Royal Albert Wharf Archives

April 4, 2024April 4, 2024

Property: How Royal Albert Wharf has unveiled homes in its final phase

Collection of apartments’ release marks last chance to buy at riverside scheme near Gallions Reach

An artist’s impression of the final phase of Royal Albert Wharf

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A decade and a half ago, Royal Albert Wharf looked very different.

Located at the eastern end of Royal Albert Dock, with the curve of the Thames behind it, today the area’s 15-year regeneration project is approaching completion, with the launch of its final phase of properties.

NHG Homes is set to release 58 apartments for sale at the scheme in spring, 2024, arranged around a communal garden square that opens onto the Thames Path riverside walkway.

Lined with trees, this route also leads to a children’s playground overlooking the river.

One, two and three-bedroom properties will be available, all featuring outdoor space in the form of balconies or private terraces.

Prices start at £375,000 for a one-bed with two and three-beds from £494,995 and £634,995 respectively.

Inside, the apartments feature open-plan design with Bosch appliances integrated into the kitchens, fitted wardrobes, built-in storage and separate washer-dryer cupboards.

The development also features a concierge service, a dedicated workspace and lounge area plus parking included as standard with three-bedroom properties.

The final phase is located right by the Thames Path

All residents get access to cycle storage facilities and the on-site car club, should they need four-wheeled transportation.

In contrast to buying a home off-plan at a scheme where work is just starting or halfway through, the majority of Royal Albert Wharf’s amenities are already in place.

NHG Homes’ head of marketing and digital, Amie Triphook Cole, said: “Royal Albert Wharf has quickly become the place to be in the Royal Docks.

“There’s a flourishing community of creators, businesses, young professionals and families who call this neighbourhood home, and with this final phase of homes, now is the last chance to buy a new home at this award winning development.

“Our residents enjoy the perfect blend of riverside views, plentiful on-site amenities and access to lush green space, all within homes designed with active, convenient and modern living in mind.

“I encourage buyers to enquire with us today, so that they don’t miss out on this last opportunity to buy in one of east London’s most exciting areas.”

Apartments are arranged around a communal garden square

Royal Albert Wharf already enjoys a wealth of local amenities with food and drink served by the likes of the Well Bean Cafe and Cafe Spice Namaste, owned by celebrity chef Cyrus Todiwala and his wife Pervin.

There’s also a monthly market selling fresh produce, street food, arts and crafts and plans for an on-site gym, nursery and a convenience store.

The development is also home to a number of artists and makers in studio spaces administered by Bow Arts, as well as local creative collective Art In The Docks, which regularly hosts exhibitions and events.

Royal Albert Wharf is located within easy walking distance of Gallion’s Reach DLR station offering direct connections to a host of east London locations.

Royal Albert Wharf has seen extensive regeneration in recent years

It also connects residents to the Elizabeth Line at Custom House and the Jubilee line at Canning Town, both making for easy journeys to Canary Wharf and beyond.

Prospective buyers will also likely be pleased at the prospect of a DLR extension to Thamesmead, an area undergoing three decades of regeneration.

The connectivity already in place means Royal Albert Wharf residents live within easy reach of the cultural and retail attractions of Stratford and Greenwich Peninsula as well as Canary Wharf.

More locally, the University Of East London is within walking distance and Excel and City Hall are a few stops away on the DLR.

The scheme is also close to Beckton Gateway retail park, which hosts big brands such as B&Q, Dunelm and Pets At Home.

key details

There are 58 properties available in the final phase of Royal Albert Wharf.

Prices start at £375,000 for a one-bed and £494,995 for a two-bed.

Three-beds start at £634,995, which includes parking as standard.

Find out more about Royal Albert Wharf here

First-time buyers Nate and Bianca in their Royal Albert Wharf home

CASE STUDY

Nate and Bianca moved into a one-bedroom apartment at Royal Albert Wharf in April 2021.

The first-time buyers purchased their home at NHG Homes’ east London scheme for £372,500 with a deposit of £56,000.

“We couldn’t find this quality and this location for the same price anywhere else,” said Nate, who works in cybersecurity in Canary Wharf.

