Hermit Road Hermit Road Hermit Road was a stadium located in Canning Town in London, England. It was the first home ground of football club Thames Ironworks, the works team of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company. The club would later be reformed as West Ham United. The ground was used by Old St Luke's from 1892 and continued to be used after the club merged with Castle Swifts to become Old Castle Swifts, the first professional football club in Essex, for the 1894–95 season. Thames Ironworks took over the tenancy of the ground from Old Castle Swifts in the summer of
Thames Rowing Club 1879 at a cost of over £3000. Thames, under its captain James Hastie, was now established as a mainstay of amateur rowing in London, and as a rival to its Putney neighbour London Rowing Club. In 1879 Thames, like London, was one of the founder clubs of the Metropolitan Rowing Association which later became the (defunct) Amateur Rowing Association (ARA). This early period was the time of the great Victorian amateur. Many Thames members were keen on all sports and the club itself also had an influence beyond rowing: In December 1867, Thames organised a two and a half mile