Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Head to the mills
THIS FORGOTTEN DOCK DOMINATED TRADE IN AND OUT OF LONDON FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS
SILVERTOWN isn’t a place many Londoners will know.
Tucked away between the river and the now disused Royal Docks, the area was defined by the big industries that were setup in the 19th Century.
Household Words, the weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens, described the area as “a place of refuge for offensive trade establishments turned out of town, those of oil-boilers, gut-spinners, varnish-makers, printers’ ink-makers and the like”.
While some businesses still operate from the area, such as sugar refiners Tate & Lyle, many more have closed or moved out to the docks at Tilbury.
Their abandoned warehouses and factories sit empty, a broken echo of the area’s roaring industrial past.
The massive Millennium Mills are one such memorial.
Built in 1905, they stand on the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock.
You wouldn’t know it now, looking across the quiet waters of the basin, but the docks dominated trade in out of London for more than a hundred years.
The mills were perfectly sited for importing grain from across the world; once refined the produce would then be sent into the city to feed hungry Londoners.
In 1917, a tragic explosion at a nearby munitions factory killed 73 people and destroyed huge amounts of Silvertown, including the mills.
Although they were rebuilt in 1933 in the art deco style seen today, the mills were extensively damaged in the pummelling the Luftwaffe gave all industrial areas of England during WWII.
The millers who owned the site once again rebuilt and they were back in operation by 1953.
An eerie reminder of the past
The docks and the surrounding industries limped on but their decline was underway; the nature of international shipping was changing.
Large shipping containers replaced the smaller break bulk cargo that required so many dock workers to handle.
The grafters once trusted with unloading cargo were replaced by massive cranes.
The ships that carried these new containers were much larger with deeper keels, too deep for the London docks.
The Royal Victoria Docks closed in 1981 and the mills closed shortly after.
Although now empty, the mills still have a particular resonance with Londoners and visitors alike – they are decrepit symbol of old London.
They are probably the closest thing London still has to William Blake’s “dark Satanic mills”.
Their hulking remains have been used in the making of various films over the years, most recently in Marvel blockbuster SpiderMan: Far From Home.
The mills have also starred in Derek Jarman’s The Last of England, spy thriller The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and even family film Paddington 2.
Despite the high security and the risk of injury, the mills are also very popular with urban explorers.
But Silvertown is changing; billions have been invested since 2015 to improve the area and the mills are set to be redeveloped within a few years.