The scheme was developed speculatively by a partnership of
John Kelk and
John Aird & Co. The engineer responsible for designing the scheme was
Sir John Fowler. In 1909 the
Port of London Authority (PLA) took over the Millwall Dock, along with the other enclosed docks from
St Katharines to
Tilbury. From 1905
Magnus Mowat worked as Engineer to the docks, being promoted to Director around 1912. With reorganisation by the
Port of London Authority in the 1920s, the northern end of the Inner Dock was connected to the
West India Docks by the Millwall Passage. From the 1960s onwards, the Millwall Dock experienced a steady decline – as did all of London's other docks – as the shipping industry adopted
containerisation, which effectively moved traffic downstream to
Tilbury. It finally closed to commercial traffic along with the other Royal Docks in 1981. The West Ferry Printing Works, the largest newspaper print works in Western Europe, was built on the north side of Outer Dock between 1984 and 1986. The Docklands Sailing and Watersports Centre, located at the far West end of the dock where the dock previously connected to the
Thames, was established by the
London Docklands Development Corporation and the Sports Council at a cost of £1.2 million in 1989. While much of the area has been occupied by commercial office towers, Millwall Dock is also an area where several housing developments and
apartment towers have been developed. During the 1980s the Clippers Quay housing estate was built around the old dry dock while the Mill Quay housing development was built on the site of the old Wheatsheaf Mill. The dock was a location for boat stunts in the 1999
James Bond film
The World Is Not Enough. ==Layout==