So, the next item in the Industrial Archaeology of South-east London, in alphabetical order, is that most hated and perhaps best-known feature of Greenwich- the Blackwall Tunnel, the ‘old’ tunnel. I’m not copying here what SELIA says about but it will all come up later in this article.
When the Blackwall Tunnel was built it was the ‘Twenty-first Wonder of the World’. Pall Mall Gazette said ‘Londoners have been ignorant of the fact that they themselves were carrying out one of the greatest engineering feats in the history of the world …… perhaps London will wake up and realise what it has accomplished’. I’m not sure it ever has!
Everybody hates the ‘old’ Blackwall tunnel with its five bends and far too much heavy traffic. However, it was a major piece of infrastructure - an engineering achievement designed with a strong concept of public benefit. It was built for pedestrians, horses and carts - today it carries 50,000 motor vehicles a day.
Before 1894 there were no river crossings down-river of the Tower except ferries. There were tolls on most up-river bridges. In 1877 the Metropolitan Board of Works bought up the bridges and made them toll free. But there were no free river crossings downriver of London Bridge.
In 1897 Parliament allowed the Metropolitan Board of Works to provide a river crossing at Blackwall – and this was finished by the new London County Council, who agreed a contract for the new tunnel at Blackwall at its first meeting on the 22nd March, 1889. The two foot tunnels, the Rotherhithe and the Woolwich Ferry followed – all of them designed to be free crossings for east Londoners and give them equality with west London and their free bridges.
A proposal for the tunnel had been drawn up by Joseph Bazalgette but it was actually designed and undertaken by the London County Council's engineer Alexander Binnie, who also built the first foot tunnel. The construction was done by Pearsons. The Blackwall Tunnel was revolutionary in concept and design. It was the longest sub-river tunnel which had ever been built. Nothing like it had been done before.
Like other tunnels, the Blackwall was built using a tunneling shield; a development of the design introduced by Marc Brunel for the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe in 1825–43. The shield used at Blackwall was built by Easton & Anderson of Erith, and was a giant steel cylinder divided so as to allow 12 men to be at the work-face simultaneously. When it was completed, the tunnel was lined with white-glazed tiles specially designed by T. & R. Boote of Burslem and the roadway was paved with granite setts. During building there was a scheme for monitoring the health effects of the work on workers. The Tunnel was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1897 apparently following a banquet in the down in the depths.
Its designers cannot have had the slightest idea of what it was expected to handle 120 years later. Horses were banned after the Second World War and today a single pedestrian will cause the tunnel to be shut and south-east London traffic to come to a standstill.
In the early days you could walk through the tunnel and keep on walking over to Poplar. There were staircases for pedestrians and these remained in use until the mid-1960s. The stairs were in shafts which were enormous double-skinned cylinders of iron made by the Thames Iron Works & Ship Building Company, just across the river. One remains up by Ordnance Draw Dock but now it is a ventilation shaft for the tunnel below and there is a fascinating film on the ventilation company’s website. Did you think the Blackwall Tunnel could be compared to a flower?
It was also possible to walk into the Tunnel from near the actual entrance. Behind the gatehouse, there is one of the original pillars in polished red granite from which stone steps went down to the roadway. This is now the end of the ramp up which over-height lorries are taken before they can enter the tunnel and jam it up for the rest of the day.
On this cross-over point once stood a concrete building. When the area began to be ‘tidied up’ for the opening of the Dome in 2000 it was thought to be ugly, but there was some question about what this concrete building was. Why was it there?? It seemed to date from the Second World War and was thought to be a defence structure with equipment to shut off the tunnel in an emergency. It was, however, removed as unfitting.
Our southern end of the Tunnel still has its original gatehouse. The one at the northern end was demolished when the ‘new’ tunnel was built. The gatehouse is in ‘Arts and Crafts Scots-Baronial style’ in red and yellow sandstone. On it is shown ‘1897’ and ‘Blackwall Tunnel’ flanked by shields with the arms of Surrey and Kent and a bronze dedication plaque by Singer & Son recording the opening of the tunnel plus a bare-breasted female and a bearded river god. There a relief of e tunnel construction work in progress. There is a flat inside the gatehouse and I don’t know if anyone lives there. I remember seeing a TV programme about the Tunnel where they had living accommodation at the north end – they showed one of the staff having his girl friend over for romantic weekend staying in the Tunnel flat!
The Blackwall Tunnel was a great engineering achievement, and a moral one in providing a free crossing down-river of the Tower. We should remember both those things,
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