Canning Town is a diverse community which has recently benefited from numerous council-funded programmes. Custom House, historically a shipbuilding area, is home to the ExCel exhibition and conference centre, a 100-acre site by Royal Victoria Dock. Closer to Canning Town Underground Station the urban landscape is in transition with large areas under construction. Much of this growth has been prompted by slick Transport links, with multiple DLR stations, the Jubilee line, and an airport next door. The eastern part of Canning Town is mostly council-built: a post-war development programme erected numerous estates including the Keir Hardie and the Freemasons Estate; thus 70s tower blocks are a feature of the neighbourhood. Keir Hardie is a ‘good’ rated primary school and Hallsville is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

The locale’s history is a tale of the extremes. Canning Town in the north was developed after the railway arrived on Barking Road in 1847, ushering in a rapid process of urbanisation, attracting labourers to the growing industrial town. The nature of the neighbourhood, where chemicals, shipbuilding, and sugar refining were the dominant trades, was such that the dense population settled in rather dire living conditions – pressure on the sewage and drainage systems caused frequent outbreaks and epidemics. Industrial accidents were common as well: the Silvertown explosion from a local chemical factory produced the largest recorded detonation in London, leaving over 70 casualties, while the launching of the HMS Albion in 1898 tragically killed 38 when the ship collapsed at the ironworks. After WWII left much of the area desolate, the council replaced most of the locale with council housing.

Today, after much redevelopment, the Excel Centre attracts businesses, political conferences, and sports events to the area and its proximity to Canary Wharf has drawn developers to build impressive new apartment complexes.

The East End was traditionally thought of as the poorer part of the capital and up until recent times, was synonymous with organised crime. The notorious gangster David Hunt, the head of a vast criminal network, was thus a product of this east London locale, albeit one pertaining to a very different time. Hunt was known to his friends and enemies as ‘Long Fella’, on account of his height of 6ft and 5 inches.

Along with mobsters, Canning Town produced a steady stream of boxers including Terry Spinks and Bradley Stone, as well as comedians such as Reg Varney and Windsor Davies all of whom have families which once worked the Docklands. Despite Royal Victoria Docks at one point in time becoming known as “shipbuilders to the world”, in 1907, over a thousand labourers emigrated to Canada and Australia, upon the encouragement of the government, to escape the severe economic and social deprivation.

In some ways, the area lacks the feeling of organic growth that other parts of London might have. As mentioned previously, much of the neighbourhood consists of council-built estates, and much of the rest is currently under construction making it difficult to predict what the landscape will look like half a decade down the line.

While this transitional period is having a cooling effect on house prices, a local estate agent explains that “the majority of the people buying in the area tend to be young professionals”, evidently willing to gamble on what could blossom into another east London gem.

The newly renovated Custom House station recently brought the new Elizabeth Line within a 15 minute walk of the centre of this postcode. The area is therefore likely to remain attractive to developers beyond the £3.7 billion injection which is currently behind the construction of 900 new homes. The improved town centre will contain various amenities such as improved schools, leisure centres, workspaces and retail space. At the core of the new town centre, the glistening new Hallsville Quarter is spearheading the transformation to the area, creating a mixed-use pedestrian-only central hub which will be an integral part of the neighbourhood by the time the scheme is completed in 2024.