Leamouth

Leamouth is the area to the west of the mouth of the River Lee at the River Thames at gbmapping|TQ394807. The northern part of the area lies within a meander of the Lee; the southern part is bounded in the west by the former East India Docks, on two sides by the Lee and by the River Thames to the south. Forming two 'tongues' of land, sometimes mistakenly identified as a peninsula; the northern known as "Good Luck Hope" and the east pointing tongue as "Orchard House".

The later name derives from a manor house located on the spit; this site had become an eponymous public house from 1800–60. When the docks were constructed, the area became isolated, with the only access via the dock road, from Poplar. Residents were engaged at the glass works, the iron and engineering works, or the Samuda Brothers, Orchard House Yard and Thames Iron Works ship yards. When the Thames Plate Glass Works closed in 1874, many of the hands – who had migrated to the area from Tyneside and St Helens in the 1840s – now followed the glassworks to New Albany, Indiana. To house the workers, there were about 100 small two-storied cottages – built from the 1820s and condemned in 1935. [The cottages typically consisted of four rooms and a wash-house.] There was the Bow Creek school (founded in 1865), but few shops, and the Crown, a public house, opened about 1840. [Charles Lammin "Memories of Orchard House" (East London History Society, 1961)]

One street, "Orchard Place", runs through the former industrial area and the Lower Lea Crossing crosses the narrow strip of land between the two tongues. The northern part was principally occupied by Pura Foods Ltd vegetable oil refinery – on the site of the former Thames Plate Glass Works; and the south by engineering works, shipyards (Thames Iron Works and
Orchard House Yard) and Trinity Buoy Wharf which contains London's only lighthouse. There are also live-work units, many in the form of the Container Cities. The "Jubilee" pedestrian bridge across the Lee links the area to the east bank of the Lee, and Canning Town station.

The Leamouth Peninsula project is a scheme by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill that has received planning permission to create up to 1837 homes, a community centre, an arts centre, and a primary school with places for up to 371 children on the peninsula. The convert|1900000|sqft|m2|0 scheme will consist of extremely high density housing around a central core pedestrian route linking to the proposed lower Lea Valley linear Park - leading to the 2012 Olympic Park. There will be a mixture of towers, from convert|44|m|ft|0 to convert|85|m|ft|0 in height. [ [http://www.skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=942 "Leamouth Peninsula Approved"] (24 May 2007, Skyscraper News) accessed 16 June 2008] The scheme will be implemented in two phases, one north of the single access road to the site, the other to the south, around Trinity Buoy Wharf.

References

External links

* [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46544 "Leamouth Road and Orchard Place: Historical development", Survey of London: volumes 43 and 44: Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs (1994), pp. 646-655]
* [http://en.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?id=s0017895 A pedestrian and cycle bridge] connecting Leamouth to Canning Town tube station, opened in 2006.