Chimneys - preserved chimney on Woolwich Dockyard

 

I'm pretty jumped The chimneys

One of the most defining features ofan industrial landscape before the 1960s was the number of chimneys. These were mostly smokestacks coming from boilers plus a number of other columns for venting fumes of various sorts. I almost wondered if I should start acompetition showing an old landscape photograph and asking how many chimneys people can see in it.  Between, say 1850 and 1970, there would have been lots and lots.I’m in no way suggesting that nowadays we should have these huge structures sticking hot unfiltered gases up into the atmosphere – but as historians surely we can take a look at them.

A few years ago the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society put out an appeal for information on remaining industrial chimneys in London.  I don’t have any details on the results but there was a report that over 70 entries were sent in. There are some preserved ones here and there – there is one in the middle of a housing estate just the other side of the River, in Rayleigh Road, Newham, check it out on Streetview.

When I first moved to Greenwich in the 1960s and looked out over the Peninsula there were loads of chimneysstill.  I remember seeing the chimney of Blackwall Point Power Station struck by lightning – but there were so many others that I wasn’treally sure which one it was for a bit.  There was also the big chimney at Greenwich District Hospital – built only in the 1960s, I assume for the hospital boilers. That came down one Sunday morning and it fell, seemingly, in my exact direction.  Another local and more industrialchimney which has come down relatively recently was that on the riverside at Enderby Wharf.

Someone has been writing articles about chimneys in the (national)Industrial Archaeology News. They make the point that historicallychimney building seems be a rather neglected subject. Clearly building these tall stacks requires a lot of knowledge and skill but we know very little about how those skills were developed and who the earliest builders were as factories proliferated from the mid 18^th century.  It isn’t just the skill to construct them but there is a whole range of specialist knowledge the builder needs to have – they are unlike a church steeple, for example, because they can’t have an internal support framework and they have to withstand hot gases.  The builder has to know the geography and the micro climate of the site too.   We seem to know a lotaboutblowing them up and pulling them down – with lots of TV shows – but not about how they went up in the first place.  How did people learn to build them so tall?

The articles in IA News are very detailed – and it’s not the easiest of publications to get hold of.  (Check out https://industrial-archaeology.org.  This has some newsletters digitized but the most recent ones aren’t on there yet.)

However, we do have in Woolwich an outstanding preservedchimney.  This is theone from WoolwichDockyard which stillstands in Woolwich Church Street – often with a ‘To Let’ sign on it. Survey of Woolwich says it was built probably in the early 1840s by ‘a specialist chimney engineer, now anonymous’.  It vented all the flues for the Woolwich Dockyard Steam factory.   It was reduced in height later to about 180 ft. and it was later used by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society when they had the site in the 20th century.  It is still pretty impressive.    The Historic England listings statement says that there may be tunnels from it which run down to the River.   It would be good to know if this is true.

Now this interest in chimneys has been taken up internationally and most notably by Europa Nostra - The Voice of Cultural Heritage in Europe.  Last year they ran a competition where entrants were invited to video a musical interpretation of the Euro anthem - Beethoven’s Ode to Joy - close to their favourite industrial chimney, See https://vimeo.com/267650942,   and http://european-heritage.co.uk/2018/04/20/serenade-for-a-factory-chimney/.  The resulting entries are also on line and I would very much recommend watching them - although many entries are from tomato paste factories – with billowy singers and one lone trumpeterhttp://www.industrialheritage.eu/EYCH2018/May/Serenade-for-a-Chimney

This year the competition is still for the Ode to Joyperformance but it can be sung under anybody’s favourite industrial monumenthttp://www.europanostra.org/europa-nostras-president-maestro-placido-domingo-renews-his-call-for-contributions-to-the-ode2joy-challenge/

I would love to see us enter an orchestra or one of our resident celebrity rock musicians making a video entry in Woolwich Church Street.  Come on – let’s have a volunteer!

GW 2020???