ELECTRICITY JUNCTION BOX

 

Some weeks ago The Greenwich Wire blogger described himself walking in Hillreach in Woolwich where he took a photograph of what most of us would describe as an ‘electricity junction box’ which is rotting away on the corner of Pellipar Road.

I think he wanted to make a point about the neglect of the of the public realm – how our streets and  the ‘street furniture’ in them are not always cared for and kept clean and fresh looking. I can’t be sure exactly what he said because the page has gone from his website and I can’t find a way of getting into it now - so I’m sorry if I am misinterpreting anything.

When I saw his post I followed it up with a a note on the Greenwich Industrial History Facebook page because I knew that there were people who were interested in the history of street furniture and had done some research on some local junction boxes.  Some of their findings had been published in the Greenwich Industrial History newsletter in, I think. 2006 and again, more recently been picked up in 2020. Several people ‘liked’ the Facebook page entry and some added comments  and some put notes about older boxes still standing in the area. I’ve followed all of them up and if they don’t feature here its because there’s not enough space for everything.

The old boxes which people noted were almost exclusively at sites in Woolwich and Plumstead. The power supply in those areas was originally supplied by a Woolwich Council power station until nationalisation in 1947  and some boxes date from then. These old boxes have a raised design on the front with the three guns of the Woolwich heraldic insignia. One of these,  in Burrage Place, Woolwich is on the Council’s local heritage ‘list’ as ‘Electricity Box. Embossed Woolwich Borough Coat of Arms on both sides: three upright cannon barrels festooned with lions heads and the motto ‘Clamant Nostra Tela in Regis Querela’ – ‘Our weapons clash in the King's quarrel’. Arms granted 9th August 1934’. Nothing there about its use or its ownership.

 I’m extremely unsure about such structures in the Greenwich part of the Borough.  The only box I know about is long gone. It was from the Blackwall Point power station and it was on the traffic island on Blackheath and so very difficult to see. It was removed by Transport for London when they were ‘tidying up’ for the Olympics.

One thing that’s important is to remember is that they are not really called ‘junction boxes’ but ‘feeder pillars’. This name seems to be the one used for them in planning documents and anyone intending to raise issues about them with the Council needs to know that. To my mind this is confusing and  a ‘pillar’ is something I would see as’ taller and slimmer than these little street cupboards.  However the term ‘junction box’ covers a myriad of small devices and so is also confusing.

I think in most areas there is a consensus that street furniture like this needs to be kept in good order - looking fresh and clean and up to date. There’s nothing wrong with keeping old stuff as museum pieces in the streets too - but they also need to be kept in good order. Most people who want to complain about them will automatically assume that the local council is responsible for them and must be chased until they are cleaned and repaired. However they are nothing do with the Council but are, like much street furniture, owned by the organisation which supplies the service to the public. Hence they are owned by the supplier of electricity – EDF - Electricite de France, in case you didn’t know that, as a result of privatisation, our electricity supply is owned by the French nationalised industry.

I don’t know how good, or otherwise, EDF are in responding to complaints about their equipment and doing something about it. But I think there is a good chance that that Greenwich Council officer that you’ve been moaning about and saying  how lazy and ineffective they are has actually made many, many calls and written many, many letters to the owners about it. I think the Council is able to take legal action against some of these outfits but I know that it seen a bit as the last resort.

Gradually these old cupboard-like boxes are being replaced by featureless white cubes but those that remain have been the subject of intermittent attention.

The first article which GIHS published on some of the local boxes pointed out one thing which I’ve seen nowhere else. That is about their manufacture and the companies involved. Interestingly both are local to South East London and to Woolwich.

One of these manufacturers, almost inevitably, is Siemens who made so much of electrical and telecommunications equipment which we take for granted today. They left Woolwich in 1968 but their presence still resonates. They had been set up in London in early 1860s with links to the German future multinational. They were based in a complex of buildings which are now largely  inland of the Thames Barrier and some of which are in use as craft workshops and the like. The site has recently been the subject of proposals for regeneration, none of which seemed to have come to fruition. 

In his article for GIHS Richard Buchanan pointed to examples of junction boxes made by Siemens apparently still in use – in Ashridge Crescent and in Kinlet Road on Shooters Hill and another in Timbercroft Lane in Plumstead.           These boxes are described as having a door opening  and facing the pavement with a key operated lock. On the base is “SIEMENS” along with a plaque giving the registration number and patent.

It would be interesting to know more and if these boxes were actually made in Woolwich. When Greenwich Industrial History Society was first set up we had a lot of access to Siemens history.  Ex workers from the factory had a long term organisation which had among other things collected a huge amount of archived material. This was all donated to the Heritage Centre when it was still open. Gradually the members all eventually died and we know of no one to talk to about the history of this amazing company.

The other firm Richard mentions as a manufacturer of these boxes is Henleys. William Henley had known early cable makers like Glass Elliott and eventually set up his own manufacturing unit in North Woolwich. I suppose technically in those days that was Woolwich since North Woolwich was then part of the Borough of Woolwich – but it’s now in Newham. They also expanded to a site at Northfleet taking over part of the old Rosherville Gardens site. My father worked in the print works which was adjacent to the Henley’s site and we all knew numerous men who worked there.

Henley’s boxes also have a door on the side facing the pavement. The door has two key holes top and bottom. The roadside face has a removable panel held on by eight studs and on the base, below the panel, is cast “HENLEY”.

So, back to that lamentable looking specimen in Hillreach. One  of the comments on my Facebook came from the Charlton Society and mentioned there efforts to get it preserved along with the (very, very sadly no longer with us) Councillor Jim Gillman. Jim wanted to get it ‘archived’ with the Greenwich Heritage Centre – then still a going concern.  But the owners said that it was still in use and therefore couldn't be moved. Perhaps we should find out if that is still true.

