A developer is hoping to build giant tower blocks next to the site of east Greenwich’s old gasholder – with 352 homes, 340 student rooms and a self-storage unit.
Fairview New Homes has applied to Greenwich Council to build on an old newspaper distribution yard that is currently being used as a worksite for the Silvertown Tunnel. The plans are a first indication of what the area will come to look like in the years after the new tunnel opens.
The plot is next to the Studio 338 nightclub – once the famous Tunnel comedy club – and the site of the East Greenwich No 1 gasholder, which disappeared from the skyline in April 2020.
Plans to demolish the gasholder, nicknamed Jumbo when it was built and originally one of a pair, caused a local outcry after the council refused to protect the landmark, which had stood for 132 years. Greenwich had already drawn up plans for how the site should look when redeveloped.
Now some of those plans are set to come to fruition with Fairview applying to build 26 and 21-storey towers facing Millennium Way, and a 19-storey student block and self-storage unit facing the A102. A nine-storey block facing a public square is also planned along with light industrial workshops.
Fairview says 24.4 per cent of the homes will be for social rent and available to those on the housing waiting list, while 10.6 per cent will be for shared ownership.
The self-storage space is designed to block noise from the Studio 338 club, while Fairview says that the lowest student bedroom next to the A102 will be on the third floor, “which is 14 metres above pavement level, further mitigating any noise and air quality impact which reduces the further you go up the building”.
The application marks the start of a return to building homes next to the Blackwall Tunnel – half a century after Victorian terraces that occupied the Fairview site were demolished.
Until the construction of the second Blackwall Tunnel and its approach road in 1969 the area next to the gasholder formed part of a residential community, but the remaining terraced houses were cut off by the new dual carriageway and eventually pulled down.
Neither of the remaining buildings from that community – the Mitre pub, now Studio 338, and the old Dreadnought School, now the Horniman Museum stores – are listed, meaning they could face the same fate as the gasholder in the coming years. A small chunk of the gasholder frame was retained by National Grid and stands behind Studio 338.
As with the wider Greenwich Peninsula, more towers are likely to come on the site, with Greenwich’s planning brief for the area calling for taller buildings next to the Silvertown Tunnel entrance.
Plans for an 18-storey Travelodge hotel with a distinctive “sail” roof on the other side of Boord Street from the Fairview site were approved in 2020; documents approved by the council in December indicated that it would be finished in early 2026.
In November last year both Transport for London and Birch, National Grid’s development arm, filed planning applications for blocks that would never be built because the Silvertown Tunnel entrance is being built on the land instead.
The fantasy applications – needed to decide how much TfL needed to pay National Grid for compulsorily purchasing its land – assumed the Silvertown Tunnel had been cancelled. Both versions were approved, and could pave the way for future applications next to the tunnel once work is finished.
Fairview’s plans first emerged last spring, when it asked council planners for an opinion on plans for a development including a 27-storey block. The latest application can be found on the Greenwich Council planning website.
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