Substations

 

As ever on a Saturday I was sitting wondering what to do next week for my Weekender article. For weeks I’d been thinking rather guiltily that I’d never done the Tramshed in Woolwich. I didn’t know an awful lot about it and it seemed very difficult to find out more – well more than who was doing stand up there in 1980!   

I was also still thinking about what I did last week - the Land’s End power plant.  It was on the Arsenal site, mysterious, and secret. It seems to have begun as a hydraulic power station and ended as an electrical substation. I daresay we’ll find out more about it as time goes on but it got me thinking about substations -  buildings between the power generating works and whatever it is that needs electricity to function. I am very aware here that I’m unfamiliar with the technology and certainly don’t understand the language used about it  - but then, I guess, neither do 99% of my readers, so maybe they we can all try and find out what was going on in using terms we all understand.

Substations –I realise they come in many shapes and sizes, but I what I wanted to look at here were the small urban buildings which stand in every neighbourhood.   There a lots of them and most of them are all the same size, painted dark red and they’re really -  and I probably shouldn’t say this -  pretty boring. There are various web sites which claim to list many of them and perhaps one day I should come back and look at them.  I want to keep this simple so I will just mention the Geograph  web sites – “photograph every grid square” - and note some of their contributors have looked at some local substation examples. https://www.geograph.org.uk/

I checked substations with Greenwich Council’s site on locally listed historic buildings. There are just three substations in the Borough on it. They are: the LESC building in Greenwich High Road, the Tramshed in Woolwich and the railway building in Troughton Road in Charlton.

The LESC building is something which I‘ve written about here several times before noting it as the only last remaining relic of the world’s first power station at Deptford. It is still in use and it’s just an ordinary square building with ‘LESC’ on the front for ‘London Electricity Supply Corporation’. The Council’s listing document notes:  “ Sub-station of 1891 .....which stepped down high voltage power from Deptford Generating Station ..... unusual survivor from the pioneering days of electrification, which enabled the streets of Greenwich to be lit by electric lighting for the first time, powered at a distance from the first modern – and world’s largest - power station .....substantially intact, an evocative example”.

The next one listed is the Woolwich Tramshed, just up the road from Woolwich Station. Woolwich Council bought this building from London Transport in 1960 and it has had a fairly chequered career ever since, mainly being used as a community theatre. Trying to discover its origins is not easy. Searches on the net will find many, many websites of the various entertainers who’ve been there over the years. Describing its history some say it was a power station generating electricity for the trams.... well, sort of! 

In these articles I’ve mentioned a booklet several times;  SELIA -  about the industrial archaeology of South East London and published in 1980.  Yes, it does mention the Tramshed “the former electrical substation of 1900 designed by E. Vincent Harris for the London County Council tramways, misleadingly called ‘the tram shed’.” At least we’ve got the architect’s name even if we haven’t got a clue how they knew what it was. Harris worked for the London County Council at the very start of his career, as a very young man. He went to build many, many civic structures around the country on a monumental scale. Memorably he is reputed, at a dinner for the celebration of his work on his retirement,   to have said that he knew that the architectural establishment of the day didn’t like his work and he didn’t much like their’s either.. Another example of a tram depot building  by him is the rather larger and very much better known one in Rivington Street in Shoreditch. This version is or was  a restaurant, complete with its own Damien Hurst, and  described in 2020 by the Guardian as ‘  so now’.

Looking for sources of information about the Tramshed  –I found something which I had written myself some 20 years ago.  To my embarrassment I haven’t got a clue where I got this piece of information from, but what I said was “electricity substation of 1910 for the London County Council tramways  ... designed to look good in a prominent area. Inside was a ten ton overhead crane, switchgear and motor generators.”I had also discovered that a substation was needed as a result of a plan to extend the tram routes to Abbey Wood. With the demise of the tram system in the early 1950s in favour of buses, another use could not be found for these electrical infrastructure buildings. I have since found a 1910 report in the local papers of Woolwich Council’s support for the construction of this building and it says that the electricity itself would originally have been generated at Greenwich Power Station on the riverside in East Greenwich. Indeed a trench for the cable was being dug along Woolwich Road.

So, what does the Council’s listings page say about it? ..” Large structure with single storey workshop ...dressed up in a handsome Mannerist classical style to diminish bulk ...substations needed to be large well-ventilated sheds located at central transport nodes... rare substation associated with tramways .... survival in such a prominent central location is  highly significant ... has an important place in London’s transport history.”

The third listed substation is perhaps a little bit more problematic. It’s the big railway substation in Troughton Road adjacent to Charlton Station. What does the Council’s listing document say? “Built in 1926 on site of Charlton station’s coal depot following electrification by the Southern Railway; sited at the end of a single track siding of 1873 which unusually extended into the building. Still in use housing transformers, converters and switchgear ... has features designed on a monumental scale, of historic interest recording technological changes to the railway industry”.

In the 1920s the Southern Railway had converted to a v660V-750V DC third-rail system and relied on a network of substations, often nicknamed "cathedrals" due to their design.   I don’t know how many of these exist in our area - I seem to remember a lot more of them - and I am sufficiently ignorant to not even make a guess. There is certainly another one where the railway crosses White Hart Road in Plumstead and that is not listed.

It was apparently a ‘rotary converter station’ which means that it converted incoming power for the railway’s use.  In  the early 20^th century when our local railway lines were electrified the current was distributed from the generating stations – probably from Deptford Power Station. It went to substations that contained transformers, in order to step-down the voltage, and "rotary converters" -huge motor-generators -to convert from alternating to direct current. In the 1940s the Southern Railway developed and used a standard design which had outdoor high-voltage switchgear and transformers, and a mercury-arc rectifier.  They went out of use by approximately 1954 and following completion of the "change of frequency" scheme in the London Area - the SR traction network was connected to the national grid at 66kV / 33kv and the introduction of 50Hz mercury-arc rectifier equipment in the substations – enabled the abolition of the 11kV radial HV network. The rotary equipment was removed from the substations and the large holes in the upper floors filled in. Charlton was “downgraded to a TPH in the CoF scheme”.  In the rotary subs days these stations were manned 24/7.The equipment would be shut at the end of each day and started up again in the morning. The nights were used for maintenance & cleaning and they were kept spotless.

