CHAPTER XIII - The Isle of Dogs: Introduction
The Isle of Dogs before the Industrial
Revolution
The Marsh and the Marsh Wall
Lying where the Thames 'fetcheth almost a round compasse with a great winding reach',
(ref. 1) the Isle of Dogs is
unique among London districts for its watery boundary
(Plate 68b,). Known locally since the nineteenth century as
the Island, it is a tongue of reclaimed land made into an
island by the West India Docks. The soil is alluvial, underlaid by clay or mud, and in places treacherous for building
on account of a peat layer. A survey of 1646 recorded the
Isle of Dogs as covering 757 acres; (ref. 2) another, in 1740, gave
its extent as 836 acres. (ref. 3) Embanking and straightening of
the river front have – disregarding the incursion of the
docks – slightly increased its size (fig. 139).
Before development the land was marsh, lying several
feet below high water level. Protected from flooding by a
bank or wall, it was drained by large ditches discharging
into the river through sluicegates. It has been suggested
that reclamation was carried out by the Romans, (ref. 4) but a
medieval date is more likely. (fn. a) Another part of Stepney
marshes, at Shadwell, was reclaimed before the fourteenth
century by the lord of the manor, who granted parcels of
the land to his freemen on condition that they each kept
their banks and ditches in shape. (ref. 6) The earliest reference to
the repair of the wall and ditches of the Isle of Dogs dates
from the end of the thirteenth century, (ref. 7) but a settlement
existed well before this, so there must already have been a
wall. Repeated drownings and reclamations probably
involved its partial reconstruction or enlargement.
Made of earth, or earth and chalk, possibly with a timber
core in places (faggots were used in the seventeenth century
to stop up large gaps), (ref. 8) the wall varied in section. In the
narrowest parts, where it was more than 15ft high, the flat
top was about 18ft across; slopes to both river and marsh
gave an overall width of up to 150ft. (ref. 9)
Successive Royal Commissions were appointed to
survey and maintain the wall, and following a flood in
October 1629 responsibility for its upkeep was given to
a permanent body of Commissioners of Sewers for Poplar,
who, with a jury of marshmen, constituted a court with
powers to regulate activities impinging on the wall and
the drainage of the marsh. Repairs were financed by a
rate levied on landowners. (ref. 10) From then on, no doubt
according to established practice, the wall was protected
from erosion by chalk lumps spread over the foreshore,
retained by timber foot-wharfing, and timber 'breasting'
and coping higher up the bank. (ref. 11) By the late eighteenth
century, Kentish ragstone was used in place of chalk on
occasion. Chalk seems also to have been the usual material
for repairs to the wall itself, being used by the Ironmongers' Company, for instance, to patch the wall on its
Barnfield Estate in 1811. (ref. 12)
As this example shows, repairs could be undertaken
by landowners on their own initiative (though, in the
case of the Ironmongers' Company, this seems to have
been an isolated instance). A protective 'horse-shoe'
earthwork is known to have been made by the 1560s on
riverside land belonging to the Queen. (ref. 13) Despite the rate,
it became customary for owners or occupiers along the
west bank, or Mill Wall, to undertake repairs at their
own expense, usually by direction of the commissioners.
Millwall leases generally included covenants on the part
of the lessee to carry out such works. (ref. 14)
Breaches occurred at Saunders Ness in 1652 and, more
seriously, to the south of Limekiln Dock, in March 1660.
In the second case, brought about by ballast-digging on
the foreshore, several acres were lost to the river and a
large pond or 'gut' formed. The owners ceded their
rights in the drowned land to the commissioners and
were recompensed accordingly. (ref. 15) The Breach and the
Gut remained until the construction of the City Canal.
Pomfret Manor, St Mary's in the Marsh and the
Chapel House
The first clear evidence of settlement dates from the
second half of the twelfth century, when William of
Pontefract built a chapel on his estate, later known as
the manor of Pomfret (otherwise Pountfret, or variants). (ref. 16)
Pomfret was a hamlet with about 80 acres of arable land
and a windmill. (ref. 17) In 1322 it had cornfields worked by 12
villeins, (ref. 18) but by 1362 the manor house was in ruins, (ref. 19)
perhaps part of a general process of decay.
The earliest reference to a chapel in the marsh dedicated to St Mary dates from 1380. (ref. 20) This chapel may
have been the old one, or perhaps a new chapel of ease
had been erected for the marsh-dwellers: such a chapelry
was founded in Stratford-at-Bow, Stepney, in 1311. The
theory that it was an outpost of the Abbey of St Mary
of Graces is founded on nothing more than the fact that
the abbey owned land locally. Suggestions that it was a
hermitage or penitent's chapel are romantic guesswork. (ref. 21)
Repairs were carried out in 1415, and bequests were
made to it until the mid-fifteenth century. (ref. 22) On Lady
Day 1449 the river burst through the wall opposite
Deptford, (ref. 23) and it was almost certainly this flood which
led to the hamlet's abandonment.
Figure 139:
The Isle of Dogs c1740
Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London from 1448 until
his death in 1489, recovered nearly 500 acres of the marsh,
obtaining a 94-year lease of the land from commissioners
appointed by Edward IV to oversee the walls and ditches.
Flooded once more, the land was again reclaimed by sublessees of Kempe, but in 1529 it was once more under
water. (ref. 24)
Further evidence of waterlogging is given in the
Stepney Manor accounts, which record the receipt of
46s 8d in 1464–5 for 'fishing and fowling' in the marsh. (ref. 25)
A century later, the greater part of Stepney Marsh was
said to yield no revenue, but, at 1,300 acres, it covered a
much greater area than just the Isle of Dogs. More than
100 acres produced a paltry 8d an acre; 282 acres were
let at nearly three times as much, but even this was a
fraction of the estimated rack rent. If this valuable
marshland was in the Isle of Dogs it would suggest that
it was already becoming known as rich pasture.
