People are always walking along the riverside in Greenwich and we have the longest bit of riverbank in London. It’s something, in my view, that we should exploit a bit more to tourists and our own residents - talk and write about what there is, and was, there. We have some very important things to say. An article about the Riverside would be very very long. At would need to start at the western end, perhaps go up Deptford Creek, and continue until we got to Erith. And that would cover most of the major industries in the Borough – but not all!
First of all we have to decide where actual western boundary of the Borough is. Today ,legally, the Borough boundary is a wall which runs alongside Watergate Street in Deptford. However that hasn’t been the boundary for very long, in fact probably just since 1993 when we gave a great and very interesting chunk of the Borough to Lewisham, next door. Greenwich is historically in the County of Kent and so perhaps an historical walk should start at the old Boundary and not the modern one. But that turns out that it’s not quite as easy as it seems.
The historic boundary line between Kent and Surrey was the Earl Sluice – a vanished waterway which ran from the Denmark Hill area down to the Thames near Rotherhithe. It became a sewer in the 1820s and there is an Earl Sluice pump house in Chilton Grove, Rotherhithe. There is also a monument with a plaque about the Kent boundary on the riverside walk between South Dock entrance and Plough Way, Rotherhithe. However I think a Greenwich riverside walk needs to start a bit downriver of this.
Without going into a lot of detail - from the late 19th century the Greenwich Borough boundary was different from the Kent/Surrey boundary. So that pre-1993 Borough boundary would be a good place to start. It appears however that this Metropolitan Borough Boundary was inside Deptford Dockyard – more of that in a moment. The boundary ran from the River down a little canal which was built by George Ledwell Taylor in 1828 to connect the Dockyard’s mast ponds to the River. Today the site seems inaccessible inside what was Convoys Wharf - although I have a suspicion that the Lenox Project (which hopes to rebuild the Lenox war ship) has an interest in the site. I don’t know if there is any boundary marker there and I am sorry to start talking about a walk which begins as somewhere you can’t get to.
The Royal Naval Dockyard, Deptford, is important in the history of our country and in the history of industry and technology. Sadly many books written about the history of industry ignore it, along with the other two Kentish Royal Dockyards at Woolwich and Chatham. These were very large organised workplaces long before what has become known as the ‘industrial revolution’.
Deptford ships were used by the King from the 13th century and it is thought that a pond with a connection to the river was here then when The Thomas was here in 1418. A dock was dug soon after. The Kings Yard was set up in 1513 under Henry VIII - on site here was a storehouse, the first permanent Dockyard building. It was finally demolished only the early 1950s, and the foundation stone is apparently a feature in the Computer Department at University College, London. Under Elizabeth the yard was expanded and it was associated with Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind and the ships which opposed the Armada. Later voyages of exploration by James Cook, Martin Frobisher and George Vancouver began here. From Deptford came ships for Nelson’s Navy including some of those which fought at Trafalgar. Over 450 great ships were built here and included the first successful naval steamship. It was closed in 1869.
After 1871 the site was used by the Corporation of London for their Foreign Cattle Market. there was provision for 4,000 -5,000 live cattle, pens for 14,000 sheep and 80 slaughterhouses. This closed in 1912, and the site became His Majesty’s Army Supply Reserve Depot and Transport Depot and the U.S. Advance Amphibious Vehicle Base.
This huge site is now generally called ‘Convoys’ – the firm which purchased it in 1984, and used it for the import of newsprint. Convoys was owned by News International, and the site closed down in early 2000. It was sold in 2008 and it is now owned Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. developers. I am very unclear what is happening on the site now but planning applications have come and gone. In 2014 Boris Johnson as Mayor of London overruled Lewisham Council in favour of the developers. Since then there have been some in-depth archaeological work and at least one book. It has been established that by far the greater part of the dockyard survives as buried structures filled in between 1869 and 1950. In 2014 the site was added to an international watch list for important historical areas under threat.
This is a huge closed site and we can’t walk through it. Is there anything there which we could see if we could go there? Most of the dockyard structures above ground level which had survived until 1955 have gone. What remains is a huge building now called ‘Olympia’. This is part of a massive iron-framed shed of 1848, with great swooping twin corrugated roofs which originally covered two slipways. Convoys used to use it for storage. The clock tower. was saved and is now on top of the shopping centre at Thamesmead. When I visited the site in the 1980s there were still some old cannon in use as bollards – are they still there??
A trip on the river would let us see the river wall and some indications of the remains of riverside structures. This would include the blocked entrance to the docks, stairs, slipways and basin of the previous five centuries. They were designed and constructed by the leading engineers of their day and included works by John Rennie and George Ledwell Taylor. This included entrances to the pair of slipways and John Rennie’s 1814 monumental stone worked entrance to the Great Basin and the wharf which he designed. They would have included the Great Dock of 1517, with magnificent granite piers evident on the wharf wall and a finely engineered massive stone dock entrance, with other stonework dating from the end of the 18th to the early 19th. There was a landing place and look out stairs dating from around 1720, and closed in the 1930s and there was an early Georgian causeway on the foreshore.
Also on the riverfront is a more modern landing stage and jetty. This is in concrete and was built for the War Department in 1934 by Ove Arup with Christian & Nielsen. A Roll roll-off – ‘Ro Ro’ – terminal, with two berths, built in 1976, projects into the river.
Eventually at the very end of our impossible walk along the waterfront at Deptford Dockyard there is something you can sometimes go andsee and that is the Master Shipwrights House. In 1998 it was sold to two young men- Chris and Willi - who have restored it, researched it and sometimes open it up to public view. They have renamed it the Shipwright’s Palace and it stands by the eastern boundary wall, with a north front facing the river and a riverside garden. It was built in 1708 by Joseph Allin, who was the Master Shipwright, the senior technical officer in the Dockyard and a house went with the job. It included the pay offices; the 'Tap House'; boatswains lodging and garden; Officers Offices and the Master Shipwrights lodging and gardens’. A single-storey brew house was added in 1710.
Next there is the dockyard wall; and we are in the Borough of Greenwich. Perhaps a quick look at sources of more information:
Book - The Deptford Royal Dockyard and Manor of Sayes Court, London. by Anthony Francis, MOLA, 2017. this is a report of the archaeological work on the site and very much recommended.
Web sites:
http://shipwrightspalace.blogspot.com/ Lots of local information and research
https://navaldockyards.org/ specialist society with publications on the subject
http://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/ buried on the site is any information we get about the history of the yard
http://www.buildthelenox.org/ project hoping to set up a visitors centre for the site
https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/discovering-deptford-royal-dockyard-pictures
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