The later name derives from a manor house located on the spit; this site had become an eponymous public house from 1800–60. When the docks were constructed, the area became isolated, with the only access via the dock road, from Poplar. Residents were engaged at the glass works, the iron and engineering works, or the Samuda Brothers, Orchard House Yard and Thames Iron Works ship yards. When the Thames Plate Glass Works closed in 1874, many of the hands – who had migrated to the area from Tyneside and St Helens in the 1840s – now followed the glassworks to New Albany, Indiana. To house the workers, there were about 100 small two-storied cottages – built from the 1820s and condemned in 1935. There was the Bow Creek school (founded in 1865), but few shops, and the Crown, a public house, opened about 1840.
One street, Orchard Place, runs through the former industrial area and the Lower Lea Crossing crosses the narrow strip of land between the two tongues. The northern part was principally occupied by Pura Foods Ltd vegetable oil refinery – on the site of the former Thames Plate Glass Works; and the south by engineering works, shipyards (Thames Iron Works and Orchard House Yard) and Trinity Buoy Wharf which contains London's only lighthouse. There are also live-work units, many in the form of the Container Cities. The "Jubilee" pedestrian bridge across the Lee links the area to the east bank of the Lee, and Canning Town station.
The Leamouth Peninsula project is a scheme by architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill that has received planning permission to create up to 1837 homes, a community centre, an arts centre, and a primary school with places for up to 371 children on the peninsula. The scheme will consist of extremely high density housing around a central core pedestrian route linking to the proposed lower Lea Valley linear Park - leading to the 2012 Olympic Park. There will be a mixture of towers, from to in height. The scheme will be implemented in two phases, one north of the single access road to the site, the other to the south, around Trinity Buoy Wharf.