There is one more old substation which I am surprised is not in the list of listed buildings from the from the Council. I was told about this building some time ago by, much missed, Neil Rhind. I have written already in this series of articles about the Blackwall Point Power Station which was sited at the end of what is now John Harrison Way - and the jetty out in the river now which was its coaling jetty.  They had a contract to power Greenwich trams and they had three substations - one in Crooms Hill, one in Westcombe Hill and one in Blackheath Park. The ones in Crooms and Westcombe Hills are long gone - and I’m not even really sure where exactly they were.  The one in Blackheath Park is still there. It is at the back and in the courtilege of the Concert Halls, in Blackheath Park. It is a very substantial building and quite tall. It is marked on old maps as ‘electricity substation’ and appears in them from the early 20^th century. I am not sure when it stopped being used, and what its current function is. It is however an impressive building, larger than most such sub stations and with a decorative grille over the door.  Why isn’t it listed?

(Thanks to Bob for sourcing technical information used above)

John Day and Lands End

 

Over the past few weeks I’ve done three articles taken from the memories of John Day describing his apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal in the 1930s.  John was an ‘Engineering Apprentice’ which he had got following good school results and a competitive qualifying examination. This meant that he worked in many different departments in the Arsenal over the course of his time while also studying for a degree in Engineering at Woolwich Polytechnic. The young men on this programme were expected to be the future leaders of the engineering profession and John was to spend his working life in the Patent Office.  These episodes of his memories were sent to me intermittently over four or five years and they don’t always connect up that well - so I’ve done my best but it is sometimes a bit fragmentary.

I finished the last episode with a description of the Arsenal motorcycle club and some very big 1930s machines some of which are worth a small fortune today.  His father was in charge of the main power station in the Arsenal and John wrote about him too. Clearly having a father with a senior job gave John access to information over and above his daily work about this vast works and its ways.

Moving on to when John says he had been working, ‘allocated’ to a ‘spell in the western `D.C’.  This was the oldest part of the Arsenal – where Woolwich Works is today - and it had originally had an electricity supply from a building in Warren Lane’ which was originally a DC (direct current) supply only and which was apparently still in operation when John was there in the 1930s. 

He was next allocated to substation No.4 (Sub 4).  I am told that this was ‘Lands End Power House’ which was to the east of the old main part of the Arsenal. In the last episode I wrote here I described how John visited the Crossness Explosives pier, which was on the riverside at what is now Thames Bank Place’. The Lands End site power plant was to the south and quite a way away – in fact so far away as to be almost at the eastern edge of the Arsenal site. John says it was east of the Sales Ground where ‘unwanted bits and materials were sold off by auction’ and served the Danger Buildings, the F shops ‘where all the woodwork was done’ and Crossness Explosives Pier. The substation was divided into two areas - one of which held the voltage reducing transformers switchgear and the other was the rest room. 

It seems that originally Lands End was primarily a hydraulic power station built in c1905/6 to operate equipment on the, then new, Crossness Explosives Pier. It appears that it was built using money from the Army and Navy. This is possibly to do with land ownership as the Arsenal began to expand into new areas to the east of the main site in order to meet the need for the new high explosives being developed in this period by research staff at Woolwich and Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills, originally under Frederick Abel and James Dewar – although Woolwich based Abel died in 1902. Along with the pier and tumps this power plant was designed to minimise the risk posed by these new materials. Woolwich production was to concentrate on the propellant Lyddite, although this had not been developed by chemists in the Royal Ordnance like Abel.

The power plant was eventually transferred to the Royal Ordnance in 1910 following an agreement with the Admiralty and the War Office. It supplied hydraulic power to the cranes on the Pier, and steam for heating and electricity for capstans at some of the tumps - magazines 3- 15 - and for lighting the pier and other structures in the vicinity of No. 2 magazine. It also supplied steam for fire-fighting purposes. On maps an accumulator tower, blacksmiths and fitters shops are marked along with a boiler house with a tank and chimney and a coal bunker between them. It was later converted into an electricity substation probably in the 1950s. Thus in a location far from the central part of the Arsenal, was ‘well out of sight and out of mind of the main part of the Arsenal’. It stood roughly where Crossway crosses a canal between Pointer and Eastgate Closes – a site now in the Borough of Bexley.

When John was there in the 1930s the substation was the responsibility of Andy Clements, with Syd Freeman as electrician’s mate and Bill Nunn as motor cleaner. Work began in the morning when they `made tea and waited for the next phone called to say something had gone wrong’. As ever, John has a story to tell us about a lesson learned:

“One morning while Syd brewed the first cup of the day, Andy pushed the newspapers off the table and produced a bit of chalk and proceeded to introduce the then resident apprentice into the deeper intricacies of electricity distribution of three-phase current. Then the phone rang and Andy told me to take Syd and sort out the trouble. 

“I forget what the trouble was but I do know that I hadn’t a clue how to solve the problem. Syd, who after all was three or four times my age, suggested a solution and all went well.

“When I returned to the substation Andy asked me what I had done and I told him that Syd had suggested a solution. Oh dear! Andy really went for me!  The gist of his tirade was if you’re in charge of a job you do not follow the instructions of a subordinate and you take responsibility. A lesson learned – but would it have been better to have the problem unrepaired? There seems to be no concept of teamwork?  I guess that this strict respect for skills embedded in a hierarchy was, and probably still is, all part of this world of apprenticeships and the handing on of knowledge to a selected successor – with many class issues included. The world we seem to have lost.  The point about responsibility is significant – but, like so much else, must be subject to past legal decisions in the real world.

One sort of skill being passed on was the art of scrounging and how to improve your life in the workplace by unofficial initiatives.  The vast size of the Arsenal must have made it ideal for such activities.  

John says Andy had ‘acquired’ a garage on the other side of the road which could be used for the benefit of engineering apprentices who, John said, ‘wanted to work on their cars or motorcycles particularly on Saturday mornings.’  I suggested a lathe might be useful so Andy took me on a ‘scrounging trip on the dilly’.  (I must say that the phrase ‘on the dilly’ is unfamiliar to me - or at least in this context.  I can guess, but if anybody wants to enlighten us on this - please feel free

Returning from the scrounging trip they had ‘a ½ inch centre lathe from a ‘mothballed’ shop’.  This was set up in the substation driven by a motor, acquired by more scrounging. Then ‘news of the lathe reached the shop steward of the main shop and he began to raise great concerns. John comments that ‘he would, he was the shop turner’. Then ‘he was soon told to be quiet - the lathe would only be used by an apprentice and was only for ‘foreigners’.

