Ivory house dockside vaults

Ivory House stands as the lone survivor of the original warehouse district that once defined St Katharine Docks. Built in eighteen fifty-eight, it escaped the widespread destruction of the Second World War that leveled every other warehouse in the complex. Its name reflects the massive, global scale of the Victorian trade that flowed through these doors. During the eighteen seventies, the building housed nearly two hundred tons of ivory every year, a volume representing the tusks of roughly four thousand elephants. These raw materials arrived here to be distributed to workshops across Europe, where they were carved into items like piano keys, billiard balls, and ornate cutlery handles for the elite.