Isle of dogs?

Question

Where did the name come from?

Answer 1

The Isle of Dogs in history

The peninsula called the Isle of Dogs was originally known as Stepney Marsh. Some of the marsh was drained in the 13th Century, and in the latter 14th Century a chapel was built to serve the spiritual needs of the small agricultural community which had grown in the area. This way of life came to an abrupt end in 1448 when the embankment keeping out the river was breached and the land reverted to marsh.

The earliest reference to the area as the Isle of Dogs is on a map of 1588. This makes it possible that one of the attributions for the origin of its name, as the place where Henry VIII kept his hunting dogs, could be true. On the other hand, it could equally well have been a dismissive term. At any rate this early mention rules out another theory, which is that the name comes from the dykes and windmills erected by Dutch engineers in the 17th Century to drain the marsh. Although they were successful, people were not in a hurry to move to the Isle of Dogs and the Chapel House Farm was probably the only building on it in the 18th Century, other than a pub which is believed to have been established on the site of today's Ferry House pub at Island Gardens. The pub served the needs of people travelling across to Greenwich in the ferry which plied the Thames from here until it was made redundant by the opening of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel in 1902.

In Poplar to the north of the Island is the oldest surviving building in London Docklands, St Matthias. This was built in 1654 as the chapel of the East India Company.

Answer 2

The origin of its name is unclear. It is first mentioned on a map from 1588, and it has been speculated that Henry VIII, whose Palace of Placentia stood in Greenwich on the other side of the river, had his hunting dogs kennelled there.

Answer 3

'ave you seen some of the birds they got working dahn canary wharf?