Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company Founded in 1837, The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company was a shipyard and ironworks based in Blackwall and Bow Creek. It was the most important shipbuilding business on the Thames and one of the biggest private shipbuilders in the country. Thames Ironworks and Shiping bulding company The owner of Thames Ironworks, Arnold Hills (b.1857), was a philanthropist and businessman committed to his workforce adopting a healthy lifestyle: “… they had things like athletics clubs, tennis, cricket, rowing, cycling anything to do with sport, but they also had other things like brass band societies, choral societies, drama societies, and they even had a temperance society and a lot of these were started up around about 1895, most successful of them all was Thames Ironworks.” John (West Ham Historian) In 1895, Arnold Hills, and foreman Dave Taylor, found- ed Thames Ironworks Football Club at Hermit Road in Canning Town. A total of fifty workers from Thames Ironworks joined the newly founded club for half-a- crown membership per season. Alongside Hills’ backing, the membership would help finance the club in its infancy. In April 1897, Thames Ironworks found a temporary home at Browning Road in time for the club to compete in their first London League season. Arnold Hills Hills then purchased a large piece of land for £20,000, in Canning Town to construct the Memorial Grounds in honour of Queen Victoria. The Memorial Grounds took six months to build and was opened on 22 June 1897. “Memorial Grounds was a fantastic stadium, it had a bank cycle track and in the middle of that was a football pitch, and round it were stands. And on the site as well there were cricket pitches, tennis courts, there was also a swimming pool, other activities for recreation for the employees of the Thames Iron Works shipbuilding Memorial Grounds Cycle Track company, and he said that the football club, the new football club could use that for as long as they wanted totally free of rent which they did for a number of years.” John (West Ham Histori- an) An Eastside Community Heritage exhibition. Visit our website www.hidden-histories.org.uk.