John’s time at Lands End was in the 1930s and it seems it was converted into an electricity substation in perhaps the 1930s - it was substation No. 11.  Maps from the early 1950s no longer show the accumulator tower and by then the cranes on Crossness Pier were electric. At that time the Arsenal was responsible for the navigation/warning lights on the large pylons which used to carry power across the river. The lights on it were on a rope and pulley system so that they could be wound down to ground level for maintenance. They were built in 1933 and carried 132Kv over a distance of 3,060 feet, they were dismantled in 1987.

Many of the tumps remain, some in other use and some abandoned.  They were magazines  used to store explosives – described as ‘mainly cordite’ although very little of that was made in Woolwich. They date from the late 1880s and were usually circular and surrounded by a wall and a moat, designed to minimise and contain blast. They provided only part of the storage needed for an eventual 40,000 tons of explosives . Some tumps have since been used for a variety of recreational and other purposes – but others are derelict. Most remain hidden behind houses and away from roads and invisible – needing to be sought out.

Some of the jobs John described required entry to the Danger Buildings. These were a series of wooden huts of relatively light construction surrounded by high earth banks and joined by wooden walkways a couple of feet from the ground. These walkways were known as a “clean” area whereas off the walkways was the “dirty” area. Access could only be attained through the dirty/clean building where all smoking, snuff taking and metal articles had to be left and one had to put on special nail less overshoes as one stepped one foot at a time over the  barrier from dirty to clean. One step off the “clean” walkway, one became “dirty” and was not allowed back.

More about all of this in future articles. For more information about all of this please look at the huge and very complex Royal Arsenal history website https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/and also thank you very much to both Ian Bull and Steve Peterson for help and information

Penns, Upper Watergate and Facebook

 

A couple of years ago I wrote here about local industrial sites which were listed in a booklet published in 1982  - The Industrial Archaeology of Southeast London.  Obviously, what it says about many of the sites is a bit out of date now but hopefully I found something interesting to say about all of them. I thought, perhaps I should go back to that booklet because there are of things in it that I’d never looked at. The earliest Greenwich site in it is listed under ‘Deptford’ – but it is actually in Greenwich, right on the border with Lewisham and it’s described as ‘Boilermaker’s Shop. Borthwick St. SE.’. The description of the site is quite long compared to most others – but what it says is:

“The only evidence of John Penn’s occupation on the land side of building is a cast iron bollard inscribed J Penn and Son, Deptford. A more impressive view of the River side could only be obtained when the tide is out by walking along the deteriorating ferry hard, the access to which is along the alley at the west end of the building. The six bay facade has semicircular arches with stucco mouldings and keystones. Above is a central parapet with scrolls and the painted inscription “J Palmer Limited, Payne’s Wharf”.  At the present time the site is occupied by Londegg Limited, manufacturers of egg products.”

Now that was written in 1982 when things are very different to today and obviously they’ve changed since and I’ll go into that in a moment. I wrote up this site for a Weekender article a very long time ago - one of the earliest ones I ever did. I also incorporated a piece about it into my Deptford Creek  book. Both of those pieces were part of articles about Upper Watergate – and I explained with both that new information about the site had been published by a local researcher.  I am aware that the people who wrote the original SELIA in 1982 entry very rightly thought the link with Penns was the most interesting thing there. Perhaps I should explain that the SELIA booklet originated in evening class at Goldsmiths College which studied industrial archaeology including an element on the history of engineering in which, locally, Penns had a major role.

Penn’s main factory was on the Wickes site on Blackheath Road. They are most famous for their marine steam engines used in many prestigious ships. I am not aware of any major study of them -  and would be very grateful if someone could recommend one.  There is a biography of John Penn -John Penn and Sons of Greenwich by Richard Hartree in 2008.

 

When I did the research for the previous Weekender article and the Riverside book I very quickly realised this site was much more interesting than just the Payne’s building and now I honestly think it is even more interesting than I thought then.  In the early 17^th century it was called Stone Wharf and it was quite clear that there quite a bit of activity on the site before that and there is a very interesting archaeological report which found the remains of all sorts of structures.  Obviously now things have changed and the wharf has been rebuilt as flats and offices and it’s become a residential area.

Now one of the reasons why I’m writing about this now is that the Greenwich Industrial History Society Facebook page, which I administer, has had a lot of posts about that site - or what people think is that site  - over the last couple of weeks.  Some quite interesting things have come up which should take us all sorts of new information and ideas. This is partly because Facebook is open to everyone and comments are made by people who may know nothing about research on the site but have information and comment on all sorts of issues, leading all of us to re-evaluate and move on.  

Now, when the SELIA entry was made It was assumed that the most interesting thing at the wharf was that it had been used by Penn’s Engineering as a boiler shop and that’s the arcaded building on the riverfront there now had something to do with them or perhaps for a later occupant. However its since been established that it was actually built for a railway company who were there before Penns and this was described in a local blog htp someone was speculating ps://shipwrightspalace.blogspot.com/2010/03/john-penn-marine-engineers-deptford-and.html.  The Shipwright’s Palace is the Master Shipwright Building – a vast 18^th century house and offices originally part of Deptford Royal Dockyard - and it’s just the other side of the wall which runs along the Upper Watergate passageway.

Clearly for SELIA one of the important things is a bollard in the road outside which links it to Penns. One of the people who has commented on the Facebook page has produced a picture which shows that the Penn’s inscription is right at the bottom of it and also suggests that this is not about Penns owning the site but that they manufactured the bollard which is also a boundary marker. Personally I am far from sure that an elite engineering firm like Penns would make street bollards – that sort of work usually thing goes to small local ironworks. Someone was speculating on the Facebook page that the bollard was a captured  French cannon altered to provide street furniture. I’m not at all sure about that but I do recall on the one occasion I went onto Dockyard site when it was operated by Convoys that there were some cannon on the riverside converted  into bollards - and I wonder what happened to them?

Most interestingly about the bollard and the corner of Borthwick  Street with Upper Watergate is the comment by Krz which is worth quoting in full “Observe carefully the pillar the bollard is up against. There is one on the other side. These pillars have a moulded base that once supported an arch commensurate with those on the river. A bomb hit this spot, also taking out a section of the listed wall.”

