August 2019 archive

Wapping Housing Estate (1926)

A list of the houses comprising the Wapping Housing Estate: Willoughby House. Sir Hugh Willoughby was appointed captain of a fleet of three ships, which set out in 1553, with the object of discovering a north-eastern passage to Cathay and India. Two of the three ships reached the coast of Lapland, where it was proposed …

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Public housing in Poplar

The dominance of public housing in Poplar’s built environment is a relatively recent phenomenon. Most of it was built between 1950 and 1980, and by 1981, 97.6 per cent of all dwellings in the Borough of Tower Hamlets (formed in 1965 and including Poplar) were owned by local authorities. Despite the many working-class families in …

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Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs – Introduction

CHAPTER I – Introduction ’A massive gleaming financial centre surrounded by a shanty town’ was how a local man described the Isle of Dogs in 1986, commenting on the stark contrast that had emerged between the new large-scale office developments on the former dock estate and the public housing which occupied much of the remainder …

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