COPPERAS IN GREENWICH AND DEPTFORD NICHOLAS CRISPE

 

COPPERAS IN GREENWICH AND DEPTFORD 

NICHOLAS CRISPE

 

Over the years, Bygone Kent has published a number of articles about the copperas industry along the banks of the Thames and Medway.  I am hoping in this – and following – articles to extend that story up river to Greenwich – and eventually to add in cavaliers, slavery, 'moles', stately homes, young ladies and other things of that sort!

 

The manufacture of copperas was a major chemical industry before the industrial revolution.  It was a way of making a black dye as well as vitriol (sulphuric acid) and a number of other chemicals – but more of that later.  It was made from stones picked up from the shore along the Thames estuary and there was a concentration of works in the Whitstable area and on Sheppey.  Lately there has been a lot of activity and interest in the history of the copperas in Kent.  Over the past few years archaeologists have undertaken digs for its remains - particularly in Whitstable and Tankerton.  As a result a number of articles have been written and there are rumours of a book. 

 

However, copperas works were not only found at the sea side – they were to be found right up the river Thames with another large group in Greenwich, Deptford and Blackwall.  These works probably dated from the mid-seventeenth century, or, maybe, even earlier.  The Deptford works, about which most is known, appear to have been promoted by a particularly busy Royalist entrepreneur  - a Sir Nicholas Crispe.

 

The Crispe family were well known in the Thanet area.  In the seventeenth century, a Crispe family lived at Quex House, near Herne Bay, and they were certainly involved in the copperas industry in Thanet.  In the 1550s, a Sir Henry Crispe from Quex had had an interest in a copperas works at Stonar.  There was a later Sir Henry who had an exciting life during the Civil War when he was captured and held to ransom in Flanders.  There were certainly some later links between this family and the Deptford copperas works however, and this is the confusing point, I do not think that the Deptford 'Sir Nicholas Crispe' had anything to do with Quex.

 

This particular Sir Nicholas Crispe does not seem to have come from Kent - although he might have had Kentish relations – but from Gloucestershire.  This branch of the Crispe family originated in Leicestershire but Nicholas' father and co-partner, Ellis Crispe, came from Marshfield, near Bath, and was an Alderman in the City of London.  He was also a member of the Worshipful Company of Salters – a City Livery Company whose original interests had been in the manufacture and distribution of salt but which had expanded to become involved in the we would describe today as the chemical industry.  Indeed, the Company now maintains the Salters Institute of Industrial Chemistry.

 

Nicholas was one of three sons – his brother Toby was a well-known and controversial cleric who developed a reputation as an 'antionomian'.  The Crispe family had not forgotten their roots in the Gloucestershire countryside and a set of almshouses which they donated in 1612 still stand in the village of Marshfield.

 

At the age of 20 Nicholas had set off for Africa and was responsible for the first permanent English settlement at Kormantin, in today's Ghana.  I am afraid he set this up in the 1630s as a slave depot and as a stopping point for East India Company ships.  He and his partners traded on the East African coast to the exclusion of all others and in 1621 Charles I, gave him an exclusive right to trade on the Guinea Coast and he set up a trading organisation known as the Guinea Company.  He made a great deal of money.

 

In the early 1630s Crispe rented a piece of land in Deptford alongside the Ravensbourne river in an area known as 'Broomfield' and this is most probably where the copperas works was built.  It is today the area near the Deptford side of Creek Bridge.  The area was part of the estate which later belonged to John Evelyn, the diarist, at Sayes Court at Deptford however at the time when Crispe first leased the land Evelyn had no connection with Deptford and Crispe's arrangement was probably with Evelyn's father-in-law, Richard Browne, who owned the estate before the Civil War. It is however worth noting that the Evelyn family themselves had made a fortune based on the manufacture of saltpetre.

 

Something else happened in Deptford at this time which probably had some relevance to the copperas industry. The copperas liquor needs to be heated and later Crispe used 'Newcastle Coals' to do this but it seems likely that a more efficient fuel was tried as earlier.  In 1636, Thomas Peyton 'of Deptford' was granted a patent for 'charking sea coals'.  'Sea coals' – is coal which has come from North East England and arrived up river by ship.