“I started renting in central London, moved north, then east and then, most recently, south of the river – I pretty much experienced it all over six years as a tenant.

“I decided my last rental experience would be the last – I’ve rented in shared flats, and on my own, and it’s never really an easy process.

“Buying an apartment is a big deal, but the NHG Homes sales team made every moment as easy as possible.

“It was probably the best experience of buying a house you could possibly have.”

Bianca, who works in the events sector in Woolwich, added: “We looked at quite a lot of properties but struggled to find a home that ticked all of our boxes.

“We wanted to find somewhere that gave us access to open space, fresh air and was close to the Thames, as well as giving us shorter journeys to work.

“Royal Albert Wharf was the perfect fit.”

Unusually, three-bedroom apartments come with parking space included

Transport connections certainly helped sway the couple, with Nate especially impressed by his new commute and the development’s connections to airports.

“I used to travel an hour and 15 minutes to Canary Wharf, and now it only takes me 25 minutes door-to-door,” he said.

“I also fly frequently for work – travelling to Heathrow or Gatwick was such a pain and added hours onto each journey – but now London City Airport is very convenient and perfect for business travel.

“Knowing you’re half an hour from your front door when you land makes a big difference.”

For Bianca, the quality of the apartment, its features and facilities played a decisive role in the couple’s decision.

She said: “The apartment is really spacious, light, and bright – the layout is one of the things that encouraged us to buy here.

“We’d looked at quite a lot of properties within our budget and this floorplan was by far the best use of space we’d come across.

“It felt so much bigger than homes of a similar size.

“We were adamant about having enough space in the bedroom, which always tends to be the smallest space in a London flat.

“There’s also so much cabinet and wardrobe space.

“When we first came to view the property, we walked in the door and it was by far the best place that we’d seen.

“I could picture us living here immediately and planned out where everything was going to go – it was such an easy decision to make.”

Find out more about Royal Albert Wharf here

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- 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

March 2, 2022March 2, 2022

Royal Docks: How The Well Bean Co at Royal Albert Wharf is set to reopen

Founder Charlie Claydon tells us how he’s bringing the chocolate factory and cafe back after a fire

The Well Bean Co’s Charlie Claydon – image Matt Grayson

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The story of The Well Bean Co at Royal Albert Wharf starts with its founder’s social anxiety.

Suffering badly from an early age, Charlie Claydon struggled to make and sustain friendships.

“By the time I was 15 or 16, I was not in a good place with my mental health,” he said. “I had considered taking my life – it was a really tough time.

“I ended up getting into drugs and alcohol really badly at a young age, because it was my way of medicating myself.

“I didn’t know much about mental health at the time – it wasn’t really talked about in school then.

“So I went down that path, making things worse and worse for myself until I realised that enough was enough.

“My life was pretty bad, my relationships with my family and friends had broken down and that’s when I decided I needed to change direction.”

an opportunity

Charlie moved away from the village where he grew up, stopped drinking, smoking and taking drugs. He also found a job.

“I managed to get a position at a bank – the manager was a lovely lady and, even though I didn’t have the qualifications, she believed in me and gave me the job,” he said.

“Within six months I was stepping in as deputy assistant manager – she’d given me a chance, something I’d not experienced a lot before.

“A lot of people had said I wouldn’t amount to much and I’d started to believe that. I didn’t particularly like the financial world, but it was good money, I was good at it and I didn’t have many options open to me, so I kept working, moving into insurance and investments and doing some event management on the side.”

Eventually his career led him to London and a role with the Financial Ombudsman Service, based on the Isle Of Dogs.

gut feeling

“I started off as an adjudicator – it was in the midst of the PPI scandal so they were employing lots of people from the industry,” said Charlie. “I was assessing cases and trying to figure out if people had been mis-sold policies.

“It was the first time where I had a job where I was helping people and doing something positive.

“I quickly grew in the role and ended up becoming a lead adjudicator, making key decisions on cases, which was really exciting.”

At the same time, Charlie continued to struggle with anxiety, trying multiple strategies and remedies to cope.

“It was at this time he read an article about an entrepreneur who’d treated his bipolar disorder through diet.”

