Deptford - Dugald -Fogg - Kent Wharf - Jacob barges - Lower pottery - Parry

 

Writing away – articles going down the Lewisham bank of Deptford Creek - last week I covered the largest of the three Sun Wharves on the Creek along with two of the small streets which divided the wharves on the site which is now the Cockpit Arts building.  The final road, Dugald Street, lay between Sun Wharf and Kent Wharf.  It had previously been called Lime Street and newspaper reports show the same cycle as the other streets, of poverty. They record long prison sentences for things which often appear to be minor offences - but clearly weren’t if you lived in parts of Deptford.

 

Someone who got was sentenced to a month’s hard labour for child neglect was George Plummer who lived in Dugald Street. He is described as a ‘cattle drover’ with five children whose wife was in hospital with cancer. The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children had found his young family in a filthy state – there was a vivid description given in the paper, including the maggots found on the baby. A lot of lurid detail about his failure to cope.  What happened to the children while he was in gaol isn’t mentioned.

 

Similarly Emily Carle of Dugald Street was committed for manslaughter following the death of her four-month old child from starvation.  This also, bizarrely, led to a prison sentence for William Brown who was selling newspapers in the street and calling out ‘Horrible discovery in Douglas Street ‘.  He was charged with giving out information which was not true - the Magistrate said that the starvation charge was not a ‘horrible discovery’ and in any case it was in Dugald not Douglas Street and so he was remanded in custody.

 

In other cases relating to residents of these street - Bridget Reeds was charged with obstruction in Douglas Street with three sacks of peas and 12 empty baskets.  I assume that means she was some sort of market trader.  There were also charges relating to gambling– Isaac Craig was summoned for playing pitch and toss in Douglas Street and got three days inside. In a more complicated case Isaac Jefferies was arrested for loitering for the purpose of betting in Dugald Street and for acting as a bookmaker without a certificate.  He had previous convictions for this but was only fined for the loitering.

 

At the end of Dugald Street on the Creek was Kent Wharf operated in the late 19^th century by a Thomas Fogg.  Like so many other creek side wharf operators in the 1880s he was manufacturing agricultural manure. He advertised for example: manures ..in Dry and Fine Condition .. concentrated and bone manures….turnip and mangold manure,, superphosphate of lime’

 

Fogg described himself as an ‘analytical chemist’ and was a Fellow of the Chemical Society. He lived in an upmarket house in the Paddington area initially with his widowed mother and later with his wife and daughter.  He seems to have moved onto Kent Wharf around 1860 and in 1861 applied to the Metropolitan Board of Works for permission to build a chimney shaft for his furnace. As with other manure manufacturers he sold through local agents and advertised for ‘gentlemen desirous of acting as agents’ and ‘influential agents for unrepresented districts’. He also produced an annual circular with particulars of all his manures along with a specially written paper on phosphates. He appears to have retired at sometime in the late 1890s.

 

After Fogg left Kent Wharf it seems to have been taken over by a hay merchant, Alfred May who by 1913 was supplying forage to the Metropolitan Police Service. However throughout the 20th Century advertisements dealing with the wharf are for a wide range of activities and there seems to have been a number of different firms operating from there. In 1939 it is listed as a scrap depot in the ‘Britain needs your Scrap’ publicity campaign and after the Second World War someone there appeared to be selling Government surplus  -  secondhand tarpaulins and reconditioned bell tents with pegs and poles. An  Edward Ash was selling firewood there in 1951 and in 1970 there were railway sleepers to dispose of. By 1971 the Wharf was disused and was taken over by Lewisham Council as part of their depot, which was further down the Creek.

 

Next door to Kent both was another smaller Wharf which is shown on  the 1893 insurance maps as a boat builder’s firm owned by B. Jacob and Sons.

 

Jacobs has been founded in 1832 as a lighterage and steam tug business by Benjamin Jacob who lived at Eureka House, New Cross Road - which fifteen or so years after his death became the site of the New Cross Empire.  Like his sons, who inherited his business, he was very much involved in local public life as a Guardian of the Greenwich Union, a churchwarden and a Mason.  He was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters. He had begun as a lighterman himself and built the business up from scratch and I guess that despite their claim to be boat builders that their busiess was mainly lighterage..

