Blackwall, London
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- This entry concerns the area London known as Blackwall. For the type of merchant sailing ship first built there and named after it, see Blackwall Frigate
Blackwall is an area of the East End of London, situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is perhaps most well-known for having given its name to the Blackwall Tunnel, which passes under the adjacent River Thames to north Greenwich.
There was a railway from Minories to Blackwall via Stepney (called the London and Blackwall Railway). It ran a distance of three and half miles. Much of the current DLR track around Limehouse and Blackwall is on the old viaducts. This was authorised in 1836 as "The Commercial Railway", running close to Commercial Road in the East End.
It has been the home of such noted seamen as Horatio Nelson and Walter Raleigh. In 1606 it was the departure point of the colonization of North America launched by the London Virginia Company. It was also the site of one of the largest shipbuilding yards on the Thames, which operated from the early seventeenth century until the late twentieth century. Its best known operators were members of the Perry, Green and Wigram families.
Blackwall is also the location of a fictitious fire-station featured in the London Weekend Television series London's Burning.
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