Limehouse Cut near Ropemakers Fields, viewed from the towpath at Maize Row looking north-east. The Cut canal was built in the late eighteenth century to provide a short-cut from the River Lea (also spelt Lee) at Bromley-by-Bow to the River Thames near Limehouse, avoiding a long journey around Bow Creek and the Isle of Dogs. On the left is a high wall, above which are Rectory Gardens and the vicarage of St Anne’s Church Limehouse. In the right foreground a Charrington’s Brewery barge with some empty pallets on it is moored. Two more barges are moored in front of it near a disinfectant factory and a timber yard in Lea Wharf. Between the roofs of these two buildings, the clock tower of St Anne’s Limehouse is visible. The early eighteenth-century St Anne’s is a Hawksmoor church which was Grade I listed in 1950, listing number 1357808. After the timber yard, an early nineteenth-century railway bridge crosses the Cut. Designed by George Stephenson and GP Bidder, it was Grade II listed in 1980, listing number 1241666. Beyond that is King’s Wharf, another timber yard and the early nineteenth-century British Sailors’ Society on Nelson’s Wharf at 2 Newell Street, which was Grade II listed in 1973, listing number 1260541. After the wharf, the Commercial Road crosses the Cut; this is the late nineteenth-century Britannia Bridge, named after a Britannia Tavern that used to be nearby. Behind the railway bridge and second timber yard, on the right, the chimneys of the late nineteenth-century Limehouse Town Hall can be seen. This was Grade II listed in 1973, listing number 1240047. The Cut’s most recent claim to fame came when celebrity footballer David Beckham arrived with the Olympic torch on a speedboat via the Limehouse Cut to the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony at Stratford.