Silvertown

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Post to the north Custom House

Post to the east Royal Albert

Post to the south Silvertown Thameside 

Post to the west Custom House


Albert Dock Junction
Beckton Trains joined their own line


Boyd Road?
St Luke church and Boyd institute, church Victoria Docks.  & School.  1874 work for the vicar of  St.Marks

Connaught Road
Road built by North Woolwich Land Co. parallel with railway to Silvertown crossing between the docks on a swing bridge, vehicles had to pay a toll to the company. The name is taken from the title of the third son of Queen Victoria.
Call on shelter
Swing Bridge.  For road and rail.  New swing road bridge Sir William Halcrow  & Partners, 1990 for LDDC. Cable-stayed, steel box with control cabin perched on the central pylon. Concrete arch spans on pilotis.
Footbridge.  A two-leaf swing footway on the main bridge.
Swing Bridge of 1879 was one of the largest such with a 27 metre, span and took two rail tracks and a road between three hog-backed plate girders. The main parts and its hydraulic operating gear preserved.
Hydraulic Pumping Station.  For the swing bridge, built 1925.  Pumps and accumulator in tower.  To the east was a shaft to pump out the water seeping into the railway tunnel.  The tunnel roof is a very thin and there was a submersible pump at the bottom of the shaft.  It has a cupola like the foot tunnel.  Damaged 1982
Level Crossing. The old Connaught Road level crossing on the Great Eastern Beckton branch however is now just a memory.
Connaught Passage The crossing spans the railway tunnel linking the docks.  It was built in 1880 but because of steep gradients some freight continued to use the swing bridge.  The North Woolwich railway was diverted through this tunnel and this is dated on the portal but trains were limited to 15 mph until 1960.  The course of the tunnel above ground can be seen in the ventilation shafts - two brick circular shafts and a lantern-roofed octagon over the pump house.  It was deepened in 1937 to 31 ft and in 1958 it was widened to 100’.  The North Woolwich line was called the ‘Substituted Line’ while the older line was the ‘transferred portion’.   The approach cuttings are walled in mass concrete, with arches in brick and concrete. Natural exposed aggregate finish from 1880. The concrete was done as part of 1990s landscaping by Keyside-Gillespies.
Connaught Road Station.  3rd August 1880.  Built by the London and St.Katharine’s Dock Company. The enabling act for the Royal Albert Dock also allowed for a ‘Passenger and Parcels Railway’ from the North Woolwich Line to Galleons – for use of the Dock company, thus it was essentially a private line. This station was west of a level crossing, which took Connaught Road across the railway and immediately south of the Connaught Tavern. The main building was constructed in a mock-Tudor style.  On the opposite platform was a shelter and both sides were linked at the east end by a footbridge. In 1940 it was closed following devastation of area by bombing. The new DLR line roughly follows the old one. It was the only station on the line not to have its own signal box but was controlled from Albert Dock Junction, 220 yards to the west.  
Board of Trade Building, red brick with inscription of 1915.  Greenhouse-like clerestories at the back

Great Western Railway Victoria & Albert Goods Depot. This was opened in 1900, and was served by the freight tracks, which lay to the south of the passenger line. In the 1930s, the depot handled some 138,000 tons of general traffic per annum, together with around 16,000 of meat. It had the distinction of being the most easterly establishment owned by the Great Western, and outlived the Gallions branch by many years. It finished its days as a National Carriers yard, but then disappeared completely.

Gent’s urinal. Removed up the dock to the west
T & H Green Silley Weir. Nationalised as Thames Ship repairers, 1880-1980.  1930s offices, machine shops and dry docks on the other side of the road.  Machinery removed for scrap
Mercantile Marine Office
Prince Regent Station. 1994. Between Royal Albert and Custom House on the Docklands Light Railway. East of Custom House station, the DLR begins to climb until Prince Regent Station, This takes its name from the nearby Prince Regent Lane, which, until the 1840s, was served by a ferry from Charlton  This is by ABK's. On the Connaught Road frontage is a steel frieze with lively silhouettes of dockland scenes and people by Brian Yale, 1995.
Dagenham Banks
Rights of way
Site of horse ferry to rival Woolwich Ferry.  1891 built because of the Barking Road connecting with Prince Regent Lane.  1911
Prince Regent Wharf, Burt, Boulton and Haywood.  Take nearly all the gas tar of London.  Unexploded bomb


