London City Island Archives

July 25, 2024July 26, 2024

Goodluck Hope offers tranquil homes with excellent connections

Ballymore’s Goodluck Hope development at Leamouth offers apartments and houses for sale almost completely surrounded by water

Goodluck Hope is seen with the rivers Thames and Lea surrounding it and The O2 just across the water — Goodluck Hope sits on land where the rivers Lea and Thames meet

Subscribe to our free Wharf Whispers newsletter here

“Goodluck Hope is unique in London,” said James Boyce, associate regional sales director at Ballymore.

“It’s in Zone 2, but it doesn’t feel like that – it’s very tranquil, on a bend in the Thames, overlooking The O2.

“There’s this big expanse of water in front of you but, because it’s built on a peninsula, nobody passes through.

“That means people there can live really close to the action – Canary Wharf is just a short journey away – but it’s a sanctuary, almost completely surrounded by water.”

Increasingly a destination in its own right, the development is coming of age with a thriving community of residents enjoying an emerging crop of local businesses.

Layers Bakery serves coffee and brunch, while Taylor’s Of Goodluck Hope trades in farm fresh produce and recently opened a wine bar and deli in a second unit at Orchard Dry Dock.

There’s expectation that Hum Yoga + Meditation is set to expand its east London operation with a second studio at the development overlooking the Thames, as well as the cultural appeal of Trinity Art Gallery, so it’s clear the area’s attractions are only growing.

Little surprise perhaps, as buyers discover what’s on offer.

Image shows Ballymore associate regional sales director James Boyce, a man in a suit jacked and white shirt with grey and black hair — Ballymore associate regional sales director James Boyce

Goodluck Hope: available properties

“We’ve got something for everyone,” said James.

“There are studios – with sliding doors to divide up the space – one, two and three-bedroom apartments and two and three-bed duplexes with living spaces on the top floor that have amazing views.

“Then there’s a row of 19 townhouses along the main street, all painted in different colours, which gives the area a Scandinavian feel.

“These have really brought the ground level to life and they’ve been really popular – we’ve only got two left.

“They are three-storeys high and have either three or four bedrooms.

“Buyers get water views and access to the podium gardens at the rear. East London has surprisingly few houses and I think that’s why they’ve been so sought after.

“A lot of people have been brought up in houses, either in London or further out, so to live in one is quite a significant thing.

“Then there’s the fact you can walk out of your front door, cross the road to the bakery for a freshly-baked croissant and coffee, then go and sit by the river or chat to your neighbours.

“All of these things make Goodluck Hope a fantastic place to live.”

The property is on the market for £1,199,000 at Goodluck Hope — This three-bedroom home at Goodluck Hope is on the market for £1,199,000 and is accessed by its own private bridge

history + tranquillity

This has not come about by chance. Following the success of Ballymore and EcoWorld’s London City Island project, a few minutes’ walk away, Goodluck Hope was conceived to complement its amenities.

“We knew we had to elevate Goodluck Hope because it needed to be something special,” said James.

“Delving into the history of the area, the East India Company’s use of the nearby dock complex and its role as a major stopping off point for ships carrying goods in and out of London gave us a starting point.

“We wanted to celebrate the maritime heritage so, whereas most new-build developments were featuring full height glazing and standard facades, we built warehouse-style with Crittall windows and pitched roofs as well as really intricate brickwork that recalled the buildings that once stood on the peninsula.

“The development also benefits from being next to Trinity Buoy Wharf, which has long supported arts and culture in the area – providing space for artists, businesses, a school and one of the smallest museums in London on the site where Michael Faraday conducted his experiments with electricity.”

The home features three bedrooms including this one — The property boasts some 1,136sq ft of internal space plus a 236sq ft terrace

neighbouring amenities

Then there’s the ongoing interplay between City Island and Goodluck Hope, with buyers able to enjoy fitness amenities at both developments meaning access to both indoor and outdoor pools.

“Goodluck Hope has a residents’ clubhouse alongside its concierge facility,” said James.

“Within that you’ve got a co-working space, a Scandinavian sauna, a plunge pool, a swimming pool and a cinema, which has an Everyman feel to it.

“There’s a studio where the Ballymore fitness team run 20 classes a week including boxing and spinning as well as offering personal training sessions.

