Callis Yard

 Continuing to work through sites in the Industrial Archaeology of South East London I’ve got to ‘Callis Yard’. What does SELIA say about it: ”Ground and first floor stabling was provided here for the Cleansing Department’s horses. A ramp gave access the first floor stables and adjacent workers housing”.

I had known for many years that the Council had a depot in Woolwich called ‘Callis Yard” but I didn’t know what or where it was - which is unusual for me because I’m very much into Council depots. I never knew anyone who had been in it or knew anything about it and none of the council staff I worked with in Greenwich had ever been there. In the 2000s all the ‘basic works’ departments were moved down to Birchmere and the older yards and depots closed.

I have found it very difficult to find out much about Callis Yard. I assumed it would be in ‘Jefferson’s “The Woolwich Story’ - but not a word.  The one book which mentions it is “Discover, Woolwich and its Environs” by Darrell Spurgeon – an ex-councillor!  Darrell says “This council depot retains at the end of the courtyard the old municipal stables of the 1890s.  The wide staircase was originally a ramp leading to the first floor where the horses were housed. In the roof, which has a glazed strip along the ridge, was a hayloft. The horse keeper’s house was the other side of the staircase”.  The Yard is, of course, in the Survey of Woolwich and I will come back to that in a moment.

Of course today, what survives of Callis Yard is very, very different to what it was when SELIA was written in 1982 and when Darrell wrote in 1996. But I need to start with them for the past of this really rather obscure site. 

It took me a long time to realise that there were areas behind the shops and the main roads in Woolwich which could be accessed via some rather sinister -looking alleyways – and that they often led to interesting things. The Survey of Woolwich mentioned a Callis Lane which I found on the 1866 OS map.  I understand it was on the site now covered by Riverside House built in 1963 in Woolwich High Street.  Mr Callis was a local landowner and vestryman in the 18th century and putting ‘Callis Woolwich’ into the net will come up with numerous entries. 

The Woolwich Local Board of Health bought some of what had been Mr.Callis’s property for a storage depot in 1894 and used it for their Road Mending Department.  Later Woolwich Council wanted to build a public library and new offices next to the old town hall in Calderwood Street and to move the dust yard there so that the library could be built on its site.   And so in Callis Yard they built a large replacement municipal stable yard for the dustcart’s horses.  

As we all know, and tend to forget, up until  the early 20th century there were lots and lots of horses about and we don’t think really very much about the infrastructure which kept them well and at work. In fact, many of them lived in huge stable blocks. Organisations which today have fleets of motor vehicles had horses – which needed to be fed and looked after-   and local authorities had large numbers of them.  It became quite common in urban areas to have large buildings where horses were housed on several floors and which had all sorts of associated facilities.  Some of these remained until relatively recently - in Garrett Street in the City of London you can still see the vast stables which were used for the Whitbread Brewery horses and it only closed in 1991. A hundred horses lived there.- 

There must have been many massive stables. I have read that the tramway depot which was on the site which is now Greenwich Power Station housed a thousand horses and so run-of-the-mill was this that I could find no contemporary description, even when it was demolished.  These very large buildings which would have been a big feature in the environment of many towns and most of them have gone unnoticed.

The Woolwich stables scheme was approved in 1897 and an architect called John Oliver Cork was engaged to design a building for only 16 horses, carts and accommodation for the horse keeper. Cook was Woolwich based and seems to have designed an enormous number of local. buildings. For the stables he looked at commercial buildings for design ideas rather than other municipal stabling.  The builder was a Mr. Proctor, another local man, and it was ready in September 1899.  I have searched all over for a report of a grand opening but found nothing.  

Originally the ground floor of the stable building was used for the dustcarts and the horses were on the first floor and the floor above was used for fodder. At the side of the building was a ramp up which the horses were led to their stalls and this was later turned converted into stairs when the horses were all gone. There was also a three-storey block or the stable keeper’s house and the offices. Over the years there was some rebuilding including more stabling when the ground floor was converted to house more horses. There were also veterinary facilities and a wheelwright but gradually the entire site became a motor depot.

