Greenwich Peninsula

The Greenwich Peninsula is an area of Greenwich in South East London, England. It is bounded on three sides by a loop of the Thames, between the Isle of Dogs to the west and Silvertown to the east. To the south is the rest of Greenwich, to the south-east is Charlton.

Formerly known as Greenwich Marshes and as Bugsby's Marshes, it became known as East Greenwich as it developed in the 19th century, but more recently has been called North Greenwich due to the location of the North Greenwich Underground station (not to be confused with North Greenwich on the Isle of Dogs, at the north side of a former ferry from Greenwich). The peninsula's northernmost point on the riverside is known as Blackwall Point, and this may have led to the name Blackwall Peninsula sometimes being used in the late 20th century.

Landmarks include The Dome (also known by the current corporate logo The O₂ and previously the Millennium Dome), the southern end of the Blackwall Tunnel and the western end of the Silvertown Tunnel, but the area is now being substantially redeveloped with new homes, offices, schools and parks. Ravensbourne University London, a media and design university built on the peninsula in 2010, neighbours The O₂.

The peninsula was drained by Dutch engineers in the 16th century, allowing it to be used as pasture land. In the 17th century, Blackwall Point (the northern tip of the peninsula, opposite Blackwall) gained notoriety as a location where pirates' corpses were hung in cages as a deterrent to other would-be pirates. In the 1690s the Board of Ordnance established a gunpowder magazine on the west side of the peninsula, which was in operation by 1695, serving as the government's primary magazine (where newly milled powder was stored before it was sent out, on board specially equipped hoys). Alongside the magazine were a wharf, a proof house and accommodation for the resident Storekeeper. From the early 18th century, however, local residents began petitioning Parliament for the magazine (and its dangerous contents in particular) to be removed; this eventually led to the establishment of a new set of Royal Gunpowder Magazines down river at Purfleet, which was opened in 1765. By 1771 gunpowder was no longer stored at Greenwich, though the buildings remained in situ for some decades afterwards.

The peninsula was steadily industrialised from the early 19th century onwards. In 1857 a plan was presented to Parliament for a huge dock occupying much of the peninsula, connected to Greenwich Reach to the west and Bugsby's Reach to the east, but this came to nothing. Early industries included Henry Blakeley's Ordnance Works making heavy guns, with other sites making chemicals, submarine cables, iron boats, iron and steel. Henry Bessemer built a steel works in the early 1860s to supply the London shipbuilding industry, but this closed as a result of a fall in demand due to the financial crisis of 1866. Later came oil mills, shipbuilding (for example the 1870 clippers Blackadder and Hallowe'en built by Maudslay), boiler making, manufacture of Portland cement and linoleum (Bessemer's works became the Victoria linoleum works) and the South Metropolitan Gas company's huge East Greenwich Gas Works. Early in the 20th century came bronze manufacturers Delta Metals and works making asbestos and 'Molassine Meal' animal feed.

For over 100 years the peninsula was dominated by the gasworks which primarily produced town gas, also known as coal gas. The gasworks grew to 240 acres (0.97 km²), the largest in Europe, also producing coke, tar and chemicals as important secondary products. The site had its own extensive railway system and a large jetty used to unload coal and load coke. There were two huge gas holders, of 8.6 and 12.2 million ft³ (240,000 m³ and 345,000 m³). The larger holder, originally the largest in the world, was reduced to 8.9 million ft³ (250,000 m³) when it was damaged in the Silvertown explosion in 1917, but was still the largest in England until it was damaged again by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in 1978. Originally manufacturing gas from coal, the plant began to manufacture gas from oil in the 1960s. Its peak production of 400 million ft³ per day (11.3 million m³) in the mid 1960s is believed to have been the largest of any single site in the world. The discovery of natural gas reserves in the North Sea soon rendered the complex obsolete.

On the eastern shore was Blackwall Point Power Station; the original station from the 1890s was replaced in the 1950s by a new station which ceased operation in about 1981. On the western shore, a large area including the site of the Victoria linoleum works later became the Victoria Deep Water Terminal in 1966, handling container traffic.

At the southwestern end of the peninsula Enderby's Wharf was occupied by a succession of famous submarine cable companies from 1857 onwards, including Glass Elliot, W T Henley, Telcon, Submarine Cables Ltd, STC, Nortel and Alcatel.