The route down the Lewisham bank of the Ravensbourne past the old site
of the Brook mill, the water works and then the park is now about to get to
Deptford Bridge. It’s a site many of us
will know well, where the buses stop, where the DLR station is and where your
car has to wait at the lights. The best
known works here is the Deptford Distillery, so we might as well start with
that.
Old maps show the distillery taking up most of the riverside between the
edge of the building line and Deptford Bridge.
On the actual corner site between the river and the main road was
Peppercorn's offices and buildings.
Today that corner site is a massive tower block, although Peppercorn’s
depository building appears to be still there.
The distillery buildings start with the old main entrance – which, on
Google Maps looks semi derelict. Architectural websites say that it says up on
a plaque above the door ‘"Established 1779. Holland and Co's Distillery
and Bonded Store."’ - Oh no it
doesn’t! It may have done so years ago – in fact I can see it on old pictures -
but it not there now. The site is said to have been a timber yard before 1779 which belonged to a Mr, Joseph
Salway. He is also described as a ‘sugar refiner’ which is at least a
technological step nearer to 'distillery' than ‘timber yard’. In this period sugar refining was a big trade
in the east end of London, partly carried out by German immigrants.
A legal document of the late 19th century says the distillery
was set up at the end of the 18th century and carried on until the
1850s by George Wheelhouse – who made ‘a large fortune’ there. I assume Mr. Wheelhouse made gin – although
when I looked up ‘Wheelhouse gin’ on the net, thinking ‘Wheelhouse' to be an
unusual name, I found several such gins - but they are all modern. One of the most respected of deceased local
historians, Christopher Philpotts, described this distillery as ‘one of the
great gin factories of London’ and I’m sure he was right. But like so much with
this site the only thing really clear is that some men made a lot of money
here, the gin itself is more elusive.
However I have discovered that a local blogger –the estimable Deptford
historian Bill Ellson has already done a piece on George Wheelhouse (http://deptfordmisc.blogspot.com/2011/ - I hope that link works - the George Wheelhouse
bit is a way down the page). Bill says
that little is known about him until 1814 when he is described as a distiller
in Deptford. He had been born in Scarborough in 1772 and never married.
In Deptford George Wheelhouse lived on site at the distillery – it
appears that the part of the distillery buildings fronting on to Deptford
Bridge – the bit left that we can see – was used as a house by the distillery
owner. There are other accounts of how
it was a grand house for the wealthy distiller.
However in 1889 the London County Council served a dangerous structure
notice on it and there is a lot of details given in the local press of the bits
falling down and all the shoring up necessary.
I assume that what is there now is safer.
To return to George Wheelhouse: The story that Bill Ellson tells us
about is his will and how as a wealthy single man he left most of his money to
charity - but it’s what his executors
did with the rest that led a court case.
Bill also describes how – although Deptford has barely heard mention of
George Wheelhouse – in Scarborough he is a local hero with streets named after
him and all sorts. Many Scarborough web
sites describe the results of his legacies (i.e. https://www.thescarboroughreview.com/news/2018/7/3/a-little-oasis-for-older-people) – so – well
good for Scarborough and tough luck Deptford!
By the time of George Wheelhouse’s death the distillery was being
managed by William Holland. It is entirely unclear to me if the distillery had
belonged to Holland from the start, or when and how he acquired it or indeed what
the status of any of these people actually was. Even the legal documentation
produced in the late 19th century seems to skip over any detail and says
that after Wheelhouse’s death ‘business was carried on’ by William Holland. This,
it turns out is just part of the general atmosphere of confusion and
contradiction. When I look in various books
about this site – all of them written by peoples whose research I would very
much respect but some of whom have since died – I find some of them saying the
site was really called ‘Vine and Still Distillery’ and others that it was
‘Goodhew’s distillery’. None of this have
I been able to trace back to source.
William Holland died in 1877 but his executors waited ten years, until 1878
to sell it to a Lt Col Kirby who seems to have continued with the Holland name
for the business. I assume he is the
same as Alfred Kirby who is described as the distillery owner in the 1880s and
who lived in New Cross. In 1887 he was knighted - I have no idea why.
