The History of St Katharine Docks

Its location is central in several ways. It overlooks the River Thames that divides north and south- a gateway to the wider world that reveals the city's reason for existing in the first place. And lying just outside the old walls of Londinium- built by Romans also drawn to this well-connected spot -it sits on a key boundary between East and West London in the modern day.

From the docks' entrance, we can see Tower Bridge in the foreground and the Shard skyscraper in the distance- a visual embodiment of the area's connections to past and present.

And looking back from the bridge we can see NCH and Northeastern's new London home at Devon House, with Canary Wharf looming behind. The area is 'historic', but beyond the clichés, what actually happened here in the past and how might it help understand the present? This Story Map surveys 1000 years of history to provide some answers. Scroll down to continue the story and click points on the maps to interact.

The story begins in 1147 when Queen Matilda, the wife of King Stephen, set up a church and hospital in open fields next to the Tower of London which had recently been built after the Norman Conquest. She dedicated the new holy place to the memory of her two children who died in infancy and St Katharine's By The Tower (originally spelt with 'c') became a place of worship that offered shelter for the poor and infirm. With royal protection from the outset, the area's success reflected the entwined growth of the church, monarchy and English state through the medieval period.

For over 600 years afterwards, the Royal Foundation of St Katharine remained under the patronage of various queens of England, who personally appointed the masters who ran church and hospital. The area bore witness to the key events that shaped English history. It survived the Reformation in the sixteenth century (Katharine of Aragon remained patron even after her divorce from Henry VIII) as well as the the Fire of London in 1666.

Another reason for the hospital's success was its designation as a 'liberty' in 1442. This medieval title meant neighbourhoods operated independently and, for St Katharine's, this status allowed it to thrive outside the jurisdiction of the neighbouring City of London. In John Stow's 1585 survey, the area was described as 'pestered with small tenements and homely cottages, having inhabitants, English and strangers, more in number than in some city in England'.

Monks began brewing at St Katharine's from its beginning and a brewery built during the Elizabethan period was still active in the 1820s. Numerous pubs, meanwhile, were nestled on the riverside throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, quenching the thirst of residents, sailors and traders. These breweries' expansion was also fuelled by the increased trade in sugar made possible by Britain's imperial expansion overseas.

But further changes were afoot at the turn of the nineteenth century. A series of new wet docks were built as London merchants and financiers sought new and improved ways of trading with the world. Building enclosed wet docks allowed ships to be loaded and unloaded quicker and also addressed the longstanding problems of congestion on the river and theft from craft moored at its wharves. 

The West India Dock Act of 1799 led to the creation of large docks on the Isle of Dogs. The East India Company, who had operated on the river since the early 1600s, soon got its own enclosed dock near the mouth of the River Lea at Blackwall. The London Docks were built further west in Wapping, nearer the centre of finance in the City of London. London’s modern industrial docklands were born- the Port of London soon became the largest in the world.

St Katharine Docks were the last of London’s wet docks to be built. They nearly weren’t built at all. Merchants and financiers began plans for their construction in the 1790s but failed to win parliamentary support. The Royal Patron at the time, Queen Charlotte, applied behind-the-scenes pressure to protect the Royal Foundation on the site.

When the plan was resurrected in the 1820s royal support was less forthcoming, but there were plenty of other objections: the neighboring London Docks opposed a new rival on their doorstep, as did the thousands of residents who- as this plan shows- faced the demolition of their homes. A clergyman exhorted people to remember the church’s ancient heritage and pleaded that its ‘obscure location may not cause its condemnation unseen’.

Numerous claims were made in this 1820s information war. Drawings predicted an organized but thriving hub of trade in the shadow of London's historic heart. Meanwhile, developer John Hall claimed the area to be demolished was a hotbed of prostitution and crime in need of regeneration. In response, a pamphlet by opponents of the scheme alleged developers had lied about local support- only one signature of support from a list of several hundred put before parliament came from someone who actually lived in the area.

The opposition failed. Parliament voted in favour of the bill in June 1825. The West Dock opened in 1828 and the East Dock in 1829. The Times reported over ten thousand people had their homes demolished, while the medieval church was destroyed, with a new building erected in Regent's Park. This sense of loss was felt keenly. Chaplain R.R. Bailey gave the final sermon at St Katharine’s Church and bemoaned the ‘unfeeling and encroaching hand of commerce’ behind the development. In doing so, he articulated the ambivalence many felt as Britain’s Industrial Revolution continued apace.

Britain’s overseas empire was connected to industrial expansion at home. The St Katharine Docks Company’s Board of Directors reflected this fact, with merchants, bankers and politicians all well-represented. Several also owned slaves on Caribbean plantations and received compensation once the practice was formally abolished in the 1830s. 

