The Remarkable Sugar Houses of Georgian London – completely vanished

Except for Churches, the sugar refineries of Georgian London were the tallest buildings in the capital.

With the establishment of the vast complexes of Docks in the East End after 1800, new refineries, better known in their day as sugar houses, sprang up in Wapping, Shadwell and Whitechapel, replacing those in the City. They would not last long, seemingly vanishing overnight in the 1870s.

Sometimes they didn’t last that long, prone as they were to destruction by fire and explosion. The astonishing story of these remarkable buildings is little known and yet they played a huge role in the daily life of so many in Georgian and Victorian London.

Andrew Byrne is an architectural historian and has written extensively about Georgian London. He is the founder of LONDON 1840, which is building a 1:1500 scale wooden model of London as it was in that year.