The Royal Victoria Dock opened in 1855, creating a need to house dock workers and their families. New settlements around the dock developed including the areas now known as West Silvertown. The casual nature of dock work meant poverty and squalid living conditions. Lacking water supply and sewage system, leading to the spread of cholera and smallpox.

The Royal Albert Dock was opened in 1880, and finally the King George V Dock in 1921.

On 19 January 1917, parts of Silvertown were devastated by a huge explosion at the Brunner-Mond munitions factory, killing 73 people. 900 local homes were flattened, and 60 000 buildings damaged

The artist Graham Sutherland visited Silvertown in 1941 and, in the aftermath of the Blitz saw “the shells of long terraces of houses, great ― surprisingly wide ― perspectives of destruction seeming to recede into infinity. The windowless blocks were like sightless eyes.”

After the devastation of the Second World War, developments altered the character of the area. Dunlop Point and Cranbrook Point were two 22-storey blocks containing 264 dwellings which were began in 1964 and completed in 1967. As part of the Barnwood Court Estate, the two blocks won a Civic Trust Design Award in 1968 for their architecture. Alas, things deteriorated to the point, whereby in 1994 residents voted in a tennants’ ballot for their demolition. In August 1998 both blocks where pulled down.

Until the early 1980s riverside factories and quayside warehousing occupied the area. Since the closure of most of them, Silvertown has been undergoing regeneration. In 2015, the Newham Council approved a £3.5 billion redevelopment plan.

Westwood Road is now a pedestrianised walkway rather than a road and not shown on most maps.




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