Stepney Areas |
The Isle of Dogs A manor known as Pomfret, later to be known as Ponte Fracto from the name of Richard de Pontefracto who once owned it, was in Stepney Marsh. John & Joan de Castell in 1302 transferred the property of Pomfret/Ponte Fracto to John Abel and wife Margery. In 1322 the manor consisted of a garden, a mill and arable land. There were cornfields in existence on Stepney Marsh in 1322 and about 60 people living nearby. There is a tradition that Edward III (1326-76) kept spaniels and greyhounds used for hunting in Essex in kennels here. The land was opposite Greenwich Palace. Edward founded St Mary Graces, the Cistercian house and a small stone chapel which was connected to these buildings was built on the Isle of Dogs. A Thomas Vaughan was holding part of the manor in 1361, and Hamo Vaughan was named as his heir. In about 1370 a church of St Mary in the Marsh was in existence on the south of the Isle of Dogs but this fell into disuse due to flooding in 1449. The manor changed hands several times during the century and eventually Pomfret, Ponte Fracto or Stepney Marsh became known as the Isle of Dogs and contained some of the finest sheep grazing land in the country. The Isle of Dogs (which now contains the India and Millwall Docks) for centuries been inundated regularly by the Thames. To prevent further encroachment walls were built around the area to prevent flooding and seven windmills to pump out the water once stood on the western side. Upon this wall several gibbets had been built some of which could take four bodies at a time. The area on the west side was called Millwall (originally Marshwall) and that on the east Blackwall. Several reasons, apart from the tradition of Edward III mentioned earlier, have been put forward for the area becoming known as the Isle of Dogs. The many dogs washed up there and the kennels kept by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I there being two. According to John Strype (born 1643): 'A man who owned a dog was murdered by a river ruffian. The dog led watermen to his body and shortly after started swimming the river over to Greenwich where a strange waterman was seated. The dog snarled at the man and could not be beaten off and the other watermen saw this and arrested him whereupon he confessed to the murder and was later condemned and executed.' As the dog might have been heard to say 'It's a nice tale!' There is also a legend which says that a handsome young huntsman and his new bride decided to spend their wedding day boar hunting. The bride went on ahead and started sinking in the mud on what is now known as the Isle of Dogs. Her husband arrived too late to save her and he also became a victim of the mud. A skeletal horseman and his hunting dogs are said to haunt the area at night. 'A hideous huntsman's seen
to rise, The river journey around the Isle of Dogs in the 17th century added time to the journey and passengers sometimes crossed the 'Isle' by coach and then resumed their journey on the other side. Pepys wrote again about his adventures in the area following a visit to the Isle of Dogs and the non-arrival of his coach to take him home 'I, being in my new coloured silk suit and coat trimmed with gold buttons and gold braid lace round my hands, very rich and fine ... so we were fain to stay there, in the unlucky Isle of Dogs, in a dull place, the night cold, to our great discomfort.' In June 1664 Pepys again recorded a journey to the area in his Diary 'With my wife only to take the ayre, it being very warm and pleasant, to Bowe and Old Ford; and thence to Hackney. There light, and played at shuffle board. Ate cream and good cherries, and so with good refreshment, home.' Unknown to Pepys, and the rest of the country at this time, disaster and terror in the form of the Great Plague were just 6 months away from this happy event. Gascoyne's map of the beginning of the 18th century shows 7 mills along the western river embankment. The area became known as Millwall. Rocque's map of 1741-5 shows the Isle of Dogs still bare of habitation apart from the hamlet of Poplar which was just a row of houses along the Coldharbour waterfront. In 1789, Mr. Perry, a ship-builder, constructed a dock called the Brunswick Dock, adjoining his building-yard at Blackwall. It was capable of containing at one time twenty-eight East Indiamen, and fifty or sixty ships of smaller burden. The building of wharves in the 19th century, with high walls surrounding them to prevent easy access was a direct result of the theft during the eighteenth century. The congestion in the Thames had also been a problem for many years. 10,000 coaster and 3,500 ships were arriving in the port annually. 3,400 lighters were needed to carry the goods to and from the anchored ships. The Act, to construct a canal and docks on the Isle of Dogs, received Royal Assent in 1Rocque's map of 1741-5 shows the Isle of Dogs still bare of habitation apart from the 799. The purpose of the Act was to take away the City's monopoly of the river which had helped to create river congestion and allow the clearance of the hundreds of moored ships which clogged the river's freeway. As the eighteenth century closed the Isle of Dogs was still a flat meadow with its 7 windmills on the Millwall embankment. However some building had taken place by 1799 and when the surveyors for the West India Dock (owned by the West India company merchants) arrived there were a variety of properties standing. Timber yards, rope grounds, ship-breakers' yards, warehouses, private houses, cowsheds and the Shipwrights' Arms, a pub. By the end of this century London was to have the largest area of enclosed water than any other port in the world. In 1821 the only dwelling on the Isle of Dogs was a single farmhouse. This was all soon to change as various workshops which supported shipping were established and roads and houses were built to shelter those who flooded into the area in search of work. The Isle of Dogs in 1857 was still largely undeveloped and an Illustrated London News reporter visiting Scott Russell's shipyard wrote of 'those marshy fields, studded with stunted limes and poplars and muddy ditches, with here and there a meditative cow cropping the coarse herbage are not suggestive of the sublime; .... the island is peopled by an amphibious race who dwell in peculiar amphibious houses ... on a foundation neither fluid nor solid ...(the houses) in many cases drop on one side (like) the leaning Tower of Pisa.' It was not until the development of the Docks that shipyards started springing up along the shoreline. In the 19th century over a dozen shipbuilders were active around the Isle of Dogs. At the north east edge the Blackwall Yard had been in operation since 1588. The Isle of Dogs, one observer in the 1880's said, was by now covered with "steam factories". Despite being marshy and badly drained, it was considered suitable for building had been filled with poorly built houses, dust heaps, factories, wharves, rubbish tips, schools, pubs, small shops, churches, chapels and various social and political clubs. The middle classes and employers who had once lived there had already moved out to healthier areas.
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