At the end of Mill Street, Bermondsey, is a stone archway with a metal gate and a sign: TOWER BRIDGE MOORINGS. A wooden walkway, suspended above the Thames, leads to a cluster of about 40 boats: Dutch barges, commercial tugs and ex-Thames lighters transformed into floating gardens.
There is a bike barge, a beehive, an open-air events space and the Arts Ark, with a grand piano set against the dramatic backdrop of Tower Bridge.
A seagull squawks overhead. The walkways groan. The Thames slaps at the boats, which bob with the swell of the water. It’s like being at sea.
“That’s a very important part of the moorings,” says Nick Lacey, the architect who created this floating community. “The Thames is quite estuarial, with tremendous tides — you’re not that far from the open sea.”
Lacey bought the moorings in 1983, having purchased the adjoining building, Reeds Wharf, in the 1970s. They are ancient moorings, dating to before 1857. Lacey, who once lived at Reeds Wharf, had gazed out at them and thought: something must be done.
“There have been barges moored here since time immemorial. I had a beautiful idea to convert the barges and barge moorings to new uses, and to keep some life on the river,” he says. “A community is a slightly intangible thing. As an architect, you try to make a place where a community can thrive. It’s not easy to do.”
Fast-forward 40 years and Lacey’s vision for Tower Bridge Moorings has come to life. What began as a handful of boats has grown to a “Noah’s Ark” of more than 100 people. There are about 30 berth-holders, who own their own boats. Others rent or stay short-term on the visitors’ berth.
Sujith Dissanayake, 50, is the longest- standing berth-holder at the moorings, having moved there from Sri Lanka in 2006 with his wife, Sophie. There were just three boats at the time.
Dissanayake first visited for a two-week holiday in 2004, having heard about the community from his mother-in-law, who had campaigned for the moorings and helped to establish the floating gardens. “I loved it. It felt like Sri Lanka. Everyone knows each other and there’s a real sense of community. It almost felt like home.”
Dissanayake has lived on the same barge throughout — a former Amsterdam party boat converted into three flats. He operates his massage therapy business from one, timing his appointments with the tide schedule.
Over the years some clients were so enchanted by the moorings that they even moved there themselves.
“Whoever comes, never leaves — it’s very addictive, boating life,” says Dissanayake. “This place is very special. The gardens; waking up to Tower Bridge. You don’t feel like you’re in central London.”
In 2007 the residents relocated temporarily to Cadogan Pier in Chelsea while work was completed. It wasn’t the same. “It was all posh and pontoons. It’s completely different here.”
At Tower Bridge Moorings, says Dissanayake, his neighbours help carry his big shop; there’s an annual Bonfire Night party; his wife runs a seed exchange. And at night he sleeps like a baby, rocked by the tide. “You feel like part of a big family here. There are play readings, concerts, events — something happening all the time.”
For Narotam Horn, a composer and pianist who lives with his wife, Ninon, and one-year-old son on a Seventies Humber Keel barge, the moorings were a chance to get on the property ladder. “This was the only way we could have anything in our name. The space we have in this area is a fraction of the cost.”
After renting for six years on the moorings, Horn bought his boat in 2021 for £120,000. He had stumbled upon the moorings while passing, watching residents chat on the walkway.
“It looked like an oasis. I couldn’t imagine that people actually lived there.” He rang up the next day and three weeks later, he had moved in.
There are challenges to living there with a young child: the boat can be slippery and navigating a pram alone is difficult when the tide is out.
But Horn has no regrets. “It’s a very romantic way to live,” he says. “It’s been amazing to see families flowering out. You watch people’s kids grow up, and you see people through different phases of life. This little oasis has sustained so many lives.”
What it costs
Keeping the moorings affordable —which is not the same as being cheap — is important to Lacey, who believes that by stabilising costs they can help to alleviate London’s housing shortage.
But do people live there because it’s affordable, or because it’s a way of life?
“It’s a bit of both,” says Lacey. “I think there are certainly people here who could never afford a deposit on a house or flat in inner London, so to buy a boat and bring it here is relatively inexpensive. But the other side of the coin is that it’s not quite like a house – it needs a lot more looking after.”
Besides the boat itself, the main cost for residents is the mooring fee. This is based on the length of the boat, and costs about £12,000 a year for berth- holders, says Lacey. Fees rise annually with inflation, although Lacey absorbed some of the increase this year.
Dissanayake pays for electricity (£250-£300 per month), gas (£45-£50) and diesel (£400 in winter). Then there is maintenance, which is an outlay both of time and money.
Every seven years, boats must be taken out of the water for a full survey, called “Dry Dock”. Dissanayake’s is next year. It will take three weeks and cost about £20,000.
“To be honest, it’s quite expensive to live here. It’s not cheap,” says Dissanayake, who rents out an apartment on his boat to help with the costs.
“Owning a boat is very demanding. A lot of things can go wrong, and the winter months are challenging… [Living here] is our choice. We love staying here, and we can’t afford a house here.”
For Alan and Lizzie Cropper, 82 and 73, the sense of community is a big part of the moorings’ attraction. They have lived on their boat — a former Rotterdam brothel — for 15 years, opting for a change of lifestyle together after their respective divorces.
Mixing with a “bright and diverse bunch” on the moorings beats a quiet retirement in the countryside.
“We love it that we’re among younger people,” says Cropper. “It’s rather like an Italian village here, where you can hear people out on their balconies talking across to each other. It’s a total one-off in London.”
For the couple, moving to the moorings was a leap of faith. Lizzie lived in a house in Hemel Hampstead, while Alan lived in a Grade I-listed, 35-room medieval country mansion in Suffolk that he and his ex-wife had bought with another couple. There were eight-and-a-half acres of land, tennis courts, asparagus beds and a Mulberry tree.
“When we were making our minds up about where we were going to live, we could never, ever have conceived that it would be this,” says Alan.
“If we’d have sat down and drawn up pluses and minuses, we wouldn’t have done it. And yet it’s been the best thing for us.”
Not all plain sailing
For Lacey, however, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. In 2003 and 2004, residents of the nearby apartment blocks lobbied Southwark council to shut down the moorings. After two planning enquiries, the moorings ended up on top.
Disputes came to a head in 2011 when the Port of London Authority (PLA), which manages the Thames, took Lacey to court, contesting the existence of his ancient mooring rights.
After two “fascinating and terrifying” weeks and an outlay of “well over six figures”, the judge ruled in the moorings’ favour. Lacey says relations with Southwark council and nearby residents are now good, while those with the PLA “could be better”.
Still, the experience has not deterred him. He and his colleague David Waterhouse have “a grand plan” to create new moorings — roughly double the size — on the river at Rotherhithe. They have also acquired two neighbouring sets of ancient moorings.
To shelter them, they plan to build a floating breakwater with gardens on top and affordable housing below. Unlike Tower Bridge Moorings, Lacey wants to make these public, with cafes, restaurants and a Thames Clipper stop.
Affordability is central to Lacey’s vision, with costs for residents expected to be in line with those at Tower Bridge. “If we manage to do it, it will make a contribution to [easing] London’s housing shortage,” says Lacey.
“I believe that the Thames, which in the past was bustling with life, has become a very much under-used resource. It’s a waste of a wonderful asset. If one had a series of these floating communities — a necklace of them down the river — how fabulous that would be.”
As we walk back along the creaking walkways to Reeds Wharf, Lacey shows me the beehive. Bees, he explains, are sensitive about where they are located. Even the smallest of disruptions can upset them. Yet, miraculously, these bees move up and down eight metres a day, rocked by the tides. They have found something special here. And, much like the residents, they’re not going anywhere.
