rigging houses, stable, and a crane'.
Blackwall New Tunnel Vent. The shell-concrete ventilation stack was designed by the Greater London Council Department of Architecture and Civic Design, project architect Terry Farrell. 
Empress Electric Theatre. This was opened in March 1913 ad was also known as the Popular Picture Theatre. It closed during the Great War .
The Globe.  This pub was built by Henry Johnson, who then owned Blackwall Yard and took its name from one of the first East Indiamen to sail from Blackwall, which took almost four years to return. It was built 1643 - 1656 and had stables and a hay loft'.  In the 18th nine cottages were built in the yard and by 1755 six almshouses too. In the early 1830s it was the base for Onesiphorus Randall’s horse bus company. The Pub and its site were cleared in the late 1870s for the Midland Railway Company's goods station.
Johnson's Almshouses. Globe Yard. Money for these was left in 1683 by Sir Henry Johnson, owner of Blackwall Yard. It was for six almshouses for poor and aged ship-carpenters. They were not actually built until 1755. They were demolished with the Globe Tavern.
45 Old Hob. Pub said to have been named in memory of a horse that worked at the shipyard for thirty years and stopped work with the men when the yard bell rang.  The pub dated from 1756 and was closed by 1876.
53 Shoulder of Mutton and Pig. Pub which stood on the left hand side going towards Blackwall Stairs. This was open 1839-1876 and renamed “shoulder of mutton” 1853
The Ship Pub. This stood on the left hand side going towards Blackwall Stairs.
78 The Brunswick Arms (The Coopers Arms) stood on the right side. In the middle of the 19th century, Brunswick Mum, a strong kind of beer, introduced from Brunswick, in Germany. The Brunswick Arms was the first to sell it. Demolished 2007.
130 White Swan Pub. This stood on the right side. It was a Watney’s house present by 1839.  It closed in 1992 and demolished in 2003. Excavations at the rear suggest that a much older building stood on this site.
The Plough. This dated from at least 1725 and was had buildings on three sides of a yard. There were stables, parlours, bars, and a tap-room. The inn could be entered from the High Street or from the river via a small staircase. It was partially rebuilt in the mid-1840s, following a fire. There were private dining-rooms and a large coffee room and five bay windows on the first floor allowed customers to enjoy the river.
Artichoke Tavern.  It was built about 1731 and they served whitebait there until 1841. In 1754 the landlord, Peter Lord, advertised the opening of the Long Room as 'a fine place for seeing the ships launched'. In the 18th it was also used as a coach office. It was purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works from Charrington & Co. in 1888, to allow the construction of the Blackwall Tunnel
Sir Walter Raleigh’s House. This stood opposite the Artichoke Tavern and said to be on the site now used by the old Blackwall Tunnel ventilation shaft. This ancient timber-framed house had only tenuous connections with either Raleigh or indeed Sebastian Cabot. Raleigh had business at Blackwall but there is no reason to believe he lived there. The house was a jettied timber-framed building with carvings of grotesque heads on the outside. Pressures to develop the area led to its demolition by 1881. Its site was bought by the Metropolitan Board of Works from the London and North West Railway Company in 1888 for the construction of the Blackwall Tunnel.
The George. This was there from at least 1839 until 1876.
Poplar Station. The original Poplar Station opened in 1840 on the London and Blackwall Railway and was sited on the west side of what was then called Brunswick Road. It was resited to the east side of the road in 1845. The platforms remained intact until the late 1960's when the cutting was infilled. The top of the up side stairway is said to have continued to be visible for quite a while after and even boasted the remains of a handrail.  Redevelopment has now made this impossible to trace
Poplar Station. This was the replacement for the first station and opened on the east side of Brunswick Street bridge (the first station had been on the west side of the bridge) in 1845. Poplar had a timber street level building with covered stairs down to the platforms. A wooden hut on one of the platforms was believed to be a stationmaster’s office. Brick toilet blocks were sited at the east end of both platforms. After closure in the 1930s the platform buildings were demolished. But the lamp room and the gents’ toilets survived until the late 1960's. The track through the station remained in use as a siding until the late 1960's, but was lifted in 1977 and in 1981 the cutting was infilled leaving the top of the bridge visible. The site was occupied by a children’s playground before the building of Aspen Way road in 1993.
Brunswick Junction signal box was east of Poplar Station, dated from 1906 and controlled movements in and out of both the Blackwall and the East India goods deports. The warehouse was destroyed by Second World War bombing but only closed in 1961


Blackwall Yard
The original Blackwall Yard was created by the East India Company. They were first granted a licence by Elizabeth I in 1600 mainly to allow then to import products from Asia and export them to Europe. Within 20 years the company had trading bases in Asia and their profits for 1601–23 averaged 100 %. At first they used men-of-war and commissioned vessels from East Anglian shipyards. It was at Deptford that they first built their own ships for the East Indies trade. The Deptford site was too small and so in 1614 the company obtained land in the Poplar East Marsh and William Burrell oversaw digging a dry dock there. In 1615 it was lengthened, again in 1624 and in 1630 another dock was built. Buildings were erected: a forge; a spinning house for rope; storehouses and slaughter and salting houses for provisions. A brick wall built around the perimeter and also a Mansion House, which survived until 1870. There were offices and a gatehouse to Blackwall Causeway showing the Company’s coat of arms. There was also a tap house and canteen for the workmen, a saw pit and a tar house. The yard was fully operational by 1617.  There were however doubts as to whether the Company should build its own ships and in the 1650s it was decided not to continue with Blackwall Yard.
Henry Johnson.  In 1655 the Company agreed to sell the docks and the yard to Henry Johnson. He had served an apprenticeship at Deptford Dockyard and a member of the Pett family of Royal Shipwrights.  East India Company ships continued to be built and repaired at Blackwall throughout the 1650s and 1660s and Johnson became a leading part owner. He also built ships for the Navy in a period of great demand during the Dutch Wars. Merchant shipbuilding was encouraged under Charles II and 1670 - 1677 12 ships were built at Blackwall. A survey by Samuel Pepys showed that the yard had the greatest capacity of the commercial yards on the Thames. Johnson undertook many improvements and expansion on the site. In 1659 he built the largest wet dock, on the Thames.  He also built storehouses for the safe storage of imported goods which was another innovation. Henry Johnson’s son, also Henry Johnson took over the yard and made a great deal of money. Shipbuilding at Blackwall continued up to his death in 1719 and left it to his daughter, the Countess of Stafford.  In 1724 she sold the yard to Captain John Kirby who was acting on behalf of a four-man syndicate. This left a complicated pattern of ownership over the next fifty years. During this time the yard was managed by members of the Perry family
The Perrys.  John Perry eventually bought the yard from the syndicate in 1779. By 1782 the yard contained at least six building launches and a fourth dry dock - which is the dock which still survives. The 1780s was a decade of great expansion in the yard with more East Indiamen and naval vessels being built and repaired.
Brunswick Dock. The dock was built by John Perry in 1789, a petrified forest found on the site while it was being built.  It had two basins, and could take 28 East Indiamen, and 60 Greenland sloop. The dock had the capacity to refit and repair small vessels and enabled more minor repair work to be done. In the late 1790s Perry retired and his sons took over with their brother-in-law, George Green. Part of the yard to Deptford shipwright John Wells and the firm became Perry, Wells and Green
Mast House. Dominating Brunswick Dock it was the great timber-and-brick mast-house on the western quay. This contained a revolutionary masting machine which could do the work in a fraction of the time normally needed.  It survived as a local landmark into the 1860s. During 1862–3 the old mast-house, a familiar Blackwall landmark was removed from what was then the west quay of the East India Export Dock. The Ordnance Survey had used it as a triangulation station for its survey of London, in 1848– 50.
The East India Company. In 1803 they were planning docks here and bought Brunswick Dock which was remodelled as their Export Dock.  Land to the east became the their Import Dock
Wigram. In 1805 John Wells sold the yard to Robert Wigram. He was an important ship-owner, and a subscriber to the East India Dock Company, later becoming a director, an MP and a baronet. Two of his sons, Money and Henry Loftus Wigram managed the ship yard and eventually the firm's name was changed to Wigram & Green. Sir Robert retired in 1819 and sold the yard to George Green, Money Wigram and Henry Loftus Wigram.
Wigram and Green. In 1805 the Government contracted with the firm to build three 74-gun ships but although the wars increased shipbuilding this was a bad time for London firms - Indian-built ships were considered the reason.   In 1821 the first steam-vessel to be built at the yard was launched and In 1824 George Green founded the Blackwall frigates, a line of passenger sailing vessels to India and Australia. He also became active in the whaling trade. In 1838 George Green retired by which time his son, Richard, was a partner. Also in 1838 much of the northern part of the yard was taken by the London and Blackwall Railway for their line to Brunswick Wharf.  In 1843 the partnership agreement between the Greens and the Wigrams expired and a division of the yard took place - the yard was physically divided by a brick wall, reputedly built overnight, to separate the two businesses
The Western Yard.  The area was taken by the Wigrams.  It was the 'historic' yard, where docks and buildings dated from the 17th. However the historic features were not altered, apart from the infilling of Johnson's wet dock. The first ship built here was a traditional wooden warship but the second vessel built there was an iron paddle-steamer. In the early 1860s on the site of Johnson's wet dock was a slip for one of the largest ships ever constructed at Blackwall. In 1877 Wigram & Sons sold the Western Yard to the Midland Railway Company.
The Midland Railway – Poplar Dock. Shipbuilding on the site came to an end and great changes were made. The three dry docks and the slips disappeared beneath a new wet dock, and all the old buildings including the Mansion House, the Globe tavern and Johnson's Almshouses, were swept away. The name was changed Poplar Dock. The Railway wanted a modern collier dock and coal-handling depot, where coal brought in by rail could be transhipped into lighters for delivery.  The work was carried out between 1877 - 1882 supervised by John Underwood. They rebuilt the river wall; excavated a new dock, built warehouses, stables and a branch line to connect the site with the main railway. In Brunswick Street they built a goods office and a hydraulic pumping station. The site of the old wet dock was covered by railway tracks and sidings. (See Railway below)
Charringtons. Poplar Dock was badly damaged by enemy action during the Second World War. From the late 1950s the yard was occupied by Charringtons, who infilled the dock, demolished the warehouses, and used the site for the storage of fuel oil. In the late 1950s an area was taken for the ventilation shaft of the second Blackwall Tunnel.  Charrington's continued on site until the late 1980s. The only surviving parts of the Midland Railway's works are a short length of brick wall on the east side of Blackwall Way and the hydraulic pumping station
New Providence Wharf. This development built in the early 21st is on the site of what was most of the Midland Railway Yard.  Their advertising says that. ....”development along the Thames ...... often developed with little regard for their context   ....................... New Providence Wharf ...boldly takes a very different approach.  Excavations before construction showed timbers of two dock structures including a wall of the Wet Dock of 1659 modified and repaired until its closure in the mid 19th. The dock wall was built of oak, pine and teak.' Also found was 'planking and working debris belonging to a slipway built in 1860 and closed in 1877.  The development by the Irish developer Ballymore consists of blocks of flats - all “luxury” and with American (US) names. Providence Tower will have. 43 floors of flats designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Ontario Tower also has ‘luxury’ 29 storey high-rise’ flats built in 2007 as ‘new executive housing’ and the tower has a blue LED rimmed elliptical profile. There is also a posh hotel.
The Eastern Yard.   The eastern section of Blackwall yard was taken by R. & H. Green. They made an entrance into the yard from Brunswick Street and built offices one of which survived until the late 1980s. They also extended John Perry’s 18th dry dock.  During the Crimean War the yard supplied ships to for the Navy but Richard Green continued to build wooden ships until his death in 1863. In 1866 the first iron ship built here was launched.  In the 1870s they built a large new graving dock along with an engine and boiler house. The yard was incorporated in 1894 as R. & H. Green Ltd, and they continued to build ships until 1907. In 1910 R. & H. Green Ltd amalgamated with Silley Weir & Co. and they grew rapidly until the outbreak of the Great War. During the war they built and repaired munitions ships, minesweepers, hospital ships and destroyers. After the war they built a marine engineering shop between the two graving docks.
Blackwall Engineering. In 1977 the company merged with the London Graving Dock Company Ltd to form River Thames Ship Repairers Ltd, the works at Blackwall was called Blackwall Engineering. When this firm closed in 1987, it brought to an end 350 years of shipbuilding and ship repairing here.  The upper graving dock of 1878 remained in use until closure the final work being new work to provide covers on local authority rubbish barges. In 1989 the dock was partially filled in and the new Reuters building were constructed over it. The other late-18th dry dock, one of the earliest remaining on the Thames was refurbished in 1991–2 and cut back to its original length. Reuter’s security makes it impossible to see.
Reuters (see Paul Julius Close)


Bridge House Quay
Part of the Wates Built Homes scheme designed by Whittam, Cox, Ellis & Clayton on the site of the Blackwall Graving Dock.  Bridge House is the adjacent ‘big house’ in Prestons Road. It covers the site of the entrance to the Blackwall Basin.


Broadwalk Place
This runs parallel to the west of what is now Poplar Dock Marina. It is closed off; it has all the usual blocks of flats and access roads to the Marina. It is on the site of the Great Western Railway depot. This had opened 1873 and was also served by the North London Railway. It was bombed flat in 1941.


Brunswick Wharf
Gibbets. This area was the traditional site for gibbeting pirates previously executed at Wapping.
Brunswick Wharf. In the early 1830s the river frontage west of Blackwall Yard east of the East India Docks basin was rebuilt as a steam wharf by the East India Dock Company to cater for the steam-packet trade. Whereas earlier docks were built, first of timber, then later of massive brickwork or masonry, the Brunswick Wharf was built of cast iron sheet piling. This was not only a great saving in cost, but also the first major application of the system. The piling was backed by mass concrete. It could be seen as the world’s first ocean passenger terminal. It was linked to the City by a frequent rail service.  It survived into the late 1940s, when it was redeveloped as part of the site of the Brunswick Wharf Power Station.  Supervision of the project was in the hands of the resident engineer, George Parker Bidder. Construction began early in 1833. At the west end of the wharf the dock company built a causeway extending 60ft into the river, approached by stone steps called Brunswick Stairs. These steps were dismantled in 1890–1. The steam packet companies required good transport links with the City. A road connecting the Wharf to East India Dock Road was a priority. This was East India Dock Wall Road along the boundary walls of the East India Docks. The dock company built stables on the wharf itself. By 1836 omnibuses were leaving Brunswick Wharf for the City almost every five minutes. In 1840 the London and Blackwall Railway opened its terminus on Brunswick Wharf itself. The railway cut the journey time from the City to the wharf to only 15 minutes. As well as constructing the new link road, the directors of the dock company promoted the building of hotel and tavern and baggage warehouses to encourage use of the wharf.  The wharf had become a very popular destination for 'excursionists’. After 1918 the already dwindling number of visitors was further reduced by the closure of the railway to passenger traffic in 1926 and by the London County Council's withdrawal of the 'penny steamer' service. By 1930 the nearest public transport was the bus service in the East India Dock Road.
The Brunswick Hotel and Tavern. Designed by Walker, it was erected in 1833–4. It was one of Blackwall's more elegant buildings, with a stuccoed river front. In 1842 landlord Lovegrove enclosed the terrace in front of the hotel within a single-storey extension, with good views over the river. At the back were offices, stables and coach-houses, an ice-house and the Brunswick Tap. . It became one of the venues for the famous Blackwall Whitebait Suppers. The hotel closed in 1873, but the Tap continued to operate until 1900. In 1874 the hotel was let to the New Zealand Government for an emigrants' depot, and this continued until about 1900. Then the Managers of the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum leased it for a children's convalescent home. During the Great War the building was used as barracks and in the 1920s as offices by R. & H. Green & Silley Weir Ltd of Blackwall Yard. It was demolished in 1930
The Brunswick Wharf Warehouse. To the east of the Hotel was warehouse. Designed by Walker, and built in 1834, it survived until 1947. It was built to provide storage for luggage and goods plus shelter for passengers. For many years it was used chiefly for the 'accommodation of cattle'. From 1877 it was used to store hay and Peek Frean's biscuits. Later it became part of the New Zealand emigrants' depot and as a dormitory for married couples on the first floor and for single men on the ground floor.
The London and Blackwall Railway Terminus. It was designed by William Tite, architect to the London and Blackwall Railway. The station opened in 1840. On the ground floor of the office block were waiting-rooms, a booking hall, and a flat for the superintendent. There were Toilets and a customs room. The idea was to transfer from the railway to a river boat. The arrival and departure sheds were between the façade and the boundary wall of the East India Export Dock. Over the next hundred years of existence there were many changes. The remains of the station were demolished in 1947
The Railway Tavern. In 1844 the dock company decided to build a second tavern pitched to suit parties travelling on the railway and the excursionists. The new building was designed by Adams and Martin. The tavern was closed in 1871, after complaints that it encouraged drunkenness in sailors, Renamed Brunswick Buildings; it became a dock master’s house. It was demolished in 1947.
Brunswick Wharf Power Station.  The power station was conceived in 1939, but the war prevented construction which began in 1947.Ift was demolished in 1988–9. It was built under the South East England Electricity (Alteration and Extension) Scheme of 1939. Poplar Borough Council resolved to make representations to the CEB for one of the new stations. Poplar Council prepared a report. Land was bought from the PLA and objections from London County Council and others were overcome. With nationaliaation in. responsibility for completion passed to the British Electricity Authority. It began to supply electricity in 1952 and was officially opened in by Lord Citrine, chairman of the British Electricity Authority. It was Built in two-thirds of the old dock, old quay. The brickwork was impressive, all the walls being clad with reddish brown bricks. Darker brown bricks were used at the bases to suggest a plinth. The interior reflected the austerity of the period in which it was built. The generating plant which was virtually obsolete by completion was supplied by Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company of Manchester. A new wharf was built in reinforced concrete for coal brought by river. In 1970–1 the boilers were converted to burn oil. Brunswick Wharf ceased generating in 1984. The site was sold in 1987 for redevelopment and the power station was demolished – the chimneys were blown up on Sunday lunchtime while Edith was checking to see if she was parked ok. The switchgear house to the north remains. The site became a golf range
Switchgear House. Low red brick that was extended upwards in 2003 as a ten-storey apartment block. On the wall is the design of a huge acorn.
The Virginians   It was from Blackwall, that the Virginia Settlers set out in 1606, Captain John Smith sailed with them in three ships: The Susan Constant, the Godspeed and the Discovery. 105 of them made it to Jamestown, Virginia, although six months later only 38 were still alive. In 1608s two women joined them.  Their child Virginia was eventually born... 
Virginia Settlers' Memorial.  In 1928 a bronze tablet was fixed to the western pier of Brunswick Buildings by the Association for the Preservation of the Virginia Antiquities, to commemorate the 1606 embarkation. In 1951 this tablet was put into a memorial erected by the Port of London Authority and designed by Harold Brown. This was a pile of granite blocks, surmounted by a bronze mermaid. After redevelopment of the wharf began the monument became derelict and the mermaid disappeared. Following a long campaign by a Wapping pensioner to attract the attention of the American authorities to the state of the monument it was restored, by Barratt Homes embellished It with an astrolabe and new plaque, and the monument is mounted on a large plinth. The campaigners were however ignored in the ceremonies. Sometime later the mermaid turned up in a Chingford back garden.


