HAY’S GALLERIA - LONDON
Shops, Restaurants and Shipping History
The Hay’s Galleria is not exactly a shopping mall, but a bit of urban redevelopment which has transformed a former industrial wharf from London’s Thames shipping days into an architectural partially enclosed mall visited by tourists and inhabited by stores, restaurants and offices. With its location as a passage between the Thames riverside, just opposite to the Tower of London (see Tower of London) and overlooking the HMS Belfast at rest in the river (see HMS Belfast), the Hay’s Galleria makes for a pleasant stop for lunch or a drink for London visitors at its many watering holes, filled at mid-day by the denizens of the surrounding office buildings, or after work before boarding a train at the new London Bridge train station just next door. The glass arcade ceiling high above, stretched between the roofs of the former warehouse buildings provides an enclosed space, but not entirely indoors. The floor of the galleria which now holds tables and strolling space was once the open water of an enclosed shipping port.
The Hay’s Wharf got its name from a London Merchant Alexander Hay, who bought the property along the river occupied by a brewery and turned it into a warehouse. Then, because of its convenient location near London Bridge, an enterprising entrepreneur John Humphry took a lease on the property around 1850, commissioning Sir William Cubitt to design an enclosed dock where the fast clipper ships carrying the tea from Asia in record time could sidle into the narrow space to unload their precious cargo in the heart of the city.
The Hay’s Wharf became one of the chief points of shipping delivery for English tea and other products, which by the late 1800s saw almost eighty percent of the dry goods arriving in the city from the Thames passing through its portals, bestowing on it the nickname the “Larder of London”. Sir Ernest Shackleton’s second ill-fated arctic expedition on the schooner, The Quest, supplied at the wharf in 1821 before carrying the explorer to his sudden untimely death, cutting the expedition short. The wharf was rebuilt after suffering major damage in the Southwark fire of 1861, and again after being heavily bombed in WWII during the Blitz of London. The wharf could survive flames and bombs, but not the shift to containerized freight and by the 1970s was closed for business.
A redevelopment plan turned the former dock into a mixed use building for offices, restaurants, shops and residential space, designed by Twigg Brown Architects as part of a master plan for the area. In the center of the space is a fanciful articulated bronze sculpture of a ship, rather like one might find in “Peter Pan” or inspired by The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" designed by sculptor David Kemp called “The Navigators” as a nod to the shipping history of the old wharf, and if one looks up as if for a sextant reference in the stars, unforeseen when the sculpture was erected in 1987, now one sees the spire of “The Shard” the new modern high rise tower dominating the London skyline (see View From The Shard). © Bargain
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SEE ALSO:
MARITIME MUSEUM AND ROYAL OBSERVATORY
TREASURES GALLERY AT BRITISH LIBRARY
EUROSTAR CHANNEL LONDON TO PARIS
NORTH BY NORTHWEST HITCHCOCK PUB
