Wapping Walking Tour

The walk and the open day at the River Police Museum were both part of the Wapping Summer Shindig, organised for the community by the Turks Head Charity.

Marshland until drained in the 16th century, Wapping takes its name from a Saxon chief, Waeppa. Centre of London’s docks, crime associated with pressed sailors, poorly paid dockers and rich cargoes made it the natural home of the River Police.

Tour route

Our elderly guide for the walk, Ray Newton was a child during the Blitz and has always lived in Wapping. He was full of stories about the tough times they had during the war. The route started at the Turks Head Cafe.

Turks Head

During World War II it was run by its eccentric landlady, Mog Murphy, and stayed open all hours for service personnel seeking news of their loved ones.

After a vigorous campaign in the 1980s led by Maureen Davies and the wild women of Wapping, the Turk's Head Company, a charity they set up to improve local life, bought the derelict building from the Council and restored it. The income from the rents of the cafe and studios above pays for charitable activities.

Our first stop was in the churchyard of St John's Church, next to which is St John of Wapping School.

St John of Wapping School

The school was originally founded in 1695, although its first location is unknown, as is its closure date. The bluecoat statues are probably the finest examples in London. They were covered in corrugated iron during the blitz and assumed to be missing, but were uncovered in the 80's.

Our next stop was Oliver's Wharf.

Oliver's Wharf

This was the first warehouse in the area to be converted into flats. Locals couldn't understand why anyone would want to live in what they thought would be a dirty, rat infested building, but the new occupants were very happy to take a floor each with a nice view over the river.  Warehouse goods were hoisted up from the river. Note the winch over the loading bays, used to lower goods to waiting wagons in Wapping High Street. Woe betide any young boys who got in the way of the workmen on piece work.

Our tour group at Hermitage Wall

We emerged at the river wall built above Joseph Bazalgette's sewer. The former warehouses along here were all mysteriously burned down in the 80's, allowing new flats to line the riverside despite objections from locals, who wanted a memorial garden to run alongside The Thames here.

Further along Hermitage Wall is Hermitage Quay.

Barges at Hermitage Quay

In the mid 1800's this was the site of Hermitage Coal Wharf, a small-scale operation, typical of that period. It later became the Hermitage Steam Wharf owned by the London and Edinburgh Shipping Company. It is now an expensive mooring for house boat barges. Locals objected to allowing a helipad here and it ended up being sited in Battersea.

At the end of Hermitage Wall is the memorial to civilians who perished in the Blitz. The garden and memorial sculpture are in memory of the East London civilians who were killed and injured in the Second World War, 1939 - 1945, and of the suffering of those who lost relatives, friends and homes.

Blitz Memorial Sculpture

The memorial sculpture was designed by Wendy Taylor CBE.  The symbol of the dove is intended to suggest hope, rather than dwell intrusively on the dead.  Its representation as an absence signifies the loved ones who were lost.

Tens of thousands of men, women and children lost life and limb in the wartime bombing of London and other major cities.  More than a million homes were destroyed.  The most intense bombing occurred between September 1940 and May 1941 and became known as the Blitz (from the German “Blitzkrieg” meaning “lightning war”).  In the first three months of the Blitz bombs rained on London almost every night.

Blitz Memorial Gardens

The gardens are much smaller than original envisioned, due to objections from land owners who needed the valuable riverside site for building flats.

Pond and punp house

Turning inland, the former dock entrance was converted to a pond, filled from The Thames by the pump house to replenish the water lost from the docks when ships used the sea locks further east at Pier Head.

Spirit Quay

The docks here, once the engine room of Britain’s global trade and prosperity, had fallen silent. Changes in shipping sizes and technology had rendered them redundant, with thousands of jobs vanishing, and hundreds of thousands of people leaving the surrounding boroughs. Docklands was caught in a seemingly irreversible spiral of economic and demographic decline.

The regeneration of the area was orchestrated by the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), established in 1981 by Michael Heseltine, the Conservative government’s environment secretary. Heseltine was appalled by the dereliction he saw in the run down dockside areas of East London and Liverpool’s Merseyside, but also by the piecemeal development of London’s South Bank during the 1970s, which he felt an “appalling architectural desert” of uncoordinated and ugly buildings. He decided that the government should take additional powers in order to stimulate development and also, crucially, to control it. He therefore took a highly un-Thatcherite, interventionist approach to orchestrating the Docklands’ regeneration.  The privately owned, low-rise housing along here is much sought after.

On the way back to Wapping Gardens, in Reardon Street we spotted a blue plaque.

Captain Bligh

Bligh’s house is long gone and the plaque is now on what was once the perimeter wall of Western Dock of London Docks. The wall was there to discouage the theft of wines, spirits and other valuable cargo, making the docks seem like a prison and there were rumours that French soldiers were imprisoned there during the Napoleonic Wars. It has been reduced in height and behind it is the 1980's housing development.

The tour finished back in Wapping Gardens, where the festival celebrating Wapping with live music and dancing was in full swing. After the tour we visited the River Police Museum in Wapping High Street.

River Police Wharf at Wapping

Formed in 1798, when theft in the docks was said to be costing a staggering half a million pounds per year, and based at Wapping ever since, the Marine Support Unit of the Metropolitan Police is the oldest UK police force. It patrols from Dartford to Hampton Court in launches that can do up to 40 knots.

We finished our visit to Wapping with a welcome coffee and porter cake at the museum.

13 July 2019