New landmarks: striking 26-storey tower unveiled in Wapping as part of 1,800-home project to transform the east London area

Cashmere Wharf is unveiled this week, the latest phase of the ambitious 1,800-home, mixed-use London Dock development.

One of the largest projects in the capital, London Dock will transform the social and economic life of Wapping.

The signature building of developer St George’s scheme, Cashmere Wharf will be a 26-storey bevel-edged tower with 141 flats of one, two or three bedrooms.

Architects Patel Taylor designed it to form the eastern side of Gauging Square, the E1 development’s main public piazza, so named as a nod to the imported “diamonds, tortoiseshell and bears’ grease” that were weighed on this spot from the early 1800s until the Sixties.

Prices in the tower start from £835,000 for a one-bedroom flat, £1,245,000 for a two-bedroom flat and £2.35 million for a three-bedroom flat.

Cashmere Wharf’s appearance, the colours of its materials, have been chosen to relate to those used in nearby historic landmarks the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, while its height will provide a new navigation landmark within Wapping.

The look will be mid-rise blocks, built from west to east across 30 acres.

A smaller public space, Arrival Square, in Vaughan Way, forms the main public gateway to London Dock’s western end, leading on to Gauging Square. Local children put Gauging Square’s timed fountain feature to good use at a recent community event.

Architect Andrew Taylor says this fresh piece of the city has been masterplanned to bring in new east-west and north-south connections, public gardens, a market square and long east-west promenades, knitting London Dock back into the surrounding neighbourhood after 200 years of isolation.

Along with 1,800 homes, eventually there will be 210,000sq ft devoted to restaurants, bars, workspaces, a gym, heated pool, squash courts, private film screening room and other uses.

Much of these amenities will be in historic Pennington Street Warehouse — a quarter of a mile long — and in the buildings surrounding Gauging Square and fronting Vaughan Way, the area where media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s News International plant once stood.

New covered north-south links within the warehouse provide access to these areas and create routes between the scheme and Pennington Street to the north.

Some 486 of the homes, or 30 per cent of the total, will be “affordable”, part of the redevelopment of a building fronting The Highway.

Marcus Blake, development director at St George, is taking pains to build up the scheme’s social and economic activity, so a sense of community, bolstered by new amenities with enough people to sustain them, is created as phases are completed.

Each block, to be built one a year, will have its own green space, separated from its neighbour by a variety of public spaces, each with its own character including a water garden, a market garden and a market square at the easternmost end.

A “Quayside” public promenade will run for almost a third of a mile from Arrival Square in Vaughan Way, along the southern side of the warehouse to Tobacco Dock at the scheme’s eastern end. A more secluded route will run along London Dock’s southern edge.

St George is taking a cautious approach to its build in a market dampened by increases in stamp duty and Brexit uncertainty.

“We are selling three to four homes a week,” says a spokesman.

“The changes in stamp duty have had more impact than Brexit. Buyers are taking longer to commit. But we are happy with the sales rate.”