Bullivant Street
This was once Union Street
Poplar Mosque. A site was used for a London County Council ambulance station built in 1921–2 to take two motor ambulances and 12 staff. It remained in use until 1972 and was subsequently converted for commercial and religious purposes. Demolished 2014
St Matthias Centre. Part of this was the London County Council. Manual training centre for 40 boys opened in 1910. Later, as St.Mathias Centre. It provided adult education. It was demolished in 2014
School. In 1912 the London County Council planned to erect a new infants' school, in Union Street. This involved the purchase of the Bricklayers' Arms ad some houses in Ashton and Woolmore Street. The school was north of the manual training centre. Along with the training centre it survived the war and was reinstated as St Matthias Church of England School. It closed in 1983. Demolished 2014


Clove Crescent
This road is largely taken up with office buildings on the site of the East India Dock.
2 Mulberry Place. This has been Tower Hamlets Town Hall since 1993.  It is one of four linked office blocks by Sten Samuelson of Malmo, and the British based Beaton Thomas Partnership. It was built as part of the commercial redevelopment of the East India Dock. The borough imported the traditional horseshoe-plan council chamber into and open-plan office space. The Town Hall is built on what was part of the East India Dock where the Mulberry Harbours were built in the Second World War for the Normand landings.
Awakening. Art work in the foyer of the Town Hall based upon Stanley Spence's "Resurrection” which is the reshaping of the East End by Docklands Development. By Loraine Leeson, Peter Dunn and a team from George Green's School.
Shadow Play. This sculpture is in front of Compass House in Mulberry Place is in steel and bronze showing recreational pastimes of adults and children. Sculptor Dave King. 1992.
Renaissance. This sculpture is by the pond at the junction with Saffron Avenue. The kiss has swept the lady off her feet and she seems to be flying. This statue is placed in the middle of what was the East India Dock. The sculptor was Maurice Blick.
The Domino Players.  This is outside the Lighterman Building. The sculptor was Kim Bennet.
Meridians and Metaphors. This is by the pond near the junction of Saffron Avenue. It is on the Greenwich meridian. The sculptor was David Jacobson.


Coldharbour
The road runs close to the riverside and is a continuation of the causeway from Blackwall, probably developed from the pathway along the top of the river wall. The name goes back to the 14th.  There were buildings here by the 1620s.  The name Coldharbour is a common one with many theories of origins. 
1 Isle House. One of the earliest houses in the street it seems to have been on this site before 1626 when it belonged to a waterman. Later it belonged to a merchant who had warehouses here as well as a house.  Isle House itself was a dock master's house built 1826 by John Rennie for the West India Dock Co.  It replaced an earlier dockmaster's house to the south which had structural problems.  It has an unusual plan presumably to give a view of the dock entrance and river.  The earliest-known occurrence of the name Isle House is in 1871. The house was occupied as a dockmaster's residence from 1826 until the 1880s, the first inhabitant, being Captain Thomas Harrison, the West India Dock Company's Blackwall Dockmaster. In 1904 the London and India Dock Company let the house to a dredging company on a yearly tenancy, and in 1935 the Port of London Authority granted lease to the Bethnal Green and East London Housing Association, Restored by Carole A. Gannon of the Welling Partnership, 1995-6.
3 Nelson House. This was formed in 1820 by Samuel Granger, coal merchant and lighterman from two older houses. Since the 1670s the southern house, 3, was leased to a, shipwright, and later to a fisherman, and a waterman.  5 was owned by a shipwright and ship's chandler. In 1802 Samuel Granger lighterman and coal merchant, purchased the freehold and turned it into one house. Evidence of the older building survives in the south cellar wall, and the chimneys. Nelson was reputed to have stayed there, hence the name, and he did visit Blackwall and so he must have stayed somewhere.  In 1856 the house was let to William Watkins, the tug owner. In 1924–5 the house was converted into two units for Port of London Authority police families. In 1935 the Port of London Authority leased it to the Bethnal Green and East London Housing Association.
5 - 7 these were probably built in 1809 by Richard Gibbs, a shipwright. In 1834 5 was let to the West India Dock Company for an Assistant Dockmaster's house. In 1877 it was a coffee house
9-13 Crown Wharf was built in 1971 by Bernard Lamb and the Greater London Council. It is a tall white- boarded terrace which partly replaced a late 19th public house
9 Fishing Smack.  This had been a pub since at least 1750. In the 1760s it was called the Fisherman's Arms. I was rebuilt in 1893, probably by the surveyor to Watney Combe Reid & Co. It was demolished about 1948 and a section of the brown glazed brickwork survives at the south corner of 7.
15 Built in 1843-5 by Benjamin Granger Bluett, a block and mastmaker. There is a ground-floor workshop which was originally the full width of the house and open to the river. Later t was J. M. Jackson & Sons, shipwrights, joiners, mast and block makers, and ship's smiths with a yard to the south near Preston’s Road. As Crown Wharf it was an oil wharf.  In 1894 the Metropolitan Asylums Board which had the adjoining wharf bought the site and in 1895 turned the mast making shop into dressing-rooms, bathrooms, waiting-rooms and stores. It also built a range of water closets and an observation ward. Edwin T. Hall designed and supervised this work. In 1969 the GLC transferred the property to the borough council.
15-25 The General Steam Navigation Company's Cattle Wharf. Acquired 1842 - 1868, it was used for the landing of live sheep and cattle, for the meat trade. GSNC founded in the early 1820s as a passenger carrier, pioneered this trade. GSNC first came to Coldharbour in 1842, when it acquired the Peninsula & Orient Company's leases of Brown's Wharf and Stewart's Wharfs. In 1842 two piers were built one at Brown's Wharf, the other at of Stewart's Wharf. They were designed by Robert Palmer Browne.  In the mid-1860s the live-cattle trade was hit by Rinderpest which brought about an abrupt end to the 'free trade' in imported cattle, and led to the closure of the wharf
19 this is the former Blackwall river-police station, built in 1893–4 now converted to flats, and new flats built in the station yard in 1982. This is part of the General Steam Navigation Company's cattle wharf and in 1891 the East and West India Dock Company, sold it to the Metropolitan Police. The boat-dock under the building had to be usable at all states of the tide, so the ground floor of the station is above street level. Thus the public entrance from Coldharbour was at the top of a flight of steps. The felons' entrance was in the parade shed from where a passage led directly to the charge room and the cells. The station was closed in the late 1970s, and the building was divided into flats in 1982.
19a flats built on the site of the former police station yard. Designed by Rothermel Cooke for Downshire Properties
21- 23 Concordia Wharf. This was the site of the Stewart family's cooperage. Founded by Richard Stewart in the 1760s, the works was on a site later taken for the City Canal. They later moved to the west side of Coldharbour. The cooperage closed in 1831, and the General Steam Navigation Company used the site for its cattle wharf which was on the opposite side of the street.  When General Steam Navigation Co. left in the early 1880s the Stewart family's old riverside residence was still standing. In 1886 oil merchants J. W. Cook & Sons, renamed it Concordia Wharf and left in 1890. In 1898 the wharf was taken over by Charles Grant Tindal, and the Australian Meat Company, which imported tinned and fresh meat and stayed until 1920. In 1921 the British Bluefries Wharfage & Transport Ltd, but moved following a fire in 1924. It was later occupied by the White Sea & Baltic Company pine-tar refiners and distillers.
25 Hawthorn's Wharf. In the 1920s and 1930s the site was a collecting depot by Hawthorn Wharf Ltd, for export of motor car and cycle accessories.
27 The Gun Pub. There was a pub here in 1716 called the King and Queen, later called the Rose and Crown, and then the Ramsgate Pink. It became became the Gun in 1770. The current building may incorporate old fabric and The Oldest part the North end, single-storey to street, extended in 1875 by F. Frederick Holsworth. It is associated with the opening of the West India Dock in 1802 when the first ship to enter was the Henry Addington firing guns on the way in. There is a concealed staircase with a spy hole facing out to the river, which it is said was used to check that for the presence of revenue men. Said to be the meeting place of Nelson and Lady Hamilton and a room above the bar is called the Lady Hamilton Room, and the pub is reputed to be haunted by her ghost. The pub was believed to have had a secret passage connected to a house possibly occupied by Nelson at .3 Coldharbour.
28 three-storey house with one room on each floor. This was a mast maker’s workshop,
29-35 Dock cottages built 1889 on the end of the South Dock Pierhead. They are built on land that belonged to the East and West India Dock Company.
30 -32 likened to lighthouses, and said to entirely consist of a dark and winding staircase with rooms of it. They were demolished in 1935–6 under a slum-clearance order. Their sites remained cleared.
Hanks Court. At the back of some of these houses named after, Joseph Hanks, a builder of Ratcliff, who built four cottages there. They were demolished in 1881, being deemed ‘unfit.
North Wharf. Metropolitan Asylum Board's ambulance station, known as North Wharf. From 1885 onwards smallpox patients were ferried out to floating isolation hospitals moored in the Thames. The General Steam Navigation Company sold its property there to the Metropolitan Asylums Board. They wanted the riverside site for an ambulance wharf where smallpox patients from north London could be brought for transfer by boat to the Board's hospital ships moored at Long Reach. At the wharf the Board required a floating pier to transfer patients at all states of the tide and connected to the wharf by a gangway. The work was carried out in 1884. Both pontoon and gangway survived into the 1960s. A galvanized-iron canopy to protect patients from the rain was also built. In about 1915 two four bed single-storey wards were built on the wharf for infectious cases and there was also disinfector and a boiler. The wharf passed in due course to the London County Council and in 1969 to the borough council. The structures were demolished in 1992–3.
Stewart's Wharf. Thus is now the the northern part of the site between the old river-police station at 19 and the Gun publ. This included the Stewart family's own residence. The Stewart family also leased a wharf upstream and other property.  West of their workshops was an L-shaped timber-pond known as the 'canal'. One building was a buoy-store of 1787–8 for Trinity House.  Richard Stewart, the founder of the cooperage, had been buoy-maker to the Corporation
West India Dock Tavern Site. In 1830 Samuel Lovegrove built a large tavern here but it was never very successful. In 1854 it had stood vacant for 'many years' and was demolished. Lenantons, the Millwall timber merchants, acquired part of the site in the 1870s for a timber-yard, and later used it for boatbuilding


Cotton Street
The east side of the road is taken up with the walls of Robin Hood Gardens.
70 The Nags Head. This pub has now been demolished
Cotton Street Baptist Chapel. The congregation which built the chapel was founded in 1808 and bought the site for a chapel from the East India Dock Company. This was at the junction of Cotton Street and Woolmore Street. The church opened in 1811. There was a burial ground but that was built on for a schoolroom. Damage was caused by a fire in 1914 and the buildings were severely damaged during the Second World War and the site was cleared by 1945.
The Ladies' Charity School building dated from 1813 on a site acquired from the East India Dock Company. A new schoolroom was built in the early 1860s. The school was taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1880 and demolished.


Ditchburn Street
Blackwall DLR Station. This was opened in 1994 and lies between East India and Poplar on the Docklands Light Railway. It is the first station on the Beckton extension. When it opened it was going to be called Preston's Road, but this was changed in the early days of construction. The site is adjacent to that of first Poplar Station on the original line of the London and Blackwall Railway

Docklands Light Railway
The Beckton extension was opened in 1994, leaving the original line at Poplar to go eastwards. Beyond Poplar, the trains for Beckton climb up onto the new concrete viaduct. Leaving East India, the train curves northward and descends to ground level as it heads towards Canning Town.


Duthie Street
This was previously known as Leicester Street was originally part of a grid of roads built on the site of an 18th rope works. It has now more or less disappeared under new road works and the pumping station which was there now has its address in Preston’s Road,

East India Docks  
East India Docks. These were built for the East India Co. by John Rennie and Ralph Walker in 1806 as the third set of wet docks built in London. East Indiamen had traditionally lightened their loads at Long Reach, before sailing to moorings at Blackwall.  However the construction of other docks was leading to robberies from ships still in the river, rather than behind dock walls. The initiative for the creation of the East India Dock did not come from the East India Company itself, but from a group of East India merchants. In 1803, a group of ship-owners led by Robert Wigram and John Woolmore secured an Act for the docks. Four of the Directors of the dock also had to be directors of the East India Company. The company proposed to build the docks around the existing Brunswick Dock.  The docks were opened in 1806 and as built consisted of a basin communicating with an Import and an Export Dock. The goods imported by the East India Company were generally of high value and little bulk and were taken to warehouses in the City for warehousing. This meant that there was little warehousing built around the docks themselves.  In 1833 the Government ended the Company's trading function, and, the dock company was deprived of the use of the bonded warehouses in the City. In 1838 they amalgamated with the West India Docks. Their larger locks and deeper entrance basin of the East India Docks were better able to accommodate larger ships than the West India Docks and they were used more for the export trade. In 1909 the East India Docks passed into the control of the newly created Port of London Authority who undertook some modernisation including to the passageway between the Import Dock and the Basin which was deepened to allow modern ships into the dock. In 1967 the Port of London Authority decided in 1967 to close the East India Docks. The main user of the dock then was Fred Olsen Lines, for the Canary Island fruit and vegetable trade which moved to the Millwall Docks.  Since then East India Docks have been all but obliterated. Most of the original features have gone, apart from stretches of original walling. The dock area is now the site of a complex of office buildings, including Tower Hamlets Town Hall.  The road names are largely of spices imported into the dock and roads and canals roughly follow its outline.
Export Dock. The Dock and Entrance Basin were adapted from the 18th Brunswick Dock. The brick quay walls were similar to those at the West India and London Docks but were founded on clay and prone to slip.  It was used for 161 years by vessels including tea clippers.  In 1895–7 new works here involved the construction of the new cut between it and the basin. By 1905 it was mainly used by sailing ships of the Aberdeen Line and Shaw, Savill & Company, and other steamers. The Union Castle Line trading to the Cape made the docks its headquarters.  The Dock was heavily bombed during the Second World War.  Brunswick Wharf Power Station was constructed on the site and since that has been demolished there is now housing. The shape of the dock can still be discerned in the outline of the estate.
Import Dock.  This was constructed in 1805 north-east of Brunswick Basin, and a high wall separated it from the road. Ralph Walker was the Engineer, and brocks were made on site because off the difficulty in obtaining them locally. Hugh McIntosh was the contractor. The Import Dock was the most important element in the system, with room to unload the returning East Indiamen. It impounded 18 acres of water to a uniform depth of 22ft. Berths were confined to the north and east quays and traffic to them came exclusively from vessels in the 'short-sea', or near-continental and coastal trades. On the South Quay No. 1 Warehouse was a saltpetre warehouse built in 1814 and another saltpetre warehouse was built adjacent to it in 1816. Between 1814 and 1821 three pairs of bonded warehouses were built along the south quay for the use of the private trade. They were designed by Ralph Walker, the dock company's Engineer. In 1820 the foundation stone for 6 & 7 Warehouses was laid by Joseph Cotton, Chairman of the Dock Company. Warehouses were to meet problems of storing coconut oil and tamarind and they were not demolished until 1959. During the 1850s there was a shortage of berths and four fixed wooden jetties were built and others followed. Donald Currie & Co used the dock for their Cape mail service in 1876. By 1883 the chief imports were from Australia, the Colonies and America, made up of comprised rice, jute, seed, wheat, wool and tallow. In the 1880s frozen meat imports included a shipment of 30,000 tons from the Falkland Islands, said to have been the largest single cargo of meat imported. A fire in 1900 destroyed 1 Warehouse built in 1913 and the adjoining quay sheds. They were replaced in 1901 by a single-storey flat-roofed building in ferro-concrete, one of the earliest uses of this material in the Port of London.  As part of the redevelopment of the docks in 1912– 16, the entrance passage was widened to 80ft, and the lock was extended. In 1943 the dock it was pumped dry in order to build the wartime Mulberry Harbours. After closure it was partially filled and the end used as a container stacking yard, while water remained in the east end.
Brunswick Wharf. The East India Dock Company decided to build a steam wharf which opened in 1834 (see Brunswick Wharf)
Rail link. In 1859 the increasing export trade at the East India Docks encouraged the idea of a railway link from the north quay, passing behind the warehouses. The railway was built in 1860 as a branch line from Poplar station.