 

Later the Jacobs business was run by a younger Benjamin who was to become the first Mayor of Deptford in 1900.  His brother Jessie was Mayor in 1906.  Both of them served apprenticeships as lightermen and then became partners with their father in the family business. Both of them lived in the area - Benjamin in Lewisham Way and then Pepys Road and Jesse in Douglas Way and then Florence Road. A third generation of Jacobs followed on from them in Reginald who was Master of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen in 1922 – and the firm continued until 1968 when it was finally wound up. (See Bill Ellson’s informative blog on Deptford Mayors http://deptfordmisc.blogspot.com/2010/05/jacob-brothers-mayors-of-deptford.html)

 

The firm is recorded as owning spritsail barges - one called Jacob dated from 1856 and one called Jesse from 1865 – but I don’t know if they built them themselves.  Clearly some vessels were built for them – for instance ‘Jacob’ a tug built in Greenwich in 1912 and which they still owned in 1958 despite it being hit by a flying bomb in Rotherthithe in 1944. ‘Jacob’ was eventually scrapped after it had been sold to mud shoot owners Flower and Everett in 1974.  ‘Olaf’, another tug built for them is still around and now in apparently in Barking Creek. She was built as recently as 1956 in Appledore for Jacobs and was sold to Humphreys and Grey and later to General Marine.

 

The dangers of the Creek and the work can be illustrated by the death of one of the family.  Joseph Jacobs, a lighterman aged 57, was a cousin of Jesse and Benjamin and worked for them.  Late one night he and a mate, James Watson, had to bring a barge up to Robinson’s mill and then bring an empty one away. Jesse Jacob said ‘it was a nasty night - blew very hard with small rain’.  At 1am James Watsoncame into the office and asked where Joseph was – and then said that the barge was adrift and the staff overboard.  They went to see if Joseph had gone home amd, finding he was not there they began to search until they found a body near Hills works between two barges.  The police described how at three in the morning they searched from Hoy Stairs. The verdict was that Joseph had fallen from his barge and drowned in the Creek

 

Perhaps we should end this with something more cheerful.   This was a dinner at the Lawes’ works – a firm we should get to in the next few weeks. There had been a cricket match between the two Lawes' factories at Deptford and at Barking and was held at Barking. The Lawes' Deptford workers were brought to Barking by Jacobs in the ‘beautiful new steam tug ‘Day Star’.  Naturally Jesse Jacobs and his staff were invited to take part in the following dinner, with many toasts and a sing song ending with the National Anthem.

 

I’m sorry that I can find no reference to Day Star in any tug reference material – but perhaps that just points to the fact that there were many many boats that these riverside firms built and operated which are not known outside of the barest records and which we know nothing about.  On the busy busy river they were just one in hundreds, all forgotten.

 

Writing away – articles going down the Lewisham bank of Deptford Creek - last week I covered the largest of the three Sun Wharves on the Creek along with two of the small streets which divided the wharves on the site which is now the Cockpit Arts building.  The final road, Dugald Street, lay between Sun Wharf and Kent Wharf.  It had previously been called Lime Street and newspaper reports show the same cycle as the other streets, of poverty. They record long prison sentences for things which often appear to be minor offences - but clearly weren’t if you lived in parts of Deptford.

 

Someone who got was sentenced to a month’s hard labour for child neglect was George Plummer who lived in Dugald Street. He is described as a ‘cattle drover’ with five children whose wife was in hospital with cancer. The National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children had found his young family in a filthy state – there was a vivid description given in the paper, including the maggots found on the baby. A lot of lurid detail about his failure to cope.  What happened to the children while he was in gaol isn’t mentioned.

 

Similarly Emily Carle of Dugald Street was committed for manslaughter following the death of her four-month old child from starvation.  This also, bizarrely, led to a prison sentence for William Brown who was selling newspapers in the street and calling out ‘Horrible discovery in Douglas Street ‘.  He was charged with giving out information which was not true - the Magistrate said that the starvation charge was not a ‘horrible discovery’ and in any case it was in Dugald not Douglas Street and so he was remanded in custody.

