Hay's Galleria

Hay's Galleria today is a masterpiece of public space that has emerged from near destruction and a chequered past of glory and shame. In the 1980s, with the increasing urban regeneration of the Thames Corridor and nearby London Docklands, the area was acquired by the St Martin's Property Corporation the real estate arm of the State of Kuwait, as part of their 'London Bridge City' development, stretching from London Bridge easterly to English Grounds where it is terminated by the Southwark Crown Court site and bound to the South by Tooley Street. The decision to retain the wharf, a Grade II listed structure, to sympathetically restore its tea and produce warehouses surrounding it, to provide office accommodation and shops, was done by permanently closing the dock gates, covering the 'impounded' area of the dock with a floor to the sill of the wharf-sides and, most spectacularly, enclosing the entire space with a roof, reminiscent of the Victorian railway termini of the same period, to create the galleria.