Ddof
In the past couple of
weeks these articles have concentrated on the corn mills and wharves at Deptford
Bridge and just down the Creek at the Old Flood Mill. The wharves which fronted onto the Creek at Deptford Bridge itself were
Albion Wharf and Ravensbourne Wharf and I also looked at them back last October
year when I was working upstream on the Greenwich side of the Creek. As I noted then much of this area was used by
the Trenchard family with their saw mill and stone merchants business. I also wrote about the area last year in articles
about Mumford’s Mill and, earlier, Kamptulicon and the maltings at Hope
Wharf. I wrote about the Trenchard
family last week in more detail
The road frontage on the
south side of Deptford Bridge consisted of a line of shops of various sorts
which, obviously, changed over the years. In 1871 they included a tobacconist,
a boot maker, a ‘trimming seller’ (what's that?) and a pub called the Mitre. In
1894 there was a photographer, and herbalists, among others, but no pub – it
had been demolished for ‘improvement’ works and new buildings.
On the corner with
Church Street was a very large building which is marked on maps at ‘Deptford
Liberal Club’. It was however in reality
magnificent shop building ‘Gardiners, ‘Scotch House’. This
was one of a big chain of drapers shops selling ‘all things Scottish’ owned by
the Gardiner brothers who had opened their first London shop in 1839. These large stores could be found in most
London shopping areas from Knightsbridge to Whitechapel, often on a prominent
corner site with a turret or similar feature dominating on the corner.
In 1885 the Deptford
Liberal Club rented fifteen upstairs rooms from the Gardiners and was fitting
them out as a club. ‘As we have seen from previous articles successive Chairs
of the Club were members of the Trenchard family whose works were
adjacent. We hear of the many meetings
held there and important issues of national and local concern –speakers
included for instance a young George Bernard Shaw talking about the Fabians. Sometimes these concerned local trade
disputes as when in 1889 gas worker activists were at the club during the
‘strike’ against the South Met. Gas Co.
and the Club’s band attended the great Hyde Park demonstration on 4th
May 1890. However, much of the club's
activity was sporting – billiards seems to have featured- although I assume
there was no alcohol allowed given the temperance interests of the Robinsons
from the adjacent mill complex who also seem to have had an interest.
Temperance or not we
all know that these clubs need the bar takings to keep going - and Deptford
Club was clearly soon in trouble. In
1924 there was a major legal action by Gardiners against the club which was
heard at the Kings Bench. I don’t know
the details but I rather think it was about unpaid rents. In 1928 the Club reopened at 20a Tanners
Hill – the first room opened and in use being the billiard hall.
At the back of the
club and the adjacent Church Street shops was an area which was used by the
London Parcels Delivery Company. Now, we
all think that parcels used to be delivered by the Post Office although how
there are also companies like Herms and DHL. Obviously there is a history of parcel
delivery organisations – parcels have always needed to be sent and delivered -
which specialised in such services and which needed depots all round the
country.
The London Parcels Delivery
Company was set up in 1837 with headquarters at Rolls Yard in Fetter Lane in
the City. I think this is probably the
site, or the grounds of, the old Public Record Office, the Rolls Building, in
Chancery Lane. The plan had been developed by the Post Office and its division
of London into postal districts. Postal districts were arranged the centre of
London in two circular areas – one was, and is, three miles from the Rolls
Yard, and the other twelve miles. On the south east post – and the parcels
delivery - went out as far as Plumstead.
Parcels were collected from addresses and then all taken to Rolls Yard
where they were sorted into distribution areas – which sounds remarkably
inefficient – and then sent out to a network of agents for delivery. A court case against a rival Parcel and Post
Mail ensured that these agents only worked for the London company and were
assumed to be very respectable.
The company had eighty
delivery carts and thirty stables – with a hundred horses stabled at Rolls
Yard. Each cart was staffed by a man and a boy – who were seen as very dutiful and
hard working, except at Christmas when customers gave them presents of gin.
The Deptford Yard will
have been one of these respectable agencies and presumably had a number of
horses and carts. However, there are the
usual newspaper stories of, for instance in 1886, a car man, Turner, working
for the company was fined for cruel treatment of a horse, and how in 1881
Alfred Exall, one of their drivers was arrested for ‘driving furiously; and
running someone over someone’. Fast
traffic and aggressive drivers are always with us!
