Its proximity to the river has given it a strong maritime character, which it retains through its riverside public houses and steps, such as The Grapes and Limehouse Stairs.

The area gives its name to Limehouse Reach, a section of the Thames which runs south to Millwall after making a right-angled bend at Cuckold's Point, Rotherhithe.

("Inquest held on the shore of the Thames by Lymhosteys for the death of Thomas Frank") 17 Aug, 5 Henry V. [A.D. 1417], inquest held before "les Lymehostes" within the liberty and franchise of the City, before Henry Bartone, the Mayor, and the King's Escheator, as to the cause of the death of Thomas Franke, of Herewich, late steersman (conductor) or "lodysman" of a ship called "la Mary Knyght" of Danzsk in Prussia.

Crews would be paid off at the end of their voyages and, inevitably, permanent communities of foreign sailors became established, including colonies of Lascars and Africans from the Guinea Coast.

The area achieved notoriety for opium dens in the late 19th century, often featured in pulp fiction works by Sax Rohmer and others.

By 1981, Limehouse shared the docklands-wide physical, social and economic decline which led to the setting up of the London Docklands Development Corporation.

In the mid-1980s, developments on the nearby Isle of Dogs (particularly at Canary Wharf), proved to be the catalyst to delivering infrastructure improvements which benefitted Limehouse and some other areas of the London Docklands.

[citation needed] The sheer scale of the Canary Wharf proposals, and, in due course, the rapid implementation of the first phase of development, provided the impetus to the transport improvements which completely altered prospects for Limehouse as well as for the Isle of Dogs.

Before this, Attlee's political views had been conservative, but he was shocked by the poverty and deprivation he saw while working with slum children, and this caused him to become a socialist.

[12] On 25 January 1981, MPs Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, William Rodgers and David Owen made the Limehouse Declaration from the bridge over Limehouse Cut in Narrow Street: it announced the formation of the Council for Social Democracy in opposition to the granting of block votes to the trade unions in the Labour Party to which they had previously belonged.

The area inspired Douglas Furber (lyricist) and Philip Braham (composer) in 1921 to write the popular jazz standard "Limehouse Blues",[14] which was introduced by Jack Buchanan and Gertrude Lawrence in the musical revue A to Z.

Much later, it was reprised in the ballet "Limehouse Blues" featuring Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer in the musical film Ziegfeld Follies (1946) and by Julie Andrews in Star!

The area also features in the Fu Manchu books of Sax Rohmer, where a Limehouse opium den serves as the hideout of the Chinese supervillain.

[16][17] More recently, the popular graphic novels of Alan Moore, From Hell (1989) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999) contain a number of references to the notorious criminality of the area in Victorian London.

The Limehouse district of London is depicted in the silent film Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919), directed by D. W. Griffith, "where the Orient squats at the portals of the West".

Further to the southwest, Narrow Street, Limehouse's historic spine, which runs along the back of the Thames wharves, boasts one of the few surviving early Georgian terraces in London.

Next to the terrace is the historic Grapes pub, rebuilt in 1720 and well known to Charles Dickens, featuring as the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in Our Mutual Friend.

Almost every building on the other side of Narrow Street was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War, including hundreds of houses, Taylor Walker & Co's Barley Mow Brewery and a school.

[21] On 22 April 1991, two trains collided between Limehouse and Poplar during morning rush hour, requiring a shutdown of the system and evacuation of passengers by ladder.

[27] Gilbert set up the Society of the New Art with Lord Burghley and the Earl of Leicester, who had their alchemical laboratory in Limehouse;[28] however, their attempts to transmute the black rock into gold proved fruitless.

[30] He rose through the sailing ranks from a poor cabin boy to a wealthy English privateer and eventually one of the Masters of the Royal Navy.

James McNeill Whistler[33] and Charles Napier Hemy[34] sketched and painted at locations on Narrow Street's river waterfront.