MUSEUM IN
DOCKLANDS
AT LAST !!!
For those of us who have been involved
with the Museum in Dockland for so many, many years the fact that it appears to
be opening – at last – is an occasion for some amazement and relief. I can’t
remember when I first learnt about the Museum – it must have been at some time
in the early 1980s – and at that time the project was well under way. I used to go to the Docklands History Group
meetings and hear about how everything was progressing. Buildings in what we used to call the Gwilt
Warehouses on the West India Dock Quay had been identified – in those days they
were massive, towering above the empty docks.
Chris, Bob and Alex were in Cannon Workshops and soon they also had a
huge warehouse up in the Victoria Dock – and it was quickly filling up with
potential exhibits. As workplace after
workplace closed down so a team of lads would be sent out in one of the Museum
trucks to get whatever they could.
One day, sometime in the mid-1980s, I
squeezed through a hole in the fence down on the old East Greenwich Gasworks
site. I hid in the bushes as juggernauts thundered past. Suddenly I realised
that I was beside an old wooden capstan – mounted on a block with a
plaque. It had come from the old dry
dock, now under the Dome, built by Stockwell and Lewis in 1871. South Metropolitan Gas Company had bought the
dry dock and preserved the capstan – it had stood as a riverside feature in gas
works, carefully preserved, until our generation had forgotten it and abandoned
it. I rang Bob Aspinall right away and
the lads and the Museum truck came over.
Then everything started to go wrong. I was working for Docklands Forum – an
organisation which monitored redevelopment and regeneration in Docklands – and
we kept a close watch on progress with the Museum. I can’t go into a lot of detail here – if I
can even remember – all the setbacks and heartaches over the next fifteen or so
years. Funding bids came and went, as
did potential sites. The office and archive moved to the Poplar Business Park
in Prestons Road. The Victoria Dock
warehouse became ‘out of bounds’, Chris had a heart attack, Alex got a new job
within the Museum of London – and Andy Topping joined the team, to very good
effect. Some exhibits were dispersed to
other museums.
But after all, after all these years –
and there has been doubt in the last few months – the Museum is to open. Back, as originally planned, in the
warehouses on the West India Quay - now
tiny buildings among giant office blocks – and everything has a different name
to what it used to have in the 1980s. I
went round the Museum last year – it was terrific and everyone must go, and
tell their friends. Congratulations, particularly to Chris Elmers and Bob Aspinall
– thanks for sticking with it.
--- and the Greenwich capstan --- it’s one of the main exhibits!
MUSEUM IN
DOCKLANDS GRAND OPENING PARTY
A FREE DAY OF FAMILY EVENTS
TO CELEBRATE LONDON’S NEWEST MUSEUM
Saturday
24 May 2003
On the day of the opening the Museum in
Docklands will have free admission.
Annual tickets will be available for purchase. Adult annual ticket £5
Concessions annual ticket £3 Children under 16 FREE DLR - West India Quay - Jubilee Line - Canary Wharf 
There is a restaurant called 1802, a
separate café and a shop.
There is a restaurant called 1802, a
separate café and a shop.
The twelve galleries of the Museum in
Docklands trace 2,000 years of London’s river, port and people -
Thames
Highway – from the Roman settlement of AD43 and the
Saxon town beneath Covent Garden to the historic ports of Norman and Medieval
London excavated at Billingsgate and Lower Thames Street.
Trade
Expansion - As
London’s port activities grew new trading companies like the East India Company
emerged. Visitors can wander through a recreation of a Legal Quay from the
1790s and the influence of overseas visitors, including Pochohantas and Prince
Lee Boo, is explored.
Rhinebeck
Panorama -Discovered
rolled-up in the attic of a house in Rhinebeck, New York, the Rhinebeck
Panorama presents a balloon’s eye view of the upper pool of London c.1810.
Coming
of the Docks -An
exploration of the Isle of Dogs (1802), Wapping (1805), Blackwall (1806) and
Rotherhithe (1806/12) reveals the vast new trading dock complexes built in the
early 1800s to resolve the problems of overcrowding, theft and pilferage in the
old river port. Original plans, engineering drawings, pictures and artefacts
uncover the engineering and entrepreneurial enterprise in detail.
City
and River - Opened
for trade in 1803, the warehouse in which the Museum now stands once stored
coffee, pimentos, sugar, molasses and rum. A recreated rum vault provides a glimpse into the skills of coopers
working in No 1 Warehouse under the watchful eyes of Customs Officers, and the
gallery examines the story of sugar. An
1807 model of the Lord Mayor’s
state barge, together with the bright red livery and silver arm badges of the
Waterman’s Company, are seen close to engravings of the Thames during the last
Frost Fair of 1814.
Sailortown
Set in the early evening,
visitors wander along early 19th century gas-lit alleyways, past a
chandler’s shop window and sailor’s lodging houses, glimpsing views of the
murky Thames between buildings.
First
Port of Empire & Warehouse of the World - The introduction of hydraulic power and the change
from wooden to iron shipbuilding transformed the lives of those who worked in
the docks. The struggles of organised labour is explored through the 1889 Dock
Strike, and beam scales, garbling knives and tobacco presses, and contemporary
film footage from the historic City of Ships (1938) shows working practices
that have now vanished forever.
The capital’s
links with the British Empire and the cultural diversity of London’s East End
are shown in What in the World, a touch-screen interactive which traces
commodities along trade routes and back to their country of origin.
The
River Thames Gallery - A number
of traditional Thames vessels, including an 1880s double sculling pleasure
craft and a 1925 Port of London Authority Waterman’s Skiff, are shown alongside
displays exploring the work of sail makers, riggers, ship chandlers, leisure
boat operators and divers and reveals some of the skills required for
navigation, moorings and salvage operations.
A major extract from City of Ships (1938) shows a lost world.
Docklands
at War - Introduced by the
Black Saturday film, which incorporates rarely seen film from the Fire
Brigade and captured Nazi extracts show the preparations made in London and
Berlin for the first few days of the Blitz.
New Port New City - Just 20 years ago
much of Docklands was an area of decline and dereliction. Competition and containerisation signalled
the end of the up-river port. As port
activities moved downriver the older docks, warehouses and riverside industries
closed down. Although still at the
centre of world trade, the area is now unrecognisable as the former port, as
new transport infrastructures, the gentrification of riverside warehousing and
the architectural spectacle of Canary Wharf create a new and equally dramatic
cityscape.
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