The River Path The River Path
Wharves and Warehouses
Wharves were built along the big rivers, and out onto tidal foreshores to allow lighters to moor at high water and to continue loading as they settled onto the mud. Development increased throughout the 19th century, but the boom time came in the 1840s and 50s when most imports and all exports were exempt from duty - this was the time of the great building of warehouses. Mass concrete helped in the building of docks and hydraulic power worked swing bridges and cranes. In London these engineering innovations were matched by high standards of architecture of great warehouses with formal, often classical, references. In Liverpool they persist in the Doric colonnades of Albert Dock. Different docks dealt with different goods from spices to sugar, wool to grain, and some had a long history in human misery - Bristol and the slave trade, St Katherine's Dock in London with the transportation of offenders. Trade demanded vessels, the Tyne offered coal, iron and the construction of great ships. Beside many small rivers boat building yards jostled with fishing wharves and trading posts.
Parts of the dockland in Bristol and London still work hard, others have become recreational and living areas now, valued afresh for their position by water, and allowing people more easy access than for centuries. Some unfortunate consequences can also follow. Recent developments along the tidal Thames, for example, have encroached upon the foreshore: beaches are lost, the river profile changes, access to the edge of the river becomes private, and many people who make their living from small river-based activities find themselves priced out.
The picture above shows warehouses on Gloucester Docks.
