Coldharbour
Described by Ian Nairn as 'a tiny loop off Preston's
Road', (ref. 56) Coldharbour is virtually the sole remaining fragment of Old Blackwall. Until relatively recently it was
little known and little seen, being obscured by the
nondescript industrial premises on the east side of Preston's Road. These have now been mostly cleared away,
exposing what is left of Coldharbour to passers-by in the
newly widened Preston's Road.
The roadway here is the only surviving section of an
old riverside road leading southwards from Blackwall
Stairs before petering out somewhere near the present
entrance to the South Dock of the West India Docks
(fig. 206). This old road almost certainly originated as a
pathway along the top of the medieval river embankment
called the Blackwall. A deed for a house on the east side,
leased in 1626, describes the house as having been built
on 'part of the wall commonly called Blackwall', and the
street as 'the way which lieth on the same wall called Blackwall'. (ref. 57) The name Coldharbour — a fairly common and selfexplanatory one — was in use by the early seventeenth
century. (ref. 58) (fn. h) It formerly applied to the whole stretch of
roadway, and was only restricted to the southern section
after the road had been cut by the construction of the
Blackwall entrance to the West India Docks (fig. 226).
Buildings had begun to appear in Coldharbour by the
second decade of the seventeenth century, as the wave of
development encouraged by the opening of the East
India Company's shipbuilding yard at Blackwall in 1614
gradually spread southwards along the riverfront, and the
opening of Browne's (later Rolt's) shipyard in the late
1660s probably gave a further boost to the process.
Information about the early development is, however,
very scanty. What appears to have been one of the earliest
houses, on the site of the present No. 1, was erected
under a lease granted in 1626. (ref. 60) In 1664 there is a
reference to a house having been built, seemingly quite
recently, by the local landowner. (The sewer commissioners wanted it demolished so that repairs could be
made to the Coldharbour sluice, which drained the area
to the west and entered the Thames at a point now
beneath the southern end of North Wharf.) (ref. 61)
The construction of the West India Docks (opened in
1802) and the City Canal (opened in 1805) severed the
old riverside roadway, leaving the section now called
Coldharbour as a backwater, bypassed before 1817 by the
construction of Bridge (later New, now Preston's) Road.
Although this isolation may have helped to preserve
something of the old character of the street, Coldharbour
did not escape redevelopment in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, to the extent that there are now
no surviving structures older than the early nineteenth
century. But whereas in parts of Poplar it is very difficult
to relate even the nineteenth-century pattern of riverside
development to the present layout, in Coldharbour many
of the riverside sites retain an integrity which can be
traced back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
One aspect which has been lost — though it can still be
appreciated in photographs — is the sense of a narrow
enclosed street (Plate 101a).
Land Ownership
From at least the early seventeenth century until the
early years of the nineteenth, both sides of Coldharbour,
except for a tiny pocket of copyhold at the north end of
the west side, (ref. 62) were held in a single freehold ownership,
being part of an estate with a long river frontage, which
extended northwards almost to Blackwall Stairs and
southwards as far as the present Stewart Street. The
early seventeenth-century owners were William Burrell,
the shipbuilder who played a leading role in the establishment of Blackwall Yard, and his son and heir, Andrew.
In 1636 Andrew Burrell sold the estate to Henry Hall of
Blackwall, an anchor-smith, and it remained in the Hall
family for five generations, each successive owner having
the name Henry Hall. (ref. 63) The Hall family lost the property
in 1750, following a law suit which ended with the Court
of Chancery ordering its immediate sale to raise money
to pay off debts secured on a mortgage of the estate. (ref. 64)
The purchaser, who bid £750 10s for the property, was
George Steevens, a well-to-do retired East India captain
and director of the East India Company, who lived in a
large house in Poplar High Street. (ref. 65) He was the father
of George Steevens, the Shakespearean and literary
scholar, who inherited the estate in 1768 but sold it in
1769 to Charles Foulis of Woodford Row, Essex, another
East India captain, and a director of the Sun Fire Office. (ref. 66)
When Foulis died, in 1783, he bequeathed the property
to a fellow resident of Woodford, (Sir) Robert Preston,
who, like himself, and George Steevens before him, had
made his fortune as a captain with the East India
Company. Preston, who succeeded to a baronetcy in
1790, and became one of the first directors of the East
India Dock Company, was the last owner of the estate:
it was broken up in the first decade of the nineteenth
century, after the territorial integrity of the property had
been destroyed by the sale of substantial chunks of
land to the West India Dock Company and the City
Corporation for the Blackwall entrances to the West India
Docks and the City Canal. An auction sale was held in
October 1802, but the conveyances of the various properties from Preston to their new owners range in date from
1802 to 1815. (ref. 67) (fn. i)
Figure 226:
Coldharbour area
a Plan based on the Ordnance Survey of 1870 b Plan based on the Ordnance Survey of 1969–70
East Side
On Gascoyne's plan of 1703 the riverside frontage at
Coldharbour forms part of a ribbon of development
extending from Blackwall Stairs to Rolt's Yard, interrupted only by Johnson's upper dock. In fact development
was neither as continuous nor as built up as Gascoyne
implies, but was more of a mixed assemblage in which
dwelling houses, public houses, storehouses and warehouses were interspersed with wharves, yards and even
gardens. The highly picturesque appearance of the Coldharbour riverfront at the very end of the eighteenth
century was recorded by William Daniell in his panorama
of the West India Docks, published in 1802, and the
southern section in a lively drawing by Rowlandson
(Plates 100, 147a). The Daniell is the earliest illustration
of Coldharbour and also one of the best. Some of the
buildings are shown in considerable detail and with an
accuracy confirmed by other documentary evidence. Only
once or twice, notably at the southern end, does the artist
falter. Particularly distinctive are the eighteenth-century
brick warehouses with their gable-mansard roofs. Several
buildings had large bays or bows jutting out over the
river, which were a feature of many riverside premises
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
How much this changed during the nineteenth century
can be seen by comparing Daniell's view with the elevational drawings of the river frontage made in connection
with the Thames (Flood Prevention) Act in the early
1880s (Plate 100). Only two of the buildings shown by
Daniell are still recognizable, and one of those — the
double-stack warehouse on the site of No. 19 — was
about to be demolished. Another wave of redevelopment
between the early 1880s and 1906 saw the construction
of two large riverside warehouses, a big public house (at
No. 9), a river-ambulance station and a river-police
station, of which only the last two still survive. Since
1945 the only new buildings have been private housing.
Nos 9–13, erected on the site of Crown Wharf in 1971,
were the harbingers, followed ten years later by the block
of flats at No. 19A. (The surviving buildings on this side,
and some earlier ones, are described below.)
West Side
Gascoyne gives the impression that the west side of the
present street had been completely built up by the end
of the seventeenth century, but the much more detailed
and careful cartography of the 1740 sewer plan clearly
shows that this was not so, (ref. 68) and that the buildings which
did then exist were mostly at the northern end of the
street (fig. 206, page 549). By 1800 there were some 20
small houses on this side (all at the north end), a couple
of warehouses, a rigging-house and a large cooperage. (ref. 69)
Although a few of the houses may have been replaced
during the nineteenth century, later surveys nearly always
describe them as 'old' or 'very old', and in 1935 No. 10,
which was leaning at an acute angle, was said to be
'obviously one of the oldest houses in the district'. (ref. 70)
Some were fairly primitive. No. 28, a narrow three-storey
house with one small room on each floor, long used as a
mastmaker's workshop, had brick party walls, and a brick
front (above the ground storey), but the back wall and
the staircase projection were 'merely boarded in'. (ref. 71) Nos
30 and 32 were likened to lighthouses, since 'they entirely
consist of a dark and winding staircase — it is really a
circular staircase running up the middle of this queer
shaped building, with a room put on here and there
where there happened to be room for it'. (ref. 72) The structural
and sanitary condition of the surviving houses left much
to be desired, and in 1935–6 they were demolished under
a slum-clearance order, and the inhabitants rehoused. (ref. 73)
Their sites have remained unoccupied.