Anyway – sometimes things sort of work out - on Shooters Hill was a ‘roadside electricity distribution box’ with the Arms of the Borough of Woolwich on it. On Monday 25th September 2006, Dr Barry Gray phoned GIHS’s then Chair Susan Bullivant to say that it had been knocked by a car, and was leaning across the pavement at a dangerous angle.

 

Susan phoned the Greenwich Highways Department who gave her the phone number of EdF, the electricity supply company, whose office is in Ipswich. The staff there were sympathetic and concerned - that the box should be saved - that the electricity supply was safe’ . Chris Foord then in charge at Greenwich Heritage Centre confirmed that they would like to acquire the box. On Tuesday 26th, Dr Barry Gray said that men were removing the junction box, and had said  ‘they had to be careful with it as a lady has phoned up about it’. Susan went to talk to them and was told it would go in their big EdF van to their depot in Bexleyheath Broadway. She told Chris, who made  the arrangements and on the following Tuesday, 3rd October. EdF duly delivered it

So, you see, it can be done.  But of course the next question is...... where is it now??

The Middle Kidbrook

 a  few months ago I said that I would start to write a history the Kidbrooke area - although any industry there probably won’t turn up until one of the last episodes. I started off by saying that I would work down the three Kid Brook streams describing some of the history of the area. They flow down from Shooters Hill and go eastwards and cover most of the area which we now call ‘Kidbrook’’.  That would give me lots of opportunities to comment on stuff in the area.  Following these watercourses helps us understand what a wet and muddy place it must have been in the past and how that influenced what is there now.

 So, I did a number of episodes on the Upper Kid Brook a few months ago. That stream, now in an underground pipe, goes along what is essentially the northern boundary of what we call ‘Kidbrook’ today. 

The Middle Kid Brook is probably rather shorter than the others but I think it’s going to take me a bit longer to write.  I need to describe some of the institutions and things of interest which lie between the Upper and Middle Kid Brook streams. I’ll worry about the stuff near the Lower Kid Brook when I get there - that’s a much longer water course.  The Middle Kid Brook is relatively short but it looks to be a lot more complicated. So let’s see how I get on!

Every book or web site I’ve looked at gives a different spot for where it originally rose. It should be  shown on the 1872 Ordnance Survey map which should be a good source.  It predates much of the housing which is now in the Shooters Hill area so we see can it on the map as an area of open land and farms but with main roads in place – in particular what is now called Shooters Hill Road – it has also been ‘the Dover Road’,  ‘a Roman Road’, ‘Watling Street’, ‘; A2’, A207, or whatever.  The problem with the 1872 map however is trying to sort out all the various dotted lines on it. The stream is shown as one sort of dotted line and then there are all the boundary lines for Parliamentary constituencies, counties and parishes and various other stuff and you are left squinting at it wondering which is the Middle Kidbrook! Michael Egan, writing about the stream, notes how it runs parallel to the Roman Road and speculates that it might actually have been a drainage channel for the road.

Then Middle Kid Brook seems to have risen somewhere near the site of the now demolished Brook Hospital. For those who don’t remember it The Brook was a large hospital built on as 37 acre site  in 1896 to handle fever epidemics. Initially it had 488 beds but greatly expanded particularly in the Great War when thousands were treated here. Under the NHS it was renamed the Brook General Hospital with 644 beds. It closed in 1995.

However we are looking for somewhere on this huge site for a spring for the start of the Middle Kid Brook. Others have looked and guessed. Blogger, Mr. Running Past, has looked at the site and seen the water tower which has now been converted to housing – the most prominent relic of the old hospital. He says “for the want of a more tangible source, it seems an appropriate starting point for following the course of the Mid Kid Brook”. However he also thought there might be something on the local London Marathon Playing Fields citing “a large manhole cover and a sound of running water underneath”.

There are however other options.

In all the various accounts of this site and the stream there is something very obvious that none of them seem to have noticed. Stand in Shooters Hill Road and look at the hospital site  -and the red brick wall which surrounded it. Just before the vehicle entrance the wall ends and there is a single storey stone faced building.  It has recently has –I think – been converted into a private house but previously it had been an agency for out of hours medical care - Grabadoc  - and called Headway House. In fact when it was originally built it was nothing to do with medicine – it was a water works pumping station built around 1860 by the Kent Water Co.

Jack Vaughan, who was the first Chair of Greenwich Industrial History, lived just up the road and researched this little building as far as he could.   Jack was into steam engines and he said there were ‘two Cornish Boilers by Harvey & Co. used with a pair of horizontal engines supplied by T.W.Cowan of the Kent Iron Works, Deptford Bridge, Greenwich in 1862-4. They were scrapped in 1925.  The equipment was used to pump water to reservoirs. Now I understood that the water they pumped came from the main Kent Water Works at Brookmill but it would be a remarkable coincidence if it was built by chance at the source of the Middle Kid Brook. However there is no suggestion of a well here, albeit that in the 1860s the Kent Water Co. shifted their supplies almost entirely to extraction from wells.

Perhaps we should continue to go westwards down Shooters Hill Road following a probable route of the Middle Kid Brook flowing some yards parallel with the main road. We should follow the Brook Hospital’s red brick wall on past the Ambulance Station and some offices. The first building which is not part of the NHSB is the Co-op Supermarket  - and many  people will remember when that shop was a pub – the Brook Hotel.

In 1960 I was a typist allocated to work for a rather glamorous young man. Rather than work he told me lots of outrageous stories but he never told me how in November 1944 he had seen the Brook Pub hit by a V2 rocket and blown up – the story he tells on a pub history web site. Following the hit to the pub an 89 bus in the road exploded and 29 people died. He says he saw all that and helped with the rescue work – he was just 14.

The Brook pub had earlier been  called ”The Earl of Moira” and was situated at Shooters Hill on what was then the Dover Road. I wonder if it was some sort of  coaching inn.  A newspaper report of 1821  seems to describe it as a known stopping place on the main road but also  as a pub well known to artillery officers based in Woolwich. Only two men held the title of Earl of Moira, one of whom was a political appointee to the role of Master of the Ordnance – clearly important in Woolwich.  It was also the name of a boat with a particularly grisly shipwreck in 1821. It seems to have been a sporting pub with grounds to the rear where pedestrian races were a speciality.  However none of this seems to have any relevance to the Middle Kid Brook stream.  