Long story short, Charlie tried a similar approach.

“I wasn’t really drinking or smoking, so I gave up coffee, sugar, wheat, and within a week I felt like a completely different person,” he said.

“It made sense to me – your brain and your gut are super connected, they’re both signalling each other all the time.

“I kept experimenting and then, I remember waking up for the first time and not feeling anxious in the morning.

“Suddenly I felt calm, I even wanted to go and hang out with people, having spent my whole life avoiding it. Over the years it has kept improving.”

shed heaven

Charlie’s focus on his diet and mental health became the foundation of the business he runs today.

“I was getting into plant-based food to help with my mood,” he said. “I was experimenting in the kitchen of the shared house I was living in – I’d never eaten plant-based food and it was tough to get my head around not having meat on my plate.

“Then I realised that I was also going to start missing things like chocolate, because it had dairy in it.

“At the time I couldn’t find anything on the market so I looked on YouTube to see how people made it, bought some ingredients and had a go.”

The experiment became a quest. Having failed to get great results with a bowl and spoon, Charlie continued on his mission to create quality vegan chocolate, buying machines to help with production.

Eventually, to save his relationship with his house mates, he negotiated with his landlord to build a small shed in the garden and kept going.

Recipe after recipe followed and he eventually took some into work for his colleagues to try. Positive feedback sparked a change in direction.

Chocolate from The Well Bean Co – image Matt Grayson

chocolate factory

“When I realised that I was creating a product that was pretty delicious, I thought it could be a business,” said Charlie.

“I was already looking for a way out of the finance industry, because I wanted to do my own thing.

“I was already volunteering and I thought I was going to be fully immersed in mental health but, actually being in that industry can be really hard, especially if you’re sharing your story the whole time.

“Having the chocolate was the balance – it was fun, so I thought I’d do a few markets and see how it went – people loved it. Because I’m impatient, I handed in my notice and decided to go for it.”

bench mark

Despite the concerns of family and former colleagues, Charlie sunk all the money he had into equipment and negotiated some table space in a cafe run by Bow Arts at Royal Albert Wharf.

The idea was that it would be a cheap option for his fledgling business and fun for customers coming in.

One table turned into two, then three, then four. Eventually Charlie wound up taking over the whole unit.

cafe community

“Then Covid hit and it was a really scary time,” he said. “We weren’t big enough for people to look for us online, and all the shops we were stocked in closed.

“We’d watched this balance sheet going up, we were really excited, we were doing very well, we’d put all our energy into it, we’d done markets, we were trying to branch out and we were having meetings with Selfridges.

“It was an exciting time, and then it all just stopped. The money just went overnight and it was a very tough time. All I could think was that I needed to save the business.”

The solution, it turned out, was for Charlie to take over the cafe, opening the doors during the pandemic to serve the local community.

Teaming up with actor Oscar Balmaseda – out of work due to Covid restrictions – the pair “fought like cats and dogs” as they served lines of hungry and thirsty locals, growing the business and working seven days a week.

In a year the business went from two to nine staff and Charlie had turned his thoughts back to chocolate as the pandemic receded.

cruel flames

“It was time to get back to chocolate – we had two people and a production plan up on our whiteboards with a smart social media strategy in place,” he said.

“We’d just finished refurbishing the cafe and then two days later the fire happened.”

Disaster. In December in the run-up to Christmas a faulty new machine in the chocolate factory overheated one evening and caught fire.

Fortunately, the unit’s fire suppression systems kicked in limiting the spread of the fire, but smoke and water damage was extensive.

Worse still, the business was under-insured leaving a hole in its finances – a mistake made amid the chaos of the pandemic and the company’s rapid growth.

Charlie is working to reopen in March – image Matt Grayson

back once again

However, the fire will not be the end for The Well Bean Co and its cafe. Ceilings, floors and surfaces have been scrubbed. Furniture has been cleaned, repaired or replaced.

The local community pitched in, raising money to help Charlie, and he and Oscar (who has also gone back to his regular job, performing in Mamma Mia! The Party! at The O2 in Greenwich) are busy getting the cafe and factory ready to re-reopen

“We’re painting this huge building, we’ve got a new counter made of scrap wood and I’ve had to learn new trades I’ve never tried in my life before,” said Charlie.

