Narrow Street
Coordinates: 51°30′32″N 0°2′1″W / 51.50889°N 0.03361°W
Narrow Street is a narrow street running parallel to the River Thames through the Limehouse area of east London, England. It used to be much narrower still, and is the oldest part of Limehouse, with many buildings originating from the eighteenth century.
A combination of tides and currents made this point on the Thames a natural landfall for ships, the first wharf being completed in 1348. Lime kilns or oasts ("lymehostes") used in the production of mortar and pottery were built here in the fourteenth century. The area grew rapidly in Elizabethan times as a centre for world trade and by the reign of James I nearly half of the area's 2,000 population were mariners. The area supplied ships with ropes and other necessities; pottery was also made here for the ships. Ship chandlers settled here building wooden houses and wharves in the cramped space between street and river. Narrow Street may take its name from the closeness of the original buildings, now demolished, which stood barely a few metres apart on each side of the street.
The Limehouse Bridge Dock was established in 1766, for barges (Thames lighters) and small ships to access the Limehouse Cut, which led to the Lee Navigation. Limehouse Basin was built in 1820, to transship goods to barges on the Regent's Canal. The two were linked in the early 19th century, and the lock from the Cut to the river, filled in.
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