Shadwell Basin is a housing and leisure complex built around a disused dock in Wapping, London. The old dock was formerly part of the London Docks and historically in Shadwell where it takes it namesake from, a group of docks named and built by the London Dock Company at Wapping and is part of the wider docks of the Port of London. Today Shadwell Basin is one the most significant bodies of water surviving from the historical London Docks. It is situated on the north side of the riverThames east of the Tower of London and Tower Bridge and west of Limehouse. Unlike some of the London Docks which have been landfilled, Shadwell Basin, the most easterly part of the complex, has been retained. It is now a maritime square of 2.8 hectares used for recreational purposes and is surrounded on three sides by a waterside housing development designed by British architects MacCormac, Jamieson, Prichard and Wright. The residential buildings are four and five storeys with façades of alternating open arches and enclosed structure, echoing the scale of traditional 19th century dockside warehouses, with a colonnade at quayside. Shadwell Basin is a popular public route for cyclists, joggers and pedestrians with a walkway alongside the water as part of the linked open spaces and canals between the river and Hermitage Basin near St Katharine Docks to the west.
History
The London Docks expanded eastward in the 1830s with the opening of the Eastern Dock and Shadwell Basin. To provide these new docks with access to the river, a new entrance at Shadwell was built. Opened in 1832, it was named Shadwell Entrance. By the 1850s, the London Dock Company had recognised that the entrances at both Wapping and Shadwell were too small to accommodate the newer and larger ships coming into service. In 1854-58 the company built a new larger entrance and a new basin at Shadwell linked to the west part of the docks by Eastern Dock and the short Tobacco Dock. Even by the start of the 20th century the docks in Wapping had become outdated as steam power meant ships were built too large to fit into them. Cargoes were unloaded downriver and then ferried by barge to warehouses in Wapping. This system was uneconomic and inefficient and one of the main reasons that the docks in Wapping were the first to close in the 1960s. The London docks complex closed to shipping in 1969. Purchased by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Shadwell Basin and the western part of the London Docks fell into a derelict state, mostly a large open tract of land and water. Acquired in 1981 by the London Docklands Development Corporation, redevelopment of Shadwell Basin took place in 1987 resulting in 169 houses and flats being built around the retained historic dock.
Landmarks
St. Paul's Church, Shadwell — the Church of Sea Captains
