Peter Watts Takes a Stroll Through the Neighbourhood of Wapping
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PETER WATTS TAKES A STROLL THROUGH THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF WAppING. IN WHAT WAS ONCE THE HOME OF THE LONDON DOCKS HE FINDS A RESTAURANT IN A POWER STATION, A FLOATING ARTISTS’ COMMUNITY, ANCIENT PUBS, AN URBAN WOOD AND THE GHOST OF AN ESCAPED TIGER. 04/ WAPPINGNESS 06/NEIGHBOURHOOD 07/GREEN AND BLUE 10/A WAPPING PUB WAP CRAW L 12/ART IN WAPPING 13/TEN THINGS TO DO IN PING WAPPING 14/ A WAPPING TIMELINE 15/PEOPLE OF NESS WAPPING /NOTABLE ARCHITECTURE xplore Wapping,’ exhorted the London, but his instruction rings true today. great London writer Samuel Explore Wapping and see how London can Johnson to his biographer demonstrate a seemingly infinite capacity to E James Boswell, ‘to see the reinvent itself, how it will welcome newcomers wonderful extent and variety of London’. It and how it celebrates its past while never is fine advice. Johnson was speaking in the neglecting to engage with the future. Few 1780s, when Wapping was London’s principle cities have London’s knack for looking settlement for sailors, a hive of cobbled streets simultaneously backwards as well as forwards, and damp, narrow alleys that lead to the and few places in London do this better than numerous wharves and jetties of riverside Wapping. You could call it Wappingness. LONDON WRITER AND WAppING ADVOCATE SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1780 2 3 Such is the all-pervasive water-soaked atmosphere that Wapping itself THE SAND STONE BRICK can even feel like STREETS OF WAppING HIGH STREET something of an island. o understand Wapping try in the 1970s, eradicating what had been he chief attraction, of course, was approaching it from St Katharine Wapping’s identity for more than 150 years. the river, although the Thames itself Docks, the pretty riverside The warehouses and docks of Wapping were can only intermittently be glimpsed T development that lies adjacent also heavily targeted by German bombers T between the tall warehouses that to the Tower of London. Leave St Katharine during World War II. But still it prospers. act almost like a river wall. But stroll round Docks at the point where it almost touches Wapping for long enough and you’ll see the Thames and you will arrive at the very Signs of Wapping’s maritime heritage are signs of its maritime history everywhere in the western point of Wapping High Street, the everywhere. Before the docks arrived, it was shape of weathered dock walls, converted charismatic street that runs parallel to the a place of wharves, jetties, warehouses, warehouses and industrial walk-ways that river for almost the entire length of the district. boatbuilders, sailmakers and pubs, having allow passageway high above the cobbled Here, on the corner with Thomas More Street, been originally settled by the Saxons and used streets. Here are restaurants and pubs that is a large stone wall, decorated with icicle- by London’s sailors for centuries. The building pay homage to the past, plus a pretty canal like drips of cement. Inside is a large red of the docks in reclaimed marshland helped that stretches in a narrow strip from Hermitage brick building, which still proudly wears the cement these long links with the sea, even if Basin in the west to Shadwell Basin in the east, emblem of the Port Of London Authority, they replaced the bustling village atmosphere offering a slender shadow of the bustling docks although this has over time turned the sort with vast warehouses and a more transient that once stood here. Between buildings on of misty green colour you associate with population. They were the closest docks to the Wapping High Street you can see numerous cannons dredged from the ocean floor. This City of London, which gave them a significant ancient stone stairs, green with age, that is the old dock house, a remnant of when advantage over those that had recently been lead directly down to the river. Such is the Wapping was home to London Docks, and built on the Isle of Dogs. In these Wapping all-pervasive water-soaked atmosphere that it stands next to Hermitage Basin, one of the warehouses, dockers would unload treasures Wapping itself can even feel like something of few parts of the dock complex not to have from right across the British Empire, including an island, bordered on three sides by the liquid been redeveloped in the 1970s. Hermitage tobacco, rum, whalebone, spices, cocoa, barriers of the Thames, St Katharine Docks and Basin once offered a way for ships from coffee, rubber, coconuts, marble and wool. Shadwell Basin and with a busy main road, the around the world to get from the mammoth Highway, to the north, cutting it off from the rest London