01

White Post Lane

Fish Island is a place of firsts and innovations: in the 1890s, resident oil distiller Carless, Capel & Leonard coined the name 'petrol'. A plaque at the corner of Wallis Road and White Post Lane announces that here in 1866, the world's first synthetic plastic was manufactured. It was called Parkesine, after its inventor Alexander Parkes.

02

Building Style

The local architectural vernacular includes robust stock-brick buildings with contrasting brick detailing, segmental arches, and large, metal-framed windows and pitched, flat and hipped roofs, as well as the saw-tooth roof of Queen's Yard.

03

Fish Island

The local architectural vernacular includes robust stock-brick buildinIn the 19th Century, the Hertford Union Canal and railway helped Hackney Wick and Fish Island to thrive, becoming a centre for processing crude oil and coal tar. The waterways almost moated the area just south of Hackney Wick, inviting local people to refer to this newly defined piece of land as 'the Island'.

In the 1860s, the Imperial Gas Light & Coke Company bought a 30-acre plot on the Island. The intention to build a vast new gas works changed following the purchase, and in 1876 a factory town was planned here instead. Gridded streets of terraced houses and factories were named after freshwater fish – including Bream Street and Dace, Roach and Smeed roads, and the area’s nickname evolved into 'Fish Island'.

gs with contrasting brick detailing, segmental arches, and large, metal-framed windows and pitched, flat and hipped roofs, as well as the saw-tooth roof of Queen's Yard.

04

Fish Island Village

The mixed-use residential-led Lanterna building is the 'pearl' in an innovative new creative and residential quarter called Fish Island Village, located in London's creative heartland.

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05

Carlton Chimney

Another Fish Island landmark is the Carlton chimney on Roach Road, a circular red brick stack with blue brick cornice built in 1900 for and by the builders J Chessum & Sons, as part of their yard at Crown Wharf.

06

Roach Road

Stour Space is an exhibition, performance and studio space and bar that shows and produces art and design, as well as promoting innovative creative enterprises. It has a focus on the local neighbourhood, the economy and sustainable regeneration, leading it to be listed as a valuable public venue in the local area by Tower Hamlets Council.

07

Stour Road

In 1902, John Broadwood & Sons – today the oldest piano manufacturer in the world – moved to its new factory on Stour Road, featuring state-of-the-art machinery and methods. When it was turned over to aircraft manufacture in WWI, the factory’s stock of piano wire was redeployed to hold biplanes together. The surviving section features the Carlton chimney at its western end, which was once the factory’ saw mill.

Roofing felt manufacturer Vulcanite was also at Stour Road from 1898, the building remodelled in the 1950s for printing machine and press manufacturer Frank F Pershke.

08

Smeed Road

In the late 1880s, the first factory to be built on Fish Island was Bernard Birnbaum’s Wick Lane Rubber Works, on Smeed Road. Balls of raw rubber were delivered here by boat, processed and then applied to fabric at the adjacent four-storey waterproof clothing factory. This building is now thought to be England’s only surviving 19th Century rubber works.

Since the 1980s most of the 14 buildings making up the Rubber Works have become artist workspaces, including Bridget Riley Studios. One of its residents is Daniel Heath, a British award-winning independent wallpaper, textile and surface designer renowned for his illustrative and engaging designs.

09

Dace Road

Britannia Works were built in 1898-99 for the Britannia Folding Box Company, a New York-based firm of milliners who were also printers and lithographers.

Today, Britannia Works houses the London Centre for Book Arts, an artist-run, open-access studio where people can print and bind books. It was founded in 2012 by artists Simon Goode and Ira Yonemura to provide resources for artists, designers and makers, as well as to run education programmes for the community.

10

Swan Wharf

Swan Wharf was built in 1906-12 for a haulage company. Today, it is home to Fish Island Labs, a joint venture by The Barbican and workspace innovators The Trampery that supports technology and creative start-ups. The Trampery is also to be the sole tenant at Peabody’s Fish Island Village, running studios and workspaces across the ground floor of the entire development.

11

Dace Road

In the 1930s, Percy Dalton opened his Famous Peanut Company at the Old Ford Works on Dace Road, using The Gatehouse from the neighbouring Britannia Works as an office. The company remained at 60 Dace Road until 2005, when it relocated to Suffolk.

Today, the former peanut factory houses creative businesses including Hey Big Man, a branding agency and web design company founded in 2013 by Mark Bennett and Josh Tinsley.

12

The London Stadium

The Olympics came to London in 2012, and today the area is cheek-by-jowl with the London Stadium and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

The area falls into the realm of the London Legacy Development Committee, which is committed to granting planning permission to new developments that respect the area’s industrial heritage and that serve its contemporary function as a major European centre of creativity and enterprise.