Oliver's Island

It was called Strand Ayt until a century after the English Civil War, by which time a myth had arisen that Cromwell had set up an intermittent headquarters at the Bull's Head, Strand-on-the-Green.

This was a wooden structure in the shape of a small castle, and a barge was moored alongside, from which the tolls were taken.

[3] Successor barges were often stationed here to collect tolls until a dock was built on the Surrey (south) shore.

A smithy was on the island by 1865 and it became a place where barges were built and repaired, the Thames Conservancy Works spanning its north shore and the facing the north shore; in 1857 the Thames Conservancy took over the above-mentioned roles of the City of London and in 1909 assigned the islet to the Port of London Authority (PLA), which used its small building as a storage depot and all its shores as a wharf, with crane, for derelict vessels.

[4] When the PLA tried to sell the island in 1971, the Strand on the Green Association, an amenity society formed by residents for their locality, led the protests.