The Urban Environmental History of West Ham and the River Lea

[Originally published on the Global Urban History website: globalurbanhistory.com]

By Jim Clifford, University of Saskatchewan

Greater London’s population increased by five million during the nineteenth century and the city developed into a major center of industry, transforming the marshlands of the Thames Estuary into polluted and crowded urban landscapes. The rich collection of nineteenth-century London maps make digital mapping a powerful tool for exploring the environmental history of West Ham, the River Lea, and Greater London. The interactive map of factories digitized from the five feet to the mile Ordinance Survey, displays the historical Geographic Information Systems database at the core of my book West Ham and the River Lea: A Social and Environmental History of London’s Industrialized Marshland, 1839–1914.

Sliding between the early 1870s and the mid-1890s shows how factories migrated to the eastern suburbs as industry expanded in Greater London. West Ham was London’s most populous suburb and it became the center of Greater London’s industrial economy. The River Lea braided into multiple streams in West Ham, providing transportation for the coal barges that helped fuel a wide range of industries. Large factories also developed along the Thames, south of the docks, in a region called Silvertown. One of the nineteenth century’s most compelling examples of the relationship between environmental and social history comes together at the confluence of two rivers, where heavy industry and a population of more than a quarter of a million coexisted in an independent suburb. [read more]