Before the hospital was built next to the pub there was a large pond here alongside the main road. Was this pond a source for the Middle Kid Brook? There was a path between it and the pub and which continued behind it and went uphill as an access path going to Hill Farm. Now it is an internal road in the ambulance station. There was another reservoir just inside the hospital site but up past the farm. In his 1979 article for Greenwich ‘Transactions’ Michael Egan notes a pond at Hill Farm and says the Middle Kid Brook may rise there.  He says he thinks it then ran parallel  to the main road but then turned to run southwest – and this does make sense in terms of dotted lines on the OS map. Perhaps we should note that when it turns south west it does so at the edge of a ‘brickfield’.

Ken White in his book on the Quaggy elaborates on this, pointing to a ‘low point’ in Shooters Hill Road which is slightly before reaching the junction with Weyman Road and that this would be where the stream turned. He says he was told that in very wet weather it would be joined by a flow from a sports ground - presumably the Hervey Road field, also the source of the Upper Kid Brook.

Before I end can I suggest a walk further down Shooters Hill Road. Down past the shops and many blocks of flats we come to an ‘Animal Clinic’.  The final building has a plaque telling us this was the Blackheath and Charlton Cottage Hospital -  a far smaller affair than the Brook, it had at first just four beds. The modern middle building here is a care home called ‘Arnold House’, named, we are told, after local Arnold’s Farm.

I noted above that the Middle Kid Brook turned at a brickfield – that brickfield was the site of Arnold’s Farm.

Dockland

 

 

Just recently I’ve done a couple of book reviews as one of these articles and I was thinking about doing another one - except that is about a book published 40 years ago.  I was reminded of it by an obituary for George Nicholson – he was a member of the Greater London Council for Bermondsey in its 1980s final days. He died back in February this year, and I’ll come back to him in a moment. More to the point is a review of the book by Chris Ellmers which is on the website of the Thames and Docklands History Group. (https://www.tdhg.org.uk/stories/the-story-of-dockland-%E2%80%93-the-book-that-is!)

Chris has given a number of talks to Greenwich industrial History Society in some of our series of evening talks. He was the first curator of what is now the London Museum Docklands – and goes back many many years with that tangled project - a new generation will see a smart interesting museum and know nothing of what really went on. Chris has produced this article about a book which was published in 1986 – and which was intended as part of a project on the industrial history of Docklands.

It’s very difficult for me to say I’ll start at the beginning because I really wasn’t there at the beginning. In 1980 I was working in a dreadful job in Greenwich but I was being paid by something called ‘Docklands Urban Aid’ but without the first clue why. As a bit of background: the Docklands Joint Committee had been set up in 1974 to ‘regenerate’ the area as older smaller docks closed and it included the Greenwich Peninsula.  When Thatcher set up the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1981 Greenwich was strangely left out. It was said at the time that Michael Heseltine made the decision to omit Greenwich after flying over the area in a helicopter.  I’m very tempted now to write to Heseltine – ‘give us the real reason, one that makes sense – you’re 95 now and you can do it.’

By 1982 I was working in central London for a housing association run by an eccentric lady whose husband had once been considered as a Tory Prime Minister. We were dependent on grant money, some of it from the Greater London Council. These were the heady years of Ken Livingstone – new energy and new ideas all bouncing around.  I don’t know how I first heard about the Docklands History Survey and the book it published in 1984. I was very excited and on the day of publication sent our office boy over to County Hall to get me a copy.  Yes!! Greenwich sites were listed in there.

I don’t want necessarily to list down the Greenwich sites in the Survey – the only copy I now have is a bit – er – compromised. Some confusion over Deptford is explained by the then recent change in Borough boundaries but Greenwich High Road is, and was, in actual Greenwich. It has five separate entries for Enderby Wharf, and ten for East Greenwich Gasworks. Otherwise away from the Peninsula there is only the Charlton Tram depot and the Barrier. It covers a wide smattering of Woolwich sites, totally inadequate - but in 1984 we would have thought it marvellously detailed.

I learnt eventually about the steering group for the Survey - but I am still very unclear about formal links with the Greater London Council and Councillor George Nicholson.  Chris Ellmers from the Museum of London was a member.  He was joined by John Earl and Paul Calvocoressi from GLC Historic Buildings Division, Alan Pearsall from the National Maritime Museum and  Denis Smith from North East London Poly – all now, sadly, gone. In addition Peter Dean represented the Docklands Joint Committee.

I don’t remember how I found out about the Docklands History Group and why went along to a meeting at the Barbican - very nervous and conscious of my ignorance.  I remember a talk by the LDDC Conservation Officer who was under a lot of pressure from the audience  – at one point someone from the back yelling ‘you’re a liar’.  The audience was nearly all men; many standing at the back and I dare not quote here some of the things being said.

Perhaps I should note that it was not until 1987 that LDDC produced Docklands Heritage: Conservation and Regeneration. I have never got hold of a copy although I did consider stealing one from a pub in Ide Hill.  It can never have been widely circulated.

 But, back to the Docklands History Group meeting - the other thing that happened there was the announcement that the GLC was going to fund a group which would oversee the production of a number of books and projects about industrial remains in Docklands.  They had appointed a research officer Dr.Robert Carr, and secured a base at the then North East London Polytechnic. Barking Campus.   

To fast forward to 1986 - The only publication of the Survey was ‘Dockland’ – the subject of Chris Ellmers’ article.  I note too that even in 1986 the Survey and its steering group is not mentioned on the title page – only GLC and NELP appear.  There is a however a three page forward by George Nicholson outlining much of the background to the project and also discussing  what was going on and says ‘historians of the future will study and judge the events of this extraordinary time’.  