At the back of some of these houses there had been
a small court, laid out by, and named after, Joseph
Hanks, a builder of Ratcliff, who bought the freehold
in 1803 and erected four small brick-built cottages
there, each with two rooms and a wash-house. They
were demolished in 1881, being deemed 'unfit for
habitation'. (ref. 74)
By the end of the nineteenth century much of the area
between the west side of Coldharbour and the east side
of Preston's Road was occupied by a mixed group of
industrial premises, now largely demolished. In 1884–5
this area had been split in two by the newly formed
Managers Street. The northern part, between the houses
in Coldharbour and Preston's Road, belonged to the West
India Dock Company, and it was here, near the northwest corner, that the company built a dockmaster's house
in 1809–10, for which Isle House, on the east side of
Coldharbour, was a replacement (see below). From 1895
until about 1930 a boat-building yard with a longish
frontage to Preston's Road occupied a large part of this
area. The original proprietors were J. M. Jackson & Sons,
shipwrights, joiners, mast- and blockmakers, and ship's
smiths, whose business was previously based at No. 15
Coldharbour. Later proprietors were Messrs Leslie &
Hamblin, boat builders, and their successors W. & J.
Leslie. (ref. 75)
The earliest industrial concern on the west side of
Coldharbour was the Stewart family's cooperage.
Founded by Richard Stewart in the 1760s, the works
originally occupied a site further to the south which had
to be given up for the making of the City Canal, and in
the early years of the nineteenth century new cooperage
buildings were erected on the west side of Coldharbour
opposite the family's house (see below, under Stewart's
Wharf). The cooperage closed in 1831, and for several
decades the General Steam Navigation Company used
the site in connection with its cattle wharf on the opposite
side of the street. It was brought back into semi-industrial
use by a firm of oil merchants in the mid-1880s, and,
under the name Concordia Works, was occupied latterly
by a tar- and turpentine-distillery and works, established
here in the 1920s. In the late nineteenth century the area
to the west was occupied by the Smithfield Engineering
Works of D. W. Forbes & Company, a firm of mechanical
engineers also describing themselves as coppersmiths,
wholesale ships' ironmongers and 'sole manufacturers of
sea-water distilling apparatus'. (ref. 76) Formerly based in Upper
East Smithfield, this firm moved to Preston's (then New)
Road in 1874, where their works included a two-storey
warehouse next to the street (latterly No. 93 Preston's
Road), a coppersmiths' shop, an engineers' shop, a tinsmiths' shop, a boilermakers' shop and a forge (fig. 227).
They were erected for the company in 1874 and 1876 by
a builder from Deptford. (ref. 77) In 1889 the company leased
a small part of this site to George Roberts, the proprietor
of dining-rooms in Poplar High Street, who built some
coffee- and dining-rooms there (latterly No. 95 Preston's
Road). This plain three-storey brick building, erected by
a builder from south London, survived until the 1980s. (ref. 78)
By 1896 Forbes & Company were in liquidation, but
some of their premises, including the warehouse and the
coppersmiths' shop, were still standing in 1951, when
they were being used as a sack warehouse by Levy
Brothers & Knowles, the sack- and bag-manufacturers. (ref. 79)
Figure 227:
D. W. Forbes & Company's engineering works, Preston's Road, site plan and south elevation in 1892. Demolished
Inhabitants and Social Character
The little that is known about the early inhabitants of
Coldharbour suggests, not surprisingly, that many earned
their livelihoods in occupations closely allied to shipbuilding and the river. Among the occupations represented there in the eighteenth century were fishermen,
watermen, lightermen, river pilots, shipwrights, boat
builders and ship-chandlers. Some of these inhabitants
were quite prosperous. The Clippingdales, river pilots
who lived in a house on the site of No. 15 in the eighteenth
century, were reputed to have made a substantial fortune
out of their profession, (ref. 80) and the Stewart family, proprietors of the cooperage on the west side of Coldharbour,
could afford to build themselves a large double-fronted
house in the street about 1770. On the other hand,
the wealthy East India merchants who owned riverside
warehouses in Coldharbour did not choose to live there.
In the nineteenth century Coldharbour had sufficient
respectability for the East and West India Dock Company
to build a house there for one of its dockmasters. and
subsequently to buy or lease properties in the street for
occupation by other dockmasters. These dockmasters'
residences were all on the east of the street, where the
bigger and better houses were located. It is clear from
the census returns that the smaller houses on the west side
were not 'well inhabited' and were often overcrowded. In
1851 the inhabitants included dock labourers, watermen,
a tinplate worker, a night watchman, a 'chymical labourer'
and a woman on 'parochial relief'. Several houses were
in multi-occupancy. In the same year the inhabitants of
the east side included two dockmasters, two master
mariners, a successful retired lighterman, and a master
blockmaker and joiner employing six men. (ref. 81) In the late
1880s Booth's investigators characterized the inhabitants
as 'respectable', and noted that several were 'well to do'. (ref. 82)
Individual Buildings and Sites in Coldharbour
No. 1 (formerly No. 32): Isle House.
This former
dockmaster's residence was built for the West India Dock
Company in 1825–6, to the designs of their Principal
Engineer, (Sir) John Rennie. It replaced an earlier dockmaster's house erected in 1809–10 near the south corner
of Coldharbour and Preston's Road. The earlier house,
designed by Thomas Morris, was so badly built - by the
local firm of Howkins, Barker, Morris & Constable - that
in 1823 it needed the support of temporary braces 'to
prevent its being blown down'. (ref. 83) In 1824, therefore, the
dock company decided to demolish the old house and
erect a new one on the riverside site in Coldharbour next
to the dock entrance, which the company had bought in
1815. (ref. 84)
During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this riverside site had been in two separate tenancies. The southern and smaller part was held under a
195-year lease granted in 1626 by William Burrell to
Hellonor Lambert of Wapping Wall, widow. By 1769,
when this lease was bought by a local waterman and
lighterman, Edward Wood, the property comprised a
wharf, a dwelling house and a back house. (ref. 85) Wood lived
there briefly (until 1771) and in 1789 he sold the lease
to two wealthy East India merchants, Captain Thomas
Newte of Gower Street and Charles Cameron of Ilford
in Essex. (ref. 86) Newte and Cameron were already the tenants
of the adjoining wharf on the north side, under a lease
of 1770 to Newte's father-in-law, Sir Charles Raymond,
baronet, a highly successful and very influential East
India merchant, who died in 1788 worth £200,000. (ref. 87) The
main buildings here were two warehouses, one dating
from about 1760, the other erected by Raymond some
ten years later. (ref. 88) On gaining possession of Wood's property, Newte and Cameron exchanged their two existing
leases for a new 60-year lease of the whole site. (ref. 89) After
Cameron's death in 1797, (fn. j) his son assigned his father's
half-share in the Coldharbour premises to Newte, who
bought the freehold from Sir Robert Preston in 1803. (ref. 91)
Newte's premises are shown in Daniell's view of 1802
(Plate 100). Next to the river is a two-storey, partly
arcaded building, with ten windows on its bowed-andbayed first floor and a little hexagonal turret on the roof.
Adjoining it on the south side is Wood's former house,
a narrow four-storey building set back from the river.