“Then there’s the Lantern Room, which is on the 29th floor – design-wise it references the Thames lighthouse at Trinity Buoy Wharf nearby, especially when it’s lit up at night.

“Exclusively for Goodluck Hope residents, we opened it in 2022 and it’s been really popular. It’s used as a work lounge during the day, which complements the facilities on the ground floor.

“In the evening the space is open for residents to host dinner parties, or for people to just take a couple of drinks up there and enjoy the sunset.

“It’s probably the tallest building within a kilometre of where it is and boasts views in all directions across London.”

The living area of a loft apartment at Goodluck Hope features open-plan design and a private terrace — The apartment is on the sixth floor and has an open-plan living area with a fully fitted kitchen

Goodluck Hope: a strong connection

“Another key attraction for buyers considering a move to Goodluck Hope is that the strength of the community has blown us away,” added James.

“It’s hard to describe, but there’s something about living on what’s effectively an island.

“It’s a place where you know your neighbours, whether that’s to say good morning to or just to make friendly eye contact.

“You know you’re an islander and there’s something really good about that.

“In contrast to more high-rise areas, where you probably won’t see many of your fellow residents, Goodluck Hope doesn’t have that density, so there really is a strong community.”

Again, this is not coincidental.

Ballymore has worked hard to foster an environment where those living locally get to know each other.

It’s part-way through its current events programme, which offers activities running though to September.

“That’s important for us because if people come and enjoy themselves, they will bring their friends and that’s really how you make a place,” said James.

“We did a survey of the residents at the beginning of the year, asking them what they wanted from the area.

“That’s why we have Workshop Wednesdays where residents can learn new skills such as croissant decorating, cheese and wine tasting, pottery or even singing.

“Then we have Thirsty Thursdays for people who want to socialise over a few drinks and enjoy some live music.

“Together with Film Fridays and Social Saturdays, there’s something new each week.

“The residents are very active, they attend a lot of the events.

“Together with our retailers, all of these things have made this place what it is – something special.”

key details: Goodluck Hope

Properties available at Goodluck Hope include suites, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, lofts and townhouses – all available for buyers to move into immediately. Prices start at £425,000.

Find out more about the development here or call 020 3797 1669 to arrange a viewing

Image shows Hum Yoga + Meditation founder Oriana Shepherd, a woman in a beige jumper with long brunetter hair — Hum Yoga + Meditation founder Oriana Shepherd

building a community

Having opened Hum Yoga + Meditation at London City Island nearly three years ago, Oriana Shepherd is now looking to expand her business to Goodluck Hope to keep up with demand.

“I initially came across the development while looking for accommodation for my son for university – it was just after Covid so a lot was happening and it just seemed like a really exciting area,” she said.

“I noticed, however, that there wasn’t a Yoga studio and so that’s where the idea came from.”

Oriana had spent much of the preceding 15 years teaching Yoga in Wales, a career she’d embarked on after more than a decade working for Virgin Atlantic.

After having children, she decided to pursue fitness alongside meditation breath work and aromatherapy closer to home, teaching and working in various roles including as a clinical therapist in palliative care.

“Having taught for so long and led Yoga retreats, opening Hum felt like a natural progression,” said Oriana.

“When I visited the island and saw the community here, there wasn’t access to these kinds of practices for residents on their doorstep and I thought it was maybe something I could offer.”

People adopt Yoga poses in Hum's London City Island studio — A class at Hum’s London City Island studio

escaping the hustle and bustle

“Hum is a space where people can come and escape the hustle and bustle of the city,” added Oriana.

“It’s an opportunity to explore something different in a really safe, relaxed, non-judgemental place.

“Whether you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned practitioner there’s something for everybody.

“We also do lots of retreats and socials too so it’s a place to meet like-minded individuals.”

Now full to capacity, the plan is to open a second site at Goodluck Hope overlooking the Thames.

“We’re hoping to have a bigger space there, which will give us the opportunity to host corporate wellness events,” said Oriana.

“We also offer Yoga teacher training and we’ll be able to offer more of that too.

“The intention has always been to enjoy the process and to support as may people as possible and opening the business has done just that.

“I love it and I feel very privileged to do this kind of work and to share it with so many people in London and from all over the world because people who live in these developments come from many different countries.

