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 is believed to show two of a terrace of labourers' cottages that once stood on the south side of Albert Road, once backing on to the railway sidings on the former site of North Woolwich Station. A couple stand posing in the doorway of one cottage, the moustached man wearing a cap and worker's three-piece suit, the woman in a long dark outfit. Just visible, there appears to be the face of a woman looking out of the ground-floor window of the neighbouring cottage. A tall wooden telegraph pole stands in front of the cottage, extending beyond the roof line and out of frame. This terrace, the one opposite, St John's Church, and the school houses in the immediate area were destroyed by bombing during World War II and a modern three-storey residential and retail block called Sky Studios now stands in place.