Hardly discernible are the two warehouses, which were
at the back of the site, next to the street: a covered yard
separated them from the arcaded building. The northern
end of the arcaded building was occupied by a groundfloor counting-house which Daniell shows with only one
small window facing the river. (ref. 92) In addition to the two
warehouses here Newte owned four others at Lower
(later Ashton's) Wharf, a copyhold property next to
Blackwall Stairs (see fig. 210, page 566). (ref. 93)
Newte died in Bath in 1806, (fn. k) and in 1813, after a
protracted legal tussle to regain possession from the
executors, his heirs offered the Coldharbour premises for
sale. (ref. 95) In 1815 the West India Dock Company bought
them for £3,000. The old buildings, by then in a dilapidated state, were demolished in 1816, but the site does
not appear to have been used by the company until the
new dockmaster's house was built there in the mid1820s. (ref. 96)
As the dock company's Principal Engineer and Architect, John Rennie drew up the plans and specifications
for the new house in 1825. The building was completed
in the summer of 1826. The contractors were Messrs
Johnson & Sons, who were already engaged on several
other buildings in the West India Docks, including the
Stores Quadrangle and Cooperage and No. 10 Warehouse. (ref. 97) Rennie submitted Messrs Johnson's accounts to
the dock company Secretary in December 1826 with the
comment, 'The whole of the work appears sound and
well finished and will I trust prove so'. (ref. 98)
Architecturally, No. 1 is the finest house in Coldharbour. Smaller than nearby Bridge House - the
Principal Dockmaster's residence, designed by Rennie's
father in 1819 - it has a plain but satisfying exterior, a
well-preserved interior, and an unusual plan (Plates 101,
102a, 103a; fig. 228). <In January 1997 a fire badly damaged the house, destroying the roof and irreparably damaging the staircase.> The plan was doubtless devised to
give the dockmaster-occupant clear views of the Thames
and the Blackwall entrance to the Docks. Thus the
ground floor is raised up high over a tall basement, and
all the main rooms are on the east side of the building
facing the river; those at the north end also overlook the
dock entrance. In the centre of the east and north fronts
are full-height bows whose windows command an even
wider field of view. Though functional in purpose, these
bows are an attractive feature, softening the otherwise
severe outline of the exterior. In 1898 the London Argus
thought it 'one of the few houses in Blackwall that can
be called picturesque'. (ref. 99)
Built over a raised basement, Isle House is two storeys
high, with a shallow-pitched roof, whose wide eaves are
carried on pairs of wooden brackets. The roof timbers
are original, the queen-post trusses being similar to those
at the contemporary Stores Quadrangle and Cooperage
(also designed by Rennie) (fig. 228). (ref. 100) The external walls
are faced with grey bricks - 'best second Malm facings
of an uniform colour' were called for in the specifications (ref. 101) - and the roof is slated, duchess slates being
specified. Portland stone is used for the window sills and
for the plain bandcourse which runs through between
the ground and first floors. Almost the only architectural
decoration on the exterior is reserved for the front
entrance, in the centre of the west elevation. Approached
up a flight of seven stone steps, (fn. l) the six-panel front door,
under a rectangular fanlight, is framed by mouldedstone architraves under a stone hood supported on stone
console-brackets. The fanlight, which is not mentioned
in the specifications, has an alternating pattern of circles
and diamonds, very similar to design no. 30 in Underwood & Doyle's catalogue of c1813.
Inside, the entrance hall takes the form of a northsouth corridor against the street elevation. At its rounded
southern end a simple deal staircase leads up to the first
floor, where there is another access corridor above the
entrance hall. The staircase has straight strings, squaresection balusters, originally painted grey, and a mahogany
handrail (Plate 103a). Another stair leading down to the
basement - which has the same plan as the upper two
floors - was furnished with a firwood handrail of 'grained
Mahogany colour'. (ref. 102) The original interior finish was not
elaborate. On the ground floor the walls were plastered
and painted, and on the second floor they were papered
'with good Paper such as allowed usually for Houses of
this description with bordering complete'. The specifications called for 'vein Marble profile Chimney pieces'
on the ground floor and stone chimneypieces on the first
floor. (ref. 103) Although in 1992 the interior was in a poor
decorative state, much of the joinery was as originally
specified. There were four- and six-panel doors, splayed
shutters, closets on the first floor, and dwarf closets on
the ground floor. Some original stone chimneypieces
survived in the basement and on the first floor, but the
marble chimneypieces on the ground floor did not. The
greenhouse or conservatory which partly encloses the
eastern bow is first mentioned in 1904. (ref. 104)
The house was occupied as a dockmaster's residence
from 1826 until the 1880s, the first inhabitant, until 1832,
being Captain Thomas Harrison, the West India Dock
Company's recently appointed Blackwall Dockmaster. (ref. 105)
From 1889 to 1904 the Superintendent of the Dock
Police lived here. (ref. 106) In 1904 the London and India Dock
Company let the house to a dredging company on a
yearly tenancy, and in 1935 the PLA granted a 21-year
lease of Nos 1 and 3 to the Bethnal Green and East
London Housing Association, which divided up the
properties for letting to weekly tenants. (ref. 107)
Figure 228:
(opposite). No. 1 Coldharbour, Isle House. Plans, west
(street) elevation and east-west section through roof showing
truss. The drawing omits modern partitioning but shows the
demolished south flight of steps to the front door. (Sir) John
Rennie, architect, 1825–6
The earliest-known occurrence of the name Isle House
is in 1871. (ref. 108)
No. 3 (formerly No. 33): Nelson House.
Built about
1820, No. 3 is an amalgamation with extensive recasting
of two existing houses. In Daniell's 1802 view the older
houses are shown as narrow buildings of three or four
storeys, the northern house having a canted east elevation
and the southern house a ground storey extending up
to the river wall (Plate 100). Since the 1670s the southern
house had been held on a 147½-year lease granted in
1674 to John Shute of Poplar, shipwright, and his
wife. Later occupants included a fisherman, William
Roberts (c1740–c1754), and a waterman, Nicholas May
(1762–c1782). May's widow was still living there in
1814, when Richard Gibbs, a local shipwright and shipchandler, who already owned the adjoining house to the
south (No. 5), bought the freehold from Sir Robert
Preston. (ref. 109) Little is known about the history of the
northern house (apart from the occupants' names) until
1802, when Samuel Granger of Poplar, variously
described as lighterman and coal merchant, purchased
the freehold at the Preston sale, and took up residence
there. (ref. 110) In 1817 Granger bought the southern house
from Gibbs, (ref. 111) and subsequently recast the two properties
into a single dwelling.
Explicit testimony for this conversion survives in an
affidavit made in 1861 by Thomas Riddall, an octogenarian lighterman formerly employed both by Samuel
Granger and his father, Benjamin. Riddall recalled that
after buying the southern house Samuel Granger 'converted the two Houses into one Dwelling House and
premises and he continued to reside in the said Dwelling
House and premises when so converted for many Years'.
The ratebooks suggest that this work was carried out
about 1821. (ref. 112)
What emerged from the remodelling was virtually a
new house, but a seemingly close adherence to the existing
structures has left its mark in certain awkwardnesses and
idiosyncrasies in both the plan and the street elevation
(Plate 101a; fig. 229). <During refurbishment in 1997 the stucco front was removed revealing the existence of a second door.> For its width (30ft) the street
elevation appears under-fenestrated, having only two
windows per floor, and Granger attempted to improve
its appearance by stuccoing the entire facade and embracing the windows within tall shallow arches. The result,
while amateurish, is not without a certain charm. Granger's treatment of the riverfront is more successful (Plates
101b, 103b). Here he added two bows to the two upper
storeys, and a full-width veranda at first-floor level,
supported on slim iron columns. The bows, which are
of timber-frame construction, infilled with brick and
stuccoed, abut, but are not keyed into, the east wall of
the house.
Figure 229:
No. 3 Coldharbour, Nelson House, ground- and first-floor plans in 1988. Cross-hatching denotes twentieth-centuryalterations
Granger gave the house a dignified new front entrance
whose large semi-circular fanlight has a simple but effective pattern of radiating spokes (Plate 102b; fig. 230).
Flanking the doorway were two partially fluted wooden
columns with Doric capitals (stolen in 1990). These were
surmounted by a broad lintel, with a decorated soffit, on
which the base of the fanlight rests. A wide, single-leaf,
front door opens into an unusually large entrance hall.
On the south side there is a chimney-stack which probably
antedates Granger's remodelling. Other evidence of the
older building survives in the south cellar wall, where
the (red) brickwork - including some narrow 2in. bricks is certainly earlier than 1800 and may be seventeenth
century. Under the staircase there are indications of an
older and steeper staircase against the south wall.
The interior is pleasant but architecturally modest.
There have been many changes, and some features are
difficult to explain. For example, in the hall the 'umbrella'
fanlight above the double doors into the passage breaks
into the cornice under the staircase, perhaps indicating
that the cornice predates Granger's work (Plate 103c). In
the passage beyond are the remains of another doorway
or partition, also with an 'umbrella' fanlight, which
interrupts the dado panelling. There is a typical early
nineteenth-century geometrical staircase, with plain
square-section wooden balusters and a sinuous mahogany
handrail; unfortunately this was damaged by fire in 1990
(Plate 103b; fig. 230).
A curiosity which fell victim to theft in the late 1980s
was a handsome blue-and-white china water-closet - an
Excelsior Washdown Pedestal.
