So, once again I am looking a site listed in the booklet, ‘Industrial Archaeology of South-East London’, published in 1982. Taking sites in alphabetical order I am now at the letter ‘B’. And, so, that starts ‘Bay Wharf’, on the Greenwich Peninsula.
Bay Wharf is on the west side of the Peninsula - you can get to it via a footpath from Blackwall Lane, just before the gatehouse to the Blackwall Tunnel. Alternatively, if you are on the riverside path walking up from Greenwich, it is where the footpath suddenly goes inland – one branch joins the path to Blackwall Lane and another one continues up the riverside towards the Dome.
It is thought that the sea wall was broken down some time before the 1620s – there are very, very good archive records of the Peninsula after that date. So at some time in the past the river must have flooded in and the sea wall was never rebuilt. It was known historically as ‘Horseshoe Breach’ –‘Bay Wharf’ is a more modern name. Like the rest of this part of the Peninsula it came into the ownership of Sir John Morden in the late 17th century and he passed it on to Morden College, who I am pretty sure still own it. In the past the inland area was called ‘Great and Little Pits’.
So what does SELIA have to say about Bay Wharf? It actual interest is the barge slips - ‘A noteworthy reinforced concrete structure in three bays, two of which are open sided. The concrete roof is of five arched spans running parallel to the River.There were cast-iron tramways in each open bay with capstans for hauling up lighters”.
Now if I'm honest I have no idea what is built on Bay Wharf now. I certainly remember the buildings and slips which SELIAhas described but the site has now been completely re-built - but not with lots of flats, like most (ex)wharves on the Peninsula. What has happened is that it has become a boat repair yard. There was a boat building business on Badcock’s Wharf - Badcocks is now part of Riverside Gardens development. Because the developer wanted to build new flats the boat yard was told to shut down and leave. It the lastrepair yard on the River and if it closed even the most minor repair would have to be done up inIpswich, which is not good. So in order to replace it,Morden College, the landowners, said that they would build a new repair facility at Bay Wharf and that it would then be let out to a boatrepair company. I am not in a position to find out what has been built on the site at Bay Wharf but I can see, from looking over the fence,that there are very considerable changes.
So what do we know about the past of Bay Wharf?? One thing that happened in the 17th century was that a whale beached itself on Bay Wharf. It was killed there very cruelly and its remains subject to a great deal of, rather vulgar, 17th-century sightseeing. Its skeleton was discovered by archaeologists in the 20th century who established that it was an elderly arthritic female and presumably lost, poor creature.
In the 19th century Morden College let it out, like other Riverside sites, to industry. They handed a parcel of Riverside land to a head leaseholder who built work places for themselves and let out subleases to other industries.
In 1863 Morden College let Bay Wharf to Nathan Thompson and his National Company for Boat Building by Machinery. I’ve written about him here before here in, September 2020, and also in the past in Bygone Kent, and in my book on the history of the Peninsula. I think I called the articles‘The Wooden Nutmeg’, butI really don’t know if Thompson was a conman or not. He built lots of small boats using automatic machinery but the trouble was that they were all identical and river users generally want a boat specific to their needs and so his boats didn’t sell and the works only lasted a couple of years. What he did, which is relevant here, is that he built a number of slips andwe are lucky enough to have some very early photographs of these slips in use.
The next people to take the site on were very much bigger, and much more successful. This was Maudslay Son and Field, the grandchildren of the famous Henry Maudslay who had revolutionised steam engine technology in Lambeth. I’ve also written about this works, and some of the ships which they built there, in articles here in the autumn of 2020, as well as in Bygone Kent, Shipbuilding Conference paper and my books.
Maudslay builta number of vessels here including big dramatic sailing ships which were sisters to Cutty Sark as well as the first ro-ro ferries, built to cross the Bospherous. They seem to have used the slips which Nathan Thompson had built and you can see in drawings that they used the same buildings. The picture of the launch of their first ship, the Lady Derby, shows identical buildings and slips to those in the photograph of Nathan Thompson’s works.
The Ordnance Survey map of the early 1870s shows Bay Wharf asa boat building yard, there are three slips, one rather smaller than the others. There is a large building on the south side of the site and an internal railway running between the slips and this building. There is also a long narrow building running parallel to Blackwall Lane.
Maudslay carried on as shipbuilders for some years. But by the 1890s shipbuilding ended there and the works was used to make Belleville boilers. Bellville is a French company and Maudslay made boilers under licence from them.
It’s a surprise to see the Ordnance Survey map for the early 1890s because the slips have gone and the whole area near the river is just a large empty space. The boiler works is down to the south of the site on what is now some of the Morden Wharf. Why were the boat building slips all cleared? it doesn’t seem to make an awful lot of sense.
It only too clear that by the early 20th century, from correspondence in the Morden College archive, that the Maudslay family had lost all interest in the works.There is a one letter from one of them saying that he is too busy racing his yacht at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, to come and discuss the failures at the works in Greenwich. Eventually whole site was sold and there was a very sad auction of all equipment from the factories at both Lambeth and Greenwich – the Science Museum gotfirst pickof the various items and several of the things they took are still on display in South Kensington,
Morden College records show thatMaudslay left the site in 1908. Aerial photographs of 1928 show the site almost completely bare - there are is no sign of slips or even buildings except for the long narrow building parallel to Blackwall Lane. It is also very unclear who Morden College let the site too after Maudslay but they did let some land to the Greenwich Linoleum Company in ‘Further Pits’. The Linoleum Company was based on the next door site, where Hanson’s are now, and which then was called Victoria Wharf. So the Linoleum Company seem to have taken on the old Maudslay site but not really used it, except possibly building in Blackwall Lane. Aerial photographs and maps continue to show a great empty space near the river.
The only sign of any activity on the wharf that I’ve been able to trace between 1908 and the 1940s is an advertisement for Flower and Everett in 1933 – who give ‘Bay Wharf’ as their address. Flower and Everett advertised a lot and seemed to give a different Greenwich Riverside location in reach advert. They advertised themselves as ‘barge builders and lightermen’but in fact operated some sort of site clearance business as well as dredging and mud shoot related activities. The site appears to have remained empty like this fora something like 50 years and I would be grateful for information from anyone who knows otherwise.
In 1943 Morden College records show it was taken on by Humphreys and Gray. They had previously been on Point Wharf slightly up river where they had run a lighterage business and built some barges. I wrote a bit about them at Point Wharf back in January 2021.
I know very little about Humphreys and Gray’s time at Bay Wharf able except that they clearly had a busy boat repair and boat building business. It was a site which a lot of artists visited and there are an all a number of interesting drawings. Quite clearly they built the slips and reinforced concrete structure which SELIA recorded. Is interesting to think that when they wrote about in the 1980s it was all less 40 years old.
Humphries and Gray appear to have been on Bay Wharf for many and I know virtually nothing about their activities there. I'm sure there are people out there who either worked there or were aware of what was going on. It would be very interested to hear from them so we can find out more about work on yet another of these riverside wharves.
And of course we need to respect the people who are working there now and their continuation of traditionalwork on a Greenwich wharf
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