The Royal Docks area - more correctly called the Royal Group of Docks - is named after three docks: the Royal Albert Dock, the Royal Victoria Dock and the King George V Dock. They are ’Royal’ being due to their naming after members of the royal family and not Crown ownership. The three docks once collectively formed the largest enclosed docks in the world, with a water area of nearly 250 acres - equivalent to the whole of central London from Hyde Park to Tower Bridge.

The docks were completed between 1855 and 1921 on riverside marshes in East Ham and West Ham. The Victoria and Albert docks were constructed to provide berths for large vessels that could not be accommodated further upriver. They were a great commercial success, specialising in the import and unloading of foodstuffs. There were rows of giant granaries and refrigerated warehouses being sited alongside the quays. They had a collective span of over 12 miles of quaysides serving hundreds of cargo and passenger ships at a time.

All the enclosed docks were taken over by the Port of London Authority (PLA) in 1909. The PLA completed King George V Dock in 1921 and reserved land to the north for a fourth dock, never built.

Although the Royal Docks suffered severe damage from bombing during the Second World War, they recovered but suffered a steady decline from the 1960s onwards, following the adoption of containerisation. They finally closed to commercial traffic in 1981. The docks’ closure led to high levels of unemployment and social deprivation in the surrounding communities.

The London Docklands Development Corporation undertook much work during the 1980s and 1990s to improve local transport and promote new residential and commercial developments in the area. Thousands of new homes were built at nearby Beckton.

An extension of the Docklands Light Railway opened in 1994 to provide direct links to the City of London and Canary Wharf. This was later extended around the south side of the docks with the link to London City Airport opening in December 2005.

A series of major developments have seen the construction of a new university campus for the University of East London and the ExCeL Exhibition Centre. The Royal Docks have also seen the development of London City Airport, opened in 1988. While the docks themselves have been preserved largely intact, little remains of the old infrastructure, although some historic warehouses and cranes have been preserved.