Newham, London: the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the House Mill, Abbey Mills and the Royal Docks

The borough's north-west corner carries the Newham side of the 2012 park, its venues, and a working Victorian theatre behind the shopping centre.

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is entered free from Stratford, E20 2ST, and the London Legacy Development Corporation states that it is "free to visit every day of the week"; it publishes no gate times for the park as a whole. The operator gives the park as 560 acres and names as its venues the London Stadium, the ArcelorMittal Orbit, the London Aquatics Centre, the Copper Box Arena, Lee Valley VeloPark and Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, alongside V&A East Museum, Sadler's Wells East, BBC Music Studios, London College of Fashion UAL and UCL East. The park straddles four east London boroughs — Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest — and the Newham-side venues are the Stadium at E20 2ST, the Orbit at E20 2AD, the Aquatics Centre at E20 2AF and the East Bank buildings on Carpenters Road at E20 2AR. No part of the park appears on the Historic England Register of Parks and Gardens; the two Newham entries on that register are the City of London Cemetery and West Ham Park. Named features include the Tumbling Bay Playground, gardens, waterways and parklands.

The ArcelorMittal Orbit stands on Thornton Street inside the park, E20 2AD, at 114.5 m (376 ft). Anish Kapoor designed it with Cecil Balmond of Arup, with architectural input from Kathryn Findlay; it was unveiled on 11 May 2012 and reopened to the public on 5 April 2014 after post-Olympic reconstruction. It took about 2,000 tonnes of steel, roughly 60 per cent of it recycled, at a cost of £22.7 million against an announced £19.1 million. There are two indoor observation decks, each taking 150 people, and 455 steps for the walk down. A tunnel slide by Carsten Höller was added in June 2016: the operator, Zip World, markets it as Helix and gives it as 178 m long and 76 m tall. Zip World states that it is "open all year round except Christmas Day and Boxing Day", publishes no fixed daily hours and directs visitors to its booking calendar; it lists Helix from £19.00 and ArcelorMittal Orbit 360 from £15.00, both labelled an Autumn Saver Rate.

The London Stadium, at E20 2ST, was designed by Populous as a sunken elliptical bowl of 25,000 permanent seats with a demountable upper tier for a further 55,000. Construction began on 22 May 2008, the building was completed in March 2011 and it opened on 5 May 2012 as the athletics venue and ceremonies stadium of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It was reconfigured for football between 2013 and 2016 at a cost of £274 million; West Ham United became anchor tenants from the 2016-17 season on a 99-year lease and UK Athletics holds a 50-year lease for annual summer meetings. Regulated capacity is 62,500 for football, 68,013 seated overall and up to 80,000 for concerts, and the ground holds both UEFA Category 4 and World Athletics Category 1 status.

V&A East Museum opened on East Bank at 107 Carpenters Road, E20 2AR. Admission is free, with separate charges for some exhibitions and events, and the V&A publishes daily hours of 10.00 to 18.00 with Thursday and Saturday 10.00 to 22.00. The Corporation describes galleries on creativity and a landmark exhibition on Black British music history. This is one of two V&A East sites: V&A East Storehouse, at Parkes Street, E20 3AX, stands over the boundary in the London Borough of Hackney.

The Theatre Royal Stratford East is on Gerry Raffles Square, E15 1BN, box office 020 8534 0310, and is listed Grade II* as NHLE 1293425, first listed on 28 June 1972 under the statutory name "The Theatre Royal". The square is named for Gerry Raffles, general manager of Theatre Workshop, the company Joan Littlewood led at the theatre, and a monument in the borough commemorates "Joan Littlewood — The Mother of Modern Theatre". The building stands inside the Stratford, St John's conservation area, designated in January 1984. No source states its box office hours, so none are given here.

The strip along the Lea and the Channelsea carries the borough's earliest surviving fabric, and almost none of it is ticketed: a Grade I parish church, a tidal mill on a river island, Bazalgette's pumping station on the marsh edge and a City of London park.

