Three districts sharing one postcode
E14 covers three places with almost nothing in common apart from their letters. The estate is the towers: Canada Square, Cabot Square, Wood Wharf to the east and the hotels at its edges. The island is the Isle of Dogs, the whole peninsula below the docks, with residential towers along Marsh Wall and Millharbour and then streets of lower housing running down to Island Gardens and the river. Limehouse is the older corner to the west, brick warehouses, the basin and Narrow Street, a riverside settlement long before the docks were dug.
All three are in Zone 2, so none of them adds a fare, and all three are within about twenty minutes' walk of Canada Square. What differs is the evening each one produces. The address you give decides which of the three evenings you get, which is why it deserves more thought than the address of the office.
Walking minutes from Canada Square
The estate itself is compact. From Canada Square to Westferry Circus at its western tip is about seven minutes, and the Wood Wharf towers at its eastern edge are a similar distance. Every hotel on or beside it is inside ten minutes on foot.
The island starts across the dock. Marsh Wall and the South Quay hotels are seven to ten minutes over the footbridge; Crossharbour, halfway down, is about fifteen; Island Gardens at the southern tip is nearer half an hour, or about eight minutes on the DLR. The island is a good deal longer than it looks from a tower window.
Limehouse is about eighteen minutes on foot from Canada Square, partly by the river from Westferry Circus and then along Narrow Street, or a few minutes on the DLR from West India Quay. It is the only one of the three that feels genuinely separate when you arrive. You come out of the station and the towers are behind you.
The road in, once the trains stop
The DLR stops at around half past midnight, and from then on every arrival in E14 comes by road. The three districts behave very differently when that happens.
Limehouse is the easiest. The Limehouse Link tunnel runs beneath it from The Highway, which makes it the quickest part of the postcode to reach from the City and the West End after midnight, roughly fifteen minutes from the City on a clear road. The estate comes next, reached through the same tunnel or along Aspen Way, with drop offs at the hotel forecourts and the edges of the squares.
The island is the slowest. Its roads run in a loop, Westferry Road down the west side and Manchester Road up the east, with the old docks filling the middle, so an address near Island Gardens is further by car than it looks on a map. On the east side a lifting bridge over the dock entrance occasionally holds the traffic for a vessel. Allow ten minutes more than you would for the estate, and give the driver the street as well as the building.
The estate after 22:00
Quiet, lit and immaculately kept. The squares are patrolled, the towers glow and the restaurants turn their last tables between ten and eleven. It is an excellent place for dinner and a less good place to go on afterwards: the bars along the dock tend to wind down while the lights above them are still on. A band in Cabot Place or a hotel bar is the usual end of a night here.
Base the evening on the estate if you want a table with height or glass around it, if you have an early start there the next morning, or if the hotel is part of the point. Five hotels sit on it or within a bridge of it, and a room call to any of them usually arrives forty five minutes to an hour after confirmation.
The island after 22:00
Residential, and quieter than the estate by some distance. Most people on the island at night live there, in the towers along Marsh Wall or the streets further south, and its pubs are locals' pubs. The Ferry House on Ferry Street, near the southern tip, is the oldest of them and looks it, in the best way.
Island Gardens, at the very bottom, has the finest view in the postcode: the Old Royal Naval College filling the far bank at Greenwich, and the foot tunnel under the Thames beside it, open all night. Ten minutes at the railings there closes a night more gracefully than most bars manage.
Base the evening on the island if you are in a flat there, if you want the shortest possible journey home, or if the plan is ninety minutes at £400 with supper sent up, which is the island's most common booking by a clear margin.
Limehouse after 22:00
Limehouse is most distinctly itself after dark. The basin holds narrowboats and a few yachts, Narrow Street is lined with warehouse flats and a couple of old pubs, and by half past nine the only tall things in sight are a mile to the east. The Grapes on Narrow Street, a slim old riverside pub with a small balcony over the water, is the best known of them.
Two waterways run into the basin, the Limehouse Cut from the Lea and the Regent's Canal from the north, and a lock at its mouth lets boats out onto the Thames. A slow circuit of the basin at night takes about ten minutes. Nothing about it feels like a financial district, which is the entire reason for going. Base the evening in Limehouse if you would like to forget where you work for a few hours, or if you live nearby and would rather be visited than travel.
Matching the address to the evening
The rule of thumb is to give the address that suits the evening, not the one that suits the office. A room call is arranged the same way in all three districts and the figure does not change between them, from £250 for an hour to £1,800 for the night. What changes is what the evening feels like once she is through the door.
Three from the raven haired column cover the three districts well. Karolina treats Limehouse as her own stretch of river and will have checked the tide before she arrives. Angelika is an estate person, early tables on Canada Square and the dock walk after, and she has never once been late. Violetta dislikes crowds and loud rooms and would choose the island's quiet over the estate's glass every time.
The island's two large hotels are set side by side in the Marsh Wall note. The pages for Limehouse, the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf carry the stations and walk times in full, and Greenwich is one tunnel away from the bottom of the island.
Filed on one line: most of the names above also sit under raven haired in the the ledger.
Questions this raises
Is Limehouse walkable from Canary Wharf?
Yes, about eighteen minutes on foot from Canada Square, partly beside the river, or a few minutes on the DLR from West India Quay. After midnight it is also the quickest part of E14 to reach by road.
Which part of E14 is quietest at night?
The southern half of the Isle of Dogs, which is almost entirely residential. Limehouse is quiet too but keeps its pubs, and the estate is lit and patrolled rather than busy.
Does a booking cost more on the island or in Limehouse than on the estate?
No. All three are in Zone 2, so her travel is included and the ladder is the same everywhere, from £250 for an hour to £1,800 overnight.
More off the tape
Put it to use
The evening this describes is one message away, and Booking shows how plainly it confirms.