I think it’s time I came to the end of this long trail of industries up
and down Deptford Creek. I have quite a list of firms I haven’t covered – but
either I’m not sure where they were, or I don’t know enough, or anything
interesting enough to make up an article – but I will try and see that they get
a mention in the follow up book I am planning.
I had intended to end with an article on General Steam Navigation who
were on the last few wharves of Creekside before it joins the Thames –and who
lasted into the 1970s. But I included an article on them way back in March 2020
when I was writing about Thameside and then again in the book I did on ‘The
Greenwich Riverside: Upper Watergate to Angerstein’. So the following is a brief summary of what I
put there for those of you who don’t remember the article and haven’t bought
the book.
General Steam Navigation were on the most easterly section of the wharf,
alongside the Creek. Some readers will remember them. I am sure many of us oldies will remember the
Royal Daffodil steaming across to France with day trippers in the 1950s and 60s. GSN’s founder, Thomas Brocklebank,
is said to have first built a paddle steamer on Deptford Creek, then other vessels
from other shipbuilder were taken over by them. Eagle built in 1820, was a
wooden paddle steamer, used on the Margate Service, followed by Hero, Royal
Sovereign, City of London and Brocklebank. Later Harlequin and Columbine were
built here by a Mr Evenden.
This Mr Brocklebank was a Deptford timber merchant and is not to be
confused with the Liverpool shipbuilder of the same name who lived in Westcombe
Park – my back garden was probably part of his park.
General Steam was set by a group of business men in 1824 led by the
construction contractors Joliffe and Banks. By 1825 they were had a fleet of 15
Deptford-built steamers at Stowage. They
used them for passenger transport and screw driven steamers for their cargo
trade. They carried mails and pioneered a ‘coastal steamship services on which
England depended’. They imported live cattle and sheep – a trade was lost with
the opening of the Foreign Cattle Market on the Deptford Dockyard site. While
they specialised in links with other British ports but they also ran all those
day trips to resorts down river and across the Channel. By 1837 they had 351
vessels.
Originally in the 19th
century Stowage Wharf was leased by General Steam from the East India Company
but from 1900 parts of the site were leased to the London Electricity Supply
Company for Deptford Power Station expansion – starting with Stowage Wharf.
In the Great War General
Steam’s yard was taken over by the Government and the Company lost 25 vessels
on war service. In the Second World War when
they had 45 ships they evacuated London schoolchildren. Later their vessels had
a distinguished role at Dunkirk where eight of their ships are thought to have
evacuated 31,000 troops. They also
evacuated troops from smaller ports and much else. Deptford Yard was badly
bombed on several occasions including a V2 in the Creek itself. Before D-day
303 smaller vessels were converted in various ways here including landing craft
and anti aircraft ships
After the war vessels
continued to be built at Deptford where there was still a staff of about 300. This
ended in the mid-1960s and men were laid off from 1967 and the yard became a
lorry depot. General Steam was swallowed up into P&O in 1972, and then the
last remains of the Deptford Yard closed.
General Steam ought to be better
known. They lasted nearly a hundred and
fifty years; provided a long lasting and efficient service.
Walking round Glaisher Street
and rest of the area you will learn nothing of this. The shipbuilding sites all eventually disappeared
under an expanded Deptford Power Station – and there is nothing about that
revolutionary structure either. I guess very few Deptford residents will
realise what a distinguished ship building site this was.
So – GSN is the final part of
Deptford Creek and this is the 68th article I’ve done on the Creek
and its industries. When I started I had no idea of how much I would find and
how interesting and important so much of it would turn out to be. I thought it would be a few coal and
aggregate wharves plus Merryweather’s, the Greenwich Railway, Bazalgette
Pumping Station and Mumford’s Mill. I knew there had been a big chemical
industry – and that probably I was the only person who had studied it, and I
also knew about one shipbuilder, William Joyce (my paper on him to a Docklands Shipbuilding
History Conference was cancelled because of the pandemic).
So I decided to not stop at
the obvious place – Deptford Bridge – but to carry on up to Lewisham. That way I could cover the Armoury Mill,
which another site of national importance we seem to choose to ignore. I could wanted to cover Elliott’s since no
one will ever believe that Britain once led the world on computer systems
unless we keep saying it - loudly!! I
could also, by looking at the older course of the river, take in Penn’s
engineering works – the world’s leading marine engine builder.
I think the first sites where
I began to realise we were going to find all sorts of new things were some way
in – first some revelations on Rennie’s
engineering works, amd then the maltings on Hope Wharf where I was amazed to find that 60 years after
they closed it down that the company still makes ‘Greenwich Malt’ as one of its
leading brands. Then on the same site thr
previous works was the Kamptulicon factory – of all things!!
Then there was the Robinson
Mill – and I found how the family had gone in a few years from an obscure
windmill to this vast complex of state of the art milling. Then on and on past
potteries and soap works – and the entire chemical works which I had covered in
my PhD Thesis. And then to discover Greening’s Co-op Wharf, Cow Gum and so much
else. Deptford really has had its fair
share of eccentrics!!
Since I began to write about
the Creek the Museum of Slavery and Freedom has been set up locally and slavery
has become a big issue. I have tried to
pick up on it where I can and there are a few firms who made tools to be used
in the plantations where slave labour was used.. I am also aware that if we need
to look at the sources of much of the raw material for industry in the 19th
century – and to keep in mind that many industries used material that was not grown, mine, or wharever by only slaves
but also by indentured labour – dreadfully treated and expendable since as free men they had no
value to the industrialist. I have also
picked up on the terrible poverty that local workers lived in and the racism
against the immigrant Irish
My main source for all of
this has been the late Christopher Philpotts’ unpublished study of the
Creek. I know nothing about him, met
him just once – and I generally look down on archaeologists - but that study is
really, really amazing. My other big
source has been thr memory of ex-members of the old local history department at
Woodlands. Since there really is no access
to the Greenwich (or the Lewisham) archives the next best thing is the memory
of the people who ran it for 40 years.
Thanks– ever grateful!!
And – look – in wrapping it
all up I do need to think that the Creek is a vital part of British industrial history
– and we need to say so. There was a lot
of big industry here, very early - which must include the Dockyard which wasn’t
of course on the Creek. There was also a very large population in Deptford and
Greenwich –a riverside area which had no obvious centre but strung out along a
riverside and up the Creek. There were
some very major companies with a big emphasis on innovation – and this is something
which is very, very typical of Lower Thameside and North West Kent generally.
Next week I will start on a
long promised look at the Charlton riverside.
I have already been asking Julian for any ideas for sources on
Lambarde’s Wall. See you there!
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