Visit to Greenwich Heritage Centre - Museum and Search Room (9 March 2013)

Notes from Materials in Greenwich Heritage Centre:

I had a think about the kinds of topics that I wanted to cover, these were my thoughts:
History of Greenwich
The Marshes
Maritime Greenwich
Community
Characters/People
Life on the Peninsula
Stories
Buildings of Greenwich
Royal connections
Ships
Stories that are related to Buildings and People

I was provided with a detailed map by the receptionist.
This included a list of places from the map:
Blakely Gun Factory
Draw Dock
Lewis and Stockwell Shipyard
Shrubshall Barge Builders
Delta Metal
Greenwich Linoleum Works
 etc.

I want to look at development on the Marsh from 1800 onwards.

Mills, Mary (1999) Greenwich Marsh, The 300 Years before the Dome, Biddles Ltd

Table of Contents:
Greenwich Marsh
Early Industry on the Marsh
The East Bank
Enderby Family & Wharf
The Atlantic Cable
Coles Child and Coal
Developers
An Engineering Interlude
British Carbolic
Bricks and Mortar
Hard Steel and Big Guns
Small Guns and Ammunition
Small Industry
Ships and Shipbuilding
Sailing Barges
Railways and Docks
Coal and Chemicals
Coal Fired Power
End of the Century
A new Century
The Great War
Rest of the Twentieth Century
Greenwich Marsh in 2000

Foreword
This is a history of the industries of the Greenwich Peninsula – where the Millenium Dome will stand. Industrial history is not boring – it is, after all, about ingenuity and achievement – sometimes it is about criminal and/or eccentric behaviour and , of course, it is about making money. Frequently the events described here have touched everyone’s lives.
This book is about the innovators and inventors who brought their processes to East Greenwich usually in order to manufacture things and to prosper by them. The contribution of generations of ordinary workers and residents is very important because without them the money (which they saw very little of) would not have been made.

From around 1800 riverside areas of the marsh were developed and industry moved in at a rapidly increasing pace until around the time of the Overend Gurney banking crash of 1866. From the 1870s the pace began to slacken and in the twentieth century there was a long slide into service industries which themselves collabpsed as the upriver docks closed in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s we have the Millenium Dome.

The Dome may well mark a change in the fortunes of the area – while, at the same time, it is part of a continuum of change and innovation.

People and Industry:

Mr Wheatley – ran a Horse Omnibus Service, 1860, whilst the area was still rural.
Greenwich Depot – Powder Magazine, up till 1768
Bleaching Business, before 1770 at Dog Kennel Field
Mr Bugsby -
The East bank of the Peninsula was developed soon after the Gunpowder Depot had been closed. This stretch of the river is called ‘Bugsbys Reach’
Who was Bugsby? – was he a robber who hid himself and his swag in an osier bed here?
It has been suggested that Bugsby has something to do with bogeys and bugaboos. Bugsby’s hole was used as a site for gibbeting the bodies of pirates. Was this why there was a watch house on the Marsh?
New East Greenwich, Pilot Pub, 1804, site’s owner George Russell, soapmaker
Beginning with very little he had built up the Old Bargehouse soapworks at Blackfriars until it became the largest soap factory in England. He owned two coal transport ships – colliers – called Nymph and Russell. It may be that he also had a riverside house in Greenwich because in 1796, he was burgled by a gang of thieves who escaped by boat. His residence was a big house at Longlands near Sidcup in Kent. In 1792 he bought some land on the east bank of the Greenwich Peninsula. It was used to make bricks, which were probably sold for the many building developments going on in Greenwich at the time.

In the 1790s Russell’s brickmakers made a hole in the sea wall without permission. Phillip Sharpe, the Wall Reeve (a local official) visited the site where he met Russell’s agent, Thomas Taylor. In reply to his questions Taylor said ‘Damn your eyes, Mr. Sharp if you come here I will poke your teeth and stop your eyes with mud’ and then told a bystander, John Bignall to throw Sharpe off the wall. Which Bignell proceeded to do. Nothing very much seems to havehappened to either Taylor or Bignell for this act of violence – within a year Bignell had got Sharpe’s job as Wall Reeve.

William Pitt, in 1801 part of the site was re-leased to a consortium which included William Pitt, who had recently resigned as Prime Minister. [He was possibly interested in developing a Flour Milll on the site.]

It is usually assumed that The Pilot – the name of the pub in Riverway – refers to pilots who worked on the River but there is a good case to be made out that it derives from a song about William Pitt.

‘When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? No, here’s to the pilot that weathered the storm.’

These verses were composed by George Canning, the future prime minister, and sung by a popular tenor, Charles Dignum, at a dinner on Pitt’s birthday in 1802.

Advert for Sale of East Greenwich Tide Mill, 1842

The Tide Mill
William Johnson had patented a tide mill design in 1801. In 1802 he approached Morden college and asked if he could lease a site for ‘a water corn mill’ – a tide mill with a wheel which could be adjusted to the ebb and flow of the tide.

Richard Trevithick, the ‘Cornish giant’ is one of the pioneers of steam engine development. In 1803 he came of London to promote sales of a new sort of engine. George Russell ordered an eight horsepower high pressure engine from him. The engine had a round boiler seated above a fire enclosed incide a brick box. There was a also a safety valve to let excees steam off into the open air and so prevent accidents.

The steam engine was used to pump water out of the foundations of the new mill.

‘New East Greenwich’ was never really more than a street of house surrounded by some very dirty industry. The inhabitants were the first permanent residents on the Marsh – a community that was to grow and flourish over the next hundred and fifty years.

