The Angerstein Railway
There is a dividing line between Greenwich and Charlton on the riverside – last week I looked at the roads and banks there – now it’s the turn of at the Angerstein railway
I know that I have written about the Angerstein railway line in four of my previous books and many, many articles - but I do feel I need to say something new here – and I will try to make it interesting. If I am going to write about Charlton industry a good place to start is all the works which were joined up to the national railway system via the Angerstein Railway. So I will try and concentrate on them, but, first, an update and some crucial points.
Briefly – and for those of you who don’t know the background to the line. It is a goods only railway which runs from a junction where the main railway line between Charlton and Westcombe Park Stations meets the line coming from the Tunnel under Blackheath from Blackheath Station.
The Angerstein Railway was built in 1851 on land belonging to the Angerstein family and leased to the South Eastern Railway from the start. It has always been a goods only line serving riverside wharves. (Apart, that is, very rarely there are special trains for train spotters).
The Angerstein family came to Greenwich when John Julius Angerstein built the house, Woodlands in 1774. It’s now in use by the Steiner School. John Julius was a City financier with fairly mysterious roots. He has been the subject of considerable scrutiny lately because of his links to slavery. This has particular significance because of his role in the foundation of the National Gallery who have undertaken a vast amount of research on him. There is a page on the Gallery web site which says that research is ongoing about his role in marine insurance (which included slave ships) and as an appointed trustee of various slave related projects. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/people/john-julius-angerstein. On a different page they describe some of his charitable work in relation to the setting up of Sierra Leone. I am also aware of a huge report on this which demonstrates the complexity of his various roles – and also asks about the amount of responsibility incurred in professional administration as distinct from personal wealth creation.
However the railway was built by his son, John, and I am not aware of any research at all into him and I do not know what he inherited from his father.
One of the interesting things about the railway is its tiny unsupervised level crossing between Fairthorne Road and Farmdale Roads. It’s something you would hardly believe is in inner London or even in the 21st century. Despite the obscurity of the crossing, residents of new housing in Charlton have used it increasingly to get to Westcombe Park Station. A couple of Years ago Network Rail suddenly declared that it must be closed as such crossings were now not allowed. Users pointed out that the eight or nine locomotives which used the line every day travelled at very, very slow speeds and that the drivers had a good view of the crossing. The only known accident was in 1912. Network Rail said people might try and crawl under stationary locomotives. There were public meetings, threats of legal action and much, much more. Just as suddenly Network Rail changed their minds – the crossing remains.
One thing which came out of the historical research into the line was that the crossing was at a point where workers from what used to be Coombe Farm in Westcombe Hill went on a footpath to access fields – and later to get to a chalk pit and works on the other side. Old maps appeared to show a tunnel under the line and investigators pointed out that a sort of tunnel still exists under the crossing. It is also amusing to read all the accounts by various rail bloggers and London explorers who came down to look at the crossing and put their video on the net – and everyone of them gets something wrong!
These days the line is used by a number of firms who are based at Angerstein Wharf, at the end of Horn Lane, or nearby. They are almost all dealing in aggregate, some of which comes in to the wharf by boat. I have been told that they are all very busy and are looking to expand. Some of the trains which use the wharf take very, very circuitous routes to get to the line and there are specialist web sites which can be followed giving their timetables. I am also told that goods transport by rail is very busy but hardly mentioned in reports on our railways.
Up until the 1970s the line was used by several manufacturing industries which rail connected to it, I will come to each of them in more detail in time. Probably the largest of them was United Glass – on the site of which is now the Sainsbury Depot. This was a very big and busy works but it closed in the 1950s.
Back up the line between the Blackheath Tunnel and the junction to Charlton Station was the
The South Eastern Railway=s signal works on the site of an old chalk pit now used for the police car pound.
Close up on east side of the line and connected to it was the London County Council’s, Central Tram Repair Depot. Mr. Fell was its general manager and it was in what is still Felltram Way. People may remember it as the ‘Airfix building’ – when, after the trams had gone, A I R F I X, was written in gigantic letters on the line of north lights. Next to them was G.A.Harvey’s Greenwich Metal Works on the site of the new fire station in Woolwich Road. They basically made holes – and I will get to them later too.
I have said I was going to talk about Charlton – and that the railway is a boundary between it and Greenwich to the west. Most of the rail links via Angerstein went to the east – but one line went west towards Greenwich – to the gas works – and I thought it only fair to mention that too.
Before it reached the gas works it passed the site of the Redpath Brown B Riverside Steel Works - which was on the site between The Pilot and the Millennium Village. I have seen and heard a lot of people say Redpath’s used the railway – and I don’t disbelieve them - but there is no map which shows an interchange, and this includes a works plan given to me by an ex manager.
The line to the gas works ran roughly parallel to what is now West Parkside. It was on an embankment and there was a bridge over the road close to The Pilot pub. It was still there in 1998 when the Dome was planned although it has been unused for many years. The builders of the Dome used it as a special road to get lorries in and out of their site while it was being built – and then demolished it. So – if you think rail access to the Dome would have been a good idea, you know now why it doesn’t exist. Many transport enthusiasts campaigned for it to be upgraded and remain - but no, it went.
This western extension to the line was basically built for East Greenwich Gas Works but did not access the Angerstein line until 1903. This very large gas works had a large and complex internal rail system – which is described in great detail in an article by Malcolm Millichip. (East Greenwich Gas Works Railway. Railway Byelines 11/1998). On the tenth page, of this ten page article he finally devotes a short paragraph to the connection of the works’ railway system to the Angerstein line and the outside world. In fact, anecdotally, it seems likely that the gas works made little use of this rail link since all coal was delivered by specialist collier ships and tar and other by products often left by road. It seems only to have been used for occasional rolling stock carrying oil or tar.
Hopefully we will find other industries rather more enthusiastic about a rail link than South Met (later South Eastern) gas.
GW 9/2022
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