Greenwich Peninsula - PDF - Carmelacanzonieri.com

The site’s historyThe site that will shortly besupporting thousands of homeswas once at the heart of London’sindustrial backbone.Greenwich Peninsula was first recorded, in918 AD, as being an area of marshland. Thefirst human intervention on the Peninsula sawthe marshes reclaimed and turned into farmlandand later market gardens, whilst the riversideremained famous for its Whitebait fisheries.Henry V is reported to have travelled downfrom the Royal Palaces at Greenwich to exercisehis falcons on Greenwich Peninsula. But not allthe history of the site is so royal. There are talesof murderers, smugglers and villains creepingacross the flat, misty Peninsula marshes, makingtheir escape towards the open sea.From archaeological and historical recordswe know that the area supported abundantwildlife, but with the nineteenth centurycame industrialisation and much of the nativewildlife was lost.The site has been used for a range of industries,manufacturing munitions, chemical, steel,submarine cables, rope and soap, but theseuses were all dwarfed by the gasworks whichopened in 1887 and expanded to becomethe largest gasworks site in Europe. For almost100 years Greenwich Peninsula supplied gasto communities in south-east London, beforechanges in the industry saw the gasworksbecome redundant. By the mid-1980sGreenwich Peninsula was left largely derelictand contaminated by industrial waste.Above left to rightSaltmarsh terracing alongthe Peninsula riverside.Greenwich Peninsulacirca. 1960.An old coal jetty, since replacedby the Queen Elizabeth II Pier.Greenwich Peninsula 05