Steel
production, together with Henry Bessemer and the Bessemer converter are usually
associated with the north of England, and Sheffield in particular. It comes as a surprise to learn that Bessemer
himself lived for many years in South London and that he built a steel works at
Greenwich. Of course, Kent has a steel
works today in Sheerness and, naturally, the arms industry at Woolwich Arsenal
and elsewhere used steel in huge quantities. It is still however, remarkable
that so little is known about Bessemer's Greenwich works which lay close to
where the Millennium Dome is being built today. It has proved very difficult to find
anything very much out about this works and there is some conflict about what
really went on there.
Henry
Bessemer came from a French background and an ingenious inventor who took out numerous patents on all sorts of
devices and processes, from which he made a lot of money. One of the earliest was 'bronze powder',
which he made in a factory in the St. Pancras area. He described some of the lengths he went to
in order to keep the process secret and his, unfinished, autobiography
sometimes seems much the same – it is often very difficult to disentangle from
the narrative exactly what he said and did at any one time. Recently historians have suggested that his
steel making process arose out of his interest in making guns, something that,
of course, would draw him to Woolwich and the Arsenal.
Bessemer
had been in France working, at the suggestion of Louis Napoleon, with the
French military authorities when he came to the conclusion that a new sort of
metal was needed. In due course he developed a process and a works was opened
in Sheffield in the late 1850s. To cut a very long story very short indeed he
eventually became involved with Col. Eardley Wilmot at the Royal Arsenal and
plans began to be made to build a plant for the manufacture of Bessemer's steel
in Woolwich. It soon became clear that Col. Willmot's support for Bessemer was
not shared by the Minister of War and the plans were abandoned. At around the same time Bessemer steel was
rejected for use in the Arsenal.
Bessemer was very bitter 'it was
quite clear that neither I, nor my steel, was wanted at Woolwich, and I made up
my mind to leave the place severely alone in future.'
The
position at Woolwich was further complicated by the appointment in 1859 of
William Armstrong, the Newcastle based arms manufacturer, to the position of
Director of Rifled Ordnance at Woolwich. In a previous article I described how
Alexander Theophilus Blakeley, who built an abortive gun foundry on the
Greenwich peninsula, had lost out to Armstrong and gone out of business. Bessemer had discovered Blakeley and his
patented process for making guns at around the same time as he began to develop
his steel making process. No doubt both of them had good cause to feel
aggrieved at the appointment of Armstrong and their failure to sell arms to the
British government.
Bessemer's
biography is not a particular easy book to read. By the time he wrote it he was an old man,
Blakeley was long dead and many of the differences with other people had been
patched up or forgotten. He died before
the biography was completed and a final chapter was added by his son. In a short paragraph, Henry Bessemer Jnr,
mentions that a steel works was built at Greenwich in the mid-1860s. Very little is known about this works and my
attempts to find out the views on it of historians with a knowledge of Bessemer
it has found got very little in the way of a response.
There
is no doubt that Bessemer had a works of some sort at Greenwich. It was on the site now known as Victoria
Wharf (lately the Victoria Deep Water Wharf) and dated from around 1865.
Victoria Wharf. is one of the few sites on the Greenwich riverside which is in
not owned by Morden College. This means that detailed archives are not
available nor has it proved possible to contact the site's new owners. The
first reference in the public archives is an application to the Thames
Conservators in June 1865 from 'Bessemer Brothers' for permission to build a
jetty. He is also listed in the Greenwich Commission of Sewers rate books of
1865 which also note that the owners of the land are Clark and Terry from whom
Bessemer held a lease - he later bought the freehold. In 1865 an advertisement
in the Kentish Mercury mentions the closeness of the Bessemer works and its
thirsty steel workers to the Star in the East pub – the pub's successor is now
Ranburn's alongside the Blackwall Tunnel entrance.