The site of the hamlet was still apparent until the
making of Millwall Docks. As well as traces of demolished
buildings, part of the chapel survived as the lower walls
of the Chapel House; 'rude work' of large rubble stones
with chalk, tile and stone infilling. It retained a pointed
window until the late eighteenth century. (ref. 26)
When the chapel became a dwelling is uncertain, but
the name Chapel House was in use by the late sixteenth
century. (ref. 27) Gascoyne's 1703 map shows simply 'the Chappell'; Maitland refers ambiguously to 'the Chapel-house
… the Ruins of a Stone Chapel'. (ref. 28) Part may well have
been in ruins, for in 1799, the owner, a Limehouse
attorney, mentioned that a weather-boarded timber
addition had been made to the building about 30 years
before: this work appears to have involved the roofing-in
of ruined stonework. (ref. 29) By 1811 the building was a 'neat
farm-house'; a few years later the then occupier, a grazier
and horse dealer, largely rebuilt it in brick on a long lease
from William Mellish, afterwards making it into two
dwellings. (ref. 30) Two or three 'mean and inconvenient' tenements were later built on to it. (ref. 31)
Pictorial evidence is slight. Buildings in a wooded area
are indicated on several distant views from Greenwich,
the earliest being Anthony van Wyngaerde's 1558 drawing
of Greenwich Palace from Greenwich Park. (ref. 32) Jan Vorsterman's 'Greenwich from One Tree Hill', painted about
1680, (ref. 33) however, shows a gabled house or house and barn
with small cottages or sheds to the north. A less distinct
view, painted by Adriaen Staelbent about half a century
earlier, is broadly similar. (ref. 34) The well-known view by
Robert Griffier (1688–? 1760) shows a substantial house
of several bays, with a hipped red-tiled roof. (ref. 35)
The house seems to have occupied a moated site – no
doubt that of the ruined manor house – south of the
Chapel House. Of unknown date, it may have incorporated the old structure to a greater or lesser extent. In
1512–13 it was acquired on an 80-year lease by Thomas
Knight, citizen and brewer of London, from the Bishop
of London. (ref. 36) Norden's Map of Middlesex (1593) shows
the house as having the status of a gentleman's or knight's
residence. It was still standing in the late 1650s, when it
belonged to Sir John Yate's estate, but in 1742 the site
was described as an acre of ground 'heretofore called the
Isle of Dogs whereon a house heretofore stood and is
now called the Orchard, and is surrounded by a large
ditch or mote'. (ref. 37)
Some years on, Maitland wrote of 'large foundations
and gate hooks' near the Chapel House, which he believed
to have been the remains of the capital mansion of
Pomfret, and by 1774 a site adjoining, formerly known
as the Foreyard or Barton, had acquired the name of 'the
Stone House grounds'. (ref. 38)
It has been wondered whether the house belonged to
the manor in Poplar where the Black Prince once lived, (ref. 39)
and it is just possible that a vague tradition of a royal
connection survived into the nineteenth century. 'But,
master, have you seen King John's Castle yonder?' an
Illustrated London News journalist was asked by a local
man in 1857. (ref. 40)
The only other building known to have existed on the
Isle of Dogs before the seventeenth century is a watergate
at Potter's Ferry. An archway with flanking towers, it is
shown indistinctly on van Wyngaerde's sketch and on a
map of c1573. (ref. 41) No other evidence of it is known.
The Isle of Dogs and Other Names
Robert Adam's Thamesis Descriptio of 1588, (ref. 42) which shows
the south-western part of the peninsula (fn. b) as the Isle of
Dogs, is thought to be the earliest map to use the name.
It was in use well before that, however, for in 1520 one
of several vessels prepared for carrying the royal household to and from Calais was docked at 'the Isle of Dogs', (ref. 44)
perhaps at Drunken Dock. It is often unclear from
mentions of the Isle of Dogs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whether all or part of the peninsula is
meant. Isle of Dogs Farm, shown on Norden's map of
Middlesex, appears on as late a map as Ogilby and
Morgan's Country About 15 Miles any Way from London
of 1683. Jonas Moore's Thames survey of 1662 shows
the same south-western area as the 'Isle of Dogs', distinct
from 'Blackwall March' to the north and what is now
Cubitt Town. Andrew Yarranton, however, in his 'fishing
city' scheme of 1681 (see page 387), speaks of 'the Isle
of Doggs, or Blackwall-level, An Isle seated in the
Thames'. (ref. 45) Title deeds (ref. 46) show that Isle of Dogs was the
name of the farm and house probably originating as
Pomfret manor (see above), but it may have been loosely
applied from an early date to the district generally.
A number of late Elizabethan and Jacobean allusions
to the Isle of Dogs show only that the name – or the
phrase – had some popular currency. It was the title of
a notorious satirical play of 'very seditious and slandrous'
content, written by Thomas Nashe in collaboration with
Ben Jonson and others, and performed at the Swan
Theatre by the Earl of Pembroke's Men in 1597. Now
lost, the play was outrageous enough to lead to Jonson's
imprisonment and Nashe's fleeing London. The Isle of
Dogs of the title, however, was no doubt a metaphor for
Britain, rather than an indication of a marshland setting. (ref. 47)
Punning references to the Isle of Dogs occur in Dekker
and Middleton's The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cut-Purse of
1604–10 and in a play by Beaumont and Fletcher of
about the same date. (ref. 48)
That the Isle of Dogs was something of a byword is
further suggested by a remark made during the trial for
blasphemy of the quaker James Nayler in the House of
Commons in 1656. Suggested places of confinement had
ranged from the Scilly Isles (where the Unitarian heretic
John Biddle had been banished the year before) to
Jamaica, when Sir Thomas Wroth – who had earlier
demanded Nayler's death – threw in the Isle of Dogs,
apparently in facetious exasperation. (ref. 49)
Yet the Isle of Dogs does seem subsequently to have
acquired some penal connotation. Rocque's map (1746)
shows gibbets on the riverside, while in Hogarth's depiction of the Idle Apprentice's departure from London to
become a seaman, as he is rowed down Limehouse Reach
it is towards a hanged man on the Isle of Dogs that one
of his companions points. The windmills lining the bank
made an ideal backdrop, symbolic of the slow-grinding
mills of God.
It has been said that pirates were hanged in chains on
the foreshore opposite Greenwich Hospital, where the
pensioners would hire out spyglasses to interested visitors,
and the macabre tradition that hangings occurred on
the Isle of Dogs continues. (ref. 50) A late-eighteenth-century
Thames guidebook mentions three gibbets in Blackwall
Reach 'upon which have been hung persons who have
committed murders on the high seas'. These were,
however, on the south side of the river, roughly opposite
the Folly House. (ref. 51)
It may have been the lugubrious reputation of the Isle
of Dogs, as much as its desolate terrain, which inspired
the melancholic Thomas Davers to erect his folly there
in the 1750s (see page 536). Davers, the unlucky scion
of 'an ancient and honourable family', committed suicide
in 1767, but had been forced by poverty to surrender his
mock fortress soon after building it. (ref. 52)
Perhaps 'the unlucky Isle of Doggs', as Samuel Pepys
called it, (ref. 53) had well-known untoward associations. But
how the name originated remains an enigma. Among
several, mostly fanciful, theories, the most persistent is
that royal hunting dogs were kept there when the king
resided at Greenwich Palace. Versions of the story probably all derive from Strype's Stow's Survey of London; no
evidence for it has ever been adduced. The word 'dog'
has acquired so many allusive usages that many rival
suggestions might be made, but the legend is not entirely
implausible. Coined by 1520, the name does not appear
to have been given in a lease of the farm later called Isle
of Dogs in 1512–13. (ref. 54) Deer for hunting were kept in
Greenwich Park by Henry VIII from 1515. (ref. 55) By this time
it is likely that the flood-prone marshes were used largely
as pasture by non-resident graziers, and it is therefore
possible that the farm buildings were under-used and,
being isolated but easily accessible from Greenwich, made
suitable kennels. (fn. c)
The name may have arisen because the farm was at
times an island in flood water, or amidst a quagmire, in
which case its coinage may have been comparable to that
of the long-lost name of Pruson (or Spruson's) Island in
Wapping Marsh. Oddly enough, an occupier or former
occupier of the farm, named in a sixteenth-century deed,
was a yeoman called Brache: this being an old word for
a kind of hunting-dog, it is possible that the name may
have arisen partly as a pun or corrupt usage. (ref. 56)
The name had no official status until the creation of
Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood, a district of the London
Borough of Tower Hamlets, in 1987. The survival of the
name despite its lack of formal standing is explained by
its reinforcing the local sense of separateness.