Granger himself occupied the house until 1828, when
he moved to Blackheath, but he later returned to Coldharbour and was still living here at the time of his death
in 1855. (ref. 113) In the following year his widow let the house
to William Watkins, a steam-tug owner, on a 21-year
lease. At that time one of the bowed rooms on the first
floor was a dining-room and the other a drawing-room,
while the two rooms on the street front were used for a
storeroom and a bedroom. The kitchen, scullery and
parlour were on the ground floor. In the cellar there were
'brick divisions and shelves forming wine bins', which
still survive. (ref. 114)
The East and West India Dock Company bought the
house from Granger's widow in 1861, and for nearly 30
years it was used for a dockmaster's residence. (ref. 115) In
1924–5 the house was converted into two dwellings, for
occupation by PLA police families, by the introduction
of a glazed screen (burnt in the fire in 1990) across the
first-floor landing, and the conversion of the north-west
room on the first floor to a bathroom and the south-west
room on the top floor to a kitchen. (ref. 116) In 1935 the PLA
granted a 21-year lease of Nos 1 and 3 to the Bethnal
Green and East London Housing Association, which
divided the properties for letting to weekly tenants. (ref. 117)
Figure 230:
No. 3 Coldharbour, Nelson House, section, elevation and plan of the front entrance, and planand section of the staircase in 1988
The present name of No. 3 suggests an association
with Lord Nelson for which there appears to be no
foundation. The earliest known use of the name Nelson
House is in 1881. (ref. 118)
Nos 5 and 7 (formerly Nos 34–35)
Nos 5 and 7 (formerly Nos 34–35) are probably the
two houses built here in 1809 by Richard Gibbs, a local
shipwright, but a rebuilding in the early 1820s cannot be
ruled out. The houses erected about 1809 replaced the
two shown in Daniell's view. By 1799 the northern house,
whose site had been leased to Ralph Mayne in 1637, was
'empty and ruinous', and it was pulled down before 1807,
when Gibbs bought the freehold of the empty site,
together with the standing house to the south. (ref. 119) Gibbs's
two new houses were first occupied in 1810 (No. 7) and
1812 (No. 5). Between 1817 and 1823 the houses are
either omitted from the ratebooks or shown as empty
properties, perhaps because they were being rebuilt or
altered by Gibbs. They were occupied again from 1823. (ref. 120)
Figure 231:
No. 5 Coldharbour, ground- and first-floor plans in1988
Both houses are four storeys high and one window
wide, with plain stock-brick fronts and round-headed
doorways with simple fanlights (Plates 101a, 102c). Each
floor contains two rooms separated by an inadequately
top-lit staircase compartment (fig. 231). In 1834 the two
ground-floor rooms at No. 5 were called parlours, and
the kitchen was in the basement. (ref. 121) At No. 5 there is a
wooden dog-leg staircase with cut-strings, simple squaresection balusters and a moulded handrail, partly in
mahogany. Other pieces of original joinery include the
first-floor doorcases, which have reeded architraves. (The
probably similar interior at No. 7 has not been inspected.)
In 1834 No. 5 was let to the West India Dock Company
for an Assistant Dockmaster's house, and No. 7 was
similarly occupied from 1851. The dockmasters left when
the leases expired in 1871. (ref. 122) Between 1877 and 1890
one, or possibly both, of the properties were partly
occupied as a coffee house. (ref. 123) According to the directories,
the proprietor in 1881 was William Keld, but the census
shows that there were two William Kelds, one at each
house. At No. 5 was a 32-year-old lighterman with a
family of seven, a nurse and female servant, and at No. 7
a 55-year-old boat proprietor, presumably the former's
father. (ref. 124)
Nos 9–13
Nos 9–13 form a row of five tall town-houses with
'weather-boarded' elevations and integral garages (Plate
101b). They were built in 1971, to the designs
of Bernard Lamb, and occupy a site which had stood
vacant for more than 20 years. GLC officers commented
that the development as proposed was 'very satisfactory
as concerns adjoining historic buildings'. (ref. 125)
The previous buildings here had included (at No. 9)
a substantial public house called the Fishing Smack,
whose site had been in the hands of licensed victuallers
since at least 1750. In the 1760s it was called the
Fisherman's Arms. Daniell's view of 1802 shows a twostorey flat-roofed building with a row of five windows on
the first floor but unenclosed on the ground floor. This
was a detached structure, separated from the rest of the
premises by a yard and served by a partly covered passage
along the north side of the site. On a plan of 1807 the
ground floor is designated a 'Drinking room'. (ref. 126) A complete rebuilding took place in 1893, to a joyless design,
probably by M. F. Saunders, the surveyor to the freeholders, Watney Combe Reid & Company. (ref. 127) The Inland
Revenue's valuation of 1909–15 described it as a 'modern
house in good order', but added that there was 'no trade
to speak of'. (ref. 128) It was demolished about 1948; a section
of the brown glazed brickwork which was once part of
the street front survives at the south corner of No. 7.
The site between the Fishing Smack and No. 15 was
occupied latterly by an oil wharf (Crown Wharf). This
comprised a two-storey brick warehouse (No. 13) erected
in 1876 by Edwin Hawthorn of Mile End, lighterman,
an open yard next to the river, and two small houses
(Nos 11 and 11A) between the warehouse and the Fishing
Smack. (ref. 129)
In the eighteenth century, and for much of the nineteenth, the Crown Wharf site was occupied by four small
houses. Daniell's view is unreliable here, for it shows
only two houses, the northern one having a bay window
overhanging the river (Plate 100). With the break-up of
the Preston estate in the early nineteenth century all four
houses were sold, the two northern houses being acquired
by Richard Gibbs, the ship-chandler, who also bought
one of the houses on the site of No. 3 (see above). (ref. 130) The
adjoining house to the south was sold in 1803 to a local
shipbuilder, Benjamin Wallis, who had been living there
since the mid-1790s, and the house next to No. 15 was
bought in 1806 by a fisherman, Edward Cross, also for
his own occupation. (ref. 131) Hawthorn erected his warehouse
on the sites of these last two houses.
In 1849 the northern of the two houses bought by
Gibbs - then known as No. 31 - was demolished by the
parish Overseers after the District Surveyor had declared
the building dangerous. (ref. 132)
No. 15 (formerly No. 52).
Described in 1845 as 'lately
erected', No. 15 is substantially the house built in 1843–4
for his own occupation by Benjamin Granger Bluett, a
joiner, mast- and blockmaker. The previous house on
this site - categorized for insurance purposes in 1779 as
a brick-and-timber structure (ref. 133) - can be seen on Daniell's
view (Plate 100). From 1776 until c1800 this older house
was occupied by Thomas Clippingdale, a member of the
well-known family of Thames river pilots, and from then
until 1805 by his son John Clippingdale junior (1774–
1835), who is buried at St Matthias's, where there was a
window to his memory. (ref. 134) Meanwhile, in 1802 Benjamin
Granger, a local coal merchant, bought the freehold of
various properties in Coldharbour at the Preston sale,
including the site of No. 15 and some premises opposite
on the west side of the road (see page 613). (ref. 135) Granger
did not live in the house, and from 1805 to 1843 the
occupant was James Bluett, a blockmaker, who was
probably the father of Benjamin G. Bluett. In 1810 James
Bluett's premises in Coldharbour comprised a house,
wharf, boat shed, gun- and stone-yard, warehouse and
blockmaker's shop. (ref. 136)
By mid-1843, Benjamin Granger Bluett, whose
middle name suggests that he was related to the former
owner, seems to have had an interest in the freehold,
and in 1845, after the rebuilding, he was confirmed as
the freeholder. (ref. 137) As rebuilt by Bluett, No. 15 was
both a workshop and a dwelling-house, which accounts
for its unusual layout. The domestic quarters were on
the three upper floors - the kitchen, scullery and
parlour being on the first floor - while the whole of
the ground floor (including the single-storey extension
on the river side) was one undivided mastmaker's shop,
the weight of the upper floors being carried on four
wooden beams spanning the space between the outer
walls. The mastmaking shop was open to the river,
and enclosed by gates at the street end. There was a
sawpit in the basement. The premises on the west
side of the street (latterly No. 28), which Bluett also
acquired, but does not appear to have rebuilt, were
used for a blockmaker's workshop and for storage. In
1894 they were described as 'very rough'. (ref. 138)
Bluett remained at No. 15 until 1852. In 1851, when
he was 48, his business was employing six men. (ref. 139) His
successor in the house was a wire-rope maker. A later
occupant, from the mid-1860s until 1894, when he moved
to No. 25, was a shipwright, Joseph M. Jackson. (ref. 140)
In 1894 the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB),
which occupied the adjoining wharf to the south as an
ambulance station, bought the freehold of No. 15, (ref. 141)
and in 1895 it enclosed the former mastmaking shop,
subdividing the area to make dressing-rooms, bathrooms,
waiting-rooms and stores. It also built a range of waterclosets and an observation ward against the south wall of
the house. Edwin T. Hall (1851–1923) designed and
supervised these alterations. (ref. 142) Ownership of No. 15
passed to the LCC in 1929, when it took over the MAB's
responsibilities. In 1969 the GLC transferred the property
to the borough council, which still owns it, the upper
floors being let to a tenant.