“But that’s being an entrepreneur – you have to be savvy and learn loads of skills.

“Some things will be the same – we’ll still be serving our amazing hot chocolate that people travel miles for, but we’ve also taken the opportunity to change the menu.

“We’ll be doing plant-based lunch bowls, breakfast bowls and toasties – all super delicious and healthy.

“The factory hasn’t had its day yet, either – there are more plans we have for it – but I believe with a bit more love and attention, it can really soar.

“I want to say a huge thank you to the local community, because, when we had the fire it was devastating.

“This was because of the potential danger to the people who live above it, but also because my business was on fire, my livelihood, and I’d just finished refurbishing two days before.

“I didn’t want to come back. But the number of people who messaged me daily to say they’d help me rebuild made me realise people loved what we’d built and that it was worth bringing back.

“They raised an incredible amount of money to help me pay staff for a bit longer and, to this day we get people coming by saying how good it is that we’re reopening and offering help. The support has been amazing.”

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September 1, 2021September 1, 2021

Royal Docks: How puppet-maker Charlie Tymms creates magic through movement

The Royal Albert Wharf-based creative talks dinosaurs and intuitive working in the studio

Charlie Tymms with her T-Rex puppet – image Matt Grayson

Royal Albert Wharf might look like a relatively ordinary residential area – brick clad oblongs arranged sensitively around both the waters of the dock and the older buildings in the area. But look behind the doors and windows of its lower floors and you’ll find a thriving community of artists and makers.

The presence of Bow Arts and Art In The Docks – which recently opened its artist-led project space at the development – ensures a rolling programme of public activities, helping the work spill out to a larger audience.

So when puppet maker Charlie Tymms, strapped and velcroed into her latest creation, steps out onto the quayside – tail whipping behind her – it only causes a minimal stir.

The beast is one of a series of creatures she has made for The Dinosaur Show, a new production that enjoyed its maiden run at the Blue Orange Theatre in August. It’s also her first ever single-person puppet.

“He’s a really naughty character on stage and chases after the palaeontologist and nicks sweets out of her rucksack – he’s delightful,” said Charlie.

“While we were doing our research and development for this project – a really important part of the process – we had a puppeteer, the puppetry director, two producers and myself play around for three days with basic prototypes.

“It was really good fun because it quickly became The Dinosaur Show That Went Wrong.

“We had the size of the theatre marked out on the floor and the sheer scale of the T-Rex – with its huge tail knocking things over – was where the part of the story about this one being really naughty came from.”

One of Charlie's sketches for the T-Rex — One of Charlie’s sketches for the T-Rex – image Matt Grayson

Collaboration has been a constant feature of Charlie’s career, which began when she was asked to do some scenic painting 25 years ago for her mum’s friend. She went on to work in set design and fell into her current area of expertise “by accident”.

“In terms of puppetry, which I now specialise in, I was asked to sculpt a full-size elephant – a massive polystyrene thing – with four people inside for the legs that could carry a small child on its back,” she said.

“It was for a Michael Morpurgo show called Running Wild and through that process I met this amazing puppet-maker called Nick Barnes, who is very well established. I’ve been making with him for years – almost as an apprentice – on loads and loads of projects. Then, through that, I’ve been gradually doing my own projects.

“With Nick I’ve tended to be the sculptor and painter, while he designs all the armatures and mechanisms.

“It’s a really nice process because everybody gets involved at some point – the puppeteers and the people producing the shows. I’ve gravitated towards collaborative projects because I like working with other people.”

Every project Charlie takes on is different but all her puppet creations involve translating an idea into a physical form that can be manipulated.

“For the T-Rex, I made the first model out of cheap plumbing pipes to try out the length of it and the harness,” she said.

“In the end the frame became more of a rigid structure as I decided on the best form of engineering for one puppeteer and the easiest way for them to control the dinosaur.