Ham creek
Inlet from the Thames boundary between east and west ham.  It was Navigable until the 19th.  Little harbour.  1656 leased to Cromwell for the use of the English navy
Ham Creek pumping station where Creek went out into the river.
Silvertown RC church stands across the channel of the old Ham Creek and straddles the boundary of the two old boroughs.
Was Kentish boundary between here and Barking Creek,

Lynx Road
Connaught Tavern. Edwardian Georgian pub. Listed as a Grade II historic building.  A large public house in Queen Anne style. The pub was a popular meeting place for dockers. Designed by George Vigers & B. Wagstaffe. Wagstaffe was appointed surveyor to the dock company in 1881; Vigers had been a student at the Royal Academy Schools when Norman Shaw taught there. Shaw's influence is obvious. The buildings look like transplanted fragments of Bedford Park. Restored for LDDC the Brian Clancy Partnership in 1996. This is now The Fox Connaught and is in Lynx Road. It is a boutique hotel and gastro pub. It was previously in Connaught Road


North Woolwich Road
Pichin Johnson 1905 from Channelsea Road
Griffith at North Woolwich in 1889.  Road making granite, wood blocks for paving also.
West Silvertown Station. Opened 2nd December 2005. Between Pontoon Dock and Canning Town on the Docklands Light Railway.
Pontoon Dock Station. 2nd December  2005. Between London City Airport and West Silvertown on the Docklands Light Railway.  Similar design to West Silvertown.
St.Mark's Church. Teulon 1861. Amazing!!  Now the Brick Lane Music Hall.

Oriental Road
1902 baths 1936 book seems to say they were a failure.  Small library too.

Plaistow level
And Charlton Thames ferry in 1811

Railway Yard
Old North Woolwich line when the dock as built became Woolwich.  Abandoned Line Silvertown Tramway.  2n private diesels shunted there.  Pre-1855 joined Eastern Counties Railway to North Woolwich.  Closed when swing bridge was built.  Opened in 1855 and this became a siding.  This was the line from Beckton works.  Albert Dock then.  Carried workmen’s trains from the gas works

