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Much of the former East India Docks in Blackwall has been drained and built over (as in the background). However the East India Dock Basin has survived; silting with mud has created a rare saltmarsh habitat close to the centre of London and this is now managed as an important bird and nature reserve.
The East India Docks were built by the East India Company, which was one of the most powerful global traders of all time. Founded in 1600, by the 1750s it had come to rule India via its own private armies, a situation that only changed in 1858 when the Crown assumed direct control following the Indian Rebellion of the previous year.
The Docks were built at Blackwall (where the Company already had a wharf) in 1804 to avoid the increasingly congested River Thames around the Pool of London and the warehouses of Wapping and Rotherhithe. New roads - East India Dock Road and Commercial Road - were constructed to bring goods into the Company's warehouses in the City of London, and were joined in 1840 by the London and Blackwall Railway, with a terminus at Fenchurch Street and Goods Depots in the Aldgate area. The changing nature of trade caused the Docks to decline in the 20th Century, and they closed in 1967.
This house dates from 1694 and was built for a London Merchant, Dorner Shepperd. At the time Mile End Old Town, as the area was known then, was popular with well-to-do merchants, traders and sailors who wanted to live close to the River but away from the crowded riverside communities. The house was later occuipied by Lady Mary Gayer, widow of the East India Company's governor of Bombay. In the 1890s it was a Jewish Care Home, and later housed the offices of the Craft Council and the local Council.
Weavers Fields, Bethnal Green, London.
The Celtic festival of Samhain (literally, Summer's End) is probably better known as All Hallow's Evening, usually shortened these days to Hallowe'en. 1st November is All Saints Day, or All Hallows, hence the modern name.
At this time the signs of the approach of winter are all around us; the weather is getting colder, the days shorter, and the leaves on the trees take on their Autumn colours then fall to the ground.
In Celtic times there would not have been enough food to keep al the animals alive, so many would be slaughtered and their meat salted to preserve it for the winter months. The onset of the cold weather would also cause the human death rate to go up, particularly amongst the elderly and very sick - something which is still true today. It is almost as if they are deciding that they cannot face another winter and now is the time to leave this world.
Some echos of the theme of death still exist today. Roman Catholics choose the month of November to remember their loved ones; and in Mexico on 1st November the deceased are remembered and celebrated during the festival of 'Dia de los Muertos' (The Day of the Dead). Also, in Celtic times the head was revered as the seat of inspiration and learning, and worthy opponents would have their heads cut off and displayed - today's custom of hollowing out pumpkins, carving a face and lighting them with candles is an echo of this.
The District Line emerges from below ground just east of Bow Road Station. A train of D78 stock climbs up the incline and passes under the substantial footbridge that connects Eleanor Street with Arnold Road.
The section of line between Whitechapel and Bromley-by-Bow was promoted jointly by the District Railway and the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway, and opened in 1902.
A strange apartment complex next to the River Thames in Shadwell. Looks like it was built by a 5-year old using Lego blocks!
Two National Express Scania/Caetano Levante coaches on the A8 service (Stansted Airport - London King's Cross) pass at Bethnal Green Station on New Year's Day 2019. The Stansted Airport routes have seen considerable growth over the years, and during 2018 the A8 was extended from Liverpool Street to Farringdon and King's Cross. At the same time the loop working around the East End was discontinued, with the Whitechapel, Mile End and Bow Church stops transferred to the A7 London Victoria service.
Many National Express services are contracted out, but the Stansted Airport services are directly operated by National Express, from a base at Start Hill near Cambridge.
This dock wall is one of the few survivors from the East India Company's docks at Blackwall, East London. When Leamouth Road was widened in the 1990s it found itself stranded between the two carriageways.
The East India Company was one of the most powerful global traders of all time. Founded in 1600, by the 1750s it had come to rule India via its own private armies, a situation that only changed in 1858 when the Crown assumed direct control following the Indian Rebellion of the previous year.
By the early 1800s the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Not only were British manufactured goods in demand all over the world, but increasing wealth saw greater imports of luxury goods. In 1804 the East India Docks were built at Blackwall (where the Company already had a wharf) to avoid the increasingly congested River Thames around the Pool of London and the warehouses of Wapping and Rotherhithe. New roads - East India Dock Road and Commercial Road - were constructed to bring goods into the Company's warehouses in the City of London, and were joined in 1840 by the London and Blackwall Railway, with a terminus at Fenchurch Street and Goods Depots in the Aldgate area. The Docks closed in 1967.
In the background is Gun Wharves. Wapping Station on the London Overground is just beyond Gun Wharves.