“I’m a very intuitive maker, so I don’t generally pre-design – I do it on the hoof but I do loads of anatomical research, so I’ve got hundreds of pictures of skeletons of T-Rexes – their skulls and anatomy – and loads of sketches.

“Then you start with the human and build it around them. In the end you want to ask the audience to believe that this thing has a life and a spirit.

“The puppeteers are amazing creatures in themselves, because they can bring things to life, but the maker can help the process enormously by where they position all the joints and where the strength needs to be to operate the puppet.

“So, with T-Rex the thighs are really important, because they’re just so massive – along with the head and the tail – visually they are the anchor points.

“Then the audience can use their imagination to fill in the gaps. In this model, for example, there is no rib cage.”

Charlie demonstrates another puppet – image Matt Grayson

Those aged three and over watching The Dinosaur Show, will also have to use their imaginations when it comes to another of her puppets.

“We knew quite early on we wanted a large head of a brachiosaurus coming out and looking over the tree canopy, then craning into the audience,” said Charlie.

“I wanted to make it really huge, but that would have been too terrifying so a head on a long neck is what we’ve ended up with. The children will be able to feed it leaves as it swings out.”

Charlie, who has produced owls for Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, been on puppet hospital duty for Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs movie and created a Toto out of gingham scraps for Wizard Of Oz at the Chichester Festival, said watching her puppets in performance was always a mixture of anxiety and joy if the audience liked the show.

“With every job you learn a little bit more about how to do things in a better way, to solve problems,” she said. “It’s a very inventive life, which I love.

“Puppetry is definitely having a renaissance partly down to the success of His Dark Materials and especially War Horse, which put the puppet at the centre of the story.

“It was quite a radical statement for a theatre company to do that and it kind of lifted the genre.

“Then there’s Lyndie Wright of the Little Angel Theatre who’s a figurehead in our world and her daughter Sarah who set up the Curious School Of Puppetry a few years ago, that every year sees 12 puppeteers come out, which is having a real impact in terms of growth.

“Anyone interested in becoming a puppeteer should take a look at its website – curiouspuppetry.com.”

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July 26, 2021September 8, 2021

Royal Docks: Cyrus Todiwala’s Cafe Spice Namaste set to open at Royal Albert Wharf

Relocation of Prescot Street restaurant after 25 years sees east London welcome chef to quayside

Cyrus and Pervin are set to open Cafe Spice Namaste in August – image James Perrin

Aldgate’s loss is the Royal Docks’ gain. After more than a quarter of a century operating in Prescot Street, Cafe Spice Namaste – the flagship restaurant in Pervin and Cyrus Todiwala’s family business – has been forced to relocate, after losing its lease to a new landlord with an eye on redeveloping the venerable red brick building it occupied, as offices.

With the pandemic biting and hospitality reeling, the couple initially looked at opening on Commercial Street in nearby Shoreditch before a former employee, living in east London, got in touch.

“She said: ‘Why don’t you come to Royal Albert Wharf? It would be nice for a little cafe’,” said chef patron Cyrus. “So we looked at it and decided in the end to establish a wider business.

“There are lots of plans in my brain, which gradually we will put into action and, fingers crossed, we will succeed.”

At the heart of everything will be a fresh incarnation of Cafe Spice Namaste, set to open in August and located on Lower Dock Walk, less than 10 minutes on foot from Gallions Reach DLR.

While the setting – overlooking the waters of Royal Albert Dock towards the University Of East London, Excel and London City Airport – provides the backdrop, there’s little doubt that the food will be the most potent draw.

It would be easy to fill the remaining space on this spread by simply listing Cyrus and Pervin’s many achievements – not least holding a Michelin Bib Gourmand for nearly two decades, which would make the new restaurant the farthest east in the capital (by some distance) to trouble the guide, should it be similarly recognised.

But rather than cover the same ground as a recent episode of BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme – which has already done a great job of distilling and presenting the background to the Todiwalas’ current situation (including their notice to quit their old premises, Cyrus’ successful battle with cancer and the story of Bombay Duck) – we’re going to focus on the future.

Cyrus intends to start things off with a few informal evenings for those signed up online to his Greedy Pigs Club before opening the venue officially.

