Brewery Wharf - Priors

 

Brewery Wharf

 

Working south down Deptford Creek on the Greenwich bank  is the first wharf we come to on the south side of Creek Road.  Today this is one of the last working wharves in Greenwich and it dominates the corner of the creek and Norman Road with cranes and silos.   It is not particularly large wharf and turns out to have what is probably an uneventful history

 

The early history of the wharf is not clear, it appears to have been called, like another wharf to the north, ‘Creek Bridge Wharf' and to have been part of the Creek Bridge Company estate. We can thus assume it was built as part of the construction of the iron bridge over the creek and that they leased it to contractors.  On the tithe map of the 1840s it is shown as being in the occupation of a William Jarman. 

 

Jarman was a contractor for local authority work and the local papers give an annual account of the tender for road work. William Jarman always seems to have won. In 1846 this was for

 

Granite kerbs 12 inches by 6 at 1s. 2.½ d. a foot (about 6p.)

2 inch York paving at 8½ d.  per foot (about 3p)

Rock paving 2 ¼ inch at 9d.per foot (about 3p)

6-inch pebble paving at 3s per yard superficial (about 15p)

Granite cubes 10s per yard superficial (about 50p)

 

Jarman is described as a master stonemason and he lived alongside the wharf in what was then called Bridge Street, now Creek Road.  Newspaper reports of the day give a number of other Mr. Jarmans living around the area, all of whom seem to have been members of various elected local authority bodies.( and award the contracts, oh dear!)

 

Mr Jarman died in February 1849, and his widow continued with the stone masons business on the wharf, and continued to win local authority contracts as the lowest tenderer. It is not clear how long Mrs. Jarman remained at work here nor indeed who used the wharf for the next fifty or so years.  On maps at late as 1864 it is still called Bridge Wharf but by 1893 the name has changed to Brewery Wharf and it was still in use for the production of construction material.

 

Why is it called Brewery wharf?  I have found no record of any brewery using it. The nearest brewery was Lovibonds based in Greenwich High Road – but they did have a rear entrance into Norman Road which was near to the Creek and Brewery Wharf.  Lovibonds had originally come to Greenwich in 1847 when they bought the Nag's Head Brewery, Esther Place, which was in Bridge Street, but much nearer to where the Docklands Light Railway Station is now and thus no nearer to Brewery Wharf than Lovidbonds Brewery in Greenwich High road where they moved in 1865.    On the 1867 Ordinance Map Brewery Wharf is still marked as ‘Bridge Wharf’ and has a crane and a small inlet.  So, did Lovibonds use Brewery Wharf?? - “well, may be”

There is no more information about the Brewer Wharf until 1889 when Schmidt Moss Litter Company advertised their product from this address. This was animal bedding, probably in this case for horses and which was said to come from Germany.   Schmidt did not stay long and from 1890 the wharf was occupied by Joseph Robinson.    

Robinson’s were advertising ‘flexible Asphalte roofs’ which were ‘impervious to the elements ‘and could be delivered with promptitude and despatch’. Robinsons was originally from Carlisle and specialised in ‘fire proof’ building materials. Their advertisements came with an endorsement of fire safety from Captain Shaw of the London Fire Brigade.  They also had a line in alabaster ‘for which they were lessees from ‘with Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Lonsdale and St Bees School Commissioners’. They made Plaster of Paris and ‘the best London Portland cement.  Steamers, they said, could berth alongside Brewery Wharf and they also seem to have done a deal with a Whitehaven firm, John Hollway, for berthing rights at the Wharf.  Robinsons seem to have remained there into the 1920s when oil and grease manufacturer T.Harris was also there.

In a change from building materials in 1908 an occupant of the wharf was advertising “WHAT IS LIFE! A Pamphlet explaining the action of “electro plasm on Protoplasm” at the cost of a halfpenny and a self addressed envelope.  

The wharf was bought by J.J. Prior in 1955 –although it is said they had operated it since 1870 – presumably along with all the others.

 

Priors dated from the mid-19^th century when James John Prior from Great Sampford, Essex saved enough money to set up his own company. By 1888 they were established as a river transport company with a depot at Orchard Wharf in Poplar – just on the other side of the River from Greenwich Peninsula.  In 1934 they acquired a sand marketing company based in Fingringhoe – an Essex village on the river Colne near Colchester and in the 1990s their head office moved there. In the early  2000s Priors 300 ton motor barges, named after family members were almost the only proper industrial craft seen on the River at Greenwich as they took aggregate and sand from Fingringhoe to Brewery Wharf for processing – while taking some 6000 lorry movements per year off London’s congested roads.

 

In 2007 the wharf was refurbished working with Euromix Concrete Ltd. There had been elderly grey-painted Stothert & Pitt crane on site which English Heritage confirmed was the oldest working crane on the London River. In 2006 J J Prior carefully dismantled this and it left the Creek on one of their vessels to be taken to Fingringhoe for preservation. To replace it on site was a Stothert and Pitt DT2 crane with 4 ton capacity which they had bought from a site in Northfleet and refurbished at a total cost of £300,000. It was delivered to the site by barge, towed by the tug 'Horton', and unloaded onto new foundations there. It could unload a 300 ton cargo in an hour and reach out to unload a second vessel moored alongside the one next to the wharf.

Priors were then very optimistic about their future and hoped that works associated with the Olympic Games would revitalise traffic on the River. The new Prescott Lock on the River Lea would be navigable by Prior's vessels and they hoped to use new wharves there.

In 2017 news came that the new crane installed in 2007 was to be dismantled as it was too expensive to maintain.  There was news that London Fire Brigade attended a blaze tonight at the ‘crane on the Euromix site’ at Brewery Wharf’.  

 

The boats still came to Deptford Creek and still appeared to ne 'Priors' - except it was apparently  not actually Priors anymore. They came from 'Ballast Quay' at Fingringhoe and we had always understood that they brought aggregate from there to Deptford..

 

 

A couple of years ago I thought I would try and find out if the old crane was at Fingringhoe. I knew it would be difficult to see anything there - but off I went. Fingringhoe is a substantial village and luckily I could park off road at the gates to Ballast Quay.  All I could see through tht gate was a private house and a garden.  There was a lot of 'go away' type signage.  Then a man came up.  He said he owned this area and it was his home and I should go away. To get to the quay you had to walk through his area, and he wasn't having that - and anyway they were very unfriendly at the Quay. Just then a huge great lorry came hurtling down - 'jump quick' - said the man, as the lorry shot down the lane through the gates, past his house and on.  He was a bit more friendly after that.

 

The man said that the firm have given up dredging and their mineral rights.  They had dug dug dug until they had a huge mountain, and that is what had been coming down to Deptford.  Once that is gone, no more . So -I also asked him about the old crane - he didn't know....and so I went home.

 

Brewery Wharf is a now a safeguarded wharf still used for aggregate handling. It is owned and operated by Euromix Concrete. They date from 1984 and ‘dedicated the ultimate service experience’.  Delivering concrete, they say, ‘is one of the most difficult delivery services in the world’.

 

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