It was located on the north side of the River Thames near Island Gardens in the east of the city, and is not to be confused with the present-day North Greenwich station on the London Underground's Jubilee line, which is located on the south side of the river, one mile downstream on the Greenwich Peninsula.

[1] North Greenwich was the terminus of the Millwall Extension Railway (MER) branch of the London and Blackwall Railway, 4 miles 39 chains (7.2 km) down-line from the western terminus at Fenchurch Street, although services did not operate through to Fenchurch Street but instead connected to the Fenchurch Street-Blackwall service at Millwall Junction.

Opened in July 1872 (slightly later than the other stations on the branch) with the official name North Greenwich & Cubitt Town, it connected with a ferry service to Greenwich south of the river.

Traffic at the station was always light and, as with the rest of the MER, it closed to passengers in May 1926,.

When the DLR was extended to Lewisham in the 1990s, a new Island Gardens DLR station was built on the opposite side of Manchester Road, and the former site was demolished and replaced by a block of flats.