Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
St George-in-the-East
The Highway • Daily 8am-6pm •
T
020 7481 1345,
W
stgite.org.uk • Shadwell DLR
Nicholas Hawksmoor's church of
St George-in-the-East
, built in 1726, stands on the
north side of the busy Highway. As bold as any of Hawksmoor's buildings, it boasts
four “pepperpot” towers above the nave, built to house the staircases to the church's
galleries, and a hulking west-end tower topped by an octagonal lantern. Within, it
comes as something of a shock to find a miniature modern church squatting in the
nave, but that's all the parish could come up with following the devastation of the Blitz.
14
Wapping High Street
If you arrive on
Wapping High Street
expecting the usual parade of shops, you're in for
a big surprise. Traditionally, the business of Wapping took place on the river; thus tall
brick-built warehouses, most now converted into flats, line the Thames side of the
street, while to the north - in a stark contrast typical of Docklands - lie the council
estates of the older residents. (Alf Garnett, the dockworker of the 1960s BBC comedy
Till Death Us Do Part
, lived here.) Few tourists make it out here, but it's only a
ten-minute walk from St Katharine Docks, and well worth the effort.
Five minutes' walk along the High Street will bring you to
Wapping Pier Head
, former
entrance to the London Docks, now grassed over but still flanked by grand, curvaceous
Regency terraces built for the of
cials of the Dock Company (and now home to
celebrities such as Helen Mirren). Further east is the unusual neo-Gothic former tea
warehouse,
Oliver's Wharf
, a trailblazing apartment conversion from 1972, with a
couple of preserved overhead gangways crossing the High Street just beyond. You'll also
find one of the few surviving stairs down to the river beside the
Town of Ramsgate
pub
(see p.392); beneath the pub are the dungeons where convicts were chained before
being deported to Australia.
Wapping Police Station
Further along the High Street from Oliver's Wharf stands
Wapping Police Station
,
headquarters of the world's oldest uniformed police force, the Marine Police, founded
in 1798 and now a subdivision of the Met. The police boatyard is a 1960s building
which features funky, abstract, vertical fibreglass friezes. Down by the riverside here, at
the low-water mark, was
Execution Dock
, where for four centuries pirates, smugglers
and mutineers were hanged and left dangling until three tides had washed over them
- the worst offenders were then tarred and gibbeted further downstream. The most
famous felon to perish here was Captain Kidd, pirate-catcher-turned-pirate, hanged in
1701, and left gibbeted in an iron cage by the Thames for twenty years; the last victims
were executed for murder and mutiny in 1830.
Wapping Wall
Beyond Wapping station, along
Wapping Wall
, you'll find the finest collection of
nineteenth-century warehouses left in the whole of Docklands, beginning with the
gargantuan Metropolitan Wharf, its wrought-iron capstan cranes and pulleys still
clearly in evidence. At the far end of Wapping Wall is the venerable
Prospect of Whitby
pub (see p.392), and, opposite, the ivy-clad red-brick
London Hydraulic Pumping
Station
, built in the 1890s and once chief supplier of hydraulic power to the whole of
central London; it now houses
The Wapping Project
, a restaurant and art gallery
(
W
thewappingproject.com), which puts on occasional exhibitions.
Shadwell Basin
Shadwell Basin
, over the swing bridge to the north of the Pumping Station, is one of
the last remaining stretches of water that once comprised three interlocking docks,
known simply as London Docks and first opened in 1805. Now a watersports centre,
it's enclosed on three sides by characteristically gimmicky new housing finished off in