Nathaniel Fenner

Last updated

Nathaniel John Fenner was an oil merchant who owned a wharf in Millwall on the Isle of Dogs, London in the nineteenth century. Along with Robert Fairlie he came up with idea of developing the Millwall Docks. [1] He first asked Fairlie to draw up a plan to develop the empty land behind his wharf.

1949 map showing Fenner's Wharf in relation to the Millwall outer Dock Fenner's Wharf and Millwall Outer Dock Ordinance Survey 1940s-1960s.png
1949 map showing Fenner's Wharf in relation to the Millwall outer Dock

In 1856 with Henry James Fenner, Nathaniel had taken out a lease on a plot of undeveloped land which had previously been used as a garden and paddock, in Southern Millwall. Here they erected a two-storey wharehouse. [2] Having experienced difficulty when attempting to land cargoes at low tide, Fenner hit on the idea of an enclosed non-tidal docks for wharfingers created by building a 'canal' across the Isle of Dogs provided with entrance basins at each end and a central arm which would extend north towards the East and West India Dock Company's Timber Pond. [3]

Following the insolvency of the Millwall Iron Works, Ship Building & Graving Docks Company, the Fenner's took over the Nast House, which that company had previously occupied. From 1877 they used this premises for storing barrels of petroleum. They converted the Mast House, and erected brick internal walls. Also they sank a large pit where the Mast Pond had been, where they stored more barrels of petroleum. [4]

Related Research Articles

London Docklands Area in east and southeast London, UK

London Docklands is the riverfront and former docks in London. It is located in inner east and southeast London, in the boroughs of Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Newham, and Greenwich. The docks were formerly part of the Port of London, at one time the world's largest port. After the docks closed, the area had become derelict and poverty-ridden by the 1980s. The Docklands' regeneration began later that decade; it has been redeveloped principally for commercial and residential use. The name "London Docklands" was used for the first time in a government report on redevelopment plans in 1971 and has since been almost universally adopted. The redevelopment created wealth, but also led to some conflict between the new and old communities in the area.

Isle of Dogs Area in the East End of London, England

The Isle of Dogs is a large peninsula bounded on three sides by a large meander in the River Thames in East London, England, which includes the Cubitt Town, Millwall and Canary Wharf districts. The area was historically part of the Manor, Hamlet, Parish and, for a time, the wider borough of Poplar. The name had no official status until the 1987 creation of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council. It has been known locally as simply "the Island" since the 19th century.

Poplar, London Area of East London, England

Poplar is a district in East London, England, the administrative centre of the borough of Tower Hamlets. Five miles (8 km) east of Charing Cross, it is part of the East End.

Canary Wharf Major business and financial district in London, England

Canary Wharf is an area of London, England, located on the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Canary Wharf is defined by the Greater London Authority as being part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. With the City of London, it constitutes one of the main financial centres in the United Kingdom and the world, containing many high-rise buildings including the third-tallest in the UK, One Canada Square, which opened on 26 August 1991.

Woolwich Dockyard Naval dockyard in Kent, England; in use from 1512 to 1869

Woolwich Dockyard was an English naval dockyard along the river Thames at Woolwich in north-west Kent, where many ships were built from the early 16th century until the late 19th century. William Camden called it 'the Mother Dock of all England'. By virtue of the size and quantity of vessels built there, Woolwich Dockyard is described as having been 'among the most important shipyards of seventeenth-century Europe'. During the Age of Sail, the yard continued to be used for shipbuilding and repair work more or less consistently; in the 1830s a specialist factory within the dockyard oversaw the introduction of steam power for ships of the Royal Navy. At its largest extent it filled a 56-acre site north of Woolwich Church Street, between Warspite Road and New Ferry Approach; 19th-century naval vessels were fast outgrowing the yard, however, and it eventually closed in 1869. The former dockyard area is now partly residential, partly industrial, with remnants of its historic past having been restored.

West India Docks Historic dock site, now part of Canary Wharf area.

The West India Docks are a series of three docks, quaysides and warehouses built to import goods from and export goods and occasionally passengers to the British West Indies on the Isle of Dogs in London the first of which opened in 1802. Following their commercial closure in 1980, the Canary Wharf development was built around the wet docks by narrowing some of their broadest tracts.

Blackwall, London Area of the East End of London, England

Blackwall is an area of Poplar, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, East London. The neighbourhood includes Leamouth and the Coldharbour conservation area.

Millwall Human settlement in London, England

Millwall is a district on the western and southern side of the Isle of Dogs, in east London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lies to the immediate south of Canary Wharf and Limehouse, north of Greenwich and Deptford, east of Rotherhithe, west of Cubitt Town, and has a long shoreline along London's Tideway, part of the River Thames. It was part of the County of Middlesex and from 1889 the County of London following the passing of the Local Government Act 1888, it later became part of Greater London in 1965.

