APT and Dandridge

 

Working down Deptford Creek wharf by wharf on the Lewisham bank we have now come to the Greenwich Railway and its viaduct.  I am however acutely aware that as I’ve gone along I’ve left a lot of gaps - some of them I will pick up on later but I want, at least, to clear up some of the background on the last two wharves I did –  the last before the railway line. These are the two with the big art projects on them - one the APT organisation and building and the other, next door, Fuel Tank, on the Faircharm Estate.

 

I’ve been very nervous about writing up these two sites because I’m sure that both are stuffed full with people who know far more than I do, with access to documents I don’t have and that both of them will have commissioned histories at some stage or another. Many, many years ago I was asked to the APT building to give a short presentation on what I knew about the history of the site and I went on and on about Frank Hills. They were massively unimpressed and I’m sorry to say they didn’t share my enthusiasm for the wicked and entertaining Mr. Hills - but never mind.

 

I have already written about the Royal Slaughter House which covered much of these sites in the Tudor period and later on what was later called Harold Wharf.   The Conservation Area Report writes about this but then leaves a massive gap between the Tudor slaughterhouse and the 20th Century APT building. I would like to be able to fill in something in between but it isn’t easy.  I understand from some sources that there was a pottery on APT site making what they call ‘red ware’ which is what you and I would see as chimney pots and flowerpots and all the rough stuff that we need but which isn’t very ornamental. I had intended to do a special article on Deptford potteries but I can’t right now – and, yes, this is yet another excuse.  There is a very important article about potteries in Deptford which I would like to see before I write something them – I have now been waiting nearly two months for a copy of the article which is supposed to have been posted to me on 2^nd February.  I’m beginning to get a bit cross about it because a pottery article would fit in very nicely here and once I get a bit further down the Creek they will become irrelevant.

 

The Conservation Report tells us that the APT building was built and designed by local architect, Alfred Roberts, in 1911 and thus is confirmed in official records which also say that it was commissioned by the occupiers of the site who were J. & A Dandridge Ltd.   It is very nice building and I’m a bit perplexed by it because Dandridge don’t strike me as a particularly wealthy or prestigious organisation who might need something like this. They are described from the start as ‘Rag and Metal Merchants’ - which isn’t an up-market trade by anybody standards.   In Deptford directories from the 19^th Century there are number of people called ‘Dandridge’ and one them has a print works in Church Street and I wonder if the original idea was for a business rather more upmarket than we ended up with here. In 1899 there was a sale of a number of small properties in the area around Creek Street which had been owned by a James Dandridge of Deptford who had died. That Dandridges owned property in the area is also confirmed by a case in 1930 when they evicted an elderly widow from premises they wanted for other uses.  I wondered if James Dandridge was anything to do with the firm and if commissioning Alfred Roberts to design their building resulted from his legacy 12 years earlier?

 

Nothing else about Dandridge appears to be even remotely posh. In pre-Second World War newspaper reports are a couple of convictions for permitting unfit horses to be used by their carters. In one such case in 1926 there was a Greenwich Police Court summons for both the driver and the Company because of the state the poor horse was in.

 

Throughout the Second World War there are many advertisements in the local press for people to work in various office jobs.  For example in 1942 an advertisement for a shorthand typist - a boy or a girl. Another advertisement is for an experienced forewoman – and there are many others. This somewhere recalls the atmosphere in several of the small works where found myself temping in the 1960s –loud mouthed, ignorant men, office dragon, young women complaining, and a general air of sexism and boredom.

 

After the war through the 50s and 60s, there are newspaper advertisements for sales of various this and thats from Dandridges. They appear in the small columns where firms with the lowest quality stock are found. They sold things like a job lot of anoraks ‘must be shifted quickly’ or bargain packs of tea towels ‘A Must for Christmas’. It’s all a bit reminiscent of Arthur Daley.

 

Dandrige were apparently replaced in the building by an organisation which was relatively recent but which is even more mysterious to me. This was Stewart and Dennis who were a sheet metal company. I am fascinated by a report in one of the descriptions of them by of people who say they can remember Stewart and Dennis testing hovercraft on Deptford Creek - particularly as I can’t find any newspaper or other reports to back it up. Did it really happen? Can anybody tell me? Are there any photographs? After all this is only 30 or 40 years ago.

 

The company seems to have gone out of business by the early 1990s and the building was then taken over by the Art in Perpetuity Trust, which is, of course, still there. They have since bought the building and done lots of interesting and exciting things. But better you read what they say about themselves rather than what I have to say.  One of those exciting things will be in mid April when they will host ‘Creekshow’ at the Gallery. The website is https://www.aptstudios.org/exhibitions2223_creekside

 

The other place where I have given very little background in earlier articles is the Faircharm site which was until 1905 the Hills Chemical works. This is even more difficult - we know that Hills family had gone but what happened there for the next eighty or so years are a complete mystery. A number of businesses seem to have come and gone and Faircharm itself says the chemical works continued until the Second World War, but I’m not sure that’s true.

 

There are various snippets of information which may or may not relate to what was going on the old Hills Wharf,   It was called ‘Raleigh Wharf’ for a while and in 1919 a fire is recorded on Raleigh Wharf which did damage worth many thousands of pounds and destroying the drying apparatus belonging to Davis Seed Crushers  - who were they?   Also in 1919 there is an advertisement to buy firewood there. In 1925 Vigiars Brothers advertised for staff there to run their eight roller boring machine – who were they?  Later the site is said to be occupied by Robert McAlpine - the major construction company,

 

On maps from the 1940s and 50s the site is marked as a timber works –which makes sense in that it had space and warehousing where timber could be stored.

 

Faircharm say that it was previously used as a factory for Zenith Carburetors and that there is signage from Zenith still on the buildings. Zenith was based in Stanmore in Middlesex and in the Harrow area and they had a number of factories of which Deptford was one.  I don’t know when they moved there or what sort of scale of manufacture was undertaken there. Zenith was a major company making equipment for many different types of cars and lorries and also had a large export business. None of the available information describes the Deptford works but official reports say that they had an establishment of 10 to 16 tool room workers who would be qualified tool makers. That doesn’t sound very large to me.

 

The site shown on the 1897 insurance plan when Hills still had it was large and complex – as the site appears to us today.  In the 19^th century three small side roads ran off Creekside towards the Creek and they remain giving access to most parts of what is still a large and complex site.

 

Faircharm acquired the old works at some point in the 1990s. Perhaps I should say here that I am very grateful to the nice man from Faircharm who gave me a copy of Christopher Philpotts amazing ‘desktop’ on the history and archaeology of Deptford Creek for which I remain incredibly grateful. The site is now changing with flats being built on the side of the Creek and new business units and more for the considerable number of people who must work here.  It’s called Fuel Tank, but I guess that will change.