Bessemer
Jnr. says very little about this Greenwich works but he says it was very small
and that his father intended it for his sons. "It had", says Bessemer
Jnr., "two 2½ ton converters and all the plant necessary. Including one
2½-ton steam hammer and another the size of which is not given. The buildings
were carefully designed, with the intention that the establishment should be in
all respects be a model one". It
was, he says never opened because of the down turn in Thames shipbuilding.
The
Blakeley gun foundry at Ordnance Wharf was built at about the same time as the
Bessemer Works and, since they knew each other and both had lost to Armstrong,
maybe the two works had some connection with each other. Perhaps, when he came
to write his biography, and some scores had been settled, Bessemer found it
expedient not to mention this.
Some
of the proprietors of neighbouring industries seem to have had connections with
Bessemer. There were the cable works of Glass Elliott – and Bessemer had showed
an interest in telegraph cables. Next door, to the south, was Horseshoe Breach
which had recently been upgraded by the 'wooden nutmeg', Nathan Thompson, in
his bid to build and sell 5,000 identical boats each year. Following his demise it had been taken over
by Maudslay Son and Field. It was there
that Bessemer's prototype anti-sea sickness boat was to be built. On Victoria
Wharf itself was an artificial stone works owned by Frederick and Ernest
Ransome, from the Ipswich family, who Bessemer knew. To the north was John
Bethel's specialist tar distillery - Bessemer himself mentions 'Bethel's patent
coke' in connection with steel making and I do not doubt that there were coke
ovens at Bethel's Greenwich works.
What
happened to the works? Bessemer Jnr. says that it was never used but that they
kept the lease and later bought the freehold. Both works and plant were let to
London Steel and Ordnance – 'London Steel and Iron Works' are shown on site on
the Ordnance Survey dated 1869. What is quite clear from the archives is that
the authorities thought that Bessemer had remained on site; London Steel and
Ordnance are not mentioned. In 1872 there was a complaint from Morden College
that the 'Bessemer Steel Co.' had encroached on their land and discussions later
began for the company to lease 'a small field in the marshes adjoining this
property for 21 years' and went on to say that Bessemer were offering more than
the market value – hardly the action of company which does not want a site. As late as 1891 Morden College's surveyor was
still dealing with Bessemer Brothers.
I
would be very interested to know if anyone has found another reference to
London Steel and Ordinance – a body about which I have been unable to discover
anything at all about.
Bessemer
Jnr. said that Steel and Ordnance 'did not achieve much success' and that the
works was then let to Messrs. Appleby Bros. The tenancy can be confirmed from
the Morden College records from about 1878.
When they left, almost twenty years later, the site was let to a
linoleum manufacturer, who later bought the freehold from the Bessemers.
Perhaps
the most important thing is what the linoleum manufacturer had to say about the
site. His name was Frederick Walton and it is perhaps possible that he knew
Henry Bessemer – another of Bessemer's interests was linoleum. Walton said how
pleased he was to get the site because it was 'where Bessemer proved his widely
known steel process'. Did Walton know
something about the site that Bessemer wanted kept quiet?
Bessemer
himself, or his sons, had the site from about 1865 and they or, London Steel
and Iron, or Steel and Ordnance' had it until it was let to Appleby thirteen
years later. Probably initially the works was built to supply Blakeley with
steel with perhaps the sub-text of upsetting the authorities at Woolwich.
Bessemer himself had moved to South London – to a very very grand mansion in
Denmark Hill – in the early 1860s. At that time a direct train service from
Denmark Hill to Greenwich was being planned. Perhaps he also thought that a
steel works near his home would be useful. It would be tucked away from the
prying eyes of his licensees and those at his works in the north of England.
We
may probably never know what Bessemer actually did at Greenwich but it is thought
that had Blakeley been more lucky in his backers, and had stayed in business,
that he and Henry Bessemer might have turned Greenwich into a great steel town
– Sheffield on Thames.
Return to Victoria Deep Water Wharf
No comments:
Post a Comment