Granite wharf And the stone trade

 

A couple of weeks ago I described how Coles Child leased land on the Greenwich riverside from Morden College and used it to build houses and factories. Walking down river from Ballast Quay through Riverside Gardens, we first passed Coles Child’s own coal wharf, whih was later know as Lovell’s Wharf.  He next wharf was ‘Granite Wharf’ and I am very glad that one of the blocks of flats in ‘Riverside Gardens’  is now “Granite House”.

 

Records show that Granite Wharf was leased by Coles Child to Mowlem, Burt and Freeman in 1852.  John Mowlem had worked in the Dorset stone quarries and in 1823 founded the famous contracting firm. Mowlem’s main yard was on Millbank at Westminster and their Greenwich wharf was ‘the stone yard’. Records tell us about ‘substantial buildings’ there and on the 1869 Ordnance map it is marked as ‘Stone yard’ The map shows two tracks of rails crossing the yard and there is a slip into the river as well as ‘mooring posts’ and a crane.

 

When I was seven we went on holiday to Bournemouth and most of all I remember the visit to the Great Globe at Swanage.  I still have the photograph my dad took of me and my mum at the Globe but obviously I had no idea I was to return to there fifty years later as part of my research on the Greenwich riverside.

 

John Mowlem eventually retired back to Swanage in Dorset and the firm was managed by his nephew, George Burt.  But Mowlem took back to Swanage an extraordinary collection of bits and pieces from the London streets.  Visitors there can follow guides to see these monuments in some surprising locations.  One of them is the Great Globe in Durleston Country Park on a hillside above the town. The Globe and the various things which surround it are well worth a visit.  The whole experience is extremely bizarre. At th top of the cliff is a strange mock castle and all around are bollards, stone tables, boundary stones, etc. many taken from London streets. The Globe itself is carved with a map of the world and various astronomical statements about The Sun, Moon and Earth. There are also stone tablets carved with homilies on the subject of Temperance, Prudence and so on as well as ‘clock times of the world’ , ‘convexity of the ocean’ and much else.

 

Among the postcards on sale at Durleston is one which has been identified a picture of Greenwich – it comes from an unpublished history of John Mowlem which I have not seen.   The picture shows the Great Globe under construction at Mowlem’s yard at Granite Wharf.. Two stone carvers sit on top of the Globe, behind it is a great crane – perhaps the one shown on the map – and in front three figures. That on the right has been named as John Mowlem Burt, George Burt’s son.  

 

The Globe seems to have been the idea of George Burt who, a few years earlier, had commissioned a smaller granite globe which is now on display in Beaulieu.  The Great Globe is made of 15 pieces of Portland stone – held together with granite dowels. It was taken from Greenwich to Swanage in sections on one of Mowlem’s sailing vessels and erected at Durleston by a Dorset builder.  Whether the stone was taken originally from Swanage to Greenwich for carving is not known – but the expense of carting 40 tons of stone between the two must have been considerable.

 

Until the new flats were built at what is now Riverside Gardens a roadway ran from Banning Street to the river along the boundary between Lovell’s and Granite Wharfs.  This was known as Paddock Place, later it was Cadet Place and it has now vanished. The wall of Granite Wharf along this pathway was simply extraordinary, consisting of what appears to be pieces of random stone, some of it set up as a sort of blocked up gateway.  Leding geologist, Eric Robinson, took an interest in this wall – dubbing it ‘Cyclopean’.   He said the stone from which its was made was probably part of the stockpile which Mowlem’s had in the yard and he thought that stone quarried in Dorset was shipped to Greenwich to be held here until it was needed elsewhere. It would then be shipped out by Thames Barge. The wall included, he said: ‘White Portland Stone, some of it dressed with the stone pick, pink and red sandstone – not necessarily as hard as the Coal Measures York Stone - they are joined by ‘Bluestone’ (Diorite)  ... at either side the blocks sit at unusual angles with an infill of angular pieces of dark bluestone – this dark stone came from Guernsey in the Channel Islands and was much used in kerbs and cobbles’.  It is pointed out this miscellany of stone pieces might serve as a museum of the sort of stones which made up the stone cartage trade in the English Channel – ‘just add some granites’.  He continued ‘look at the cobbles and smaller cube setts in the entrance to the yard and you see all of these granitic rocks polished by cart wheels and cars’.

 

So, what happened next?  As development plans proceeded I began to put under the noses of planners and developers many ideas for retention of items on the site, I was ignored until I pointed out that this one site has academic approval from a famous geologist, not just from me. So it was agreed and part of the planning consent was that the stone from the wall must be saved and re-erected as a feature on the site.  Now I am sure that the masons who worked for the developer did what they thought was right – but no one seems to have shown them what the old wall had looked like, and what was important about it.  By the time the developer proudly showed us the new wall they had tidied up all the rough stone, squared it up and made a nice neat looking wall – but cyclopean no more.  They had also put up a nice little plaque about it entirely taken from Wikipedia. Thanks to the Greenwich Society we managed to get that changed.

 

I only hope Eric Robinson has never seen the rebuilt wall. He lives in Wachet in Somerset, and if you go to Watchet station, which has nice preserved trains, there is a replica of our Cadet Place wall.  Only a small win, but better than nothing.

 

Granite Wharf continued in use right into the 2000s. By then it was used by Tarmac and there were always boats calling. The riverside stretch along the front of the wharf had a concrete awning to stop gravel and stones from their overhead conveyor falling on to walkers.  They eventually moved out, apparently very reluctantly, to Charlton, and the developers moved in to build flats.

 

Sources

David Lewer and Bernard Calkin. Curiosities of Swanage

Eric Robinson originally gave a talk on the wall, on site, but the quotations above come from a private letter from him to me – and thanks to him for that.