East India Dock Wall Road
East India Dock Wall Road laid out in 1833–4 to give access to Brunswick Wharf. It ran parallel to Naval Row and where they diverged is a connecting flight of steps for pedestrians.  This stretch of the road was later closed and the area planted with trees and shrubs as part of Tunnel Gardens, opened in 1902 (see Blackwall Tunnel Approach) and the line of it and some of the trees remain on what is now essentially a footpath.

Fairmont Avenue
New road on the site of Charringtons/Midland Railway Poplar Dock/ 17th Blackwall Yard.  This is all gated off with a security guard and it is impossible to see what is there. Appears to be flats and gardens with American names.
Midland Railway Depot. (See under Blackwall Yard, Midland Railway above)
Raddisson Hotel



Gaselee Street
This was originally called Regent Street. It is built on, and follows the line of, a rope works.

Harbour Quay
The road goes round a section of the east end of the north quay of the South Dock Basin, heading for Wood Wharf business park.  It is on the water edge and it is possible to look at the length of the dock.
Cranes. Preserved cranes on the quay side albeit moved here from elsewhere.
Wood Wharf Business Park. A development which consists of two steel-framed high-tech pavilions, intended for office and warehouse use.
Dock offices. On the quayside are a number of brick buildings in a variety of uses.  They are post Second World War and were inside the curtilege of the dock estate.
Lutomer House. Sports Centre. This is part of buildings erected for the bulk wine installation (see Junction Dock)


Jamestown Way
Private road on a Barratt built estate on the site of Brunswick Power Station, previously East India dock Export Basin.  The name presumably relates to the Pilgrim Fathers who left from here.

John Smith Avenue
Private road on a Barratt built estate on the site of Brunswick Power Station, previously East India dock Export Basin.  The name presumably relates to the Pilgrim Fathers who left from here led by John Smith.

Junction Dock
Junction Dock. Built in 1853 to allow for access to the docks from more than one entrance by linking the South Dock to other parts of the West India Docks. In 1851 the dock company was forced into action by the collapse of a wall at the Blackwall. James Rendel suggested building a linking cut from the South Dock to the Blackwall Basin although his plans were considerably amended. It was never used other for much other than for berths for exports and timber imports. It was filled in by the Port of London Authority in 1979–80 as part of an agreement for the lease of the site to Teltscher Brothers Limited.
Cut-Wood Sheds. From the late 1820s softwood piling grounds were formed around Junction Dock
Cranes. Electricity was experimentally applied to existing cranes at the East Wood Wharf before Donaldson ordered three 60ft-wide steel-framed 6-ton electric travelling cranes from John Grice Statter, of Westminster, and Stothert & Pitt, of Bath,
Bulk Wine Installation. Despite the possible closure of the docks, the Port of London Authority remained committed to continuing operations. In 1979 Teltscher Brothers, importers of Yugoslavian wines set up a bottling and distribution centre and leased a site at the Junction Dock which was operational by 1980. The Junction Dock was filled in and in 1982 Teltscher Brothers built offices and a warehouse on what had become an Enterprise Zone site with architects Building Design Systems called Lutomer House which looks out over the Blackwall Basin. This was the last bonded warehouse in London's up-river docks. The site was vacated in 1991.


Lovegrove Walk
Named after the landlord of the Brunswick at Blackwall. It crosses what was the Blackwall Basin Graving Dock of 1875-6.
Jamestown Harbour. Housing 1982 by Whittam, Cox, Ellis & Clayton for Wates


Managers Street
Built to take smallpox patients to the MAB wharf without taking them down Coldharbour. It was laid out in 1884–by Board's architects, A. & C. Harston of East India Dock Road and Leadenhall Street, the new road was called Managers Street, after the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The contractors were Beadle Brothers of Erith.
1 - 2 built for the pier-master and his men. They were designed by the Harstons and erected in 1888. The men's accommodation, in the eastern house, comprised a mess, three bedrooms and a bathroom. No longer there.


Mountague Place
Laid out by James Mountague, District Surveyor for the City of London and built up piecemeal.


Naval Row
The road dates from the 19th and derives from a terrace of houses erected on t built by John Perry as housing for his ship yard officers. Parallel to it was East India Dock Wall Road laid out in 1833–4 to give access to Brunswick Wharf, to make space some of the deck wall had to be set back. The two roads ran side by side and where they diverged is a connecting flight of steps for pedestrians.
Dock Wall. This is the most substantial surviving remains of the East India Docks system. The longest stretch consists of part of the western perimeter wall, a portion of the southern wall and the curved section which is part of a rebuilding in 1833-4 by James Walker all capped with iron railings.  At the south-west corner there is an iron door in an iron-framed doorway from 1833–4. The other openings are all recent. This is a retaining wall which holds back the ground under a rising stretch road.
5 East India Arms. This was on the north side of the street. This was demolished to make way for the second bore of the Blackwall Tunnel. There were impressive railings on the roof where the pub has a terrace with views across London.
Traffic Control Centre for the Metropolitan Police. Built 1992 on what was part of Tunnel Gardens.
Lead Works. This was the easternmost house in Naval Row. It was owned, with the adjoining land up to what is now Quixley Street, by Simon Kingsell, plumber, painter, glazier, and lead manufacturer who had been here since 1789. The lead-works included a mill, a counting-house, a chaise-house, stables, a glazier's shop and a plumber's shop He was bankrupt in 1816, and in 1823 his works was in the hands of Henry Pinchard, a colour manufacturer.  By 1841 the Steamship pub was established there.
26 on the site of the lead works. This is a group of workshops and another building designed by Alfred Roberts, for John Wright & Sons, painters and plumbers, with offices and a warehouse
24 Steamship Pub. Built 1885 by Edward Brown but a pub of that name had been her since 1842.It is a single storey pub extension attached to a house which once stood in line with others, now gone. I
28 The Prince of Wales. This was on the corner with Quixley Street from at least 1846
Hydraulic pumping station. This was built For the East India Dock Co.  who later bought power direct from the London Hydraulic Power Company. This station dates from 1857 and was probably designed by the dock company engineer Henry Martin. It was extended later to provide power for new lock gates, probably by A. Manning, then with an engine room in matching style. Machinery by Armstrong & Co. was replaced by electrically powered machinery in 1925.


Newby Place
The road name is derived from the local landowning Newby family and in particular Ann Newby who lived here and gave land and money for local amenities.
2 Newby Place Health Centre. Built in 1993-5, a design-and-build scheme with architects Janka & Tony Mobbs. This has recently been remodelled as the Health and Well Being Centre
Obelisk in the health centre grounds in red granite
1 was sold to the North London Railway Company in 1903. It was occupied by the Poplar Constitutional Club from 1886-l 1917.In 1917 the British Empire temperance public house was there. In 1920 it was leased to the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union and then Poplar Labour Party, until the Second World War.
All Saints church.  Built in 1820-3 after the inhabitants of Poplar put a petition to Parliament in 1816. Until then Poplar had formed part of the parish of St Dunstan's, Stepney.  The church was designed by Charles Hollis and built by Thomas Morris of Blackwall on land given by Mrs Ann Newby. George Green of Blackwall Yard loaned the money for it. There was Second World War damage and the steeple was pulled away by a barrage balloon. The Church took a leading role in the community of this targeted area of dockland during the Second World War.  Bombs constantly damaged the Church building, although this did not dissuade hundreds of people from using the Crypt as an air-raid shelter.  Late on in the war however, a V2 rocket devastated the building, destroying the east end and bringing down the roof. It was rebuilt in 1953.  It is in Portland stone on a granite plinth, this then being a new material for a London church. The crypt was converted to a parish centre by Thomas Architects, 1987-9.  There is a clock on the church tower and a ring of ten bells.  In 1971 the Parish of Poplar was the first Team Ministry in the London Diocese, combining nine parishes in an area which is one of the poorest in terms of multiple deprivation, in the shadow of Canary Wharf.
Flush bracket. This is located near the north east corner of All Saints Church. There is also a stone at the rear of the church with the consecration date
Churchyard. It was re-ordered on the north side as a public garden by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in 1893. The new layout was by Fanny Wilkinson, who laid out over 75 public gardens in London. It surrounded by early 19th railings on low walls with 19th granite and Portland stone piers. South of the church is Garden of Remembrance, with flowerbeds and chest tombs. Headstones are arranged round the perimeter against the railings. There is a war memorial in the churchyard.
Green space across Newby Place. Two areas fronting other buildings were probably once part of the original churchyard. There are stone gate piers at the entrances and iron railings like those around the church. There is a memorial with the inscription: "to perpetuate the sacred character of this ground consecrated and used for the interments of inhabitants of this parish. This monumental stone was erected by the Vestrymen of All Saints Poplar on the closing of this portion of the churchyard ADMDCCCLIX
Rectory of All Saints. Built on Mrs Newby's land in 1820. . She had given her house as the rectory, but it was demolished and a grand new house was built for the rector on the same site. Peacocks once roamed the gardens.
A coach-house was built to the south of the house and in converted into a clubroom and parish room. In 1900 this included a workshop employing local women as seamstresses in the 'Goodwill Outfitting Society’. These buildings were destroyed in Second World War bombing.
Fire-engine house. This was built by 1822.  Under the London Building Act of 1774, every parish had to have a manual fire-engine, and other fire-fighting equipment.
Watch House. This was built in 1828 in the yard of the fire-engine house, with cells, a room for the watchmen, and accommodation for the Superintendent of the Watch. It later became a Metropolitan Police station until it was replaced in 1869.
Town Hall. This was built for the Trustees of the parish in 1870–1. It was on the site of the watch-house and fire-engine house plus the site of a school and some of the rectory garden.  A two-story building by A. & C Harston was built in 1871-1 in the usual vestry hall design of the times. From 1900 it was' occupied by the rates department of the new borough. This was the scene of the Poplar Rates dispute 1920-1. The councillors were sent to gaol for refusing to set a rate – about equalisation of rates over London. In 1938 it was renamed' Poplar Public Hall' when the new town hall in Bow opened. It was demolished following extensive bomb damage in 1940 during the Blitz.
All Saints' School. This was built by the vestry in 1846 on land at the end of the rectory garden. The architect was John Morris. I was rebuilt on a part of the rectory garden, with land behind the town hall used as the school's playground. In 1894 it became the infants department. In 1904 following a London County Council inspection it was decided that the building was unsuitable for elementary education. It was closed in 1906 and demolished in 1909.
All Saints' Institute. Following the closure of the All Saints' school, it was decided to use the site for a parish institute. The building was formally opened in 1911.  It contained  a gymnasium, a billiard room and clubrooms, with  a hall on the first floor  In 1940, when the adjoining town hall was alight the Institute was being used by the RAF Balloon Command and was saved by water from Poplar baths. But the damage was such that the building was demolished in 1961 by the Borough Council
Hope and Anchor. The pub is said to have closed in 2014. It dated from the 1880s


Newport Avenue
Private road on housing estate on the site of Blackwall Power Station.
East India Docklands Light Railway Station. Opened in 1994, it lays Between Canning Town and Blackwall on the Docklands Light Railway. This was not the original choice of name, as it was at one time going to be called either Brunswick or Brunswick Wharf.


Paul Julius Close
Reuters Technical Services Centre. This was built on the site of Blackwall Yard. In 1989 by the YRN Partnership


Poplar Dock
Poplar Dock was London's first railway dock when it opened in 1851. The site was originally reservoirs built by the West India Dock Co. in 1827–8 which were converted into a timber pond in 1844.  There was a plan for a railway to join the West India Dock and the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway Co. was incorporated in 1846 -  later the North London Railway Co. The sea-coal trade needed to respond to the changed regulations and the increase in rail transport.  It was suggested that the timber pond could be used as part of a system for transferring goods using railway wagons. After much discussion the dock company agreed to allow it to be used for small craft and colliers serving the railway and an agreement was reached for the railway company to lease it. The North London Railway began building its line to the docks from Chalk Farm in 1847 and the dock opened to shipping in 1851. Hydraulic cranes were used to speed the transfer of the coal from the colliers to rail, the first systematic use of them in the Port of London. Cranes owned by the Northumberland and Durham Coal Company stood on the east quay and that company ran their own stock on the railway line. The dock was used for the transfer of inland coal from railway to barge from 1857. By 1863, with the Great Northern, Midland, and Great Western railway companies wanted depots at Poplar Dock, it seemed necessary to expand. The railway companies decided to proceed with the construction of the dock and its entrance in 1871 and the work would include goods depots for the Great Western and Great Northern railway companies. A depot was also planned by The London and North Western Railway Co. The Midland Railway had built their own depot elsewhere. In 1875 a second basin was added on the west of the original dock with goods facilities for these other railway companies. Poplar Dock became an export dock with goods from all over the country arriving for delivery into barges and redistribution to shipping throughout the Port.  On the east side of the east basin a heavy lift crane was built with an octagonal base which remained into the 1970s. The inland coal business moved to the east quay kept for that trade by the North London Railway. Poplar Dock remained in the hands of the North London Railway Co when London's other docks were brought together under the Port of London Authority in 1909, because it was seen as a railway facility. In 1923 the North London Railway Company became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Co. The dock's main business still came from coal, distributed to riverside industries. All the depots at the dock were destroyed by bombing in 1940. After the Second World War the dock continued to function as a transit facility for coal, steel and other traffic but Traffic declined from the late 1960s. Railway lines and sidings were removed, and the remaining sheds and depots were demolished and work ended in 1981. In 1988–9 much of the barge dock extension and the north end of the old dock were filled to make space for roads.
Hydraulic power.  By 1877 there was a large hydraulic pumping station the shell of which survived along with two accumulator towers into the 1980s. A water tower serving the pumping station was added after 1877 and here was a large chimney.
North London Railway. To access the dock the NLR line had to cross The London and Blackwall Railway after passing under Poplar High Street. This route had a steep gradient and alternative approaches were subsequently constructed – a second line was longer and ran to the east side of the basin. Sidings were built in 1865 running west along the north side of the Blackwall Railway with exchange facilities at Harrow Lane Sidings. In 1875 an alternative line was built with what was called the Loop Line - a curve from Harrow Lane Sidings which meant that trains had to reverse. These lines remained in place into the late 1970s.
London and North Western Railway Depot.  This was on the north quay of the dock and included a warehouse owned by Bass & Co. who exported ale from 1852. 
Great Northern Railway Depot. This was on the south side of the dock where there was an export shed. A small GNR warehouse existed before the mid 1860s on the south side of the east basin and it was reached by a swing bridge across the dock entrance.
Great Western Railway. This was on the west of the dock
Poplar Dock Marina. The Marina opened in 1999
Cranes on the quay.  Two Stothert & Pitt travelling cranes in front of the flats. These are 6-ton travelling cranes rebuilt to near original condition.
Flats. Built in 2002 by RMA Architects. 


Poplar High Street
Bridge over the rail lines parallel with Harrow Lane – this line would have taken the majority of the coal from Poplar Dock carried by a variety of railway companies. It now carries the Docklands Light Railway.
260-8 Hidayyah Trust.  The building was originally the South Poplar Health Centre, built 1978-9 by Derek Stow. It is a steel-framed, steel-clad box composed of separate modules, designed as a prototype for transportable hospital units.
275 Angel Pub. This dated from before 1765 and was renamed Queens Arms in the 19th.
275-9 Queens Theatre. This was at the top end of Poplar High Street. Many famous music hall stars and other entertainers began their careers here. They included Betty Driver, Nellie Wallace, Kate Carney and Vesta Victoria. The first music hall here, the Oriental, was licensed in 1865 and performances were given in a hall at the back of the Queen's Arms public house. In 1873 this was replaced by The New Albion to the designs of Jethro T. Robinson and cottages in Angel Court were cleared as part of the scheme. Later the name changes to The Queens. In 1897 the LCC demanded considerable alterations mainly related to safety: the widening of entrances, provision of additional exits and removal of wooden linings. The façade of the building was reconstructed and the coat of arms in the centre of the building was incorporated into the pediment. The entrance to the theatre was squeezed between the Queen's Arms and the Little George Pub. There was a side bar where the public and performers could mingle; there was a large working cellar beneath the stage, where gas tanks for limelight were stored. It was sold in 1905 and reopened in April 1905 with a new bill’ two shows a day and benefits for local charities and individuals. In the 1920s a new box office, bar and frontage was installed. In 1937 a cinema projection room was provided but it continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s as a place of live entertainment. During the Second World War the theatre was bombed twice but by 1956 it had closed. Various schemes were put forward and it was hoped to reopen as a theatre showing plays rather than variety shows. By 1964 the LCC had acquired the site for housing.