 

In other cases relating to residents of these street - Bridget Reeds was charged with obstruction in Douglas Street with three sacks of peas and 12 empty baskets.  I assume that means she was some sort of market trader.  There were also charges relating to gambling– Isaac Craig was summoned for playing pitch and toss in Douglas Street and got three days inside. In a more complicated case Isaac Jefferies was arrested for loitering for the purpose of betting in Dugald Street and for acting as a bookmaker without a certificate.  He had previous convictions for this but was only fined for the loitering.

 

At the end of Dugald Street on the Creek was Kent Wharf operated in the late 19^th century by a Thomas Fogg.  Like so many other creek side wharf operators in the 1880s he was manufacturing agricultural manure. He advertised for example: manures ..in Dry and Fine Condition .. concentrated and bone manures….turnip and mangold manure,, superphosphate of lime’

 

Fogg described himself as an ‘analytical chemist’ and was a Fellow of the Chemical Society. He lived in an upmarket house in the Paddington area initially with his widowed mother and later with his wife and daughter.  He seems to have moved onto Kent Wharf around 1860 and in 1861 applied to the Metropolitan Board of Works for permission to build a chimney shaft for his furnace. As with other manure manufacturers he sold through local agents and advertised for ‘gentlemen desirous of acting as agents’ and ‘influential agents for unrepresented districts’. He also produced an annual circular with particulars of all his manures along with a specially written paper on phosphates. He appears to have retired at sometime in the late 1890s.

 

After Fogg left Kent Wharf it seems to have been taken over by a hay merchant, Alfred May who by 1913 was supplying forage to the Metropolitan Police Service. However throughout the 20th Century advertisements dealing with the wharf are for a wide range of activities and there seems to have been a number of different firms operating from there. In 1939 it is listed as a scrap depot in the ‘Britain needs your Scrap’ publicity campaign and after the Second World War someone there appeared to be selling Government surplus  -  secondhand tarpaulins and reconditioned bell tents with pegs and poles. An  Edward Ash was selling firewood there in 1951 and in 1970 there were railway sleepers to dispose of. By 1971 the Wharf was disused and was taken over by Lewisham Council as part of their depot, which was further down the Creek.

 

Next door to Kent both was another smaller Wharf which is shown on  the 1893 insurance maps as a boat builder’s firm owned by B. Jacob and Sons.

 

Jacobs has been founded in 1832 as a lighterage and steam tug business by Benjamin Jacob who lived at Eureka House, New Cross Road - which fifteen or so years after his death became the site of the New Cross Empire.  Like his sons, who inherited his business, he was very much involved in local public life as a Guardian of the Greenwich Union, a churchwarden and a Mason.  He was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters. He had begun as a lighterman himself and built the business up from scratch and I guess that despite their claim to be boat builders that their busiess was mainly lighterage..

 

Later the Jacobs business was run by a younger Benjamin who was to become the first Mayor of Deptford in 1900.  His brother Jessie was Mayor in 1906.  Both of them served apprenticeships as lightermen and then became partners with their father in the family business. Both of them lived in the area - Benjamin in Lewisham Way and then Pepys Road and Jesse in Douglas Way and then Florence Road. A third generation of Jacobs followed on from them in Reginald who was Master of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen in 1922 – and the firm continued until 1968 when it was finally wound up. (See Bill Ellson’s informative blog on Deptford Mayors http://deptfordmisc.blogspot.com/2010/05/jacob-brothers-mayors-of-deptford.html)

 

The firm is recorded as owning spritsail barges - one called Jacob dated from 1856 and one called Jesse from 1865 – but I don’t know if they built them themselves.  Clearly some vessels were built for them – for instance ‘Jacob’ a tug built in Greenwich in 1912 and which they still owned in 1958 despite it being hit by a flying bomb in Rotherthithe in 1944. ‘Jacob’ was eventually scrapped after it had been sold to mud shoot owners Flower and Everett in 1974.  ‘Olaf’, another tug built for them is still around and now in apparently in Barking Creek. She was built as recently as 1956 in Appledore for Jacobs and was sold to Humphreys and Grey and later to General Marine.

