A cathedral of trade
Tobacco Dock
A Grade I-listed Georgian warehouse complex of timber and brick — built to hold the empire's tobacco.
Designed by Daniel Asher Alexander (architect of Dartmoor Prison) and opened in 1812, Tobacco Dock is a feat of dockland engineering: vast vaulted brick cellars below, a forest of cast-iron columns and timber roof above. At its height it could store 24,000 hogsheads of tobacco.
After the docks closed it became, briefly, an ill-fated shopping centre. Now it serves as one of London's most atmospheric event venues — its cathedral-like interior all the more powerful for the centuries of stillness within it.