I said that I am writing this in response to obituaries to George Nicholson. The ones I have seen note the great success of Borough Market, and Coin Street community builders and much, much more. He worked to set up bodies which would effect change – and did so successfully.  There was also the London Rivers Association – I went to many of their meetings and was very aware of input from Greenwich locals – we were very interested on reports of how riversides were managed elsewhere, particularly that in Kolkata. I was also impressed by their report on shipbuilding – still very active on the Greenwich Peninsula in the 1980s and early 1990s.

I have not seen however any mention of the Dockland History Survey in Nicholson’s many obituaries or of the attempt by the Greater London Council to leave a legacy of a truthful history of Docklands.  The Council was of course abolished by the Thatcher government in 1986 and its assets sold off. I am afraid remaining copies of the Dockland History Survey ended up in the Edmonton Destructor. 

So, to return to ‘Dockland’.  It was launched at County Hall in the very last weeks of the GLC by a platform made up of the Mayors of the appropriate London Boroughs – an event I have never seen a report of.  I cannot recall anything that was said or, pretender as I am, what I said to get myself there. I managed to wangle a lift there with the Mayor in the Greenwich limo.

What Greenwich sites did Dockland look at? It’s a list of sites demolished or in other use. A few  survive and still in use -  Deptford Pumping Station (still also used for Tideway) - Greenwich Power Station (still in use by London Underground) - 19^th century houses (Ceylon Place cottages longside the Pilot Pub now listed) - Angerstein Wharf (still there and working) - Thames Barrier (well, yes)  - Woolwich ferry (running with new boats) – Woolwich foot tunnel (think its closed) - Thames Barrier (well, yes) – McDonalds Hamburger Restaurant (first ever in England) – Woolwich railway tunnels (well, yes)

Several other buildings listed survive in other uses- Covered shipbuilding slipway, (‘Olympia’ still there awaiting ‘development) - Mumford’s granary (now housing) – Enderby Wharf as Submarine Cables Ltd (the factory is still there and at work!) -  Enderby House (now a pub) - - Fire station (now housing)  = – Woolwich Coffee Tavern (now shops) –  So-called Tramshed (now the Youth Theatre) the Odeon cinema (now a church) -  Granada cinema (now a cathedral)

Under the heading of ‘Deptford’ there was Deptford Royal Dockyard, (not now in Greenwich anymore)  -   John Penn’s boiler shop (now rebuilt as Paynes Wharf  and shown to be a railway building) -  Deptford Electric Power Generating Station (then still in use)  

In Greenwich itself  they listed –- Power Station jetty (still there unused)  –-Enderby  Wharf office building (demolished it had decoration of gutta percha leaves) cable loading equipment (now- very recently – scheduled) - cable ship George W MacKay (long since broken up) - Victoria Deepwater Container Terminal (now I think Hansons) – East Greenwich Gas Works (still partly at work) - Gas holder No.1  (demolished 2019) - Gas Holder No.2. (demolished at around the time the book came out)  – coal and coke jetty (tiny bit remains with statue on it  - Reforming plant (long since gone) – ammonium sulphate storage shed (amazing building demolished years ago but in lots of ‘80s TV thrillers) - brick acid towers (long gone) - oil gas plant (long gone)  - railway bridge with signal cabin (this was beside the Pilot Pub) – Coalite plant (long gone) – Blackwall Point Power Station (only jetty remains)  -  LCC Tramway repair depot (long gone)

Woolwich - Royal Dockyard (now housing estate) - Engine store (the Albion sugar building - long gone) - the smithery (now at Iron Bridge Museum) – Cubow (now housing site), Mast Pond Wharf (now flats) -  - Woolwich power station remains (all gone) – Co-op department store (in other use) – Tramway rails in Beresford Square.

 

That leaves a number of sites in the Arsenal – then still closed to almost  everyone.  I understand that the Survey was given a publishable list of buildings from an official source and excluded from seeing them.

 

So what happened to the Docklands History Survey? Basically it became a sub section of the North East London Polytechnic.  I went and met them as part of my job with Docklands Forum - they had published a couple of what were basically picture books but by then many such books were appearing.  There was no sign of the Survey Committee or their research worker – and they didn’t want to join the Forum.

JOHN DAY 6

 

 well must get back to John Day and his reminiscences of his 1930s apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal. His apprenticeship involved working for successive departments within the Arsenal for a few weeks or months to see what they did and learn some of the necessary skills. They would then move on to another department. As a premium apprentice it was vital that he understood how the complex fabric of a major industrial environment, like the Royal Arsenal, was co-ordinated.

But first things first – as John said ‘There was always tea making.’ He described how this was done.  Water was boiled in a conical tin can. He does not say how and what was used in order to heat it up - but I suppose in this sort of workplace  there must always have been some sort of heat source in which the can of water could be to put to boil. Next, he had to have what they called a ‘screw’ which was a small piece of newspaper which had been brought from home and contained a mixture of tea leaves and condensed milk.  I can only just begin to imagine the state of condensed milk which had been wrapped up in newspaper - in the days before plastic bags. The tin can used for boiling the water had a cup in the lid and the mixture of tea leaves and condensed milk was scraped into the boiling water. I do rather suspect making and drinking this horrible mix was for many young men part of a rite of passage into the working world of ‘men’ - but you didn’t have to do it like that, lads, you know!

Luckily washing the overalls was done by one of the labourers – which at least avoided being confronted by Mother who probably didn’t appreciate clothing which had had condensed milk wrapped in newspaper in the pockets.  The labourer/launderer boiled them up in soda over the blacksmith’s forge in his lunch hour. The money he made out of this for this was paid into the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society funeral department so that when the time came he would get a funeral with black horses, plumes and all the trimmings. He also supplied cigarettes, tobacco, biscuits and sweets which he brought wholesale and sold at retail prices.