On Facebook there is obviously a whole varied mix of people making  comments and most of the things they say are very interesting. I had heard people speculate before that the stone paved Upper Watergate passageway was the oldest street surface in London.  And I think that’s something very much up for discussion although Krz from Master Shipwright’s posted that some of the stones which people are talking about were relaid in the 1990s for Deptford City Cahallenge. Someone else says  that their father-in-law was told that it was laid by French prisoners of war while another says it is “a bugger to cycle down”.

One person mentions that it is a right of way and I added that the waterman’s stairs at the end must have been licenced and that very likely there is a Parliamentary Act covering them which ensures the right of licenced waterman to pick people up there and take them wherever they wanted to go. They were quite strictly regulated and their rules were apparently copied when the London taxi service was set up. It was also some discussion about existence of a ferry at the end of the stairs but while it was agreed there must have been one, nobody has come up with any definite information.

Some people have mentioned the adjacent Royal Dockyard – as one person said “the birthplace of the greatest Navy the world has ever known”.

There have been a number of very interesting Facebook comments from people who I think are actually talking about a different site but one which is only a hundred yards or so down river.  They say that they have documents and all sorts of information about a slipway and also inland sites connected to it. This very much sounds like the slip at what was Lower Watergate which is now owned and operated by the Ahoy Centre and which has a very complicated history which I am not sure if anybody has really managed to disentangle.

Someone has mentioned Gordon Shipyard which was there. Greenwich Industrial History Society has had a speaker on Gordon’s - Chris Ellmers - although most of what he said and what is written is about Gordon’s main site which was a bit more up river towards Rotherhithe. I am not sure about what he has published on this, and will ask him.

Some other people have mentioned a ‘Rodney foundry’ which I think must have been as 20^th century works because information comes very largely from family history sources and it’s just the sort of thing we lose out on in our book and archive led research. I hope we hear more about them soon and that someone is able to publish information about them.

It really is an interesting site.

 

THE UPPER KIDBROOKE 1

 

Last week I did what was an introductory article in response to a request for some information about Kidbrooke Village. I hope that article last week wasn’t too boring but I felt I ought to give a bit of background and also explain why it’s quite a difficult area to write about. I have a lot of information but was a bit perplexed as to how I could put it in a sensible order. 

Perhaps I should start with why it’s called ‘Kidbrook’. It seems that it means’ kite brook’. Michael Egan, who wrote a booklet ‘Kidbrook’, gives a list of 40 variants on the name of this bird going back to 1115.  Most writers have assumed that it means the bird we now know as a ‘red kite’, which may have frequented what was then marshy land.  Kidbrook fundamentally consisted of land around a network of streams running on the western slopes of Shooters Hill. Three main streams have been identified and writers on the area have described their various routes flowing west and south until they reach the river Quaggy, which then joins the river Ravensbourne near Lewisham Station – and flows on to become Deptford Creek.

I thought it might be interesting if I also followed the courses of these three rivers and see what lay along their routes; how they impacted on the area and how it has grown sand changed. Although stretches of the most southerly of these streams, the Lower Kidbrook, is still open in the fields alongside Kidbrook Park Road, most of the streams are now buried underground. We can’t see them but it doesn’t mean they’re not still there.  Road names often refer to them and also the marshy nature of the area.

I thought I should start with the Upper Kidbrook which was the most northerly of these streams and ran through the farmland south of the Dover Road, the A2. It appears that most of this stream is buried and there is virtually nothing to see of it so I hope that what I have written is comprehensible as  there is virtually nothing to see above ground and the about information is patchy, to put it mildly. I have been reliant on an article and notes by Michael Egan made in the 1970s before the motorway was built,  by information in Neil Rhind’s encyclopaedic works on Blackheath and a similar attempt  to  follow the stream by the current blogger, Running Past.  I’ve been working away on it and it’s going to be much longer than I thought so there will be lots of episodes and I might end up venturing extensively into Lewisham.

The Upper Kid Brook is said to originate in a marshy area near the corner junction of Hervey and Begbie Roads. Although the 19th century Ordnance map evidence doesn’t really bear this out but shows a stream running south from the main road. However I will stick with what the various writers on the stream have said and go to this corner junction which is also the corner of a large stretch of open land which is used by Blackheath Rugby Club.

This field has an interesting recent history. Throughout much of the 20^th century it was the sports field for the Harvey factory which was then in Woolwich Road on the East Greenwich and Charlton border. Charlton Athletic are also said to have trained there. The Rugby Club manages this old playing field as a community resource and for its own purposes.

I have always thought that factory playing fields are interesting creating a huge social infrastructure which we have now lost - their demise as factories have closed has added to our increasing social isolation. Harvey’s field is only of many playing we will encounter as I look at the various streams in the Kidbrook area.

I wrote quite a bit about Harvey works here in Weekender a couple of years ago. They were a metal fabricating company originally specialising in ‘holes’ - perforated  metal - had a copy of a thick catalogue full of hundreds of holes they could produce in metal. They also some very large metal objects like the huge dishes at the Goonhilly radio communications centre. There is a film showing one of their fractionating towers being taken to Scotland by road which I would very much recommend – is on YouTube.

Their Greenwich factory closed in 1977 and the sports field was sold to the Inner London Education Authority who wanted to build a school for children who were physically unable to access normal education. This school was never built and the old playing fields remained unused except by locals for dog walking and local children to run about. I very much remember debates at Greenwich Council in the 2000s when use of the site was considered and locals campaigned for it to remain a community resource – leading to its current management by Blackheath Rugby Charitable Trust. I remember making a speech about it at a Council meeting - but what I had to say is of no relevance here.

Whatever! The Upper Kid Brook seems to have risen and from the playing field area. The most recent writer that I’m aware on the Kidbrooke streams is the blogger ‘Running past’. They have actually managed to identify a spot which looks as though it’s the place a watercourse could run. But there is a remarkable lack of information about the next section of the Upper Kidbrook and we must assume that it is somewhere underground in a pipe or whatever and invisible from the mid 19th century. There has been almost nothing on any map that I have seen which shows or even hints at its course. Michael Egan said that he worked out the route of the brook from maps in the sewer records at Greenwich Council. He was researching pre-1980 and such records may not be available now

It seems Hervey Road followed the line of the stream when it was developed in the mid 19th century. The sewers were laid in 1870 but development seems to have been confined to the north side of the road. Following it leads us next to Eastbrook Road – one of many ‘brook’ names in the area as we will see. Running Past blogger points out there is a dip in Eastbrook Avenue which must indicate the path of the brook.  The late Neil Rhind pointed out that ‘Eastbrook’ is not the original name of the road and that it was changed in 1870. That change of name must indicate an awareness of the stream in this area.