The House Mill stands on Three Mill Lane, Three Mills, E3 3DU, and is listed Grade I as NHLE 1080970, first listed on 30 March 1955 under the statutory name "Tide Mill (known as the House Mill)". Daniel Bisson built it in 1776 after a fire and it worked until 1940; the water wheels are not currently turning. The River Lea Tidal Mill Trust owns it, together with the Miller's House, and uses both for education and conferences. The Trust states that "opening hours on Sundays are 11 am to 4 pm", with tours at 11:30, 13:30 and 15:00 of about an hour each at £10 per person including a guidebook or poster and a hot drink, and recommends pre-booking; the Trust's seasonal notice on the same page is out of date, so check the current dates before travelling. The neighbouring Clock Mill is separately listed Grade II, NHLE 1191269, also first listed on 30 March 1955; Philip Metcalfe rebuilt it between 1815 and 1817 around an older clock and bell and it worked until 1952. The whole island lies inside the Three Mills conservation area, designated in November 1971 and extended on 14 December 2006, and also carries 3 Mills Studios, a ten-acre film and television facility, and Three Mills Green.

Abbey Mills Pumping Station is on Abbey Lane, West Ham, E15 2RW, approached from the Greenway, the surfaced path on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer. The main building of 1865-68 is listed Grade II* as NHLE 1190476, first listed on 6 November 1974, with Charles Driver as architect and Joseph Bazalgette as engineer. Seven further entries on the same site are Grade II: B Station, NHLE 1357994; C Station with its valve house, NHLE 1392550, listed 9 April 2008; the bases of the pair of former chimney stacks, NHLE 1357995; the gate lodge, NHLE 1080982; the gates and gatepiers, NHLE 1357996; the offices, formerly the superintendent's house, NHLE 1080981; and the stores building, NHLE 1080980. Six of those were first listed on 25 October 1984. Two Moorish chimneys were demolished in 1941 for fear they would guide bombers, and their stumps are what NHLE 1357995 protects. The original station held eight beam engines by Rothwell & Co.; it now runs on electric pumps and assists the modern Station F, completed in 1997 about 200 m south, under Thames Water. It appears on the Historic England Heritage at Risk Register. The building is not routinely open and the exterior is what a visitor sees from the Greenway; the Northern Outfall Sewer bridge over the Channelsea River is itself listed Grade II, NHLE 1392549.

The Church of All Saints, West Ham, is on Church Street, E15 3HU, and is listed Grade I as NHLE 1358002, first listed on 25 October 1984. There has been a building on the site since at least the late twelfth century and three blocked clerestory windows survive from that phase; the west tower was added around 1400, when the chancel arch was rebuilt. The tower clock mechanism dates from 1857 and was built to Lord Grimthorpe's design, the prototype of the Big Ben movement. The font is dated 1707 and carries three churchwardens' names, reflecting the ancient parish's division into three wards, and the church also holds a relief and possible font remains from Stratford Langthorne Abbey, royal arms given by Thomas Holbrook in 1804 and a reredos by George Gilbert Scott of 1865-69. The abbey precinct itself survives as a scheduled monument in Abbey Gardens, Bakers Row, E15 3NF, NHLE 1003775, of 0.18 hectares; a scheduled monument carries no grade. No source states the church's opening hours, so none are given here.

West Ham Park is entered from Upton Lane, E7 9PU, and is a Grade II registered park and garden of 27.77 hectares (about 68.6 acres), NHLE 1001685, registered on 17 February 2004. The City of London Corporation owns and manages it and publishes monthly closing times only — 4.30pm in January, 5.30pm in February, 6.30pm in March, 8.30pm in April, 9.30pm from May to July, 8.30pm in August, 7.30pm in September, 6.30pm in October and 4.30pm in November and December — with no opening time published. Seven entrances, all wheelchair accessible, are named on the operator's map as South, Linden, Country, Margery, Nursery, Main and Portway gates. Free facilities include the Ornamental Gardens, a children's playground and paddling pool, football pitches, cricket, tennis courts, an outdoor gym, a Linden Wildlife Garden, a Wildlife Education Garden and pond, and a bandstand available for hire. The operator warns that the park may close at short notice if winds are forecast at 40 mph or above.

The residential east of the borough: a twelfth-century parish church whose churchyard is a nature reserve, the covered market Green Street turns on, an Edwardian civic block with a 46 m clock tower and a Victorian cemetery landscape at Manor Park.

