Rowe's map of London, westminster and Southwark, exhibiting the various improvements to the year 1804, detail showing the London and west india Docks
A canal and the two West India docks now cut across the neck of the Isle of Dogs to provide shipping with a shortcut across its marshy peninsular. A wall around its edge holds back the tidal Thames while windmills on the windy west side pump water from the marsh. As industry spreads, wealthy residents are lured away to the fashionable new suburbs rising to the west of London. Turnpikes appear, on the Hackney Road for example: an indication of the growing need for good roads and the money to maintain them. From the tangle of older streets, the line of the proposed new Commercial Road shoots straight across the open fields.
The British LibraryRowe
1804