We have a new route for our Old East End walk. It’s now both crammed with history but also a really lovely walk. We start in the pre industrial old Wapping of Execution Dock and salty seadogs. Then it’s the early docks and charming old warehouses, the country’s first police station, an old pub that claims a connection with a famous painter and a huge dock wall built to keep goods in and dodgy characters out. There’s a little park which still has hints of its less pleasant history, a little changed Victorian workhouse, a huge docks basin built at the start of the industrial revolution and a spot where two of Britain’s most famous Victorian doctors worked at the same time for the poor just a couple of streets from each another. We then enter an area remarkably unchanged since the early 1800’s, having avoided the bombs of two world wars and the 1960’s brutalist rebuilding that ruined so much of the East End. This includes a lane where a famous film director with a link to an infamous local murderer was brought up. We also see a fine leafy area with an historic church, grade listed buildings from Georgian to Victorian times, plus historic old tenements built for the Edwardian poor.
Start Wapping Overground station
Finish Stepney Green underground station or Blind Beggar pub
Shorter walk alternative – Same start and finish point but take DLR from Shadwell to Limehouse midway through the walk