ABSTRACT
The Mill wall Docks are at the heart of the Isle of Dogs, the peninsula formed by the great east London oxbow in the Thames (Fig. 1). They are now within the London Docklands Development Corporation's Enterprise Zone and, over the past few years, have been the scene of frantic building activity. There is scarcely a single structure of pre-Thatcherian vintage on the quays of the Millwall Docks, but the docks themselves, a reversed-L on plan, survive largely as built. The story of the construction of these docks lies very much in the fearful gap between a developer's vision and its successful realisation. Conceived in the early 1860s, a time of great economic confidence, the Millwall Docks were completed in 1868 following a hard fought battle through an unpromising flotation and the disastrous Crash of 1866 [1].