So – after all that inconclusive speculation perhaps we needs a bit of
excitement – let see the Mercury’s report from July 1891. For some reason an excise officer was on site
and with Mr. T. F. Kirby a ‘puncheon of whisky’ was being emptied into ’one of
the huge vats on the ground floor ‘. I
will pass over any questions as to why the excise officer was there, who
T.F.Kirby was (I don't know) and why it was whisky when they were supposed to
make gin.
Each of the vats could hold eight hundred thousand gallons of spirits. Some
of the whisky spurted over a lighted lamp, ‘and in an instant the spirit was
ablaze, running over the floor the warehouse and down into the large vat they
were engaged in filling’. Mr. Kirby tried to put the flames out with his coat..
and the fire brigade was instantly summoned. The Greenwich Fire Brigade at
Grove Street immediately sent out ‘the steamer, the manual, and fire escape 43
Greenwich “A,” with ten men’. Smoke was issuing in large volumes from the
windows and ‘then came the Deptford steamer. Mr. W. J. Philcox. the superintendent
of the B District, arrived on it, and assumed control of the operations’. Soon after ‘the Rotherhithe steamer. No. 1 headquarters’
steamer, the Tooley-Street steamer, and others, dashed up and quickly got to work.’
Arriving on the Tooley Street steamer was Captain Shaw. This was of course Eyre Massey Shaw, Head of
the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, after whom the preserved fire float Massey Shaw
is named. I once went to a lecture on Massey Shaw and how he was idolised to
the extent that pop songs of the day were written about him and he features in
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe (he took a bow on the first night). He was a clever Irishman with an army
background – and it should always be remembered that his predecessor James
Braidwood had died leading his men in the massive Tooley Street fire of
1861. These were still the days when
firemen were celebrities and heroes – even being at that Iolanthe first night
with a notorious wrong lady didn’t seem to matter.
At Deptford Distillery Massey Shaw was joined by the Chair of the Fire
Brigades Committee of the London County Council - and a crowd ‘of many
thousands’. Control of the crowd was
down to ‘strong force of police under Superintendent McHugo, with two on
horseback’. All traffic was stopped on the Broadway. Thereafter follows a long description of the
flames and smoke. The brigade worked
manfully ......’ their drenched bodies and shining helmets were time after time
lost to view from the crowd in the dense volumes of smoke ‘. Also ‘forked tongues of flame began to play
amidst the smoke’ and ‘the roof was quickly consumed’.
Thankfully the only building actually burnt down appears to have been
warehouse which was probably deliberately flooded’. Some firemen suffered minor injuries but no
one else was hurt and the whole place was fully insured.
Well, that’s the exciting bit. Later
the whole place was refurbished after the Great War and in 1922 was taken over
by the long established gin distiller, Seagar Evans. They expanded the site and
the business and greatly added to the Deptford buildings which became their
headquarters. In 1956 they were taken over by an American corporate and as a
result whisky became more important to them than gin. In due course work stopped at the Deptford Distillery
Now the back of the site is completely covered in shiny new flats – try
looking at them from above on Google maps and see how many have been fitted
onto this site, all jammed up against each other with precious little outside
space. The whole of the planning
process is described in numerous Deptford blog sites – you have to hand it to
the Deptford bloggers they don’t hold back!
They describe the process of ‘regeneration’ as ‘tortuous’ and I am sure
they are quite right on that.
This article has been far from easy to write. It seems that every piece
of evidence or something I knew about the site has been overturned - as soon as
I get one thing ferreted out another thing has contradicted it. Even the story
of George Wheelwright with so much evidence from Scarborough may not be so –
there is at least one very coherent story of the origins of the distillery
being through a Mr. Goodhew which may also make sense. Even the fire with its nice write up in the Mercury
- I don’t have a problem with the fire brigade
but the fire itself? Is it an insurance job?? And who are all these people who
seem to be owners but who might not be.
Some things are certain. Some
people made a lot of money. Some people
drank a lot of spirits – but probably not the same ones who made the money. And finally - the front of the buildings in
Deptford Bridge now is a complete mess. Why?
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