In 1718 JANE RANDOLPH, mother of the third American President, THOMAS JEFFERSON, was baptised at St Paul’s, where her parents Isham and Jane were married. She then worshipped there as a child until her family emigrated to Virginia. In 1739 she married Peter Jefferson, and they established a plantation in Virginia, which they called Shadwell. Thomas Jefferson was born there in 1743.
The explorer CAPTAIN COOK worshipped at St Paul’s and in 1763 had his son James baptised here. In 1790 JOHN WESLEY PREACHED HIS VERY LAST SERMON in the church.
WILLIAM PERKIN was baptised in the new St Paul’s Church in 1838 and grew up just across the road in St David’s Lane. He became a chemistry student and set up a laboratory in his home. One day, at the age of 18, while attempting to make artificial quinine to combat malaria, he instead produced MAUVE, the FIRST SYNTHETIC DYE. His went on to discover and manufacture many more colours, establishing what is now a world-wide chemical dye industry. The site of his home and laboratory is marked by a blue plaque – which really should be mauve.
King Edward Memorial Park
Elizabethan Explorers
KING EDWARD MEMORIAL Park was opened in 1921 on the site of a former fish market and is one of the few places in docklands to have survived unchanged into the new millennium. The river views are wide and splendid, and down by the waterfront is a round, red-brick building covering an air shaft for the Rotherhithe Tunnel, which runs underneath the park. On the wall is a tablet commemorating four Elizabethan explorers who ‘in the latter half of the sixteenth century set sail from this reach of the River Thames near Ratcliffe Cross’.
Ratcliffe, meaning ‘red cliff’, was a natural landing place and harbour from where, in 1553, SIR HUGH WILLOUGHBY led an expedition to try and discover the north-east passage to China, round the north of Russia. He perished in Lapland, but one of his company, STEPHEN BOROUGH, reached Russia and returned to England having helped establish THE WORLD’S FIRST JOINT STOCK COMPANY, THE MUSCOVY COMPANY, to facilitate trade between Britain and Russia. His younger brother, WILLIAM BOROUGH, became a hero in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The fourth explorer was SIR MARTIN FROBISHER, who led three expeditions to find the North West Passage and duly discovered Baffin Island.
Limehouse
First Chinatown
LIMEHOUSE TAKES ITS name from the many lime kilns that were located here from the 14th century onwards, burning chalk brought up the river from Kent, and producing lime for London’s building industry.
It was the location of LONDON’S FIRST CHINATOWN, when Chinese sailors arriving on ships bringing tea from China settled in the area during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Limehouse acquired a somewhat exaggerated reputation for opium dens and white slavery which fired the imagination of the writers of the day. CHARLES DICKENS researched the opium dens for his last, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. OSCAR WILDE’S hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray comes to Limehouse to smoke opium. SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE came here to research for his Sherlock Holmes novels. The writer SAX ROHMER was inspired to create master criminal DR FU MANCHU by a Chinese character he glimpsed on a foggy night in Limehouse. Hastings, the long-suffering companion of AGATHA CHRISTIE’s Hercule Poirot, was imprisoned in a Limehouse opium den in The Big Four. After Limehouse was badly bombed in the Blitz, Chinatown moved west to Soho, but the community is remembered in many of the local street names such as Canton Street, Mandarin Street, Pekin Street, Ming Street and Nankin Street.
Narrow Street
A Georgian Riverside
THE SPINE OF Limehouse is Narrow Street, which runs for almost a mile along the waterfront. Off Narrow Street is LIMEHOUSE BASIN, created in the early 19th century as a dock where river boats could unload their cargo on to canal boats, for onward passage along the Regent’s Canal and the national canal network. Limehouse Basin also lies at the southern end of LONDON’S OLDEST CANAL, the LIMEHOUSE CUT, begun in 1766. Originally linked directly to the Thames, the Cut provides a short cut from Limehouse Reach to the River Lea, avoiding the long haul round the Isle of Dogs and the tortuous Bow Creek.
Today Limehouse Basin has been redeveloped as a marina with luxury apartments. By the north quay, on the other side of the railway arches built for the London and Blackwall railway and now used by the Docklands Light Railway, there is an octagonal hydraulic accumulator tower (see Shadwell) from 1869, which is being converted into a viewing platform. In 2007 TV chef GORDON RAMSAY opened his FIRST ‘GASTROPUB’, THE NARROW, near the entrance to Limehouse Basin.