Field Armor (1540)
The “Giant” Armor
•Place: Germany, Brunswick
•Location: Tower of London, White Tower Entrance Floor
•Object Number: II.22
•Object Title: Field Armor
•Date: 1540
•Object Number: II.22
•Provenance: Tower Arsenal since at least 1625
•Physical Description: The close helmet is of burgonet type, the skull with a low, roped comb, a pivoted peak with an extension underneath pierced with two sights. The lower part of the visor consists of a single falling plate with cross-shaped breaths. The double gorget plates are modern restorations. The gorget comprises a main plate front and rear with three lames above. The breastplate is globose with a medial ridge, shaped to a central point. The neck and gusset edges have strongly roped inward turns. It is pierced for a lance rest. The fauld is of three lames, and single plate tassets are attached by straps and buckles. The backplate has a culet of four lames. The arm defenses comprise full pauldrons, both fitted with upright haut pieces, the right pauldron’s mainplate has a cut-out at the front for the lance. The small articulating lames below the main plates are restorations. The upper cannons have turners and are attached to large bracelet couters and lower cannons. The gauntlets are of mitten type. The cuisses are articulated twice at the top. The greaves reach the bottom of the foot and are pierced at the rear for spurs. The lower part of the right is restored, as are both the broad toed sabatons. All elements are embossed with a border of overlapping roundels etched alternatively with rosettes and flamboyant rays and are also etched with bands of scrollwork and foliage. The band in the center of the backplate incorporates a heart-shaped cartouche bearing the monogram AB for the etcher. The tassets are embossed with central crosses lozengy.
•Materials: Metal—Ferrous, Leather
•Dimensions:
oHeight: Height as Mounted 2070 mm
oWeight: 32.545 kg (71 lb. 11 oz)
•Component Parts:
oPair of sabatons
o10 lames
•Inscriptions and Marks: Etched AB for the etcher.
•Associations:
oPlaces: Germany, Brunswick
•Bibliographic References:
oF. Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armor and Weapons,London, 1786: pl.8, fig. 3, pl. 22
oMann, J G Der “Harnasch ders Reisen” im Londoner Tower, und der Atzer AB, ZHWK 4(13) heft 1, 1932: 27-31
oHall, N The giant and the dwarf in A Borg (ed) Strange stories from the Tower, London, 1976: 47-9
oA.R. Dufty and W. Reid, European Armor in the Tower of London, 1968, plate XXIV.
oT. Richardson, “A Rowlandson source”, Burlington Magazine, 1040, 1989, 773-5
•Notes:
oThis once fine armor has been in the Armories since at least the 17th century. In Fordaine and Schonbul Travels of 1625-8 it is described as the armor of John of Gaunt, an attribution it retained until the reorganization of the Tower displays by Meyrick in 1825 and illustrated as such by Grose. In the 1660 Inventory it is described as “a large white armour cap-a-pe, said to be John of Gaunt’s”. The carved wooden head of John of gaunt which was displayed with the armor is illustrated in Borg 1976: p. 326, pl. LXXVIIb. There is a tradition that the armor was issued and worn in the Lord Mayor’s Show in the 18th and early 19th centuries. This could account for its severely over-cleaned condition, and some of the more modern repair work and restoration. Mann (1932: 27-31 first suggested the Brunswick attribution for the armor. Dr A von Rohr of the Landesmuseum, Hanover, suggested the initials AB might belong to Bonaventura Abt, a painter working in Brunswick 1525-52. He worked for the town and for Prince Heinrich the Younger, who had his residence at Wolfenbüttel (once known for a tournament), and in 1535 is recorded as “painting” an armor. There are two other giant armors from Scloss Blankenburg, no 4 dated 1549 (R Bohlmann, Die Braunsweigischen Waffen aus Schloss Blankenburg am Harz, ZHWK 6 heft 10, 1912-14: 335-64) and another almost identical but fragmentary harness (Mann 1932 abb. 3-4). Mann identified a series of armors with overlapping embossed circles etched with the rosette and flame design, including a late “Maximilian” armor from the Tower, II.11, another formerly in the berlin Zeughaus (abb. 7-8) and the couters of another in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, formerly in the Riggs and Spitzer collections.
Designed by Foster + Partners, the station has been built for Crossrail in the North Dock in West India Quay.
The station design incorporates two parts - a huge 256 metre long station box sitting directly below the over site development.
The over site development, called Crossrail Place was opened on 1 May 2015 and includes 100,000 square feet of retail space and a roof-top park which is semi-covered by an elegant timber lattice roof. The roof is made of translucent materials, letting the local community see, and encouraging them to visit, the new green space, shops, restaurants and facilities within and allowing views out over the dock, Canary Wharf and beyond.
[Crossrail website]
Marking the outbreak of the First World War, and commemorating the British and Colonial servicemen killed during its course.