Until its development in the nineteenth century, the
Isle of Dogs was known in law as Stepney (anciently
Stebenhethe or variants) Marsh, of which it was originally
only part, or as Poplar Marsh, South Marsh or Poplar
South Marsh; archaic terms include Wet Marsh or Wall
Marsh. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, its
northern boundary followed the common sewer south of
Poplar High Street, running east to Blackwall Causeway.
On the east side of the marsh, it is probably the case that
the area as far south as Coldharbour has always been
regarded as belonging to Blackwall rather than the Isle
of Dogs. The term Poplar East Marsh was also used by
the late seventeenth century to refer to the eastern part
of the marsh. (ref. 57)
The name Mill Wall came into use in the late eighteenth century (it is first used in the rate books in
1784), initially referring to the western marsh wall, where
windmills stood. Later, the name was used for both the
path on the wall and the district generally. By the 1840s,
the one-word form was usual. As late as 1875, this part
of the Isle of Dogs was listed in the streets section of the
Post Office Directory under Millwall alone – although
Westferry Road had existed for 60 years, and had long
ago superseded the marsh wall path, parts of which had
already been stopped up as development proceeded. The
anachronism was no doubt perpetuated in deference to
the occupiers of riverside wharves.
The local historian Cowper equated Millwall with the
whole Isle of Dogs, but since the Millwall Docks were
made Millwall has come to mean more or less the western
half only; though the name has often been used loosely.
The east side of the Island south of Blackwall, including
ground outside William Cubitt's development, has come
to be known generally as Cubitt Town. Other names
have come and gone. C. C. Tooke's attempt to promote
the name Tooke Town for his estate in the 1840s and
1850s proved unsuccessful. 'North Greenwich' has been
used from the late nineteenth century for the area
immediately opposite Greenwich, doubtless an imitation
of North Woolwich (an outlier of Woolwich on the north
bank of the Thames) inspired by the Admiralty's interest
in the ground.
Since the late nineteenth century, defunct field names
have been revived for streets and developments, such as
Saunders Ness Road and Friars Mead. Stebondale Street
recalls Stebonheath, but the rurality of Lockes Field
is specious – the made-up name derives from Locke
Lancaster & Company, the lead manufacturers.
Land Use before Development
The evidence suggests that arable farming came to an
end in the fifteenth century, and possibly well before
1449 the land was used primarily for grazing. It is known
that a butcher, Richard Bray, had an acre of arable land
in the marsh in the early fifteenth century. (ref. 58) Various
butchers held land in the marsh in the sixteenth century,
including fields on the Bishop of London's estate. In
1587, William Redmar, Citizen and Butcher, obtained a
9½-year lease from the Mayor and Corporation of the
City of London of 18 acres at a rent of £18 a year. (ref. 59)
This may have been the same 18 acres the herbage of
which was leased in 1673 by Sir George Marche of the
Tower of London to a Limehouse yeoman, George
Clifton, (fn. d) for £31 10s a year, Clifton undertaking to mow
any thistles, docks or burrs. In the later seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries this same ground was let to
butchers, at double Clifton's rent. (ref. 60)
A report to Sir John Yate from his agent, Robert
Kinsman, in 1663, shows how flooding could be caused
by surface water draining off the northern upland. The
marsh, wrote Kinsman, was:
in a sad condition att present by reason of thistles & the last
greate rayne made such an extraordinary landfloode that it
broke through Poplar Towne into the Marsh and drowned some
of it … if this fair weather holds it will dry again in a week.
(ref. 61)
In time the district acquired a reputation as some of
the richest pasture in the country for horses and beasts
for slaughter, with powers of revitalizing sick animals.
One mid-nineteenth-century authority claimed that the
special properties of the marsh were due to brackish
water, which:
let in from the Thames at various points, and pervading the
ditches throughout the entire marsh, causes the cattle brought
from different parts to be scoured and cleansed, and has a
tendency to sharpen their appetite, whilst it improves and
sustains the healthy quality of the herbage; and the joint agency
has a most extraordinary effect on the cattle in fattening and
enlarging them, and otherwise rendering them fit for the
market. (ref. 62)
Sheep also benefited:
a butcher undertook to furnish the club at Blackwall, with a
leg of mutton every Saturday throughout the year, that should
weigh twenty-eight pound, the sheep being fed in the marsh,
or he would have nothing for them; and he did perform it. (ref. 63)
Some beasts would have been slaughtered on the Isle of
Dogs (a killing field was in existence by 1740), (ref. 64) others
taken to the live cattle market at Smithfield. (ref. 65)
Grazing retreated gradually before development. James
Warmington, the Ironmongers' Company's tenant, complained in 1837 of trespassers taking short cuts across his
grass:
the nuisance has been increasing, ever since the time the Stones
were prepared for the New London Bridge in the Isle of Dogs,
when so many workmen were employed near the spot; I think
I may safely state, that an acre of Herbage is entirely spoil'd,
[and] the fences can never be kept in proper repair. (ref. 66)
But as most industry grew up on the riverside, and
house-building was limited, it was only with the creation
of the Millwall Docks that a pastoral character disappeared: as late as 1856, the district was still described
as 'so valuable for pasture and grazing purposes'. (ref. 67) By
1867, throughout the whole parish, there remained just
13 acres of permanent meadow and 13 acres under crop.
There were fewer than 60 cows or heifers, most of which
were kept in yards – a fall of a third on the previous year,
no doubt occasioned by the sudden economic slump. (ref. 68)
In addition to grazing, there was some vegetablegrowing, notably on the Charteris (Mellish) land north
of Chapel House Street, where W. H. Bradshaw had a
market-garden in the late nineteenth century. (ref. 69) A local
man, born in 1869, recalled this ground producing cabbages and mangolds for the London markets. He also
recalled sheep on the site of Glengall Road Board School
in the early 1870s. (ref. 70) How far back this market-gardening
went is not clear. Various pieces of ground were vaguely
described as 'garden' in the Commissioners of Sewers'
cadastre of 1817, and in earlier deeds and land schedules. (ref. 71)
The Windmills
It was said in the 1850s that 'when in other parts of
London the wind is scarcely felt, it sweeps over this
place with great strength'. (ref. 72) Even today, the Isle of Dogs
is a noticeably windy place, and before development must
have been ideal for windmills. Their number has been
variously stated, seven being most often cited. Seven are
shown on Gascoyne's map of 1703, and Seven Mills
School was named by the Inner London Education
Authority to commemorate them. (ref. 73) It was thought
erroneously that they dated back to medieval times.
