Boulter Family Films: London dockers, Royal Albert Dock (1964)

Great shots of London dockers enjoying a tea break in the teeming Royal Albert Dock, a hive of container ships and gigantic cranes.

Royal Albert Dock is now the site of City airport, but in the 1960s was still part of London’s heaving dock network. This film shows dockers taking a tea break – one poses with his mug before instructing the film-maker to stop filming. Later shots show the docks filled with cranes and ships being unloaded, before cutting to the boating lake at Barking’s Mayesbrook Park. The film ends with some park football. Taken from the Boulter Family Films archive.

Barking & Dagenham Heritage and Archives Service