The Hope and Orchard
Throughout the middle ages Orchard Place was green and rural, remaining that way into the late 18th century.
Orchard House and its orchard, which took up most of the eastern branch, was owned by Mr Wright from 1743-1766.
Goodluck Hope took up much of the northern branch of the peninsula and belonged to the Manor of Stepney. It had a cooperage, a fishery, grazing meadows and a good sized house, called Handlebury. It was also known as Hanbury or Handle Hall and was demolished in 1804.
In 1810 Robert Wigram, who was an East India merchant who had helped to set up the East India Dock Company, in 1803, bought Goodluck Hope, calling it the Wigram Estate.
In 1815 the East India Company bought Orchard House, as the new East India Docks were just next door.
The first industry on Bow Creek was a copperas works. Bow Creek was ideal for this work as London Clay was full of iron pyrites, from which copperas could be extracted. Copperas, an iron sulphate, was used as an ingredient in sulphuric acid, as a fixative for wool and, up until the 19th century, it made the black of ink.
By the late 18th century competition from the north had grown too strong for copperas works in the south. This, along with other factors, saw the last of the copperas works close, early in the 19th century.
Mapping History
Between 1700 and 1820 Orchard Place was transformed from a semi-rural backwater to a busy centre of national importance for trade and industry. So many businesses sprang up, went bust or grew and moved that the maps of 19th century Orchard Place are different every decade.
The Age of Iron and Steam
In 1810 an iron bridge was built to provide a road linking East India Docks and Canning Town, but had to be torn down, in 1887, after a collier barge crashed into it.
In 1840 a railway was opened to link Orchard Place with the City, with trains leaving from Fenchurch Street and arriving at Blackwall station. This would become the London and Blackwall Railway that not only transported goods, but people who were taking trips to the seaside via a paddle steamer. These steamers went to Gravesend and Rosherville Gardens, Northfleet.
In 1862 the Great Eastern Railway was formed, running services to East Anglia. It's locomotives were built at Stratford, while the engine sheds were just up river from Orchard Place.
In 1902 the Midlands manufacturers, Baldwins Limited, brought the Blackwall Galvanised Iron Company to Orchard Place, where they had workshops for much of the 20th century. One of the directors was Stanley Baldwin, who would go on to become Prime Minister.
The Thames Plate Glass Company
The Thames Plate Glass Company, founded in 1835, was the only plate glass factory in the South of England, and was famed for the size of glass it produced and for the finish. No other glass company could match the size of glass produced here. Nearly half of its employees were women, as their 'superior delicacy of touch' allowed for better grinding and polishing of the glass.
Its glass was used for lenses, mirrors, theatre scenery and the Bow Creek Lighthouse, which still stands, and in which Michael Faraday experimented.
In 1862 Henry Dircks and John Pepper used Thames Plate Glass to create a theatrical optical illusion that would go on to be called 'Dr Pepper's Ghost'. So popular was this illusion that the company sold out of Ghost glass.
Well known for embracing the latest technologies, the Thames Plate Glass Company was the first to use the glass rollers designed by Sir Henry Bessemer.
In 1874, following competition from the North, and abroad, the company closed.