The Church of St Mary Magdalene is on Norman Road, East Ham, E6 6HN, and is listed Grade I as NHLE 1080961, first listed on 21 October 1982. The nave, chancel and apse date to the first half of the twelfth century; the tower is probably early thirteenth century and was partly rebuilt in the sixteenth. It was damaged in the Blitz in 1941 and now forms part of the East Ham Team Parish. The churchyard around it is managed as the East Ham Nature Reserve, whose entrance sits about 60 m from the church. The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Little Ilford, on St Mary's Approach, E12 6HG, is the borough's fourth Grade I building, NHLE 1190948, first listed on 17 November 1980. No source states either church's opening hours, so none are given here.

Queen's Market is a publicly owned covered market on Green Street, Upton Park, E13 9JJ, beside Upton Park station. Newham Council runs it; Friends of Queen's Market, a campaign group, publishes the trading days as Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 9am to 6pm and Sunday 12 noon to 6pm, with no Wednesday market day, adding that "some market shops are open on the other days". The market grew up in the late Victorian period as East Ham developed, worked first by English Cockney, Gypsy and Jewish traders from Whitechapel and the East End; in 1904 the traders were moved into Queen's Road to stop them blocking the main road and the trams. From the late 1960s and 1970s South Asian and African traders established themselves, and the market now specialises in South Asian and African food and textiles. The Friends call it "our much loved 112-year-old Queen's Market" and say of themselves that the group "has been in existence for 21 years"; the market is an Asset of Community Value. Newham Council proposed a supermarket and luxury housing above a smaller covered market in November 2006, and in May 2009 the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, directed the council to refuse planning permission. It is also the market where Muhammad Shahid Nazir, the "One Pound Fish Man", filmed the trader's song that led to a record deal in 2012.

Newham Town Hall, the former East Ham Town Hall, is on Barking Road, East Ham, E6 2JT, and is listed Grade II* as NHLE 1190712, first listed on 31 January 1973 and amended on 17 June 1999 under the statutory name "Newham Council Offices". Henry Cheers and Joseph Smith designed it in a Renaissance style; the foundation stone was laid in 1901 and the building opened on 5 February 1903 at a ceremony performed by John Passmore Edwards. The main frontage runs to six bays with a tower 150 feet (46 m) high, the clock came from Smith & Sons of Derby and the hour bell was cast by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough. It was built for East Ham Urban District Council and remains the ceremonial seat of the London Borough of Newham: most council operations moved to Newham Dockside in 2010, but formal council meetings still take place here. Three neighbouring buildings of the same civic group are separately listed Grade II — the Passmore Edwards Library, NHLE 1261973, listed 16 May 1994; the Technical College, NHLE 1080989, listed 15 April 1982; and the boundary wall running round to High Street South, NHLE 1190736, listed 25 October 1984 — and the block stands inside the East Ham Town Centre conservation area.

The City of London Cemetery and Crematorium is on Aldersbrook Road, Manor Park, E12 5DQ. The historic core is a Grade I registered park and garden of 66.44 hectares, NHLE 1000286, registered on 1 October 1987; the cemetery as a whole runs to about 200 acres (81 ha). The City of London Corporation founded it in 1854 and the first interment was on 24 June 1856; William Haywood laid it out in 1855 with the landscape gardener Robert Davidson, the original crematorium of 1904 was by D. J. Ross and the new one of 1971 by E. G. Chandler. There are more than 150,000 gravesites: approximately 600,000 people have been interred here, and with the remains from over 30 London churchyards also placed on the site, the figure is approaching 1 million. At least nine structures inside carry their own Grade II listings, among them the main entrance screen and lodges, NHLE 1080984; the columbarium, NHLE 1080986; the Non-conformist Mortuary Chapel, NHLE 1080985; the Central Avenue chapel, NHLE 1357998; the South Chapel, NHLE 1357999; the cottage, NHLE 1293711; and the mausoleum to Lieutenant Colonel W. Haywood, NHLE 1190633. Mary Ann Nichols and Catherine Eddowes, two of the 1888 Whitechapel victims, are buried here, as are the soft-tissue remains of Joseph Merrick; Bobby Moore was cremated at Putney Vale and his ashes are in the Garden of Remembrance here. The grounds open Monday to Sunday 9am to 5pm, and 9am to 3pm on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, with last entry 30 minutes before closing; the office opens Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm. Four operator rules apply and none of them is a copyright matter: wildlife photography has not been permitted in the grounds since 1 July 2025, drone use is prohibited, third-party tour guides may not operate within the cemetery, and dogs are barred except assistance dogs.

