walk/tour
various, 0
Western end of Platform 1
A tour exploring transformative new developments that are – as one advert puts it – ‘built on London’s history’. It will look at how sites such as Goodluck Hope, London City Island and Royal Wharf use and are shaped by their Docklands past
East India
15, 115, D3
Walk starts on platform 1 of East India DLR. Canning Town station on the Jubilee line is also close to the starting point. Walk finishes near Pontoon Dock DLR station, or a slightly longer walk from Custom House on the Elizabeth line. Uber Boat from Royal Wharf.
Step-free access at all times. Toilet stop before halfway mark, and cafes and bars nearby at the end.
The tour covers a lesser-known part of London Docklands on the border of Tower Hamlets and Newham, from the site of the old East India Docks and its adjacent industries on Leamouth to the industrial wharfs and factories of Silvertown. The area – now in the midst of a dramatic transformation under the GLA’s London-wide regeneration programme – has a history of trade, manufacturing, imperial power and economic decline, and we’ll look at how that legacy both shapes the built environment of today and is drawn on by its developers to give new residential developments on brownfield sites their own identities as neighbourhoods amid the planned tens of thousands of new homes in this part of Docklands.
In particular, we’ll look at the new neighbourhoods of London City Island, Goodluck Hope and Royal Wharf, all completed within the last few years, while also touching on older developments such as Virginia Quay and Britannia Village and the construction sites of the huge new Thameside West scheme and Silvertown tunnel. Buildings of interest include Glenn Howells’ new Mulryan Centre for Dance, Wilkinson Eyre’s Crystal (now City Hall), CZWG’s Hoola Building and Mae’s Pinnacle House. Other sites of interest include the Greenwich Meridian line, East India Dock Basin nature reserve, the historic Stothert and Pitt cranes at Victoria Dock, the IFS Cloud cable car, and memorials to the Virginia Settlers of 1608 and the Brunner Mond explosion of 1917.
This tour is led by a participant of Open City’s Golden Key Academy – a course training up insightful and engaging guides dedicated to explaining London and bringing its many stories to life. It is part of a wider collection of tour events created by Golden Key Academy guides for the Open House Festival celebrating their conclusion of the eight month course.
Further information on the Golden Key Academy can be found here https://open-city.org.uk/golden-key-academy
Artist Debbie Kent has been walking, writing and recording in this corner of Docklands for the past seven years as it has undergone a radical transformation.