In Volume III of his great work on Blackheath Neil Rhind gave a lot of detail about the farmland which through which the Kidbrook streams ran before development in the late 19^th century.  There were a number of farms in the area but very little information about which farm covered which particular piece of land.  Neil makes it clear that several of them were under one management and he also discusses some of the crops grown there. This was not in any way subsistence farming but businesses growing for sales in the adjacent urban areas or in central London.  I think it very likely that they were selling to, or under contract to Greenwich Palace and later to the Royal Hospital.

Working westwards the next road we come to after Eastbrook is, or was, Woodville Road. Neil Rhind says that some houses were built here in the 19^th century, when no.2b was occupied by a Thomas Clack who was chief electrician on cable ships for TELCOM.  The road was apparently renamed Rochester Way in the 1930s but was later removed for the A 2 motorway. A small relic of Woodville Road can be found in Woodville Close which can be reached via a brick lined corridor alongside the motorway from Hervey Road to a small enclave of housing. No mention is made of the brook here.

The next feature today on the presumed route of the brook is a major obstruction - the A2 motorway heading for Dover. It emerges into Kidbrook from the beneath the roundabout which it entered as the Blackwall Tunnel Approach road. It dates from the early 1980s and was constructed` after Michael Egan’s booklet was written.  I suppose a future researcher into the line of the Upper Kid Brook would find much information in the records of the construction of this section of the motorway since it must pass underneath it. The motorway itself runs below ground level in a cut  - as I recall this was to cut traffic noise following a campaign undertaken by lady members of Greenwich Communist Party. Unlike now, there were no yoga classes in the 1980s to distract them.

Before the motorway was built we could continue to follow the line of Hervey Road . Once across the motorway Hervey Road has been renamed ‘Annesley Road’ and it takes us to Kidbrook Park Road. Neil Rhind gives some interesting information on occupants of the road given the RAF’s use of land to the south and in the Second World War. At no.10 was the Colquhoun family – Cecil Colquhoun was Director General of Aircraft Production from 1941. Earlier 10 had been the home of Sir Ernest Swinton  ‘responsible more than anyone else for the development of the tank in modern warfare’.. At no.11 was Lt. Col. Charles Phipps, Director of Factory Safety during the Great War. At no.15 William Mosses, a leading trade unionist in federating craft unions in the Great War period.

To be continued ............................. 

 

KIDBROOKE - AN INTRODUCTION

 

A friend of mine keeps telling me that I ought to write one of these articles on the history of Kidbrooke Village  -he says It would he says be a big great big best seller - well – OK!

I gather that ‘Kidbrook Village’ is the name used for the new centre and the replacement housing for the much hated Ferrier Estate.  Perhaps people think that some time in the past there was an old fashioned type village here and they ‘d like to know about it. To a certain extent that is true but it was a very long time ago and not in the area where the new housing is being built now.  I will do my best to explain all that  - but there are a lot of different subjects in the past of Kidbrooke and I think it will take me several articles to work through them – so, yet another series!

And can I remind people that these articles are supposed to be about industry in Greenwich – there was industry in Kidbrook but it needs digging out from all the other stuff and the really big industrial sites there are all tangled up with the Royal Air Force. But, after all, industry with a close relationship to the military is nothing new in Greenwich - so I’m sure I can cope with that.  These future articles are going to be by way of an introduction to Kidbrooke and partly an explanation as to why it’s so difficult to write about it in way you do most towns and villages

There is already a very interesting history  booklet entitled ‘Kidbrooke. Eight Hundred Years of a Farming Community’ by the late Michael Egan. But it is a collection of subjects rather than a straightforward description of the area.

The booklet has a good chapter on the boundaries of Kidbrook with all the boundary stones and marks which fit very well with the series of articles I’ve done here recently about the procession around the Greenwich Parish boundary - some of which, of course, are shared with Kidbrooke. Michael was a bit of an expert on these boundary stones and in addition to the booklet wrote a number of articles about them.  One of the last articles I did about the Greenwich procession featured a photograph of Michael, kneeling on the ground and looking intently at a boundary stone on the Greenwich - Charlton border. I’ll certainly pick up on what he says about the boundaries of Kidbrooke and it will do very well as a sequel to the articles on the Greenwich Parish boundaries.

 I  think boundary stones are a subject which will, hopefully, encourage you to go out into streets and look for various features, which have been there for centuries -  and I’m always very happy when I can do that.

I also think we should take on the long northern border of Kidbrooke featuring the A2 – the ancient and crucially important Dover Road.  That also must make a contribution to the area and some of the things alongside it. Pubs are one thing, and we could note water works sites, and hospitals.  I said in an article a couple a couple of weeks ago that at the start of the National Health Service in 1947 Greenwich Parish had at three big general hospitals. I have to admit now that one of them was on the Kidbrook side of the street.

Another subject which might get you out into the streets looking at stuff are the three Kidbrook streams. These streams are crucially important to Kidbrooke’s history and I will talk a bit about that, and, like the boundary stones. Michael took them as a separate chapter and had another separate article about them published elsewhere.

A number of other people have written some quite diverting articles and blogs about the three Kidbrooke streams and what you can see of the remains of them - where they went and where they still go hidden away. If you follow their route you come across a number of interesting buildings which were built on land which was available here. I think it might be very worthwhile  to talk a bit about some of those institutions as we come to them.

Michael does go on for the short chapter about the earlier village of Kidbrooke. This seems to be centred on the northern part of Kidbrooke which is around the current church and a long way from the new village which is south of the railway station. In fact today the railway station stands between the two bits of Kidbrook which is like a figure of 8. The southern section has
 the new housing and interesting features like Sutcliffe Park while the north has the more historic areas and some older housing.  Michael describes in as much detail as he could the village which grew up with its church but those details are very, very sparse and depend strongly on the little we know about that original parish church in that area - concluding that where there is a functioning church there is likely to be a functioning community.

The only trouble is that by about 1400  the village had disappeared and remained disappeared for the next five hundred or so years.  Was caused by the Black Death? That certainly wiped some villages out in Kent as elsewhere. Personally I find that a bit difficult = Kidbrooke no distance at all from Greenwich, Woolwich and Charlton. It certainly isn’t isolated in the way that some of these plague struck villages were, and surely if somewhere so close to these urban centres had been decimated by infectious illness wouldn’t we know about it in the histories of those towns.

