Thames Riverfront Quay

Canary Riverside along Westferry Road in London sits on the historic Isle of Dogs, where the West India Docks were built between 1800 and 1802 as London's first commercial wet docks. Led by merchant Robert Milligan, the fortress-like docks stretched nearly a kilometre long to moor 500 ships. Today, this former industrial waterfront has transformed into the Canary Wharf financial district, named after a 1936 fruit trade berth serving the Canary Islands.

London Β· from the walk β€œDocks, Deals & Dollars” Β· Generated

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Canary Riverside, Westferry Road, London E14 8RR

How did Canary Wharf on London's Isle of Dogs get its name?

Take a deep breath. Look out at the Thames in front of you... and try to imagine this scene two hundred years ago. Before eighteen hundred, ships arriving to unload goods in London crowded into the stretch of river between London Bridge and Wapping. Cargoes often rotted before they could be unloaded. The chaos was Staggering. Losses from pilferage alone were estimated at between two hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred thousand pounds a year during the seventeen nineties... a fortune in today's money. Gangs of river pirates known as "Heavy Horsemen" would literally stuff stolen sugar and coffee into hidden pockets sewn inside their coats.......... Something had to change. And the man who forced that change was Robert Milligan... a wealthy West Indies merchant, slave trader and ship owner, who returned to London having managed his family's Jamaica sugar plantations. Outraged at losses due to theft and delay, Milligan headed a group of powerful businessmen who lobbied Parliament for something revolutionary... enclosed docks with Walls.......... The West India Docks, constructed between eighteen hundred and eighteen oh two, were the first commercial wet docks in London. And the scale was breathtaking. They were enormous... almost a kilometre long, with moorings for five hundred vessels. The whole complex was built like a fortress, with high spiked walls, a moat, and its own police force.......... But here's the detail most people miss. The very road you're standing near... Westferry Road... gets its name from eighteen twelve, when a horse ferry was introduced alongside the passenger ferry to cross from this peninsula over to Greenwich. Before that road was built, the Isle of Dogs was practically wilderness... windswept marshland with barely a soul living on it.......... Now... the name "Canary Wharf" itself. No, it has nothing to do with canary birds. Number thirty two berth of West Wood Quay in the Import Dock was built in nineteen thirty six with a two-storey transit shed for Fruit Lines Limited, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines, for the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade... and that is how this entire financial district got its name. Bananas and tomatoes from the Cana-ry Islands!......... And here's the most delicious irony of all. The Canary Islands are named from the Latin Islas Canarias, which in English means... Islands of the Dogs. So you are standing on the Isle of Dogs... named after nobody knows quite what... looking at a financial empire named after the Islands of the Dogs. The coincidence is almost Too perfect.......... The first modern buildings were completed in nineteen ninety one, including One Canada Square, which became the UK's tallest building... but by the time it opened, the London property market had collapsed, and Olympia and York filed for bankruptcy in May nineteen ninety two. The greatest docklands gamble in history nearly failed before it began. Today, over one hundred and twenty thousand people work here... on land where dockers once hauled rum barrels and sugar hogsheads off ships from Jamaica.......... The Thames keeps flowing, as it always has. But what happens on its banks... that changes with every generation.

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