Thames Ironworks

As part of the London Festival of Architecture there was a one-off opportunity to visit a unique site at the mouth of Bow Creek - not Trinity Buoy Wharf but the derelict post-industrial wasteland on the opposite bank. It's a site with historic links to shipbuilding, maritime catastrophe and top-level football, also Dame Helen Mirren, mega-nightclubbing and a new DLR station. It's the Ironworks, originally home to the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co (1857-1913), and how amazing to get the chance to look inside. [15 photos] The entrance to this decrepit wonderland is immediately alongside the northern entrance to the Silvertown Tunnel. This landscaped maelstrom of swirling traffic is crisscrossed by pedestrian crossings almost nobody yet needs, but that's forward planning for you. On the riverward side a straight stretch of DLR viaduct has been safeguarded as the future site of Thames Wharf station, a halt on the Woolwich branch. It's been on the drawing board for years, indeed it…