Prestons Road
Blackwall Tunnel Ventilation shaft. This is one of two shafts on the north side of the river for the old tunnel.  These shafts have been rebuilt and most recently fitted with smoke control apparatus which means they now open up like a flower.  This vent is on the site of what was originally a staircase for pedestrians down into the tunnel.
Landon's Place, Accumulator Tower, built in 1877-8 when the hydraulic system was extended. This was for the London & North Western Railway.
Bridge House. Built 1819-20 by John Rennie for the West India Dock Company's Principal Dockmaster or Superintendent.  It had some 19th alterations and in 1987 Whittam, Cox, Ellis & Clayton, converted it into flats. It was placed at the entrance to Blackwall Basin with views over both docks and River.  It is now offices for the London Youth Federation.
Blackwall Entrance Lock Bridges. The bridges across the entrance locks were a vital link and operated by the dock proprietors as part of the dock estate. The first bridge here was one designed by Ralph Walker as a horizontal swing-bridge, double-turning and arched. Rennie replaced this Blackwall entrance bridge in 1811 by installing one of the same type, but in cast iron.  In 1813 he also had a cast-iron footbridge, built over the east side of the lock. A second footbridge was built in 1865. These were removed by 1893. Congestion grew on the road bridges and there were disputes with the dock companies about improving the crossing. In 1890 bridges were renewed but paid for from by the London County Council. Alexander Binnie, the London County Council Engineer, worked with Robert Carr of the Dock Company to design a single-leaf hydraulic swing-bridge of wrought iron plate-girder construction, with double carriageways and footpaths. In 1892 it was decided to rebuild the Blackwall entrance and Thames Iron Works & Ship Building Company manufactured the new bridge. The bridge over the Blackwall entrance lock was sited east of its predecessor and was opened in 1895. It was the largest of the dock road bridges and to minimize inconvenience quick-acting hydraulic machinery was used. It was dismantled in 1988, when the London Docklands Development Corporation built a causeway with five decorative arches, permanently damming the lock. A fixed lattice-steel footbridge was built over the west end of the Blackwall entrance lock in 1984–5, as part of the Jamestown Harbour housing estate
100 Lutomer House. Buildings erected for the bulk wine installation (see Junction Dock)
Hydraulic Pumping Station. This was a relic of the Midland Railway Company’s coal dock at Blackwall Yard. It was built in 1881-2 by John Undergo, the Midland Railway engineer.  It functioned from 1882 until 1956. It is now a wine warehouse...
Poplar Business Park.  Two-storey units built 1987-8, by YRM for the London Docklands Development Corporation.
Marshall Keate.  The pub dated from the mid 1840s. There appear to have been three sections to it: the Marshal Keate Hotel, Union Dock Hotel and the Railway Tavern. In its final years tap dancing classes were held at the pub. Demolished for road widening.

Quixley Street
The street is on the site of what was originally an entrance into Blackwall shipbuilding Yard.
Great Northern Railway Goods Depot. The area east of Quixley Street was used as a railway goods yard. By another agreement, with the Great Northern Railway Company, the London and Blackwall Company built sidings, turntables, a 12-stall stable and a warehouse and leased them to the Great Northern Railway Company. The warehouse was a two-storey brick building over a brick-arched basement. Enemy action during the Second World War left the warehouse with only two walls which still stood in 1970. The whole site was bought by the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1983 and was cleared.


Railways
London and Blackwall Railway. This railway originally came through the area as a cable hauled railway from the City to Brunswick Wharf in 1840. It was steam hauled from 1849. This closed to passenger transport in 1926. A branch to the East India Docks was built by agreement with the East and West India Dock Company, into the East India Docks, and running between the two basins to access sites to the east and leaving the line at what was known as Brunswick Junction where a signal box was sited. This closed in 1961.  A line also went to the Great Northern depot on the east side of Quixley Street. (See Quixley Street above).
North London Railway. The railway inherited the line into Poplar Docks from Chalk Farm built by its predecessor the East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction railway. Two hydraulic accumulator towers remain but their power station has gone. This originally dated from 1851 and closed in 1968. The railway and its predecessor were built in order to facilitate coal traffic from the River around North London and beyond. Coal traffic began in 1851. This was originally via an agreement with the Northumberland and Durham Coal Company who operated their own locomotives.   Other railways obtained running powers over these lines to access their various depots at Poplar Docks, and indeed other depots in the area. (See Poplar Dock above)
Great Northern Railway. Depot at Poplar Docks This dated from 1878 and closed in 1968. (See Poplar Dock above)
Great Western Railway. Depot at Poplar Docks This dated from 1878 and closed in 1940. (See Poplar Dock above)
Midland Railway. Midland Railway bought part of the Blackwall Yard in order to improve and maximise their coal trade. This was accessed via the London and Blackwall Railway.  In 1876 the railway built a Poplar branch line from the London to Blackwall to their yard.  This left the London and Blackwall at Poplar Junction which was near Preston’s Road – where today the Docklands Light Railway runs below the roundabout for the Aspen Way flyover. There was a signal box there. A spur from this line went back towards their Hydraulic Power Station (see Preston’s Road above). There was a second signal box at Brunswick Street bridge (see Blackwall Way above). There was also a siding for R&H Green and Silley Weir, shipbuilders still on part of the Blackwall Yard site. (See Blackwall Yard above)
London and North Western Railway. Depot at Poplar Docks This dated from 1853 and closed in 1968. (See Poplar Dock above)

Raleana Road
The house said to belong to Sir Walter Raleigh stood in this area. ‘Raleana’ is a word used in relation to him – to refer to a drink said to be invented by him, or a place or river named after him.
The site of ‘Walter Raleigh's house’ is covered by Raleana Way it was demolished during construction of the tunnel in 1897. (See Blackwall Way) The Blackwall Tunnel ventilation shaft is said to be now on the site (see Yabsley Street)

Riverside
Blackwall Reach. This stretch of the river is so named from at least the late 16th.
Blackwall Rock. This was a shoal in the river here in the immediate vicinity of Blackwall Stairs. Said to be “off Mr. Perry's Building Slips”.   In 1804 it was described as a mass of siliceous "pudding stone" about 300 feet in length, 150 feet wide and not more than two and a half feet under low water Spring Tide. William Jessop was asked to remove it and worked with William Walker and with Trinity House staff to achieve this over a period of four years and the work was completed in 1808.
Coldharbour (see Coldharbour above)
Concordia wharf (see Coldharbour above)
North wharf (see Coldharbour above)
The Coldharbour Iron-clad river wall. This was installed around 1860 by the General Steam Navigation Company, which imported live cattle for slaughter until 1870s. The wall is constructed of concrete overlaid with five rows of large overlapping iron plates rivetted together. Each plate measures 8ft by 2ft 6in.
Blackwall entrance (Blackwall Entrance above)
Northumberland Wharf (see Yabsley Street below)
Blackwall Stairs. These were at the southernmost end of Blackwall Way and most early travellers would have embarked here. There was a ferry here in 1568, and several pubs.  Martin Frobisher set off from here in 1577 in search of the North-West passage and in 1606 three ships left here led by John Smith - Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and Discovery - going to Virginia to found a settlement.
Blackwall Way– and many riverside pubs (see Blackwall Way above)
Poplar Midland Railway dock entrance (see Midland Railway wharf above)
Graving docks (see Blackwall yard above)
Brunswick wharf (see Brunswick Wharf above)
Brunswick Wharf. The East India Dock Company's needed to rebuild its long and largely under-used river frontage — then called the Anchor Wharf and Gun Wharf. Turning the river frontage into a steam wharf would secure the river wall while providing a facility. William Walker replaced the wall with one constructed of cast-iron sheet-piling backed by mass concrete, notable for its large scale and because the iron sheeting was used for the entire face of the wall.


Robin Hood Lane
12 The Beehive . The pub was on site by 1876 and a tied house to Noakes & Co. Brewery of Bermondsey, taken over by Courage in 1930.  It was demolished with to provide an enlarged entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel.
28 British Oak pub. The British Oak, was described as a beer house in 1883. It was completely rebuilt following a fire in 1927 by Walker & Son. It closed in 1991 and is now demolished
Two cast-iron bridges with slate panels from the London and Blackwall Railway. They were built in 1836-40 to connect the East India Docks with London in an alignment planned by John Rennie.
6-19 Grand Palace cinema. This was opened in December 1913. It was modernised and to the plans of Charles Brett in 1934. In the Second World War it was requisitioned by the Ministry of Food, and was used as a food store. It never re-opened as a cinema, and became a storage warehouse, until it was demolished in the late-1980’s. The site was used for a new road widening scheme at the mouth of the Blackwall Tunnel. A different version of this is that the building was destroyed by a Second World War bomb and rebuilt in 1949 as the Lansbury Palace cinema which never actually opened.
Robin Hood gardens 1966-72 by Alison & Peter Smithson for the GLC, the apotheosis of public housing in the borough and an icon for the Smithsons' admirers.  In 1963 when the London County Council commissioned Alison and Peter Smithson to design two separate buildings. Their successor Greater London Council decided to demolish the adjacent Grosvenor Buildings –private tenement blocks from 1885. The Smithsons were influenced by le Corbusier. Construction began in 1968, and the scheme was completed in 1972. It comprises two precast concrete-construction slab blocks – one ten-storey and one seven-storey in a fairly uncompromising Brutalist design. The site remains, sandwiched between three busy roads and the Smithsons tried to make a ‘stress-free central zone and a quiet green heart which all dwellings share and can look into’. There were also ‘streets in the sky’ intended to encourage a traditional model of East End sociability. The flats quickly got a reputation as a very troubled estate. Tower Hamlets Council, the successor landlord, voted for demolition in 2008. In 2015 the estate is still there but with clearance and demolition probably underway.

South Dock
This square covers a small section of the south east end quay
Cut-Wood Sheds. From the late 1820s softwood was floated and piling grounds were formed. In 1857 a cut-wood shed was built. At the east end of the north bank of the South Dock. In 1902 it was divided and most was re-erected on the north side of the Blackwall Basin. It was demolished in 1949, following wartime bomb damage.


Woolmore Street
Woolmore Primary School.  In 1814 a committee was to be appointed to fundraise for a Free School here.  The East India Dock Company donated a plot of ground and buildings were begun in 1815 and the school was formally established in 1816. Shipbuilder George Green, was a leading figure. In 1875 the managers transferred the school to the School Board for London and its title was changed from the Poplar and Blackwall Free (British) School to the Woolmore Street School. The Board rebuilt the school in two phases, demolishing the school and replacing it with girls, boys and infants departments.   In 1912 the London County Council again rebuilt the school which was opened in 1914.   The infants' school and manual training centre were largely undamaged in 1945, but the Woolmore Street building was described as derelict.  Work to rebuild it was finished in 1950. The school is currently being rebuilt.


Yabsley Street
Northumberland Wharf and waste depot Tower Hamlets Waste Recycling Unit which is now run by Cory.
Blackwall Tunnel Electric Lighting Station. This was on Northumberland Wharf. In 1896 the London County Council decided to build an electricity-generating station. This was made up n buildings to house the boilers and engines, a large chimney, a subterranean water-tank, and a building for offices and stores if was designed by the London County Council’s Engineer’s Department. The boilers and fittings were supplied by Fraser & Fraser, and the engines and dynamos by Laing, Wharton & Down. The buildings were finished by 1897, when the tunnel opened for continuous day-and-night traffic.  The plant was shut down in 1912 when the tunnel was connected to the municipal supply, and in 1920 the wharf and disused station were sold to Poplar Borough Council and used as a refuse depot. The buildings were demolished by the Greater London Council in the late 1960s
Tunnel vent shaft on the site of Walter Raleigh’s House
James Hellyer & Sons. Northumberland Wharf. They were leading figurehead carvers and gilders in the 19th. James Edward Hellyer Senior and two of his sons, Frederick and James worked for the firm. Frederick carved the Nannie Dee figurehead for Cutty Sark and died in Lewisham in 1906.
St Nicholas's Church Said have been built on the site of Raleigh’s House in 1900 and paid for by money donated by Miss Trevor. Said to be first building in Poplar to be lit by electricity. Badly damaged during the Blitz, and was used as a waste disposal centre later in the War. The parish was united with All Hallows in 1955, to create the parish of Saint Nicholas with All Hallows, Aberfeldy Street


Sources
All Saints , Poplar. Web site
Banbury. Ship Builders of the Thames and Medway
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
Body. The Blackwall and Millwall Extension Railways
Bygone Kent
Carr. Dockland
Carr. Dockland History Survey
Cinema Treasures. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
Connor. Branch Lines of East London
Connor. Forgotten Stations of London
Connor. Stepney’s Own Railway
Disused Stations. Web site.
Flikr. London at War Group.
GLIAS Newsletter.
Kay. London’s Railway Heritage. East
London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Web site.
London Encyclopaedia
London Gardens Online. Web site
London Pubology. Web site.
London Railway Record
Lost Pubs. Web site
Lucas, London
Marcan. London Docklands Guide
Marden. London’s Dock Railways. Isle of Dogs and Tilbury.
Municipal Dreams. Web site
Pevsner and Cherry. London Docklands
Port of London Magazine
Pub History. Web site
Robins. The North London Line
Sabre. Web site
Survey of London, Poplar
Taylor.  Blackwall.  The Brunswick and Whitebait Dinners
Thames Basin Archaeology of Industry Group. Report
Walford.  Village London .
Waymarking. Web site
Woolmore Street Prinary School. Web site

Thanks again to the Survey of London, Poplar volume

River side east of the Tower, north bank.
Silvertown

This post covers only the north bank of the river for this square

Post to the south Charlton
Post to the east Silvertown

Bradfield Road
On Port of London Authority maps Bradfield Road is sometimes marked as West Ham Causeway.
Lyle Park well-hidden pocket provided by Lyle's for the Borough of West Ham in 1924. The Park was opened in 1924 by Sir Leonard Lyle, JP on land that was gifted to West Ham by the Golden Syrup manufacturer. It one of only three riverside parks in the borough. The park changed now contains a set of ornamental wrought iron gates, originally the entrance gates to Harland & Wolff Ltd, ship builders. It is a rectangular piece of land fronting the Thames with a narrow strip leading to Bradfield Road. There is a drinking fountain, erected by public subscription and dedicated to 'the men of West Silvertown' who died in the Great War. What was the putting green and bowling green is now a heather garden. The entrance to the park has a small garden area with lawn and flower beds, next to which is a children's playground.
Bloomsbury Varnish Works. This is the site adjacent to Lyle Park. The varnish works seems to have operated here under a variety of companies until the early 2000s. It is now operated as a scrap yard
Greenshields Trading Estate. On the site of a British Road Services repair depot which closed in the 1950s.

Knights Road
Lafarge Tarmac Silvertown Site. Trad wharf. This is a branch of the large concrete and buildings materials processing company. This was a Euromix site, making ready mix concrete, taken over by Lafarge Tarmac.
John Knights. They are now part of the PDM Group but the original company is now over 130 years old, beginning as a candle maker. the Silvertown site has always used other people’s waste to produce new products and now PDM providing an environmentally sustainable disposal service for a wide range of bio-degradable chain waste John Knight came here to make his Royal Primrose soap and the site has evolved and has an oil mill, seed and cake warehouses, a glue factory and even a fat melting plant. Today, the plant processes more than 100,000 tonnes a year of food chain by-products. The Silvertown site includes part of the original office buildings. SARVAL operates a rendering plant processing raw animal by-products from abattoirs, meat processing plants and butchers' shops to produce a range of tallows and processed animal proteins.
Atlantis House. Offices for Atlantis Oil and Chemical Co, Ltd.who operate Manhattan Wharf.

