Dock Offices
Once located just inside the main gate, these were the former offices of the Surrey (Commercial) Docks which in its heyday comprised nine docks, six ‘mast ponds’ and a canal on a 460-acre site. From 1864, the Surrey Commercial Dock Company managed this dockyard for the trade and storage of timber on the Rotherhithe peninsula; it had been previously been run by three separate enterprises. The imposing Dock Office building served as general offices, Superintendent’s office, and a janitor’s house, with the Company’s engineer James McConnochie the likely architect.
When the docks closed in 1969, the building fell into disrepair, but it was rescued in 1985 by the London Docklands Development Corporation, which redeveloped the area from 1981. This grade 2 listed building is now a rare surviving remnant of what was one of the largest and most important of London’s docks in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Located at the dockyard entrance, its large clock tower would have been well known to those who arrived at work on the docks each day; with its bell-like roof with fishscale slates and a weathervane, it is still a prominent landmark in this much-changed industrial landscape.
_DS37443a
All Rights Reserved © 2012 Frederick Roll ~ fjroll.com
Please do not use this image without prior permission
Dock Offices
Once located just inside the main gate, these were the former offices of the Surrey (Commercial) Docks which in its heyday comprised nine docks, six ‘mast ponds’ and a canal on a 460-acre site. From 1864, the Surrey Commercial Dock Company managed this dockyard for the trade and storage of timber on the Rotherhithe peninsula; it had been previously been run by three separate enterprises. The imposing Dock Office building served as general offices, Superintendent’s office, and a janitor’s house, with the Company’s engineer James McConnochie the likely architect.
When the docks closed in 1969, the building fell into disrepair, but it was rescued in 1985 by the London Docklands Development Corporation, which redeveloped the area from 1981. This grade 2 listed building is now a rare surviving remnant of what was one of the largest and most important of London’s docks in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Located at the dockyard entrance, its large clock tower would have been well known to those who arrived at work on the docks each day; with its bell-like roof with fishscale slates and a weathervane, it is still a prominent landmark in this much-changed industrial landscape.
_DS37443a
All Rights Reserved © 2012 Frederick Roll ~ fjroll.com
Please do not use this image without prior permission