No. 15 is a tall, plain, narrow-fronted house of three
storeys with a basement and roof garrets. It has rendered
walls and a slated mansard roof. The front door opens
from the street on to a long, steep, strictly utilitarian
staircase leading to the domestic quarters on the first
floor. It is built against the north wall and enclosed on
the south by broad wooden planking. The staircase from
the first floor to the top of the house is slightly more
elegant, with old-fashioned square-section wooden balusters and a mahogany handrail. On the upper floors
there are full-width rooms at front and back, and a
smaller room on the south side. In the parlour - the
first-floor room overlooking the river - the French
windows and doors have heavily moulded wooden architraves. On the top floor the room partitions are made of
wooden planks, whose use, here and elsewhere in the
house, may perhaps owe something to Bluett's occupation. The ground floor still retains many of the divisions
inserted by the MAB.
The sites of North Wharf and Nos 19 and 19A before
their acquisition by the General Steam Navigation
Company.
These two sites, immediately to the south of
No. 15, can be identified in Daniell's view as the whole
range of wharves and buildings - some 210ft of river
frontage - between and including the two eighteenthcentury warehouses, the latter recognizable by their distinctive gabled-mansard roofs. The northern warehouse
was erected (before 1767) by Charles Foulis, the East
India captain who bought the freehold of most of Coldharbour in 1769 and who occupied this site himself
from the mid-1760s until his death in 1783. The double
stack of warehouses at the south end was built, probably
in the early 1790s, by Foulis's heir, (Sir) Robert Preston,
who also erected a range of stores here. (ref. 143)
In 1803 Preston sold the freehold for £2,700 to Richard
Govey the elder, of Poplar - variously described as
cooper, esquire, and gentleman - who within six months
had disposed of it to John Raymond Snow, esquire, of
Greenwich, for £3,300. (ref. 144) But Snow fell behind with the
repayments on his mortgage and in 1806 the premises
were sold at auction in three lots. (ref. 145) The sale advertisement drew attention to the location of the property between the West India Docks and the City Canal, 'in a
situation so rapidly improving' - and commended the
existing buildings as 'admirably adapted for the East and
West India Shipping trade'. (ref. 146)
As a result of this sale, three separate freeholds were
created. The smallest, with a river frontage of 23ft, was
at the north end, next to No. 15. This site comprised
Foulis's old brick warehouse and, probably, a dwelling
house. A description of the property in 1858 mentions a
dwelling house as well as the warehouse, which was then
being used for stabling and as a cart-house. (ref. 147) The middle
freehold, with a river frontage of 77ft, was occupied by
some low warehouses along the street front, a gateway
with a sail loft above it, and, at the north end, a
dwelling house, possibly of some antiquity, with two
large chimney-stacks projecting from the north wall. The
chimney-stacks are clearly indicated in Daniell's view,
which shows the house with a five-light bow window on
the first floor, overlooking the river. The purchaser here
was Michael Larkin of Blackheath, described as 'esquire',
who was probably a merchant. (ref. 148) In 1830 a mastmaker,
Blois Evans, bought the premises, which he occupied
himself until his death in 1846. (ref. 149) This freehold was reunited with the smaller piece to the north under the
ownership of the General Steam Navigation Company in
1859 (see below). Together they now constitute the site
of North Wharf.
The largest of the three freeholds created by the 1806
sale was bought by Andrew Timbrell, a merchant of
Upper Guildford Street, Marylebone. (ref. 150) It had a river
frontage of 107ft and was then occupied by three low
storehouses and the double stack of brick warehouses
built by (Sir) Robert Preston. In 1820 the West India
Dock Company bought the freehold from Timbrell (ref. 151) and
let the premises to tenants, who included a ship owner
of Ratcliff Cross, Stepney, George Brown, after whom
the site was known as Brown's Wharf, a name which
persisted long after he had left and was later also extended
to the adjoining wharves. Brown leased the site for 21
years from 1831 for a steam-packet wharf, but in 1839
he assigned this lease to Captain Richard Bourne, RN,
proprietor of the Dublin & London Steam Packet
Company. (ref. 152) Bourne was one of the founding directors
of the Peninsula & Orient Steam Navigation Company,
and in 1841 he made over the leases of Brown's Wharf
and the adjoining Stewart's Wharf (see below) to that
company. The P & O's tenure was, however, very shortlived, for in 1842 the company assigned the leases to the
General Steam Navigation Company (GSNC). (ref. 153)
Between 1842 and 1881 Brown's Wharf formed part
of the GSNC's Cattle Wharf at Coldharbour (see below).
Its later independent history as the site of the river-police
station is described under Nos 19–19A.
Stewart's Wharf.
So called after the family of coopers
who lived and worked in Coldharbour from the mid1760s until the early 1830s, Stewart's Wharf is now
(1994) the northern 125ft of the vacant site between the
old river-police station at No. 19 and the Gun public
house at No. 27. The corresponding site in Daniell's
view is the range of buildings extending southwards from
the double stack of warehouses, up to and including the
large three-storey house with a full-height canted bay,
which was the Stewart family's own residence. The three
trees shown by Daniell were in the garden of the family
house.
The Stewart family also leased a wharf upstream of
the Gun public house, and a range of property on the
west side of Coldharbour, which, in terms of the present
topography, extended from the south side of Managers
Street to beyond the Blue Bridge, and included the sites
of Nos 27–51 Coldharbour and the entrance to the South
Dock of the West India Docks. The cooperage workshops
were situated on the west side of the street, the site of
the eighteenth-century buildings (demolished for the City
Canal) being to the west and south-west of the Gun.
Westwards of the workshop range was an L-shaped
timber-pond known as the 'canal'. Among the buildings
was a buoy-store erected in 1787–8 by John Stewart
for Trinity House and designed by the Corporation's
surveyor, Thomas Mutter. The Stewarts had been storing
buoys here for Trinity House since the mid-1760s, when
John's father, Richard Stewart, the founder of the cooperage, was appointed buoy-maker to the Corporation.
Trinity House also had the use of Stewart's Wharf and
its cranes for landing and shipping the buoys. (ref. 154)
The Stewart family's own dwelling house (latterly No.
23) was the largest in Coldharbour. Erected about 1770,
it was a three-storey double-fronted property, with a
north-facing principal elevation and a shorter return front
to the street (Plate 100). The front door, in the centre of
the north elevation, opened into a central hallway leading
to a staircase at the back (south). There were four rooms
on the ground floor: a breakfast parlour and a diningroom in the north-west and north corners respectively,
and two kitchens in the south corners. The dining-room
and the corresponding bed-chambers above it extended
into a full-height canted bay overlooking the river. A
description of the house in 1807 mentions a brick basement and 'capacious cellars for wine, malt liquors, coal
and wood'. In the eighteenth century there was a large
garden on the opposite side of the street. (ref. 155)
In 1799 the family lost more than half of its premises
in Coldharbour, including the cooperage workshops, the
buoy store and the wharf, when the City Corporation
acquired the land for the City Canal. Replacements for
the old workshops were erected in the garden opposite
the family house, and consisted of two parallel northsouth ranges, capable of accommodating 50 coopers' lofts,
separated by a yard, a covered sawpit for six sawyers, and
a row of five 'neat brick dwelling houses' for employees. (ref. 156)
These houses were on the west side of the road facing
the site of No. 19A.