 

The dangers of the Creek and the work can be illustrated by the death of one of the family.  Joseph Jacobs, a lighterman aged 57, was a cousin of Jesse and Benjamin and worked for them.  Late one night he and a mate, James Watson, had to bring a barge up to Robinson’s mill and then bring an empty one away. Jesse Jacob said ‘it was a nasty night - blew very hard with small rain’.  At 1am James Watsoncame into the office and asked where Joseph was – and then said that the barge was adrift and the staff overboard.  They went to see if Joseph had gone home amd, finding he was not there they began to search until they found a body near Hills works between two barges.  The police described how at three in the morning they searched from Hoy Stairs. The verdict was that Joseph had fallen from his barge and drowned in the Creek

 

Perhaps we should end this with something more cheerful.   This was a dinner at the Lawes’ works – a firm we should get to in the next few weeks. There had been a cricket match between the two Lawes' factories at Deptford and at Barking and was held at Barking. The Lawes' Deptford workers were brought to Barking by Jacobs in the ‘beautiful new steam tug ‘Day Star’.  Naturally Jesse Jacobs and his staff were invited to take part in the following dinner, with many toasts and a sing song ending with the National Anthem.

 

I’m sorry that I can find no reference to Day Star in any tug reference material – but perhaps that just points to the fact that there were many many boats that these riverside firms built and operated which are not known outside of the barest records and which we know nothing about.  On the busy busy river they were just one in hundreds, all forgotten.

 

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working down the Lewisham bank of Deptford Creek up to and just past the railway bridge - and have been saying continually that we need to look at potteries.

 

It seems very strange and unlikely that one of the major industries of Deptford in the 18th and 19th centuries was the manufacture of pottery. Most this clearly was the sort of rough stuff that we don’t really think of as pottery - chimney pots and sewer pipes and so on –rather than your actual fancy ceramics. There was at one point a short burst of ‘Deptford Ware’ but that was not really relevant to what I am writing here – and we should also remember that there are other Deptfords in this country and in America, most of which have important potteries.

 

I’ve been saying all along in these articles that I’ve been held up for writing about the potteries because I had been unable to get hold of a definitive article by archaeologist Derek Garrod which gives a breakdown of all the different potteries in Deptford.  I tried to get a copy from the Kent Archeological Rescue Unit and unfortunately the first one they sent me got lost in the post, They have now sent me another copy which they say has come from the collection of one of their members so I think I’ll send it back to them once I’ve read and scanned the article, And I’m very grateful to them for their help.

 

The article does indeed give details of the various potteries and including the names of some of the operators of them 1800. The earlier sites are sometimes very difficult for me because I don’t have access to archival material like the rate books - a key source for any local historian. This is because of the difficulties of access to both Greenwich and Lewisham local history collections – and that is probably the next thing I’m going to start complaining about here!

 

So I now have information on where the various potteries were in a fairly limited area. There is at least one which I know was sited on a part the creek which Derek Garrod didn’t cover – and I’ll get to that separately and later. Many of the potteries which he does cover are not on the actual Creekside and so of not applicable here. But there are a lot of them and we should appreciate the size of the industry.  There is a more information about the one on the Val de Travers site which I included last week but also I’m surprised, and a bit gratified, that I have found another pottery which he doesn’t mention.

 

There were probably potteries on the Creekside  from the 17^th century and a John Hall was described as the ’potter by the Tide Mill’  as early as 1680.

 

The last Deptford pottery only closed in 1961 and this was not on Creekside but nearby on what is now the Sue Godfrey Nature Park in Bronze Street. It was known as the Upper Pottery– and I have a sort of memory of being shown the remains, perhaps in the early 1970s. Sprigged stoneware was made there and can be found marked with the date of 1701. There were maybe four kilns. This was run by members of the Parry family from around 1730 until 1891 when it was taken over by a James Carroll. By 1918 it was part of the Tamworth firm of Gibbs & Canning. They eventually closed in 1961 by which time they were making oven linings and insulators. I am told that a wall is built of pieces of pottery – but is now all under plant growth.

 

The second oldest of the Creekside potteries appear to be those near the tide mill – and I am not sure exactly where these were or how near is ‘near’.   The address was apparently ‘Neathercoats Wharf’ and this was in what was once called ‘Slaughterhouse Lane’ – which is what is now ‘Creekside’.   One of them was run by an Aaron Rawlings and then by his widow, Mary. She was succeeded by a James Forrester in 1760 and then by a succession of others until 1800.   The other was run by a Matthew Barker and seems to have closed by 1761.

