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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.
Despite the Docklands having high levels of redevelopment, there are still some areas which are still waiting to be redeveloped, such as this land on the corner of Pennington Street and Chigwell Hill, with a dumped pram.
The Experimental Lighthouse and adjoining Chain and Buoy Store were designed by Sir James Douglass and erected in 1864. The lighthouse was used by Trinity House to test equipment and to train lighthouse keepers.
Trinity House was originally a voluntary organisation of shipmen and mariners, and was granted a Charter in 1514 by King Henry VIII, becoming "The Guild or Fraternity of the most glorious and undividable Trinity of St Clement". It gained its Coat of Arms in 1573, and with it the authority to erect beacons and other markers to aid navigation around the coasts of England; these evolved into the buoys, lightships and lighthouses for which Trinity House is still responsible around the United Kingdom.
Trinity Buoy Wharf was established in 1803 for the construction of wooden sea buoys, and over the years has adapted and expanded with the development of cast iron buoys in the 1860s.
Trinity Buoy Wharf was closed in December 1988 and acquired by the London Docklands Development Corporation, who decided to turn it into a centre for creative enterprises. In 1996 a long lease was granted to Urban Space Management, a company with a track record of regenerating former industrial locations.
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.
Thursday 5th March 2015 - Stairway to Heaven Memorial, Bethnal Green.
A reminder that one of the worst civilian disasters of the Second World War occurred 72 years ago, on 3rd March 1943, when 173 men, women and children died in a crush at the unfinished Underground station which was being used as an air-raid shelter.
A memorial service was held at St John on Bethnal Green on Sunday 1st March, following which floral tributes were laid on the partially-completed Stairway to Heaven Memorial, which was unveiled on 3rd March 2013 as part of the 70th anniversary commemorations. This tribute was laid by Alf Morris, a childhood survivor of the disaster and a stalwart campaigner and fundraiser for the Memorial.
Orginally built for the East London Railway in 1869. The District Railway arrived here in 1884 and had its own ticket hall (the low building on the left, now occupied by a coffee shop).
Plans have recently been announced for the rebuilding of this station to accommodate Crossrail from 2017, although these buildings will be retained.
The bell is rung by the river to mark each high tide www.trinitybuoywharf.com/whats-on/event/time-and-tide-bell
An amazing survivor from an earlier era. It is just five minutes walk away from the Tower of London, yet I wonder how many of the millions of tourist would ever venture here?
In 1859 John Wilton opened a Music Hall behind five Georgian houses in Graces Alley, just behind Cable Street. For 30 years the venue saw singing, dance, comedy, circus acts and classical concerts in the Music Hall tradition. Since then it has housed a Methodist Mission, supported striking dock workers, provided a retreat for East Enders when they stopped the fascists in the Battle of Cable Street, and sheltered people who had been bombed out of their houses in the Second World War.
In the 1960s it was threatened with demolition, but a successful campaign (supported by Sir John Betjeman) saved it and it is now a Grade II* Listed Building.
in 2004 the venue was revived as a performance space, and also as an unusual venue for functions. The venue now hosts a wide variety of performance art, and the aim is to restore the venue gradually to its former glory. It is worth seeing a performance here for the atmosphere of the venue alone.
An absolute gem of a place. Whitechapel Bell Foundry has been in continuous production since 1570, making it London's oldest manufacturing firm. It manufactures church bells and handbells. Bells that have been cast here include Big Ben, the bells of Westminster Abbey, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and numerous bells in churches in the UK and USA. It is possible to take foundry tours on Saturdays (pre-booking only as numbers are limited), and you can visit the shop and exhibition Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm.
For more information about the foundry, about church bells, and the art of handbell ringing, I can recommend the Foundry's own website: www.whitechapelbellfoundry.co.uk
Shifting from gyratory to two-way streets, plus the removal of the subway and the addition of a segregated Cycle Superhighway
Le palais des congrès London Excel à la capitale britannique de Londres, vu depuis le yacht Sunborn, un hôtel amarré au Royal Victoria Dock
8 juillet 2018
The Excel Convention Centre in the British capital of London, seen from the Sunborn yacht hotel, moored in the Royal Victoria Dock
8 July 2018
Herbert Frood, inventor of the disc brake, had a brilliantly simple idea; he would advertise his brake pads on railway bridges throughout the UK - and nowhere else. The bridges soon became known in each locailty as 'The Ferodo Bridge' and a number still carry the name of the company - which still exists today.
Bow Wharf stands at the junction of the Regent's Canal and the Hertford Union Canal. It now contains offices for small businesses and leisure facilities.
259 Wilmot Street, Bethnal Green, London E2. The large rectangular plaque can be seen alongside the first floor window.
Stewart Headlam lived at this location between 1873 and 1878 when he served as curate of nearby St Matthew's Church.
As a young man Stewart Headlam was strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, and always favoured the poor over the priveleged. He also served for many years on the London School Board representing Hackney, which as the time included much of Bethnal Green. His ideas included providing free schooling and free school meals from taxation, ideas which were seen is highly radical and even dangerous at the time.
