Edge Woolwich builders

I had intended this week to do another episode about the history of water supply and waterworks in the Greenwich Borough.  I have, however, been persuaded by a friend that water every week is a bit boring.  So, something else this week - but I will come back to or local waterworks very soon.

 A few weeks ago, I wrote aboutthe boat builders Cunis/Cubow who were sited on the most easterly part of where the old Royal Dockyard had been in Woolwich.  This site is the one where the Council are currently requiring the developer to demolish flats which, they say, have not been built to planning specifications.  The site was used by industry from the 16^th century through until the 1980s and this article is about a building company, Thomas and Edge, whose works was on the site in the early part of the 20^th Century.

Thomas and Edge was set up in 1895 by partners John Edge and Edwin Thomas.  Details of their backgrounds are unclear there is nothing to suggest that they came from wealthy or even particularly well connected families  John Edge would have been in his early 30s in 1895.  He had been born in Plumstead, was married, and described his occupation as “builder’s clerk” - although who he had worked for isn’t known. Edwin Thomas was in his early 20s and came from Shropshire. Is occupation is always given as “building contractor”.

They moved their works onto the old Royal Dockyard site in 1915 and I don’t know where they were before that. Their site was slightly to the east of the boat building site and the slips used by Cunis and, later, Cubow. They had a large two-storey shed and a riverside wharf with cranes, plus a yard with equipment and stores. They also had a large woodworking shop and this was probably in a range of single story sheds alongside the main building.

They claimed their first major contract was for the Goldie Leigh hospital.  This was a very large scheme and their contract was for £64,000.  It is unclear how much the hospital was built by them for this sum.  It is difficult to believe that a contract for the entire scheme would be awarded to a small new firm and it implies they had a reliable workforce already in existence and also a reputation to deliver a contract successfully.

 This problem of not know

ing the extent of their contract with the Goldie Leigh Hospital scheme repeats itself throughout the early years of the company’s history. In 1928 the firm produced a book with a list of projects and big pictures of buildings which they said they had built.  It is implied that these buildings were constructed entirely by Thomas and Edge but no dates or details are given for this work. Today it is not hard to check the background to some of these buildings because they are included in the Survey of Woolwich or listed by English Heritage and, quite honestly, it is unusual to find any reference to Thomas and Edge as a contractor to these sites.  I suspect they did work on all these sites, but perhaps not the whole contract.

I have one very good example. 2They claimed to have built “Ice wells, distribution depot. Messrs.United Carlo Gatti. Architect Henry Drew. The Gatti building, near King’s Cross, is now the London Canal Museum and I know people who volunteer there.  So I asked then who did construction work on this building?

They replied with: “Names of some builders working at 12/13 New Wharf Road, N1, [now London Canal Museum] from Islington: 1906, 12 Feb: New stabling - insertion of new first floor for stables. Thomas and Edge, builders, Woolwich.  The architect in 1906 was Henry Phelps-Drew (c.1858-1917), who designed other buildings for United Carlo Gatti Ltd.”

 

But we don’t have such details on most of  the other buildings. In the book about their work it says that they built a number of premises in Powis Street, Woolwich.  In fact they seem to suggest they were involved in the complete rebuilding of Powis Street or, that at least a considerable proportion of the work was handed to them. Survey of Woolwich lists most properties in Powis Street sometimes giving a building history.  Those they attribute to Thomas and Edge in the 1890s seem to consist of shops 25 -31 in Powis Street and possibly Garret’s department store.  

They describe old Woolwich Library as one of their earliest works, publishing a picture, undated and with no detail.  They are not mentioned in the detailed account of its construction in the Survey of Woolwich which talks at length about its architects. Similarly undated is a picture of another local building - the Matchless factory - which was probably built in 1911. It’s impossible to know if they actually built the whole building or not.  Co-incidentally, in 1928, Matchless began to make motor cycle sidecars in a factory at Mast Pond Wharf, adjacent to Thomas and Edge’s premises.

