Dreadnought walk and wharf

 

Leaving the Creek, Waitrose and the old gas works site you can now walk along a bland river front walkway or go on the parallel Thames Street. There were several wharves along this stretch plus jumble of cottages and pubs along and a ferry.  Many small enterprises came and went. The Travers Survey of 1695 shows this as an empty space – marshland with maybe osiers growing and perhaps some gardens – but by the end of the 18^th century some wharves were busy here. In the mid-1970s there were still six barge repair yards along here before you got to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel – but now there are just modern flats offices and new pubs with no sign of the bustle of previous years.

 

Dowells Street is a new road which runs from Waitrose and the old gas works site to join up with Thames Street.  It is named for a local coal merchant. The riverside path is ‘Dreadnought Walk’ named for the next wharf we come to after the gasworks which was called ‘Dreadnought Wharf’. It seems to have been in use from the mid 18^th century when it is marked as ‘Boat/Ship Building’ on Searles’ Map.   I had assumed - as I’m sure many people do - that it was called ‘Dreadnought” because it had some connection with the famous hospital ship which lay out in the river nearby.  Perhaps, I thought, it was the wharf which the ship used to unload or load goods and people. But, no, apparently not. The Dreadnought ship apparently used a wharf on the north bank of the River.  Perhaps it was just called ‘Dreadnought’ because that ship was one of the local ‘sights’ nearby.

 

Dreadnought wharf is said to have been seems to have been used as moorings for some of the Greenwich fishing fleet.  I’ll say something about Greenwich fisherman in another article but it was a very big industry which would have dominated this area.  In 1859 the wharf was taken over by Rennie and Sons for iron ship building; they had had a site on Deptford Creek since 1837 and then were at Dreadnought for the next 56 years.  They were John and George Rennie, sons of the famous civil engineer. At Dreadnought Wharf they built iron ships -steamboats for the Indian government, gunboats for the Royal Navy and the Brazilian Government, tugs, a bucket dredger, and a torpedo gun boat. In the early 20th century they built paddle steamers of 200 passenger capacity for the London County Council pleasure boat service - Christopher Wren, Marlowe, Pepys, and Rennie. In 1915 they built a train ferry for 500 tons and they then left Greenwich and went to Wivenhoe in Essex.

 

The wharf was then bought by Tilbury Contracting and Dredging Company for the maintenance and repair of its vessels. – they previously had a works on Providence wharf in East Greenwich as Hughes & Co. They had a large fleet of tugs, hoppers and barges which they used to provide river services. In the two World Wars, they focused on the construction and repair of small ships for the Admiralty, while the machine shops turned out components for mine-sweepers. They left Dreadnought in 1963 and are now Interserve, which is a multinational; the Hughes family remaining on the Board until the 1970s.

 

Dreadnought Wharf was later taken on by the Anglo Swedish Electric Welding Company who was on several local wharves in this period .They promoted a new type of electric welding pioneered in Sweden but Oscar Kjellberg. 

 

Next after Dreadnought was Norway Wharf. In the 1840s it was used by William Joyce, the Greenwich shipbuilder, whose works were nearby at Kent Ironworks – and who I wrote about in a previous issue of the Weekender.  He built a number of ships here, but sadly died very young.  The wharf was taken over by another engineering firm, T, W. Cowan, who made agricultural steam ploughs, road rollers and other such heavy equipment. There was also a stone merchant here and later Harvey – whose huge factory eventually stood in Woolwich Road and made boilers, fractionating towers, and perforations (yes, holes).  They were followed by a string of businesses so typical of areas like this – building industry materials, skip hire, barge repairs, and so on.

 

The walk along the Riverside continues but the walk way is very plain with no reference to the past. Up until the 1980s all of these wharves were busy with numerous small businesses which may not have been very beautiful but were essential to the metropolitan area. Eventually everything was swept away to be replaced for the current houses, flats, offices and superstore and with no reference to the works which had stood there

 

Thames Street runs parallel to the river going toward the Cutty Sark. There was once a parallel road between Thames Street and the river called Wood Wharf.   This area has been decried in detail in a great book by Ron Richards whose working life was spent in boat building and repair here –it is called Victorian Wood Wharf and Greenwich riverside 1820-2010. .  A number of buildings here, numbered 32-36 Wood Wharf were themselves known as ‘Wood Wharf’.  In the 18^th and early 19^th centuries the area belonged to the Bishop family – and there was a lane here which went to Bishops Buildings’. I know that Ron Richards tried, and failed, to get the name used again when the new flats and offices were built. The Bishop family built barges and maintained a workshop and a sail making business here.

