Bordered on three sides by the River Thames, this former marshland is now a sprawling industrial and residential area known as the Greenwich Peninsula, incorporating a golf course and one of the UK’s largest venues, the O2 Arena, formally the Millennium Dome. The Emirates Airline cable car is also a highlight of the area, providing great views of east London for tourists and a new way to cross the river for residents. The cable car is fully integrated into TFL allowing passengers to tap in and out afterall. Apart from a few quaint, understated Georgian terraces which would have belonged to dockworkers, the majority of the residential sites are luxury high rise flats, which started to spring up at the turn of the millennium, thousands more of which are scheduled to be finished by 2025. Currently much of the area is taken up by building sites, large car parks, and the southern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel, but the new builds and pipeline developments are attracting an affluent population to the peninsula. Its proximity to the city, much improved transport links – North Greenwich Station, opened in 2000, is on the Jubilee Line – and its stunning river views mean the area is increasingly sought after. Despite the industrial feel of the neighbourhood, there is a surprising amount of green space, with Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park to the south and other park spaces dotted around.

The Greenwich Peninsula was entirely marshland until it was drained by Dutch engineers in the 16th century to be used as grazing land for livestock. It was not until the 1690s that the area began development, when the Board of Ordnance built a gunpowder store on the western side. By the 18th century, though, residents began petitioning the government out of fear that the store could be a danger to the population and it was relocated down the river. The area was steadily industrialised during the 19th century bringing oil mills, ship builders, cement manufacture and, predominantly, gas works to the peninsula. One of the gas holders built housed 12.2 million square feet of gas and for a long time was the largest in the world, and the whole site remained the biggest manufacturer of gas from coal, until the discovery of North Sea gas reserves rendered the site obsolete. Public and private investment began the evolution of the area in the 1990s, leading to the construction of the Millennium Dome and North Greenwich Station in 1999. This slow development continued until the 2012 Olympics, when the interest in the land skyrocketed.

The peninsula’s life as marsh and then industrial land, means that it was barely a residence to anyone, let alone the famous. However, it may well have been the final resting place of many notorious pirates who were captured by the British Navy and hanged at Blackwall Point.

Anthony Gormley’s famous sculpture Quantum Cloud is located beside the dome. The 1999 piece stands at 30m tall, even taller than Gormley’s Angel of the North, and is inspired by quantum physicist, Basil Hiley, who hypothesised a mathematical structure underlying space-time and matter. Gormley’s sculpture was designed using a computer algorithm that positioned the metal sections as if they were emanating from a central figure, which forms the outline of a body.

The video for one of the most famous British songs of all time, Blur’s 1994 hit Parklife, was shot on Greenwich Peninsula, with much of the video taking place outside The Pilot public house. The band was formed slightly south of this neighbourhood in New Cross, where the members attended Goldsmiths university together.

Besides the Millennium Village and a few other complexes, the area’s current status as a building site or tourist destination means that it is only truly busy during events, and otherwise occupied by site workers and the small number of current residents.

At the moment the whole area is mostly a building site with numerous developments in the works, indeed, since widespread construction began in 2013, the peninsula is set to be almost unrecognisable by 2025. Unfortunately the striking design of Santiago Calatrava architect’s three dramatic glass towers, that were planned to sit on top of North Greenwich Station, have been scrapped. The innovative design was recently deemed “too difficult to build” while the retail space provided was said to be unnecessary. Nonetheless, the Upper Riverside development was recently completed and provides 1,000 new homes on land adjacent to Santiago Calatrava’s proposed site. Future neighbourhoods will include another 1,500 new homes in 24 storey towers, as well as two new schools, and 48 acres of open public space.