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Original Text (Annotation: EPW037972 / 316887)
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Cargo being transferred to barges as well as to warehouses. The barges would carry cargo up river to places like Brentford Dock EPW006188 and EPW001670 where it would be transferred again for forwarding by rail. It was one of the labour intensive and therefore costly operational practices that did so much to cause the demise of the Port of London due to lack of adaptation to new cargo handling methods in the 1960s while places like Rotterdam forged ahead with investment and change.
The barges also supplied many riverside industries in such places as Wandsworth and Fulham, industries that relied on the river for there imported raw materials. Some of these industrial buildings survey today (2013) converted into apartments, where they have not been demolished in favour of new residential building. Thus the linear industrial zone through the centre of London westwards from the Docks has disappeared to be replaced by a zone of up-market housing. '