Further along Narrow Street is one of the prettiest stretches of road in London. The street opens out on to a pleasant square with, on the river side, one of the capital’s best early Georgian terraces. There are some later Georgian houses in the row as well, providing a useful demonstration of how to tell early Georgian architecture from later – in the early buildings the windows are flush to the wall while, in the later period, the windows are set back.
At No. 76 is THE GRAPES pub, which appears in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend as the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters – ‘of a dropsical nature, with not a straight floor, with red curtains that match the customers’ noses!’ Dickens paid regular visits to Limehouse to see his godfather Christopher Huffam, a sail-maker who lived nearby in Newell Street. The Grapes is renowned for its fish restaurant.
No. 78, next door, is the home of former Labour Foreign Secretary DR DAVID OWEN. On Sunday 25 January 1981, he and three other former Labour ministers, Shirley Williams, William Rodgers and Roy Jenkins, met here to issue the LIMEHOUSE DECLARATION, which led to the formation of the short-lived Social Democratic Party or SDP.
Limehouse, in fact, has political form. In 1909 David Lloyd George came to Limehouse and gave an impassioned speech before a cheering crowd, attacking the House of Lords for opposing his ‘People’s Budget’, which included proposals for the introduction of the Old Age Pension paid for by taxing the wealthy. The occasion brought into being the phrase ‘Limehousing’, meaning to give a rabble-rousing political speech.
No. 138 is DUNBAR WHARF, from where the first emigrants going of their own free will to Australia departed – convicts were taken aboard from Wapping Old Stairs. Captain Cook, one of the very first Englishmen to see Australia, had a home nearby. Today, Dunbar Wharf is one of the most spectacular of the new docklands apartment blocks with quite stunning river views.
No. 148 is LIMEKILN WHARF, where a number of old warehouses, converted within but untouched on the outside, back on to and surround a muddy inlet – the atmosphere is redolent of how Limehouse must once have been. One of these warehouses was the home of LIMEHOUSE POTTERY, established in 1740 as THE FIRST SOFT-PASTE PORCELAIN FACTORY IN ENGLAND.
Well, I never knew this
ABOUT
EAST END RIVERSIDE
The BBC Television situation comedy Till Death Us Do Part, written by Canning Town’s Johnny Speight, was set in WAPPING.
ENGLAND’S FIRST FUCHSIA was discovered in 18th-century Wapping, having been transported here from the West Indies by a seaman as a gift for his sweetheart. It was spotted by a gardening man who was amazed to see it growing in a window-box. He bought the flower and nursed it through the winter, so that the following year he was able to sell off the cuttings, and soon the fuchsia could be seen in gardens all over England. The fuchsia is named after a 16th-century German botanist called Leonhard Fuchs.
The ‘TICHBORNE CLAIMANT’, ARTHUR ORTON, began life as a butcher in WAPPING. Orton emigrated to Wagga Wagga in Australia and was sitting having a drink in the local bar one day when his eye lighted upon an advertisement in the local paper enquiring of the whereabouts of a Sir Roger Tichborne Bt, heir to a vast fortune back in England. Sir Roger had disappeared at sea, but his mother, Lady Tichborne, refused to believe he was dead and placed advertisements in newspapers all over the world. Orton did some research on Sir Roger and decided to try and pass himself off as the long-lost son. Somehow the huge, obese butcher from Wapping via Wagga Wagga managed to convince Lady T
ichborne that he was her small, slim, aristocratic son. His claim, however, was disputed by the rest of the family and, after a trial lasting 102 days, Arthur Orton was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The 1920s jazz standard ‘LIMEHOUSE BLUES’, written by Philip Braham and Douglas Furber, and turned into a hit song by Gertrude Lawrence, was inspired by the Limehouse area.
SIR DAVID LEAN, director of such films as Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, lived at Sun Wharf on Narrow Street, Limehouse. Other show-business residents of Limehouse are actors SIR IAN MCKELLEN and STEVEN BERKOFF.