“We have such a wide, varied community and seeing people come together is really precious.”

key details: Hum Yoga + Meditation

Hum Yoga + Meditation offers a range of Yoga, Pilates and meditation classes.

New members can get 50% off their first month with unlimited classes for £54.

Standard membership costs £108 per month with several other options available.

Find out more about Hum here

Read Wharf Life’s e-edition here

Subscribe to our free Wharf Whispers newsletter here

- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com

October 13, 2021October 13, 2021

Rotherhithe: Author Tom Chivers shares an extract from his latest book London Clay

The Rotherhithe-based writer offers thoughts on his first non-fiction work and a slice of the text

Author Tom Chivers grew up in south London

Subscribe to Wharf Life’s weekly newsletter here

Recently released, London Clay is Tom Chivers’ first foray into non-fiction.

Billed as a “lyrical interrogation of a capital city, a landscape and our connection to place”, its 464 pages host a heady blend of historical research, reportage and personal memoir that promises to change the way its readers view urban areas.

A published poet as well as an author, publisher and arts producer, south London-born Tom has lived in Rotherhithe with his wife and children since 2014.

He said: “I grew up on the River Effra, literally over it because it’s subterranean, and that made me realise there’s a whole world beneath the streets.

“When I was 17 I wrote a very long and bad poem called Effra, which was an attempt to reflect the lost rivers in writing and, ever since then, I’ve been interested in trying to capture the history and atmosphere of London – its speed, aggression and that underlying sense of violence one feels in the city.

“I wanted to show that strange dissonance between the London of high finance and the London of poverty and grime as well as the new London that’s rising above us now.

“My way in was the lost rivers – some of them are still flowing, but many are untraceable so you’re looking for fragments or remnants. I’m interested in the natural landscapes of London so I started looking at the geological foundations of the city.

“The premise of London Clay is a series of walks, but it’s trying to understand how the deep city of geological strata has determined the history of the city, and also how we feel about it and approach it today.

“It’s not a traditional guidebook – firstly, each journey tries to get under the skin of the place and immerse readers in that weird landscape, trying to unpeel the surface of the city.

“Secondly, I would genuinely love it if people felt inspired, both to go to the places that I write about, but actually more so to go to places that they know, that they live in or maybe work in, and use that same method of starting with the geology.

“The extract here features my journey to the River Lea and, because I’d never been there, discovering this extraordinary landscape – the developer’s dream of London City Island, Bow Creek Ecology Park and the absolutely amazing Trinity Buoy Wharf populated by artworks all about immersing us in deep time – the perfect place to end my journey across the city.”

London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City by Tom Chivers is published by Doubleday and costs £20 in hardback.

Detail from the cover of London Clay by Tom Chivers

FROM LONDON CLAY

>> I arrive in Limmo to the music of screeching tyres: a silver hatchback flooring it out of the western roundabout of the Lower Lea Crossing.

Burnt rubber.

Mudflats.

Tidal swill.

>> I had crossed the river to get here, to walk the final stretch of the Lea, on an empty train from Rotherhithe, before trekking through the former maritime ‘hamlets’ of Wapping, Shadwell, Ratcliffe, Limehouse and Poplar – now one continuous development from the Tower Of London to the Lea.

The river is where it ends.

‘To start again. With a wiped slate’.

>> Leamouth: Limmo: Limbo. The purgatorial energies of the place are overwhelming. Ruined dock walls stand in the shadows of half-built towers, open to the wind; sales and marketing suites for future homes; concrete flyovers sunk into alluvial swamp; the brine-stink of Bow Creek, as the Lea is called down here, where the channel loops back on itself in a series of hairpin bends.

The Lea once formed the border between Wessex and the Danelaw and it still feels like frontier land – London’s Wild East. On the near side, the Saxon kingdom of Alfred (urbane, Christian); on the far bank, the great heathen army of the Vikings under Guthrum. The earliest canalization of the Lea may date to this time, when in AD895, Alfred ordered the draining of its lower reaches to prevent the Viking fleet reaching the Thames from their base in Hertford. In the middle of the roundabout a giant figure surveys the traffic heading across the Lea – the three legs and disembodied face of Allen Jones’s Aerobic (1993) – a rusting, sheet-metal Matisse whose feet are barbed like arrowheads, like something dredged from the water.