He goes on to describe the hours of work in the Arsenal at Woolwich. Weekdays were 8 a.m. to 5:40 pm and 8 a.m. to 11a.m. on Saturdays. There were two weeks holiday which were made up of ‘closed week’- this was for the ‘Kings Birthday’ which was on the Friday afternoon and Saturday morning before Whitson bank holiday. There were also ‘bean feasts’ and bank holidays.  

 

Workers had to ‘clock in’ each morning using Gledhill- Brooks time clocks and individual time cards.  There were two racks for the cards one each side of the clock, in and out. These were normally kept shut during working hours and opened a few minutes before clocking off time by the time clerk.  By rattling the handle the clock could be made to jump a minute and the first to arrive was expected to gain this extra minute for the rest of the queue. Workers were allowed to be just one minute late – after that lateness was counted in 15 minute segments.

Nobody was allowed to start work until the foreman had walked up the shop, when there was a panic to put away newspapers. John describes how ‘I once started before the foreman came as I had a ‘stranger’; or ‘contract’ job for a friend on hand’ and ‘received a right earful from the stop steward.’

 

He says ‘another earful was earned’ when he was doing a private job on a Brown and Sharp surface grinder. ‘Somebody’ wanted to make a spirit level and had acquired a length of stainless steel similar to a flat bottomed rail and John was asked to grind the base. He ‘put the stainless steel on the magnetic chuck, switched the chuck on and brought the grinding wheel down onto the rail .... that was when I learnt that stainless this is not magnetic.....’

 

‘There was a bang, the rail flew across the shop ... the wheel on the machine broke and bits flew through a window ... across an alleyway to another window .. and landed in the shop next door.’ Questions were asked.

 

There had been no guard over the wheel which John had used – no surprise there! Guards slowed work down nobody used them.  The enquiry into the accident  laid down that guards has to be refitted. They stayed in place for a week or so.

 

John commented that most of the machinery dated back to the Great War and was driven from line shafting through open belts. There were no chuck guards on lathes, no cutter guards on milling machines and speed changing on cone pulleys was done with the lump of wood against the moving flat belt. He says ‘we learnt to keep clear ourselves rather than relying on somebody else having made a machine fool proof.;’  and ‘I don’t suppose there has been a great reduction in industrial accidents in this mollycoddle age’.  Oh dear!

 

John’s next move was to the New Fuze Tool Room as a centre lathe turner. I was put on an old 8 inch Le Blond lathe. ... apprentices always got the most worn-out lathe - if we could do a good job with that, we could certainly use a more modern tool’. The jobs varied from 0.2 in. diameter striker pins to 4 in. diameter bronze discs.

 

In the tool room working next to John was a ‘rotund, red faced, cheery character who had a mind like an engineer’s pocket book’. This man had instant recall of all the decimals for fractions of an inch by sixty -fourths, the sizes of number and letter drills and the thread depths of all the screw pitches - all to four figures !

 

Then ‘in our fourth or fifth year we were given a turning test’. They were given drawings and from them had the choice of jobs that could be done in less than a day. They also were given a very modern lathe in the Carriage Tool Room to make it on. ‘These lathes were so complicated compared to the old clapped - out ones we were used to, that we either spent the morning trying to find out how everything worked’ or, as I did, nipped back to the old machine that we knew and machined the test piece on that.

While he was in the New Fuze Factory he also worked on a milling machine. He made ‘a set of helical milling cutters for use in the tool room’,   A helical milling cutter is a cutting tool featuring angled flutes wrapped around its body.

John says this job was ‘right in the deep end!’ ...’Anyone who has done helical milling will have found that the calculated settings for the helix are not the settings for the machine, that is where experience comes in’.  He was taught by Fred Best ‘the highest regarded miller there.... Fred’s job was making the gauges for slide ways for the new 3.7 inch gun which were planed on his Parkinson milling machine using the fast table feed’.

Fred did not hold with advanced education and told John he was wasting his time ‘as there are people with degrees sweeping the streets.

ENDERBY GROUP

 

 

Yesterday in the post came Journal No 25 of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society’s journal.

It’s a publication which carries serious articles about industries throughout London.  This edition has in it articles on the Broadwood piano factory in Hackney Wick; the workshops at Tower Bridge and the Express Dairy at Cricklewood  and - hello what’s this? .. an article by our Greenwich Industrial History Society’s Secretary, Alan Burkitt Gray, on ‘How Greenwich Connected the World at Enderby Wharf’. Happily Alan has also recently taken over the editorial of the GLIAS Journal – before retirement he was a professional for some very upmarket magazines.  He has included his own article about his experience of Enderby Wharf and of campaigning for recognition of its high tech and world changing past and the small triumph we have had in getting this machinery scheduled.

This is a really great article which everyone in Greenwich should read. It explains about the recent scheduling of the equipment on the Jetty at Enderby Wharf. Included in the list of scheduled apparatus is a submarine telephone cable gantry used to guide the cables from the factory at roof level and onto a series of rollers leading to the cable ship. Note that this for telephones - the development of telephone cables comes much later in the history of Enderby Wharf but is equally if not more important than the earlier telegraph message based systems.

In the eighteenth century the Enderbys were Southwark oil merchants who acquired a whaling fleet by marriage and extended it, also undertaking exploratory work in the Antarctic – leading to a role in the Royal Geographic Society.  In 1830 family members bought a ropewalk on the Greenwich riverside and manufactured rope and canvas here. In 1845 the factory burnt down; and following this Enderby House was built, initially as a residence.  Many family members lived in Greenwich – one born in Woolwich was General Charles Gordon. Family members were also involved in setting up a colony in the Auckland Islands. 

In the 1850's the site was bought by Glass Elliot, a pioneering company in the new submarine cable industry. They made most of the earliest international submarine cables linking countries around the world. They received major attention for the Atlantic Cable which was successful only on its 4^th attempt to cross the Atlantic and which essentially changed the world. This was followed by the India Cable and much else over the next 50 years. Cables made in Greenwich were laid on many new routes around the world – essentially setting up the network which we still use today. Submarine cables were made at Enderby Wharf until 1975, and part of the site is still in use today researching and making high tech communications equipment.