 

Exactly who Thomas Peyton was is not known but someone who probably knew Deptford well was Sir Thomas Peyton of Knowlton near Chillenden. It is also possible that he had an interest in property in the Mottingham area.  He certainly had an interest in coal supplies to London since he acquired the right to levy customs on that for the price of £2,000.

 

In 1636 Peyton was in his early twenties and recently married.  His wedding had taken place at St.Bride's Church in the City of London so it likely that he had a London home as well as that in Thanet.  John Evelyn knew him, and described visits by mutual friends and social visits in the early 1650s.  Peyton had been involved in one of the many skirmishes of the Civil War when, following petitions raised in Canterbury, he was appointed Lt.General of a party of 6,000 horsemen and 1,000 foot soldiers.  At Deptford this force met Fairfax who had four regiments of horsemen and three regiments of infantry.  Battles ensued at Northfleet and Maidstone. 

 

Was the Thomas Peyton from Knowlton the man who invented coke?  It was a very important step because this is the first occasion on which the preparation of something we all take from granted - coke made from coal – has been traced.  Was he doing this in order to use the coke to heat the copperas liquid for Nicholas Crispe?

 

At the beginning of the Civil War Nicholas Crispe had made so much money that he contracted with the King for a 'customs farm' - that is he bought the right to administer the customs and make a profit from them.  In 1641 he was knighted and became a Member of Parliament.  He was however expelled from the House of Commons because of his monopolies – and one of the accusations was about his manufacture of 'copperas stones'.  Over the next four years he devoted himself to the Royalist cause, raising regiments, providing ships, undergoing a court martial and various other exploits.  Eventually he was pardoned and settled in Hammersmith where he began to experiment with new ways of making bricks. 

 

His brick making process was to become one of his main interests – he tried to sell some to John Evelyn and later provided the bricks for work in the garden of the Royal Palace at Greenwich.  In 1655 Crispe visited John Evelyn at Deptford – to make a suggestion about a 'mole to be made at Sayes Court'.  I am entirely unclear as to what a 'mole' means in this context but I suspect it was some sort of breakwater or pier in the river and something to do with the Royal Dockyard.  Evelyn mentions this episode in his diary without comment but in the files of his correspondence, now in the British Library, are letters from which we can learn a bit more.  There are a number of letters from Crispe filed and kept by Evelyn – and they show that Crispe had really terrible hand-writing.  The letters describe a number of visits which Crispe made to Sayes Court in order to discuss his 'mole' but on each occasion - Evelyn was apparently always 'out' and it is only after some time that he replied to Crispe and they eventually met.  The whole episode leaves the impression that Evelyn thought Crispe was a real nuisance!

 

By 1656, more coke was again being made in Greenwich but by a different Royalist entrepreneur.  Evelyn, crossing the river by the Greenwich Ferry 'saw Sir John Winter's new project of charring sea coale'.  Winter (or Wynter) is better known in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.  His grandfather was Admiral William Wynter, the associate of Sir Francis Drake, and 'Master of Ordnance and Surveyor of the Shippes' under both Henry VIII and Elizabeth.  An earlier John Wynter had lived in Deptford, and it has even been claimed that they were previous owners of Sayes Court.  The family had used their wealth to buy land at Lydney in Gloucestershire where they exploited the coal and timber.  In 1655, when Evelyn saw his coke works, Winter was actually incarcerated in the Tower of London for his activities in Ireland in support of the King – but, although his estates had been confiscated, he seems to have been allowed out to further his business interests in Greenwich and Deptford.  Through this, he gained a lucrative monopoly in coke manufacture.

 

I know of no connection between Winter and Peyton – or between either of them and Nicholas Crispe – but, in the relatively small world of the 1600s, it is almost impossible that they did not know each other, given their devotion to two common causes – that of the King and the exploitation of natural resources.