At the peak, in the mid-eighteenth century, there were
12 mills on the Mill Wall. There were also windmills
north of these, at the lead works at Limehouse Hole and
on the site of Union Docks; and there seems to have
been a thirteenth mill somewhere in the marsh by the
early to mid-1750s (Plates 145b, 146b). (ref. 74)
The earliest mill, built about 1679, was followed by
five more in the 1690s and a sixth in about 1701. These
were the seven mills of Gascoyne's map (fig. 1, page 3).
Two more appeared in 1710–12, a tenth in about 1718–
19, an eleventh in 1730–1, and a twelfth about ten years
later. One was pulled down in the 1760s, another in
1785. Most, however, seem to have survived until the
end of the eighteenth century. By the early nineteenth
century, several were defunct or demolished, and by the
mid-century none remained in operation. Cowper notes
the existence of the foundations of two or three, as well
as the sail-less body of Theobald's Mill, the remains of
which may have survived as late as 1884 when the site
was swept by fire. (ref. 75)
The mills, which with two known exceptions were of
post type with circular or polygonal seats, were used
mostly for corn-grinding to begin with, but oilseedcrushing had taken over as the main activity by the late
eighteenth century. Several were erected by millers and
others living on the south bank of the Thames in or near
Redriffe (Rotherhithe), and south-side men continued to
be associated with several mills throughout the eighteenth
century. There were already windmills on the Rotherhithe
riverside when the first was built. (fn. e)
First Mill and Mill Adjoining (Site of Price's Oil
Works).
The First Mill – so called from its topographical
position – was built on a 61-year lease of November
1730, granted by Thomas Hollis, citizen and draper of
London, to Thomas Rawson, miller, of Poplar. Rawson
had earlier obtained permission to build it from the
Commissioners of Sewers, on providing £100 surety. The
site, with 150ft of river frontage, covered three acres. (ref. 76)
The mill was no longer in Rawson's possession a
couple of years later, and in 1735 it belonged to Nicholas
Felton, miller, of Rotherhithe. A second mill, of smock
type, was built on the site c1740. In 1746 Felton's widow
assigned the lease to Robert Sanders and Benjamin
Carvill, millers, of Rotherhithe and Kent respectively.
(ref. 77)
In 1755 Carvill was described as a biscuit baker, of
Limehouse, and by that time as well as the mills and
their granaries, a brewhouse had been built. In 1770 the
lease passed via Carvill's widow to a Greenwich baker,
George Wigzell, who in 1774 also obtained the freehold –
to the conveyance of which the Shadwell butcher Samuel
Mellish, uncle of William and Peter Mellish (see page
418), was party. Wigzell granted a 40-year repairing lease
of the dilapidated premises in 1783, at a rent of £50, to
George Frost of Poplar, a victualler. Part of the property,
with one of the mills converted for oil-milling, was sublet by Frost the following year to Vaughan Lindsell,
esquire, of Poplar. (ref. 78)
As well as the oil mill, Lindsell's premises included a
two-storey dwelling house with cellars, and a two-oven
bakehouse and a granary. These last, 40ft by 30ft and
28ft by 14ft respectively, occupied the ground floor of a
building, the upper parts of which were granaries used
by Frost's tenant Gray (probably Alexander Gray, the
City baker who held a lease of the Second Mill), who
appears to have occupied the other mill. Gray and
Lindsell had joint use of the riverfront. (ref. 79)
A couple of years later, in 1786, Frost disposed of the
original lease to John Garford, the prominent local oil
and seed broker. The corn mill apparently occupied
hitherto by Gray was subsequently used for crushing
oilseed by William Garford. In 1791 he obtained a new
61-year lease of the whole three acres, later assigning the
lease to John Bowman, a City brandy merchant, who also
acquired the freehold from Wigzell in 1795. Eventually,
the premises became Sir Charles Price's oil mills, and
the smock-mill seems to have been made into an oilrefinery, probably surviving until the site was redeveloped
in the 1870s. (ref. 80)
Robert Batson's Estate: the 'Second Mill'.
This was
built on a 99-year lease granted in March 1710 by the
then freeholder William Lea, citizen and fishmonger of
London, to Robert Smith junior of Stepney, miller, for
a consideration of £10 15s and at a rent of £2. The 80ftwide site had a river frontage of 150ft. A peculiarity of
the lease was a clause denying access from the rest of
Lea's land, the intention being that the occupiers 'are to
Goe to and Come from the same from off the River of
Thames only'; a further covenant banned 'geese, ducks,
turkeys, cocks, hens, or any other sort of fowls whatsoever' from the premises. (ref. 81)
Smith died about 1745, leaving the mill to his daughter,
Rebecca, his nephew Charles Smith continuing to run it
for some years. In 1764 Rebecca, the widow of a West
Ham coal merchant, sold the mill, with its dwellinghouse, warehouse, kiln and granaries, to Edward Walford,
a local miller, for £145. (ref. 82)
Figure 140:
The Isle of Dogs c1820, plan showing the principal freehold land holdings Key to landowners: A Port of London Committee: B Sir Charles Price: C Robert Batson: D George Byng:E Rev. William Tooke: F William Mellish: G Ironmongers' Company: H Ferguson and Todd: I Earl of Strathmore:I William Stratton
Walford's administrator, Sarah Stiles of Ratcliff, granted
a 21-year lease of the mill in 1778 to Alexander Gray, a
Cheapside baker (see above), who in 1785 assigned it to
John Hart, an oilman. (fn. f) Hart sold it in 1789 for £800 to
his creditor Timothy Stansfield, a tobacconist, of Lower
Thames Street, and in 1798 Stansfield let it to John
Bowman, who a few years earlier had purchased the First
Mill. Bowman's lease expired in 1807, and it was probably
then or soon after that the mill was pulled down.
(ref. 83)
(fn. g)
George Byng's Estate in Northern Millwall: the
'Third Mill'.
