Rafters at work in Surrey Commercial Docks, c.1930 

Rafter Walk, the 170m boardwalk that snakes across the revitalised Canada Dock, opened at the start of November with a spectacular event attended by more than 2,500 people. Here, we take a look at the inspiration for the name given to the red timber structure.  

The red walkway was designed by award-winning architect Asif Khan, who was born and raised in Southwark and used to visit Canada Dock with his family as a child. Khan took the history of the site as his inspiration for Rafter Walk. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the dock received ships laden with timber from across the Atlantic, destined for the rapidly industrialising city of London and beyond.  

The heavy baulks of softwood, known as deal, were unloaded, sorted and readied for onward transportation by dock workers. These included the deal porters, who moved the timber around the dockyards and timber warehouses, wearing protective leather headgear. They’re immortalised in the Deal Porters Sculpture that Rafter Walk passes next to, and the timber fins supporting the walkway recall the structures in which they stacked the timber.  

Before the timber reached the deal porters, however, it was manoeuvred from the ships to the timber ponds where it was kept to season (the wood could split if  allowed to dry out too quickly). This was the task of another group of specialist dock workers, the rafters.  

The walkway will see people tread the timbers once more at Canada Dock  

Khan has said he wanted the walkway to “evoke the crossing of time”, and that to walk along the gently undulating boardwalk is to follow in the footsteps of those rafters who once plied their trade in these waters. They would hop between the floating timbers, arranging them into rafts in which they were sorted by size, quality and ownership. They would lash the timbers together with a length of coir rope, or hammer in staples that they pulled from a canvas pouch tied around the waist, to form rafts that could reach more than 20 metres in length.1  

The rafters would then move these rafts through the river and dock system using long metal-tipped poles known as setting poles or pike poles. Paddling with oars was another technique that could be used, and rafts could be split into smaller sections to navigate narrow channels, then reassembled.  

The work was hard and dangerous – rafters risked being crushed or dumped into the water when baulks of deal shifted unexpectedly, and the bustling docks were teeming with other moving vessels, all with their own agendas. The rafters learned their demanding trade over a seven-year apprenticeship. Their pay depended on the size of the ship they were unloading. In the 1860s, they could earn four shillings unloading a “short-hour ship” which took around 8 hours. “Long-hour ships” could take up to 12 hours to empty, and offered an extra shilling. 2  

By the mid-20th century, the decline of Surrey Commercial Docks along with mechanisation and modern transport saw the rafters disappear from the waterways. During the peak years of Britain’s maritime industry their profession had been vital to the operation of London’s port, and it’s fitting that their role in the area’s history is remembered with this striking new piece of urban architecture.  

Rafter Walk’s illumination avoids disturbing wildlife 

Rafter Walk traverses the new wetland habitats that have been created by British Land in partnership with Townshend Landscape Architects, engineer Whitby Wood, timber specialist Xylotek, contractor Galldris and conservation specialists including the London Wildlife Trust. It allows people to get close to nature without disturbing the birds, invertebrates and other creatures that make their home in the dock, and clever lighting means it’s illuminated at night for people walking along it without causing light pollution that would affect the wildlife. 

Read about how we’ll be maintaining Rafter Walk and managing the wetland habitat here.