Blackwall Yard

In 1607, the Honorable East India Company (HEIC) decided to build its own ships and leased a yard in Deptford.

In 1614 the East India Company outgrew Deptford and ordered William Burrell to begin work on a new yard for repair, construction and loading of out-going ships.

The site Burrell selected was at Blackwall, which was further down river and had deeper water, allowing laden ships to moor closer to the dock.

In many cases the owners who chartered their vessel to the East India Company had them built at Deptford and Blackwall.

Johnson went on to expand the yard, which continued to build and repair ships for the East India company as well as other activities.

The Anglo-Dutch wars of the late 17th Century resulted in too much work for the royal dockyards, and the Navy Board under Samuel Pepys began to commission third rates from Blackwall which was by then the largest private yard on the Thames.

[2] It was at this time that the Perrys began construction of the large Brunswick Dock to the east of the yard, opened in 1790.

In the 1830s the London and Blackwall Railway isolated the northern part of the remaining site, which the company then sold off.

During World War II the dock was seriously damaged by bombing and it was later filled in and used as a fuel oil storage yard by Charringtons.

Part of the site is now occupied by the northern ventilation shaft of the second Blackwall Tunnel and the rest by housing.

Greens continued building wooden ships longer than Wigrams, including 25 naval vessels, 14 of them 200-ton gunboats, during the Crimean War.

Their head office was located at the YMCA Building in Greengate Street, Plaistow E13, and they remained there, almost at the last occupants, until the company finally moved out in 1981.

[8][9][10] In 2021, plans to redevelop the 1.7ha Blackwall Yard were published, including five buildings ranging from nine to 39-storeys tall, with the former graving dock to become an open-air swimming pool.