Long-time London resident and avid museum and theatre-goer. I started this blog in 2014, and got serious about it in 2020 when I realised how much I missed arts and culture during lockdowns. I go to a lot more events than anyone would think is sensible, and love sharing my thoughts in the forms of reviews, the occasional thought piece, and travel recommendations when I leave my London HQ.
In this walk I investigate the history of my own neighbourhood. Wapping has plenty of sights and points of interest, where Georgian docks, maritime history and modern regeneration combine.
It’s our old favourite, Walking London’s Waterways by GillyCameron-Cooper. This photo is taken on the Thames foreshore at Wapping with Canary Wharf in the background.
Welcome To My Neighbourhood!
By now, I hope you are familiar with our walks around London’s Docklands, following Gilly Cameron-Cooper’s Walking London’s Waterways. With the help of this book we have explored the Rotherhithe Peninsula, Central London riverfront, Greenwich, and Canary Wharf. The Canary Wharf walk started in Wapping so we are not covering entirely new ground today, but this walk is more leisurely. It is a circular around Wapping starting at Tower Hill. I currently live right in the heart of Wapping, so enjoyed what was basically a regular lockdown walk, but with added historic interest.
Wapping is a great part of London to visit (or to live in!). Historically it was quite an isolated hamlet despite its proximity to the Tower of London. As well as the river to the south, it was hemmed in by marshy land to the north. Before the docks were constructed here, Wapping was home to glass and rope works, and market gardens. The history of the last couple of centuries is palpable, in the form of warehouse buildings. There is a much longer history to the area, however, some of which we will explore today.
The walk also highlights the modern uncertainty of the place. Wapping has benefited from a lot of regeneration projects, but it’s not quite gentrified. Post-modern and contemporary housing developments exist alongside a more settled community which is alive and well. This community still remembers (just) the time of day labourers and dockers, bustling wharves and blazing warehouse fires which burned for days. All of these different aspects are visible today as we stroll the streets of Wapping.
Historic Wapping – Around the Tower of London
We start our walk at Tower Hill station, a short distance but yet a world away from Wapping’s docks and warehouses. Just outside the station is this great remnant of London’s Roman walls, modelled here by Trajan. You will of course recall the walk we dedicated to London’s Roman walls a while back. The lower part with the red stripes of terracotta are Roman, while the top section was a later addition.
After admiring the Roman wall, we head down into the concrete underpass and alongside the Tower of London. This grassy area is where a moat of Thames water once flowed.
After traversing some steps we come to the foot of Tower Bridge. With flourishes like that, there is no mistaking its Victorian origins.
If we look out across the river at this point, we can just make out Butler’s Wharf and the Anchor Brewhouse, familiar to us from this walk.
Both the Tower Hotel and David Wynne’s sculpture in front of it date to 1973. The hotel’s style is unmistakably Brutalist, which has divided opinions over the years. You are looking at London’s second most hated building, according to a 2006 BBC poll.
Historic Wapping – St Katherine Docks
Adjacent to the Tower Hotel is the entrance to the three basins of St Katherine Docks. For information about the docks’ history, see the end of this post. The Dockmaster’s House is in the top image, behind the tree. A prime spot to keep an eye on the boats going in and out of the lock next door. The house is Georgian, as are the docks themselves.
St Katherine Docks opened in 1828, the closest commercial docks to the City of London and purpose-built to take small ships and lighters transporting goods from bigger ships further down the Thames. Their construction required the demolition of around 1,250 houses, and the displacement of over 11,000 people. And all this for a short-lived commercial success, as the entrance was too narrow to accommodate larger iron and steam ships. Today it is well-frequented by luxury rather than commercial traffic.
The Dickens Inn is something of a historical pastiche: an 18th Century brewery warehouse with faux-Elizabethan galleries on top. It is undeniably nice on a summer’s day, however, if you can grab an outdoor seat.
Miller’s Wharf sits imposingly on St Katherine’s Way. It is our first glimpse on this walk of Georgian dockside warehouses converted into flats. Definitely not the last glimpse though!
