Warehouses And General Offices At Western End Of North Quay

The warehouses and general offices at the western end of North Quay were originally part of an extraordinary range of nine warehouses divided by single-storey link buildings, extending over half a mile in length and built between 1800 and 1804. The original design by architects George Gwilt & Son included 'low warehouses' at the western and eastern ends and in the centre, with 'high warehouses' in between. In 1827, John Rennie raised the low warehouses by two storeys, bringing their cornices level with those of the high warehouses. Only Warehouses Nos. 1 and 2 survive today; the remainder were destroyed by bombing during the Second World War.

The Warehouses

The warehouses are constructed of stock brick with Portland stone dressings. The northern elevations use cheaper plum brick. The main blocks rise five storeys plus an attic, with a semi-basement below quay level. Stone cornices and a blocking course cap the structures, which have triple-span hipped slate roofs. The top storeys feature semi-circular windows, and stone string courses run horizontally across the facades. The lower link buildings have walls that curve inwards and stone-capped buttresses.

No. 2 Warehouse was built between 1800 and 1802 by contractors Messrs Adams & Robertson and is the earliest multi-storey warehouse to remain intact in the Port of London. The cast-iron stanchions supporting the timber floors date from 1813-18 and are the earliest remaining in a London multi-storey warehouse. These replaced oak storey-posts to increase load capacity. Between 1998 and 2000, FSP Architects converted No. 2 Warehouse for developers Manhattan Loft into a mixture of apartments, restaurants and shops.

No. 1 Warehouse was constructed between 1802 and 1804 by contractors Fentiman, Loat & Fentiman. Originally a low warehouse, it was raised in height in 1827. The interior suffered severe fire damage in 1901 but was restored almost to its original state immediately afterwards. The building was converted by architects Purcell Miller Tritton and Partners to become the Museum in Docklands, which opened in 2003.

The Dock Office

Built against the buttressed boundary wall of the Import Dock, the Dock Office was constructed in 1803-4 and remodelled as a ledger office in 1827 by Rennie. The stock brick building has a main southern elevation of two storeys featuring a tetrastyle Doric portico complete with triglyph frieze and mutule cornice. The western elevation has curved walls, a stone-coped parapet and supporting buttresses, one of which carries a chimney. The door is approached by steps with wrought-iron handrails and has an architrave surround, double panelled doors and a flat bracketed hood above. To the north are two round windows and three round-arched windows; to the south are two later windows.

Historical Context

The West India Import Dock, of which Warehouses Nos. 1 and 2 and the Dock Office form part, opened in 1802. It was the first dock in London designed and built specifically for trading, established by the West India Dock Company to meet the needs of the West India trade. In 1797, this trade accounted for nearly a third of London's imports and nearly a fifth of its exports. Dissatisfaction with existing facilities at the Legal Quays, situated between London Bridge and the Tower of London, led to two rival schemes being proposed: one at Wapping and the successful scheme at the Isle of Dogs. The West India Docks were for the exclusive use of the West India trade and were granted a twenty-one-year monopoly of that trade. The chief promoters were Robert Milligan and George Hibbert, both men with substantial West Indian interests.

The first warehouses, including No. 2 Warehouse, were pressed into service when the Import Dock opened in 1802. The other warehouses of the North Quay were completed by 1804. Writing in 1955, S. H. Kessels observed that at twice the length of the Palace of Versailles, the development outreached "all the palaces and great houses of Europe", whilst the Survey of London describes the buildings as "one of the great monuments of European Commercial Power". Rum warehouses opened on the south side of the Import Dock in 1806, and the Export Dock opened in the same year.

The trade which the West India Docks were built to facilitate is often described as 'triangular'. Ships left England loaded with goods used to buy slaves on the west coast of Africa; those slaves would then be carried to plantations of the West Indies; and the ships would return to England with the products of those plantations. Goods were stored at the West India Docks at either end of this operation. Cargoes carried for trading in Africa included cloth, beads, guns, and even rum produced on the plantations. The principal imports were sugar, rum, coffee, pimento, mahogany and dye wood; cocoa, ginger, Madeira wine (the only non-West Indian cargo) and cotton were also handled. The warehouses on the North Quay stored all imports until the opening of the Rum Warehouses, after which rum and Madeira wine were carried there. Before the opening of the Export Dock, the North Quay warehouses were also used for export goods. Following the 1807 Act abolishing the slave trade, these exports were destined for the use of plantation owners, residents and slaves, and included clothing, building materials, household goods, victuals and wine.

In 1827, the twenty-one-year trading monopoly of the East India Dock Company expired, and the low warehouses of the North Quay were raised to receive East India private trade goods, sugar produced by slaves in Mauritius, and tea. After the abolition of British colonial slavery in 1833, the West India Docks, together with other London docks, continued to receive coffee from Cuba and Brazil, where slavery was to continue until 1886 and 1888 respectively. The West India Docks remained in use until 1980.

Significance

The surviving buildings of the West India Import Dock occupy a unique place in the history of the British slave trade. Intended for the exclusive use of the West India trade, as endorsed by the West India Dock Act of 1799, the warehouses were built expressly to receive the products of slavery and are the only surviving buildings of their kind in Britain to be linked to the slave trade in this direct and unambiguous way. In November 2007, the Museum in Docklands, housed in No. 1 Warehouse, opened a permanent gallery entitled London, Sugar & Slavery, which examines the history and legacy of the capital's involvement in transatlantic slavery.

Warehouses Nos. 1 and 2 and the Dock Offices now form part of the West India Dock Conservation Area. Also falling within this area are the 'Round House', built as a guard house by George Gwilt (1804-5); the former Excise Office building by Thomas Morris (1807-9), with its railings and gatepiers; John Rennie's Quadrangle Stores of 1825; five West India Dock Company Police houses in nearby Garford Street (by John Rennie, 1819); the sailmakers' and chandlers' warehouse at no. 11 West India Dock Road; and two of the original three stone piers of the entrance gates to the West India Docks. All of these are listed, as are the quay walls, copings and buttresses to the Import Dock and Export Dock.

A stone dedication plaque, originally placed on No. 5 Warehouse, has been re-sited on the western flank wall of the Dock Office building. The plaque describes the building of the West India Docks as part of "an undertaking which under the favour of God, shall contribute Stablity, Increase, and Ornament to British Commerce." A bronze statue of Robert Milligan (c.1746-1809, statue 1812), original promoter of the Docks, stands on the North Quay outside the entrance to No. 1 Warehouse, the Museum in Docklands.