 

To return to Deptford and the copperas works.  In 1658, a lease on the site seems to have been reviewed and put in the names of Crispe's three sons, Ellis, Nicholas, and Samuel.  The document says that the site is 'part Broomfield, called Great Crane Meadow' and had been in the previous possession of Evelyn and his wife's grandfather, Thomas Prettiman.  There is however another and very interesting name on the lease – that of 'Thomas Kilsey'.  I was unable to decipher the writing on the lease, which gave Kilsey's address which was 'Lower ---- Kent".  What is the missing word – Lower Halstow or even Lower Goldstones?  In the Civil War Kelsey was a Cromwellian General whose remit in the Parliamentary forces was the whole of Kent and Surrey.  He was undoubtedly a connection of the Kelsey family who lived in Greenwich and whose most famous member was Henry Kelsey, the explorer who went to America with the Hudson Bay Company in the 1680s.  Was the Kelsey family involved in the copperas works?

 

Sir Nicholas Crispe remained busy in Kent, as elsewhere.  In 1660 he set up the culture of madder (a plant yielding a red dye) in Dartford and then, back in prison for non-payment of debt, he petitioned for his release - giving his promotion of the copperas works as an example of his usefulness to society.  In 1662, he was back and visiting John Evelyn, this time with a 'project for a receptacle for ships'.  This idea was also noted Samuel Pepys who discussed the project with Crispe and noted that it entailed a dock at Deptford to take '200 ships of sail'.  Evelyn also noted Crispe's 'success with distilling'.

 

In 1666 Nicholas Crispe died – still selling bricks at 12/- per 1,000. His heart is buried in St.Paul's Hammersmith as part of a monument to the memory of Charles I. He left three sons who seem each to have inherited a third of the copperas works.  This was, as well will see, co complicate the ownership considerably as time went on.  One of the sons, Ellis, died not long after  - according to Samuel Pepys the cause of Ellis' death was 'eating cucumbers.

 

Nicholas Crispe, another son, was also a 'customs farmer' for the Port of London, and he seems to have taken on the Deptford copperas works.  As part of the new regime, there seems to have been some sort of evaluation and perhaps modernisation work.  A plan was made of the works in 1674 which shows that it was sited on Deptford Creek and covered the area from the Creek too slightly north of Creek Road.  There were a number of buildings on the site and a small dock.

 

One of Crispe's friends was a Daniel Colwell, who was a member of the newly formed Royal Society.  Colwell went down to Deptford copperas works and wrote an article about it for the Society.  This is a very valuable document because it outlines in detail the set up and working practice of the works in the seventeenth century – and has often been used as an example when other works have been examined.  Colwall's description has recently been by archaeologists when looking at the of excavations in Whitstable – I would recommend articles about this in the Spring 1999 Industrial Archaeology News by Tim Allen, and on web pages put out by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust.

 

Copperas is made from stones picked up along the shoreline and cliff faces – and more of that later.  Colwell described how the stones were put into 'beds' - trenches of about a hundred by fifteen feet and twelve feet deep.  They were then covered with rainwater and left there for several years until the liquid became concentrated enough to dissolve a boiled egg in three minutes!  This liquid was then boiled to crystallisation and could be used as a black dye.  Strongly heated, it produced 'oil of vitriol', leaving behind another dye, Venetian red.

 

Meanwhile Nicholas Crispe was consolidating his family's wealth with a fine Kentish residence.  In the early 1680s, he bought Squerries Court at Westerham and the fine house, which still stands there, and is open regularly to the public, was built by him.  He stayed in Westerham for less than twenty years but the house remains as a living symbol of the sort of money made by a family which was prepared to take active sides in the political (and real) battles of the mid-seventeenth century while perfectly prepared to work with the opposition while there was money to be made.

 

Material for this article was taken from a wide variety of sources, particularly from archive material in the Kent and Surrey County archives as well as from that of the London Borough of Greenwich.  The Evelyn collection in the British Library has also been consulted.