Isle of Dogs
The Isle of Dogs is a large peninsula bounded on three sides by a large meander in the River Thames in East London, England, which includes the Cubitt Town, Millwall and Canary Wharf districts. The area was historically part of the Manor, Hamlet, Parish and, for a time, the wider borough of Poplar. The name had no official status until the 1987 creation of the Isle of Dogs Neighbourhood by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council. It has been known locally as simply "the Island" since the 19th century.[1]
The whole area was once known as Stepney Marsh; Anton van den Wyngaerde's "Panorama of London" dated 1543 depicts and refers to the Isle of Dogs. Records show that ships preparing to carry the English royal household to Calais in 1520 docked at the southern bank of the island. The name Isle of Dogges occurs in the Thamesis Descriptio of 1588, applied to a small island in the south-western part of the peninsula. The name is next applied to the Isle of Dogs Farm (originally known as Pomfret Manor) shown on a map of 1683. At the same time, the area was variously known as Isle of Dogs or the Blackwell levels. By 1855, it was incorporated within the parish of Poplar under the aegis of the Poplar Board of Works. This was incorporated into the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar on its formation in 1900.
Geology
The soil is alluvial and silty in nature, underlaid by clay or mud, with a peat layer in places. Etymology
The first known written mention of the Isle of Dogs is in the ‘Letters & Papers of Henry VIII’. In Volume 3: 1519–1523. 2 October 1520. No. 1009 – ‘Shipping’, there is a list of purchases, which includes:
The 1898 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable attributes the name: "So called from being the receptacle of the greyhounds of Edward III. Some say it is a corruption of the Isle of Ducks, and that it is so called in ancient records from the number of wild fowl inhabiting the marshes."[2] Other sources[1][3] discount this, believing these stories to all derive from the antiquarian John Strype, and believe it might come from one of the following:
a nickname of contempt: Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe wrote a satirical play in 1597, which was a mocking attack on the island of Great Britain, titled The Isle of Dogs, which offended some in the nobility. Jonson was imprisoned for a year; Nashe avoided arrest by fleeing the area. Samuel Pepys referred to the "unlucky Isle of Dogs."[citation needed] the presence of Dutch engineers reclaiming the land from a disastrous flood.[1] the presence of gibbets on the foreshore facing Greenwich.[1] a yeoman farmer called Brache, this being an old word for a type of hunting dog.[1] the dogs of a later king, Henry VIII, who also kept deer in Greenwich Park. Again it is thought that his hunting dogs might have been kept in derelict farm buildings on the Island. Now known as the area West Ferry Circus.[1][4] Isle of Dykes, which then got corrupted over the years.[