This huge gap in the history of Kidbrooke is strange – what was happening there?  I’ve written a bit in the last couple of weeks about the histories of local government administration in Greenwich but kept quiet about Kidbrook.  It is described as a ‘liberty’ and that’s a very very unusual and special definition of an area and I think we should find out why it is called that.

Michael continues with a long section on what happened in Kidbrooke over the next five hundred or so years - and I guess he had very little documents and archives to go on. What he used were property transactions  about large tracts of land in the Kidbrook area which were being passed down  in aristocratic and wealthy families.   To find something a bit different I’ve been looking at the British Library newspaper database which isn’t something Michael would have had access to.  I wanted to see if I could find any of those little stories about various  people working locally and the things that happen in their lives. No-  all I got was a long series of newspaper notices of births and deaths of various doings and property dealings of the same aristocratic and wealthy owners of the estates locally.  None of this has actually very much to do with what was going on in Kidbrook itself!  I’m perfectly willing to believe that all these large tracts of land had  farms on them and had professional management = and this was not subsistence farming but growing for sale in the City of London and the inner urban areas.

 I’ve seen articles about how on Mile End Road coming into the city it was jammed every morning with carts full of vegetables and fresh bread. Every day coming down from the Lea Valley were vast amount of vegetables - all specially grown Tesco as a supermarket chain grew from the Lea Valley Growers.  I’ve also read about the boats which came down the Thames every morning from up river fruit farms bringing often quite exotic produce into the City.  I do wonder however if Kidbrook farms might have had contracts to supply Greenwich palace complex.

 The Greenwich peninsula was not good for arable farming.  Fields were let to butchers  who had bought ‘beef on the hoof’ and allowed the animals to rest and recover from what would often been a long and possibly traumatic walk into London so that they were in best condition when they were slaughtered. Other fields were led to cab hire and other bodies which used horses and to give them  much needed rests and breaks from the streets.  Kidbrook may have been the same.

But my best guess for the use of Kidbrook farm is grazing for commercial milk production.  Apparently in the early 20^th century three of these farms were owned by Express Dairies  to supply milk to their shops and so on.  My case rests!

We could move on quite quickly from this to the current situation. From the mid-nineteenth century suburban housing was moving into the northern section of Kidbrooke with a new church and community buildings and the large sites which had been big farms we’re easily sold off to the County Council and developers for housing –  big facilities like the first comprehensive school. In the 1930s there was a big industrial site in the area - the rather mysterious RAF base. It included things like the barrage balloon headquarters, a language school and various other things, all of which we can happily look at.

A big site is taken over by the County Counsel and the Ferrier Estate  very much against the wishes of Greenwich Council and turns out to be a total disaster.

So I will write this as best I can sand with all my good wishes the new developments and the hope that we’ll be successful with new facilities better than the  hapless Ferrier.  Meanwhile I think we should all relax and go along to our local yoga club.

JOHN DAY - PIECEWORK, EXPLOSIVES PIER AND BIG 1930S BIKES

 I thought I should do another episode of John Day’s reminiscences of apprenticeship at the Royal Arsenal in the 1930s. This one will cover piecework; the Crossness Explosives Pier and then a lot about  big bikes in the 1930s.

In my last episode I ended with a story of a man being paid for ‘piece work‘ .  John then described what this meant.  It was all very complicated and so i saved it up to include it in a new article where I would have more space.

 ‘Piece work’ was a system of payment where each job came with a card bearing the price that that job would earn. That price had been set by the ‘price fixer’ who was supposed to know exactly how long each job should take .... and inevitably  set off a number of arguments.  John explained that in the Arsensal there was a minimum wage that a workman was expected achieve based on the cumulative value of the jobs he had done during the week and they should at least equal the minimum wage. If he consistently did not do so there was a fair chance of his “getting his cards”. I assume everyone knows what ‘getting their cards’ meant ......  I’m sure in this day and age there’s a totally different system - it’s a long, long time since I last had the sack!

 

 A reasonably skilled man could exceed the minimum and be paid for all the work he had done up to a set limit, which was about one and a half times the standard wage. A good man could exceed this and on Saturday mornings you would see men shuffling the week’s cards to get as near the maximum as possible while leaving some cards for later weeks. This caused problems if a man left, as he could have cards for several week’s work which had never been done and the cards for it had never been counted.

 

Apprentices were not on piecework, though occasionally one of the older ones, on a repetitive job, would go on it to earn a little more money. If a man had an apprentice, adjustments were made for instructing time and for money earned for him by the apprentice.  John commented “Most of the time it probably balanced out”.

 

John said that he could not remember if working ‘a closed week’ earned him overtime or a week off later.  An apprentice’s wages in the first year was 12/-a week from which contributions for ‘unemployment’ – 10d. - and a friendly society contribution - 12d. - were deducted.  As a result he received just under 11/-  a week.  There was a rise of 2/- at the end of the year and the wages went on up until, when he was 21, he got 63/- as a young journeyman - the union rate

 

[12/- is twelve shillings – about 60p.    10d. – 4 p.    12d. is 1 shilling - 5p.   11/- is eleven shillings, 55p.   2/- iz two shillings – 24p.    63/- is £3.15p.]

 

The friendly society membership was for sick and similar insurance and his stamped card had to be sent in every six months. He belonged to the Ancient Order of Foresters whose secretary was Brother Moss of Verdant Lane, Hither Green.  The Foresters still very much exist with a big headquarters in Southampton and they date from the 1830s, set up to help workers ‘as they walked through the forest of life”.

             

John also gives descriptions of various areas within the Arsenal. One was a story of a visit to Crossness Explosives Pier.  This was located on the River at the eastern end of the Arsenal in what is now East Thamesmead - Thamesbank Place is apparently on the site.  It was a specialised facilty for loading ammunition and gunpowder from the nearby tumps - used as magazines. For more information and some pictures see https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/royal-arsenal-piers.html

 

Sometimes John would visit the pier to accompany a specialist, Andy Clements. after a call about equipment needing attention. It meant a trip out to the eastern end of the Arsenal, often in the wet. They liaisded with the ganger on the pier who he describes as ‘an excitable Maltese whose name was Cordelli’.  Once there Andy would keep Cordelli talking while John surreptitiously moved the offending drum on the crane slightly. Then Andy would go up to the offending crane, wave his arms about and shout strange words whereupon the crane would begin to work again – Cordelli, he said, was ‘convinced Andy was practising some kind of magic’.