The installation consisted of one ceramic poppy for each of the 888,246 serviceman. It was installed at the Tower of London with poppies added each day from 17 July, concluding 11 November.
The project was conceived by artist was Paul Cummins, with setting by Tom Piper, and was designed to appear as a sea of blood spilling out.
The title of the piece comes from a poem in the unsigned will of an unknown soldier who died in the war: "The blood swept lands and seas of red, / Where angels dare to tread"
Officially Middlesex Street, seen here marketless, and with a City of London housing estate on the left hand side of the road
Thousands of private residents will be driving their cars into the underground garages via this entrance, eventually.
The first voluntary emigrants to Australia left from Dunbar Wharf in Poplar.
Compare this view with an earlier photo of the wharf from English Heritage.
Whitechapel High Street, Aldgate, London.
The Whitechapel Gallery, opened in 1901, was designed in an 'Arts & Crafts' style by Charles Harrison Townsend, and its aim was to bring great art to the people of the East End.
In 2009 the Gallery expanded into the Passmore Edwards Library next door. The Library opened in 1892 and soon gained a reputation as 'The University of the Ghetto', for it was here that many young Jewish men and women came to educate themselves and improve their chances in life - many of them were able to leave the poverty of Whitechapel behind and build more prosperous lives in the affluent suburbs. The Library closed in August 2005 with the opening of the nearby Idea Store.
The Underground entrance was created in 1938 when the platforms at Aldgate East Station were moved slightly to the east; this allowed the junction at Aldgate East to be remodelled, which reduced delays as trains waiting for another to pass no longer blocked other junctions. This entrance enabled the nearby St Mary's Station to be closed.
The Royal Inn On The Park sits right on the northern edge of Victoria Park, as well as on the boundary between two London boroughs - the pub is in Hackney, the Park in Tower Hamlets.
East London Bus Group 17887, an Alexander-bodied Trident based at West Ham Garage, passes on the 277 (Highbury & Islington Station - Leamouth). Originally, this was a horse-tram route between South Hackney and Limehouse. It was suspended in 1914 because of the First World War - the army simply requisitioned all the horses! After the War the route was electrified and reopened as part of tram route 77 between Aldersgate and West India Dock. In September 1939 it was converted to trolleybus as route 677; the trolleybuses in turn were replaced by motorbuses in April 1959. Since 1990, the 277 has been diverted to serve Highbury & Islington Station, and has also been extended into the developing Docklands area; as a result it remains a popular and busy East End route.
Shard London Bridge, seen from the Tower of London.
Height: 310m
Floors: 72
Architect: Renzo Piano
Developer: Sellar Property Group
This beacon, standing at the side of the East India Dock Basin, was one of a chain of 1,400 that were lit the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to mark the coming of the new Millennium in 2000.
Much of the former East India Docks in Blackwall has been drained and built over. However the East India Dock Basin has survived; silting with mud has created a rare saltmarsh habitat close to the centre of London and this is now managed as an important bird and nature reserve.
The East India Docks were built by the East India Company, which was one of the most powerful global traders of all time. Founded in 1600, by the 1750s it had come to rule India via its own private armies, a situation that only changed in 1858 when the Crown assumed direct control following the Indian Rebellion of the previous year.
The Docks were built at Blackwall (where the Company already had a wharf) in 1804 to avoid the increasingly congested River Thames around the Pool of London and the warehouses of Wapping and Rotherhithe. New roads - East India Dock Road and Commercial Road - were constructed to bring goods into the Company's warehouses in the City of London, and were joined in 1840 by the London and Blackwall Railway, with a terminus at Fenchurch Street and Goods Depots in the Aldgate area. The changing nature of trade caused the Docks to decline in the 20th Century, and they closed in 1967.
This picture was taken just south of the bridge leading from Solebay St into Mile End Park and is looking north up the canal. The scene is little different today.
The Greenwich Meridian passes through Blackwall, just to the East of East India DLR Station. This is the view looking South along the Meridian - this way for Greenwich itself, then Blackheath, Hither Green (it bisects the Station), Catford, West Wickham, New Addington, Oxted, East Grinstead, Sheffield Park Station on the Bluebell Railway, Lewes, Peacehaven; then western France, eastern Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and across the Atlantic Ocean to Antarctica.
Saturday 14th February 2015 - Crossrail worksite, Whitechapel.
Currently an access site for the Whitechapel Station platforms, the Cambridge Heath Ventilation Shaft will be located here.
The first services to use the new Crossrail tunnel and station at Whitechapel will be the Abbey Wood to Paddington (Crossrail platforms) services due to start in late 2018; full services from Shenfield and Abbey Wood to Heathrow Airport, Maidenhead and Reading will be operational by the end of 2019.