He said: “We always had a splash of colour and I think that will come here too. This space is a lot more modern, with big windows, so it will feel different, but we want to bring back as much of the feel of the original Cafe Spice Namaste as we can. The food is a variety of Indian cuisine, not stuck to any one region or area, though we do have an emphasis on my own style of cooking which is Parsee and we do a lot of Goan food because of my background working there for several years. We try to bring in as much of the sub-continent as possible. At the new restaurant, the classics that our regulars will be familiar with will remain – the rest will evolve.

“We will do specials around seasonal British produce and we’re also thinking that, in this area, it may be easier for people to have more shared plates, which will be small plates so we can present a bigger variety and bring more choice to the menu. We’ll also hold supper-club style events once a month that people can register for online.”

Cyrus has many ideas he hopes to develop in Royal Docks – image James Perrin

Without the goodwill and support of its loyal group of regulars, it’s likely Cafe Spice Namaste wouldn’t be coming to the Royal Docks or anywhere else, for that matter.

It was hit especially hard by the pandemic because of its location in the City – losing almost all passing trade – and never having focused much on takeaways, so a group of three customers led a funding drive, raising nearly £50,000 to help with the move.

Cyrus said: “That felt really amazing – where else would you have customers willing to put money in and help you relocate and re-establish yourselves?

“That money gave us a big stepping stone. Hospitality has been decimated and we were certainly not alone in many of the difficulties we faced, but we had other problems and issues as well. We weren’t able to benefit from local sales as the City was deserted.”

His other restaurants, based in Hilton hotels, including Mr Todiwala’s on the Isle Of Dogs and one near Heathrow, remain closed too, victims of business models upset by Covid-19. In the short-term, then, it’s up to Cafe Spice Namaste to be the lead in the charge for recovery.

During the photoshoot for this piece, a service boat was visiting Royal Docks, loading up on fresh water to supply a recently arrived superyacht in central London. Having not used the craft in a while, its crew were allowing the excess to gush through the system and down into the depths below to Cyrus’ visible discomfort. The spectacle of so much water apparently going to waste was a tough watch for a man from Bombay – a visible sign of one of the key ingredients in his makeup.

Perhaps one of the reasons the Todiwalas were able to find support in the community is that Cyrus has been persistently outward looking, keen to get deeply involved with the creation of the produce he uses and to ensure as light a touch as possible on the planet.

“I grew up in an area with acute water shortages and no electricity for most of the day,” he said. “I wish I could get more people to see how the culture here is so wasteful – nobody considers what happens to things once they’ve been put in the bin.

“We started recycling bottles in 1992 – nobody had heard of it then and nobody wanted to do it, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of throwing them away.”

He’s also run farms producing pigs and poultry as well as agricultural plantations of pineapples, coconuts, cashews and mangos. More recently, he was the first chef ambassador for the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, presenting Mudchute Park And Farm on the Isle Of Dogs with its approved status in 2017 and in June took over from the late Albert Roux as group chef ambassador with The Clink Charity, which delivers training to inmates in British prisons. He’s also in talks with a farm project in Greenwich to supply Cafe Spice Namaste with seasonal vegetables to minimise food miles.

As part of his latest venture he is also hoping to establish an academy to train young people at Royal Albert Wharf.

“We will start with one-off classes for four hours and it will grow slowly,” said Cyrus. “But some people will want to do a week and, if there’s interest and demand then we’ll build that in.

“As the restaurant opens it will be a stressful time – it’s always difficult to find your feet, but we’ve been at this for many, many years and so we’re prepared, compared to the newer operators.

“I want this to be a place that the community accepts, that draws people to us, supplying their needs at different levels.

“One gentleman living across the water has already asked us to supply a week’s menu to him every seven days, so we’re doing that, and other people may want the same. If people sign up to our newsletter then they’ll get all the information about what we’re doing, what we’re developing. There are loads of ideas that are brewing and, when we are established, we can start to implement them.

“I’ve had a great life and a good career so far. It’s been hard, but that’s because I take on extra things, thinking about how I can help the community and what I can do for young people. But if I’d done it differently I probably wouldn’t have learned as much as I have.”

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