>> I find a bench by Bow Creek and carefully disinfect my hands with antibacterial gel before wolfing down a shop-bought sandwich. A couple in matching Lycra stop for a photo, their beaming selfie framed by an island of green wilderness on the opposite bank, where dense vegetation spills over the steel revetments at the water’s edge. Storm clouds are gathering to the north as I cross to the island by a modern footbridge.

The bridge spans the creek just below the nine-lane flyover of the A13 and also runs parallel with an abandoned single-track railway built in 1848 to carry goods between Canning Town and the East India Dock. The railway bridge is now covered with graffiti and rendered inaccessible by forests of weeds and nettles at either end. Nevertheless, I notice that a nylon hiking tent has been pitched on the empty trackway directly above the freezing tidal water.

A fourth crossing – an ornamental pipe bridge carrying gas into London from the Beckton works – is remembered by a solitary brick pier on the east bank. The tent shakes violently in the wind gusting downstream.

Tom's work is billed as a 'lyrical interrogation of a capital city' — Tom’s work is billed as a ‘lyrical interrogation of a capital city’

>> The island across the water, I discover, is not wilderness at all but a carefully managed ecology park squeezed, ingeniously, on to a teardrop peninsula inside a loop of the creek. A branch of the Docklands Light Railway splits the narrow bar in two such that the park appears, in places, to be merely an extension of the railway verge. The geography is hair-raising.

As I move along the island, deserted trains rush past on an elevated viaduct to the southern shore, where they appear to launch, unmanned, back across the creek, soaring like rollercoaster cars above the Lower Lea Crossing. The DLR track extends a dead-end railway siding marked on old maps and aerial photographs – the only visible feature of an otherwise muddy, contaminated wasteland. During the construction of the park in 1996, traces of mercury were detected in the ground, leading to the addition of an extra 40cm of topsoil.

Where the Olympic Park struggles to contend with the vast scale of the Lea Valley, the Bow Creek Ecology Park has the benefit of intimacy; it takes around 10 minutes to complete a circuit on footpaths brimming with red clover and ox-eye daisy. Locals appear alone or in pairs: a jogger by a reed-filled mere; two women sharing a spliff in a shady bower beneath the railway embankment. Small white butterflies explode from bushes as giant bumblebees stumble, nectar-drunk, amid the wildflowers. I disappear into the undergrowth for a piss and for a moment, in the darkness between trees, I could be almost anywhere but here.

>> An information board tells me how the park’s wetlands are fed by groundwater from a borehole sunk into the mud to a depth of twelve metres. A pump is used to regulate the levels in two ponds connected by a weir. Every September, an area of meadow is deliberately inundated ‘to mimic the natural flooding of a river floodplain’. Here, as Sid observed, the natural is artificial – a simulacrum of the real thing. But the human is also part of nature; we are hustling at the edge of the frame, observers of a world to which we, too, are subject.

>> I follow the path out of the park and along Bow Creek. In this corkscrew geography, the east bank is now west, and across the mudflats another peninsula emerges. In shape it is an inverse facsimile of the first, a little larger perhaps; but in place of the dense foliage of the ecology park it is crammed with towering modern apartment blocks. The sheet metal revetments have been capped with brand-new concrete blocks and stainless-steel railings on which two men in matching polo shirts are leaning.

>> In truth, there is nothing ‘flat’ about the mudflats of Bow Creek. They swell and heave with the submerged ruins of innumerable wharves and slipways, timber piles and river stairs – here folding and unfolding like a satellite image of mountains, here fractured by deep gashes filled with rubble, nails, car tyres, rusting exhausts, chicken wire, road signs, aluminium cans, traffic cones, shopping trolleys, waste pipes and, a little upstream, a large steel litter bin.

Everything that could have fallen into the creek has done; and everything that has done is covered in the same claggy, grey liquor. It is hard to resolve this hazardous, post-industrial topography with the upmarket development on the opposite bank. Unlike the upper reaches of the Lea, Bow Creek remains defiantly tidal. It is a dynamic environment that cannot easily be tidied away.

>> I cross a footbridge spanning the creek and City Island appears, as it is designed to, like a miniature version of Lower Manhattan. The name is a marketer’s invention – a place that is dense with history now reduced to its simplest forms. Island. City. City. Island.

Read e-editions of Wharf Life’s print edition here

Subscribe to Wharf Life’s weekly newsletter here