 

In the late 19^th century boat building began to be replaced on these wharves by ‘lighterage firms – these were businesses which managed lighters, ‘dumb’ barges with no power which carried goods around the port. In 1967 Pope and Bond took over much of the site.  They undertook boat and barge repair and were one of only a few such businesses left on the Thames – a vital facility for all craft using the River. Eventually they lost a major contract and were forced to close. Ironically the Government had ‘safeguarded’ working wharves along the River but had failed to do so for boat and barge repair works.  There was a huge effort made to save Wood Wharf but it was soon taken over by developers

 

There was another industry at Wood Wharf from the early 1970s – as a rehearsal studio run by the Lewisham musician, Billy Jenkins. His Voice of God Collective recorded tracks wt titles like ‘The Greenwich One Way System’ for Wood Wharf Records.  However – others worked there too and for ten years the premises was used by musicians you will have actually heard of, seen on TV and whose records you will have bought.. 

 

Horseferry Road goes down to the River from Thames Street - and ferries once ran from here to the Isle of Dogs. There had been several ferries from Greenwich over to the Island over the centuries. It is not always clear where they actually landed, although some used Billingsgate Dock, near the current foot tunnel. By the 17^th century there was ‘Potters Ferry’ although its antecedents are very unclear. It was owned by the Warner family but there were also various watermen’s groups who felt they had claims and there were many disputes.  In 1812 an Act of Parliament established a Poplar and Greenwich ferry. This was a horse ferry – which carried horses and cattle and was part of the general expansion on the Island including the West India Docks. The watermen involved in the Potters Ferry were not happy about this and managed to get the exclusive right to take foot passengers. Much aggravation ensued. The two ferries continued in parallel but it was not until the 1880s that things changed.

 

In 1888 a steam ferry took over the old horse ferry site.  ‘Ambitious and mechanically daring’ it was designed to carry large vehicles onto steam ferry boats regardless of the state of the tide.  A concrete slip was built at the end of Horse Ferry Road and down this travelled a 270 ton landing stage on rails.  Underneath the end of Horse Ferry Road was a large chamber with steam engines which ran the platforms on the slips by steel cables.  20 ton weights counterbalanced these 145 feet below.  This amazing device lasted less than ten yeas before it closed.  Relics of its rails can still be seen on the foreshore and the underground chamber may still be there. In the mid 1990s investigations were carried out and Clive Chambers, who was not a young man, dived down into the chamber and managed to take some pictures. Activists hoped that a Museum of the Working Thames could be established here

 

Inevitably a developer moved in to Wood Wharf and like the rest of the area it became identikit flats and offices.

 

Finally – to go inland to a more recent planning battle. Until recently on the corner of Thames Street and Horse Ferry Road stood a pub.  There were lots of pubs along these streets and alleyways but this one stood out because it looked a bit odd with big double doors. It has even been suggested that it was an old fire station although Ron Richards says it had been a pub since 1840.  It was called 'The Old Local Britons" - a name sometimes associated with working men's clubs and Friendly Societies particularly in the 1790s when such clubs could be contrasted with the revolutionary French.  An Amicable Society of Loyal Britons was indeed set up in Greenwich in 1834 and maybe this was where they met.  This interesting building became a posh restaurant (I remember their bang bang chicken with affection) but then became vacant and has since fallen to the developers.  

 

This was a quick look at an interesting and crowded area. For further information

Ron Richards Victorian Wood Wharf and Greenwich riverside 1820-2010 (self published and available only from Ron)

Joan Tucker. Ferries of the Lower Thames. Published by Amberley. This gives an enormous amount of detail on the quarrels between the various ferry companies

 

I have also used for this article 'Wood Wharf. A life preserver for the working Thames. Published for Groundwork in 1997

 

And there are endless web sites featuring the inimitable Billy Jenkins and his work at Wood Wharf and elsewhere.