Wapping
the birthplace of the man who wrote Amazing Grace, and what else the docks left
Wapping is a strip of riverside a mile long and two streets wide, and it kept more of its eighteenth century than almost anywhere else in east London because so little was rebuilt after the docks closed. The churches, the charity school, the hydraulic power station and the stairs down to the foreshore are all within a few hundred metres of each other, and so is the birthplace of the man who wrote Amazing Grace.
Why the buildings survived
Wapping was bombed and then emptied. When the docks went, the population went with them, and for two decades there was no commercial reason to knock anything down and no money to do it with. By the time the money arrived the surviving buildings were listed.
The result is a place where a 1656 church foundation, a 1719 school and a nineteenth-century warehouse conversion stand within sight of each other, and the gaps between them are where the bombs fell.
The entries
St Paul's, Shadwell
302 The Highway E1 Nearest station: Wapping
First built in 1656 and rebuilt in 1820, and known as the church of sea captains: Captain James Cook had his eldest son baptised here in 1763, and Jane Randolph, mother of Thomas Jefferson, was baptised here in 1720. Fourteen sea captains are buried in the churchyard.
Raine's School
Raine Street E1 Nearest station: Wapping
Founded in 1719 by Henry Raine, a local brewer, for fifty boys and fifty girls, and one of the earliest purpose-built charity schools in London still standing. The original building is now in community use; the school itself continues elsewhere in Tower Hamlets.
Wapping Old Stairs
Wapping High Street E1 Nearest station: Wapping
One of the surviving sets of river stairs, running down between buildings to the foreshore, and the kind of access point that made this a working riverside rather than a view of one. Execution Dock, where pirates were hanged and then chained at the low-water mark until three tides had covered them, was close by. Fishermen from Ramsgate sold their catch at the stairs, which is where the pub beside them gets its name.
John Newton was born here
Wapping E1 Nearest station: Wapping
The author of Amazing Grace was born in Wapping in 1725, went to sea at eleven, and commanded slave ships out of Liverpool before renouncing the trade, taking orders in the Church of England and writing the hymn, which was published in 1779. He lived long enough to give evidence to Parliament in support of abolition and to see the trade abolished in 1807, the year he died. Wapping is his birthplace and the reason he appears in a guide to this parish.
The Town of Ramsgate
62 Wapping High Street E1W 2PN Nearest station: Wapping
A narrow pub beside Wapping Old Stairs, Grade II, listed in 1973 for its beamed ceilings, plank panelling and engraved glass screen, and for the group it makes with Oliver's Wharf and the Pier Head railings. Historic England describes the building as eighteenth-century on an earlier foundation; the pub itself claims a licensed presence on the spot since the mid-sixteenth century, which is a claim about the site, not the fabric. The story that Judge Jeffreys was seized here in 1688 is repeated so often that the listing itself carries it, with the word reputedly doing a lot of work. He was not: see the questions below.
The Prospect of Whitby
57 Wapping Wall E1W 3SH Nearest station: Wapping
The pub everyone is sent to, and the claims on it need unpicking. Grade II and listed as early as 1950; Historic England says the original building is said to be of about 1520, and then describes what is actually standing — a yellow brick rebuilding of the early nineteenth century, three storeys, recessed sashes, a hooded balcony over the river, some eighteenth-century dado panelling inside. So the site is early Tudor and the building is Georgian. It was The Pelican, then the Devil’s Tavern, before it took its present name. The careful version of the superlative is that it stands on the site of the oldest riverside tavern, not that it is the oldest riverside pub, which the Town of Ramsgate also claims and the Mayflower and the Angel across the river dispute. The noose hanging at the waterside is a modern ornament: Execution Dock was at the other end of Wapping, by Wapping Old Stairs. The Pepys, Dickens, Turner and Whistler regulars come from the pub’s own copy and from nowhere else.
St Peter's London Docks
Wapping Lane E1 Nearest station: Wapping
Grade I listed and one of only thirteen such buildings in Tower Hamlets. Begun in 1865 and restored after bomb damage, it hides a remarkable interior behind a plain brick exterior, with stained glass by Margaret Rope telling the story of the parish.
The hydraulic power station
Wapping Wall E1W 3SG Nearest station: Wapping
Built in 1890 by the London Hydraulic Power Company, which pumped high-pressure water through mains under the streets to work lifts, cranes and theatre machinery across central London. It was the last such system anywhere in the world to close, on the 30th of June 1977. Grade II* listed, and the reason is inside: two accumulator towers, two cast-iron tanks, the inlet and filtration fittings and mains of six, seven and eight inches all survive in place, with only the pumps replaced, in the 1950s. From 1993 to 2013 it held the Wapping Project, an arts venue and restaurant that left the machinery standing among the tables; the freehold was sold in 2013 and the building has been under redevelopment since. It is not open to visitors, and no source confirms what occupies it now, so do not believe a listing that names a tenant.
Questions
Was Judge Jeffreys arrested at the Town of Ramsgate?
No, though its own listing says he reputedly was. James II fled on the 8th of December 1688 and Jeffreys hid aboard a collier off Wapping disguised as a sailor. On the 12th he went ashore into the Red Cow, an alehouse in Anchor and Hope Alley near King Edward’s Stairs, where a scrivener who had been before him in a chancery case recognised him. A mob gathered, the train-bands got him out and took him to the Lord Mayor, who fainted at the sight of him, and Jeffreys asked to be sent to the Tower rather than face the street. He died there on the 18th of April 1689, aged forty-one, of kidney disease. The Hanging Judge name comes chiefly from the Bloody Assizes after the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685: of 1,381 people convicted, about 160 to 170 were executed and several hundred transported. The figure of seven hundred hangings that circulates is inflated.
Is Wapping on the Underground?
No, and it matters for planning. Wapping station is on the London Overground, in zone 2. Shadwell has the DLR and the Overground. The nearest Underground stations are Tower Hill and Whitechapel, both about a mile away, so everything on this page is an Overground or a walking trip.
Did John Newton land enslaved people at Wapping?
No, and the claim turns up in more than one guide to the area. Newton commanded slave ships sailing out of Liverpool, and the triangular trade carried its captives to the Americas and the Caribbean, not to the Port of London. Wapping is where he was born, which is connection enough: the parish produced the man who wrote the best-known hymn in the English language and spent his later life arguing against the trade he had worked in.
Was Captain Cook connected to Wapping?
He lived in the parish for a time and had his eldest son baptised at St Paul's, Shadwell, in 1763. The church's association with sea captains is not decorative: fourteen are buried in the churchyard, which reflects what the parish did for a living.
Is Execution Dock marked?
Not officially, and its exact position is disputed. It stood on the foreshore somewhere near Wapping Old Stairs, where the condemned were hanged and left until three tides had washed over them. The pub names along the street keep the memory better than any plaque does.
Can you get down to the river here?
At several points, by the old stairs, and it is worth doing at low water. The stairs are public but unlit, steep and slippery, and the tide comes in faster than people expect. Check the tide table, not the weather.
What happened to the docks?
London Dock closed in 1969 and the rest of the upstream system followed within a decade, as container shipping moved downstream to Tilbury. The basins were filled in or converted; Wapping's population fell by most of itself and then came back as something entirely different.
Elsewhere on this site: guide to London statues, bluecoat figures.