The Dickens Inn, St Katharine Docks, London E1

Image: © Christine Matthews Taken: 27 Aug 2014

Quotation from the Dickens Inn website: The Dickens Inn is a restyled and reconstructed wooden warehouse building thought to have housed tea or to have been owned by a local brewery. It certainly existed at the turn of the 18th century and may well have been born in the 1700’s. The original building stood on a Thames side site just east of its current location. In the 1820’s its timber frame was encased in a more modern brick shell to make the warehouse conform to the architectural style of St Katharine Docks masterminded by the celebrated Scottish civil engineer “Thomas Telford”.This building came unscathed through the air raids of 1939/45 war, only to be condemned to demolition when the site was needed for redevelopment in the early 1970’s. The building was thankfully reprieved when the developers discovered the interesting timber frame concealed inside the drab exterior skin of brick. It could not, however, stay on its original site as this had been earmarked for housing under the St Katharine’s dockland development scheme. The 120 ton timber shell was therefore moved some 70 metres and erected on its present site. The original timbers, tailboards and ironwork were used in the restoration and the building reconstructed in the style of a three storey balconied inn of the 18th century. Photographs from this period make a fascinating display in the entrance to the current Dickens Inn. When Cedric Charles Dickens, grandson of the famous author Charles Dickens, formally opened the inn in May 1976 he said “My Great Grandfather would have loved this inn”

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