Silvertown
Name from Mr. Silver, who developed site
Odhams chemical manufacturing works.  East of Victoria Docks and started by local butcher who owned the grazing there.  When cattle disease came he got the foreign cattle killed there and started a manure factory.  Fowler Waring cables 
Jas Gibbs and Co. 1856.  Vitriol manufacture
Ault and Wiborg, printing ink factory.  Bought the Enmure Printing Ink Co and that became British Printing Inks.
Cairn Mills, Loders and Nucoline.  Tailored fats for the food trade.  Closed 1995 - Unilever, 1887 now Unilever.  Ground nut oil from Tilbury to the wharf by lighter, all modern plant, 1887,
Petty and Co., refining coconut oil, rebuilt several times 166, closed 1995
Crosse and Blackwell factory. The origins of the firm of Crosse & Blackwell go back to a colonial produce business established in London in 1706.  'It was not until much later that the business, run for more than a century first of all under the name of Jackson and then under that of West & Wyatt, eventually started manufacturing food products.  The firm specialised in quality pickles, sauces and condiments.  In 1830, two friends, Edmund Cross and Thomas Blackwell, who had entered the firm 11 years before as 15 year old apprentices, bought it for the sum of £600 and gave it their name.  By 1839 the company had expanded and moved its offices-and shop to Soho Square, leaving the factory at King Street. The company continued to expand and over the next 14 years the capital increased from £600 to £25,000.  A vinegar brewery was opened in Caledonian Road (here the company installed one of the largest vats in the world holding 115,000 gallons) and started pickle packing operations at 20-21 Soho Square.   The previous year Crosse and Blackwell had also taken over a small firm, Gamble & Company, whose founders had set out in 1811 to produce preserved fruit, vegetables and meat for the victualling of long distance vessels.                                                                     In 1892 Crosse & Blackwell became a limited company with a capital of nearly £500,000.  Then, after the First World War they joined forces with two other old-established firms: E. Lazenby & Son Ltd and James Keiller & Son Ltd.  The first of these had been manufacturing on a commercial scale since 1776 and the firm remained a family business until it was taken over by Cross & Blackwell in 1919.  Their premises at Bermondsey continued to be used for the preparation of pickles, sauces and salad creams.  In 1924 James Keiller & Son (originator of the famous Dundee marmalade) came under the wing of Crosse & Blackwell, but continued to trade under their own name.  Keiller's factory had been opened in 1878 at Tay Wharf Silvertown, the site being selected no doubt for its proximity to the river, its rail links and adjacent sugar refinery opened in 1876 by Henry Tate.  The factory was destroyed by fire in 1889 and rebuilt in 1390 - hence the date on the cornerstone above the East Gate. Keiller's continued to produce all types of preserves, chocolates and confectionery, including many spices and herbs, until the Second World War.  During the first daylight raid on London (September 7 1940) the factory was almost completely destroyed by bombing. The preserve boiling house was least damaged and as a result of the destruction the chocolate and confectionery trade was transferred to Dundee whilst preserves manufacture restarted after a period of months.  In 1956 preserve manufacture too transferred to Dundee and Crosse & Blackwell moved its pickle and sauce production from Bermondsey.  The production of tomato ketchup and salad cream followed. In 1960 the Nestle Company acquired the share capital of Crosse & Blackwell. Nestle's started in 1867, owned a string of other well known companies such as Fussell's, Maggi, Findu, Chambourcy, Locatelli and Libby.  Crosse & Blackwell had established 11 factories in the UK and overseas (America, South Africa, Australia) including a fish canning plant at Peterhead in Scotland.  It is to the latter that pickle manufacture was moved with sauce manufacture being moved to Milnthorpe, Cumbria.
Tay Wharf, the site of Keiller & Sons’ jam factory encloses the end of Factory Road, with the restored remains of its monumental gateway, dated 1900. Marmalade Factory burnt down in 1889 and rebuilt in 1890t.  Name and this date over the gate, which was bombed in 1940.  Mostly preserves made there. In 1956 pickle and sauce production came there from Bermondsey.  Ketchup and salad cream 1910.  Bought up by Nestle
Minoco Wharf.  Huitninty to distill from Russian crude oil, 1909.  Silvertown Lubricants, 1950.  Gulf Oil 1896 Mineral Oils Corp.

Silvertown Way
Silvertown by Pass 1935 carrying North Woolwich Road over the railway north of Silvertown Station. By-pass good views from it.  Bowstring bridge in reinforced concrete.  Library of paving granite on it.  Rendell Parker and Tritton, 1.09 miles.  80’ wide 2x12’,
Landscaped footpath by the road leads towards Thames Barrier Park. It follows the line of the Silvertown Tramway, the old line of the Eastern Counties railway, taken over by the docks after the line was rerouted around the end of the Victoria Dock.
Recreation Ground.  Unexploded bombs in the Bowling Green and tennis courts.

Royal Albert Dock
Royals Business Park . The north west corner of the Albert Dock was the site of cold stores for the frozen-meat trade. The only relic is the compressor house replaced by the business centre Planned for the comer of the dock with a boat store and clubhouse for the standard rowing course
Compressor House, Handsome red brick building with tall storey, a bold stone cornice and the PLA badge. Was the compressor house of a multi-storey reinforced concrete cold store of c. 1914-17. Had a concrete lattice-beam roof structure, supporting a concrete water-retaining roof for the cooling process. Single-volume interior, retained by Rees Johns Bolter Architects for use as a visitor’s centre. Trusses dominate the interior, retained in the restoration by Rees Johns Bolter Architects, 1994-5. 

Royal Albert Business Centre Building 1000 by Aukett Associates. Two long, intersecting buildings set within wedges of concrete walling. Completed 2004. Two five-storey office blocks, with internal malls linked by glass winter gardens, under a continuous roof supported on Y-shaped props. Glazed on all sides. 

Regatta Centre.  The recreation of the Connaught crossing was partly needed to allow for an Olympic-standard continuous rowing course between the two dock basins. By Ian Ritchie Architects, 1999. An angular design for the Clubhouse with sharp 'prow' aligned to the dockside for viewing balconies from the bar. Inside, the clubhouse has an innovative powered rowing tank for training designed by Arup, engineers, to reproduce as closely as possible the experience of rowing on open water.
Boat Store simple steel structure with an undulating steel roof.

Victoria Dock Road

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