St Katharine Dock
St Katharine Dock is probably the best known of all the
old London docklands to outsiders .
While the huge docks of the Isle of Dogs and beyond were hidden to anyone but East Enders themselves, tourists and Londoners alike only have to wander a few yards east of Tower Bridge to be in the heart of one of the relics of the Pool of London.
It was also one of the first of the moribund docks to be brought back to life: long before Canary Wharf and Yuppie housing were a twinkle in the planners’ eyes, St Katharine’s Dock had become a berth for luxury watercraft and a popular watering hole, thanks to the Dickens Inn and the Tower Hotel.
Royal connections
The Dock was a hugely ambitious but, in reality, never particularly successful venture. It was carved out of the banks of the Thames in 1827, marking a triumph of commerce over religion and bringing to an end the area’s centuries of history as a sacred site.
When St Katharine’s Hospital was pulled down in 1827 it brought to an end an association dating back to 1148, when Matilda of Boulogne, the wife of the usurping king of England, Stephen, established a hospital for the repose of her two deceased children.
It was also the start of a
long association with queens
of England. In 1273, Queen Eleanor, the widow of Henry III, kicked out the Prior
and brothers who had
been purloining funds, and re-established St Katharine’s with a new master.
Philippa of Hainault, the queen of Edward III, was
next to grant funds and found
a charity to benefit St Katharine’s, and the two Henrys V and VI later became benefactors.
The hospital benefited
further when its master, Thomas de Bekington, later the Bishop of Bath and Wells, obtained a Royal charter of privileges in 1445.
21-day feast
Thomas had cut a marvellous deal. The precincts of the hospital were declared free from all jurisdiction, be it civil or ecclesiastical, other than that of the Lord Chancellor. And to bolster funds, an ann-ual fair was to be held on Tower Hill, starting on the Feast of St James and lasting a full 21 days.
Short of being declared an independent state with its
own tax-raising powers, St Katharine’s couldn’t have had it better.
And St Katharine’s even escaped the grasp of that great dissolver of holy establishments, Henry VIII. In 1526, the king confirmed its rights, supposedly as a favour to his new queen, Anne Boleyn.
But the hospital was too rich a plum to remain unplucked forever. And in Edward VI’s reign, its lands were seized by the Crown. Then Dr Wylson, the secretary to Elizabeth I, tore up Henry VI’s charter and swiftly drew up a new one, conveniently leaving out any mention of Tower Hill Fair. He sold rights to the fair to the Corporation of London for the sum of £466, 13s and 4d.
The beleaguered hospital was ravaged by fire in 1672, when 100 houses were destroyed, and a storm in 1734 razed 30 more. Then, during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, a Protestant mob tried to destroy the church – its sin being that it was built in ‘Popish times’.
In the end it was not the greed of kings, the vagaries of nature, nor the bigotry of rioters that ended St Katharine’s. Big business saw it off in 1825, when the church was demolished to make way for the new docks.
The Gothic building, with stalls dating back to 1340, was unceremoniously razed and the hospital was no more.