AS we entered the 21^st century a group of us got together following concerns that the history of cable making  in Greenwich was beginning to be forgotten. The site on the Greenwich Peninsula was obviously of interest to developers. The tourists offer in Greenwich did not, and does not, include anything about the cable industry while most other sites with a relation to the Atlantic cable all have museums.  There was also an increasing research interest in the cables.  In his GLIAS Journal article Alan describes how we set up the Enderby Group to try and get somebody – anybody - in Greenwich to take a bit of notice of what had gone on here. 

We were also particularly concerned at the state of Enderby House. Having been built as a residence for Enderby family members it had later been used as offices under successive cable companies. However in 2010 the factory owners sold off the Riverside strip -  which has resulted in those huge  blocks of flats. The next door site had been the Amylum glucose factory which had been sold to a French farming co-op. One day a French demolition firm turned up  - having given no, legally required, notice to either the Port of London Authority or to Greenwich  Council. They proceeded  to demolish the entire factory. When they left they did so without installing any security so that any vandal who fancied it could get into Enderby House.

I remember one day a lot of us got together and walked down to the Riverside and we all had our photograph taken outside this horrible derelict building – most pthose who became the \e\nderby Group were there. I don’t know what happened to that photograph because I haven’t got it now but there was a sign put up about the developer, and suddenly they began to put out plans to renovate the house.

So we set up a campaigning organisation and called it the ‘Enderby Group’ to try and get whatever was planned  for the site to acknowledge its past and also to see if we could get some input – an exhibition or just some community space  or something - to tell the world about what happened at Enderby Wharf. We were helped and supported by some interesting people I would like to point out in particular Bill Burns who runs this amazing cable site from New York and its very much the best place to look at if you want to know the whole story of Enderby Wharf. https://atlantic-cable.com/ . It has on it a history of Enderby House and the texts of several books by Stewart Ash who has been involved in the research of history of the site for some years.  Quite early on we ran a seminar at the Cutty Sark Pub for the developers, planners and top local politicians  to inform them about what had been made and developed.

Although we were working very hard things began to get more and more difficult. There was a lot of distraction from what we were trying to do by a plan for an apparent cruise liner  terminal on the Wharf and local anger about that was so great that our ideas - educational, community oriented, tourist friendly and ever so ever so Green - rather got ignored – while locals campained against increased pollution.

So despite our efforts we have ended up with blocks of flats and a pub which has nothing in it to describe its distinguished and very important past. Even the names of the various blocks of flats did not relate to its past all.  So obviously we’re all very pleased to see the scheduling of the monuments on the jetty. 

Tourist Greenwich has got a lot to say about old kings and queens long ago -and I’m not against that at all. It also has a lot to say about ships generally at the Maritime Museum and about clocks at the Royal Observatory. This is all very science based and links very well to the many industries in which research and other facilities as part of production process. We had some factories which specialised in various scientific instruments and in some ways much of our local production resulted from local research and innovation: the Royal Arsenal was all part of that too. The birth of the telecommunications and later cable industries in Greenwich is integral to it and I don’t know why we don’t promote it – showing our role in the modern world.

I would very much like people to have an opportunity to read what Alan has to say about the past of the site and about the importance of the scheduling of this equipment on the Riverside. If and when I get a link I will certainly get someone to post it here as GLIAS does put the contents of their journals on their web site. Meanwhile we will continue to go on about the past and to get people to take an interest and in the meantime please look at Bill Burns website which has everything on it you could possibly want to know

In ,]our zoom talks programme Greenwich Industrial History Society will feature on 14^th July Stuart Ash on ‘The birth of optical fibre communication. A very British story’ – and hopefully this will include the awarding of the Nobel Prize

Conduits in Greenwich Park

 

In two earlier articles I looked at early water supply systems in Greenwich which relied on conduits- lines of pipe work conveying fresh water from springs. They were, and are, mostly on the hillside sloping down from Blackheath and other similar sources and taking it to where it would be used. The first article looked at the conduit head in Eltham which was built for Eltham palace and also looked at fresh water sources generally. The second article looked in detail at one of the earliest conduits in Greenwich – the Arundel Conduit which goes down the outside of the Park ending up in the area now known as Ballast Quay. It has long been established that a whole system once existed and that Greenwich Park was where some of these water sources originated.

There has been a considerable amount of investigation of conduits in Greenwich Park over the years.  There are two buildings there which relate to the conduits as well as various stories of mysterious caverns and so on - most of which have proved to be totally unsubstantiated.  There is however a great deal of interest and in recent years numerous bloggers have written about the conduit remains in Greenwich Park and there are also indications of old water supply structures in the areas surrounding the Park.

The earliest map we have of Greenwich is the one drawn up for Samuel Travers’ survey in the late 17^th century.  It marks numerous conduit heads. Travers had apparently been tasked with identifying some of these. Along with the map he also produced a report which details what his team of researchers had found on the ground.

In the late 17^th century the Royal Hospital was established on the site of the Royal Palace and involved a great deal of work on new buildings and much else. initially Samuel Travers was asked to identify what property in Greenwich was actually owned by the Crown. However some buildings relating to military applications remained – for for example the gunpowder testing facility on the site which is now Enderby’s Wharf.   Travers was a career politician - if such a desciption is relevant in the late seventeenth century. He had been a Member of Parliament for a variety of constituencies in what were later known as ‘rotten boroughs’. The constituency for which he is best known is Bossiney which at one stage had only one voter.  He came from a family of Puritans based in Cornwall but left there and as a clever young man followed the traditional route of Oxford University and the Middle Temple becoming a lawyer. I am charmed that in later years he returned to Cornwall, living at Tintagel with its associations to King Arthur and Guinevere.

