West India Docks

West India Docks These were London's first commercial wet docks, built to maximize London's booming maritime trade with the West Indies and avoid the congestion and pilfering experienced in the Pool of London. The Isle of Dogs - then largely pastureland - provided an ideal site, the loop in the river enabling separate entrances for ships and lighters to be made at the east and west ends of the docks.

Two enormous docks were excavated between 1800 and 1806 (the Import and Export Docks), which with their associated locks and basins enclosed a combined area of some 62 acres of water, at the time the largest docks in the world. In 1829 a third dock (South Dock) was added to the system, by converting the unsuccessful City Canal, cut across the Isle of Dogs in 1800-5 as a by-pass for shipping.

Building development on the docks was of a scale to match the engineering. Nine vast sugar warehouses extended more than half a mile along the northern quay of the Import Dock. Designed by George Gwilt and built by William Adam, the last of the Adam brothers, these were London's first dockside warehouses, and a monument to the nation's mercantile power. Two of the buildings still stand, the only ones to survive the Blitz of 1940 and now dwarfed by the towers of Canary Wharf.