Made to Measure and Fitted Free

We supply and fit made to measure window shutters for homes in Cubitt Town, Millwall and across the Isle of Dogs, with free measuring and free fitting. This page goes through the home types on the island, which shutter style suits each one, and what to check before you order.

Anyone searching for shutters on the Isle of Dogs soon finds that the island is not one kind of place. A bay-fronted terrace in Chapel House, a post-war house in Cubitt Town and a flat on a 1960s estate all have different windows, so they call for different shutters. We are London Blinds 4U, and we measure, supply and fit window shutters across London, including E14.

We start with the homes themselves. After that we look at which shutter styles fit them, what to check if you live near a conservation area or in a leasehold flat, and how we measure a bay or a flat window.

Shutters in Cubitt Town and Millwall: what the island’s homes look like

The Isle of Dogs is a peninsula in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, postcode district E14, with the Thames bending round three sides of it. Cubitt Town, Millwall and the Canary Wharf area all sit on it. People often talk about the island as if every building were a glass tower. Much of the housing is nothing like that.

Tower Hamlets council records that Cubitt Town was developed by William Cubitt from 1842, on land leased from the Countess of Glengall. Millwall Dock opened in 1868, and by 1901 about 21,000 people lived on the island. Then came the war. The Survey of London says the damage in Cubitt Town was so heavy that most of the pre-war buildings were cleared and replaced with public housing, with building work starting early in 1952. It describes two-storey terraced houses laid out in echelons, with three-storey blocks of flats set between them.

That history matters to you for a plain reason. A lot of Cubitt Town is low-rise and post-war, so many of its windows are flat to the wall rather than period bays. Some older pockets survive, and the towers are a different story again. Each needs its own shutter answer, and the rest of this page takes them one at a time.

Full height shutters for post-war terraces and low-rise flats in Cubitt Town

A flat-fronted window is the easiest kind to fit shutters to. It has one frame, one flat wall and one reveal, which is the recess the window sits in. The shutter frame goes inside that recess and looks like part of the room.

For a window like this we usually start with full height shutters. They cover the glass from sill to head in a single run of panels. On a taller window we can add a mid-rail, a horizontal bar across the panel. The louvres above the bar and below it then tilt on their own. You can close the lower half for privacy from the street and leave the upper half open for daylight.

If the window faces a path or a road and you want more control, tier on tier shutters do a similar job with two separate panels, one above the other, each with its own hinges. You can open the top pair wide and keep the bottom pair shut. Two sets of hinges mean more joinery, so it is worth asking us which of the two suits your window better.

Before we agree a style, we look at a few things. How deep is the reveal? Does a window handle or a window board sit where the frame wants to go? Is there a radiator or a sill under the window that the lower panel has to clear? A shutter can look right on a drawing and still fail on one of these. There can be technical reasons why a style does not suit a particular window, and these checks are where we find them.

Plantation shutters for the bay-fronted terrace and sash windows of Chapel House

Chapel House is the part of the island where shutters make sense on looks alone. Tower Hamlets describes Charteris Terrace on East Ferry Road, built in 1907 by Griggs and Son, as a typical bay-fronted terrace with small front gardens and tessellated tile paths. Its appraisal adds that some houses keep their original front doors and sash windows. The area became a conservation area in January 1987.

If you live in a house like that, you probably care about the windows. A sash window slides up and down, and most owners do not want to cover it or replace it. Interior plantation shutters sit inside the window reveal, so the sashes and the look of the house from the road stay as they are.

Tier on tier shutters sit well with sashes. The gap between the upper and lower shutter panels can sit level with the meeting rail, the point where the two sashes meet. The window then reads as one design.

The same conservation area has estates from 1920 to 1926 too, including the Chapel House Estate (120 properties built in 1920 to 1921) and the Manchester Grove Estate. Those homes are younger than the 1907 terrace, so their windows may well be different. We cannot tell from the street, so we look at each one.

Café style or tier on tier shutters for a bay window in Chapel House, Isle of Dogs

A bay is a group of windows set at angles. Most are canted bays, with a flat centre window and an angled window on each side. Shutters in a bay are made as separate panel sets, one for each section, so the whole run can fold back when you want the view.

