the rise of ROTHERHITHE

The river, though, is not the only way of getting around from Rotherhithe. With tube stations servicing Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Canada Water and Surrey Quays,as well as Overground trains running north/south through Surrey Quays, Canada Water and Rotherhithe, the area is well-connected to say the least.

Thanks to the imminent redevelopment and upgrade of the retail and leisure complex at Surrey Quays, the next ten years is likely to see a big change in the area’s popularity and property value, even though prices have already seen a sharp upward turn in the last decade. Rotherhithe has often been considered the more desolate, distant end of Bermondsey – the ‘wrong side of the street’ to Wapping and the urban edge to Greenwich – but now this space between other desirable areas is rising on the swell of demand as people are catching on to its benefits and relatively low prices.

Rotherhithe’s history is surprisingly rich and still celebrated today, one example being the shopping centre’s naval facade. For a thousand years it has been a natural port for London, gaining its name from hrȳther + hȳth; the Anglo-Saxon for “landing-place for cattle”. The first recorded use of this name was in 1105, as Rederheia. Perhaps the delivery point for farm animals transported from the Isle of Sheppey and the farms of Kent, it was the watery gateway for food and trade into the capital.

By 1350 King Edward III had a palace built on the marshy rivers edge, although it could have been considered more of a hunting lodge for his falcons and a place to stay away from the plague-ridden London populous than a palace of luxury. The remains of the palace can still be seen, modestly resting in an open grassy square at the water’s edge at Bermondsey Wall East.

“The Mayflower picked up 102 English Separatists and headed off to the New World

Skip forward two hundred years to 1620, in front of the Mayflower pub (then called ‘the Shippe’), and you would have seen The Mayflower set sail to Southampton, where it picked up 102 English Separatist passengers and headed off to the New World, where they would become known as America’s founding ‘Pilgrim’ fathers. From these original travellers have come some surprising and hugely influential descendants including Presidents Franklin D Roosevelt, George W. Bush and John Adams as well as entertainers Bing Crosby, Clint Eastwood, Richard Gere, Orson Wells and Marilyn Monroe.

More recently the docks at Surrey Quays and the tunnel to Wapping built under the Thames by Isambard Brunel’s father and son team carved Rotherhithe out as a port and hub central to the surge in London’s, and the country’s, industrial revolution. It remained this way until the outbreak of the war when on the first day of the Blitz, Surrey Quays was heavily bombed, the raid igniting over a million tonnes of timber in Quebec Yard, causing the most intense single fire ever seen in Britain.

It seems a long time to remain dormant but Rotherhithe’s history is huge and the seventy years that have passed since have not weakened it for the long term. Now, from these ashes, like a mythical Phoenix, Rotherhithe is rising to be glorious again.

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