I arranged to join a walk last November with my local University of the Third Age group, an idea that seemed straightforward enough until faced with the real enemy of any day out: the weather. Or rather, its peculiar ability to behave in a way that suggests it resents being forecast.
The Met Office had declared rain at 60% four days earlier, then 70% the day before, then 40% by the morning, only for the sky to appear as blue and smug as a Mediterranean travel brochure. I concluded long ago that the Met Office deserves our sympathy: after Michael Fish reassured the nation in 1987 that no hurricane would arrive, only to have one appear with theatrical force hours later, its confidence has never recovered.
Our walk began at St Katharine Docks, E1, which has nothing to do with St Catherine of Alexandria, St Catherine of Siena. The docks borrowed their name instead from the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, a medieval hospital that originally stood on site, founded by Queen Matilda in 1147. In the early 19th century, the precinct was swept aside to make way for a new commercial site. Thomas Telford designed the basins, Philip Hardwick the warehouses and the result opened in 1828 to mild fanfare and modest success. The narrow entrance prevented the largest ships from entering, a design flaw that feels like the architectural equivalent of buying a wardrobe only to find it won’t fit through the door.
Commercial decline would beset St Katharine as other docks prospered. Bombing in the Second World War accelerated the decay; by 1968, commercial operations ceased. By the 1970s, the area began its second life as a leisure marina, pleasure craft now sitting politely in water once churned by labour. Stepping into the marina today feels like entering a club where membership is implied by proximity to boats with polished teak. Restaurants, offices and apartment buildings line the water with an air of curated ease.
St Katharine's Dock: 'a leisure marina, pleasure craft now sitting politely in water once churned by labour.'
'For all the talk about respecting heritage, London has a habit of tidying its past until it resembles a postcard'
Yet, beneath the refinement lies a scrambled history of demolition, slum clearance and utilitarian warehouses that spoke a more honest architectural language. If authenticity is measured by the scars of survival, St Katharine offers only faint lines. The effect is pleasant enough, although the sense of having entered a well-behaved waterside showroom is hard to ignore. It is an odd moment when one leaves the marina and enters the narrower streets beyond. The shift is immediate. The light changes. The air thickens slightly with the scent of the river rather than the fragrance of artisan coffee. Footsteps echo differently.
For all the talk about respecting heritage, London has a habit of tidying its past until it resembles a postcard. Telford’s warehouses once hummed with labour. Goods were hauled directly from barges through loading doors that now belong to flats with entry systems tucked away from view. One begins to wonder which parts are original and which are the architectural equivalent of cosmetic dentistry; although whether this should be held against modern developers is a matter better left to those who enjoy writing letters to newspapers.
Walking eastward towards Wapping, the landscape contracts. To the naked eye, the river seems to narrow — although not in truth — and the streets begin to show their age. Wapping is a survivor rather than a stage set; a sliver between the Thames and the Highway and a neighbourhood the history of which has not yet been polished into polite silence. Warehouses still stand, converted into flats, but recognisably themselves. The cobbles, uneven in places, tell their stories without fuss.
Wapping in the 1980s. The area suffered deeply in the late 20th century, but has retained most of its character despite re-development.
This was once a world of shipwrights, chandlers and lightermen who did not have the luxury of thinking about heritage. It was also the site of Execution Dock, where pirates were hanged at low tide so the incoming water could wash away their sins. Capt Kidd met his end here in 1701, a detail that the local pub, named after him, displays with cheerful confidence. The sign shows him in a white wig, flanked by illustrations of maritime violence. The river police, the world’s oldest organised force of its kind, began here in 1798 to deal with the endless theft that accompanied the port trade. Smuggling was common, wages were low and temptation immediate. The Thames does not encourage purity of behaviour.
As the dock economy collapsed in the 1960s, Wapping suffered deeply. Jobs vanished, buildings emptied and the district hollowed out. The 1980s brought warehouse conversions and an influx of residents seeking the charm of dockland living. Then came the Murdoch print dispute of 1986, which brought the area to national attention as industrial conflict once more took hold of it. The grit of its heyday remains, lingering among the quiet and contemplative streets.
As in St Katharine Docks, the line between original buildings and their more polished, reconstructed cousins is not always obvious. Yet such is the fate of many cities that outlive their industries: history congeals into atmosphere rather than presence. A walk through these districts reveals a truth about the city. St Katharine Docks presents its best behaviour to visitors. Wapping shows history without apology. One is curated, the other lived. Both are honest in different ways.
'Many of Wapping’s structures are blessed with such indifference: they were not designed to please, but to work'
At one point during our walk, I thought of J. M. W. Turner — perhaps prompted by the greyness of the Thames or a slant of the autumn light that seemed to struggle with itself. The artist’s ability to paint luminosity from murk is rightly celebrated; poorly acknowledged, however, is his fascination with the body as much as the horizon. He understood that the line between beauty and decay is thin and that both are shaped by tide and time. Wapping, with its mixture of surviving brick, converted warehouses and illicit memory, would likely have amused him.
One suspects he would have found the marina at St Katharine Docks less compelling: too tidy, cautious and determined to behave. Turner enjoyed scenes where the river’s honesty exposed the absurdities of civilisation. He likely would have recognised the beauty in buildings that do not care whether we admire them. Many of Wapping’s structures are blessed with such indifference: they were not designed to please, but to work. Where Italy, my country of origin, builds outward and presents its beauty to the world, London builds inward, hiding it in function.
As we returned to the starting point, I found myself thinking about the river’s effect on time. The tide hides the past twice a day and reveals it again without ceremony. The docks rise, fall, dry and irrigate themselves without care for interpretation. What survives are not the buildings, but the rhythm. Londoners adapt, plan, redevelop and argue. The Thames is a silent witness. Between the marina and the river lies a conversation about memory. One side edits it; the other lets it linger. Somewhere in the middle walks the observer, trying to decide whether the past is best preserved by polish or stubborn endurance.