Albert Road is a spinal route running parallel to this stretch of the Thames, which served the substantial commercial and residential development built around the Royal Docks during the late nineteenth century. Parts of the road were either in North Woolwich, Kent, or East Ham, Essex, originally having sequences of street numbering in two directions, but all is now within the London Borough of Newham. This view shows a corner shop then at number 9, Albert Road, on the corner of Rhea Street, from where the photograph was taken. By the time of the 1901 Census, the street number is believed to have changed to 334 by which time the shop belonged to Samuel Fulcher, a carpenter and sweets shop keeper from Ipswich, Suffolk. The shop window displays some fresh fruit, bottles of soft drinks, and posters advertise Hignett's Sunflower Tobacco and cigarettes, R White's Kaola, Ginger Beer and Lemonade, and similar goods. Above the window, larger posters on boards fixed to the side of the shop advertise Nestle's Milk, Rickett's Blue, Colman's Bull's Head Mustard, and Hudson's Soap extract. The door and windows on the Rhea Street side of the building probably comprise the residential part of the shop, the chalk scribblings on the brickwork possibly made by one of Samuel and Elizabeth Fulcher's children, assuming the family was living there at the time. To the foot of the image is written 'Albert Road. Photographed by SB Bolas'. Although damaged by wartime bombing, the shop and adjacent buildings appear in post-war maps, but the area was redeveloped in the late twentieth century as the Sheldrake Close housing estate. Rhea Street would have joined Albert Road between Kennard Street and Winifred Street.
