Some personal reflections on the new-ish City Hall’s surroundings.
Truth be told, I was sad to leave the old City Hall behind. I liked its circular wisdom, its windows forever in need of a clean. Above all, I loved the location, on the river next to surely the most iconic bridge in the world. Where was this Royal Docks we were moving to? What was it?
I felt like a tourist going to work on my first trip to the Crystal. The DLR stop of West Silvertown sounded like an outpost from a Hollywood western. And, on first glimpse, looked like a desert. A semi-industrial desert. But then, a stranger vista, on arriving at the docks. Gigantic cranes, no longer in use. Low-flying planes. Cable cars moving hypnotically back and forth. A solitary wakeboarder. And, catching the light, all low-slung glamour, the rakishly angled Crystal. It made me want to find out more.
And so, with the zeal of a convert, I delved into the Googleverse and assembled a few eclectic facts about the area.
When first opened, in 1855, the Royal Docks were the biggest and deepest in the world. An engineering marvel, they were built out of marshland to accommodate the huge steamships that serviced the empire. Outside London’s planning laws of the time, the area was known as ‘a place of refuge for offensive trade establishments’. These included ‘oil-boilers, gut-spinners, varnish-makers, printers’ ink-makers and the like’ according to the magazine ‘Household Words’ edited by Charles Dickens.
One such establishment would have belonged to businessman Samuel Silver, who made his fortune in waterproof clothing. His name lives on in the eponymous Silvertown. Silver’s factories, situated on the edge of the docks, used imports of India rubber from South America and a substance called ‘gutta percha’ from Malaysia. Gutta percha, a natural plastic from the percha tree, became a household name in Victorian England and was used in the manufacture of everything from golf balls to ear trumpets to underwater telegraph cables.
The factories were bombed during WWII.
Meanwhile, the docks were used to build portable harbours to assist with the Normandy landings. The concrete pontoons were built in secret before being transported to France to enable ships to dock at the invasion beachheads.
Eighty years on from D-Day, the NHS Nightingale Hospital, housed in the ExCel Exhibition Centre overlooking the docks, stepped up in another moment of national crisis.
Also installed during the pandemic, Laura Ford’s sculpture of a bird boy, alone in an expanse of water, is a poignant reminder of those times, and a photogenic magnet for ducks and pigeons.
From marshy outlier to industrial hub to symbol of national resilience to the seat of London’s government. There’s grit in them docks.
Ariadne Birnberg 