Beckton
From Free net encyclopedia
Current revision
Template:Infobox London place Beckton is a place in the London Borough of Newham, located 8 miles (12.8 km) east of Charing Cross.
Its boundaries are the A13 trunk road to the north, Barking Creek to the east, the Royal Docks to the south, and Prince Regent's Lane to the west. The area around Prince Regent's Lane is also known as Custom House. Modern Beckton is divided into East Beckton, Mid Beckton, North Beckton, West Beckton, and Cyprus (named for the British capture of Cyprus from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, which occurred as the original estate was being built).
History
Until 1965 Beckton was part of Essex and from 1894 it was divided between Barking Urban District (later municipal borough) and East Ham Urban District (later county borough). Some territory near the Thames was historically part of the Woolwich parish of Kent and became part of the County of London in 1889. It formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich from 1899 until it was transferred to Newham in 1965.
Situated north and east of the Royal Docks, the area was formerly a heavily industrialised part of Greater London, and was the location of the largest gasworks in Europe, which served the capital; the area itself was named after Simon Adams Beck, the governor of the Gas Light and Coke Company when work began on the site in November 1868. Beckton Gasworks also had a huge by-products works producing a wide variety of products including ink, dyes, mothballs, and fertilisers, all by-products of the process of turning coal to coke in the production of town gas. When Britain switched from town gas to North Sea natural gas in 1969, the gasworks closed.
The other major Beckton industry, the sewage treatment works, is still thriving. First established in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette's scheme to remove sewage (and hence reduce disease) from London by creating two huge sewer pipes from the capital, one on each side of the Thames, the sewage works is Britain's largest and is now managed by Thames Water. The outfall sewer has been landscaped and now also serves as the Greenway cycle track through East London. Originally sewage was pumped untreated into the Thames, and this contributed to the high death toll in the 1878 Princess Alice disaster, when over 600 died in Britain's worst inshore shipping tragedy. The site was mooted in 2005 as the location for a desalination plant, but the proposal was rejected by Mayor Ken Livingstone as environmentally unacceptable.
In more recent times, industry has left the area, leaving huge areas of brownfield land, and Beckton has been redeveloped as part of the Docklands project. It now comprises mainly housing and several out-of-town shopping centres, and the architecture is mostly post-1982. Small areas of Victorian housing survive in Winsor Terrace, originally built as accommodation for Gas Light and Coke Company staff, and in the 'Nottingham' estate off Prince Regent Lane. It is served by local buses and Beckton DLR station, which acts as the terminus of the DLR's Beckton branch. The Victorian 'Cyprus' estate was rebuilt in the 1980s, but the original Cyprus public house survives. Image:Beckton.jpg
Future
Transport for London are planning a new bridge, the Thames Gateway Bridge, which will connect Beckton to Thamesmead on the southern bank of the River Thames.