Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Butler's Wharf
East of Tower Bridge,
Butler's Wharf
is one of the densest networks of Victorian
warehousing left in London and one of the most enjoyable parts of Docklands to
explore. From Tower Bridge itself (see p.187), you can get a really good view of the old
Anchor Brewhouse
, which produced Courage
ales from 1789 until 1982; a cheery, ad
hoc sort of building, with a boiler-house chimney at one end and malt-mill tower and
cupola at the other. Next door is the original eight-storey
Butler's Wharf
, the largest
warehouse complex on the Thames when it was built in 1873. In the 1970s, it became
London's largest artists' colony, home to everyone from Derek Jarman to Sid Vicious,
but nowadays, its flats, shops and restaurants form part of Terence Conran's
gastronomic empire, with a wide, public, riverside promenade.
Shad Thames
, the narrow street at the back of Butler's Wharf, has kept the wrought-
iron overhead gangways by which the porters used to transport goods from the wharves
to the warehouses further back from the river; it's one of the most atmospheric
alleyways in the whole of Docklands. For a totally different ambience, head for
Horsleydown Square
, to the south of Shad Thames, where terracotta-rendered flats,
with striking blue balconies, overlook a piazza centred on a fountain encrusted with
naked women, whose belongings are sculpted around the edge. Also worth a look, two
blocks south on Queen Elizabeth Street, is the
Circle
, a modern take on the Victorian
“circus”, its street facades smothered in shiny cobalt-blue tiles.
Design Museum
28 Shad Thames • Daily 10am-5.45pm • £8 •
T
020 7403 6933,
W
designmuseum.org •
!
Tower Hill
Just east of Butler's Wharf is the
Design Museum
, a stylish white Bauhaus-like
conversion of an old 1950s banana warehouse designed by Terence Conran - the
museum, which puts on exhibitions on designers, movements or single products
from the era of mass production, is due to move to Kensington High Street in 2015
(see p.273).
16
St Saviour's Dock
East of Butler's Wharf, a stainless-steel footbridge takes you across
St Saviour's Dock
,
a tidal inlet overlooked by swanky warehouse o
ces. Incredible though it may seem,
it really is still possible to smell the spices - cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, mostly
- which were stored here until the 1970s, especially in the last section of Shad
Thames after a shower of rain. The footbridge takes you over to
New Concordia Wharf
on Mill Street, one of the first warehouse conversions in the area, completed in 1984.
Next door stands the photogenic
China Wharf
, with its stack of semicircular windows
picked out in red.
The area around St Saviour's Dock was dubbed by the Victorian press “the very
capital of cholera”. In 1849, the
Morning Chronicle
described it thus: “Jostling with
unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast heavers, coal-whippers, brazen
women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, [the visitor] makes
his way with di
culty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow
alleys which branch off.” This was the location of Dickens' fictional
Jacob's Island
, a
place with “every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect”, where Bill Sikes met his
end in
Oliver Twist
.
THE THAMES PATH
A leisurely way to reach Rotherhithe is to walk the mile along the
Thames Path
from Butler's
Wharf, stopping en route at
The Angel
, a pub once frequented by Pepys and Captain Cook,
which now stands all alone on Bermondsey Wall, with great views over to Wapping. Close by
are the foundations of Edward III's moated manor house, begun in 1353, and the “Leaning
Tower of Bermondsey”, a precariously tilting riverside house just downstream from the pub.