ST ANNE’S CHURCH, Limehouse, stands slightly self-consciously in its own little enclosure, surrounded by drab council housing, rather like an over-dressed guest at a party. It was built in the 1720s and is the earliest of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s three East End churches. Its magnificent tower has been a prominent landmark for sailors on the river since it was raised, and boasts THE HIGHEST CHURCH CLOCK IN LONDON – actually the second highest clock on any London building after Big Ben.
POPLAR & THE ISLE OF DOGS
POPLAR – CANARY WHARF – LIMEHOUSE
Canary Wharf, home to Britain’s three tallest buildings
Poplar
It’s Only Fair
POPLAR, WHICH TAKES its name from the Poplar trees that once thrived on the marshy soil here, lies immediately to the north of the Isle of Dogs. It is one of London’s poorest areas, and yet it sits in the sunless shadow of money-drenched Canary Wharf, headquarters to some of the richest organisations on earth. The contrast is eerie and thought-provoking.
On 29 July 1921, the leader of Poplar Council, GEORGE LANSBURY, grandfather of Hollywood star ANGELA LANSBURY, marched from Poplar Town Hall to the High Court, preceded by his official mace-bearer and accompanied by a brass band and several thousand supporters, to defend his council’s refusal to hand over their rates to the London County Council. Poplar Council had voted to use the rates to provide benefits for their own local poor, arguing that it was unreasonable to expect a deprived area such as Poplar to contribute to a central fund that would be used effectively to subsidise the rich boroughs. Lansbury and 24 other male councillors were sent to Brixton Prison, while five women councillors were taken off to Holloway. Such was the public outcry that they were all released after six weeks and the Government agreed to adjust the rate revenue so that funds were apportioned according to the needs and means of each borough. Poplar Council’s determination to provide for the needs of its own poor, in defiance of central government, was nicknamed ‘Poplarism’, a term which came to be applied generally to extravagant or spendthrift local council spending. A mural in Hale Street beside Poplar Recreation Ground depicts the protest.
ST MATTHIAS CHURCH, surrounded by trees in Poplar Recreation Ground, was built by the East India Company as a chapel of ease in 1654. It is THE ONLY SURVIVING EXAMPLE IN LONDON OF A CHURCH BUILT DURING THE COMMON-WEALTH (1649–60). The exterior was greatly altered in 1866 and has been knocked around since, but the oak beams holding up the arcades inside are thought to be from East India Company ships. Two scholars are buried in the chapel. ROBERT AINSWORTH (1660–1743), who compiled a widely used Latin dictionary, is commemorated by a wall tablet, while the celebrated Shakespearian commentator GEORGE STEEVENS (1736–1800), born in Poplar, is the subject of a much-admired monument by Flaxman.
Isle of Dogs
Docklands
ORIGINALLY KNOWN AS Stepney Marshes, the Isle of Dogs was where Tudor monarchs, when resident at Greenwich Palace, kept their hunting dogs. Once a peninsula consisting of 800 acres (320 ha) of lush pastureland, the area became a real island in 1802 when the WEST INDIA DOCKS were built, as London’s FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT CARGO DOCKS, and THE LARGEST STRUCTURE OF THEIR KIND IN THE WORLD. Heavy bombing during the Blitz and competition from the container docks at Tilbury brought about the closure of the docks in the 1980s. Today, the Isle of Dogs is a strange mixture of New York skyline, glass towers, council blocks, smart new terraces and rows of drab public housing.
Canary Wharf
High Point
CANARY WHARF, ORIGINALLY constructed in 1937 for handling cargoes of fruit from the Canary Islands, is now the most visible sign of the immense regeneration happening in London’s docklands, which began in the mid 1980s and is still spreading eastwards, despite a few financial hiccups along the way. The original developers, the Canadian firm Olympia & York, went bankrupt during the recession of the early 1990s, and for many years the huge new office blocks remained half empty. Wandering around the echoing canyons of Canary Wharf in those days was an eerie, almost post-apocalyptic experience. Today the whole area is buzzing with activity, new growth and modern sculptures.
