Take the stairs down from Tower Bridge’s southern end and Shad Thames begins. The narrow lane, crossed overhead by iron bridges, is one of London’s most photogenic — but those bridges were never decoration. They were industrial gangways carrying sacks of tea and spice from warehouse to warehouse Fact.
The heart of the larder
The warehouses of Butler’s Wharf stacked tea, spices and grain in the nineteenth century — the physical heart of the “London’s Larder” nickname Fact. Left derelict when the docks died, they were converted from the 1980s into apartments and riverside restaurants Fact. Brunch now stacks where spice once did, but the wall cranes and warehouse names remain.
Dickens’ island
East of Shad Thames lies this riverside’s darkest layer: Jacob’s Island, a slum once ringed by tidal ditches, which Dickens made the stage for Bill Sikes’ end in Oliver Twist Fact. Only names and plaques remain, but that the larder’s plenty and the slum’s misery sat on the same riverside is a layer you cannot skip when reading this district.