After John Stewart died in 1799, aged only 39, his
widow Elizabeth carried on the business, and in 1807 she
bought the freehold of the premises from Sir Robert
Preston. Under Elizabeth Stewart, later assisted by her
sons, the cooperage continued in business until 1831,
when she assigned all her property in Coldharbour to
her son-in-law, Miles Stringer of Effingham in Surrey. (ref. 157)
In 1838 Stringer let the site for 60 years to the steamship
owner Captain Richard Bourne, who was already operating a steam-packet service from the adjoining Brown's
Wharf (see above). (ref. 158)
For the next 40 years Stewart's Wharf and Brown's
shared a common history, being for most of that time
part of the General Steam Navigation Company's Cattle
Wharf at Coldharbour. The later independent history of
Stewart's Wharf is described below under Nos 21–23.
The General Steam Navigation Company's Cattle
Wharf.
At its fullest extent the General Steam Navigation
Company's Cattle Wharf at Coldharbour comprised the
entire river frontage between Nos 15 and 25 and a large
tract of land on the west side of the street. Acquired
between 1842 and 1868, partly by lease and partly by
freehold purchase, it was used mainly for the landing of
live sheep and cattle, particularly from the Continent, for
the meat trade. The General Steam Navigation Company
(GSNC), which had been founded in the early 1820s as
a passenger carrier, pioneered this trade in imported
livestock. It proved highly lucrative and contributed
significantly to the company's nineteenth-century prosperity. (ref. 159)
The GSNC first came to Coldharbour in 1842, when
it acquired the Peninsula & Orient Company's leases of
Brown's Wharf and Stewart's Wharf. This move followed
a disagreement with the East and West India Dock
Company in 1841 over the use of Brunswick Wharf,
Blackwall, which led the GSNC to look for an alternative
wharf for its non-passenger trade with Edinburgh. The
Coldharbour site was approved in August 1841, and in
January 1842 the construction of two piers was ordered,
one in front of Brown's Wharf, the other in front of
Stewart's Wharf. These were designed by Robert Palmer
Browne (1803–72), the GSNC's architect and surveyor. (ref. 160) (fn. m) There is no record of any other major works
being undertaken for the GSNC at either wharf; indeed,
when the company gave up the wharves 40 years later
some of the old buildings shown in Daniell's view of
1802 were still standing. It did, however, demolish most
of the former cooperage buildings on the west side of
Coldharbour.
During the GSNC's tenure both parts of the wharf,
and the adjoining property to the north acquired in the
late 1850s, were referred to as 'Brown's Wharf'. After
the lease of the original Brown's Wharf expired in 1852
the GSNC rented the site directly from the East and
West India Dock Company.
In 1858 the GSNC made its first freehold purchase in
Coldharbour. This was the small property with a river
frontage of 23ft immediately to the south of No. 15. As
it was separated from the rest of the wharf by another
property, with a river frontage of 77ft, not in the GSNC's
occupation, it was not of immediate use to the company,
whose directors justified the purchase as 'a favourable
investment for the future'. In 1859 the GSNC was able
to buy the intervening plot, this purchase being trumpeted as 'of great prospective advantage in connection
with the branch of the company's business conducted in
that locality'. (ref. 163)
On their own freehold the directors did not shrink
from the capital expenditure which they seem to have
found unnecessary on the leasehold parts of the wharf.
All the old buildings on the freehold wharf were removed,
being replaced by a range of four open-sided sheds
with curved corrugated-iron roofs supported on cast-iron
columns (Plate 100). Under the sheds the surface of the
wharf was laid with granite paving sets. Probably the
most expensive undertaking, however, was the reconstruction of the river wall. Just over 100ft long, this was
rebuilt in concrete with a facing of wrought-iron plates,
and, unlike the sheds, it survives (Plate 104a). The large
overlapping iron facing plates, each measuring 8ft by
2½ft, are rivetted together and further secured by 12in.square timber piles driven into the river bed in front of
the plates. Each plate overlaps the plate above it by 2in.
In all there are five rows of plates, the bottom row being
partially submerged below the river bed.
Although they cannot be precisely dated, both the
river wall and the iron sheds probably date from the early
1860s, soon after the company bought the freehold. They
presumably were erected under the supervision, and
perhaps to the design, of R. P. Browne (c1802–72), who
also constructed the company's wharf at London Bridge
in the 1860s. (ref. 164)
In the mid-1860s the live-cattle trade was hit by a
blow from which it never really recovered. This was the
appearance in England in 1865 of Continental cattle
plague or Rinderpest, which had been carried over by
infected cattle shipped through Dutch and German ports.
To prevent the spread of this fatal and highly contagious
disease the government was forced to introduce a series
of restrictive measures which brought about an abrupt
end to the 'free trade' in imported cattle, and eventually
led to the closure of the cattle wharf at Coldharbour. (ref. 165)
Although the GSNC was able to continue trading at
Brown's Wharf, albeit under strict regulations, business
inevitably was depressed, and in 1867 the directors
complained that the Coldharbour wharf - 'which at great
expense had been made the most convenient place of its
kind in the Port of London' for landing cattle - had been
'rendered useless' by official restrictions on the movement
of cattle. (ref. 166) In 1868 a government directive requiring
imported cattle to be kept in quarantine for 12 hours at
the place of landing obliged the company to buy a large
plot on the west side of the street (opposite its own
freehold) where cattle could be isolated before being
officially inspected. (ref. 167) In 1877 the East and West India
Dock Company considered extending the dock-railway
system to Brown's Wharf with a view to the wharf being
used for the temporary storage of wool intended for
export to the Continent in the GSNC's ships. The dock
company wanted the GSNC to build suitable warehouses
in return for a new long lease of the site, but nothing
came of these proposals. (ref. 168)
Although the GSNC continued to land cattle at
Brown's Wharf until 1883, its last years were ones of
steadily declining trade as new regulations took their toll.
In 1881 the government's decision to concentrate the
foreign cattle trade at the City of London's Foreign
Cattle Market in Deptford (opened in 1871) 'so far
curtailed the business to be done at the company's
premises at Brown's Wharf', that the directors decided
to give up the central section of the wharf, rented from
the East and West India Dock Company. The GSNC
closed the rest of the wharf in 1883, following a government order totally prohibiting the cattle trade with
France, 'which during 1882 formed an important item in
the Company's business'. (ref. 169)
North Wharf and the making of Managers Street.
In 1884, within a year of closing the cattle wharf at
Coldharbour, the General Steam Navigation Company
(GSNC) sold all its freehold property there to the Metropolitan Asylums Board (MAB). (ref. 170) This purchase comprised the riverside site known as Brown's Wharf, and
the large irregularly shaped plot opposite, on the west
side of the street, which the GSNC had acquired in 1868
as a place for keeping imported cattle in quarantine. The
MAB wanted the riverside site for an ambulance wharf
where smallpox patients from north London could be
brought for transfer by boat to the Board's hospital ships
moored at Long Reach, and to the convalescent hospital
at Darenth. South London was already served by Acorn
Wharf at Rotherhithe. (ref. 171) In 1885 these two wharfs were
prosaically renamed North Wharf and South Wharf. (ref. 172)
The East and West India Dock Company was dismayed
at the prospect of highly contagious patients being
brought to North Wharf along the narrow confines of
Coldharbour, where several of the company's dockmasters
lived. (ref. 173) This potential source of conflict was averted
when the MAB decided to make a new road between
Coldharbour and New (now Preston's) Road over their
land on the west side of the street, and the dock company
readily consented to give up the small strip required to
make the opening into New Road. (ref. 174) Laid out in 1884–5,
under the superintendence of the Board's architects,
A. & C. Harston of East India Dock Road and Leadenhall
Street, the new road was called Managers Street, after
the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. The
contractors were Beadle Brothers of Erith. On the north
side a site was appropriated for a pair of semi-detached
houses, latterly Nos 1 and 2 Managers Street, for the
pier-master and his men. They were designed by the
Harstons, in the manner of a double-fronted suburban
villa, and erected in 1885 by Ward & Lamb of Holloway,
whose tender was for £1,175. (ref. 175) The men's accommodation, in the eastern house, comprised a mess, three
bedrooms and a bathroom, but was hardly needed for in
1887 the only two staff were the pier-master, who looked
after the wharf during the day, and a pier-man, who
acted as night watchman. (ref. 176)
At the wharf itself the MAB's main requirement was
a floating pier or pontoon, so that the transfer of patients
could take place at all states of the tide. It was connected
to the wharf by a gangway. Both these features were
designed by the MAB's own engineer, Adam Miller (also
described as a naval architect), who had devised the
ventilation system for the hospital ship Castalia. The
construction work was carried out in 1884–5 by Messrs
Jukes, Coulson, Stokes & Company, ironmongers and
manufacturers of London and Sheffield, whose tender
was for £2,800: this included the cost of the two wooden
dolphins which held the pontoon in place. (ref. 177) Both
pontoon and gangway survived into the 1960s.