Thought to be earliest of the mills, the
'Third Mill' was built c1679 on a 61-year lease granted
by Henry Williams of Rotherhithe, victualler, to James
Cutting, also of Rotherhithe, miller. The site was 65ft
wide with a river frontage of 100ft, and the yearly rent
was 10s. The mill appears on Gascoyne's map as 'Browns
Mill', but it was later run by members of the local milling
family, the Smiths. (ref. 85)
In 1785 George Russell and Thomas Uwins, the then
proprietors, had it pulled down and the dock serving the
mill filled in. (ref. 86) The mill-seat, however, was still standing
in 1798, when George Byng leased it – with a muchenlarged site, giving a river frontage of 270ft – to Thomas
Nairn of Wapping, baker. At 21 years, the lease was the
longest possible under the terms on which Byng held the
estate at that time. Whatever Nairn's intention may have
been, the mill was never restored, and a few months later
he assigned the property to Thomas Spratley of Ratcliff,
a boat-builder. Spratley built a dock and put down ways
for laying ships and boats for repair, and in 1805 he sublet part of the site to a Wapping anchor-smith for a
workshop. (ref. 87)
Richard Chevall's Estate (Tooke Estate): Robert
Smith's Three Mills.
Three windmills were built here
in the 1690s, all on 99-year leases granted by Chevall to
Robert Smith, a Rotherhithe miller, probably the Robert
Smith later known as Robert Smith senior of Poplar.
The first was built about 1690, the second about 1692
and the third about 1697. The last two, let at a halfcrown a year each, stood on similarly sized plots, each
having a river frontage of 132ft and a depth of 70ft. The
plot size and rent of the earlier mill were no doubt
comparable. (ref. 88)
One mill, having become unsafe, was acquired in
1768 by a local carpenter, John Powsey, (fn. h) presumably for
renovation. With the mill were a house and a 40ft-square
warehouse of two storeys with garrets. Powsey assigned
the property after little over a year to William Kent, who
had been running the mill for several years. In 1779 Kent
also acquired the other two Smith mills, which remained
in his family for some years. (ref. 90) At least one was a ruin in
1801, when its site was redeveloped as Mill Wall Foundry;
the southernmost mill is shown as still functioning in a
painting of 1811 (Plate 68a). (ref. 91)
William Mellish's Estate in Northern Millwall:
Baker's Mill.
Baker's Mill was built on a 99-year lease
granted in 1694 by the then freeholder, Edward Leeds,
citizen and mercer of London, to a Rotherhithe miller,
Nicholas Baker, at a premium of £22. With a river
frontage of 134ft, the 60ft-deep site was comparable in
size to those of other local mills. The rent was 10s plus
'one good sweet fat capon' or a half-crown in lieu (but
compare the covenant in the lease of the Second Mill,
above). The intended mill was exempted from the usual
covenant to maintain any buildings erected. (ref. 92)
John Cooper the elder, a Poplar millwright, took over
the lease of the premises (which included a house and
granary) in 1768, but by 1770, when he and John Salter
purchased the freehold of the estate, the mill had gone.
The site later became the riverside portion of Mellish's
Wharf. (ref. 93)
(fn. i)
George Byng's Estate in Southern Millwall: Chinnall's Mill.
The only one of three intended mills to be
built on the ground in 1695, this was leased for 99 years
to a miller called Luke Chinnall by John Lockey, the
then freeholder. It is shown as 'Chinns Mill' on Gascoyne's map of 1703. The plot was similar in size to
those of Robert Smith's mills to the north, built around
the same time. In 1713, after Chinnall's death, his family
sold the 'lately fallen down' mill to John Frampton of
Westminster, baker, who disposed of it a couple of years
later, apparently after restoration, to John Stiles, miller,
of Blackwall Marsh. (ref. 95)
It seems to have remained in use until c1795, when
cottages were built on the site by its occupier of some
years, John Hart. (ref. 96)
The Ninth Mill
The Ninth Mill
was built c1718–19 on a 99-year lease
granted by William Lockey of Barking to William Chandler, gentleman, of Deptford. The rent of the ground,
which had a river frontage of 200ft, was a half-crown a
year. From 1762, when a later William Chandler, a farmer
of East Ham, assigned his interest in the lease, the mill
was held by a succession of Limehouse millers. One of
these, Humphrey Wetton, also described as a corn chandler, dealer and chapman, occupied Chinnall's mill too
from the mid-1770s, going bankrupt about 1797. (ref. j) The
mill was later run by a meal factor, Thomas Peacock, of
Southwark and Shadwell, who in 1810 surrendered the
property to George Byng for £800. It was still standing
in 1816, when the much-reduced site was let on a short
lease to a Rotherhithe shipwright, Thomas Seaton, at an
annual rent of £45. He undertook to spend at least £75
erecting a cottage there.
Generally called the Ninth Mill, this windmill was
also known as Tommy Tinker's or the Little Mill. Cowper
seems to be confusing it with Chinnall's Mill when he
refers to Churn's (that is, Chinn's) Mill, 'since called
Tommy Tinker's'. (ref. 98)
Theobald's Mill
Theobald's Mill was built c1701 on a 99-year lease
granted by John Lockey of Barking to Daniel Mayhew
of Rotherhithe, miller. The site had a long river front of
290ft. William Peace, another Rotherhithe miller,
acquired the lease in 1763 and in the following year Peace
assigned it to an oil-presser, William Smith of Poplar. In
1788 George Byng granted a new 90-year lease of the
site, including the mill, apparently rebuilt as a smockmill, to a Wapping biscuit baker, Murty Cullen, at a
rent of two guineas. Mayhew's mill took the names
of successive occupiers. It appears as Ward's Mill on
Gascoyne's 1703 map, and a century later was known as
Theobald's Mill. By this time part of the ground was a
shipyard, and in the mid-1830s the site became Weston's
cement and plaster works. (ref. 99)
Mill at Drunken Dock.
This, the southernmost of the
Mill Wall mills, was built in about 1712, probably on a
lease from the freeholder, Simon Lemon. It seems to
have been occupied initially by John Stiles, who also ran
Baker's Mill at this time, surviving until at least 1766.
The site was later occupied by the Mast House (see page
467). (ref. 100)
The Isle of Dogs in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries
The Poplar and Greenwich Ferry Roads Company
Proposals for a road from Limehouse to the Greenwich
ferry went back to at least 1807, (ref. 101) and in 1812 the Poplar
and Greenwich Ferry Roads Company was set up by
local landowners and others, (fn. k) and incorporated by Parliament with powers to ply a horse-ferry between Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs, and to make toll-roads to the
ferry on each side of the river, including two on the
north side (now Westferry and East Ferry Roads). (ref. 102)
Westferry Road was formerly called West Ferry Road
(and originally was usually known as the Poplar and
Greenwich Ferry Road). The contracted form, the use
of which goes back at least to the 1920s, and is now
universal and officially accepted, is used here throughout.
Ord Street, running between Bridge Road and Westferry
Road, was absorbed into Westferry Road in 1875 (though
the tollgate remained), and in 1937 Bridge Road too was
annexed.
