London 1981
Peter MARSHALL
Gun Wharves, Wapping, 1981
29g-32:,street, warehouses, Tower Hamlets,
You can click on the image to go to the next picture
Gun Wharves are an extensive set of buildings on both sides of Wapping High St immediately to the west of Wapping Station. Grade II listed, they were built in the late 1920s. According to the listing text:
The site now occupied by Gun Wharves, originally known as Wheatsheaf Wharf, had a warehouse building on it from at least the 1870s. In the 1890s it was called Sharpe's Wharf and in the early C20 it was a paper wharf. A company called Litchfield and Soundry appear to have redeveloped the site in the late 1920s as Gun Wharves.
The text also gives the reason for their listing, which took place a couple of years after I made these photographs:
Gun Wharves has special architectural interest as a handsome Thames riverside warehouse of the late 1920s, built with a giant arcade marking the divisions of the loading and window bays. The warehouses close the vista of Wapping High Street as the footprint of the building traces the curve of the street. Along with Warehouses E, F and G and King Henry's Wharves, with which Gun Wharves has group value, the ensemble creates one of the few 'cavernous' streets remaining in Docklands.
When I was making these pictures in 1981 at least some of the wharf buildings were still in use as warehouses, but shortly after they were all converted to luxury flats. You can just make out a lorry and two men on the second floor watching a load being lowered on to it by the crane operator on the floor above.
The management of the new flats used a graphic interpretation of one of my photographs in one of the entrances and several living there over the years have bought prints from me to hang in their flats.
The site now occupied by Gun Wharves, originally known as Wheatsheaf Wharf, had a warehouse building on it from at least the 1870s. In the 1890s it was called Sharpe's Wharf and in the early C20 it was a paper wharf. A company called Litchfield and Soundry appear to have redeveloped the site in the late 1920s as Gun Wharves.
The text also gives the reason for their listing, which took place a couple of years after I made these photographs:
Gun Wharves has special architectural interest as a handsome Thames riverside warehouse of the late 1920s, built with a giant arcade marking the divisions of the loading and window bays. The warehouses close the vista of Wapping High Street as the footprint of the building traces the curve of the street. Along with Warehouses E, F and G and King Henry's Wharves, with which Gun Wharves has group value, the ensemble creates one of the few 'cavernous' streets remaining in Docklands.
When I was making these pictures in 1981 at least some of the wharf buildings were still in use as warehouses, but shortly after they were all converted to luxury flats. You can just make out a lorry and two men on the second floor watching a load being lowered on to it by the crane operator on the floor above.
The management of the new flats used a graphic interpretation of one of my photographs in one of the entrances and several living there over the years have bought prints from me to hang in their flats.