Millwall Iron Works

The Millwall Iron Works was a major nineteenth-century industrial and shipbuilding complex on the Isle of Dogs in London, developing from 1824 onward as small shipbuilding firms were consolidated to build larger and more complex ships. In 1835 the Scottish engineers William Fairbairn and David Napier bought the Land of Promise estate, and Fairbairn laid out an ironworks there in 1836 that built more than 100 mostly small ships. John Scott Russell took over in 1848, and in 1858 the yard launched the SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which had to be launched sideways. A successor company listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1861 employed four to five thousand men and became known for iron cladding of Royal Navy warships. The business failed after the Panic of 1866, the site declined, and it was later converted to the Burrells Wharf housing estate.