Pier Street, Cubitt Town, Isle of Dogs, London, E14

Image: © David Hallam-Jones Taken: 2 Apr 2016

An entrance to Mudchute Park and, in due course, to its farm. It is a Local Nature Reserve and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation. The park now covers 13 hectares (32 acres) and the local authority - the London Borough of Tower Hamlets - describes the farm as the largest urban farm in Europe. When Millwall Dock was being constructed in the 1860s, spoil from the excavation of the dock and silt from its channels and waterways were dumped on nearby land, using a conveyor system. Frederic Eliot Duckham (father of Alexander Duckham, who founded the lubricating oil company) invented a pneumatic device that pumped the liquefied waste through a pipe over East Ferry Road, dumping it on the other side of it. Thus the name "Mudchute" derives from the area being the former dumping ground for this waste. After WWII, Mudchute continued to be owned by the Port of London Authority (PLA) but in the early 1970s, when the PLA realised that Millwall Docks would close in the foreseeable future, they negotiated with the Greater London Council to transfer the land to them for house building. However, the Association of Island Communities launched a successful campaign to make sure the land became an open and public space. The newly formed Mudchute Association leased the land (all except that land which was leased to ASDA) from the Council, and a farm and garden was established in 1977.

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