Since then, Thamesmead has grown significantly, limiting the number of potential sites for a new river crossing.

Early 21st century new build properties in Thamesmead West have been blighted by social problems and mass repossessions, attracting national attention.

Thamesmead is seen as a new and better alternative through the eyes of two small children who live in older dilapidated flats on the other side of the river.

Much of it was used to build the new town ; Thamesmead.

The constituency boundaries for the area were re-drawn for 1997 general election, and Austin won the new seat of Erith and Thamesmead with a majority of 17, 424.

It was planned that the bridge should be built by 2013 and would have connected Beckton in the London Borough of Newham with Thamesmead in the Royal Borough of Greenwich linking the A406 / A13 junction in Beckton with the A2016 Eastern Way and Western Way in Thamesmead and serve the new Thames Gateway development.

Transport for London are planning a new bridge, the Thames Gateway Bridge, which will connect Beckton to Thamesmead on the southern bank of the River Thames.

In 1997, the seat was split up along different lines, with part of it going into neighbouring Erith and Thamesmead, and part of it merging with the Greenwich seat to form the new Greenwich and Woolwich seat.

The pre-1974 parts of Thamesmead are a mix of modernist town houses, medium-rise and 12-storey blocks system-built in concrete, which have featured in various films due to their ' rough urban look '; the design of the newer buildings is more traditional and in brick.

From the start Thamesmead was cut off from Abbey Wood the nearest town, with shopping facilities by a railway line over which a 4 lane bridge was built to overcome in the early 70s.

* 177 between Thamesmead town centre and Peckham bus garage.

* N1 between Thamesmead town centre and Tottenham Court Road.

When North Greenwich was opened, it was built to enable a branch extension to be built eastwards to Thamesmead.

Thamesmead is the name given to a group of disparate mainly social housing developments built from the late 1960s onwards mostly on former marshland on the southern banks of the River Thames, between the established towns of Woolwich and Belvedere.

Much of Thamesmead was initially built by the Greater London Council ( GLC ) for rent to families moving from overcrowded back-to-back Victorian housing ( also referred to as slums ) in south eastern parts of Inner London.

Thamesmead was built at the end of the 1960s.

* Thamesmead South is in Bexley and is the location of the original development built in the late 1960s to early 1970s.

* Thamesmead West is in Greenwich near Woolwich and Plumstead ( Between Whinchat Road, the A2016 & the banks of the river Thames ) and was built from the 1990s onwards.

Thamesmead West contains Gallions Ecopark a pioneering small social / affordable housing development with homes built to high energy efficiency and environmental standards.

Belmarsh Prison, Isis Prison and Thameside Prison are located on western edge of the area, while the sewage processing works at Crossness, built in the Victorian era is on eastern edge of Thamesmead.

In common with the rest of London, the ethnic make-up of Thamesmead has changed since it was first built.

The covered sewer forms the southern boundary of Thamesmead and has been landscaped as an elevated footpath called the Ridgeway ( similar to The Greenway built over the Northern Outfall Sewer ).

Still, residential building continued, this time on the other side of the A2016, which effectively cut this part of Thamesmead off from any form of rail travel to central London.

Bus services were improved and people living on Thamesmead are now more easily able to reach Abbey Wood Station, which is a main stop on the line.

Despite early proposals for the Jubilee Line Extension to go to Thamesmead, via the Isle of Dogs and the Royal Docks, Thamesmead was not included and after reaching the Greenwich Peninsula, the line then heads north to Stratford, London ( via Canning Town and West Ham ), despite Stratford also being on the major Central Line tube link into London.

In the 1990s, another ultimately larger wave of emigration from West Africa ( predominately Nigeria and Ghana ) began, growing to a point where national newspapers talked of advertisements on Nigerian Television describing Thamesmead as a key UK destination.

After the 2005 General Election, Erith and Thamesmead is represented by a Labour Party MP while the remaining two seats were held by the Conservative Party ; although on 29 January 2008 the Conservative Party whip was withdrawn from Old Bexley and Sidcup's MP Derek Conway following alleged misuse of funds, leaving him as an Independent MP.

Canada Water was originally intended to be a stop on the aborted Fleet Line Extension to Thamesmead.

In 2009 she made a third attempt at becoming a Labour parliamentary candidate by featuring on a controversial all-woman shortlist for the Erith and Thamesmead constituency.

A long standing proposal has been for a four-lane tolled bridge providing a road link between the Beckton and Thamesmead on the south bank: the Thames Gateway Bridge.

Notable stations included Radio Thamesmead ( later RTM Radio ) in southeast London, one of the first cable radio stations in the UK, which began on the Rediffusion cable system in the southeast London area in 1978.

The station started broadcasting from studios on Tavy Bridge, Thamesmead, as RTM Radio transmitting on 103. 8 F. M.

The station launched on the FM radio band as RTM Radio on 18 March 1990, having previously exclusively broadcast on the area's local cable television service as Radio Thamesmead, and intended to fulfil a community-style remit, with any profits generated being invested in local regeneration projects.

A branch of the Green Chain Walk passes the ruins on its way from Oxleas Wood to Thamesmead riverside.

An alternative plan was devised in the 1970s to extend the Jubilee line parallel to the River Thames: this would have taken the line from Fenchurch Street to Thamesmead via St Katharine Docks, Wapping, Surrey Docks North, Millwall ( near to South Quay DLR station ), North Greenwich, Custom House, Silvertown, Woolwich Arsenal, and thence to Thamesmead.

When the GLC was abolished in 1986, its housing assets and the remaining undeveloped land was vested in a non-profit organisation Thamesmead Town Limited ( TTL ).

Thamesmead was designed around futuristic ideas, and indeed, looked impressive at first from a distance.

It was provided walkways between its blocks of housing and later between sections in North Thamesmead.

* Thamesmead Central is in Greenwich and was first developed in the early 1980s in the ring between the A2016 and A2041.

Being cut off from the tube map and at the very edge of the metropolis may have meant Thamesmead was not first port of call for immigrants arriving in London.

The whole of Thamesmead estate was featured prominently in the film The Optimists of Nine Elms ( 1973 ) starring Peter Sellers.

The Tavy Bridge area of Thamesmead South, including Southmere Lake, was used as a setting for the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange and also the Channel 4 film Beautiful Thing.

* Andy Fordham, 2004 World darts champion, was publican of the Queen's Arms public house in Woolwich, although he has since moved to the Cutty Sark pub in Thamesmead.

Another small New Town, Thamesmead, was developed adjacent to the Thames in the early 1960s but suffered from poor transport links.