The West India Docks were built in 1802. Before that, there were only a few paths crossing the Island.

Robert Batson, a local shipbuilder built a rope walk within his works. His son - Robert Batson junior - started to lay out other streets in the 1810s. He named Robert Street after himself although no houses were there in 1818 and it wasn’t fully built until the 1860s.

Because of the proliferation of duplicate street names in London, the 1870s saw the streets on the former Batson estate renamed. The new street names reflected the sources of sugar imports to the West India Docks. Robert Street was renamed Cuba Street. So afterwards, the rope works were replaced by engineering factories.

According to the Survey of London, because of the long-drawn-out building process, Cuba Street, Manilla Street and Tobago Street evolved a ’ragged uniformity’.

Cuba Street had an industrial character, with industry along the north side on the site of the original rope works and at the western half of the south side.