The book also lists a number of buildings with which they were involved in central London - mainly in Regent Street. Some of these are listed and one very prominent building is part of the Quadrant at 100 Regent Street.  It is Grade II listed and the English Heritage report on it is very detailed as are accompanying statements by Westminster Council.  None of them mention Thomas and Edge but the illustration published by them says that they were the contractors.   Hmm - this in an extremely prestigious building.  Similarly they claim to have built what was a headquarters building for the Co-operative Permanent Building Society, which became Nationwide, on prominent site in Bloomsbury Way.

All of these buildings, whether built by Thomas and Edge or not are in very conventional ‘grand’ Edwardian style – nothing even remotely ‘modern’ about them.  

The company describes numerous buildings it was associated with building in parts of Africa. Among many others, it illustrates the shipping company Elder Dempster’s various headquarters in Accra, Lagos Freetown.  It would be very interesting to know the fate of some of these buildings but they give no exact addresses or indeed dates.  I’m afraid that using Google Street View to find a building almost a hundred years old, in other use, in a city the size of Lagos is a daunting task.

While I have been very cynical about their role in the construction of many prestige buildings I am sure that they did actually do a lot of work. They appear to have been involved in construction of a number of temporary hospitals in south London in the Great War and they built housing in the Crayford area for Vickers’ munitions workers. 

One local building which they probably did actually build was the Fuel Research complex in East Greenwich, very close to the Pilot Pub.  The organization had origins as part of the gas works research on military gases n the Great War but continued with research on applications like, for instance, the conversion of coal into fuel oil. It closed in 1957 to become part of Warren Springs at Stevenage.   Thomas and Edge also built the recently demolished Maybloom club in Plumstead and the Queen Victoria – the half timbered pub at the top end of Wellington Street which is now a sort of supermarket. They also almost certainly built the Palace Cinema in Eltham in 1922. -  This was on the corner of Passey Place. and eventually closed in 1972 and was demolished.  They also had military contracts and between 1937 and 1940 they built seven barrack blocks and an institute at Aldershot, Hampshire; workshops at Feltham, signals establishments at Woolwich, and the construction of factories, laboratories, research buildings, office blocks and ranges at Woolwich Arsenal which took four years' work.

By 1930 the firm had a Birmingham office with others at Cheltenham, Wolverhampton, Brighton and Lewes, Sussex.  In Woolwich as well as the works at Royal Dockyard Wharf, they had offices in the old Woolwich Building Society’s Equitable House

The firm was not above setting out the odd stunt. One of these in 1905 involved the famous escape artist Houdini. On stage at the Theatre Royal in Woolwich Houdini accepted a challenge from H. C. Greenwood, manager at Thomas and Edge. He would make a box and see if Houdini could escape from it.  The house was 'packed with some 3000 people to see the American take up the gauntlet. Houdini entered the box, which was made of one inch deal, and the lid was then nailed down by Mr. Greenwood. The box was then taken into the "ghost house” and for nineteen minutes it stayed there. Then Houdini sprang out of the curtains dragging the box behind him. It was still nailed down and corded, and when opened “was found to be perfectly empty.”

In 1907 John Edge was found guilty of recklessly driving a pony and cart ‘furiously, to the common danger of passers-by in the thoroughfare. … narrowly escaped running over a lady’.  This may or may not indicate a problem with John Edge but by 1910 he had left Woolwich and the partnership. By 1911 he had moved to Byker on the outskirts of Newcastle.

More cheerful is a report of 1920s staff dinner at the Cannon Street Hotel.  Edwin Thomas presided and said   Grace.  Dinner was eaten and I’m sorry that we don’t know the menu. After a toast to ‘The King’ there was a musical performance by members of staff.  Some “excellent songs were rendered - interspersed with a “few toasts”.  Edwin Thomas thanked the staff but spoke more seriously about ‘unsettled times”; and how the building trade was still feeling the effects of the terrible war. ‘Auld Lang Syne," followed by the National Anthem, brought the evening to a close.

After John Edge's departure Edwin Thomas continued to run the firm for many years, while living in some grandeur at the Pagoda Blackheath.  The firm eventually closed in the 1970s.

Thanks: Malcolm Tucker