Beckton
Beckton is a place in the London Borough of Newham, located 8 miles (12.8 km) east of Charing Cross.
Its boundaries are the A13 trunk road to the north, Barking Creek to the east, the Royal Docks to the south, and Prince Regent Lane to the west. The area around Prince Regent Lane is also known as Custom House. Modern Beckton is divided into East Beckton, Mid Beckton, North Beckton, West Beckton, and Cyprus (named for the British capture of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, which occurred as the original estate was being built).
History
Until 1965 Beckton was part of Essex and from 1894 it was divided between Barking Urban District (later municipal borough) and East Ham Urban District (later county borough). A small area on the Thames was historically part of the Woolwich parish of Kent and became part of the County of London in 1889. It formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich from 1899 until it was transferred to Newham in 1965.
Situated north and east of the Royal Docks, the area was formerly heavily industrialised, and was the location of the largest gasworks in Europe, which served the capital; the area itself was named after Simon Adams Beck, the governor of the Gas Light and Coke Company when work began on the site in November 1868. Beckton Gasworks also had a huge by-products works producing a wide variety of products including ink, dyes, mothballs, and fertilisers, all by-products of the process of turning coal to coke in the production of town gas. When Britain switched from town gas to North Sea natural gas in 1969, the gasworks closed.
The other major Beckton industry, the sewage treatment works, is still thriving. First established in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette's scheme to remove sewage (and hence reduce disease) from London by creating two huge sewer pipes from the capital, one on each side of the Thames, the sewage works is Britain's largest and is now managed by Thames Water. The outfall sewer has been landscaped and now also serves as the Greenway cycle track through East London. Originally sewage was pumped untreated into the Thames, and this contributed to the high death toll in the 1878 Princess Alice disaster, when over 600 died in Britain's worst inshore shipping tragedy. The site was mooted in 2005 as the location for a desalination plant, but the proposal was rejected by Mayor Ken Livingstone as environmentally unacceptable.
In more recent times, industry has left the area, leaving huge areas of brownfield land, and Beckton has been redeveloped as part of the Docklands project. It now comprises mainly housing and several out-of-town shopping centres, and the architecture is mostly post-1982. Small areas of Victorian housing survive in Winsor Terrace, originally built as accommodation for Gas Light and Coke Company staff, and in the 'Nottingham' estate off Prince Regent Lane. It is served by local buses and Beckton DLR station, which acts as the terminus of the DLR's Beckton branch. The Victorian 'Cyprus' estate was rebuilt in the 1980s, but the original Cyprus public house survives (named The Ferndale).
Immediately after the Second World War, large numbers of prefabs were built in Beckton, to house those made homeless by the war. The prefab-lined streets were all named after well-known generals and war heroes, but in the redevelopment of North Beckton in the 1980s, these were all swept away with the exception of Eisenhower Drive.
Containerisation during the 1960s, and the development of the docks at Tilbury, released all the land from the Thames up to the A13 which had been earmarked for a new, North Albert Dock. The original District Plan envisaged a large Council-owned estate, and major infrastructure works - including a huge drainage scheme with pumping stations - were put in place. However, following the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation, much of the land was sold off resulting in today's blend of largely private housing.
The Gasworks were still extant - although derelict - in the early 1980s, when Stanley Kubrick's team came scouting for an area that could double for the battle scenes in his 1987 movie, Full Metal Jacket. The Gasworks rough concrete structures were painted with Vietnamese script, and then strategically dynamited so as to resemble war-torn Hue. Retail parks now cover most of the Gas Works site.
A 25 metre high toxic spoil-heap from the Gasworks was landscaped in the 1980s to create 'Beckton Alps'; this became a dry-ski-slope for a time, opened by Diana, Princess of Wales, with a viewing platform at the summit and a swiss-style bar at the foot. However, the site is now derelict.
Other notable movies filmed in and around the Beckton Gasworks area during the 1980s included Michael Radford's 1984 feature film adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (which used the Gasworks as the setting for the "Proletarian Zones") and Andrew Birkin's 1990 film of Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. The latter film starred Serge Gainsbourg's daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, who could often be seen (at the time of filming) shopping in the aisles of ASDA. In several scenes of The Cement Garden, aircraft can be heard taxiing at the nearby London City Airport. Winsor House, which served as the backdrop to the movie was later demolished and the Winsor Lodge Hotel stands there now. The 1986 movie Biggles: Adventures in Time was also filmed there; and in the opening minutes of the 2007 Simon Pegg film Hot Fuzz, the Tate & Lyle factory, Silvertown, and the City Airport aprons can be seen through the window blinds of Building 1000.
In the early 21st century, Beckton burgeons south and further east, towards Gallions Reach. "Gallions Hotel", part of the Furlong City development by the lock that links the Royal Docks to the Thames, was formerly a rail terminus which connected with passenger ships leaving for all parts of the British Empire. Many colonial officials and their families spent their last night in Britain in the Gallions Hotel, which was mentioned by Rudyard Kipling in his novel, The Light That Failed.
Education
- For details of education in Beckton see the London Borough of Newham article
Gallery
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Henry Addlington Close in Beckton
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Gallions Hotel
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Building 1000 -
Stonechat Square Mid-Beckton
Building 1000, by Royal Albert Station, is a dramatic dockside structure with a full-height glass atrium. Newham Council have considered relocating some offices to Building 1000), which been the backdrop to several films. Three more similar buildings are planned on the site.
Beckton is at the western end of the London Riverside redevelopment zone of the Thames Gateway. Transport for London are planning a new bridge, the Thames Gateway Bridge, which will connect Beckton to Thamesmead on the southern bank of the River Thames.
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