Riverside
This stretch of the river bank is referred to as Hook Ness
Manhattan Wharf. This wharf dates from at least the 1890s when it was used for the storage of paraffin.  It has been operated by various companies since. In 1946 it was used by the Vigzol Oil Refining Co Ltd and later by William Simpson & Co., Petrolane Merchants.  It was also said that it had been used by The London & Thames Haven Oil Wharf Ltd, from 1901 to 1944 and in 1979 by the British Sun Oil Company. It is currently apparently used by the Atlantis Oil & Chemical Co Ltd . It is very likely of course that all these companies, and others who have used the site, are  interrelated. The site is now currently owned by Ballymore Property Co., developers of much of  the Docklands and riverside sites.
West Ham Stairs and Causeway, sometimes called Manhattan Causeway.
Mohawk Wharf. At one time this too was an oil wharf operated by the Anglo-American Oil Company.  It was later Bow Waste Paper Mills Ltd. Processing paper waste. In 2007 it was part of the service area for the adjacent Euromix/Lafarge batching plant handling aggregates from JJ Prior's quarry at Fingringhoe.
Sunshine Wharf. Currently used as a metals recycling depot. This was the Sun Chemicals Wharf - Sun is an American printing ink manufacturer. It was sold housing developer Ballymore in the early 2000s
Deanston Wharf. Currently used for paper storage and shredding. It was previously used for tea, and pioneered mechanical handling. This was British Data Management now Iron Mountain. They have a large jetty
Venesta Wharf . This was the Venesta factory, Box, Barrel and Case Works. Venesta had been set up with a works in Millwall to exploit their plywood product.  They moved to this Silvertown site in 1928, closing the Millwall factory and concentrating all UK production here. They started to introduce aluminum foil despite some initial problems but by the early 1950s this site was purely dealing in foils while plywood production had moved to Erith. The site is now Kierbeck Business Complex – Kierbeck are a steel fabrication company but this appears to be run with units to let. The wharf itself is said to be no longer usable.  The site itself is apparently owned by Ballymore.
Crescent Wharf. In 1894 Brunner, Mond & Co. opened a chemical works here, They made soda crystals and, caustic soda. This ended in 1912 and part of the plant closed.  At the start of the Great War under pressure from Lord Moulton at the Explosives Supply Department, the chemical plant was used for the production of TNT   On 19 January 1917 an explosion devastated the Brunner-Mond works and the Silvertown area.  A large part of the factory was instantly destroyed together with nearby streets. There was damage throughout the area including 900 homes.  The site of the factory is said to have never been reused. There are however a number of business units on the wharf.  The wharf is now owned by Ballymore.
Memorial. This says “TO THE GLORIOUS MEMORY OF THE MEN FROM THESE WORKS WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914 - 1919  and “AND TO THE MEMORY / OF THOSE WHO WHILST / SERVING THEIR COUNTRY / BY MAKING T.N.T. / PERISHED IN THE / EXPLOSION IN THESE / WORKS. JANUARY 19TH / 1917 “and “ALSO TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO FELL IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1939 – 1945”
Island Jetty. This jetty is owned by Gulf Oil and stands to the south of Venesta Wharf in the river with no apparent land connection.

Sources
Carr, Dockland,  
Carr. Docklands History Survey
Hill and Bloch. Silvertown Explosion.
John Knights. Web site
Lafarge Tarmac. Web site
London Gardens on line. Web site
London Government, Web site.
Marcan. London Docklands Guide
PMSA. Web site
Port of London Authority. Web site
Port of London Magazine
Port Cities. Web site
Sarval. Web site

Riverside east of the Tower. North bank only
Silvertown

This posting covers only the north bank of the river on this square

Post to the west Silvertown
Post to the south North Charlton

Barrier Point Road
This housing complex and the park are on the site of Prince Regent Wharf.
Barrier Point is an 18 storey block of flats built in 2001 designed by the Goddard Manton Partnership

Booth Road
More flats

Minoco Wharf
Minoco Wharf. The site is currently owned by the developers Ballymore and is being promoted as “Royal Wharf”.
Silvertown Lubricants. In 1896 the Mineral Oils Corporation was formed by Charles Hunting to distill and refine lubricants from Russian crude oil imported by the Northern Petroleum Tank Steamship Co. of Newcastle upon Tyne.  They built a jetty, wharf, and works here. In 1901–2 Minoco became Silvertown Lubricants Ltd., and in 1929 were acquired by the Gulf Oil Corporation. In the 1930s they made Lubricants, processed with Hi-Duti concentrate, cutting oils, quenching oils, transformer and switch oils, Penetrol and Speedolene. It was taken over by Shell UK in 1997 and in spite of a £5m refit it was decided to decommission the plant at Minoco Wharf and sell for development.


Prince Regent Wharf
Burt, Boulton & Hayward. This site made coal tar products and timber products here from 1870.  The firm of Burt Boulton and Hayward was started in 1848 by Henry Potter Burt. He was joined in 1850 by Samuel Boulton and in 1854 by a nephew Thomas Burt Haywood. They used Bethel's patent process of 1858 using tar oils. Initially they had works at Rotherhithe and then Millwall. Works at Rotherhithe from 1849 later at Millwall and then Silvertown where they introduced the use of the vacuum in tar distilling. They used tar from local gas works as a preservative for timber mainly for railway use – sleepers, telegraph poles and so on. In the 1980s the site was described as ‘the most polluted in Europe’. They became Printar Industries and Silvertown Tar macadam.

Rail lines
Many of these riverside sites had rail lines and sidings, coming from the Silvertown Tramway and from sidings west of Silvertown Station, Great Eastern Railway.


Thames Barrier Park
Thames Barrier Park. This park is on the site of the Prince Regent Wharf tar works. It was planned to create a link between West Silvertown Urban Village and the Thames. It claimed to be Britain's first postmodern park, the result of an international competition in 1995. The landscape architects were Groupe Signes, the architects Patel & Taylor who had worked on a similar riverside industrial site in Paris. The strongest image is the 'Green Dock', a strip of planting hollowed out of the central plateau – said to be a reminder of the site's dockland heritage. It provides a sheltered microclimate for a 'rainbow garden' - strips of coloured plants. A Pavilion of Remembrance near the River commemorates local people who died in the Second World War.


Thames Barrier,
Thames Barrier. There was a decision to build in 1953 after the floods of that year to provide a barrier in the Thames to protect London. It is the largest moveable flood barrier in the world designed for the Greater London Council by Rendel, Palmer & Tritton.  It was completed in 1982. It is a third of a mile long going across four main shipping lanes and made up of 10 separate moveable steel gates of 3,000 tons which lie on the river bed. Between each gate are concrete piers housing electro- hydraulic equipment sheltered beneath elegantly shaped stainless steel forms. There are shell-like hoods of stainless steel - seven large ones each facing a smaller one. Ships can pass through the four wide gaps between the central piers - note the navigation lights.  It is increasingly raised not just to stop surge tides coming up the Thames but to hold flood water from the upper Thames back until it can flow out with the outgoing tide. Service areas and the control rooms are on the south bank


Tay Wharf
Tay Wharf – now part of the industrial estate – was a jam and marmalade factory for James Keiller who came here from Scotland in 1880.  In 1920 they were taken over by Crosse and Blackwell and later Nestle.


Thames Road Industrial Estate
The estate is on the site of Silver’s India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works.
Silver’s India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works. Silver is said to have opened a factory in Greenwich (although this has never been identified0 and in 1852 moved to what is now Silvertown, and named after him.  They were closely involved with the Hancock brothers who had identified both rubber and gutta percha and Silver took over Charles Hancock’s works. Initially they made submarine cables but then other electrical products. They moved into the manufacture of bicycle and motor vehicles – as well as items like rubber balls and other goods from conversion to ebonite. . They expanded with other works in Britain and abroad. They were taken over in the 1950s by what was then the British Tyre and Rubber Co. and the works was closed down and became the industrial estate. As cable manufacturers they laid some important cables including the French Atlantic Cable from Brest to Cape Cod.

Wards Wharf Approach
Thomas Ward Ltd. They had machinery showrooms here and dealt in iron & steel scrap, tanks, boilers, engineers, shipbreakers, contractors plant, machinery erectors & dismantlers. They dated from before 1921.
More flats and yet another riverside tower.

Sources
British History Online. West Ham.
Crouch. Silvertown and Neighbourhood.
Emporis. Web site
Field. London Place Names,
Carr. Docklands History Survey
Grace’s Guide. Web site
Port of London Magazine
Royal Docks Trust. Web site
West Ham. Centenary volume.

Riverside east of the Tower, north bank
North Woolwich

This post covers the north bank of the river only


Post to the west Silvertown
Post to the south West Woolwich

Factory Road
Tate and Lyle Thames Refinery. Thames Refinery is the largest sugar refinery in the EU and one of the largest in the world, with a capacity of 1.2million tonnes per annum. This was opened in 1878 by Henry Tate, specialising in cube sugar. The refinery now produces a wide range of sugars – for specialist applications as well as familiar types. They also produce artificial sweeteners. ‘Sugar boats’, ships of up to 35,000 tonnes, still call at the jetties. There is a Raw Sugar Jetty,   a Refined Jetty, and the Shore Berth. They Handle: 72,000 tonne of raw sugar and Export Refined Sugar. The massive refinery dominates the area and The office frontage building fronting North Woolwich Road is an example of 1950s Festival of Britain commercial architecture with its well detailed façade of strong verticals, clad with decorative tiles. It has an attractive lattice balcony in the setback end bay. Thames Refinery was sold in 2010 to American Sugar Association Refining
Silvertown Gas Works. This was set up by the Victoria Docks Gas Company and opened in 1864. It was taken over by the Gas Light & Coke Co. in 1871. It was closed in 1909. And the site was sold in 1911, but the gasholders were in use till 1914. Before that it had been used as a coal station and was managed at a distance by the staff at the Bow Common Works.  Eventually the equipment was too out of date to continue to be used. The site was taken over by adjacent Tate and Lyle and it was thought some buildings from the works survived into at least the 1960s.
Silvertown Sewage Works. This lay alongside Ham Creek. The Silvertown area had been omitted from the general sewage works for West Ham at Bow Creek as the area was very cut off. In the late 1860s factory owners began to press for something to be done and sponsored a private Bill and the sewer was extended to the area.  In the 1880s a works was built especially for the area alongside the gas works.
District Chemical Works – this was managed by a Charles Wulffing. Nothing more is known.
London Teleport. London North Woolwich Earth Station was opened in by 1984 BT London’s first satellite earth station; it was designed to handle business services from the City and provide trans¬mission facilities for satellite television and radio companies. It first transmitted commercial cable TV broadcasts using the European Communications Satellite (ECS). It was then renamed the London Teleport following a visit by The Duke of Edinburgh.  It became the hub of BT's international SatStream service, videoconferencing and several other specialised satellite services from computer data transfer, facsimile transmission, and telex and telephone communications over private leased lines. In 2011 it was sold to Arqiva who have closed it and cleared the site
Sewage Pumping Station. Designed for Thames Water by Grimshaw Architects in the late 1980s, built in 1995 with deliberately, lopsided curved roofs.  
Henleys. W.T. Henley came to London in 1830, as a dock labourer who taught himself instrument making. When the Electric Telegraph Company was set up Henley supplied the telegraph instruments. As his business developed he eventually set up a factory at North Woolwich. The first order received was to armour the cable link from Ceylon to India and this was followed by other orders. The firm continued making submarine cables and began to diversify. After the Second World War the company became part of Associated Electrical Industries Ltd., and the North Woolwich factory closed the main works being that at Northfleet.
Loon Fung. Chinese Cash and Carry. Loon Fung was established in central London in the 1970s as one of the first Chinese supermarkets in the UK. In 2006, the cash and carry opened in Silvertown, East London to supply oriental foods to the growing cosmopolitan population in the Docklands area and beyond. An oriental gateway advertised the site.

Ham Creek
This small stream once flowed southwards through the area, but disappeared following dock and other building. It formed part of the boundary between East and West Ham.  Its outlet into the Thames formed a small bay and it is said that between 1656 and 1673 it was used as a naval dockyard, supplementing that on the south bank opposite at Woolwich.

Henley Road
Named for the Henley Factory which was alongside the road.

Pier Road
Some artefacts lie along the riverwall. A propeller is mounted on a plinth, along with a small mobile crane and an anchor.

Railway
Railway line into North Woolwich Station. This was originally built in 1847 as the Eastern Counties and Thames Junction Railway from Stratford.  It has latterly been part of the North London Line to Richmond. It is now closed and will be part of Crossrail.

Sources
Atlantic Cable. Web site
Co-partnership Journal
Crouch. Silvertown
Exploring East London, Web site
Hughill. Sugar and all that
Loon Fung, Web site
Stewart. Gas Works of the North Thames Area
Tate and Lyle Web site
World Teleport. Web site

Riverside east of the Tower. North bank. 
North Woolwich


Albert Road
12 The California.  Pub of 1914 with art nouveau lettering designed by Robert Banks-Martin. Closed 2007 and demolished.
North Woolwich Police Station, Built 1904 and designed by J. Dixon Butler, in striped brick and stone. The station was "K" Division of the Metropolitan Police.  There is a lamp at the corner of the road with "POLICE" in the glass. It is now partly closed.
74 The Royal Albert. This pub was present by 1867 and was owned by Watney’s Brewery. It closed in 2002 and is now housing.
102-104 The Albion Pub. This pub was known locally as the Cowshed.  It was present by 1872 and was destroyed in an air raid in 1944.
The Kent Arms was at the corner with Dock Street. Its name may relate to North Woolwich’s position in Kent until 1889. It was demolished in 1975. A replacement pub was called Katie's Place – which had been the name of a small road alongside it. It was also later called Churchill’s and Jimmy Dean's but it closed in the 1990s and has been demolished.
The Prince Albert. This was on the corner with Pier Road and was demolished in the 1970s.
The Woodman. This pub was destroyed in Second World War bombing.
Royal Standard. Pub dates from1898 with brick Baroque details and Art Nouveau iron overthrow to the saloon entrance. It is one of the last of the 19th docklands public houses left in the area.


Barge House Road
Woolwich Council Houses. Row of early local authority housing erected by the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich in 1901 with a loan from the London County Council. These were the first houses built by the Woolwich council.  At one time there were notices on them showing their origins which seem to have gone
Barge House Tavern. This is said to have been a barge on the foreshore here which was built up into a pub.
Barge House Ferry. This ran to Warren Lane in Woolwich.  In 1839 a Mr. How built an esplanade here and installed a large boat for the ferry. It was to carry livestock – horses and cattle. It was normally prorated by the proprietor of the Barge House.
Military Ferry. In 1820 the Royal Arsenal set up a ferry from its landing stage to the Barge House for the transport of artillery and provisions by the Royal Army Service Corps.
Barge House draw dock
Hoba Wharf


Ferry
Woolwich Free Ferry. The ferry has been free of toll from 1889. It was opened by Lord Roseberry, Chairman of the three day old London County Council. Woolwich was arrayed in flags and bunting and there was a procession through the streets with mounted police and all the local organisations with banners and bands. The first ferries, were "Gordon", "Duncan" and "Hutton", and could carry 1000 passengers, and 20 vehicles. After 30 years they were replaced by "Squires", "Gordon" and later "John Benn" and "Will Crooks".  In 1926 Squires was hit by a US freighter. In 1940 they worked all night evacuating people from the blazing Essex shore, with oil burning on the river. They ran a 24 hour service in blackout without navigation lights and with bombs falling around them. It was finally decided to replace the old side loading ferries with "end-loading" vessels. In 1963 three diesel engined boats were built by Caleden shipbuilding Dundee- Ernest Bevin, James Newman and John Burns. They are double ended and able to proceed in either direction.  The terminals are Husband & Co., built 1964-6, with steel-trussed ramps adjustable to a 30-ft tidal range, replacing floating landing-stages of 1889.  Long queues of traffic develop throughout the day and the ferry is still a vital link for heavy lorries. It remains Free.


Foot Tunnel
Woolwich Pedestrian Tunnel. Built 1909-12 by the London County Council engineer Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice for the London County Council. The entrance rotunda is in red brick with a Copper dome with little conical-roofed lantern on top. Lifts were installed in the Woolwich tunnel from its inception until they were closed for replacement in 2009. 


North Woolwich
North Woolwich is in itself an interesting anomaly. It is an enclave of Kent on the north bank of the river. It was originally in Woolwich parish; and as such was eventually part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich until 1963 - and thus part of Kent. This situation probably had its origin in the land around Ham creek which was held in 1086 by Hamon, Sheriff of Kent and there is some speculation that the name ‘Woolwich’ originated here as a trading area for sheep. Two bits of land had been given by Offa the Saxon king to St.Peter's Monastery in Westminster and this was part of the ancient manor of Hammarsh. In 1963 it became part of the London Borough of Newham.