 

He also describesd ‘a near miss’ on that pier. A three-phase electric capstan was being installed and John had the job of wiring it up to its starter which was hung on the rear of a small wooden hut which straddled the rail tracks.  Looking round the hut he saw a couple of railway trucks heading straight him. The inevitable happened, the trucks hit the hut which toppled over onto the starter and ‘everyone on the land side of the pier thought I was underneath’.  Happily he had nipped out of the way.

 

He then describes what he calls ‘The short lived Royal Arsenal Sports Association Motor Cycle Club’.  This was in 1935 and I guess that many of you will be more interested in the bikes themselves rather than the people or the Arsenal. Happily John describes a number of the bikes which the members had and I’ve been looking them up on the net. It hasn’t always been easy to match up the information which John gives about the bikes with what I finding on the websites – but I’m happy to get corrected information and I’m sure there’s lots of you out there who will have it. I’ve also tried to find out what they asre worth today.  There’s nothing like the big bikes. It’s been said they were too noisy and dripped oil – but wasn’t that the whole point?

 

He says the club began in the Electrical Shop with Bill Beresford who had ‘03 Norton’ which I can’t identify. Norton were of course the long established Birmingham company who in the 1930s were manufacturing motorcycles for the military and other official bodies in their thousands . I also note that in the 1930s their  civilian machine was the ‘International’ with a strong reputation in professional motorcycle racing and described ‘ as evoking a golden age of motorcycling’.  I also their post war reputation plus a short term ownership by Plumstead based AJS. Value today from £5,000 to £25,000 plus.

 

Then there was Bill Croft who ran the battery shop that charged and repaired all the dilly and other accumulators in the Arsenal.  He had an Enfield Twin and side car’ Royal Enfield were a Redditch company also making machines in vast numbers. A1 search says “premium, high-performance luxury motorcycles often paired with sidecars.” Value today Today from £8,000 to £25,000 plus.

Percy Harris rewound small armatures an- it was said that he did more private vacuum cleaners than official motors. He had a 649cc vertical twin Triumph and sidecar, described elseswhere as ‘one of the most iconic engines in British motorcycling history’. Designed in 1931 as an overhead-valve parallel-twin motorcycle for the Coventry based British Triumph Engineering Company and designed primarily as a durable sidecar hauler. Value today - one is currently advertised at £16,5000.

Meredith Smith – Merry Smith was in the drawing office. He was responsible for the heating in the about- to be- re-opened Nottingham Ordinance Factory. I was aware that the Arsenal had had various branches all around the country and I’d visited one In Scotland  but I was unaware of this one on Nottingham. It seems to have employed many thousands. It had opened during the Great War but later the site had been closed and sold and was then repurchased in the 1930s when it seemed likely that the Second World War would happen. It’s now a trading estate dominated by the buildings of the Experian Company. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROF_Nottingham.   Norton overhead valve motorcycles were introduced in 1922 and were iconic British singles and twins known for performance

Len Shum worked in thed drawing office,  He had a Overhead valve Raleig36  ‘iconic British machines., single-cylinder and later twins, renowned for racing success’ from the Nottingham manufacturer. However Raleigh had stopped production of motorcycles a year before this. Today they sell at between £3,000 and £9,000.

Len Dent. He had a MAC Velocette described as ‘economical, unglamorous transport’ quality machines hand built by a small firm in Birmingham. Value today £3,500 - £8,000.

 

Charles Day – John Day’s father who had a 1150 cc Brough Superior and sidecar- the  Rolls Royce of motorcycles. This is a machine produced by the son of the original Brough manufacturer, Nottingham  based Brough Superior – whose machines were almost all custom built.  Value today £45,000 - £400,000  (!!!)

 

Then there was John Day himself with a model 9 Sunbeam. Wolverhampton based Sunbeam was actually a subsidiary of ICI but in the 1930s was taken over by Plumste I ad based AJS. This 6493cc OHV single-cylinder British motorcycle produced from 1924 to 1939,  was known for its high-quality construction. One currently for sale £6,785.

 

The club met on Sunday mornings at the Prince Imperial Monument facing the Royal Artillery Institution. I'm a bit confused by this and I can’t find a reference to the Prince Imperial monuments on the Arsenal site. The Prince imperial was the son of French Napoleon III who livede in England in exile - the Prince was killed in 1879 in one of the Zulu wars. The Prince Imperial Monument is said to have been his statue which stood outside the Royal Academy buildings in Academy Road and since moved to Sandhurst. I think where they actually met was in one of the two Riverside Guard houses on the Arsenal site where the Prince's body is said to have rested after it was brought to England and before being taken for burial.

The motorcyclists went for runs round the Kent lanes or to a local motorcycle sporting event.  They ran a road trial which entailed following route cards at a set speed, there being time checks at unknown points. John thought he would do quite well in this his first motorsport event, but “had I not thought I knew better than the organisers in how to get from a to b.” The club only lasted a 

Greenwich local government 1890s-2026

 

Last week I did the first episode of what I intended to be a sort of background to the Borough  and who was in charge of it and when – and how the system worked. I said that I would have to look at the various areas separately as  they were all very different and that I would start with Greenwich itself as it was the most complicated of the parishes involved.  But, I would carry on later and do Woolwich and other areas like Plumstead and Kidbrooke.  In fact I have a request from a reader  for me to do Kidbrook soon.

So, as far as I could I covered the background to the institutions involved in the earliest years of  Greenwich as an expanding urban area - albeit one with a large national institution within it.  I also covered the ownership of some of the land and how that affected how it was run.  I finished in the early 17^th century when - like everywhere else – there were changes to the responsibility for various bits of local infrastructure – changes to the poor law and the responsibility of local parishes for those unable to look after themselves.

 Institutions evolved to care for orphans, the sick, the insane, the old, and those unable to support themselves. Over the years ideas and institutions changed and evolved which means that its history is enormously complex. So I think I will describe that part of local administration at another time and concentrated on the basic administration of the area - otherwise I’ll never get finished.