Enderby Wharf and the Enderby Family

Enderby Wharf
The first factory to be built on the Greenwich Peninsula stood on the site of the 17^th century gunpowder depot. Since then the site has been in almost continuous occupation – and, in effect, in the same ownership. Items made there have had world-wide importance. It is still known by the name of the family who used it over 150 years ago – Enderby Wharf. Beside it on the riverbank stands their home, Enderby House.

Vitriol and Copperas
The gunpowder depot buildings must have stood unused for many years until, around 1800, George Moor opened a ‘vitriol’ works on ‘Crown Land’. It is very likely that ‘Crown Land’…

The Deptford copperas works, opened by Sir Nicholas Crispe, was described to the Royal Society in 1678. There were more works on the east bank of the Ravensbourne (Deptford Creek) in Greenwich – one of which had been associated with Mr. Moore.

Rope
Mr Littlewood opened a Ropewalk nearby. This ropewalk connects Greenwich with one of the most successful ironfounders of the late seventeenth century.

Rope making is sometimes thought of as a very traditional kind of manufacture. Around 1800 is was one of the many processes which were undergoing change and improvement. There was an increasing need for more and better rope – for all the great ships in the navy and the merchant marine. Joseph Huddart has set up a factory in Limehouse to make rope by a revolutionary new method and it may be that some of his ideas were used in Greenwich. Rope is made in long narrow buildings called ‘rope walks’. The ropewalk at Enderby Wharf remained in place for nearly a century and the shape of it can be seen by looking inland from the riverside path through the gates to the Alcatel works.

By the late 1830s the Enderby family had acquired the ropewalk. They had a number of industrial interests but are best known as whalers. Their ships went all round the world and their Greenwich works made the sort of items sold by ships changers – rope, sacking, and so on.

Samuel Enderby had helped to pioneer a process to make white lead in which tannery waste was an important ingredient.

The Enderby family had lived in Greenwich for a long time before they opened their riverside factory. In the 1790s Samuel, Jnr. Had occupied a large and impressive house on Crooms Hill.

The Riverside Factory
The Enderby’s factory consisted of two large waterside buildings where spinning machinery and looms used to make canvas. There were also rooms where hemp was spun and a flax mill on the site. Outdoors were buildings to house a steam engine and boiler, house for the foremen, stables, a smithy, and a joinery.

A feature of the factory was a ‘pitch’ house.  Made with tar.

The first Telegraph Cables
In 1837 the Enderby brothers were approached by William Cooke, the pioneer inventor of the telegraph, who asked for help in developing a specially insulated rope. This was for the earliest experiments in setting up the electric telegraph in which Cooke wanted to establish an electric telegraph across the Thames. It was possibly this cable that was used in the first trials of the telegraph on the railway up Camden Bank between Euston and Camden Town. If so, this means that the earliest effective telegraph cable was made in Greenwich. Later owners of the site made cables that stretched across the world and in so doing followed on work already done by the Enderby family.

In 1845 the Enderbys planned to extend the Greenwich works by building right up to the river’s edge. Before the work began a serious fire left the works in ruins. The factory’s own fire engine fought the blaze. A detachment of Royal Marines was sent to help but there was never very much hope of saving the ropewalk.

(p54 – p67 to write out)
Second visit

Other notable personalities:

Coles Child and Coal
Developers
John Bryan and Howden
John Bethell
Charles Holcombe
The Sea Witch
Willis and Wright

Joshua Taylor Beale, Wapping cabinermaker, design for rotary steam engine

British Carbolic
Soames Family – Soapmaking

Brickmakers
Thomas Taylor
Jabez Hollick
George Crowley Ashby – East Greenwich Portland Cement Works
Sir John  Scott Lillie
William Buckwell
Patent Stone and Henry Bessemer
Hodges, Butler and Dale

Hard Steel & Big Guns
Henry Bessemer
Alexander Theophilus Blakeley, opium connection

Small guns & ammunition
Thomas Robson
Martini Henry

Small Industry
Banning Street and Derwent Street
Pelton Road
Bellot Street
Blackwall Lane
Saw Mills and Mahogany

Ships and Shipbuilding
Wooden Nutmeg
Maudsley Son and Field
The Lady Derby
Halloween and Blackadder
William Courtney
Stockwell and Lewis
Pascoe and Wright

Coal and Chemicals
Frank Hills – Tide Mill
Phoenix Works
John Bethell
Other Chemical companies
Forbes Abbott
Guano and Manure
Briquettes

Coal Fired Power
Gas Works
George Livesey – South Metropolitan Gas Works
East Greenwich Works
Colliers
Electricity
First Power Station

Appleby Engineers – 1870s
Linseed
Linoleum

Redpath Brown – Structural Steel
Delta Metal company– Bronze
Tilbury Dredging and Contracting
Molassine
Shaw Lovell

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Contact Mary Mills - Interview

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Development of Microstory ideas:

Compact description, which then when clicked expands to a more full description.

ie.
1860 George Enderby Cable

to:

In 1860 George Enderby founded the Enderby Cable Factory, etc.

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Summary of Industries:
Organic materials:
Wool ?
Corn Flour
Hemp
Flax
Molassine
Linoleum
Rope
Wood
Ship Building

Metals and Rocks:
Iron
Steel
BlackSmiths
Joinery
Cable
Gun construction
Ammunitions
Brick
Cement

Energy resources/Byproducts:
Coal and Chemicals
Oil and Gas
Power stations
Soapmaking
Bleaching
Electricity

Milling:
Tide Mill
Saw Mill

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Actions:
Take scans and put them all in an Assets folder
GHC still to email scans over.
Create a map of the Greenwich Marsh/Peninsula area - Illustrator
100 word abstract of the project
Icons of Industries
Contact Mary Mills

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