You have three sensible choices. Full height with a mid-rail gives one clean line and good control over each half. Tier on tier lets you open the top panels and keep the bottom ones closed. Café style shutters cover only the lower part of the window, from the sill upwards, so the top of the glass stays open to daylight.

The right one depends on how overlooked you are, how much light the room needs and how your sashes work. We talk it through at the window, with the bay in front of us.

Shutters in Island Gardens and Coldharbour: checking the conservation area rules

Tower Hamlets says every one of its conservation areas has an adopted character appraisal and management guidelines. On the island those include Island Gardens (designated in March 1971), Coldharbour (December 1975) and Chapel House (January 1987).

The Island Gardens appraisal covers the Greenwich Foot Tunnel rotunda and several listed buildings, among them the Church of Christ and St John, The Watermans Arms and the Ferry House pub. It says most of the homes inside the area were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A riverside villa at 58 to 60 Ferry Street dates from 1830 to 1850. Coldharbour includes Bridge House (1819 to 1820) and Isle House (1825 to 1826), the old dock officials’ houses, which have full-height bow windows.

What does that mean if you want shutters? Conservation area controls mostly deal with changes to the outside of a building. Interior shutters sit inside the window reveal, which is a different matter. Even so, the rules differ from home to home, and the council has the final word. Planning Portal says that if you live in a listed building you will need listed building consent for any major works, inside or out. So if your home is listed, speak to the council before you order anything.

For a house, a short call or email to the Tower Hamlets planning team will settle it. If you own or rent a flat, your freeholder or managing agent is the person to ask. We are happy to look at the windows with you, but the answer on consent has to come from the council or your freeholder. Our guide to shutters explains the style options in more detail.

Shutters for estate flats in Millwall and Cubitt Town: lease, landlord and managing agent checks

Plenty of people on the island live in flats. The Samuda Estate was built in 1967, with four and six-storey blocks and Kelson House, a 25-storey tower of interlocking maisonettes by the river. The Barkantine Estate in Millwall opened its first block in 1968 and originally had 634 dwellings. Cubitt Town also has three-storey blocks of post-war flats set between the terraces.

If you own a flat on a lease, read it before you order. Some leases limit what you can change at a window, and some blocks like windows to look the same from the street. Shutters show through the glass, so it is fair to ask your managing agent if that matters in your block. A shutter fitted inside the reveal is a smaller change than anything on the outside, but the lease is what counts.

If you rent, ask your landlord in writing. Shutters are screwed into the frame or the wall around the window, so there will be fixing holes if they ever come out.

When a block repeats the same window on every floor, we still measure each one. Walls and reveals vary a little, even in the same building, and a made to measure shutter has no spare room to hide the difference.

Which shutters suit which Isle of Dogs home? A table of styles and limits

Measuring for shutters on the Isle of Dogs: a worked example for a bay and a flat window

This is an example of how we measure, with made-up figures to show the method. It is not a record of a past job.

Take a bay with three sections. We measure each section on its own. For the left section we take the width at the top, the middle and the bottom, then the height down the left side, the middle and the right side. Say the widths read 842, 846 and 851 mm. Walls are rarely perfect, so the three numbers differ. We note all of them and work from the smallest. A panel can be made to sit snug, but it cannot be squeezed into a gap that is too narrow.

Next comes the angle where two sections meet. Not every bay is cut at the same angle, and the hinges between the panel sets have to match it. We also measure the depth of the reveal, because the frame needs room, and we check what already sits in the recess, such as a window board, a handle or a lip of the frame. Then we do the same for the centre and right sections.

A flat window is simpler but gets the same care. Three widths, three heights, one depth reading, and a look at what is beneath and beside the window. If a radiator sits under the sill, we plan the lower panel so it clears the heat and the pipes. If the window is close to a corner, we check that the panels can open fully and not hit the wall.

The result is a set of figures for each section, a note of any awkward spots and a style we think suits the window. You see all of it at your window, so the quote holds no surprises.