 There are a number of excellent websites about local welfare provision - ‘workhouses’ covers  Greenwich in enormous detail – as does ‘ Lost Hospitals’.  {see https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Greenwich/  and https://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/}.  he complexity of all this meant that when the National Health Service was set up in 1947  Greenwich had three big General Hospitals.  It all needed sorting out!                                                                              

However in this article I will concentrate on what was happening with basic administration from the 17^th century. The responsible body was the parish but it didn’t function like a church organisation.  I have written a number of articles about the gas industry in Greenwich in the early 19th century and it very much illustrates the parish authorities at work.  They had identified that gas lighting, which was just coming in, would improve street lighting and help with people’s perceptions about danger in the streets. Contractors were identified  and interviewed and when it emerged that some procedural rules  had been broken one of the parish officers resigned. In due course contracts were drawn up and because of public concerns a town meeting was called which all ratepayers could attend. Following a failure to set a rate a ‘writ of mandamus’ was issued -  a very unusual move and one which only applied to civic malpractice and not to the church.

In my book  on George Livesey I talked a bit about the campaign in the 1840s and 50s to bring the London private gas industry into some form of regulation over pricing, quality and relationships with local authorities.  This was part of a London wide movement which was dominated by South London based politicians.  Long term one result of this was the eventual setting up of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855 with a remit to sort out sewage disposal – although it worked on many other issues, including the gas industry.

Local representatives on the Metropolitan Board were delegated from a new network of local area boards of works. For Greenwich, this was St Alfege and St Nicholas  Parishes - as well as St Paul’s Deptford Parish which is now in Lewisham.  I’ve looked vain for some exciting press coverage in the setting up of these bodies in this system but it seems to be largely unremarked apart from a bit of bleating that there were more North London councillors involved in the Metropolitan Board than there were South Londoners and also some objections from Greenwich residents that they were being lumped in with Deptford.

Twenty or so years after it was set up the Greenwich Board built itself a ‘town hall/ office block  with meeting rooms. This is the building which is now known as West Greenwich House which effectively served as a town hall in the years before the Second World War. It very different now from what it looked like when it was built since it was bomb damaged in the Second World War, losing its porch and  dome. It is now an independent  arts and community centre. I’ve no idea what it’s like inside now but at one time the rooms were all named from 1930s  Greenwich councillors - let’s hope they still are.

The Greenwich Board also had a works department on a wharf in the area now housing known as Riverside Gardens; then adjacent to Granite Wharf and later called Badcock’s Wharf.  When the Board of Works were abolished the Depot remained as part of the new Greenwich Council until 1904.  The entrance to the yard was in Chester Street (now Banning Street) and there was a ramp, leading from the centre of the yard to a jetty and wharf – probably for use by dustcarts which had to access the jetty from which rubbish was tipped into barges. The ramp remained until the site was cleared and rebuilt by the current developer

Over the years the Board undertook work on local infrastructure – predominantly on main drainage but also road widening,  particularly at Deptford Bridge. For many years the Board Chairman was Thomas Norfolk who was in charge of the brewery at Deptford Bridge. He came from Bromley in Kent and had been at school in Greenwich where he was a friend of John Penn, the engineer.  He was the manager of Mr. Lambert's Deptford Bridge brewery who in  1829  married Lambert’s daughter becoming owner of the brewery which was thenceforth known as ‘Norfolk Brewery’. When he retired the Board of Works gave a public banquet to celebrate his work as Chair with speeches and toasts about how conscientious he was. At his death in 1887 he was buried in the presence of at least 1,000 people alongside his wife, mother of his ten children`           

The Metropolitan Board of Works was replaced in 1889 by the London County Council a directly elected body to which Greenwich sent elected representative. There are many histories of the London County Council which became a pioneering body running many different services. Many of its works remain in current use in Greenwich today.

In 1900 the Greenwich Board of Works was replaced by the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich which covered eventually just the parishes of St Alphege and St Nicholas  - Charlton and Kidbrook becoming a separate body. The Metropolitan Borough was really very much like the Borough we understand today although with different powers and services.

The Metropolitan Borough covered a great many services and clearly they had many buildings all around the Borough. For basic services the Board of Works yard next to Granite Wharf was used for a short time but soon replaced by Tunnel Avenue Depot.

There is no detail on maps showing the earliest years of Tunnel Avenue Depot  However, buildings must have existed there since and in 1919 the Borough’s disinfection station was moved here from Banning Street. Disinfection is a means of dealing with ‘verminous persons’ and their possessions and in some Boroughs, cyanide chambers were used for infested property. There also seems to have been  a rubbish destructor at the depot in 1926.  Jetty Road was built to get rubbish to a concrete jetty but the jetty which remains now is more modern although also used for rubbish to be tipped into barges and then carried off to Essex. The only exception was food waste that was sent to a neighbouring Borough – almost certainly Woolwich, to be sold as food for pigs. The depot was bombed several times during the Second World War. The council disposed of it in the early 21^st century but the disinfection/ bath house, the jetty and some wall remain in other use.

In the new Metropolitan Borough the Board of Works building, now West Greenwich House, was used as a town hall but in 1939 a brave new town hall was opened at the bottom of Royal Hill. This building has been  written about widely and with enthusiasm. It was very, very special. The architect they appointed was Clifford Culpin – whose father was then the Labour Chair of the London County Council.  It was one of a succession of modernist public buildings which he and his partners built in that period. Famously Pevsner described Greenwich Town Hall as “the only town hall of any London borough to represent the style of our time adequately”.   It was part of a movement across Europe to build civic buildings differently. It was art deco, functional, ‘avowedly modernist’, to ”consciously reflect” a progressive left-wing Metropolitan Borough. Or, as contemporary architectural commentator, Owen Hatherley has said, “You gradually realise it is an extraordinary work of art”.  It had a tower from which the people of Greenwich could see the river and it included many interesting decorative features. In brick, it is “moderate modern.. rectilinear but not aggressive’.  It’s easily the most important modern building in the Royal Borough, probably also in South London.

The London County Council and the Metropolitan Boroughs lasted into the mid 1960s when the then Conservative governments wanted to include places like Bexley and Bromley as part of the Greater London Council to replace the London County Council. As part of these changes the Metropolitan Boroughs were twinned with some of their neighbours In order to make larger ‘more efficient’units. This interestingly led to endless disputes because many  boroughs didn’t get on with their nearest neighbour.  Greenwich was merged with Woolwich which was a much bigger borough. This meaning ex-Greenwich councillors were very much in a minority.  In the early 1970s it was decided to sell off half of the revolutionary architecture of the new Greenwich Town Hall.  In the years since all Council offices have been moved to Woolwich. A few weeks before writing this article it was decided to sell off the rest of the town hall and there is no longer a civic presence in Greenwich.