Pier Road
This was previously be called Stanley Road
North Woolwich Pier A pier was built here for the Great Eastern Railway Company for a ferry to Roffs Wharf, Market Hill in Woolwich.  This was known as the Penny Ferry. In 1908 the Great Eastern Railway withdrew the service as it was unable to compete with the free ferry. The pier on the north bank was retained and until the Second World War was used by the LNER as a calling point for river steamers going to Southend and Margate. In later years the pier was used by the Alexander shipping company, who operated their "SUN" tugs. The pier remains although the wooden decking has timbers missing. It includes there is a steel shelter with an asbestos roof and the remains of a small booking office.
Bus Station. A small bus station and turn round exists adjacent to the foot tunnel rotunda, serving the ferry and the foot tunnel – and until recently the now defunct station  The road itself on this stretch is essentially a queuing area for the ferry and designed as such with long lines of waiting traffic. There is a heavy flood protection area along the riverside and at the ferry terminal – and a previous attempt to improve things with red brick planters is now neglected.
1 The Three Crowns. This pub closed in the early 1990s.  This pub was present by 1855 and was a Charrington’s House. It is now flats.
North Woolwich station.  The earliest station may have been in the area of the park. The line had been opened in 1846 from Stratford, by the Eastern Counties and Thames Junction Railway to connect with a ferry from North Woolwich pier, to provide a quick journey from Shoreditch to Woolwich.  There were hourly services until 1854 when the brick station building was erected. It had three platforms, a goods yard and a turntable.    The station was badly damaged in Second World War bombing in 1940.   The goods yard was rationalised and closed by 1970, and the line reduced to a single track in 1969. The other tracks were lifted.  The station building ceased to be use and was used as a rubbish tip.
North Woolwich Station. The original station became a museum and was replaced. From the 1980s only one track went on to North Woolwich from the Connaught Tunnel and in 1985 the station became the eastern terminus of the North London line running to Richmond via Stratford and Highbury.  The station building was moved away from the road behind a small parking area to the west of the old station building beside the old goods yard. A small station building and a single platform were provided. The station and the line to Stratford closed on in 2006. This little station has now been demolished for Crossrail.
North Woolwich Station Museum.  After closure the old station was taken over by the Passmore Edwards Museum. It was built in 1854 and is a striking building with a central single-storey ticket office, originally set back behind an open arcade. There was office and meeting room accommodation on the first floor.  It was restored by Julian Harrap and became the Great Eastern Railway Museum which was opened by the Queen Mother in 1984. The museum, which is run by the Passmore Edwards Trust tells the story' of the Great Eastern Railway. The interior in record of its condition of c1910, with the staff dressed in Edwardian dress the exhibits include a wide variety of steam railway displays and artefacts in train models, equipment, old notices and signs etc to a large booking hall. With a reconstructed ticket office, booking hall and general waiting room. It was at one time also used as a small public library.  On the turntable site was a small shunting tank engine built in at Stratford in 1895.   For whatever reasons London Borough of Newham began to close the museum services run by Passmore Edwards Museum in the 1990s and ceased publicising the museum. The Great Eastern Railway Society removed their exhibits. Inevitably it closed in 2008, despite dedicated staff. It s understood the bulldog will become flats.
Public toilets. These date from the time when the area was part of Woolwich Borough. They have been closed for many years.
Electricity transformer station. This was opposite the ferry entrance and had a plaque on it showing the Woolwich Coat of Arms. These were removed although the building remains – the date 1937 is still on it.
2 Royal Pavilion.  It is large pub of 1849, extended 1852. This pub was close to the ferry and had a jazz club. It closed in the early 2000s and was demolished in 2003. It is to be replaced by a tower block of flats.


Railway
Crossrail work. Crossrail will cross the river in this area. A tunnel portal will be created on the site of the former North London line between Albert Road and Factory Road.


Royal Victoria North Woolwich Gardens. 
Royal Victoria North Woolwich Gardens.  During the 1840s the North Woolwich Land Company, owned by George Parker Bidder, railway engineer and entrepreneur promoted a new railway and ferry here. In 1850 William Holland, proprietor of the now demolished Pavilion Hotel had begun to lay out the gardens and he opened them in 1851 as the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Gardens – a cheap alternative to the Great Exhibition.. The Gardens attracted large numbers of people with all sorts of entertainments – recreated as a play by local people in the 1980s. By 1853 there was a bowling green, rose gardens, walks and a maze as well as fairground attractions.There was also an Italian garden with scarlet geraniums, a Chinese dancing platform, the larges dance strafe in London and a lake. However, from 1882 things began to deteriorate. The Bishop of St Albans, the Lord Lieutenant of Kent and the Bishop of Rochester petitioned the City of London to buy the gardens for a public park. A fund was set up and an appeal launched. This money was finally raised in 1889 through the Charity Commissioners and a donation from Queen Victoria. They were the handed to the London County Council and re-opened in 1890 as the Royal Victoria Gardens.  Under the LCC gardens were completely redesigned. The area divided into a series of square or rectangular cells each with a different character or activity. The Gardens suffered bomb damage in 1940 and little remains today, except for the bowling green and a shrubbery. There are enhanced sports facilities and a modern café next to the bowling green and run by the bowlers. . In 1971 the park became the responsibility of Newham Council.
Silvertown Open Air Baths. This was Opened in 1922 and provided by the London County Council via Woolwich Council.  The pool suffered damage from wartime bombing and was closed in 1948.
Steam Hammer. It was made by manufactured by R.Harvey of Glasgow in 1888 and it was used in the blacksmiths shop of the nearby firm of R H Green & Silley Wier Ltd, shipbuilders and repairers. It was used to shape forgings, comprising a hammer-like piston located within a cylinder. The hammer is raised by the pressure of steam injected into the lower part of a cylinder and falls down with great force by removing the steam.


Store Road
Victoria Ale Stores.  Burnt down in 1897.


Woolwich Manorway
Improved in 1896. Manor Way is an old name for road leading to the ricer,
Manor Way draw dock
Sankeys Wharf. Used by a builders merchant
19 Round House. 19th brick pub in the shape of a curved building. This was a Watneys pub which closed in 2003 and has now been converted to flats. 
Pumping Station. Built by the London County Council in. 1900 for main drainage. Red brick, very plain.
The Lodge. This is a 19th house.  It was built as the Pumping Station Manager’s house. It is a detached house facing the adjacent pumping station and the side alley leading east to Barge House Road behind.
Gaslight & Coke Cottages. A terrace of eight cottages built by the Gaslight & Coke Company for its workers in the 1900s.

Sources
Bygone-Kent
Carr. Dockland
Carr. Docklands History Survey
Chrismansfieldphotos. Web site
Closed Pubs. Web site
Clunn. The Face of London
East London Old and New
FOGWOFT. Web site.
GLIAS Newsletter
Great Eastern Railway Journal
Industrial Heritage
London Borough of Newham. Web site
London Encyclopaedia
London Gardens Online. Web site
Marcan. London Docklands Guide
Model Engineering
 Nature Conservation in Newham   
Newham walks,
Pudney. London River Crossings.
Spurgeon. Discover
Tucker. Ferries of the Lower Thames

Riverside east of the Tower, north bank
Galleons

This post only includes items north of the river

Post to the north Beckton


Atlantis Avenue
Bohler Sortex. Buhler is a company with Swiss origins who make a wide variety of machinery. Buhler Sortex is involved in the field of optical sorting.


Galleons Road
Royal Quays. Housing scheme on old rail land.
Galleons Hotel. The hotel was originally built in the early 1880s for P&O shipping company and originally catered for passengers waiting to embark on their liners in the Royal Albert Dock.  It was built on piles with stables in the basements, and with a subway from the hotel to the dockside quay.  It was designed by George Vigers & T.R. Wagstaffe, in the Norman Shaw tradition. It has a long, rendered front with a jettied upper storey, a tower and 'Ipswich' windows. The plaster frieze, which was originally blue and white, was by Edward Roscoe Mullins. The first-floor billiard room opened on to a balcony over the station platform canopy.  It did not close as a pub until 1972 but after the railway line closed it stood alone in immense surroundings covered in railway tracks, and was described as a ‘good place to hatch a revolution’. When the Royal Quay housing scheme was instigated plans were made for its renovation, which was undertaken by the Brian Partnership in 1996. It is now surrounded by new housing, is no longer scary, and houses the headquarters of Irish-London company, Corbyn Construction, The Reach bar and kitchen and Luck’s Gym. The bar was officially opened by the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in 2014.   
Galleons Station.  Opened in 1880 and built by the London and St.Katharine’s Dock Company. It was sited north of Galleons Road, adjoining the hotel and the front door opened out onto the platform. Both the dock company and the Great Eastern Railway Company used it. In 1886 it was resited but a fragment of station remained behind the hotel and part of the platform was kept as a raised area in front of the hotel
Galleons Station.  Opened in 1886 and built by the London and St.Katharine’s Dock Company. It was to the east of the previous Galleons station’.  It was bombed in 1940 and abandoned by the Port of London Authority in 1950.  The site has since been redeveloped although the platform survived for a while.


King George V Entrance
George V entrance lock.  This was built in 1921 to take 30,000 ton ships and it much bigger than the Royal Albert entrance lock. It had steel gates and a small automatic local hydraulic pumping station of 1970 to power the lock with a modern accumulator tower which was removed in 1989.
Flood Defence Gate. The gate provides flood protection to the impounded area of the docks. It consists of one 30.5 meter wide flap gate hung from an overhead travelling frame together with 250m of concrete floodwall.
Custom House. Single-storey brick building from 1948 at George V entrance
Offices - Small office for the Lock Keeper built by the Port of London Authority

Lower Galleons Entrance
This, northern entrance to the Royal Albert Dock, was built in 1886 in order to better compete with the Tilbury Dock then being built by the East and West India Dock Company.  It was damaged during the war and was not reopened until 1956.  In 1980 it was reconstructed into a small craft lock.  It is said that its 1950s electrically driven gear is preserved.

Plaistow Level
The Albert Dock and Basin lies in what was the Plaistow Levels - marsh next to the Thames. In the past the site was administratively in Kent, adjacent to the manor of East Ham. A chapel is said to have been still visible in the 18th in what was known as Chapel Field which lay east of Woolwich
Manor Way.

Railway
Galleons Branch. Development in this area north of the Royal Albert Dock entrance and around the Galleons Hotel is on the site of an extensive railway system. The Galleons Branch came from Custom House station and was opened by the London and St.Katherine’s Dock Company in 1880.  The Royal Albert Dock received its enabling act in 1875 and this included powers for the construction of a passenger railway from a junction east of Custom House Station to a riverside terminus at Galleons Reach. By later 1880 this line had been built and at first it was very busy with three trains an hour.   There have been two stations at Galleons on slightly different sites. Beyond the station the lines continued to a coal wharf managed by Corys and in 1918 this line was used to access a ferry for workers at the Arsenal. Services were curtailed in the Second World War and the area and the line were devastated by bombing in 1940. It was eventually closed and left to rot.
PLA railways. Around the Galleons Branch and interfacing with it was a large network of Port of London Authority railways accessing the Royal Albert Dock, the Royal Albert Basin, the entrance lock and indeed Cory’s coal wharf.

Riverside
Galleons Reach. A reach is the part of a river which lies between two bends. The name of Galleons Reach here can be found on maps as early as 1588 and a Galyan family held land here in the 14th.
Galleons Point - This is shown as ‘Gailion Nesse’ on a map of 1588 and ‘ness’ is a word used for a promontory. The actual point is close to the entrance to the King George V dock.
Cory coal wharf. Closed in the 1960s
Port of London Authority. Radar scanner.  This scanner was installed in 20134 as is part of the PLA’s 18-installation network. It covers the eastern bit of the Thames Barrier Control Zone and feeds data direct to the Thames Barrier Navigation Centre. It is on a 65-metre high tower and the Scanter 5102 radar uses solid state technology and operates in a completely different way to traditional marine radars.
Piers – there were a number of steam ship piers around the entrance to the Riyal Albert and George V docks.
Galleons Riverside Footpath. This winds round the riverfront and the dock entrance, despite being closed as a right of way in the 1980s by the London Docklands Development Corporation. Good for bird watchers.
Devils House. A building which would have been on the site of what s now the Albert Basin was on the bank of the Thames north of Galleons Point. This is thought to be The Devils House’. It is thought this was demolished during dock construction and that it was probably a pub.

Royal Albert Dock Basin and lock.
Galleons Point Marina -  this is in fact Albert Dock Entrance Basin. All-purpose boating facility offering temporary moorings, maintenance, tuition and equipment sales. It is said to be upmarket with no residential moorings.
Royal Albert Basin and lock. This is very large –larger than many actual docks and intended to be large enough and deep enough to take any ship then afloat
Lock – built in 1880. This, southern entrance, was filled in during the 1960s
Thames House. There was a control centre here responsible for safety of navigation from Crayfordness to Teddington. Vessels would switch from Galleons Radio, channel 14, to Barrier Control, channel 18, between Margaretness and Blackwall Point.  This is now completely dealt with at the Barrier.
IVAX Pharmaceuticals. European Headquarters of the IVAX Corporation, opened in 1999. These long grey buildings are at the far east of the Royal Albert Dock. These buildings were vacated in 2007.
National Construction College (East London)
Pumping station.  This is a red-brick single storey structure with gable built in the same idiom as Port of London Authority buildings. Dates from 1930.

Woolwich Manor Way 
Galleons Point. Housing estate by Fairview developers built 2003 on the Harland and Wolff ship building and ship repair works site.
Sunderland Point. 12 storey tower on the riverside.
Harland & Wolff. This very large ship building and ship repair establishment was on the site of what is now known as the Galleons Estate. The main part of the yard was to the south in Woolwich Manor Way, but the works extended to the side of the George V entrance lock.


Sources
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
Bygone Kent
Carr. Docklands History survey
Connor. Branch Lines around North Woolwich
Connor. Forgotten stations of London
Field. London Place Names
London Borough of Newham. Web siteLondon Railway Record
Marcan. London Docklands guide
Nature Conservation in Newham,
Port of London Authority, Web site
Port of London Magazine
Royal Docks Trust. Web site
Victoria County History. Essex

Riverside east of the Tower, north bank
Beckton

Post to the south Galleons
Post to the north Jenkins Lane
Post to the east Creekmouth


Armada Way
Armada Point BDM. Delivery contracting company.
Docklands Light Railway Beckton Depot. The depot was built to service and stable the trains needed for the operation of the Beckton Extension and for the use of double-unit trains across the network. There are facilities for 45 trains. Rail access is from spurs from the running lines from the Beckton branch. This is on part of the gas works site
Control Centre, this was built In preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games to ensure the rail service remained operational in the event of a major incident. 

Beckton Gas Works
This square covers only the eastern section of this very large gas works. Gas holders and retort houses.
Beckton Gas Works. The (Chartered) Gas Light and Coke Co. bought land in 1868 from the Ironmongers Company for new works to serve much of Metropolitan Thames. The earliest of all gas companies they had hitherto been based in central and east London with a headquarters which remained in Westminster. From the late 1860s the London gas industry was under government pressure for small companies to amalgamate, close small works and open big out of town works. Beckton was the Chartered’s response and the works was opened in 1870, and became the second largest in Britain at its peak serving 45 million customers. It was named after the then company chair, Simon Adams Beck.  The site allowed the easy delivery of coal from North East England: and the company had its own fleet of steam colliers, and its own railway into the site.  The design and construction of the works was undertaken by Frederick John Evans, the Company's Chief Engineer, assisted by Vitruvius Wyatt, and the contractor was John Aird. Originally four retort houses with plant and gasholders were installed and a gas main was installed to the City and Westminster. G. C. Trewby was the first superintendent living in a company house on site. Beckton continued to develop and eventually 14 retort houses were built. In 1890 a carburetted water gas plant was introduced and in 1931 batteries of coke ovens were built. During the Second World War Beckton was seriously bombed and three holders and the mains were badly damaged closing the works for a fortnight. Later in the war over 200 identified bombs were dropped on the works. In 1959 the first pipe-line supplies of petroleum began and a pipe line was built to storage tanks at Shell Haven and Coryton. Further new technologies were introduced during the 1960s.  With the advent of North Sea Gas the works was closed in the early 1970s, although operation holders remain on site. Famously the site was used for the filming of Full Metal Jacket and Vitruvius Wyatt’s carefully designed buildings were plastered with Vietnamese slogans and turned into ruins. They remained in this state for some years but have now been demolished. Much of the site returned to birch scrub with many birds and plants. A beetle was found here known nowhere else in Britain. 
Gas Holders.  The three remaining holders have apparently been demolished. It may be worth noting that Kent County boundary went straight through the site of the original gasholders. Two of the holders remaining on site in 2000 and listed were: No. 8 built by the original engineer Vitruvius Wyatt in 1876.Ot had unusual buttress- like columns in cast iron with fancy latticework. No. 9 was designed by the later engineer George Trewby in 1890-2 with a capacity of 8 million cubic ft. It was the third largest holder then built in Britain. Its lattice steel, six-tier guide frame was entirely rational.
Beckton Waterfront Business Park.  As part of the preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games in London the London Development Authority purchased the former Beckton Gas Works site to provide alternative employment space for industrial businesses from the Lower lea Valley.  The site is bounded by Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and poplar trees will screen it.  The building layout follows the principal geometry of the site. 

Beckton Sewage Works
Beckton Works. A sewage works was established here by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which served the whole of North London. It was built by Costain in 1864. And was effectively the terminus of the Northern Outfall sewer. Originally the untreated flow went straight into the river here.  Major work was done by the London County Council in the 1950s and now the sewage from some of the millions of Londoners living north of the River is treated here along with surface water resulting from rainfall.  It was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1959.  Sewage enters Beckton by gravity through five 9 ft diameter sewers. The coarse screens remove everything larger than 5cm across. Further screens and channels remove grit and plastics. It then moves to the sedimentation process. The sewage then flows into large tanks, where the finer solids settle by gravity. It takes about four hours to flow along these tanks, and about 70 of the solids are left in the tanks as sludge. This sludge removed by electrically driven scrapers to troughs at the inlet end and is then further treated. The remaining liquid flows into aeration tanks. Here it is mixed with a biologically active sludge and aerated using fine bubbles of filtered air from diffusers on the floor of the tanks. Activated sludge is made up of microorganisms, which use the remaining pollutants as a food source while the air bubbles provide the oxygen needed to sustain them. The mixture takes about six hours to flow through these tanks then the clarified effluent flows over weirs at the tank's surface and flows directly into the River Thames. The sludge used to be dumped in the North Sea but now it is dried and burnt in the Sludge Power Generator installed in 1994. Gas produced is used as fuel for gas turbine engines for electricity for use within the process.
Wind turbine.  64 meter high wind turbine that will help generate eight per cent of the energy needed to power the site.
Thermal hydrolysis plant. This is an industrial-scale pressure cooker which will heat sludge to around 160 °C, in order to produce up to 50 per cent more biogas, which is then burnt to create heat to generate renewable energy

Gallions Reach Shopping Centre,
Retail Park. Originally this had 30 shops built in 2004. This is on part of the gas works site

Hornet Way
Gemini Business Centre. This is on part of the gas works site

Northern Outfall Sewer
The Northern Outfall Sewer is a major gravity sewer which runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton sewage treatment work. Most of it was designed by Joseph Bazalgette in the late 1850s.  The eastern end of the Northern Outfall Sewer, running 4.5 miles from Wick Lane, to Beckton is a public footpath/cycleway called The Greenway.
Lee Tunnel.  Thames Water is building this underground link to prevent storm discharge into the river at Abbey Mills. It will follow the Greenway from West Ham to Beckton, but at considerable depth.


