Deptford Bridge

 And so our walk up the east bank of the Creek reaches Deptford Bridge - and I am aware that I have missed out some sites and some industries on the way and that I am going to have to backtrack down the Creek again eventually.

Deptford Bridge is important and a pivotal site in more than one way. It is where the Dover Road crosses the Ravensbourne – and down river is called Deptford Creek and upriver is the Ravensbourne. There are also a whole bunch of industrial buildings here spread over a surprisingly wide area for this narrow crossing. It is the junction of roads going to Greenwich and to Deptford as well as to Lewisham and it is where they meet the main road from London.  It is also, of course, the site of a station on the Docklands Light Railway.   The bridge itself has a long history – probably rather longer than we realise and has been the site of various events – battles even.  And of course all sorts of famous people have crossed it.

The river is of course the reason for the bridge being there at all.  I wonder how many of the thousands who cross it every day know it’s there – only this week I mentioned it to a friend who thought it was an old canal. In fact the upriver stretch of the Ravensbourne going up to Lewisham is ‘canalised’ as the result of flood containment work in the 1960s and some of it was changed and re-done more recently for the Docklands Light Railway.  Up until the 1960s maps show two River Ravensbourne’s running up river from Deptford Bridge – the current river and another winding stream to the east.  The route of this winding stream is still the Borough boundaries of Greenwich and Lewisham but the watercourse it is not there now – in fact a number of blocks of flats are on the line of it.  Does anyone remember it?  I would be interested to know.  I intend to return to it since there were some important works on its length. Down river is now called Deptford Creek and again much of it is artificial in that inlets have been constructed as well as the infrastructure for many mills. Slightly down river of the Bridge is ‘the highest point to which medium tides flow’ – the Creek is tidal but the Ravensbourne is not.

I have a copy of Paterson’s Roads, left me by my father in law. Published in 1826 it gives routes on all the ‘Great and Direct Roads’ in the Kingdom. So page 1, the first road and the first route: ‘London to Dover’ … From the Surrey side of London Bridge…. Bricklayers Arms ….. New Cross Turnpike … Enter Kent … Deptford Turnpike... crosses the River Ravensbourne.  This is of course the Turnpike Road. Turnpikes were an 18th century scheme for sort of privatising the roads which – making their money from exacting tolls from those who wanted to use it. New Cross Turnpike Trust was one of the biggest and most important in the country and one of the most efficient. They had a toll gate with a toll box at the bottom of Blackheath Hill on the corner of what is now Greenwich South Street but which was then Limekiln Lane - from at least 1809 until 1833. A little further up the hill, another bar was constructed across the entrance to Plumbridge Street in 1818, removed in 1833. The Turnpike Trust held their meetings at the top of the Hill at the Green Man – demolished in the 1970s and replaced with Grey Ladies Gardens.






Now we all think that the A2 – the Dover Road - is a Roman Road, don’t we? I don’t know if the stretch from Blackheath to the Old Kent Road is Roman. I am aware of a lot of learned articles written over the past 100 years or so claiming that from Blackheath the Romans went this way or that way or some other way. But it seems to make most sense for them to go the same way we do – down Blackheath Hill and over Deptford Bridge. I have been trying to find reports of the work done to rebuild Blackheath Hill after it collapsed in 2001. I am sure I had read that after they had cleared away 2000 years’ worth of holes and diggings and new road surfaces, there was then Roman Road all intact – but all I can find are reports that they found solid base of chalk going down the hill. Again does anyone know if it was established if it was the Roman Road, and if not what was it.

At the site of the Bridge there is supposed to have been a ford on the Ravensbourne– hence the name of ‘Deptford – but this is the main road from the coast. You would think the Romans were efficient enough during the 400 odd years they were here to build a bridge over this fairly small river; but there appears to be no sign of any such thing. 400 years is the time span between us and the Mayflower sailing to America, Shakespeare had only died six years earlier. That’s how long the Romans were here – plenty of time to build a bridge.