The company scrapped its horse-ferry service in 1844,
but tolls continued to be collected. Pressure for abolition
of the tolls grew from the 1870s, and eventually the
Metropolitan Board of Works obtained powers to buy out
the company. (ref. 103) On 9 May 1885 there were celebrations as
the toll-gates were removed. (ref. 104)
Development and Social Change
The formation of the ferry roads in 1812 15 opened up
the Isle of Dogs for development. Ground fronting
Westferry Road was being offered for building leases by
early 1814. (ref. 105) There were hardly any takers: as a windswept marsh, the Isle of Dogs lacked potential as a
residential suburb and development depended almost
wholly on the growth of business on the riverside.
The Limehouse shipbuilder Robert Batson had formed
a couple of streets on his estate in north Millwall a few
years earlier. They were not conspicuously popular with
house-builders. With Westferry Road under way, George
Byng laid out streets on his land south of Batson's. Over
the next few years several houses appeared, and a chapel
on the Reverend Tooke's land further south, but building
soon fizzled out.
On the riverside it was a different matter, and before
long there were several workshops, factories, warehouses,
cottages and larger houses, the northern part of the Mill
Wall riverside becoming densely built-up during the next
couple of decades, with an intricate pattern of leasehold
interests. East of Westferry Road little more was built
until the 1840s.
Riverside industrialization continued and by the midcentury the Isle of Dogs had become a thriving manufacturing district. A pattern of narrow wharves running
from river to road (similar to wharves further up the
Thames) was emerging in places. Some large sites,
particularly along the south-west and east of the Island,
were snapped up by the new breed of iron-shipbuilders
and marine engineers – men such as Henry Wimshurst,
builder of the first screw-propeller ship, the Archimedes.
By the 1860s large shipyards were flourishing in Millwall
and Cubitt Town. With the creation of the Millwall
Docks, intended to provide yet more wharfage, prosperity
seemed assured. In fact, over-confidence had forced the
pace of growth which had, hitherto, been markedly
organic.
Throughout the Isle of Dogs development generally
was governed by the short-term demands of entrepreneurs. On many riverside premises there was almost
continual change to boundaries and buildings. Housebuilding was mostly carried out piecemeal, by many
builders. The process was most apparent in Millwall,
partly because development began much earlier there,
partly because of the disjointed nature of the landownership (fig. 140), and the sometimes awkward shapes
of the freeholds. The Ironmongers' Company's Barnfield
Estate, for instance, was almost impossible to develop
fully without conjoint development of adjacent land. A
further problem was that no big-time developer showed
any interest, until William Cubitt saw the potential of
the roadless marshes to the east in the early 1840s; there
was nothing to give development a convincing take-off
or an overall plan. Millwall and Cubitt Town were far
from fully built-up when the financial crash of 1866
triggered the collapse of business confidence, devastating
the Thames-side shipyards.
The Isle of Dogs that emerged after the distress of the
late 1860s was solidly working-class. Residential, or
largely residential, areas, served by innumerable small
shops and licensed premises, were sandwiched between
the docks and wharves which together provided most
local employment. Poor, but a hotbed neither of crime
nor vice, it drew relatively little attention from missionaries and social reformers.
It was, however, notoriously difficult to get into, or
out of. Traffic was subject to bottlenecks and frequent
stoppages at the dock bridges. Cabs were unknown, buses
inadequate. In the 1850s a one-horse bus ('the smallest of
all metropolitan omnibuses') ran between the Greenwich
Ferry and Limehouse. (ref. 106) In 1862 local businessmen
(ref. l) set
up a new bus service round the loop of the Island, but
this closed in the late 1870s. Although by this time there
were limited train services to the Island, the need for
buses remained, and various private horse-buses operated
until the introduction of motor-bus services by the
London General Omnibus Company c1913. (ref. 107)
Physical isolation and lack of amenities (there was, for
instance, no cinema except very briefly) produced an
insular community. Free of the worst social problems
of poor districts, the Island acquired an environment
blackened by industrial pollution yet unrelieved by social
colour. Those parts of it not actively repellent were of
stupefying drabness. The Reverend Free of St Cuthbert's,
Westferry Road, was blunt in his assessment of 1890s
Millwall: 'badly lighted, astonishingly foul, inconceivably
smelly, and miserably bare and lifeless.' (ref. 108) He found the
people (though confirmed non-churchgoers) 'extraordinarily genial and friendly', nothing like the 'very
shady lot' he had previously ministered to in North
Kensington: 'But down here … they are a very drunken
lot. There is too a tremendous lot of gambling among
the boys'. (ref. 109) Football and allotment-tending formed the
other cornerstones of Island culture: the absence of a
middle-class was striking.
By 1854 the Island contained '5,000 people … 530
houses, sixty manufactories; four places of worship; one
or two good school-houses; ten excellent public-houses;
a doctor (no lawyer!); a house-agent; a gas-work; an
omnibus; a post-office; and a station for the Thames
police'. (ref. 110) The lack of professional men remained a
feature, and although a few substantial houses were built
on the wharves to accommodate owners or managers
none was so occupied for long. Cubitt & Company were
persuaded in the 1850s to attempt a development of
suburban-style villas (see page 522), but had it not been
for peculiar circumstances it is unlikely such a scheme
would have occurred to anyone. It was an utter failure.
Before the building of the Great Eastern in the 1850s,
Millwall and the Isle of Dogs were names little known
to the general public. As the emerging ship became a
sightseer's attraction, the Island began to acquire its
reputation as a place ethnographically and topographically
distinct:
'the island is peopled by a peculiar amphibious race, who dwell
in peculiar amphibious houses, built upon a curious foundation,
neither fluid nor solid. Damp is a thing unknown in the Isle of
Dogs – everything that is at all wet being thoroughly wet
through. The houses, in many cases, drop on one side, at a
greater angle than the notorious Leaning Tower of Pisa …
productive of great inconvenience in a thickly-inhabited house,
especially where there are crockery and children.' (ref. 111)
The housing stock until the Second World War was
mostly private. Streets consisted largely of two-storey
terrace-houses of four to six rooms, built close to the
pavement's edge on 15ft frontages; some building leases
from the mid-nineteenth century specified narrow iron-railed forecourts: front gardens were almost unheard of.
Flat-fronted, the earlier houses typically had round-arched doorways, usually with plain fanlights, and some
times outside window-shutters. Stucco was almost
unknown. Back additions varied in accommodation: some
cottages did not have one. The breaking of a terrace on
the ground floor for cartways was not uncommon, and
pairs or rows of small cottages on off-street plots were
occasionally built. There were a very few three-storey
houses in Westferry Road, but many more throughout
Cubitt Town, particularly in the mid-nineteenth-century
terraces. Basements and raised ground-floors were usual
in Cubitt Town, but not in Millwall where ground-floors
tended to occupy the natural ground level. The majority
of houses dated from the 1840s to the 1860s, but in
Millwall some were up to 30 years older. Newer houses,
built sporadically between the 1870s and the First World
War, were invariably of two storeys but often larger as
regards room height, and kitchen, scullery and washhouse provision; they frequently had bay windows, sometimes to the back additions as well as the fronts. The
newer houses often filled gaps in streets partly built up
before c1867; larger developments were concentrated on
the Charteris (Mellish) Estate in Millwall and, in Cubitt
Town, on the Millwall Docks Station Estate.