Riverside
Beckton Pier No.1. 19th jetty on cast iron columns for unloading coal, 400 yards, no conveyors, or cranes.  The columns are now all that remain. It was built in 1870, with. Heavy plate girders on cast-iron caissons.  This would have been served by collier vessels from the Durham and Northumberland coal field. It was modernised with hydraulic cranes in 1890.  In the early 1920's it was rebuilt again with modern cranes and conveyors to feed the Beckton internal railway system. There were also facilities for loading for Bromley by Bow and Stratford gas works. This installation was opened in 1926 by King George V
Beckton pier No.2. Built in 1895 this second pier was for coke and pitch,
Managers House. The original managers at Beckton Gas works had a specially built riverside house. It was from here in 1878 that the Trewby family saw the wreck of the Princess Alice and were able do what they could to help rescue and support survivors

Sources
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
Bygone Kent
Carr. Docklands History Survey,
Clunn. The Face of London
Diamond Geezer. Web site
English Heritage. Report on Gasholders
Essex Journal
Everard. History of the Gas Light and Coke Co.
GLIAS. Newsletter
James. Chemistry in Essex
Marcan. London Docklands Guide
Millichip. Gas Works Railways, 
Model Engineer
Nature Conservation in Newham
North Thames Gas. Beckton Centenary
Sergison Bates. Web site
Stewart. Gas Works in the North Thames Area
Thames Basin Archaeology of Industry Group. Report
Thames Water. Web site
The Trams. Web site
Walford. Village London

Riverside East of the Tower, north bank
Barking Power Station site

This post only covers sites north of the river

Post to the west Creekmouth
Post to the north Barking Marsh

Atcost Road
Buzzard Creek Industrial Estate.
Trading estates and light industry
Railway
Rail line coming into the powers station site from the north east originating from Ripple Lane sidings.

River Road
Barking A Power Station. In 1920, the County of London Electric Supply Company applied for permission to build a power station here capable of expansion to 600 MW.  This was a consortium of local authorities to rival privately built Battersea. Although originally built to supply the county of London it then served a wider area, including part of Kent, as well as the national grid. It had 8 Parsons turbo-generators and 22 boilers, plus 2 reheat boilers. These were in two boiler houses, one being all chain grate boilers and the other being all pulverised fuel boilers. It opened in 1925 and when completed was the largest power station in Britain built as a complete station at one time. The Yarrow boilers were scrapped in the early 1950s, being replaced by steam from the B station. The pulverised fuel boilers were converted to oil firing around 1964. The site was chosen for easy delivery of coal from the Thames and by rail.
A cable tunnel was built the river to supply the south bank with electricity.
Shaft house for the cable tunnel which took cables to the Arsenal and Thamesmead
Barking B Power Station. This began to operate at full capacity in 1939. The capacity was 303 MW with 4 x 75 MW B.T.H. turbo-generators. It had 16 chain grate boilers, each capable of producing 256,000 lbs steam per hour. These were arranged in two boiler houses, with 8 boilers in each. The power station was transferred to the London Division of the British Electricity Authority in 1948. The B station closed on 1976.
Barking C. This was built by The British Electricity Authority in 1954. It had three B.T.H. 75 MW turbo-generators and 6 boilers, 5 for pulverised fuel and the sixth a cyclone furnace. The pulverised fuel boilers were converted to use oil in 1960. The station was closed on 26 October 1981,
Barking East 33kV Switch House, the Control Room and Office Block, and the interconnecting cable tunnels remain
Dagenham Sunday Market is now on part of the power station site.  It has over 600 stalls and thousands of visitors each week. The market opened in 2002 moving here from Chequers Lane, Dagenham
Barking Guano Works. This factory was at Creekmouth but also on a site later used for the power station,
Powder magazine. This dated from 1719 and in 1885 was sold to the Creekmouth Gunpowder Company, despite attempts by the local authority to close it; it lasted until after the Great War. This now appears to be the reception area for a property company.
Riverside Piers


Sources
Barking and Dagenham Nature Conservation
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
Dagenham Sunday Market.Web site
Essex JournalGLIAS. Newsletter
Hillman. London Under London
MPP electric list
Port of London Magazine
Victoria County History. Essex
Wikipedia. Barking Power Station. Web site


 

Riverside east of the tower, north bank.
Barking Levels.

This post covers sites north of the river only

Post to the west Barking
Post to the east Dagenham Riverside

Barking Levels
Marshes. This was once extensive grazing made up of low lying land dissected by dykes reclaimed from saltmarsh by building seawalls. They are an important habitat. The amount of grazing marsh in the Thames estuary is now greatly reduced and the whole area is on development pressure.  Much of the site has been used to store coal and power station waste – however some plants and animals are here because of that and are not native to the area. Attempts at agriculture here have often failed because of flooding. Most of this area was called Ripple Level. In the late 19th ice was collected here to sell to fishing boats and for packing fish.  There are now tips of pulverised fly ash and at one point a crater from which the ash has been removed. Other pits were used as settling ponds for fly ash slurry.  There is also some landfill with problems of methane emissions. Grassland covers most of the area and there is now little grazing. There is a very large range of wild flowers and insects. There are many butterflies and moths.
Housing development plans exist for this whole area.


Choats Manor Road
1st Barking and Dagenham Scouts. This is the previous site office for Bellway Homes
Housing at the western end built by Bellway in the 1990s


Sources
London Borough Barking and Dagenham. Web site
Nature Conservation in Barking and Dagenham

Riverside east of the Tower and north of the river.

This post relates to structures north of the river only

 A tiny piece of riverside built out with large jetties originally for fitting out the Thunderer warship. 
This is a busy industrial area still undertaking port operations

Post to the north Dagenham Riverside
Post to the east Fords riverside



Dagenham Dock - Perry Road
Efforts were made to create a dock here from 1841. This was built on the site of some of Dagenham Breach - an area of flooded marsh caused by the breaching of the sea wall in 1707, and intermittently flooded throughout the 18th.  In 1865 Sir John Rennie and Butterton built a jetty and a branch railway, with plans for a rail connection and ferry to Erith. They were bankrupted and a deep water dock was built in 1887 by Samuel Williams and Sons, barge builders, who had bought 30 acres from liquidators. By 1891 they had built a timber dock, with a railway connected to the London and Tilbury and Southend railway, together with two new jetties to create a tidal quay in 1907. Samuel Williams and Co. joined John Hudson and Co. and became a successful shipping company and this became a large coaling. Land alongside the dock was used for shipping and haulage either by themselves or by other companies like the Union Cable Company or the Ford Motor Company – who eventually had a ro ro operation here.  It continues to be the location of a small terminal licensed to handle coal off-loading. The site is also used for a number of river-related uses including a heavy haulage depot with 200 tanks for storage of petrol, distillates, etc.
Thunderer Jetty. In the early 20th, HMS Thunderer, the last major warship Orion class Super Dreadnought.built on the Thames. It was being fitted out after construction at the Thames Ironworks in Canning Town.  The new jetty, known as the Thunderer Jetty, was built upstream in 1910-11, by Arthur Williams.  It took nine months to build and the land had to be reclaimed too.  A150 ton crane was also used.
Coaling jetty. Built 1899-1903, for Samuel Williams & Sons. This was built to the designs by L. G. Mouchel & Partners, British agents for Hennebique's patent reinforced-concrete construction system. It was extended by one bay in 1906-7, to designs by Samuel Williams’s son, Arthur, who was an engineer. This incorporated his patent system for the horizontal casting of reinforced-concrete piles, developed in response to problems encountered with the vertically cast Hennebique piles. The Jetty is about 500ft long and  parallel to the river bank.


Sources
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Barking Riverside History. Web site
Dagenham Dock. Wikipedia. Web site
Port of London Magazine

Riverside east of the Tower and on the north bank
Hornchurch marshes
TQ 50073 82174

Beam River. Another outlet to the river from the Beam comes down through this area, having come off the main river in an east:west channel which then turns north:south. This divides the areas used for car storage by Fords from the business park.

An area of marshland mainly used for car storage by Fords

Post to the west Dagenham riverside
Post to the north Dagenham marshes
Post to the east Rainham Marshes

Courier Road
Internal road to the Ford site and named after another of their cars. This leads to a vast car storage area.

Fairview Industrial Estate
Purpose built modern trading and light industrial area which houses around 125 companies

Fiesta Drive
Internal road to the Ford site and named after another of their cars. This leads to a vast car storage area.

Frog Lane
Biossence . This is a heat from waste project under construction


Hornchurch Shoot
An old wharf where rubbish was offloaded from barges to dump inland. This is a small area of inter-tidal habitat and flood defence wall supporting plant communities, over-wintering ducks and wading birds.
Helipad
Wind pump

Old Man’s Head
Name for part of the riverside adjacent to Rainham Creek

Rainham Caves
Name for part of the riverside adjacent to Rainham Creek

Sources
Greater London Authority. Web site
Sabre. A13. Web site
Thames Estuary Partnership. Web site

Riverside east of the Tower and on the north bank

Coldharbour Point
TQ 51986 78831

A tiny promontory with a warning beacon

Post to the north Wennington Marshes
Shared part of square (north of the riverI to the south Erith
Post to the west Erith
Post to the south Erith



Coldharbour Point
The Name probably points to the bleakness of the location.
Lighthouse No. 3 at 17 miles from London Bridge. This lighthouse is identical to Margaret Ness and Cross Ness, and situated on the shoreline by the vast landfill site. It was established in 1885 and today at 38 feet high shows a light visible for 3 miles.

Sources

Lighthouse compendium. Web site

Riverside east of the Tower and north of the River
Great Coldharbour
TQ 52021 78844

Post to the west Coldharbour Point and (shared square) Post to the east Erith


A bleak area of reclaimed marshy riverside surrounded by landfill.with some freight and industrial actvities

Ferry
The ferry is sometimes said to date from the Romans and Roman bricks have been found here. It was reached by a path called Manor Way used as a drove road for cattle until the 1950s and the ferry is said to have been used for these cattle, fattened on the marshes. There is also speculation that this was the ‘Pilgrim Ferry’.

Great Coldharbour,
The name probably points to the bleakness of the location and dates from the 16th. There are several other examples of the name Coldharbour, all with the same origin and it is sometimes speculated that the name is Roman.  Little Coldharbour was slightly upstream. .The area is also said to have been an island, reclaimed in the late 17th by inning. In 1906 William Cunis Ltd. established a lighterage and dredging business here and from 1929 the company extracted gravel and ballast filling the worked-out pits with refuse from London. In the 1950s they were still operative and providing warehousing facilities here.  There are plans to turn the area into a Riverside Conservation Park.
Great Coldharbour Farm. This was a farmhouse demolished in 1920 and said to have been on the riverside.
Freightmaster Terminal. This is an industrial and warehousing estate.

Sources
British History. On line. Wennington. Web site
Field. London Place Names
Historical Houses. Web site
London Government. Web site
Tucker. Ferries of the Lower Thames

Riverside east of the Tower and North of the river
Purfleet
TQ 55019 78469

Purfleet was a garrison and chalk quarrying village which is now full of a lot of new and very decent housing.  The squalor of heavy haulage and rubbish tips are all around. As a village it has a station, a church and a hotel which is doing its best to make something of itself -but very little else. The sole shop seems to be an Indian take away.  To the south is the river, largely inaccessible, and to the north various versions of the A13 and the CTRL thundering past.  On the old A13 is the Circus Tavern which must represent south east Essex writ large.

Post to the west Purfleet
Post to the north Thurrock
Post to the south Purfleet Board Mill

Beacon Hill
Beacon Hill is both the name of the old hill with lighthouse and quarry, and of a road on the hill with modern housing.
Excavations here show the site of Paleolithic, Iron Age, and Romano-British settlements. Here the chalk rose to a height of 120 feet but most of the hill has now been quarried away.
Beacon. A system of warning beacons along the Thames was set up in the Middle Ages and revived during the Armada crisis.
Lighthouse. In 1828 the Corporation of Trinity House leased a piece of land from the Whitbread Estate for a lighthouse where they could test new types of lamps and reflectors and the lighting values of different kinds of oil. It was a standard 19th shore type, with living quarters. In 1829 experiments were carried out with Argand burners and reflectors, and observed from the Trinity House Buoy Wharf at Blackwall or from Trinity House’s yacht on the Thames.  It had four revolving sides or faces, which were provided with lights of different kinds. All the lights were accurately placed in focus and the machine set to perform one revolution every 8 minutes.  It became disuses during the 1870's, though parts of the building survived until 1925. In 1933 all that was left was a round brick stump 5 or 6 feet high.
Anti-aircraft battery 1914 -1918, said to have used the remains of the lighthouse.  At the start of the war they had AA guns and pom poms manned by Royal Marines. Later this was increased because of Zeppelin raids .In the Second World War there was a section of the Territorial Army, Royal Artillery with a Lewis gun here.
Quarry At the base of Beacon Hill Whitbread owned a chalk quarry. Purfleet is 17 miles down ricer below London Bridge. Here the chalk out-crops on the northern shore, to provide the first high ground east of London there, From 1554 many leases of the cliffs and limekilns at Purfleet are recorded In 1669 Samuel Irons of Purfleet issued a token depicting a limekiln. In 1738 the chalk-pits, 3 limekilns, and 2 wharfs were leased for 61 years to Matthew Featherstonhaugh. His company was known variously as the Bricklayers Co., the Lime Co., and the Purfleet Co. When the lease was terminated in 1794 the landlord, Samuel Whitbread, began to mechanize the quarries.  In 1807 Arthur Young described the trucks carrying the chalk to the kilns and the lime to the wharf. In the 1820s and 1830s the quarries and kilns were worked by Meeson and Hinton. By the 1930s the estate was owned by Messrs. Harrisons (London) 1931 Ltd and the open chalk quarry was levelled with the remainder of the hill sculptured to a smooth mound with a wild meadow.
Railway - The first railroad in Essex was laid at Purfleet to carry the trucks of chalk from the workings to the riverside and the waiting ships. in 1812, "The chalk is got into the vessels much more easily than they used to do, by having small ridges of iron called rail-roads, by which means one horse can draw three times as much as it could without the rail".
World War II Prisoner of War camp. This was successively No. 286 Purfleet Camp which was for Italian Prisoners who worked on local farms.  No. 654 Purfleet Camp, No.4 Transit Camp; No. 655 Purfleet Camp, No.1 Transit Camp. Guards' compound consisted of huts; prisoners' compound consisted of tented accommodation within a rectangular wire enclosure. The transit camps were for Germans some of who had huts rather than tents. After 15 January 1920 acted as Dispersal Unit for overseas soldiers arriving at Dover, Folkestone or the Thames. Dispersal Camp closed 10 September 1920.  It was later used to house homeless families
Beacon Hill Park

Botany Way
The road climbs through a series of worked out chalk pits passed innumerable haulage and other depots, tips and oil storage tanks – an area almost entirely about heavy freight and rubbish disposal.
Beacon Hill industrial estate
Botany Pit which originally had chalk capped with Thanet Sand. In the early 1960s the quarry was extended by removing the sands and gravels on the north side of the hill. Palaeolithic stone tools and hundreds of flint flakes and cores with some hand-axes were found. Some bones of fossil mammals were also found including horse, red deer and probably bison. Botany Pit was cut back to a low angle in the 1980s when it was developed as an industrial estate
Botany Gardens. This was set up by Whitbread in an overgrown chalk quarry. There were boat trips there and later there were cheap rail excursions from east London. For some years up to 1914 western and war films were made there. The gardens were closed by 1917
Caspian Way
This is named for Caspian Wharf which was operational on Purfleet riverside from 1890
Chieftain Drive
One of a number of roads of local authority housing on the site of the Magazine and all named after tanks.

Church Hollow
Called ‘The Dipping’ it was in the western part of Whit breads quarry. Most of the area is now new housing. By 1800 a chapel, a school, and two rows of cottages had been built in the Dipping, an old chalk quarry, for chalk workers' family. These buildings appear to lie derelict behind modern housing in the road and adjacent roads. The quarries adjacent to Purfleet (The Dipping) were used as an oil storage depot. Towards the end of the 20th century the storage use ceased and the tanks were eventually demolished. The area is presently being developed for residential purposes.
Chapel. Built in 1791 this was a small building with round-headed recessed windows.  The Whit breads owned and maintained it and required their workers to attend.  The Methodist circuit preachers were gradually replaced by a Calvinistic schoolmaster and the building was used mainly for Anglican worship, and about 1863 it was put under the care of the vicar. It became a house in the 1920s. It is now totally derelict.
School. This was later called Church Bungalow and used as housing. It is now totally derelict.
Church House. This was the school masters house. It is now totally derelict.
Hollow Cottages. These are near Botany Pit and were built in 1790 by Samuel Whitbread for his workers.  There were originally 12 but they have now been turned into 6 by making one house out of two cottages. They front onto a communal green.

