Beresford Gate

 

This week’s item from the ‘Industrial Archaeology of South-East London’ is back in Woolwich and this time there are connections to both the military and the Arsenal itself.  This is ‘B’ for’ Beresford Gate’.  I hope people know what this is - but, in case you don’t, it’s the big old brick building in the middle of Woolwich Market and you absolutely can’t miss it.  It was originally the main gateway into the Arsenal but there is now a big new road built between it and the complex industrial site it was once the entrance to.This was the main gate the Arsenal - that secret City adjacent to Woolwich. This was the Arsenal’s public face, the bit that most people knew about and understood was the entry to a very secret and private world. 

So, what does SELIA have to say about it?   It is: “A yellow stock brick building with three stone carriage arches built in 1829. The superstructure featuring decorative mortars was added in 1891”.

Well, that’s a bit minimal but SELIA dates from 1982 which is – only just - before 1984 when the gatehouse was isolated from the rest of the Arsenal. SELIA does however explain the difficulties of writing about the Arsenal in 1982 and that something I will come back to when I do other Arsenal sites. The problem was that it was almost impossible to get onto the site or to find out what was there. 

This is the point in these articles where I would now say that I would ‘have a look at what the Survey of Woolwich had to say about it. The Survey, of course, beingthe impressive study of Woolwich Parish done in 2012 by those clever people from The Bartlett School at University College London.But the entry about the gatehouse in this massive volume is so long that if I quoted only a part of it here I would have to do it as a serial over several weeks - it is very, very long.  The gate house is of course ‘listed Grade II’ and the Historic England entry is quite short but very much ‘architectural’.

Why is it called ‘Beresford’ gate?  Who was this ‘Beresford’ and why was this gate named after him? It was built in 1829 and replaced an earlier main gate to the Arsenal. The work was ordered by William Carr 1st Viscount Beresford, Master General of the Ordnance and the then big man at Woolwich and so of course it was named after him. He was a major figure in the army of the day and he was one of those clever Irishmen who seem to turn up in the Georgian army. He was the illegitimate son of the Marquis of Waterford whose sons, legitimate and illegitimate, all seem to have done extremely well.  In one of his many activities he was Commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army - and all of it done with only one eye!  Contemporary quotesinclude ‘a low-looking ruffian with damned bad manners' and, from the Duke of Wellington: 'the ablest man in the army'. Look at the web to find many pages about him.  There are many – I attach a link to his Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beresford,_1st_Viscount_Beresford#Peninsular_War

Has anyone ever written up the careers of these aristocratic 18^th-century Anglo Irishmen? Being posh, of course they had a good start - but even so they were a lively and adventurous lot of high achievers.  Begining of course with the Duke of Wellington, himself!

Beresford came to look at the site of the gatehouse and the proposals.   Once he had given his okay it was built under the supervision of Col. Jones, who had designed it. John Thomas Jones was a Woolwich trained Royal Engineer who had had a distinguished and adventurous military career and was ‘revered by the Duke of Wellington’. He was a writer and a cricketer – and there is a statue of him in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The proposed position of the new gate had to be adjusted a bit to meet the objection of the Woolwich local authority. Some cottages had already been demolished to form a better approach to the Arsenal by road and by moving the entrance to face the gap icreatedit enhanced the look of the entrance and the gate.  It was then very different to what we see today. Originally it was a fairly simple structure of an iron gate between stone piers. It had lodges on either side of it both with brass mortars on the top – mortars are a sort of gun..  The West Lodge was originally for the porters and messengers, and the East Lodge had housing for a warden - although from the 1840s the Police used both lodges. These rooms are now used as offices.

The whole structure was embellished with military hardware.  Like the earlier gate the piers were originally topped by piles of shot. There are several plaques cast in plates in the panels above the foot entrances and piers. These show the Arsenal’s coat of arms along with King George IV’s and Beresford’s monograms.  Both the plaquesand the brass mortars on the parapets are still there. Some web sites describe these mortars as ‘18th century 13-inchers’ and say they were cast by famous figures in the manufacture of guns in the Arsenal, one by Jan Verbruggen, and the other by William Bowen. I am aware however that there are lots of experts out there on such weaponry and I’ve been told off by many of them in the past for my ignorance. So, I would be grateful if anyone out there knows the correct origins of these guns that they tell us.It is said that they were specially cast using condemned gun metal, arranged through Col. William Millar, Inspector of Artillery.   They have on them the cipher of George IV along with decorative roses, shamrock, thistles, lions, flags and yet more shot. They were removed for safekeeping in 1985, and later cleaned up and reinstated.

From the late 1850s changes began which greatly enlarged the gatehouse and used the plain yellow stock brick of the original structure but with some stone detailing. A bell tower was added on the west side as part of installation of offices in 1859 - although I don’t know if it ever contained a bell. Whether or not it had a bell why was it put there and what it was intended to be used for? In 1861 three rooms were added above the gateitself and they rest on metal beams with arched floors. Col. John Walpole, of the Royal Engineers, was responsible for this work in addition to what he was concurrently doing at the Royal Military Academy.

Later additions are in red brick and by 1891 including three waiting rooms above the entrance gates which had been added by Col. M. T. Sale, RE. There was a large general waiting room and smaller rooms, ‘for officers and ladies’. In 1891 the clock was added. It is said to have been made by the Leicester based firm of Gent which specialised in industrial and electric clocks and it was integrated with the internal telephone system, (https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/royal-arsenal-telephone-exchange.html).

Today the central part has three openings, the middle one is wider was for horses and carriages; pedestrians were supposed to use the side passages and these were widened in 1936 and the iron gates replaced in ‘robust spear-headed form’. No doubt this was to accommodate the vast crowds of workers who came in and out by foot. The original gates were made by John Hall of Dartford. Hall’s, started by John Hall, area classic engineering firm of the Industrial Revolution.  This Dartford Company employed the famous and innovative engineer Richard Trevithick and still lives on today as J & E Hall & Co., refrigeration engineers, now based in Hawley just outside Dartford.

In the 1960s as plans for the closure of the Arsenal proceeded, the Gatehouse was scheduled for demolition.  It was intended to widen Plumstead Road for access to Thamesmead, then planned by the Greater London Council. This was opposed and it was proposed to rebuild the gate further north in its original 1820s form. But then the gatehouse was ‘listed’by English Heritage and so had to be kept.  Plumstead Road was eventually built in 1984–6, isolating it the gatehouse in Woolwich Market Place away from the rest of the Arsenal. Ownership eventually devolved to Greenwich Council, which set it up as ‘a backdrop to the Beresford Square market and focal point for tourist information and outdoor entertainment’. It had had restoration works in 1991–2 and 1995–6 and it is now set in the market areas – with stalls alongside. Beside it are stone benches and an old horse trough -one of three in the area.

As for the future -plans are afoot to reorder the whole area.  The best I can do is to suggest that you look at Mr Murky Depth’s blog from January this year, 2023.  https://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/2023/01/16/woolwich-royal-arsenal-gatehouse-future-plans-revealed/