ABSTRACT
Long before Docklands was seen as the place to be and a decade before the LDDC came into existence, a newspaper article reported that
An East End construction company is building a block of 11 town houses on the Isle of Dogs-and the cheapest is £20,000… Now it is the “in” thing to live near the river-and the agents handling the sale of the houses are confident they will have no difficulty selling them… The scheme has met with a cool reception from Island Councillor Ted Johns who said “The frightening thing is that this is just the start of what is bound to happen in the future… The riverside is gradually being taken away from the East End and this must be realised before it’s too late.” (East London Advertiser 29 January, 1971)
Ted Johns’ comments were certainly prophetic, but it took 15 years before they were finally realized. “We sold our house” in the suburbs and “went to one of the first owner occupied houses to be built”, a man still living on the Isle of Dogs in the 1990s said. “The word ‘yuppie’ hadn’t been invented then.” [Although] house agents were busy…persuading people to go the Isle of Dogs, nothing happened …it didn’t take off at all”. “It was too early for the area”, an estate agent explained. “There was plenty the other side of London to be done…so you didn’t need this large lump of land on the East…there was no infrastructure, no nothing.” “People bought then…because they liked the area.” A view exemplified by a newcomer who moved to the Island in the seventies attracted by “the nature of the people”, “the community” and “sense of belonging”. “The whole quality of the East End cockney is gutsy”, he said.
