Limehouse Studios

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Limehouse Studios was an independently-owned television studio complex, located at the eastern end of Canary Wharf on the Isle of Dogs in London, which opened in 1983. The building was demolished just six years later, in 1989, to make way for the massive Olympia & York development of Canary Wharf which now occupies the site.

One of the first successes of the London Docklands Development Corporation, the studios were housed in the immensely strong converted shell of a disused rum and banana warehouse built in 1952. Under the design of Terry Farrell, this was transformed into a complex containing two studios of 3000 and 6000 square feet and various associated production offices and post-production facilities. The two studios were contained in suspended concrete boxes mounted on independent giant springs to reduce external vibration, and the whole complex was fitted out to the highest standards.

As one of the then few independent facilities in London, founded by a group of executives from the former Southern Television after that company had lost its ITV franchise in 1981, the new studios quickly became the venue of choice for many of the independent production companies now making programmes for the new Channel 4, helped also by the popular hospitality boat moored alongside in the dock. Among the many programmes made at the studios at that time were Who Dares Wins (1983-88); Treasure Hunt (1983-89), including a celebrity episode in 1985 where the studio itself was the final "treasure" location; Janet Street-Porter's 1987 "yoof tv" series Network 7; and the first series of Whose Line Is It Anyway? with Clive Anderson in 1989. The studios were also the home for the first nine series of Spitting Image from 1984 to 1989, for ITV.

Following their eviction in 1989, the owners moved all the equipment they could to the former Lee International Studios at Wembley. But the name disappeared when the parent company Trilion collapsed three years later.