Initially, the only new building on the wharf, apart
from a small cistern-room, was a patients' receivingroom. Erected in 1885, from the Harstons' designs, this
single-storey brick building with, originally, a slated roof,
stood immediately to the south of the point where the
former gangway joined the wharf (Plate 104a). (ref. 178)
A galvanized-iron canopy was built in 1887 to protect
patients, who were getting soaked through waiting for
ambulances in the rain. (It seems that the open-sided
sheds which the GSNC erected here had been removed
before the MAB bought the wharf.) The new canopy
was built by Walter Jones of Magnet Wharf, Bow Bridge,
at a tender cost of £290 15s. (ref. 179) Its steel trusses were
supported by iron columns. The surface of the wharf,
extending up the south side of No. 15, is paved with
granite sets laid (probably in the early 1860s) by the
GSNC. (ref. 180)
By 1893 the MAB required more accommodation at
North Wharf, where two pantechnicons had been fitted
up as temporary receiving-rooms, and in 1894 it bought
the adjoining No. 15 and a small house opposite (No.
28) which no longer survives. (ref. 181) In about 1915 two fourbed single-storey wards were built on the wharf, one to
the north of the gangway, the other adjoining the south
side of the 1885 receiving-room. Both buildings were
wooden structures with slate roofs. The southern ward
was for infectious cases and the various adjoining structures included a disinfector and a boiler room.
When the MAB was wound up in 1929 its properties,
as well as its responsibilities, passed to the LCC. In 1969
the GLC transferred North Wharf to the borough council,
which still owns it. All the remaining structures were
demolished in 1992–3.
Nos 19 and 19A are respectively the former Blackwall
river-police station, built in 1893–4 and now converted
to residential flats, and a block of new flats erected in the
station yard in 1982. Both stand on the original Brown's
Wharf, earlier occupied as part of the General Steam
Navigation Company's cattle wharf (see above). The
GSNC surrendered its lease in 1881, and in 1891 the
East and West India Dock Company, which owned the
freehold, sold the wharf to the Metropolitan Police for a
new river-police station. At that time the only buildings
still standing on the wharf (but soon to be demolished)
were the eighteenth-century brick warehouses shown in
Daniell's view of 1802. (ref. 182)
Figure 232:
No. 19 Coldharbour (former River Police Station), site plan, floor plans and section in 1893. John Butler, architect, 1893–4
The Blackwall Station, one of only two permanent
river-police stations ever built on the Thames (the other
was at Wapping), was designed to accommodate a division
of the Thames police formerly based on board The
Royalist, a hulk moored off Folly Wall. The inconvenience
of this floating headquarters had long been felt, and in
1875 it was suggested that the station should be relocated
on shore in the former Railway Tavern at Brunswick
Wharf. This proposal was rejected, and it was not until
1889 that other land sites were seriously considered, the
choice of Brown's Wharf being approved in 1890. (ref. 183)
The new station was designed by John Butler (c1828–
1900). Architect and Surveyor to the Metropolitan Police
since 1881, and built by Holloway Brothers. Erected on
deep concrete foundations, it has elevations of red brick
with stone dressings. On the principal fronts the brick and
stonework are arranged in horizontal bands, presumably
under the influence of Norman Shaw's recently completed
Metropolitan Police Headquarters at New Scotland Yard,
where Butler had been involved with the preliminary
planning (Plate 104b). (ref. 184)
The particular needs of the river police called for some
careful and ingenious planning (fig. 232). The boat-dock
under the building had to be usable at all states of the
tide, and in order to leave sufficient headroom in the
dock at high tide. Butler raised the ground floor of the
station several feet above street level. Thus the public
entrance from Coldharbour was at the top of a flight of
steps. The various parts of the building were strictly
segregated, with their own separate entrances. The felons'
entrance was in the parade shed. From there a passage
led directly to the charge room and the cells, bypassing
the front lobby where respectable members of the public
might be waiting, and the entrance to the self-contained
living accommodation for married policemen was in the
yard to the south of the public entrance. On the first
floor, above the cells, two rooms were set aside for drying
clothes and oilskins.
The station was closed in the late 1970s, and the
building was divided into flats in 1982. At the same time
a block of flats (No. 19A), in a style faintly reminiscent
of a Victorian riverside warehouse, was erected on the
site of the former station yard to the north of the old
building (Plate 104a). Both the conversion work and
the new flats were designed by Rothermel Cooke for
Downshire Properties. (ref. 185)
Nos 21 and 23: Concordia Wharf (formerly Stewart's
Wharf).
The former Stewart's Wharf emerged from its
40—year spell as part of the General Steam Navigation
Company's cattle wharf in the early 1880s. By then the
cooperage workshops and the five small houses on the
west side of the street had been demolished, but the
Stewart family's old riverside residence (No. 23) was still
standing, and remarkably this eighteenth-century house
survived into the twentieth century.
In 1886 the freehold was acquired by the oil merchants
J. W. Cook & Sons, who renamed the premises Concordia
Wharf and built a range of iron-covered open-sided stores
on the west side of the street before relinquishing the
wharf in 1890. (ref. 186) Their immediate successors here. The
Granulin Company Ltd, recently incorporated 'dealers
in and treaters of grain for use in brewing', stayed for
only a few years in the mid-1890s. (ref. 187) In 1898 the wharf
was taken over by Charles Grant Tindal, an Australian
stock farmer and grazier living in England, whose
company, the Australian Meat Company, combined livestock farming in Australia with the importing of tinned
and fresh meat and the manufacture of meat extracts and
preserves. (ref. 188) In 1899 Tindal built a five-storey brick
warehouse (No. 21) on the northern part of the riverside
site. Erected by Perry & Company of Bow, it was 50ft
high, with wooden floors strengthened by steel joists and
a loophole to each floor. Blue bullnosed bricks were used
for the door surrounds and other openings. (ref. 189)
The Australian Meat Company remained at Concordia
Wharf until about 1920, latterly sharing the premises
with the Ayres Quay Bottle Company. (ref. 190) In 1921 the
British Bluefries Wharfage & Transport Ltd, a firm of
wharfingers, took over the wharf, but after a major
fire here in January 1924 completely destroyed Tindal's
warehouse, the firm moved to Bermondsey. (ref. 191) The warehouse was never rebuilt and the riverside section of the
wharf was concreted over and used for storage.
Concordia Wharf was later occupied by the White
Sea & Baltic Company (P. & I. Danischewsky Ltd), a
firm of pine-tar refiners and distillers established in
Russia in the later nineteenth century. By 1933 it had
erected on the west side of the street 'a most up-to-date
distillery' for refining pine tar, the riverside area of the
wharf being used for storing barrels (Plate 104b). (ref. 192)
No. 25: Hawthorn's Wharf.
In 1993 this site comprises
the southern 35ft of the vacant lot between the former
river-police station at No. 19 and the Gun public house
at No. 27. The most recent building here, demolished in
1978–9. (ref. 193) was a warehouse of 1905–6, which replaced
a house of early nineteenth-century character, though
possibly with an older core.
