The Story of London's Lost Docklands

Comments · 42

• DA

  @Danielward737 · 3 months ago

  I’m from a lineage of East Londoners and I heard the latter part of this documentary. That is why the East Londoners were made of different stuff. Now it’s unrecognisable

  11

• PA

  @PaulSinghSelhi-VFX-TUTORIALS · 1 month ago (edited)

  I was born in Greenwich  in 1960 and lived in Westmoor Street Charlton with Old Father Thames at the bottom of my road. We had the utmost love for our river ( riva) It brought life, prosperity and death to London. It's undercurrents were notorious and as children we were taught to both fear and respect it. As a student in the 1980s I moved back to docklands as I went to QMC and lived for sometime on The Island. I would often walk the docks at night before they were redeveloped and gaze into the mirror still pools reflecting the starry night sky and it was like standing on the edge of a spaceship looking down into the eternity. Even better when you dropped a tab !!!!!!!

  2

• DA

  @davidmason1203 · 2 months ago

  I lived in Graces Alley, it's between Cable Street and Ratcliff or "The Highway, as it is now known", in what was a The Old Mahogany Bar, The East End Methodist Mission; it had originally been a Public house ( known as the King of Prussia) and locally known as "The Old Mahogany", it was i'm lead to believe the first Public House in the UK to be fitted out using Mahogany a very exotic wood at that time; The Mahogany Bar had been "The Wiltons Music Hall" and was said to have been known world wide by sailors; The Old Mahogany Bar, East End Methodist mission i'm lead to believe was used as a kitchen and dining room during the "Dockers Strike" as well as being a first aid station during "The Battle of Cable Street. There are or were a lot of fanciful stories about sailors being got drunk, robbed and dropped down into a cellar from where they were taken to ship's waiting in the dock's, those shanghaied were supposedly taken through a tunnel which was supposed to have run from Wiltons Music Hall to London Dock's; it's a complete myth, when I lived their my dad searched and never found ant thing like a tunnel;  personally "I think" if there ever was a tunnel it would have been discovered during the Blitz!  as I played on the three or four local bomb sites as a child in the direction of the Docks.  My father was A Docker, in St. Katherine's Dock and London Dock; after I left school in the 1960's I worked in the Poplar, Wapping, Limehouse and Isle of Dogs areas and there were still chinese people living in the area in the 1960's, and I certainly do remember the Call On! especially when I was working on the Isle of Dogs,  not realising what was about to happen ie., The Call on! I got close to the mass of men who, without warning lifted me on my bicycle and man handled me right across the huge Crowd of men! Living so close to St. Katherines Dock and London Dock; I remember my Dad taking me in "I don't know why he took me with him" but I remember the Barrels some quite small but some others absolutely huge, several feet in diameter and much Taller than a man; they went from just inside the Gate of London Docks, as far as the eye could see! I remember The Dockers were filtering "Dry Sack Sherry" bottling it, Labelling it, and corking it! When I went into St. Katherines Dock with Dad, they were laying elephant tusks out in order of quality etc., ready for the auction, one of the Dockers showed me a table with parts of elephant tusks with various forms of damage and cancers etc., I can't be more explicit as to what I saw really I couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 or 7 years old maximum at the time! Back then wealthy people wouldn't dirty the soles of their shoes coming to the area! It being an area government's seemed to have forgotten the area having sustained  a great deal of Bomb damage during the London Blitz not much if any rebuilding of homes and or the rehouse of the Local Communities ie., the  local people!

  4

• SI

  @simonclarke4367 · 3 months ago (edited)

  very nicely done sir although, the pronunciation of 'Quays" needs work

  10

• AL

  @aldgatewest · 3 months ago

  Gawd blimey...my "old neighbourhood" as a kid!

  14

• AN

  @angelacasey8446 · 2 days ago

  This was a really interesting documentary.

• HO

  @Hooverfan53 · 3 months ago

  ..i just found your channel and think it's fantastic! Now subscribed.

  4

• TO

  @tonybaker55 · 3 months ago

  My 3rd great-grandfather was born in 1777 in Marylebone and did his apprenticeship as a Waterman on the Thames. His son and grandson also became Watermen. I am sure my 3rd G-G must have seen a lot during his years, up until 1832, when he died. They lived on the south bank in Bermondsey. My G-G eventually moved to then, leafy Plumstead, where my grandfather was born in 1872.

  5

• BR

  @briantinker7290 · 3 months ago

  brilliant, thanks, subscribed now!

  4

• SP

  @SpiderBird1548 · 3 months ago

  This is fascinating. I grew up by the East India docks...

  1

• KE

  @Kelly-MarieLott · 3 months ago

  i grew up through the construction of canary wharf playing on the rubble of streets blitzed during ww2

  22

• AN

  @annaevans2199 · 10 days ago

  Very interesting documentary. Easy to follow. I really enjoyed watching this one.