Bridewell Place, Wapping
The two-storey structure occupying most of the foreground is Bridewell Place. Today it comprises expensive maisonettes but it looks as though it may have had an earlier life, although it has proven surprisingly difficult to ascertain any details.
From a general perspective, the Wapping area was first settled by Saxons, from whom it takes its name (meaning literally [the place of] Wæppa’s people). It developed along the embankment of the Thames, hemmed in by the river to the south and the now-drained Wapping Marsh to the north. This gave it a peculiarly narrow and constricted shape, consisting of little more than the axis of Wapping High Street (the cobbled road seen above) and some north-south side streets. John Stow, the 16th century historian, described it as a "continual street, or a filthy strait passage, with alleys of small tenements or cottages, built, inhabited by sailors’ victuallers".
Wapping was inhabited by sailors, mastmakers, boat-builders, blockmakers, instrument-makers, victuallers and representatives of all the other trades that supported the seafarer. Wapping was also the site of ’Execution Dock’, where pirates and other water-borne criminals faced execution by hanging from a gibbet constructed close to the low water mark. Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been submerged three times by the tide. Though Execution Dock is long gone, a gibbet is still maintained on the Thames foreshore by the Prospect of Whitby public house (about 575m downstream from the true Execution Dock!).
The area’s strong maritime associations changed radically in the 19th century when the London Docks were built to the north and west of the High Street. Wapping’s population plummeted by nearly 60% during that century, with many houses destroyed by the construction of the docks and giant warehouses along the riverfront. Squeezed between the high walls of the docks and warehouses, the district became isolated from the rest of London, although some relief was provided by Brunel’s Thames Tunnel to Rotherhithe. The opening of Wapping tube station on the East London Line in 1869 provided a direct rail link to the rest of London.
Wapping was devastated by German bombing in World War II and by the post-war closure of the docks. It remained a run-down and derelict area into the 1980s, when the area was transferred to the management of the London Docklands Development Corporation, a government quango with the task of redeveloping the Docklands. The London Docks were largely filled in and redeveloped with a variety of commercial, light industrial and residential properties. Much of the remaining warehousing has been turned into expensive residences and I think that's what has happened to Bridewell Place.
Bridewell Place, Wapping
The two-storey structure occupying most of the foreground is Bridewell Place. Today it comprises expensive maisonettes but it looks as though it may have had an earlier life, although it has proven surprisingly difficult to ascertain any details.
From a general perspective, the Wapping area was first settled by Saxons, from whom it takes its name (meaning literally [the place of] Wæppa’s people). It developed along the embankment of the Thames, hemmed in by the river to the south and the now-drained Wapping Marsh to the north. This gave it a peculiarly narrow and constricted shape, consisting of little more than the axis of Wapping High Street (the cobbled road seen above) and some north-south side streets. John Stow, the 16th century historian, described it as a "continual street, or a filthy strait passage, with alleys of small tenements or cottages, built, inhabited by sailors’ victuallers".
Wapping was inhabited by sailors, mastmakers, boat-builders, blockmakers, instrument-makers, victuallers and representatives of all the other trades that supported the seafarer. Wapping was also the site of ’Execution Dock’, where pirates and other water-borne criminals faced execution by hanging from a gibbet constructed close to the low water mark. Their bodies would be left dangling until they had been submerged three times by the tide. Though Execution Dock is long gone, a gibbet is still maintained on the Thames foreshore by the Prospect of Whitby public house (about 575m downstream from the true Execution Dock!).
The area’s strong maritime associations changed radically in the 19th century when the London Docks were built to the north and west of the High Street. Wapping’s population plummeted by nearly 60% during that century, with many houses destroyed by the construction of the docks and giant warehouses along the riverfront. Squeezed between the high walls of the docks and warehouses, the district became isolated from the rest of London, although some relief was provided by Brunel’s Thames Tunnel to Rotherhithe. The opening of Wapping tube station on the East London Line in 1869 provided a direct rail link to the rest of London.
Wapping was devastated by German bombing in World War II and by the post-war closure of the docks. It remained a run-down and derelict area into the 1980s, when the area was transferred to the management of the London Docklands Development Corporation, a government quango with the task of redeveloping the Docklands. The London Docks were largely filled in and redeveloped with a variety of commercial, light industrial and residential properties. Much of the remaining warehousing has been turned into expensive residences and I think that's what has happened to Bridewell Place.