Three miles of nineteenth-century dock water lie south of the A13, reused rather than filled in, and the DLR is how a visitor moves along them.

The Royal Victoria Dock opened in 1855, built by the Victoria (London) Dock Company to George Parker Bidder's design on the previously uninhabited Plaistow Marshes, and was worked by hydraulic machinery for large steamships. It had four solid piers, each 152 m by 43 m, and 3.6 km of quays; it gained the "Royal" prefix in 1880 and closed to commercial traffic in 1981. The Stothert & Pitt cranes on the north and south quays are covered by a single Grade II entry, NHLE 1393528, first listed on 17 November 2009, which carries fourteen separate grid references and so covers a run of cranes along both quaysides rather than one machine. Warehouse K on the north quay is separately listed Grade II, NHLE 1376226, on 27 August 1998, and Silo D on the south side is Grade II, NHLE 1245030, listed 28 January 1999. The quayside between the Royal Victoria Dock Bridge, the high-level pedestrian crossing completed in 1998, and ExCeL is a public walk, entered around E16 1AY. Two entries often placed here are in fact at the Royal Albert Dock about 2 km east: the Dock Manager's Offices, Grade II, NHLE 1376228, and the Central Buffet at Custom House, Grade II, NHLE 1380201, in which "Custom House" means the Royal Albert Dock custom house and not the station.

ExCeL London occupies the northern quay of the Royal Victoria Dock at One Western Gateway, E16 1XL, telephone +44 (0)20 7069 5000, and gives its own registered address as Warehouse K, the Grade II listed warehouse of 1883, NHLE 1376226. It opened in November 2000 on a waterfront site of about 100 acres between Canary Wharf and London City Airport. Two column-free rectangular halls give roughly 44,546 square metres (479,493 sq ft) of main hall space, with function rooms, six hotels on site and 1,800 parking spaces of which 85 are accessible. Phase II, completed on 1 May 2010, added an International Convention Centre, and a further phase was completed in late 2024. The Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company has owned it since May 2008.

City Hall stands at the Crystal, Kamal Chunchie Way, E16 1ZE, on the north quay of the Royal Victoria Dock beside the cable-car terminal. WilkinsonEyre designed it as The Crystal, a Siemens exhibition centre on sustainable architecture, opened to the public in September 2012, with Perkins+Will handling the later fit-out; it was rated LEED Platinum and BREEAM Outstanding. The Greater London Authority moved in during January 2022, completing the move in the third week of that month, and the building has been London's City Hall since, so the seat of city government for the whole of London stands in Newham. What a visitor has here is the dock quay and the cable-car terminal alongside; no source states its opening hours or any public right of entry, so none are given here.

Brick Lane Music Hall is at 443 North Woolwich Road, Silvertown, E16 2DA, in the former St Mark's Church, listed Grade II* as NHLE 1080963, first listed on 17 December 1971 and amended on 3 April 2012. Samuel Sanders Teulon designed the permanent church, also called St Mark's, Victoria Docks, and it opened in 1862. Brick Lane Music Hall began in a former brewery building in Brick Lane in 1992, moved to Shoreditch, and converted this building in 2003; the conversion kept the church exterior and inserted a stage, bar, kitchen and lighting and sound equipment, with the audience seated at tables, cabaret style. The war memorial at the former St Mark's Church is separately listed Grade II, NHLE 1406974.

Thames Barrier Park is on North Woolwich Road, Silvertown, E16 2YH, created in November 2000 on reclaimed industrial riverside facing the Thames Barrier and covering 7 hectares (17.3 acres). Allain Provost and Alain Cousseran of Groupe Signes, with Patel Taylor, won the international competition to design it in 1995. Its signature feature is a sunken planted channel through the park, widely called the Green Dock, with a Pavilion of Remembrance beside it. The park carries no entry on the National Heritage List for England. No source states its opening hours, so none are given here. Further east, North Woolwich Station, including its turntable and platform lamp standards, is listed Grade II, NHLE 1376229, on 27 August 1998, and the north entrance to the Woolwich pedestrian tunnel is Grade II, NHLE 1253068, listed 31 July 1989.