It may be interesting to remember that the approach to Deptford Bridge before Blackheath Hill had buildings erected on it looked and was very different to today. The 2001 road collapse was very largely because of chalk and gravel extraction over two millennia. Flats and houses lining the road means we are unable to see the sheer chalk faces at the back of them – and also what would once have been the entrances to many small chalk workings. We would have been in the midst of landscape – although on a smaller scale – to what Swanscombe and Northfleet were like in the 1950s and 1960s one of bare chalk pits. They are still there all those pits off Blackheath Hill it’s just that we can’t see them now.

Of course Deptford Bridge has been built and rebuilt many times there. There was a medieval wooden bridge which is said to have had a chapel on it which was dedicated to St.Katherine.  In the Middle Ages Bridge maintenance was usually assigned to and carried out by religious houses and so they built chapels on the bridges which belonged to them.  The medieval wooden bridge was replaced in the mid sixteenth century by a stone one. By the 1870s there were complaints about being … ”compelled to drive into the roadway from crowding foot-passengers, and meeting on the right hand and left tram cars”. It was widened again in the early 20th century when the river and creek were also widened and it has been rebuilt again more recently. 

As Jess Steele points out in her admirable history of Deptford ‘Turning the Tide’ regular flooding has damaged and even washed away various bridges and related structures over the years.  Jess also points out some of the many crossings of the river here by the famous or otherwise on the Dover Road on the way to France– although I guess they were innumerable. Any journey to France, via Dover will very probably have involved crossing Deptford Bridge and that includes all the famous ones along with the very numerous others.

The bridge and the area round it was also the site or transit camp for various rebellions and revolts and was sometimes the site of various skirmishes and actions. Jess quotes for example the Peasants revolt of 1381 when protestors against a poll tax forced their way over the bridge and marched on London.  In 1450 the Cade Rebellion also came up from Kent and over the bridge.  They were against corruption and much else and protestors gathered at a camp on Blackheath.    In 1497 guns were placed on the bridge to defend it against Scottish rebels backing Perkin Warbeck against Henry VI – 2000 men were killed there. The Wyatt rebellion of 1534 included a camp of 2000 men at Deptford.  None of this can have been good for local people and I am reminded of an article I once read about the Battle of Brentford in 1642 – at another river crossing on a main road into London.  This article was about the aftermath of the battle – and when the soldiers have moved on. The locals are left with piles of corpses, lots of abandoned weaponry, no food, badly damaged houses, everything of value stolen, traumatised children and old people unable to cope, bedridden and sick abandoned – the only people to do well out of it are the scrap dealers,  who are always with us.  Brentford managed to get compensation out of Parliament, I wonder if Deptford did?

Jess goes on to describe more cheerful crossings – beginning with Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, although they were there at 7.30 in the morning.  They are just some of the many many travellers who have come this way. What local people did get eventually was access to the wharves as well as but also shops and some amenities.

Shops included in the 1850s Harmon’s Boot and shoe warehouse ‘cheap and fashionable’   - clearly a slogan from a shop which understands its clientele. They advertised seamless boots, American overshoes and there was a Ladies fitting Room with a ’female in attendance’.       In 1857 there was the Deptford Bridge Book & Stationery Depot... A Circulating Library of Standard Books.  Agents for the Rev. C. H...Spurgeon’s ‘Sermons” and also J. Wedderburn, Scale, Weight & Weighing Machine Manufacturer, And kinds of Weights sad Scales Cleaned and Adjusted by the Year.   In the 1880s there was W.J. Gibbins, French dyer, cleaner and bleacher.

This is a random selection but it seems that they include at least a couple who are actually manufacturing businesses In this respect the report of a fire may of interest  this was in the premises of no 1 Deptford Bridge of. J. Z. Knowles & Co., they were cabinet makers and house furnishers, and they said “Notwithstanding the disastrous dilapidation of fire, all goods entrusted to them are perfectly safe”. this was because their workshops were elsewhere.

Deptford Bridge was and is out just a major crossing of a river on the way into London from ‘abroad’, the river itself an important commercial and manufacturing centre and a tributary to the commercial heart of one of the world’s major rivers – it provides local centre and a hub for small businesses and today – a college.  These days of course it has its own station on the Docklands Light Railway and that is another subject I will have to tackle