Shops further down
Church Street included a bird dealer. In the only reference I can find on him,
a Mr. Grimwade, he was arrested for stealing pigeons. When we see ‘bird dealer;
we tend to think of someone selling hapless finches and linnets in cages – but
I wonder if they actually catered for the racing pigeon fraternity,
Continuing down Church
Street a few doors down was 10 The Druid’s Head pub, which closed only in 1971.
It dated from the 1829s and I wondered if the name was connected to ship built
in the Royal Dockyard. There have been –
and are - Royal Navy ships called ‘Druid’. But none built at Deptford until
1869.
The last buildings I
wanted to look at in Church Street is George Banks' Mineral Water factory which
fronted on to 112-116 Church Street and backed onto the Creek. They also had works in the High Street area. This
was a sizeable establishment which made all sorts of soft drinks. I had always
been led to believe – growing up immediately post war – that bottled water was
something sold on the Continent and elsewhere because they didn’t have decent
fresh water in the taps like us British did.
And so I have learnt with some surprise that up to the 1920s the country
was crammed with ‘mineral water’ manufacturers. Banks described himself in the 1880s as a
soda water manufacturer but his works made all sorts of beverages ‘ginger beer,
lemonade ginger ale, kola and hop ale’ as well as ‘fruit syrups and cordials’
all 'best quality and warranted non-intoxicating’... ’the best ever offered to
the public’.
Banks himself is
interesting in that his background gives no indication of an interest in soft
drinks. He came from Norwich and had enlisted in the army and fought in the
Crimea – achieving the Turkish and Crimea medals. He went as an orderly –
batman - to Lord Wolseley. Wolseley himself is interesting with an amazing career (despite his racism) Irish
and educated in Dublin, he had a life crowded with incident (look him up in
Wikipedia) and is someone else who ended up as a Gilbert and Sullivan character
– in the Pirates of Penzance. He had
been attached to the Royal Engineers in the Crimea and was one of the last to
leave. Presumably Banks accompanied Lord
Wolseley – going with him to India
having been shipwrecked on the way to China?
Wolseley was involved in several
actions in India including the siege at Lucknow as one of the Quarter Masters’
department. He went on to fight in China. Was Banks with him then? Wolseley went from there to hobnobbing with Confederates and gun runners in the
US and much much else. However I think
we can assume that Banks had left him before he went to the US if not earlier. What
skills he had must have been learnt in the army. In the 1880s Wolseley was to live locally at The Ranger’s House, ‘at the invitation of the
Queen’.
Totally irrelevant to
this is Wolseley‘s brother Frederick, who went to Australia and
invented sheep shearing equipment. He employed a Mr. Austin as his
engineer. They came back to England and
then ..... now ‘Wolseley’ .. ‘Austin’
… haven’t we heard those names before somewhere??
Banks left the army to
work in Deptford Dockyard and in 1871 was a labourer at Penn’s in Blackheath
Road. By the 1880s he was making mineral waters in Church Street. An analysis of his drinks appears in
advertisements having been undertaken by Granville H. Sharp - - this is a
chemist from Liverpool not the anti slavery activist. They were said to be of
‘excellent quality and flavour’ and ‘aerated with carbonic aid gas’ and
generally of the best possible everything. Banks also claimed to have ‘prize
medal machinery’.
One of the ways we
know about Banks is from the old bottle collectors. Looking through the auction
houses I am amazed at the prices being paid for bottles which in their day were
mass produced. I am sorry that as ever I can’t use these pictures which will
all be someone’s copy write
As ever notices in the
papers about Banks' works tend to focus on the behaviour of his various
delivery drivers - driving too fast or had runaway horses, or whatever. It
makes you realise that the age of horse drawn traffic really wasn’t much
different to today - you were run over by a horse and cart rather than by a
car. Another delivery driver was caught issuing
fraudulent receipts to Fulham Cricket Club for mineral water.
I hope that next week
I will have worked my way down to the actual west bank of the Creek – and
arrive to start with, at Theatre Wharf.
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