Stewart Headlam was also associated with Oscar Wilde during his last days in London. Having been convinced that the outcome of Wilde's second trial for homosexuality had been pre-judged, he offered to stand bail for him and escorted him to and from the courthouse each day. When Wilde was released from Reading Gaol in 1897 Headlam collected him in a taxi at 6am to avoid press attention, and Wilde stayed in Headlam's home until he left for exile in Paris, where he died in 1900.
Stewart Headlam is also remembered in the name of a primary school in nearby Tapp Street, and in Headlam Street in Whitechapel.
The Peabody Trust was founded by George Peabody, an American Industrialist who made his fortune building railways, then came to London to invest in financial services.
He was also a philanthropist and social visionary, and appalled by the poor housing available to working people at the time, he set up the forerunner of the Peabody Trust in 1862 with a substantial sum of his own money and the first Peabody Estate was built in Spitalfields in 1864 (it still stands today at the corner of Folgate Street and Commercial Street). The Peabody Trust today is a Registered Social Landlord and a Charitable Trust.
The Bethnal Green Estate was built in 1910, with block H added in 1916. The triangular site, just off Hackney Road and bounded by Minerva Street, Centre Street and Cambridge Crescent, was formerly occupied by a factory and 42 terraced houses.
The new buildings for the Royal London Hospital have now been completed, and over the next few weeks most hospital departments and wards will transfer over to the new buildings.
This is the entrance to the new Accident and Emergency department. Vehicle access will be via Cavell Street, which was named in honour of the nurse Edith Cavell, who trained at the Royal London.
CT Plus DAS1, a short-wheelbase Enviro200 Dart, turns from Pritchards Road into Hackney Road on Monday 9th March 2009. This is not its usual route, but it was diverted this way as Whiston Road was closed.
Route 394 started as a half-hourly community minibus service running between Islington Angel and Broadway Market via the back streets of Hoxton. In 2003 it was extended via London Fields and Hackney central to Homerton Hospital, doubled in frequency and an evening and Sunday service was added. Nine unusual short-wheelbase Darts with slimline Caetano bodies were purchased for the route; these were ideal due to the many narrow streets and tight corners encountered on the route. Another frequency increase in early 2008 saw two additional vehicles, DAS1 and DAS2, join the CT Plus fleet.
Trinity Almshouses - or to give them their full title, The Almshouses of the Trinity Brethren - were built in 1695 on land given by Captain Henry Mudd of Ratcliff. They may have been designed by Christopher Wren, although they are more likely to be the work of his pupil William Ogbourne. This is the chapel at the end. The almshouses were threatened with demolition in the 1880s but there was a successful campaign to save them and they were taken over by the London County Council and restored. The chapel was damaged in the Second World War but restored and now houses offices.
Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, London E14
Alison and Peter Smithson, completed 1972
"Personally, Robin Hood Gardens is one of my favourite projects, and as a Tutor at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, I would take my students to study the actual, physical building, to experience the space and light of the development, and to use this building to reflect on their own architecture. The project contributed to my own work and understanding of architecture.
The importance of Robin Hood Gardens as a formative project in the history of architecture cannot be under-estimated (sic). It is imperative that Robin Hood Gardens is saved from a non-reversible fate. We should develop schemes for the future longevity of Robin Hood Gardens, and I would be among the first to lend my assistance to make sure that Robin Hood Gardens survives for our future generations."
Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid Architects
www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/robin-hood-...
Sunday crowds on a warm 31st May. The new bridge carrying the East London Line Extension over Brick Lane has now been finished and the road fully reopened to traffic.
Former church and associated buildings in St Leonard's Road, now converted into private residences.
The Parish of St Michael and All Angels, South Bromley, was one of six to be created from the ancient parish of Bromley St Leonard's in 1864, to serve a burgeoning East End population. Designed by FW Morris and consecrated in 1865, the building served as the parish church for a tightly-knit community centred on the shops and pubs of St Leonard's Road. However Poplar suffered heavily from Second World War bombing, and city planners levelled much of the rest in the post-war era. The much-depleted congregation clung on until until 1975, when they joined with nearby All Saints, Poplar.
This hydraulic accumulator tower and pumping station was built in the late 1800s for the Poplar Dock Company, to power the new generation of hydraulic cranes and other equipment then being introduced. Poplar Dock was always railway-owned and served, and was unique in that it did not pass to the Port of London Authority in 1909 but remained in railway ownership (latterly with British Rail) until closure in 1981. It reopened in 1999 as Poplar Dock Marina. The tower and pumping station has in the meantime found a new use, as a branch of the Majestic Wine Warehouse chain.
Another hydraulic pumping station, built in 1858 for the East India Dock Company in nearby Naval Row, ,has survived and is today used as offices.
Corner of Winkley Street and Canrobert Street, Bethnal Green London E2. Run in cinjunction with Casa Mexico next door and open at weekends.
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.