Bricking it near the folly on the foreshore at Cubitt Town, Isle of Dogs

After my visit to The London Museum yesterday for the Mudlarking exhibition, I felt the need to be in the quiet open space of a foreshore at the water's edge, simply watching the boats and birds go by. I headed West towards the Blackwall side. 

To get there, I had to navigate the high rise hell of the Canary Wharf zone. I had to remove my baseball cap for fear of it being blown away by the wind whipping through the tall metal structures. I noticed there was not a hat to be seen anywhere except hard ones worn by workmen constructing the next lump. When I reached the Blue Bridge (which is actually grey) I stopped to take in the views West across at the watery expanse of South Dock, and East to The Millennium Dome (for that is/was its name when it was born!)

Just north of this bridge, on the river side at Coldharbour, there is a little enclave of houses evoking a time before the glass towers were built, although The Gun pub, a Grade II listed building, is not quite the working men's boozer that it would have been until the 1970s, but it's still a nice place to stop for a waterside drink. The map shown below is on the wall inside there and I'm showing it alongside a terrace of Victorian buildings that remains just south of the bridge, making a visual contrast between then and now:

The tall buildings replace a group of little streets on the north side of the dock that was previously Fenner Wharf and Pier Head Cottages, interesting because a tall modern neo-Deco building on the river side, at the junction with Stewart Street, is today called Pier Head:

Near here, at Folly Wall is John Outram's superb 1980's Deco Revivalist construction – hard to believe that this delighful concoction is actually the Isle of Dogs Sewage Pumping Station. I love it! An Egyptian temple jumbo jet hangar hybrid! The road name references Thomas Daver's folly, a little faux fort that was built here in the 1760s. 

And so to the foreshore... with easy access via a slipway or steps along the Thames path at Amsterdam Road. 

I really like this beach. I wandered down to the water's edge and spotted a fragment of brick tile that seemed to say BELGIUM. I took a photo. Two metres away I saw a yellow brick stamped with FARNLEY, a Leeds company:  

It reminded me of the many brick makers I spotted on the foreshore at Battersea 11 years ago 

and so I wandered about looking for more...

Oh, almost forgot... this area is called Cubitt Town, named after the man who made it possible, William Cubitt, brother of architects Thomas (Belgravia) and Lewis (KX station).