The Thames Ironworks was a large shipbuilding yard at Bow Creek in East London. In 1895, they formed a company football team that played in the Southern League and FA Cup. In 1900 the club was wound up and reborn as West Ham United. This walk tells the story of Thames Ironworks FC. We will visit Hermit Road and the Memorial Ground, two of the places where the club played, as well as the site of the Ironworks and a few other locations connected with the club.
Guide: Rob Smith
Meet at Canning Town Station, Silvertown Way, London E16 1DQ
This walk with Rob Smith from Royal Victoria Dock to Pontoon Dock looks at the vast Royal group of docks, built for steamships by entrepreneur engineers and at some of the industry that was created by the docks. Rob will also talk about the dock workers strike of 1889 and the creation of the Port of London Authority. One of a series of walks by Rob covering different periods in the development of the Port of London from the Romans to Canary Wharf, uncovering some of the legacy of the Port of London through street names, mooring posts, cranes, plaques etc. and using old maps and photographs.
Guide: Rob Smith
Meet at Royal Victoria DLR Station, Seagull Lane, London E16 1BZ
There’s so much more to Walthamstow than just its famous mile-long Market. The grand tombs in St Mary’s Churchyard offer a bit of a clue. Starting at the teenage home of William Morris, later home to publisher Edward Lloyd, who brought to us the tale of Sweeney Todd, and today home to the William Morris Gallery, this Guided Walk takes in a set of mews built by a local butcher/property developer, a theatre hidden within a school and a remnant from Robert Smirke’s General Post Office before visiting the real and original Walthamstow Village with its Ancient House, almshouses, workhouse and church to hear how Lord Mayor of London George Monoux was a great benefactor to the area and finishing in an industrial park which is not only home to the jaw dropping God’s Own Junkyard but the Wild Card Brewery and Mother’s Ruin Gin Palace too.
Guide: Joanna Moncreiff
Meet at William Morris Gallery (outside front entrance), 531 Forest Road, London E17 4PP
As recently as 1979, 85% of the area around what is now Canada Water was occupied by the waters of the Surrey Commercial Docks. Since then there has been a radical transformation, the former docks and timber storage ponds becoming woodland, parks, housing and shops. A new phase of development is bringing change again. On this Guided Walk, Rob will find the buildings from the old docks that have survived, explain how the docks worked and tell the story of their complex history. He will also explain how this part of London transformed into Docklands and why it is different to Canary Wharf, its neighbour on the other side of the river.
Guide: Rob Smith
Meet at Canada Water Station, Deal Porter Way, London SE16 2YS
Shadwell, developed to equip ships for imperial interests and explorations in the Age of Sail, was home to wealthy merchants and many small businesses. To make those possible, large numbers of ordinary folk provided services, making the area a multicultural hub where escaping slaves hid out, fed-up sailors started new lives, river pirates spied opportunities and women provided the comforts of home in lodging-houses, taverns and brothels. Of course, women were also seamen, pirates, slaves and merchants. Outsiders came to experience the many opium-dens that were standard places of unwinding for seafarers. Shadwell Basin is the only one left of three early docks located in the area. On this walk we pass remnants of all these phenomena as well as river stairs, imposing warehouses, green spaces, the Thames Path and numerous appealing pubs.
Guide: Laura Agustín
Meet at Shadwell Overground Station, outside exit on Cornwall Street, London E1 2QE
This fifty-minute Virtual Walk, hosted online via Zoom video conferencing, explores the fascinating Thames Estuary, a place London has always relied on but which remains a mystery to many Londoners. Starting in East London and following the river to the sea. Your guide Rob Smith will tell you some of the stories from the history of the area, and tell you about places to visit in real life: forts built to defend London from invasion, container ports that bring goods to our shops today, hidden places for wildlife, genteel Georgian towns that have grown up a bit today, Saxon settlements and World War Two sea forts.
Virtual Guide: Rob Smith
Online Event
Woolwich was once home to two vast military production sites - the Woolwich Dockyard and the Woolwich Arsenal. Both founded in the time of Henry VIII, the dockyard built ships for the Royal Navy up until the switch to steam ships in the early 19th century, and guns and ammunition were developed at Woolwich Arsenal until the 1960s. This one hour Zoom talk looks at the story of both sites, some of the ships built there and the impact the sites had on British naval power.
Virtual Guide: Rob Smith
Online Event
