It’s silver and huge, reminiscent of Sydney Opera House but designed to protect London from rare but potentially lethal high tides. The gates are pivoted; they open and close by turning through 90 degrees.

The Royal Docks, with water area of 93 hectares, comprised the largest enclosed, impounded dock water in the world. London’s docklands helped to win the Second World War. Three thousand convoys sailed from here between 1939 and 1945. Docks were closed for shipping in 1981. The redundant cranes towers above the modern West Silver Village are piquant reminder of the past.

Furthest east in Tower Hamlets, tucked away dusty, potholed side road, beyond a nature reserve and a line of derelict factory building, is Trinity Buoy Wharf, the home of London’s only lighthouse.

It is known in its lower reaches as Bow Creek, formed the historic boundary between the old counties of Middlesex and Essex. During the nineteenth century it become highly industrialized, with shipyards, oil mills, ironworks, chemical works and a plate glass factory all nearby.

The docks were for exclusive use of vessels engaged in the East Indies trade. Their trade was in goods of high value. The times of sailing were regulated by weather conditions in the Indian Ocean. The increasing export trade at the East India Docks encouraged the idea of railway link from north quay.

The name is probably derived from an old settlement of the Saxon Belingas, who formerly possessed this “gate” or “opening” to the River. The scene presented here, at early morning, is full of life. Fishmongers from all parts gather around the salesman’s stalls.

Concordia Wharf and Jacob’s Island, The part of Bermondsey which Charles Dickens described as, “the filthiest, strangest and most extraordinary of many localities that are hidden in London”. Also, here in St. Saviour Dock Bill Sykes, in Charles Dickens’novel Oliver Twist, falls from a roof and dies in the mud. Dickens gives a vivid description of the dock.

Close by, a narrow passageway alongside the Town of Ramsgate pub leads to Wapping Old Stairs where, in 1671, Colonel Thomas Blood (1618 – 80) was apprehended while trying to escape with Charles II’s crown jewels.

Here pirates and mutinous seamen were brought to hang with great spectacle and ceremony. The scaffold stood on the river bed. The unfortunate Captain Kidd was dispatched here in 23 May 1701 and his body was put into an iron cage hanging along the River Thames, where it would serve as warning for other pirates.

Victims were left dangling while the tide washed over them three times. By the time the river had finished with them the bodies were filled with water a grotesquely bloated, and there are those who like to say that this was the origin of the word “whopper” (Wappinger).

It was built in 1858 and is the only original warehouse still standing in St. Katherine Docks today. Elephant tusks were imported into London in large quantities. At its peak in the 1870s, nearly 200 tons of ivory covered its floors annually, amounting to almost 4000 dead elephants, Aside from ivory, the warehouse also handled other luxury imports such as perfume, shells, and wine in the expansive basement vaults.

Here were produced light forged components for ships, using wrought iron. Once, the largest ship in the world “Great Eastern” was built in opposite warehouse. Because it was so large the ship could not be launched stern first, in case the stern dug into the river bed. So Brunel built it to be launched sideways.

These massive timbers are thought to be the partial remains of the slipway from which Isambard Kingdom Brunel’ s “Great Eastern” was launched.

Today, the Isle of Dogs is a strange mixture of New York skyline, glass towers, council blocks, smart new terraces and rows of drab public housing.

Originally constructed in 1937 for handling cargoes of fruit from the Canary Islands, is now the most visible sign of the immense regeneration happening in London’s docklands, which began in the mid 1980s and still spreading eastwards.