Historic Wapping – Along the Riverside
The Thames Path follows the famous river from source to estuary. In central London, it often dips in and out and around buildings, making for a choppy walking experience. This is our first stretch of Thames Path on this walk; it’s a miniscule one but offers fabulous views of the Shard, Tower Bridge and the community of Hermitage Moorings.
The Hermitage Riverside Memorial Garden is the result of a long campaign by local residents. Because of the importance of London’s docks to the UK economy as a whole, residents of Wapping and surrounding neighbourhoods were heavily impacted by the Blitz. As the area’s heritage was increasingly lost to developers in the Post-War decades, locals wanted to preserve a space as a memorial to those lost. The resulting garden didn’t quite satisfy anyone. It wasn’t as big or invested-in as campaigners wanted, and I’m sure the developers would have preferred to build on the land. Nonetheless it is a nice public garden where you can take in the river views, with this sculpture to remind you of the purpose behind it.
The riverfront path continues in front of a couple of newish developments. But by looking down at the river at low tide, we can see that the traces of commerce and industry in Wapping haven’t been entirely erased.
Just before we turn away from the river, we can just spot Rotherhithe over the other side; about where the Angel pub and Edward III’s hunting lodge are.
Historic Wapping – Wapping High Street
Pierhead has always looked to me like a lovely place to live. This image sneaks a peek into the private garden between two rows of flats in Georgian terraces. The buildings once flanked an entrance to London Dock (under the current garden). How wonderful to be able to sit and watch the Thames from a peaceful spot which was once a busy thoroughfare. London Docks were three times the size of St Katherine Docks, and grew rich from a 21-year monopoly on tobacco, rice and wine from the East and West Indies.
The Town of Ramsgate is a great historic pub. Fishermen from Ramsgate used to land their catches here, hence the name. Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian once drank here. And after the Civil War, Parliamentarian Thomas Blood was caught here with Charles II’s crown, which he had flattened to make it easier to conceal.
Alongside the Town of Ramsgate is the access to Wapping Old Stairs. This is an easy access point down to the river; as the name suggests, one of the older ones too. Wapping Stairs once offered access to Execution Dock, where mutineers and pirates had their sentences carried out in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Their bodies remained in gibbets until three tides had washed over them. The last execution was in 1830.
We now have a great run of converted warehouse buildings along Wapping High Street. The boxy blue and white building you can see in a couple of shots is part of the river support for the Metropolitan Police. More on that shortly.
Historic Wapping – Policemen, Smugglers and Kings
At Wapping New Stairs we get another quick glimpse of the river, with police boats in the foreground and Rotherhithe over yonder. Wapping New Stairs consists of a rickety-looking but publicly-accessible ladder. Access to the Thames foreshore is plentiful along the length of Wapping, but some access points are more adventurous than others.
The Marine Policing Unit actually predates the Metropolitan Police. A fact they are very proud of, so are likely to tell you if you are ever lucky enough to visit their little museum when it is open. In fact, this is the oldest uniformed police force in the country. The Thames River Police were originally established in 1798 to deal with the pilfering and corruption which plagued river trade. Within a year, they had reduced losses by 80%. Today they mainly deal with drug importation, body recovery, terrorism, and advising hapless river users on safety.
A few more wonderful warehouses. Phoenix Wharf at the bottom is one of the few that has not (yet) turned into flats.
King Henry’s Wharves are another unconverted, authentic looking remnant of Wapping’s past. The name, along with Gun Wharves a little further along, recall the site of a 16th Century foundry to produce cannons for Henry VIII’s navy.As you can see, King Henry’s Stairs are one of those slightly more intrepid river access points I was talking about.
Historic Wapping – New Crane Wharf to Wapping Wall
Still on Wapping High Street but past the station, we can see that the more careful modern developments echo the shapes of earlier warehouses.
Following a sign for the Thames Path near Riverview Chinese Restaurant (recommended by this local), New Crane Stairs lead us down to the river. Just in case we got carried away by the sun and the sand, the Super Sewer works in the background remind us that this is in face a relatively dirty river. On a happier note, if you mentally remove the balconies in the bottom image, you can imagine the cranes hauling cargoes straight into the warehouses.