At the end of the eighteenth century the site was
occupied by two houses, (ref. 194) neither of which is shown in
Daniell's view. Both were acquired by the City of London
as part of the properties purchased from Sir Robert
Preston in 1800 in connection with the making of the
City Canal, the smaller being used for a lock-keeper's
house, while the larger was occupied, rent free, by James
Mountague in his capacity as the first Surveyor and
Superintendent of the canal. (ref. 195) Mountague also enjoyed
the use of a large plot of garden ground opposite on the
west side of Coldharbour (see below, under West India
Dock Tavern) and of a small wharf to the south of the
Gun public house. In 1806 a 'Canal Office' was established
in his ground-floor front-room, 'in which lock-keepers
enter Minutes and where a person always attends'. (ref. 196)
By 1814 'not more than' £1,500 had been laid out
in repairs, additions, alterations and improvements at
Mountague's house, which presumably included the eastward extension and rebuilding of the riverfront with a
canted bay. (ref. 197) It was further enlarged about 1827 by the
annexation of the small lock-keeper's house to the
south. (ref. 198) (fn. n) Among the features listed in 1828 were a leaded
roof-lantern, deal trellis-work on the parapets, and a
'trellis work verandah', (ref. 200) but these had disappeared
before the river front was sketched in the early 1880s
(Plates 100, 147a).
Mountague was succeeded here in 1828 by Samuel
Lovegrove, the vintner and tavern proprietor, who leased
all the property in Coldharbour formerly occupied by
Mountague, and who built the large West India Dock
Tavern on part of the garden plot on the west side of
the street (see below). (ref. 201) Although he paid the rates on
Mountague's old house, (ref. 202) Lovegrove may not have lived
there himself, and it was probably sub-let to tenants. In
1847 Lovegrove's executors surrendered the lease to the
East and West India Dock Company, successors to the
City Corporation. (ref. 203) The house was then in the occupation of Captain William Drayner, a master mariner and
ropemaker. (ref. 204) He left in 1853 and for the next 40 years
the dock company used it as a dockmaster's residence.
The last occupant, in the 1890s, was a shipwright, Joseph
M. Jackson, previously at No. 15. (ref. 205)
By 1904 Montague House - as it was then called—
was found to be 'beyond profitable repair'. The dock
company's Works Committee recommended its demolition, and in 1905 the site was sold to Edwin Hawthorn of
Snaresbrook, who erected a warehouse there in 1905–6. (ref. 206)
This was Hawthorn's second warehouse in Coldharbour. His first, at No. 13, was built in 1876, when
he was a lighterman living in Mile End. The warehouse
at No. 25 was a five-storey brick structure with concrete
floors supported on steel joists, a teak staircase, a flat
asphalt roof, and a loophole to each of the upper floors
(Plate 104b). (ref. 207) In the 1920s and 1930s the building was
being used as a collecting depot by Hawthorn Wharf
Ltd, an exporting firm which specialized in the export
of motor car and cycle accessories. The firm also handled
imported dutiable goods intended for re-export, which
were stored on bonded floors specially set aside and
secured for this purpose. (ref. 208)
The West India Dock Tavern Site.
The lands acquired
by the City for the making of the City Canal included a
large plot on the west side of Coldharbour, previously
part of Stewart's cooperage (see above). Not all of this
land, which lay to the west and south-west of the Gun
tavern, was needed for the new canal, and the northern
end, cleared of the cooperage workshops, was afterwards
used as a garden by James Mountague, whose official
residence at No. 25 lacked this amenity (see above). He
erected several buildings there, including a chaise-house
and stable (rebuilt in 1813), a laundry and a greenhouse.
On the west side there was a long narrow fishpond, called
the canal, which had been a timber-pond when the
Stewart family occupied the ground. (ref. 209)
Mountague's tenancy of this land was originally only
a temporary one, as the City's Port Committee planned
to let the site for building houses. In 1813 the ground
was made ready for building, plans and elevations prepared, and a noticeboard erected inviting contractors
to apply for leases. But when none was forthcoming,
Mountague took it upon himself to remove the noticeboard and rebuild his stables, which had been pulled
down in anticipation of the development. The Port
Committee, Mountague's employer, was understandably
annoyed by his actions, and a sub-committee went so far
as to recommend his eviction, but he was allowed to
stay on, although he had to pay rent for the garden
thereafter. (ref. 210)
Following Mountague's departure in 1828, the City
agreed to let the ground for building to Samuel Lovegrove, and by January 1830 he had built a large tavern
here, immediately in front of Mountague's stable block. (ref. 211)
(The site is now covered by Nos 37–45 Coldharbour.)
Called the West India Dock Tavern, it was a big, plain,
well-fenestrated building, three storeys high and nine
windows wide (Plate 105a). On the long east-facing
front elevation the many windows gave views over the
river and the entrance to the City Canal. Lovegrove may
have reckoned that the proximity of the West India Docks
would be good for business, but it seems that the tavern
was never very successful. After his death in the mid1840s it failed to attract a tenant, and the stable block
was let separately for livery stables. (ref. 212) In 1854 the tavern,
which had then stood vacant for 'many years', was
demolished, the fishpond filled with spoil from the Junction Dock excavations, and the site, newly fenced, used
for storing 'colonial deals'. (ref. 213) Lenantons, the Millwall
timber merchants, acquired the northern part of the site
in the 1870s for a timber-yard, and later used it for boatbuilding. (ref. 214)
No. 27: The Gun public house.
A public house, under
a variety of names, has occupied this site since at least
the second decade of the eighteenth century. In 1722 it
was called the King and Queen, by 1725 the Rose and
Crown, and from about 1745 until 1770 the Ramsgate
Pink. (fn. o) It was renamed the Gun in 1771. (ref. 215) Daniell omitted
the building from his view of Coldharbour in 1802 (Plate
100). A plan of about 1800 shows that it occupied the
northern 35ft of the site and had two bay windows on
the river front. (ref. 216)
The present undistinguished structure appears to be
predominantly nineteenth century in date, although vestiges of earlier building may still be present. The oldest
part is the low slate-roofed northern end. This presents
only a single-storey elevation to the street, but it rises to
two storeys on the riverfront, where there is a large
clubroom on the first floor, connected to the ground floor
by an internal circular staircase. In 1875 a two-storey
two-bay extension in brick with stucco dressings was
added on the south side of the building (Plate 105c), and
the existing single-storey street elevation was refronted
in the same style. F. Frederick Holsworth of Kentish
Town was the architect for this work, which was carried
out by J. H. Johnson of Limehouse. (ref. 217)
Nos 29–51 (odd)
(No. 51 demolished). Originally
called South Dock Terrace, this row of two-storey cottages was built in 1889–90 on what had previously been
part of the pierhead alongside the entrance to the South
Dock. The site was one of several pieces of land released
for sale by the East and West India Dock Company in
the 1880s to help offset the costs of making Tilbury
Docks. It was bought in 1888 by William Warren, an
estate agent in the East India Dock Road, who developed
the site in association with George Larman of Plaistow,
builder. (ref. 218) The same partnership was also responsible for
developing nearby Glen Terrace, begun a few months
earlier.
Built of stock brick, intermixed with a little red brick
in the fronts, the houses here are flat-fronted and plain,
with paired entrances, two-storey extensions at the back
and three rooms on each floor. The roofs were originally
slated. The early occupants were all weekly tenants on
average rents of 8s 6d. (ref. 219) In 1891, when about half of the
houses were still in the hands of their first inhabitants,
the tenants included three engine fitters, three labourers,
two lightermen, a boat-builder, a blacksmith, a sign writer
and wood-grainer, and an office keeper. (ref. 220) In March 1890
the freehold of the entire terrace was bought by Thomas
Gray, a surgeon living in Mountague Place. (ref. 221)
The westernmost house (No. 51) originally abutted
westwards on the back gardens of a row of four older
cottages in New (now Preston's) Road, which were swept
away when the road was re-aligned in the late 1920s.
Numbered 1–4 New Road, they had been erected in 1876
by the East and West India Dock Company, to rehouse
workmen displaced by the demolition of Canal Row for
road widening. One cottage was required by the dock
company for one of its own gatemen; the others were let
to the Merchant Shipping Company, based at the Canal
Dockyard, for their foremen. (ref. 222) Designed by the dock
company's engineer, Augustus Manning, and built by
Messrs Lewis & Bostock of Plaistow at a cost of £880, (ref. 223)
these cottages were two storeys high, with a single-storey
kitchen extension at the back. They were built of stock
brick, with red-brick dressings, slated roofs and red ridge
tiles. The accommodation, typical of this type of house,
comprised a front parlour, a living-room, a kitchen, an
outside w.c., and, on the first floor, two bedrooms. (ref. 224)