Leamouth was traditionally the easternmost part of Middlesex. The area has never had its own Anglican church so for services such as road maintenance organised by a vestry and poor relief it relied upon its ecclesiastical parish (of All Saints) Poplar. Indeed, the whole Isle of Dogs was until the late 20th century referred to as being Poplar or the Poplar District within the capital city of London.

Orchard Place was the name of its manor house on the spit; this 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 – 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.