City Lit London Villages - Wapping Walk

This Wednesday we met up at Tower Hill as the most convenient station for our walk around Wapping (in fact the place we had another City Lit course with Armelle - nearly 3 years ago)

Trinity Gardens A  sunny spot for office workers to enjoy their sandwiches

25 years ago mention of Wapping on TV was usually tied together with pictures of busses being driven into 'Fortress Wapping' - well City Lit London Villages walk showed a different side to expose what the area is now.

The tour started near The Tower of London that had once been the home to London's first Zoo - it eventually moved to Regents Park as Safety was an issue.

Once the location of a Zoo with Polar Bears

The area around Wapping was the centre of London's Docks - since containerisation this is has fundamentally changed the nature of the area - gentrification means that posh boats use the old docks as a Marina with expensive flats overlooking them.


Dickens Inn is a feature (it's not connected with Charles Dickens though being built far later). 

Dickens Inn backgrounds the Marina

Talking of the Times it's disputed Printing presses are  now long departed  and a Waitrose Supermarket is one of the new buildings there.

Now Waitrose

Old Dock buildings are now reused.

Old buildings have been preserved and new additions often seem to work well.

Some lovely buildings

Much of the community around the docks was tied up with Pubs and there's even one called The Town of Ramsgate, here fishermen sold their catches at lower cost to them than in the markets.

Nearby The Captain Kidd too

Town of Ramsgate 

Captain Kidd Pub 

A Rope reminds 

There was an area called Execution dock.

The Dockers had a hard life manhandling goods up steps - there was much 'shrinkage' which led to the first police force - and a museum reminds people of their purpose.

Down to the river

A Police station in the dock area

St Georges' Church Mortuary 

Again we saw an example of how efforts were made to educate the working classes - here St John of Wapping 

School remains

We also saw a fine Nicholas Hawksmoor Church (st Georges) that had a (now unused) Mortuary - we were told that this was necessary as some burials had been of live people!

We also learnt about early shopping arcade at the entrance to tunnel under the Thames at Wapping (Overground station)

And saw the famous Cable Street Mural where Oswald Mosely's Blackhirts were fought by Irish and Jewish communities - it's said that the two communities created the English dish Fish  and Chips -Fried Fish from the Jewish cuisine and Chips from the Irish