Atlas and Derrick Gardens

 

Moving on, and taking another site from The Industrial Archaeology of South-east London -this week I’m looking at a housing estate housing - Atlas and Derrick Gardens, SE7. The entry in SELIA is quite long and I’m not going quote it all here because the rest of this article will repeat much of what it says, but in rather more detail.  In the first few lines SELIA describes the houses as “in a rather unexpected location off Anchor and Hope Lane.Two groups of Artisans’ dwellings whose names have an unexpected derivation’ - and it’s that ‘derivation’ I want to write about now.

I’m sure it is quite a pleasant place to live; near the river and the near the last real Riverside pub in south-east London. It was once surrounded by industry but that has mostly gone and across the road from the estate is the big Sainsbury’s depot.  The estate has recently been ‘locally listed’ by the Council and I will get to that in a moment. There’s an entry about it in John Smith’s ‘History of Charlton’ and Darrell Spurgeon’s  ‘Discover Greenwich and Charlton’ – and a terrific article by Alan Pearsall in Greenwich Antiquarians’ Transactions written as long ago as 1971.

They all agree that Atlas and Derrick Gardens was built by river hauliers, Cory's, around 1908.  One day I will do a proper article about Cory’s who are very much still around as Cory Environmental. See https://www.corygroup.co.uk/  which starts with a short film with some terrific shots and commentary about their work in South-East London managing waste and their big big works in Erith.  It includes some shots of their Charlton barge yard which is only just up the riverside from Atlas and Derrick.  One of their very strong points is that the vast tonnage of waste they move daily from Central London is all carried on the River - we have all seen those strings of yellow containers going off down river headed by the one of Cory’s Charlton based tugs.

In the film they say the firm was set up by William Cory in the 1890s but its predecessor was a haulage and lighterage business in the London coal trade and an earlier William Cory.  I don’t know if the 1890s Cory was the son, or the grandson, of the one I am going to write about below.

Who was William Cory? I am very confused – there are so many Corys and lots of them were in the coal trade.   Are they all related?  Or just lots of different William Corys who appear to be nothing to do each other. In South Wales Cory Brothers operated a network of mines and coal haulage - there may still be a Brass Band.  And there were and are others. I once found a 1820s Cory dye works in Limehouse and the Horace Cory had a colour business in the Old Kent Road around the same time. There were many more.

But let’s stick with what seems to be the story behind Atlas and Derrick Gardens.  In 1868 a Mr. William Cory died and I am able to quote from his obituaries so I am sure he is the right one. He had been born in 1818 and his father ‘ever stood in the front rank of coal merchants’. Coal - sea coal - was delivered into London from the Northumberland and Durham minesin sailing vessels and there is a whole history of control of the coal trade through the Coal Exchange in Lower Thames Street and taxation by the City of London. Ships crowding in the river were controlled by the Harbour Masters and there were designated waiting areas where these ‘collier’ ships were told to anchor until their wharf was free. One of these waiting areas was in the river just off the Charlton riverside.

In the mid-19^th century things began to get difficult. Alan Pearsall, who was a maritime historian,in his 1971 article said the problems were about adjusting to replacing sailing ships with steamers to deliver the coal. However, the obituary writers of the 1860s identified the chief villains as the Great Northern Railway – bringing coal from the Midlands into London by train, and the Russian war. Both of them agree however that the hero who solved everything was ‘the clear, able head William Cory’.  He installed cranes in 1855 at the new Victoria Dock to unload coal from the steamers coal at 100 tons an hour.

However he also thought to himself that it was not good to have to pay the Victoria Dock Company to install his cranes on their property, but that out in the River space would be free.

At around the same time a company called ‘The Patent Derrick Company’ was demonstrating their heavy lifting gear on the Thames and had had a notable success with hoisting large objects up onto Great Eastern. They contracted with the Thames Ironworks Company to build a vessel which was specially designed to undertake salvage work of the Thames - a double-ended vessel, 250 feet long by 90 feet wide.  However the Patent Derrick Company became bankrupt and began a legal battle with Thames Ironworks.  William Cory seized the opportunity and bought the vessel, which he called ‘Atlas’.

He moved Atlas out into the River to what was called the ‘Charlton roads’, off Anchor and Hope Lane.He converted the vessel into a stationary hulk from coal could be transhipped from the seagoing colliers into barges and lighters using steam driven derricks. Because this was done out in the River it meant that the collier ships could stay in the river and didn’t have to wait to dock at a wharf. Atlas had an upper level fitted with ten hydraulic cranes of three various types - the swinging crane, the overside crane, and the luffing crane. This allowed four colliers to be unloaded simultaneously, and as much as 5,000 tons of coal could be loaded into the barges within a twelve hour period. Each load of coal was weighed while it was being hoisted, just before it was tipped.  Thus Cory always had large supplies on hand to compete with the rail-borne coal, and he was handling million tonnes a year. He died in 1868 but the work was continued by his family.

In 1865 Cory built another such vessel to do even more work.  By 1875 these two derricks handled over half the seaborne coal arriving in London and were manned by independent workers ‘old coalies’ – it is said that this name for them originated with William Cory.  40 or 50 lighters would leave the derricks on the flood tide and increasingly these lighters were towed by steam tugs belonging to Cory. It’s interesting that today the rubbish barges from the City and elsewhere are brought downriver by Cory’s tugs and are almost the only regular commercial traffic on our poor underused River.

Cory also opened a new barge yard in Charlton to provide a service centre and a depot for the barges and tugs - and this still remains on our riverside.

The derricks were still in use in 1902 but coal lightering was becoming less important as rail-borne coal began to win out and most of the large users - gasworks and power stations - had their own collier ships. The system stopped before the Great War

So what about Atlas and Derrick Gardens? Clearly having read this you will gather that they are named after the Atlas and the Derrick installations. ‘Derrick’ was an older term alleged to have been named after an Elizabethan executioner who invented a new sort of scaffold.

The Cory Company bought the land from the Roupell Estate, the local landowners (you may remember that the unlamented Pickwick Pub was originally called The Roupell Arms).  In 1908 they built two separate groups of houses - Atlas Gardens and Derrick Square - to house employees of the riverside Barge Works and their families

The houses are terraced maisonettes, designed with sunlit gardens and grouped around small greens as a deliberate, philanthropic enterprise - spacious and generously proportioned they have good quality detailing. They are attractive, secluded and peaceful enclaves with mature trees. They qualified for listing due to historic interest. The estate was sold to Greenwich Council in 1979 and dwellings have since been modernised.

More recently the estate has been beset with planning applications from major developers to build on the old industrial sites to the south and east of them. Recently a private housing scheme was proposed that would have dwarfed Atlas and Derrick Gardens and was met by staunch opposition by residents who said that surrounding the Edwardian squares with the proposed ten story tower blocks would have removed some of our riverside heritage.  The groundswell of support across Charlton led to these applications being refused and Greenwich Council designating the land around Atlas and Derrick Gardens for industrial use only. Hopefully this will ensure the historic continuation of light industrial employment in the area. 

Residents tell me they would like a permanent plaque up somewhere nearby which can tell the many visitors on the Riverside walk and Anchor and Hope Lane some of the history of the estate. What do readers think about the idea??  Can anyone help?  I have told residents they need to find out how much it would cost – and practicalities like if it would need to have – and to pay fees for – Planning Permission. Greenwich Industrial History Society Facebook page would be a good place to tell us your ideas