Newham holds 38 stations and piers inside the borough boundary, spanning four Underground lines — Central, Jubilee, District and Hammersmith & City — the DLR, the Elizabeth line, two London Overground lines (Mildmay and Suffragette), three National Rail operators (c2c, Greater Anglia and Southeastern), the London Cable Car, a river-bus pier and the Woolwich Ferry. There is no tram in the borough.

For Stratford and the Olympic Park, Stratford is four TfL stations under one roof: Stratford (London) Rail Station, 910GSTFD, for the Elizabeth line, the Mildmay line of London Overground and c2c and Greater Anglia; Stratford Underground Station, 940GZZLUSTD, for the Central and Jubilee lines; and Stratford DLR Station, 940GZZDLSTD. Stratford International Rail Station, 910GSTFODOM, takes Southeastern high-speed services and has its own DLR station, 940GZZDLSIT. Pudding Mill Lane DLR, 940GZZDLPUD, is the closest DLR stop to the ArcelorMittal Orbit and the London Stadium. Maryland, 910GMRYLAND, is on the Elizabeth line, and Stratford High Street DLR, 940GZZDLSHS, is a further DLR stop in the area.

For West Ham, Three Mills and the lower Lea, West Ham is a three-station interchange inside the borough: West Ham Underground Station, 940GZZLUWHM, for the District, Hammersmith & City and Jubilee lines; West Ham Rail Station, 910GWHAMHL, for c2c; and West Ham DLR Station, 940GZZDLWHM. Abbey Road DLR, 940GZZDLABR, is the nearest station to Abbey Mills Pumping Station and to Abbey Gardens, and Star Lane DLR, 940GZZDLSTL, takes bus routes 276 and 323. Three Mills is in Newham but is reached across the Lea from Bromley-by-Bow Underground Station on the District and Hammersmith & City lines, which TfL places in Tower Hamlets, so that is the practical approach rather than the Newham-side stations. The City of London names nine stations for West Ham Park — Abbey Road (DLR), Forest Gate, Maryland, Plaistow, Upton Park, Stratford, Wanstead Park, West Ham and Woodgrange Park — with bus routes 104, 238, 325 and 678.

For Green Street, East Ham and Manor Park, Upton Park, 940GZZLUUPK, and East Ham, 940GZZLUEHM, are both on the District and Hammersmith & City lines: Upton Park is the station for Queen's Market and Green Street, East Ham for Newham Town Hall on Barking Road. Plaistow, 940GZZLUPLW, is on the same two lines. Manor Park, 910GMANRPK, on the Elizabeth line, is the station for the City of London Cemetery, and Forest Gate, 910GFRSTGT, is also on the Elizabeth line. Woodgrange Park, 910GWDGRNPK, and Wanstead Park, 910GWNSTDPK, are on the Suffragette line of London Overground.

For the Royal Docks, Silvertown and North Woolwich, it is the DLR and almost nothing but the DLR: twelve DLR stations sit in this area alone — Custom House for ExCeL 940GZZDLCUS, Royal Victoria 940GZZDLRVC, Prince Regent 940GZZDLPRE, Royal Albert 940GZZDLRAL, Beckton Park 940GZZDLBPK, Cyprus 940GZZDLCYP, Gallions Reach 940GZZDLGAL, Beckton 940GZZDLBEC, West Silvertown 940GZZDLWSV, Pontoon Dock 940GZZDLPDK, King George V 940GZZDLKGV and London City Airport 940GZZDLLCA. Custom House Rail Station, 910GCUSTMHS, on the Elizabeth line, is the area's heavy-rail station and the stop for ExCeL. There is no Underground station anywhere in the Royal Docks; the nearest tube is Canning Town, 940GZZLUCGT, on the Jubilee line at the area's north-west corner, with its own DLR station, 940GZZDLCGT. The London Cable Car's north terminal, TfL stop Royal Docks 940GZZALRDK, stands beside City Hall and crosses to Greenwich Peninsula; Royal Wharf Pier, 930GWRF, takes the RB1 and RB6 river bus; and Woolwich Ferry North Pier, 930GWWC, is the free vehicle and foot ferry to Woolwich. Pontoon Dock DLR, the stop for Thames Barrier Park, is also a bus interchange for routes 129, 241 and 330.