Church Lane
Church Lane now consists of new housing built on the floor of the chalk pit.
Harrisons Wharf
Esso depot. This was an Esso Petroleum Ltd bitumen terminal. It had rail access via a siding to her riverside on which they ran a Hunslet 0-4-0 diesel mechanical locomotive built in 1940 acquired from the War Department which is now at Quainton Railway Centre. Before development the site was operating an aggregates yard, and faced onto a semi-derelict riverside.  The area is marked on earlier maps as saltings.
Housing. This is made up of 103 flats overlooking the Thames by Bellway Homes. It is thought to be of very poor design and the development was built with no direct pedestrian access to the actual river.

High Street
The High Street appears to be an area to the north of London Road and west of Church Hollow. It does not appear to be a road in any accepted sense. The Whitbread family are said to have developed a relatively small industrial estate here in the 19th.
Purfleet House. This was built in the Dipping around 1790 by Samuel Whitbread. It had 26 rooms and was used as his family home. It was partly demolished in 1920, the remainder surviving until 1951 as parish offices. Now the site of St.Stephen's church
St. Stephen’s Church. This is the successor to a small in the Dipping which closed in 1920. The vicar of St.Clement’s then bought the chapel, with Purfleet House as the site of a new church, and St. Stephen's was built there in 1923, as a chapel of ease using stone from the demolished house.  However it is also said that the church was built as a hall by the Whitbread’s behind their house.
Rose Cottage. 19th cottage set behind a small garden.
London Road – this road runs parallel to the river through Purfleet Village
This was the A1090 which took the original route of the A126 through Purfleet in Essex, when it was bypassed in the 1920s. It headed south over the Mar Dyke into Purfleet and within sight of the River Thames it ran parallel to the river, before crossing a railway line at a level crossing by Purfleet station.
Riverside Green. This is a substantial riverfront open space with wide views across the River. There is a flint faced and brick capped wall which frames the east side of the green. Mature trees to the rear rise above the edge wall. There is a beacon by the river
King's Stairs. Old ferry landing with a weather-beaten and tide-washed mooring post said to have been in position since 1798. These stairs replaced an earlier landing a short distance upstream which had become part of the Government Magazine.
Ferry.  The ferry is known to have existed in 1577, and continued to operate into the 20th crossing to the Long Reach Tavern and earlier may have gone up the Darent to Dartford. There also may have been a “long ferry” up to London. . From 1838 a steam ferry from London to Gravesend could be hailed by boat from Purfleet. It was originally a Royal ferry until Edward III transferred it to Dartford Priory. It was later in varied ownership and a ferry house is also mentioned
A pier was built in 1843 and a telegraph station was associated with it.
Royal Purfleet Hotel. This stands on the riverside overlooking Long Reach and Erith Rands. Owned by the Whitbread family until 1920, when it was acquired by Trust Houses and later by Punch Taverns. It is now in private ownership. It is said it began as The Ship Inn, built around 1769.  In 1828 its name changed to the Bricklayers Arms, due ownership of local pits by the Bricklayers Company. In 1848 it was remodelled and the hotel became known as the Wingrove Hotel, after the owner John George Wingrove. Around the 1860's, the hotel changed its name to The Royal Hotel. However it is also said it was called the Purfleet Tavern and also it was once called the Royal Opera House. It had become fashionable and famous for whitebait dinners. It also had a reputation of card games and betting on bare-knuckle fighting, and as a high-class brothel. It is said that the Prince of Wales was a visitor – hence the ‘Royal’. It is also said to be haunted
Mermaid Causeway. HMS Mermaid was moored here and used to transport gunpowder
War Memorial. This stands in front of the church with an inscription to the memory of local men killed in the Great War.  It consists of a shaft and cross with the inscription on copper plaques
Railway crossing. A metal fence on the north side of the road indicates where a rail siding ran under the road to a riverside oil wharf.
Yara Terminal. Cornwall site. YARA is a Norwegian company mainly supplying fertilisers. The Yara Purfleet Terminal supplies the UK with bulk liquid CO2. The terminal is constantly supplied by a fleet of dedicated CO2 tanker vessels. These include Yara Embla and Yara Froya, who are both equipped with the largest liquid CO2 tanks in Europe
Cornwall.  Training Ship Cornwall was a reformatory moored off Purfleet. It was the third such establishment which used an old frigate, the Cornwall which was certified for operation on in 1859. Boys on the Cornwall learned nautical skills, tailoring, and carpentry. In 1915, sixteen of the boys and an officer died after the sailing cutter Alert belonging to the Cornwall collided with the steam tug Empress. The boys were buried in a communal plot at St Clement's Church, West Thurrock. In 1934, the ship became designated as an Approved School but at the start of the Second World War the boys were moved to Brandon and in 1940 the ship was destroyed in bombing at Denton.
Botany Cottages. Built 1905 by the Steam Ship Coal Owners Association
Purfleet Station. Opened in 1854 as an original intermediate station of the London Tilbury and Southend Railway. Part of freight line to West Thurrock
Level Crossing. This is by the station

London Road – this road bypasses Purfleet and is the old A13 main road to Southend
The A1306 was once the A13. This section was renumbered in 1998-99 when the western extension of the then new-build replacement A13 was opened to the north.  In this square it runs parallel to the Channel tunnel rail link, and crosses the Mardyke to go as far as Meads Corner with the Circus Tavern, and then continues onwards
Meads Corner – junction with the old A13 and the other old Purfleet Bypass.  There was or is a motor dealership there called Meads
Circus Tavern.  A large south east Essex pub calling itself an entertainment complex. It is said to be famous for hosting darts matches but it also has music events country and western and Irish music 'big name' acts, kick boxing, wrestling, racist comedians, male strippers – and tribute nights, and and and ..... 
Coryton Commercials depot. Until 2011 this was the London Borough of Havering’s Purfleet depot


Purfleet by pass
The Purfleet Bypass was the A126 from the mid-1920s, being a contemporary of the old A13.now the A1306.  It is now the A1090,

Tank Hill Road
Tank Hill (formerly King's) Road was a private, gated road, built by the government after 1760, to connect the powder magazines with a road to London.
VOSPA. Department of Transport Vehicle and Operator Services Agency. It includes a goods vehicle testing facility. This has now closed
Health Centre
Woodlands Pre-school
Purfleet Primary school. This now calls itself an 'academy’.  It originated in a nonconformist school held in Whitbread's chapel in 1772. This was an evening school, started by Methodists for the children of lime burners. It had closed by 1808 but began again in 1819 as a Sunday school.  By 1839 it was a day and Sunday school, still partly supported by the Whitbreads although the the garrison had its own school by 1871. A school board for West Thurrock was set up in 1876 which took over the Purfleet School and ran it in Whitbread's chapel. In 1889, they built a new school on Garrison Hill to which a teacher's house was added in 1892 and an infant room in 1894. West Thurrock School Board was handed over to the Education Committee of Essex County Council in 1903. In 1904 a small piece of land was leased from Whitbread to teach gardening to the boys. In 1909 it included a fruit garden with 100 trees, and the school won numerous medals for fruit at Royal Horticultural Society shows. A manual, cookery and laundry centre was built at the school in 1914. From October 1914 to June 1915 the school was requisitioned by the military authorities as a hospital for Purfleet Camp. By 1930 what had been Purfleet Council School was known as Garrison Hill Council School and this remained until at least 1948. In the Second World War children were evacuated to Martlesham, Suffolk, and others to Devizes, Wiltshire. The school was badly damaged by incendiary bombs in 1940.  By 1951 the school was known as Garrison Hill Primary School. It was used as an emergency relief centre during the floods of 1953. By 1959 the school was called Purfleet Primary School, and by 1968 Purfleet County Primary School. In 1974 the school was enlarged for children from the Garrison estate.

Tank Lane
An ancient lane which proceeds on the ridge of the former chalk pit. Initially it is wide enough to be an access road and is partially framed to the north by the former outer garrison wall. It eventually emerges as a footpath on Botany Way


Sources
British History on line. West Thurrock. Web site
Children’s Homes. Web site
Havering Council. Web site
Essex Field Club. Web site
Lighthouse Compendium. Web site
List of Prisoner of War camps. Wikipedia. Web site
Baldwin. The River and the Downs
On the Lakes. Web site
Pevsner and Cherry.  Essex,
Port of London Magazine
Royal Hotel. Web site
Thurrock Council. Web site
Yara. Web site

Riverside north of the Thames and east of the Tower.
Purfleet Long Reach
TQ 55791 78000

Major industrial riverside site awaiting a new use

Post to the north Purfleet
Post to the west Darent meets the Thames

This post covers the north bank of the river only

London Road
Large site on private Mill Road. This has had a number of commercial uses - most recently Smufit Kappa and British Gypsum. The site is owned by Thurrock Council and is part of a regeneration scheme not yet implemented but for which the site will be, or has been, cleared. The site is that of the Thames Board Mills – this was the largest factory of its kind in the country producing cardboard and fibreboard for packing. It was first set up because of river access in 1887 by Louis Cartiaux as the St. Louis Park Mills Co. Which made board from stable straw manure waste and also made newsprint. The local water was not suitable and the works was not a success. The site was taken over in 1902, by W. J. Alford as the Thames Paper Mill Co. and was expanded throughout the 1920s and 1930s and again in the 1960s. In 1965 they were taken over by Unilever and in 1975 South Mill was closed and demolitions followed. In 1986 the mill was bought by Davidson Ltd. who renamed it Purfleet Board Mill. It closed down in 2004. What remained on site was the converting factory built by James Lomax Simpson in the 1920s and expanded in 1930 by the L.G. Mouchel using the Hennebique system. A warehouse from 1939 also survives as does an earlier 1930s timber warehouse with laminated roof. The North Mill dated from the 1960s and was the main paper-making area.
Jetty– the site includes a large riverside jetty.


Sources
Archaeology Data Service. Web site
British History on Line. West Thurrock. Web site
Thurrock Council. Web site

Riverside north of the river and east of the Tower
Purfleet Unilever
TQ 56405 77889

A stretch of industrial riverside with oil storage a major factor - along with the Unilever margerine factory.

Post to the west Purfleet. Purfleet Board Mills
Post to the south Purfleet jetties

Jurgens Road.
Unilever. This was originally the Van der Bergh Jurgens works set up in 1917. It is now Unilever's‘spreads’ factory - Stork, Flora, Bertolli, and ICBINB margarine.  It is an integrated refinery for crude oils and fats alongside a jetty .The plant produces 180,000 tonnes of margarine and olive oil based spreads per year, the equivalent of nearly one million 500g packs every day. Waste mayonnaise from is turned into biofuel and plastic laminates
Pura Foods. This company makes a range of edible oil and fat produces and dates from 1987.

London Road
Mountain of Fire and Miracles. Purfleet Branch this is in what was Purfleet Baptist church.
Purfleet Baptist Church. In 1892 a congregation met in a member’s home. Charles Hall, a Baptist and manager of the Anglo American Oil Company offered them a room in the Company offices. A site for a church was leased from Samuel Whitbread this opened in 1897 under the Grays Baptist Tabernacle. A new church was built in 1938 and the old church became the Sunday School. Both buildings were bombed in 1940 and demolished and a new church opened in 1950.
Esso Refinery.  The oil installation, now belonging to Esso, was established in 1888, and by the end of the Great War about 50,000,000 gallons of oil were passing it each year.  It provides fuel to customers in the South and East of England receiving it direct from Esso’s Fawley refinery via cross country pipeline. It can also accept deliveries by ship to its jetty. The site had five bottom loading bays of which three are typical retail bays for Mogas, Super Unleaded and Diesel and two bays for Diesel and Gasoil.  No refining takes place and the tanks, are for storage purposes only.
Purfleet Wharf and Saw Mills. a company for marketing West Australian timber, and had bought forty-two acres of ground at Purfleet in Essex to use as a depot known as Purfleet Wharf and Saw Mills, Ltd. It was set up in 1902 and closed in 1941
The Fleet. Restaurant and bar. This was previously Purfleet Club and Institute founded in 1904 although the building was formally opened in 1909. The club closed in 2004.
Jarrah Cottages. These were built by Purfleet Wharf and Saw Mills for their workers. Jarrah is a type of Australian hard wood.
Cobelfret. Purfleet Deep Wharf. This is the C Ro Ports London Ltd ro-ro terminal owned by the Cobelfret Group which handles cars and trailers in conventional ro-ro style as well as using two rail-mounted gantry cranes and a fleet of reachstackers. Annual throughput is around 200,000 containers, 250,000 trailers and 250,000 cars. There are three daily sailings to Zeebrugge and one to Rotterdam. The terminal has its own rail sidings from the London-Southend line which can handle container and car traffic. Among the manufacturers using the terminal are General Motors (Vauxhall and Opel), BMW, Mercedes and Mazda. C Ro ports operate in Europe and Scandinavia and date from 1928.

Sources
Archives online. Web site
British History Online. West Thurrock
Francis. The Cement Industry
Port of London Magazine
Thurrock Council. Web site
Unilever. Web site

 

Riverside north of the River and east of the Tower
Dartford Crossings
TQ 57449 76762

Section of riverside taken up with large aggregate and oil terminals and some very large jetties.  The are is however dominated by the high - and very busy - bridge.

Post to the west Purfleet jetties

Dartford Tunnel
The idea of a tunnel below Woolwich was first considered by the Ministry of Transport in 1924 and this was eventually proposed between Dartford and Thurrock. It was thought to be suitable for part of a ring road round London. A pilot tunnel was drilled in the late 1930s but further work was delayed due to the Second World War
New Tunnel. By 1970 the tunnel was carrying over 4 times the original estimate and a second tunnel was announced by the government. This was to be part of what was then the North Orbital Road, now the M25. Work was delayed due to a lack of funds, which was resolved by European funding granted in 1974. The second tunnel opened in 1980, allowing single direction working in each tunnel and connection of the crossing to the M25.
Old Tunnel. Work began in 1959, using a similar construction method to the Blackwall Tunnel but the delay in work due to the war allowed the tunnel's design to be improved with a better ventilation system. Tolls were levied from the start. The two-lane tunnel opened in 1963,
Queen Elizabeth Bridge. There was a concern that the two tunnels would not be able to cope with the full demands of a completed M25. In 1986 proposals were made for improvements and in 1986, a Trafalgar House consortium won a bid to build a new bridge under a private finance initiative. This included transfer of the control of the whole crossing to Dartford River crossing Ltd. Work on the bridge began in 1988.[ It was designed by German engineer Hellmut Homberg, and the two main caissons were constructed in the Netherlands – and designed to withstand a collision with a large ship. The towers are about 200ft high. It was opened by the Queen in 1991when it had the longest cable-stayed span of any bridge in Europe. It is the only bridge across the Thames downstream of the Tower,

Riverside
Lafarge Wharf . This wharf handles Marine Aggregates only, with receiving hoppers and discharge conveyors for self-discharging vessels.
Tunnel Wharf– this was the wharf for the Tunnel Cement works which stood to the north of the railway
Vopak Wharf and Terminal. There are 3 berths on the wharf. The site has 86 steel tanks doe oil storage. There are fully automated road vehicle loading facilities available and loading and discharging facilities for sea. They handle high and low flash petroleum products.


Sources
Dartford Crossing. Wikipedia. Web site
Port of London Authority. Web site
Tarmac-Lafarge. Web site
Vopak. Web site

Riverside east of the Tower and north of the river

Stoneness
TQ 58575 76204

A lonely area and a tiny reminder of what most of the Thameside marshes once were.

Burnley Road

Road Train. This is a lorry drivers training school
Tardis. They supply clean water in tankers

Channel Tunnel Rail Link
This runs north east:south east under the area

Stoneness
The point marks the river’s turn out of Long Reach and into St.Clement’s or Fiddler’s Reach
Lighthouse  No.5. This is 22 miles from London Bridge. It was established in 1885 and carries a wind generator on its top, at 44 feet high, the light is visible for 9 miles.
Pill boxes – these are defence structures from the Second World War and there is one either side of the lighthouse and point.
Sluice outlet
Ancient ferry to Greenhithe. Thought to be used by pilgrims although this can’t be proved. There is a footpath to Stoneness from St. Clements Church. It is thought mainly to have been used for cattle.  It continued into the 1950s.

West Thurrock Lagoon and Marshes.
When the sea wall was rebuilt the flood channel behind it, about 1,100 yd. west of Stone Ness, was left as a lake, named as 'the Breach' on maps down to the 19th and later shown as swamp. It is an important site for wintering waders and wildfowl attracted by the extensive intertidal mudflats together with a large and secure high tide roost,
Stone Ness salt marsh is noted for the size and character of its marsh plant community. The saltings constitute the largest area of salt marsh in the inner Thames estuary,
The lagoon is an important high tide roost for overwintering waders and wildfowl. Large reed beds border its south and eastern perimeter where Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers and the Bearded Tit breed.
West Thurrock trading estate

Sources
English Nature. Web site
Lighthouse compendium. Web site
Road Train. Web site
Tardis. Web site
Tucker. Ferries of the Lower Thames
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide. Web site