Dock to the Thames, but now it is Settlers from overseas lived in Wapping – of London. And within this island, there is just a sweet little ornamental lake surrounded nearby Limehouse was home to London’s first as much to explore as there was in Johnson’s by houses, and a home itself to a sedate Chinatown and the area is now home to a time. You can find London’s oldest riverside inn, family of regal swans and the odd mallard. thriving Bangladeshi community – and artists, the grisly site of pirate executions, a gorgeous writers and poets would come to Wapping to listed church, a power station turned art t is another fine example of glimpse exotica in the form of both the goods gallery, an historic foot tunnel, London’s only Wappingness: the way Wapping brought from overseas and in the working- memorial to the Blitz, mudlarks searching for has come to terms with its past, class men and women who lived and worked Tudor bric-a-brac, Wapping Woods and an I making sensible accommodation there. They would then disperse around escaped tiger. So come, let’s follow Johnson, with what has been before. This has not been London and the East End, taking some of the explore Wapping and embrace Wappingness. an easy task. Wapping has been battered essence of Wapping with them across the by change over the centuries, first when Highway into Whitechapel, Spitalfields and the docks were built in 1805, carving great beyond. Later still in the 1970s, artists set up watery holes throughout the neighbourhood studios in the derelict warehouses of Wapping, and reducing the population of 6,000 by two creative communities that lent Wapping a STONE STAIRS, GREEN thirds, and then when they were filled in again strong artistic character it retains to this day. WITH AGE, LEAD FROM THE THAMES TO THE HIGH STREET 4 5 apping is a popular haunt. usable pieces in an hour.’ On her trips down One hundred and fifty years ago, you may The beach is easy to reach here, she’ll regularly bump into one local, have seen even more extraordinary beasts. via the numerous stairs that who brings a deckchair and sits out alone on On the Highway that borders Wapping was W connect the river to Wapping Wapping beach watching the river for hours a shop known by Victorians as Jamrach’s High Street, and a rich maritime past means at a time. And why not, it’s a beautiful spot Emporium. Jamrach was a German-born there’s a fair chance something of interest and porpoises, seals and dolphins have all dealer of exotic animals. From his shop you may be found. For the experts, that means been spotted in the Thames at Wapping. could purchase zebras, alligators, rhinos, Neigh There is a continuum pewter badges and medieval arrow heads, but ostriches, polar bears, kangaroos, monkeys, here, one of local anybody who has a nose on Wapping beach In the 1970s, the nature writer Richard Mabey leopards and lions, as well as every kind of will find shards of Victorian china or the remains noted in ‘The Unofficial Countryside’ how the bird from the cockatoo to the black swan. pride, community of Tudor clay pipes. The latter litter the sand urban landscape still made room for nature The writer and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti like pebbles and date back hundreds of years. to exist and this holds very true in Wapping, was a regular customer, purchasing unusual spirit, people looking When tobacco was first introduced to London, where Mabey once spotted roosting house creatures to add to the menagerie he kept at bour after one another: it’s these pipes were considered disposable so martins. Away from the river, the key spot is his Chelsea home. Rossetti had wombats, an after finishing their smoke sailors and dockers Wapping Woods. This is a pleasant green armadillo and peacocks – the latter are still a neighbourhood, would simply chuck them in the river. Centuries park of tall trees and shaded spaces that sits banned from Cheyne Walk because of the later, they are still washing up in Wapping. right on top of what used to be the eastern noise they made – and Rossetti was one of a vibrant, thriving section of London Dock. It was planted in 1969 many artists who wandered round Wapping, and artistic one. Jane Parker is a mudlark with a particular and is now home to goldcrests, goldfinches, Limehouse and Shadwell, fascinated by hood interest in the pipes. She regularly comes mistlethrush, dunnocks, woodpeckers the sights, sounds and smells of the sea. to Wapping to collect some to make into and pied wagtails. You can’t lose yourself jewellery, which she sells from her website. ‘I’m here, but you can find those sounds and looking for ones that have been pummelled signs of songbirds that help make London by the tide, and are soft and worn at the living a more rewarding experience.