The Voyage East – Gallions Reach Update

A year or so ago I posted on the Gallions Reach Hotel in Beckton, East London by the Royal Dock (click here) as part of my long running and slightly disorganised project to recreate a voyage from London to Shanghai (just put ‘voyage east’ in the search box and you’ll see a host of previous erratic posts). In the old days of the passenger liners heading to the Far East this was where you stayed before boarding your ship. Originally a carriage ride from central London, a train line was installed. If you read memoirs of Englishmen and women heading East in the nineteenth century the Gallions Reach Hotel pops up often in the first chapter. When I visited in 2008 it was a building site but amazing hadn’t been part of the horrific destruction of the East End courtesy of England’s two greatest enemies – The Luftwaffe and Thatcher. However, it wasn’t entirely clear what was going to happen to the old hotel.

Anyway some new news – according to the Royal Docks Trust (and I’ve been away from London too long to know if this is a quango you can trust or not) the Hotel is to be refurbished as a centrepiece for the development they call Royal Quay. According to the blurb on their site (which appears to be written by someone with only a passing acquaintance with the English language) Royal Quay will include, ‘Apartment buildings, paved plazas, restaurants and cafes have been designed around a new yacht basin, offering residents and visitors’ alike European style surroundings.’ This is is odd as there’s loads of flats there already and a yacht basin (though no yachts when I visited) and as for ‘European style surroundings’ – since when was Beckton and East London not in Europe? Of course the yuppies who get to decide what goes on in the East End these days mean ‘more like where we go on holiday in Italy’ by ‘European’. The idea apparently (and this is so 1980s it’s scary) is to turn the old Hotel into a ‘restaurant, health spa and small business centre’.

I’m in East London in February and will see what has happened – so expect a picture of a smoothie, a panini and a small businessman. Meanwhile here’s the old train station that used to drop off the passengers for the Far East back in the days when a spa meant Bath or a town in Germany and not just a glorified swimming hot tub. The first picture is a train arriving at the station in the 1890s and the second the station shortly before it shut in the 1940s and showing signs of bomb damage courtesy of the Luftwaffe.