 

It may be possible that these are the forerunners of the pottery on Evelyn Wharf which I wrote about back in February.  In the late 1850s that wharf seems to have been acquired by a William Parry as a pottery. He was only there for about six years but used his short spell there to advertise energetically. He made and sold ‘redware’ - sewer pipes, chimney stacks and flower pots.

 

And so we come to the Lower Pottery .  A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Val de Travers works on Sun Wharf and mentioned that it had been a pottery.  This was there in 1730 and belonged to a John Willson, followed by Isaac Parry, Thomas Hopkins and William Northern. I wonder if it was part of the property which was auctioned in 1832 as 14 lots in a ’freehold premises adjoining Deptford Creek’. This included potteries in the occupation of Isaac Parry.  In 1858 it was taken over by Isaac Solly Lester and Benjamin Biggs – more about them in a moment and they certainly were not potters

 

Ownership and/or management of several of these sites were by Isaac Parry and other members of the Parry family. There were in fact several generations of Isaac Parry’s, fathers and sons. The first traced was born in Deptford in 1711 and I suppose it is not inconceivable that he came from a family already involved in the trade.  He must have been running the ‘Upper Pottery' – the Bronze Street one - from 1734 to 1744  and the Lower Pottery from 1755. A wealthy man with property in central London and also property in ‘West Cheam from where he sourced his clay.

 

He died in 1764. He had two sons, Isaac, born in 1737 and John. The third generation Isaac Parry was born in 1766.  All of them describe their occupation as ‘potter’- and in 1801 their kiln house and coal store are mentioned following thefts.  This third Isaac Parry served on several local institutions – was on the Poor Law Board and on the boards of local medical ‘dispensaries’.   In 1811 the firm was able to declare a dividend although in 1814 bankruptcy was threatened and survived.

 

A fourth generation Isaac Parry was born in 1801. In charge of the firm in 1847 he advertised his bricks for sale – ‘yellow seconds, cutters and pickings.  His brickfield was in Peckham Lane ‘opposite the Asylum’ and in an area where a lot of house building was taking place. He is also said to have made crucibles and sanitary ware.   He had two sons, one - George - died in 1845 after a short illness‘. Isaac died in 1854 and so a fifth generation took over the business.

 

Of the two sites – the Upper Pottery went on to be taken over in 1891 and to survive in other ownership until 1961. 

 

I covered the Lower Pottery two weeks ago when the site became the head office of asphalt manufactures, Val de Travers.  It had operated as a pottery since 1730 and was taken over by the Parry family in 1840 when it went into other use.  A drawing from the early 1840s is thought to show the Lower Pottery.  The Parry family for whatever reason no longer used it and it was taken over by Thomas Hopkins but by 1846 was empty.  By 1858 it was in the hands of Isaac Solly Lester, Benjamin Biggs and Thomas Phipson.  They are an interesting trio but not I think anything to do with pottery manufacture. Isaac Solly Lister was quite upmarket with city links but had been in partnership with Biggs in a nuisance creating City naphtha works. Biggs had been involved with Frank Hills' brother Edwin in artificial manure production. Phipson was a professor of analytic chemistry.  I have my own theories as to what they were doing there – but that must wait for the result of someone else’s – non pottery related – research.

 

So finally we come to the pottery on Evelyn Wharf which is not covered in Derek Garrod's article and which I wrote about in February

 

William Parry was on the wharf only six years until in 1864 he petitioned for bankruptcy and sold the lease on the wharf.  I commented on the long court case relevant to his bankruptcy for the recovery of £16. 12s 2d. – And thought that even in 1860 it wasn’t a vast amount of money to start a major legal action on.  It was confusing in that nearly everyone involved in the case from the bankrupt owner, the creditors and even the lawyer had the name of Parry – one whom turned out to be William Parry’s mother. Later arguments in the case were about who it was who actually submitted the written petition of bankruptcy and what their names were.  The Parry family had a long and distinguished record as potters on a number of sites along Deptford Creek and William Parry’s short stay at Evelyn Wharf is only a small episode in that. It’s a pity it seems to have ended with a family row.

 

The Deptford Creekside potters seems to have consisted of a backbone of five generations of Parrys with some others.  We have not finished with pottery yet and we will eventually get to other one, not mentioned by Derek Garrod as we near the Thames.