Plate 6 from a series by Toms, a well known London topographer and engraver of the first half of the 18th century. The broad location of the magazine was east of East Greenwich, then ending at about Ballast Quay, on the western edge of what was formerly Greenwich Marsh (now the North Greenwich peninsula). It was there from 1694 and, according to Henry Richardson's brief history of Greenwich (1834), went out of use in 1760 after local pressure against its continuation on safety grounds. Its operations were then transferred to the larger Georgian magazine constructed in 1759 at Purfleet, Essex, on the north shore of the Thames on Long Reach. Richardson adds that an original role of the Greenwich magazine was making slow-match for firelock small arms. It is marked on John Rocque's map of the 1740s and at least as late as on one of 1804. Brick earth was being extracted in the area before 1869, from which time it was called Stone Yard and held limekilns and coke ovens. By the mid-1890s the site was known as Granite Wharf (east of Lovell's Wharf) and held lime, cement and stone works. Apart from the grazing cattle and a courting couple, the presence of a peat-cutter (with a visible trench) raising his hat to another gentleman indicates the marshy nature of the ground. The figure sketching in the foreground may be the artist of the piece.