George Larpent was the dock’s first Deputy Chairman and together with his business partners received over £18,000 from compensation claims in Mauritius involving over 500 enslaved people. For Larpent as for many other former slave owners, abolition was not always the end of the story. Years later, his firm still had hundreds of thousands invested in Mauritian sugar plantations as indentured servitude and other forms of unfree labour replaced formal slavery.

Click the star to see details of Larpent's claims and further information from the  Legacies of British Slave-ownership  project.

The docks' warehouses, designed by Philip Hardwick, allowed goods to be unloaded by hand or by crane into warehouses directly. Then, on 'woolfloors' like this, prospective buyers could inspect goods and participate in auctions for their sale. Before train lines cut journey times to eastern docks, St Katharine's capitalized on its close proximity to the centre of mercantile trade in the City of London.

The social life of the docks were also integral to their character. Pubs and breweries had long been part of the area's history, but in the nineteenth century they played a new function: many casual labourers awaiting the 'call on' for work would wait in pubs like this one- the Bull's Head that used to sit on the site of Devon House. Pub landlords often acted as employment agents for the dock owners, even paying wages on their behalf at the end of the day- in the obvious expectation much would be spent immediately behind the bar.

Dock workers did numerous jobs, from the skilled stevedores who loaded ships, to lightermen who ferried cargo from larger vessels, to various officials charged with recording details of what came in and out. Among those working at St Katharine's were these 'gaugers' photographed in 1895, who measured the barrels of alcohol to ensure the correct amount of tax was paid.

The high walls built around the docks were designed to deter thieves, but not everyone was put off. As the Old Bailey Online records show, the docks were scenes of numerous crimes from theft to assault. For example,  Thomas Brockley  was convicted of stealing lead from the engine house- designed by steam pioneer James Watt- on Christmas Day in 1828. His punishment was to be transported to Tasmania, where he died a pauper in the 1870s. He was not alone: the vaults below 'I Warehouse' were reportedly used to house convicts ahead of transportation to Australia.

The world of the docks was therefore both profoundly local and inextricably global. Before drinking at the Bull's Head, labourers could spend a day unloading cargo from around the world. St Katharine's specialized in 'luxury' goods, many of which came from animals. Alongside ostrich feathers and tortoiseshell, ivory was an especially popular commodity in the late nineteenth century. The scale of this trade is demonstrated graphically by this image from inside the docks' central warehouse- the aptly named Ivory House, the only one of the original warehouses to still survive.

St Katharine Docks was a hub through which goods and people flowed freely: silk came from China, tea and indigo from India, wool came from the Falkland Islands; people emigrated to America and convicts were transported to Australia; closer to home, ships carried people and cargo across Europe and to other parts of the British Isles. This interactive flow map gives a sample of these interwoven connections.

The docks imported people and cultures as well as material goods. Sailors and seamen from all over the world arrived in the Port of London. Many were itinerant, staying only as long as it took for ships to be loaded and unloaded, but others put down roots. This map shows a contemporary estimate from 1935 of the city's black population and its concentration in the city's East End docklands. It provides a telling reminder that Britain's multiracial history is not the sole preserve of the post-war period, a story that the  Mapping Black London in World War II  project outlines in more detail.

The Second World War transformed London, Britain and the world. The docks were central to this story. On 7th September 1940, the Blitz began: an aerial barrage from Nazi Germany's air force designed to strike at the industrial heart of the war effort. St Katharine Docks were hit that first night, where firemen tried in vain to put out the flames engulfing the warehouses around the east basin.

After four more years of sporadic bombardment, the end of the war in 1945 offered a chance to assess the damage. Aerial photos taken by the RAF showed a scene common across the east end: some buildings in the west dock survived untouched, others were damaged, while many in the eastern basin had been flattened completely. South Devon Wharf- site of Devon House -was among the places destroyed.

The physical destruction wrought by war brought longer-term problems starkly into view. After 1945, the docks were less profitable and Britain's overseas empire was less powerful. St Katharine Docks, now a small part of the amalgamated Port of London, was hit hard on multiple fronts. As newer mass container ports were built further out towards the Thames Estuary, there was no money to repair older western docks: St Katharine's had to find a new future.

How London and Britain would rebuild after war were active questions through the second half of the century. As this video illustrates, by 1969 the docks had closed and plans turned to how best to regenerate the area. Heavy industry was out, and service sector employment in finance, leisure and tourism were in.

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine's still exists. Having been relocated- or, more precisely, demolished -to Regent's Park in 1826, it returned back to the East End in 1948. Its current location in Limehouse is only a mile away from its founding many centuries ago, and it remains a  charitable retreat  open to all.