London Photo Gallery - Royal Victoria Dock

Exiting Custom House station, most of the crowd would be destined for ExCel, an exhibition centre, and a few hotels in the area. This northern section of the Royal Victoria Dock is fairly well-developed. The Royal Victoria Dock opened in 1855 as the largest man-made water feature in the world at almost a mile long. It was built to accommodate the latest iron-clad steamships at the time and operated until 1981. In 1990, this site was chosen to be home to a new exhibition and conference centre within the M25. ExCel opened in 2000, hosting important events such as Olympic matches in 2012. Perched high above the water is the Royal Victoria Dock Footbridge, a slim steel pedestrian bridge after climbing a long staircase. Built in 2000, it offers a very nice view of Canary Wharf in the distance as well as planes descending to land at the London City Airport. Across on the other side is the Silvertown redevelopment, which will transform the Millennium Mills in a 5 billion pound project to create 6500 new homes, as well as offices and more. At 10 stories tall, the flour mill had its heyday in the 1960s but the operations were moved to Tilbury and the building has stood vacant since 1981.