Evidence of the quality of building is conflicting, but
given the bad subsoil and poor maintenance there can
have been little ultimate difference between a shoddy
house and one better constructed. In the 1890s the houses
were described by one investigator as 'generally bad and
jerry built'. But another report made at the same time
concluded that 'the people generally are well housed and
few of the houses are jerry built'. (ref. 112) Subsidence may
indicate not deliberately poor building, only that builders
were used to dealing with London clay, not silt and peat;
the bad construction of basements in Cubitt Town,
however, was undeniable. Rebuilding of disintegrating
brickwork, tying or complete replacement of bulging
front or flank walls, was common; rising damp and
vermin infestation endemic. The few surviving nineteenth-century houses on the Isle of Dogs are not noticeably ill-built, but they do not include any of the meanest
terraces which formerly lined the side streets.
By the early twentieth century chronic dilapidation
was widespread, even in some neighbourhoods considered
socially superior and where occupancy was one family to
a house. These included terraces in streets such as Alpha
Grove, inhabited by respectable workmen and foremen.
The worst parts included a largely Irish-Catholic enclave
in the riverside culs-de-sac near Winkley's Wharf, where
slum conditions were matched by drunken, rowdy inhabitants – the men mostly casual labourers. (ref. 113)
Industrial and commercial building varied, but there
was little of architectural pretension. Multi-storey warehouses were almost unknown, the rice mills at Cubitt
Town Wharf being the nearest thing to a Pool of London
warehouse locally. And although there arose a forest of
monumental chimney shafts (Plate 69a), many of their
associated buildings were flimsy. Surviving scraps of
industrial building show how nondescript much of the
fabric was. Foundries and heavy-engineering workshops
of the mid-nineteenth century sometimes achieved
impressive effects through simplicity and massiveness of
construction. But by the twentieth century steel had
supplanted brick, timber and iron for building such
works. Easily dismantled, unsuitable for conversion, these
later structures have largely disappeared.
By the 1980s, wartime bombing, decline, and local
authority housing had transformed the architectural
character of the Island. Remnants of nineteenth-century
building were few. The riverside still retained an industrial and commercial air, although many premises were
derelict and the physical dominance of the riverside
buildings and chimneys had been usurped by point blocks
on new estates. In 1994 the amount of pre-Second World
War industrial fabric surviving is so small that its role in
the landscape is negligible.
Before the formation of the Isle of Dogs Enterprise
Zone, a few middle-class people were attracted to cheap
sites with riverside views. Capstan Square was the first
large private housing project. It was reported in The
Times in 1974 that hostility from long-time local residents
had led to windows in the square being smashed, a
foreshadowing of the later tensions engendered by the
arrival of 'yuppy' newcomers in the late 1980s. (ref. 114) Given
the volume of recent private home-building, the opening
of the Docklands Light Railway, and the continued
decline of traditional employment, the long-term survival
of a large middle-class community seems assured. The
paucity and unattractiveness of most old building, and
the phenomenal land-price rises of the 1980s, have
ensured that 'gentrification' and rehabilitation have
occurred hardly at all.
The Pattern of Industry
Flour-milling, baking and oilseed-crushing, established
locally in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
merged easily into the mixed pattern of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century industry on the Isle of Dogs. Blackwall
was an old-established centre of shipbuilding, but the
Isle of Dogs riverside in the eighteenth century was a
place for breaking ships, not building them. In 1786, for
instance, several Wapping men were fined for damaging
the Millwall foreshore in breaking up hulks. (ref. 115) Shiprelated businesses, however, notably mast-making at
Drunken Dock, dated back to the 1760s, and many of
the early colonizers of north Millwall were maritime
craftsmen. It could be argued that shipbuilding was
a natural development. However, there was no direct
evolution from these small establishments to the great
iron-shipyards. The first of the new wave in the Island
proper were the Scotsmen Fairbairn and Napier, who set
up their yards on virgin sites: Fairbairn made much of
the fact that he had been a 'newcomer', working in
defiance of Thames-side shipbuilding traditions. A large
part of his work was concerned with bridges and mills,
and this civil engineering side of ironworking remained
important locally: some of the most famous Millwall
names, including Matthew T. Shaw and Samuel Cutler,
were those of constructional engineers.
The origins of the iron trades locally go back beyond
Fairbairn and Napier to the building of Mill Wall
Foundry in 1801, and apart from the odd anchor-smith,
it was only with the later establishment of the Canal
Iron Works, and Brown & Lenox's works, that marine
engineering became established. Iron-shipbuilding,
however, brought the area to public attention: until the
construction of the Great Eastern the Isle of Dogs was,
as Charles Dickens put it, a terra incognita. (ref. 116) Shipbuilding
expanded during a period of exceptional financial and
technological confidence, but the boom was short-lived.
Long remembered as the boom and slump were on the
Isle of Dogs, they should not obscure the fact that it had
a previously established industrial base much broader
than iron-shipbuilding and its associated or dependent
trades.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were
in Millwall, in addition to several oil and corn mills, a
rope-walk, a foundry, a boat-builder's shop and a mastworks. By the mid-1830s, as well as new barge-, boatand shipbuilding yards, a number of wharves, warehouses
and factories had been established, including four timber
yards, a stone wharf, oil warehouses, two cement works,
a tar works, a chemical works, a steam laundry, steam
mills, a smithy, and a cooperage. (ref. 117) As industrialization
continued, diversity increased, and although several
industries became prominent locally, none, with the specific exception of shipbuilding and, more generally, engineering and chemicals, could be said to have become
dominant.
The outlines of the industrial and commercial pattern
which had emerged by the mid-nineteenth century
remained until after the Second World War. Ship-repairing, barge-building, engineering, forging and founding,
boiler-making and sheet-metalworking, ore-smelting and
metal manufacture, scrap-metal processing, oil-milling,
oil refining and oil wharfage, the manufacture of oilbased goods, chemical manufacture, preserved-food
manufacture, rope-, wire- and cable-making, coopery,
and the making or handling of building materials, were
among the most important activities.
The existence of an engineering-oriented male labour
force was to some extent the legacy of shipbuilding and
ironworking in the boom years. Long after the slump,
metalworking companies continued to be attracted to the
area, from heavy engineering concerns to all sorts of
specialist manufacturers. But newcomers were likely to be
of a lighter or less prestigious character. Mid-nineteenthcentury Millwall could boast Swayne & Bovill's railwaywheel works: early twentieth-century Cubitt Town had
the Star Manufacturing Company's pram factory.
