Millwall Dock is a

dock A dock (from Dutch ''dok'') is the area of water between or next to one or a group of human-made structures that are involved in the handling of boats or ships (usually on or near a shore) or such structures themselves. The exact meaning vari ...

Millwall Millwall is a district on the western and southern side of the Isle of Dogs, in east London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lies to the immediate south of Canary Wharf and Limehouse, north of Greenwich and Deptford, eas ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, located south of

Canary Wharf Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located near the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central Lon ...

on the

Isle of Dogs The Isle of Dogs is a large peninsula bounded on three sides by a large meander in the River Thames in East London, England, which includes the Cubitt Town, Millwall and Canary Wharf districts. The area was historically part of the Manor, Ha ...

History

The scheme was developed speculatively by a partnership of John Kelk and John Aird & Co.'The Millwall Docks: The docks', in Survey of London: Volumes 43 and 44, Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs, ed. Hermione Hobhouse (London, 1994), pp. 353-356. British History Online URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp353-356 accessed 30 November 2019. The engineer responsible for designing the scheme was Sir John Fowler. The construction was undertaken by Kelk and Aird and the dock was officially opened in March 1868. After a slow start to the business and financial difficulties, Kelt and Aird surrendered control of the company to lawyers acting for the investors in December 1868. In recognition of its settled status the business was renamed the

Millwall Dock Company The Millwall Freehold Land and Dock Company was a 19th-century company set up to develop the central area of the Isle of Dogs in London's East End. Originally called the Millwall Canal, Wharfs and Graving Docks Company, the Act for the incorporati ...

in 1870. In 1909 the

Port of London Authority The Port of London Authority (PLA) is a self-funding public trust established on 31 March 1909 in accordance with the Port of London Act 1908 to govern the Port of London. Its responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames and its ...

(PLA) took over the Millwall Dock, along with the other enclosed docks from St Katharines to

Tilbury Tilbury is a port town in the borough of Thurrock, Essex, England. The present town was established as separate settlement in the late 19th century, on land that was mainly part of Chadwell St Mary. It contains a 16th century fort and an anc ...

. From 1905

Magnus Mowat Brigadier-General Magnus Mowat (1875-1953) was a Scottish railway engineer. From 1920 to 1938 he was Secretary of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. Life He was born on 10 November 1875 the son of the Hon Magnus Mowat in Aberdeenshire. He w ...

worked as Engineer to the docks, being promoted to Director around 1912. With reorganisation by the

in the 1920s, the northern end of the Inner Dock was connected to the

West India Docks The West India Docks are a series of three docks, quaysides and warehouses built to import goods from and export goods and occasionally passengers to the British West Indies on the Isle of Dogs in London the first of which opened in 1802. Follow ...

by the Millwall Passage. The dock was used mainly for timber and grain, a trade which eventually moved down river to the

Port of Tilbury The Port of Tilbury is a port on the River Thames at Tilbury in Essex, England. It is the principal port for London, as well as being the main United Kingdom port for handling the importation of paper. There are extensive facilities for contai ...

with the construction of a major grain terminal in the 1960s. A McDougall's flour mill, the Wheatsheaf Mill (constructed in 1869), stood on the south side of the Outer Dock, but was demolished in about 1980. Nearby Sir John McDougall Gardens is named after one of the McDougall brothers, John McDougall, who was also a prominent local politician in Poplar. From the 1960s onwards, the Millwall Dock experienced a steady decline – as did all of London's other docks – as the shipping industry adopted

containerisation Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers and ISO containers). Containerization is also referred as "Container Stuffing" or "Container Loading", which is the p ...

, which effectively moved traffic downstream to

. It finally closed to commercial traffic along with the other Royal Docks in 1981. The West Ferry Printing Works, the largest newspaper print works in Western Europe, was built on the north side of Outer Dock between 1984 and 1986. The Docklands Sailing and Watersports Centre, located at the far West end of the dock where the dock previously connected to the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

, was established by the

London Docklands Development Corporation The London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was a quango agency set up by the UK Government in 1981 to regenerate the depressed Docklands area of east London. During its seventeen-year existence it was responsible for regenerating an ...

and the Sports Council at a cost of £1.2 million in 1989. While much of the area has been occupied by commercial office towers, Millwall Dock is also an area where several housing developments and

apartment tower A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...

s have been developed. During the 1980s the Clippers Quay housing estate was built around the old dry dock while the Mill Quay housing development was built on the site of the old Wheatsheaf Mill. The dock was a location for boat stunts in the 1999

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...

film ''

The World Is Not Enough ''The World Is Not Enough'' is a 1999 spy film, the nineteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Michael Apted, from an ...

''.

Layout

The

is L-shaped, with an 'Outer Dock' running east–west, and an 'Inner Dock' running north from the eastern end. It originally contained around 36 acres (14 hectares) of water and had a 200-acre (81 hectare) estate. The western end of the Outer Dock was originally connected to the Thames at

by an wide channel. The spoil from the docks formed the area of wasteland known as the

Mudchute Mudchute Park and Farm is a large urban park and farm in Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, just south of Canary Wharf. It is a Local Nature Reserve and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conse ...

. A graving dock for ship repairs was constructed at the south-east corner of the Outer Dock (one of 6 originally planned), and later lengthened to .

References

Other sources

* * 'Dockland: An illustrated historical survey of life and work in east London', NELP/GLC, 1983, {{ISBN, 0-7168-1611-3

External links

Docklands Light Railway

Mill Quay Residents Association
Geography of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets History of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Buildings and structures in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets London docks Port of London Millwall