Custom House, London
| Custom House | |
|---|---|
 Custom House
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| Custom House shown within Greater London | |
| OS grid reference | TQ408807 |
| London borough | |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LONDON |
| Postcode district | E16 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| EU Parliament | London |
| London Assembly | |
Custom House is a district in the West Ham area of the London Borough of Newham in east London, England.
The area is named after the custom house of Royal Victoria Dock. This dock is today in recreational use but it dominated the industry and commerce of the area from 1855 until the 1940s and closed in 1980. The main economic building of the area is the ExCeL Exhibition Centre and thus the district is connected to the City of London directly by two stations on the Docklands Light Railway. Nearby offices, factories and storage premises form the bulk of the rest of the workplaces of the area in the south of the district, close to the DLR route. Schools, a college, a care home, council offices and a parade of shops also support the local economy, which has parks to north and south-east. The district is contiguous with Canning Town, its forebear which was widely disparaged by the upper middle classes in Victorian England as a location heavily associated with rubber, packaging and miscellaneous manufacturing and dockyards, Custom House by not having such connotations is sometimes used for most of the south of the ancient parish of West Ham. A widely varying mapped overlap of the two areas relies on various interpretations including ward names and proximity to four DLR stations on the same line.
Historically Newham was in the extreme west of Essex, and formed along with Canning Town the south of the parish of West Ham, a largely rural parish until the early 19th century. As trade expanded in the British Empire the royal docks were built connected to the wide River Thames in this district — the demand for trade brought rapid population expansion: chiefly the families of dockworkers, warehousemen, carters (distributors), packaging and semi-skilled manufacturing hands, building and utilities workmen and workers in London's street and general distribution markets.
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