Just around the corner, we are now on Wapping Wall. It is built on a 1560s seawall, which in turn replaced medieval flood defences.
The London Hydraulic Power Company built this pumping station in 1891. It remained in use until 1977. At one point an arts organisation named the Wapping Project moved in. They later moved out (they describe it on their website as being ‘ungrounded’ from the building); so the Wapping Project is now based in… Berlin.
We saw the Prospect of Whitby on this walk. Like the Town of Ramsgate, it is a pub with a long history. It looks great from the river too, so let’s head down Pelican Stairs to take a look. From here we get a nice view of Canary Wharf reflected in the river. Also note the hangman’s noose to help us imagine what Execution Dock was like.
Historic Wapping – Shadwell Basin
Shadwell Basin is the last section of London Docks which remains as a body of water with river access. This lovely red bridge used to swing up to allow boats in and out – today it doesn’t need to do so as nothing larger than a kayak passes through.
St Paul’s, Shadwell once went by the name ‘the Captains’ Church’ because of all the seafarers around here. Captain James Cook lived around here at one point, and baptised his eldest son at St Paul’s. This version of the church is a little later, however, dating to the 1820s.
My favourite new fact I learned from Cameron-Cooper’s walk around Wapping is that the Romans had a watchtower in Shadwell. Built in the 3rd Century, it was a defense against Saxon pirates. There are records of ‘Shade Well’, meaning ‘shallow stream’, dating back to the early medieval period. Shadwell’s gravel beach amongst mudflats and marshes have always provided a good landing spot; it was still a little fishing hamlet in the Elizabethan era, but grew quickly in line with shipping and trade in the 17th-18th Centuries. There’s another place in Virginia named Shadwell after this one; it was the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson whose mother hailed from our own Shadwell.
Wapping Woods, between Shadwell Basin and Wapping Lane, is a relatively new invention. This was once another basin of London Docks, as the remaining walls and dock infrastructure attest. It is now a compact but welcome green space, one of several small parks in the area.
Historic Wapping – Ornamental Canals and Hermitage Basin
The Tobacco Dock warehouse was once part of a five acre complex. A relatively large part remains today, but is in an under-utilised limbo. For a brief period Tobacco Dock became a shopping mall, but it quickly became unviable and closed again. Various small businesses now operate out of it, as well as a rooftop bar and conference venue. The ships alongside it were a playground – replicas of 18th-19th Century cargo ships.
These now ornamental canals were once practical, linking together the basins of London Docks. Today, however, they are just decorative and home to a lot of bird families. The low rise development alongside the canal is one of the nicer ones in the area (in my opinion, of course).
At the corner of two stretches of canal, some original London Docks features are visible. Although transformed now into a staircase, we can see that this was once an entrance point ships passed through.
A last look along the canal before we turn our gaze to Hermitage Basin.
Does the name ‘Hermitage’ sound familiar? We have now looped almost back around to the Hermitage Riverside Memorial Garden and Hermitage Moorings we saw earlier. Interestingly, Hermitage Basin takes its name not from any connection with Russia (the Hermitage Palace), but because a literal hermit lived in this area at one point. Walking around the outside of the basin, I like the stonework which has been there so long it looks like melting ice.
And Finally, Back to St Katherine Docks
From Hermitage Basin we head along Thomas More Street back to St Katherine Docks.
As in London Docks, there are traces of St Katherine Docks’ past both in infrastructure and in names. At the top is a decorated bollard, and in the middle is a modern road entrance to the docks. Ivory House was, as the name suggests, the centre of valuable ivory imports. Now it houses a medieval-themed restaurant!
We wend our way around the docks, past a variety of buildings old and new.
Here’s something I have never noticed before; a Silver Jubilee crown which is actually a Stanley Kubrick reject! Quite odd, especially as it’s tucked around the side of a building and so hardly a prominent piece of public art anyway.
A final (and rare) reminder of St Katherine’s medieval history before we head back to Tower Hill.
And now we say goodbye to Wapping. Until the next time, dear readers, when we will take on another part of London’s rich and varied history.
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4 thoughts on “Georgian Wapping – A Historic Walk”
4 thoughts on “Georgian Wapping – A Historic Walk”