As engineering declined, industries such as food-processing took their place. Socially, this change was important because it gave employment to unskilled women and
girls. Indeed, by the turn of the century growth in
women's jobs was outstripping that of men's, with the
prospect that 'the men may begin to depend on the
power of the woman to be the bread winner of the
household and grow lazy'. (ref. 118)
Industrial and Commercial Decline
The keynote of industry on the Isle of Dogs in this
century has been deterioration: the degradation of premises from prestige manufacturing to nondescript light
industry, wharfage and warehousing, down to mere scrapdealing and use as depots. A common feature has been
multiple occupation of premises originally used by a
single concern.
National decline in certain manufacturing industries
accounts for much of the process. The blight caused by
the closure of the docks, and dismantling of the goods
railways serving them, the disuse of the Thames as a
commercial waterway and the consequent disappearance
of Thames-side wharfage, (fn. m) are well-known factors. The
availability of better premises on industrial estates beyond
Inner London is also important, having speeded up the
centrifugal movement of industry (which helped the
development of the Isle of Dogs in the first place).
Other factors, such as environmental legislation and the
amalgamation of independent concerns into conglomerates, have led to many works closing throughout
the country. On the Isle of Dogs and other riverside
London districts, a combination of factors has led to the
redevelopment of wharves with housing and open spaces.
Most important of all, however, has been the survival of
an inadequate road system which made it impossible for
the Isle of Dogs to support a large number of industrial
and commercial enterprises once river transport had
declined.
Poor road communication plagued industry on the Isle
of Dogs almost from the start. The roads also had the
effect of hampering the expansion of riverside premises:
in some cases tramways were laid across the main road
to connect landside and riverside portions of works;
Mortons had a tunnel. There was high demand for
premises on the river, hardly any for inland sites, wharves
being almost essential for loading and unloading owing
to the slowness of the roads.
In 1929 Poplar Council and local businessmen condemned Millwall's roads as 'a disastrous burden upon
industry, a serious hindrance to passenger traffic, and a
grave drawback to the transport of goods to and from
the Docks'. With the growth of heavy lorries the problem
had become 'insufferable': the Limehouse exit from
Westferry Road narrowed to 15ft 8in. after a right-angled
bend only 21ft 4½in. across, while the dock-bridges
(two of them long disused) caused further constriction.
Westwoods of Napier Yard had had to turn down a big
contract to supply girders because the road could not take
them, and the job went to a north-country company. (ref. 119)
Because shipbuilding expanded so quickly and collapsed so soon, the Isle of Dogs was faced early on with
a lot of recently built but empty property. The situation
was exacerbated by the fact that the available land for
house-building was nothing like fully built-up: the local
population, not yet a settled community, was therefore
far smaller than it might have been considering the
former number of works. When the shipyards closed they
did not leave a huge unemployed Island labour force,
because so many workers had commuted. Others moved
away; many houses stood empty. The local concentration
of skilled metalworkers can easily be exaggerated. 'Every
morning there is a vast immigration of outlanders', it was
said at the turn of the century, from Poplar in the north,
by train from Forest Gate in the east, and across the
river from Greenwich. Moreover, the outlanders were
for the most part the more skilled workers. (ref. 120)
The legacy of shipbuilding and other iron trades
allowed a number of engineering and ship-repairing firms
to remain, but in the long term the extensive riverfront,
ill-served by roads, favoured wharfage, warehousing and
miscellaneous, low-prestige businesses. Without road
improvements, there was never much chance that the
Isle of Dogs could remain prosperous into the late
twentieth century.
The typical newcomer company after the 1860s slump
was housed in riverside premises, often part of a large
establishment which had been broken up; was involved
in wharfage and warehousing or some manufacturing
process which did not require a highly skilled workforce;
did not make a high capital investment in new building;
and was likely to move on or go bust after a short time.
In consequence the riverside became a gallimaufry of
activities, with fragmented sites, an accretive pattern of
building, many poor quality structures, and a high level
of chronic dilapidation. Manufacturers often let spare
room, especially to wharfingers. And as factories became
vacant for whatever reason, they were often taken over
by wharfingers as cheap storage space. This in turn
reinforced the dependence of the local economy on the
river rather than the roads, and led to a great deal of
dilapidation of former industrial premises. Wharf and
warehouse accommodation on the Isle of Dogs was
typically at the shabby end of the business, often carried
out in makeshift conditions: old workshops turned into
warehouses by ripping out old plant and bricking up a
few windows; open yards; cheaply thrown-up sheds of
wood and corrugated iron.
By the 1960s it was increasingly common for disused
premises to remain vacant. In 1994 it remains to be seen
whether transport improvements will allow the Isle of
Dogs to re-emerge as a commercial centre.
The 'Fishing City' and Other Projects
From as early as the sixteenth century, planners and
entrepreneurs produced ambitious schemes for bypassing or exploiting the Isle of Dogs in the interests of
improved navigation and other benefits. In the early
1570s a scheme was projected under the aegis of the City
of London to construct a canal from the Thames at
Limehouse Hole to the River Lea in the vicinity of
Bromley Hall. (ref. 121) A century later, in 1681, the engineer,
agriculturalist and 'improver' Andrew Yarranton (1616–
?84), came up with a scheme for turning the Isle of Dogs
into a 'fishing city', to provide safe berths for a shipping
fleet and houses for fishermen. His plan, devised as a
means of meeting Dutch competition in the fishing
industry, was to build two parallel docks and a connecting
channel, controlled by locks, with houses lining the
quays (Plate 67a). He envisaged that ancillary businesses,
including the making of rope and nets, would also be
carried out. Registration of boats and houses would help
facilitate credit, and incentives, such as tax breaks and
naturalization of immigrants living there, were proposed
to ensure the city's success. (ref. 122)
Yarranton was perhaps the first to see the potential of
the peculiar topography of the Isle of Dogs, which so
obviously lent itself to canal and dock development. The
City Canal and West India Docks as built were by no
means the most imaginative of the many plans put
forward in the late eighteenth century (see page 248),
and after they were built a number of expansive schemes
were projected for the rest of the Island. A collier-dock
scheme designed by George Rennie in 1824 would have
taken up almost the whole of the area between the City
Canal and the Chapel House (see page 276). Even more
adventurous was a scheme of 1836, revised in 1837–8,
for a huge collier wharf running for more than 1¼ miles
along the south-eastern shore, which also proposed a road
across the Island from east to west. Steam-ferries would
have linked this road to the south bank at Deptford and
Greenwich Marshes. (ref. 123)
The Millwall Docks, too, were conceived in somewhat
hubristic vein, to provide wharfage for more factories: the
factories never materialized. These schemes, ambitious as
they were, were at least technically feasible given the
amount of undeveloped land. Even the combined existence of docks, factories and hundreds of houses, however,
did not deter a later visionary, Philip Revell, who in the
1870s drew up a megalomaniacal scheme for turning the
Isle of Dogs into an island fortress for the defence of
London (Plate 67b). (ref. 124)