In 1693 he was appointed by William III as Surveyor General of Crown Lands - which of course included the Royal Hospital. A commission was appointed:- “to enquire what conduit heads, aqueducts or drains there are within this Manor for conveying water to His Majesty's Palaces or mansion houses in Greenwich, and how the same are now kept and preserved, and at whose charge; .......  and if any of them are obstructed, or otherwise damnified, to enquire by whose, occasion or neglect the same happened and what the charge of repairing the same will be."

The report, published in 1695 was entitled 'An account of the King’s Lordship or Manor of East Greenwich with its Rights, Members, and Appurtenances, in the County of Kent.”  The accompanying text is the best information we have of Greenwich as a whole and, along with the report, are models of clarity and competence. His map of Greenwich mark’s five conduits in the Park all helpfully numbered and seem to be in the places where remains of structures are found today.

 

Today the Greenwich Park website gives photographs and some information about the two brick built structures which remain both of which are on the sites of the conduits marked by Travers. They  have been extensively covered in numerous websites in recent years.  I should also add that while I’m aware of recent archaeological projects in the Park I am not aware of what they may have found and identified and what research may have been done on these structures. The Park website does not mention Travers but does note work on these structures by the architect Hawksmoor although they generally give a much bigger picture of Sir Christopher Wren. 

Hawkesmoor was on site in Greenwich 1715 as Wren’s clerk and that same year became clerk to the Fabrik Committee. He had been working on St Alphege’s Church since 1712. He failed to be appointed Surveyor at the Royal Hospital but was later Surveyor to the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches - which of course included St Alfege’s along with others like his astounding Christ Church Spitalfields.  Had I been writing this 40 years ago the narrative on Hawksmoor would have been led by the Ackroyd novel, with Iain Sinclair somewhere in the background.  I can’t find my copy so I can’t check if the conduit heads get a mention – so we’ve missed them being cast as entrances to some satanic ritualism or other.

However just because Hawksmoor worked on the site as clerk doesn’t mean to say that he designed the structures which are in the park today. I note that the Historic England entry on those sites  says information on this can be found in Pevsner’s volume on South London - if you look at that volume it mentions it briefly in an unattributed footnote with no additional information.

There has been considerable interest in these conduits over the last 100 years or so.  A Council survey was carried out in 1961 and there have been individual researchers of some persistence.  When the tunnel system was explored it was found to be of a much greater extent than originally thought.  Most coherant is the study drawn up by Harry Pearman in the 1960s done while he was working for Greenwich Council and published by the Chelsea Speliological Society. Harry managed to be clear and understandable.

 Since then there have been a number of other studies and not only of the two brick structures which remain in the Park. The subject  is very popular – for example the most well attended talk The Greenwich Industrial History Society has ever put on was about these structures - I remember so many people turning up that we ran out of seats and the men had to sit on boxes of books.

So what does Historic England have to say about the two structures remaining in Greenwich Park?           The larger of the two is on the west side of the Park just adjacent to Crooms Hill and probably about halfway up the side of the Park fence. It says:-

“Conduit house. Situated within an enclosure of iron railings. it is late 17^th  or early 18^th, attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was Clerk of Works at Greenwich 1698-1735 and restored in the later 20^th Century.  On the north front is an arch with a panel above it inscribed "Greenwich Hospital Standard Reservoir. It is built of brown brick with a vaulted and a once lead lined reservoir below from which pipework is said to run down hill to what were the Royal Hospital buildings.  This reservoir is said to be fed by pipes further up the hill And there is no passageway exit from the building.

Its brick walls are heavily covered with graffiti of varying dates and styles spanning two hundred years, from the late 18^th Century. In at least two places, dates from the 1700s can just be made out, plus initials. N and ‘R.E.’ were there in ‘1784’ and from 1791 are the remains of some looping letters – perhaps ‘F. E.’

The other remaining structure is on the other side of the park, roughly parallel to the Standard but is at One Tree Hill’, it is a semi-circular shaped brick and stone wall set in sloping ground originally  the entrance to a conduit. It was the central block, constructed of yellow brick and flanked by curving arms which slope downwards to ground level.  There is a central arch with a stone keystone and a stone plaque above it with an inscription which is now illegible. 

These two visible brick structures are only the most obvious parts of a whole network of pipes and of conduit runs in the Park. I have a huge pack of notes which I ought to return to in a future article. It is also clear that there were also major pipe runs and systems to the west of the Park. One major one which has been interpreted many times was the Hyde Vale conduit. Along with physical indications and notes in pre 19^th century documents there are numerous interpretations by all sorts of researchers. Hopefully I will return to them.

ADA

 

 

I thought this week I ought to do something about Councillors in Greenwich as we’ve just had the Council elections. So perhaps looking at someone in the past in that role is very relevant. It’s often quite difficult to find out much about individual councillors - they tend not to get reported in the local papers nor mentioned in council minutes. Ada Kennedy was a very popular Greenwich councillor 1932-68 and I thought she might be interesting – researching her has taught me how little we can know about somebody who was a leading counsellor for around 30 years

I also ought to explain what I mean by “Councillor in Greenwich”. I said some months ago that I would do one of these articles on the political structure of Greenwich before the Second World War and the changes in the 1960s - and I’m sorry that I’ve  never got round to that. Ada was elected in 1931 to the  Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich which was much, much smaller that it is now and certainly not including Woolwich or Eltham. The Town Hall was what is now West Greenwich House in Greenwich High Road.  The political control changed regularly and it was not until 1934 that it stabilised with a Labour majority. 

 Ada Kennedy was a Greenwich Councillor for thirty years  and known for her empathy and her huge over all majorities at elections.  She was born Ada Dorothy Alice Bassett in Lambeth, the daughter of Walter and Alice Basset Her father, Walter, is listed as a decorator who, like my grandfather, did ‘graining’.  That was a highly skilled process to make painted wood look like ‘wood’ – fashionable and hideous.