London Docklands Development Corporation

The London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) was a quango agency set up by the UK Government in 1981 to regenerate the depressed Docklands area of east London. During its seventeen-year existence it was responsible for regenerating an area of 8.5 square miles (22 km2) in the London Boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Southwark. LDDC helped to create Canary Wharf, Surrey Quays shopping centre, London City Airport, ExCeL Exhibition Centre, London Arena and the Docklands Light Railway, bringing more than 120,000 new jobs to the Docklands and making the area highly sought after for housing. Although initially fiercely resisted by local councils and residents, today it is generally regarded as having been a success and is now used as an exemplar of large-scale regeneration, although tensions between older and more recent residents remain.

Cubitt Town Area on the Isle of Dogs in London, England

Cubitt Town is a district on the eastern side of the Isle of Dogs in London, England. This part of the former Metropolitan Borough of Poplar was redeveloped as part of the Port of London in the 1840s and 1850s by William Cubitt, Lord Mayor of London (1860–1862), after whom it is named. It is on the east of the Isle, facing Royal Borough of Greenwich across the River Thames. To the west is Millwall, to the east and south is Greenwich, to the northwest Canary Wharf and to the north, across the Blue Bridge, is Blackwall. It is in Blackwall & Cubitt Town Ward of Tower Hamlets London Borough Council.

Millwall Dock

Millwall Dock is a dock at Millwall, London, England, located south of Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs.

Mudchute Park and Farm

Mudchute Park and Farm is a large urban park and farm in Cubitt Town on the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, just south of Canary Wharf. It is a Local Nature Reserve and a Site of Metropolitan Importance for Nature Conservation.

South Dock was a railway station on the Isle of Dogs in east London. It was between Millwall Junction and Millwall Docks on the Millwall Extension Railway (MER) branch of the London and Blackwall Railway (LBR) which opened to goods traffic on 18 December 1871 and to passenger services on 29 July 1872. The station was on the northern side of the South Dock of the West India Docks, near the eastern end. It had an island platform as it was the only passing loop on the branch. The station buildings were of timber with a slate roof. Platform was brick faced. Station was staffed entirely by dock employees, company issued its own tickets.

Limehouse Studios was an independently owned television studio complex built in No. 10 Warehouse of the South Quay Import Dock. This was located at the eastern end of Canary Wharf in Limehouse near the Isle of Dogs in London, which opened in 1983. The building was demolished just six years later, in 1989, to make way for the Olympia & York development of Canary Wharf which now occupies the site. The opening of the studios was commemorated with a programme called Celebration which featured host Gary Wilmot and artists including Bonnie Langford.

Burrells Wharf Residential estate in London, England.

Burrells Wharf is a riverside residential estate, owned by its leaseholders, in London, England. It is situated in Docklands on the Isle of Dogs and the North bank of the River Thames. The residential estate is one of 18 buildings or groups of buildings on the peninsula to be architecturally listed as buildings of special interest or importance.

City Canal Former canal excavated across the Isle of Dogs in east London

The City Canal was a short, and short-lived, canal excavated across the Isle of Dogs in east London, linking two reaches of the River Thames. Today, it has been almost completely reconstructed to form the South Dock of the West India Docks.

A1206 road (Great Britain)

The A1206, also known as the Isle of Dogs Distributor Road, is a crescent-shaped ring road around the Isle of Dogs, in the East End of London. It is made up of Westferry Road, Manchester Road and Prestons Road and is the main road through the area, connecting parts of the London Docklands.

The Millwall Iron Works, London, England, was a 19th-century industrial complex and series of companies, which developed from 1824. Formed from a series of small shipbuilding companies to address the need to build larger and larger ships, the holding company collapsed after the Panic of 1866 which greatly reduced shipbuilding in London. Subsequently, a recovery was made by a series of smaller companies, but by the later 19th century the location was too small for the building of ships on the scale then required. Most of its buildings, being near the apex of the peninsula in the Isle of Dogs, survived the Blitz and have been made into apartment blocks in a residential estate, Burrells Wharf.

The Millwall Freehold Land and Dock Company was a 19th-century company set up to develop the central area of the Isle of Dogs in London's East End. Originally called the Millwall Canal, Wharfs and Graving Docks Company, the Act for the incorporation of the company received royal assent on 25 July 1864.

References

  1. Stone, Peter (2017). The History of the Port of London: A Vast Emporium of All Nations. Barnsley: Pen and Sword. ISBN   9781473860407.
  2. "Southern Millwall: The Byng Estate in Southern Millwall | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. British History Online. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  3. Guillery, Peter (1990). "Building the Millwall Docks" (PDF). Construction History. 6.
  4. "Southern Millwall: Drunken Dock and the Land of Promise | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 7 April 2019.