The roads department till operated from Callis Yard and one report talks about the disposal of 2000 tons of old granite setts which had accumulated over many years.  A sign of how roads were being changed from horse-friendly cobbled surfaces, to car-friendly tarmac.   More and more small buildings were erected at Callis Yard - many of them made of corrugated iron. I guess it was never a very beautiful place.  But in old photos that stable block looks great!

I found a report of a Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society recording of a similar horse depot and stables belonging to Chiswick Council and some of the details must have been similar at Woolwich.  At Chiswick the horses were tethered in stalls which were roughly nine by six feet, and there were two larger loose boxes for use by the vet. The bottom half of the walls were faced with salt-glazed brick with white-wash above. The floor was concrete but crossed by channels which emptied into drainage gullies. Each stall had an iron hay rack and there were mangers for oats and chaff - galvanised bowls in a triangular frame –but the stalls had no permanent water supply. Electric came from the Chiswick Electrical Supply Corporation. The stall divisions had been bought at an auction in 1909. They were teak tongue and grooved boards set in curved cast-iron frames with wide elm ‘kick boards’. At end of each division was a cast-iron post with the initials ‘LGOCo’ - the London General Omnibus Company! The tramway was replacing its horse-buses with motor buses and these stalls were there surplus stock. 

On the upper floor were three machines for processing fodder: an oat grinder and two chaff cutters. The oat grinder was a simple rotary machine worked by electricity or by hand, in which the grain was crushed between two smooth rollers. Both chaff cutters were also operated by power or by hand and fed hay or straw through revolving blades.

I understand from several people that in 1974 the stable was used as a headquarters by the group of volunteers working on the archaeological dig on the Woolwich kiln. Elizabeth, the archaeologist who led the dig, tells me “the enormous quantity of pottery shards found as digging continued totally swamped the corner of the building earmarked for finds processing.  All the shards had to be washed, marked, catalogued, and boxed. It was a nearly impossible task to keep pace with the amount found every day …..The team was fortunate indeed that the space was quite large and could accommodate at least the first stages of finds’ work. Numerous high-ranking visitors from official bodies, museums, ceramic historians, and the like came to Callis Yard as word got out’.   

I understand from Richard Buchanan and Jim Marrett that the Borough Planning Conservation Group visited Callis Yard in 2008, by which time it was clear that it would soon close. They said that the cast-iron columns supporting this stalls for the horses still survived. The old tiled roof upstairs had been replaced by glass and that the hoist which lifted fodder from the yard still survived.  However developers were already beginning to move in and wanted to demolish most of the buildings –but would keep the stable block.

And now? The site has been completely redeveloped with flats in tower blocks everywhere and there are numerous advertisements with all sorts of inducements to get people to move in. They also include descriptions of the wonderful things they will find when they move to Woolwich. All sorts of developments there are happening – I see just this week the developer wants to the Council to remove the requirement for a children’s play centre. The stable block has - I think – been turned into flats but is impossible to see it because it is so hemmed in by tower blocks and in a now private road. 

I must admit to feeling a bit sad that I didn’t know about the stable building and never saw it. It appears to have been good looking and interesting – and it could have provided a focus for the area and something for Woolwich to be proud of. 

Thanks: Richard Buchanon, Jim Marrett, Elizabeth Pearcey, John Austin

AND IN ADDITION: Last week I did break it open Paris and I said I guess somebody would come in and point out my mistakes. So can I thank Richard Buchanan doing that and he points out “The picture of the bridge in the article shows the ribs under the arches. When it was built ribs were an innovative element in bridge design, and, compared with a barrel vaulted design, made for lighter weight arches of sufficient strength to support the roadway - meaning that less stone was needed. It would have been a job for skilled stonemasons, so probably not cheaper than older techniques, but something to flaunt. The ribs have probably been repaired since, and certainly take heavier loads nowadays than originally contemplated. “