She described herself at the age of 16 as an ‘active suffragette’ who failed to throw a brick through the window of 10 Downing Street - ‘ I tossed the brick into the Thames’. She went ‘on hunger marches’ -  probably local demonstrations  against poverty. But at that stage she was still living with her parents.

At the age of 23 she married John Kennedy They actually got married in central London at a church in Charlotte Street, just off  Tottenham Court Road. She gave her address as 1 Goodge Street and  John gave his as Tottenham Street, nearby.  Were they just a young couple coming up to the excitements of London before settling down suitably in the suburbs?

John was actually an engineer from Manchester. With three children – Joan, John and Mavis – in the 1920s they lived in Marlton Street, now an unimpressive turning off Woolwich Road, opposite Greenwich Labour Party’s office. I assume they may have moved to Greenwich because of John’s job as an engineer but strangely his place of work is listed as the Stationary Office Print Works in Harrow.  Harrow is a very difficult place to get to from Greenwich - there are no reasonable public transport routes and it’s a bit too far to use a bicycle on a daily basis.  It makes no sense, however the Stationary Office Print Works would provide a very good job in a government establishment with secure employment, with a pension and much else.

She joined the Labour Party in 1920. We know nothing about her political activity, if any, in the ten years between joining the party and becoming a Councillor. There are many newspaper reports n Greenwich during that 10 years of an Ada Kennedy who sung at charity events. These were usually a dinner or similar function to raise money for some good cause or another where amateur musicians were brought in to provide entertainment. Was this the future Councillor or someone completely different?  It would be a good way to learn about and make contacts in, the all important voluntary sector.

Ada first stood for Greenwich Council ‘s West Ward in 1931 but failed to be elected.   The council was  then under no overall control, with Municipal Reform and Labour splitting seats equally.  In 1934 she was successful and won in North West Ward and thus began a career in local politics  which was the last over the next 30 years. She always represented a Greenwich riverside ward, mainly  Marsh Ward, now known as Peninsula, where there were streets great of small housing built for workers in nearby industry. We know very little about her time in the Council and have to rely on a few scattered newspaper reports and if we are lucky some reminiscences. In 1940 she served as mayor and thins we have a few newspaper stories about what she was doing.

In November 1940 we learn that she is chairing a conference on giving opportunities to young people. You wouldn’t have known from the report that there was a major war going on! I have read so many reports of such conferences over the years – wartime or not!  Young people are always a cause of worry.  Within a few weeks of that conference she was at a big service in the Naval College Chapel packed out with defence workers and celebrating  bravery and efficiency.  It’s all about the courage of ordinary people and she spoke about when  bells would ring for peace.

Next she’s getting a portrait of a past mayor framed and hung in the Town Hall. I know there was a gallery of these portraits when Greenwich Town Hall was closed down. They were put in the basement of Woolwich Town Hall and I tried to track them down to see if I could get a picture for this article.  No one remembered them but an envelope full of portrait photographs is with Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust. So perhaps that’s where they went - and thank you to the Trust for being so helpful about this.

Every Christmas every Mayor in every local authority has to go to endless Christmas dinners. I have spoken to some ex-mayors who have said that they’ve had to eat 30 or so in the week before Christmas. 1940 was the same, despite the war! First Ada visited the Miller Hospital, at the end of Greenwich High Road, where Christmas dinner ‘was a Turkey and a plum pudding, which was all made in the hospital and said to be made to pre-war standards, except there weren’t any currents’.   They were entertained by a nurses’ concert party.

Later in the day Ada went to the Dreadnought  Hospital – now Greenwich University Library - where there were seamen patients from all over the world.  She said it looked ‘more like the League of Nations’.  They also had  Plum Pudding and the patients all got ‘woollen comforts’ for Christmas presents -  and carols sung by the Sea Rangers and later by the Brownies and later still by St Alfege’s choir.

Finally Ada  went to St Alfege’s Hospital – where the Greenwich Centre is now - for more turkey and plum pudding.  Guests were the Brockley Heavy Rescue Team; Carol’s were sung by Greenwich Central Team  and the nurses produced a pantomime called ‘Babes in the Wood’.

In complete contrast to Christmas Ada chaired a major conference in the Borough Hall with Arthur Greenwood - then a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet but in charge of post war reconstruction.  He is the politician who appointed Beveridge to report on future social services and, after the war, was a major architect of the National Health Service. The conference was to discuss the implementation of the Beveridge report and was clearly an important event, supported by many local politicians, in showing how a new society could emerge after the war was over.

Ada’s next event was to celebrate and raise consciousness about the work of the Royal Air Force . This was in the Granada Cinema which was where the Plaza is now .... and so it went on throughout her year as Mayor of Greenwich. Of course she was not alone in this and we can imagine how every local authority throughout the country the Mayor would have had a similar role. I am very impressed by the events organised to support the forces by local people but also the sort of serious discussions about the future of the country once we were at peace again. We hear so much about various heroic military and other events during the Second World War but very little - in fact nothing - about this work going on constantly with the civilian population building morale and fixing thoughts on a better future for everyone;

There is no space here to discuss more about Ada’s career, except to say that she supported many progressive issues. She  was active in the Co-op Womens Guild, which, among much else,  promoted the involvement of women in public life. She was a governor of the Roan School and on the board of five other schools. After the Second World War the family moved to Annandale Road - the small houses in Marlton Street were demolished and I wonder if Ada may have been bombed out

Ada’s great strength as a councillor was her close relationship with the people in the area which she  represented. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. It was said people looked on her as a friend and someone always there for them and not just in times of crisis in their lives – and that she would know them well enough to help without needing to be asked. This was reflected in her enormous popular vote – over 80% of the poll in most elections.

In 1957, and by then in her sixties, she was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough. The ceremony  was attended by ‘five of her grandsons’ and many of her family must still be living locally. She stood finally in the 1964 election by which time municipal Greenwich was no more, its councillors a minority to those representing Woolwich.  She eventually died in 1974 and I have been unable to find an obituary.