Canary Wharf appears in the Guinness Book of Records as THE LARGEST COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE WORLD, and now features THE THREE TALLEST BUILDINGS IN BRITAIN. The HSBC building was designed by Norman Foster, and the Citigroup Tower by US-based architect Cesar Pelli. Both have 45 floors and are 654 ft (200 m) high. Pelli also designed ONE CANADA SQUARE, which at 771 ft (235 m) high, was for 20 years the TALLEST BUILDING IN BRITAIN, a title now claimed by the Shard of Glass (see Shard of Glass). The observation room at the top was open to the public as one of London’s most spectacular viewpoints until 1996, when an IRA bomb exploded at nearby South Quay, killing two people, injuring 39 and causing the collapse of an office block. The observation room has been closed for security reasons ever since. In 2003 One Canada Square became the headquarters of the sinister Frenchman Pascal Sauvage, played by John Malkovich, in the film Johnny English starring Rowan Atkinson.
The two 19th-century warehouses along the West India Quayside are the only original warehouses to survive wartime bombing and now contain expensive apartments, restaurants, bars and a museum. There are several more splendid remnants from the original docks, including the magnificent Dock-master’s House, built in 1807, now an Indian restaurant, a row of cottages for the Dock Police Constables, a guardhouse and a stretch of wall pierced by a fine archway.
Millwall
Winds of Change
AS YOU TRAVEL south from Canary Wharf, the pace and calibre of the new developments begin to peter out. The offices and houses around Millwall Dock are laid out like a village, a pleasant relief from the Manhattan effect to the north. In the pre-titles chase for the film The World Is Not Enough, James Bond is forced to dive under the water in his speed boat when Glengall Bridge, spanning Millwall’s inner dock, begins to close.
MILLWALL is named after a series of windmills that used to line the western embankment of the Isle of Dogs. Millwall Football Club was formed in 1885 by workers from Morton’s canning factory, which stood on the site now occupied by the futuristic Cascades apartment block. In 1910 the club moved to a new home across the river, where there was more room.
An intriguing structure nestling among the paper shops and council terraces on the east side of Westferry Road is ST PAUL’S PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN ENGLAND, built in 1859 in the style of a small-scale Pisa Cathedral. It is now a performing arts centre known as THE SPACE. The foundation stone was laid by JOHN SCOTT RUSSELL, whose shipyard just down the road built Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s mighty Leviathan.
Great Eastern
Leviathan
TUCKED AWAY BENEATH the river wall and surrounded by modern flats are the remains of the massive timber slipway from which the Leviathan was launched in 1858. Later renamed the GREAT EASTERN, this monster ship was over 700 ft (213 m) long, with room for 4,000 passengers, and for the next 40 years remained THE BIGGEST SHIP IN THE WORLD. Because it was so large the ship could not be launched stern first, in case the stern dug into the river bed, or the ship’s momentum took it across the Thames and into the opposite bank. So Brunel built it to be launched sideways. The first attempt in November 1857 was a failure. Leviathan, as she then was, moved just a few feet and then stuck. One man was killed and five others were injured. It took another 13 attempts, and a name change to Great Eastern, before the huge ship finall
y took to the water on 31 January 1858.
The Great Eastern was never a success as a passenger ship. Originally built for taking passengers to Australia, she was too big to go through the new Suez Canal and she was too slow to compete with the smaller and faster vessels that dominated the Atlantic route to New York. Her owners went bankrupt and Brunel’s health was ruined – he died in 1859. In 1866, however, the Great Eastern was used for laying THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL TRANS-ATLANTIC CABLE, from Valentia Island in Ireland to Newfoundland.
Island Gardens
A Wonderful View
ISLAND GARDENS, AT the southeastern tip of the Isle of Dogs, where once there was a scrap metal yard, were laid out in 1895 by the Commissioners of the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, both to improve their own view across the river from the hospital, and to give a spectacular vantage-point from which to see Wren’s masterpiece in its full majesty. The result is possibly the most noble and glorious view on the whole of the Thames. The round, glass-domed red-brick building on the edge of the gardens gives access to the Greenwich foot tunnel (see Greenwich).
THE WATERMAN’S ARMS, a short walk away in Glenaffric Avenue, posed as The Governor General pub in the 1980 film The Long Good Friday starring Bob Hoskins.
Nearby is the pleasant green space of MUDCHUTE, so named because this is where the chute deposited the mud dredged out during the building of the Millwall Docks. Mudchute Farm in the north of the park is THE LARGEST URBAN FARM IN BRITAIN.
I Never Knew That About London Page 17