Crane Street - Trafalgar -Moss - rowing clubs

 

If we continue along the riverside on the Five Foot Walk in front of the grand buildings of the World Heritage site we arrive at Park Row and the Trafalgar Tavern. Sometime around 1752, the Italian painter Canaletto painted the Royal Hospital buildings from across the river.  On the far left of his picture, is crane on the side of the path. This was used to help load and unload boats with supplies for the Royal Hospital.  The picture also shows a set of Watermen’s Stairs alongside the crane and they are still there. Now they are called ‘Lower Royal Naval College Stairs’ but that wasn’t their name in 1750 - maybe they were Crane or Hospital Stairs.   That whole area on the river in front of the Trafalgar Tavern was a busy embarkation place for the Royal Hospital – the stairs are still used to access the foreshore.  The next stretch of riverside had several more pubs and some river related sports activities.

Then we come to the Trafalgar Tavern.  John Bold has recently published a very detailed article on the pub in the Greenwich Historical Society’s Journal (2019), and please read what he has to say. The Trafalgar was built as a hotel in the late 1830s but has not been used continuously as this.  At one time is housed a wholesale confectionary business; later it was a working men’s club and then an unemployed workers centre. The Curlew Rowing Club was in part of it for a while and so were the London Transport and the Globe Rowing Clubs – and there were other river related sports and recreational organisations in Crane Street. Curlew was an old established club founded in 1866.  They were to claim evidence that in 1787 that their crew rowed in the first regatta.   In 1866 they had their headquarters in the Crown and Sceptre Inn, in Highbridge, and stayed there until 1934. They then moved to the Trafalgar Tavern.

The Trafalgar Tavern was built on the site of an older pub called The George, later called was The Old George or Mattinson’s.  It was demolished in 1837 having been sold, by the Royal Hospital. The George was a relatively small building with bow windows overlooking the river. When it was demolished the frames of these bow windows were sold along with feather beds, handsome desert services and Brussels carpets.

The Trafalgar itself fronts onto Park Row where its tables and chairs take up space which was once public road and pavements.  It is said to have been built to honour Horatio Nelson and  few years ago there was a sign here which said ‘Lord Nelson’s Favourite Pub, (despite the fact that Nelson died some thirty years before the pub was built). There is also now have a statue of Nelson at the end of Park Row. It was sculpted by Lesley Pover after being commissioned by the Trafalgar’s owner Frank Dowling for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005.  .  It is now a busy and popular establishment catering both to locals and tourists, and still sells the traditional whitebait ‘with a variety of twists’.

So, round the corner ad we are in Crane Street – said to be named after the riverside crane round the corner. It is narrow with houses on the southern side – built by the Royal Hospital to replace an earlier terrace. Along the river were wharfs, small scale industry and pubs. 

The pedestrianised road first follows the long side wall of the Trafalgar, to eventually reach another  pub -  No  4 The Yacht. This is  , said to have been here for at least 300 years, and was first called the Barley Mow, on 18^th century insurance documents, but in 1826 listed as The Watermen’s Arms; it became the Yacht soon after. The pub seems to have a run a boat hire business and 1882 its assets included “50 pleasure boats, and skiffs”.

Greenwich Yacht Club used the Yacht for its earliest meetings, opening there in 1908, but moving down river in 1911.  Sports clubs using the building included non river based organisations like the Invicta Harriers. In the Second World War a high explosive bomb apparently led to a post war rebuilding with the bar said to be modelled on that of the Queen Mary liner.  It is currently a Greene King house and is described on its web site as ‘sports’ which certainly echoes its past  In1886 an advertisement for the Greenwich Amateur Regatta specifies ‘none but single young men will be entered’ and it would take place ‘next the Yacht Tavern’.  Its gallery overlooking the river is still in place and very popular - although the regatta’s seem to have gone somewhere else.

Industries in Crane Street have been on a relatively small scale. In the 19th century the Bean family had a clay pipe manufacturing business here, and in 1836 there was a sail maker and later a bakery.

Nos.11/13 was ‘Crane Wharf’’ and used by R.Moss who described himself as a Paper Stock Merchant.  A drawing by Graham Sutherland, no less, of the building in the 1920s shows a sign saying that old rope was bought, which he then sold on to the paper industry.  Moss closed in the 1960s and was looking for a purchaser for the wharf which by then was in extremely poor condition.  There were a number of rowing clubs in the area and one of those in the back of the Trafalgar Tavern was the Globe Club.   Sharing with Curlew and the London Transport Club it was very overcrowded and there were complaints. Mr. Moss’s sale was a chance for the Globe Club to have somewhere of their own.

Globe had originally been Stone’s Rowing Club from the Deptford factory of Stone’s Engineers with membership being restricted to employees of the company.  Boats were hired from local Watermen but that was expensive First they set up headquarters in the Lord Clyde pub and were the called the Clyde Rowing Club. They then moved to the Globe Pub and changed their name again. In 1938 the Globe pub was demolished and so by 1947 boats their boats were stored in an upstairs room at Brooke’s Wharf in Thames Street. The club bought an Assault Landing Craft and moored it by the Union Pub (today’s Cutty Sark pub). In the mid 1950s they moved to Dreadnought Wharf and the Tilbury Dredging Co’s site. and bought a Thames barge to use as their boathouse. The next move was to the Trafalgar Tavern alongside Curlew. 

Mr. Moss’s premises looked like a prospect for the club,  but he wanted £3,750 for it.  Greenwich Council was approached, and Mr. Moss put the price up to £17,000. However the council bought the building and Globe moved in. When The Trafalgar Tavern was extended in the 21^st century Curlew had to move and they too came to the old Moss building.  It is now the Trafalgar Rowing Centre and managed by a Trust for both clubs as well as use for for social events and as an art gallery. There is also gym across the road in one of the new buildings in Highbridge. 

Sporting and other river based activities in Crane Street were greatly helped by Corbett's boat hire business based around the draw dock at the junction with High Bridge and Eastney Street. Corbett had been boat builders in Wood Wharf and in Crane Street.   They had a pontoon from where they let out a wide range of small vessels. In 1886 they advertised boats for picnics as well as more sporting activities.  They also built boats to specification.  Their business more or less covered the foreshore along Crane Street and they hired to all sorts including boat clubs from Poplar and Blackwall. They closed in the late 1930s.

Crane Street with its locally based sports clubs, art galleries and small scale housing probably is the last relic of a Greenwich Riverside which many people would like to have seen kept elsewhere in areas like Wood Wharf.  Most important it maintains a close relationship with the river and riverside activity. Everywhere else developers have moved in, removed the traditional riverside and built offices, flats, tower blocks.  Crane Street is a sort of reminder that it didn’t always used to be like that.  It is much frequented by those tourists who venture beyond Cutty Sark Gardens and even make it to, and beyond, The Trafalgar.

Crane Street ends at the junction with Eastney Street and the riverside path continues as High Bridge. Here is a draw dock- a causeway going into the river where boats could be hauled up onto land.  This draw deck is thought to have once been a wharf and in any case is very ancient. An inlet is clearly shown here on the Travers map of 1697.  Eastney Street was once East Street, marking the eastern boundary of the town. It led to High Bridge –which is where we will go next