Now, it’s about time I returned to my alphabetical list of sites from The Industrial Archaeology of South-East London’. Skipping a few sites - which I’ll come back to - I’ve reached 'Dial Square’ on the Royal Arsenal site.
So what does SELIA have to say about ‘Dial Square? - ‘The remaining side of the 1717 square, probably by Vanburgh, consists of a long single story brick building with central pedimented archway’. Now of course I am aware that the people who compiled SELIA were very unlikely to have any idea about what was actually on the Arsenal site because in those days there was no access into it - so that entry gives no sense of what and where ‘Dial Square’ is, or was.
If you look at a modern map - let’s try Google maps and put in ‘Dial Square’ - it lists nothing in Woolwich with that name. ‘Dial Square’ according to Google is the name of a bar in a football -related establishment in North London. If you put ‘Dial Square’ into Google search it just comes up with endless north London football related sites. For someone like me, who is very turned off by both football and bars full of sporty men, that’s not at all good.………………. Hmmmm!
So what do other my sources of information have to say about ‘Dial Square’? What does Darrell Spurgeon’s say in his ‘Discover Woolwich and its Environs’? He doesn’t actually mention ‘Dial Square’ but he does have an entry under ‘Dial Arch Block’. Now most people today will know that ‘Dial Arch’ is the name of the pub on the Arsenal site which has a very decorative entrance and that must be what Darrell was referring to.
Darrell also says: ‘Only the entrance front with its powerful archway remains from the former gun machining factory built 1717-1720 which with other buildings covered a wide area and was generally known as the ‘Great Pile’. The design has traditionally been attributed to John Vanbrugh but it is now considered it may have been designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor’.
There is a description of the Great Pile in Vincent’s ‘Warlike Woolwich’ published in 1875 when the site was a very active manufacturing establishment. He says: ‘it consists of various fitters and founders shops but is seldom visited by the public except when there is some great casting to be made in the workshop at the back. This and the adjacent brass foundry were formally the main buildings of the Royal Gun Factories’. This rather implies that visitors were encouraged to come and watch men at work on selected castings.
Of course, I also have ‘The Survey of Woolwich’ to tell me what is going on here and it is very, very informative –with so much detail as to be more than a bit intimidating. There is also a map from 1777 of the Arsenal site on the very excellent Arsenal website 9https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/). This shows the area to the north of the ‘Dial Arch’ marked as ‘Dial Square’ and the arch is the entrance to the square - known as the ‘Great Pile’. These buildings connected evolved over the centuries and changed a great deal. Interestingly, although all of these histories name the area behind ‘Dial Arch’ as ‘The Great Pile’ and ‘Dial Square’ an earlier historian, Oliver Hogg, says that it was originally called ‘Artificers Court’ and was changed to ‘Dial Square’ when the Sundial was installed.
The Survey also explains how it is that a football team begun among workers there was originally called ‘Dial Square Football Club’. Hence the sentimental naming of the North London bar as ‘Dial Square’ and connecting it with football in North London. The Survey also explains that the last buildings of the ‘Great Pile’ were finally cleared as late as 1969.
In the interest of keeping this article at a reasonable length it would be best if I stick to the Dial Arch itself here. If you want to find out about the Great Pile buildings please read ‘The Survey of London’ which has an enormous amount of detail on them.
When the Arsenal site was finally closed and handed over to English Partnerships for redevelopment all that was left of the Great Pile and Dial Square was the line of buildings which have since been turned into a pub with the entrance through the old gateway in the middle. Very early on, before any ‘regeneration’, took place on the site I booked a room there to hold a seminar for the Gunpowder Mills Study Group, who were very keen to visit every site where explosives were made. We were put in one of the rooms which is now part of the pub and there was absolutely nothing there except some chairs. We were able to make a cup of coffee for people if we brought our own kettle and cups. There were no toilets and people had to go across the road and use the ones in the market.
The entrance now used to enter the pub is in brown brick and is described, by Historic England, as having ‘large square battered piers with moulded caps’ - ‘battered’ means the brickwork is leaning inwards from its base - and is ‘a gabled round-arched gauged brick gateway with blocked voussoirs’- which means the bricks were made of specially soft brick earth so they could be cut and rubbed. Voussoirs are the specially shaped bricks which make up the arch. It is also described as a ‘distinctive gable-headed and rusticated arch’. The Survey of London suggests that it ‘plays with military architectural forms’ and reminds us that ‘visitors encountered this view on first arriving at the site’ and originally ‘the great warehouse loomed up beyond’. All of which means that it was designed to make a major impression and was no doubt very expensive. A measure of how it was valued by Governments of the day.
But that’s not all. 'The central arch is flanked by battered pylons topped with pyramids of shot’. The original piles of cannon balls had gone by 1950 but they were replaced in the 1980s and replaced again more recently.
At the back of the archway is a beam installed i1780 which is inscribed with the names of former Inspectors of Artillery and the Royal Brass Foundry before 1855. These were generally solders who had won their reputations in the Peninsula Wars and who went on to distinguished careers and major appointments - in their case in the artillery and or Royal Ordnance. Sadly I don’t have the space here to look at who they were and what they did.
So we come to the reason why it is called ‘Dial Arch’ – in the centre of the arch is a large sundial dated 1764. This dial doesn’t seem to be listed in the various directories British sundials and even the Survey has little to say about it. It is suggested that it was there to remind Arsenal workers about keeping to set times. It is sometimes thought that the Industrial Revolution made accurate timekeeping important. But in the Woolwich area the Royal Dockyard would have expected work to be done to time so it would be a familiar concept. A sundial is not an accurate way of setting time schedules and – anyway - there were clocks around in the 1760s! So, what was going on?
We have been rescued with information about the sundial sent to me by the ever estimable Ian Bull.
Ian says ‘in 1756 a clock had been installed but it wasn’t accurate and the Sundial was erected to regulate and replace it, Major Oliver Hogg wrote: "The clock with the turret in which it was placed, has long since passed away, but the dial is still proudly displayed …..Its primary purpose has disappeared and no one in these days accords the dial that attention which it once deserved”. In 1777 it was decided that the Sundial needed recalibrating. In the late 19th Century an electric clock, driven from a master clock, was erected on a north eastern corner of Dial Square. The original sundial has either been replaced or very heavily restored.”
So now these magnificent military buildings have been turned into a pub for Young’s Brewery, part of the redevelopment of the site by Berkeley Homes. I have only been there twice and on the second occasion the chair I was sitting on collapsed depositing me on the floor. This was ignored by the bar staff until someone from an adjoining table went to the bar and said some things after which they suddenly became very helpful – so thank you ‘unknown other customer’.
So – ‘Dial Square’ is a pub in north London and ‘Dial Arch’ is a pub in south London. I am sure there must be a message there, but I’m not sure what it is
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