John Howland owned land in Rotherhithe which he gifted to his daughter when she married the Marquis of Tavistock in 1695. On it they built the Great Howland Dock which opened by 1700 to refit and repair ships away from the tidal river. In the eighteenth century it became a centre for the Greenland whaling industry and was renamed Greenland Dock.

By 1800 London desperately needed new dock facilities. The Grand Surrey Canal Company was formed in 1801, with plans to link the docks by canal as far as Portsmouth. However, it only got to Camberwell and Peckham and effectively became a long, narrow dock rather than a waterway. The Commercial Dock Company was formed in 1806 and continual building, takeovers and mergers by these two companies created the vast network of docks and other facilities which became known as the Surrey Commercial Docks. This eventually covered 372 acres (150 hectares) and came to specialise in the timber and grain trades. Many of the place names within the docks reflected the areas of the world with which they traded, such as Russia Dock, Canada Dock and Baltic Yard.

By the twentieth century Surrey Commercial Docks employed thousands of people from the local community. During the Second World War the docks and surrounding area suffered extensive damage from enemy bombing. They were rebuilt but the shipping industry was changing radically. The volume of trade they handled fell sharply during the 1960s and the docks were finally closed in 1970 ending an era. Much of the land was sold to the Greater London Council and the London Borough of Southwark and many docks were filled in. During the 1980s the London Docklands Development Corporation organised the sale of land to developers and much of the area is now residential and retail.

This gallery shows images of the docks through the years alongside many of the streets and buildings in the neighbourhood.