Quay Walls,Copings And Butresses To Import Dock And Export Dock

WEST INDIA DOCKS

Isle of Dogs

Quay walls, copings an buttresses to Import Dock and Export Dock.

I

Following the Act of 1799, the West India Docks were opened in 1802, the first and greatest of the enclosed security commercial docks, a pioneering civil engineering design by William Jessop with Ralph Walker, that created the modern Port of London after 1000 and set the precedent for commercial dock design. The Import Dock is the earliest, 1800-02, followed to south by the Export Lock of 1803-06. Totalling 54 acres and 2,600 ft long with an original impounded south of 23 ft, the quay wall are of sophisticated brickwork having a profile and counterfort buttresses, on a gravel bed. The ashlar granite copings have largely been renewed or concealed by jetties. The locks to the Blackwall Basin were enlarged later in the C19 but see West Ferry Road for the Limehouse Entrance lock to the former City Canal subsequently in the 1860s enlarged as the present South Dock. Expenditure on works from 1800 to 1806 amounted to the vast sum of ?l.1 million. These docks with Nos 1 and 2 warehouses (qv) are now the only surviving examples of the first intensive period of London dock construction: 1800-10.

Listing NGR: TQ3757380490