Greenwich marsh

 

In these articles I’ve been following the Greenwich riverside from the old Kent/Surrey border and we’ve come a long way.  My most recent articles have been about workplaces and people on the west bank of what we now call Greenwich Peninsula –until recently it was called Greenwich Marsh.  I thought it might be an idea to leave the riverside for a couple of weeks and have a look at the Marsh this week and, perhaps next week, look at an urgent repair job on the river wall.

Marsh lands in the past were a bit special and they had their own laws and regulations. The great authority on this was William Dugdale who wrote his History of imbanking and drayning of divers fenns and marshes, both in forein parts and in this kingdom, and of the improvements thereby extracted from records, manuscripts, and other authentick testimonies.  There can’t be many subjects where the main authority is 360 years old.

Marsh land is usually reclaimed land which would be covered by the river or the sea, intermittently or all the time. It was land which had been ‘inbanked’ – where people had intervened to stop incursions by water with ‘walls’.  We don’t know who first ‘walled’ Greenwich Marsh – some claim it was the Romans. Most serious ‘inbanking ‘was done in the middle ages when religious orders had the money and man power to ‘improve’ their land by marshland reclamation. Once walled and drained the land could be used for sheep that would fertilise it and encourage plant growth. Monasteries –corporate bodies - could also afford to take the long view.

Most of the legal framework is based on laws drawn up to cover Romney Marsh.  Romney Marsh is a good example of how fragile the whole system is. How many of us on a trip to the seaside notice the Dymchurch Wall. It is a massive piece of civil engineering which has kept the sea off the marsh for hundreds of years – probably begun in the 13^th century, it has recently been rebuilt.  The ‘walls’  which have kept Romney Marsh safe needed, and need, a large staff of maintenance workers. Greenwich Marsh was a lot smaller scale but needed constant vigilance and care.  Over the years commissioners were appointed to oversee work on the various marshes. We know the names of many of them, but they were the local gentry and nobility, and someone else did the work. We know that in 1800 Greenwich Marsh had a full time bailiff, although we don’t know how many labourers were employed to work under him.

Greenwich Marsh was part of a series of marshlands which stretched from Deptford right down river to Gravesend and they included the area around Deptford Creek which was also called ‘Greenwich Marsh’.  Which can, of course, be confusing.   Responsibility for the state of the walls and the drainage ditches was developed in the early medieval period.  Down river in Woolwich a devastating flood in 1236 led to a Commission of Inquiry. At Abbey Wood in 1279 the monks at Lesnes Abbey ‘enclosed’ the marshes between the abbey and the river having engaged a ’foreigner’ to do the work. Within the next 12 years they ‘inned’ the rest.  From 1315 commissioners were appointed annually to monitor works between Dartford and Greenwich.  There was a breach of Greenwich in 1322, one between Greenwich and Woolwich in 1355 and another in Greenwich in 1370.   The river walls are probably the largest civil engineering project in the Borough – and certainly the one with the most influence on our environment. 

The Reformation must have meant that gradually the religious bodies which had maintained the marshes were replaced, by necessity, by the civil authorities. Lesnes Abbey closed in 1525 but in 1527 there were floods in Plumstead which led to a tax being levied. This was the beginning of a system called the ‘wallscot’ – a fund raised to pay for future flood defence systems with money raised from the landowners.  A ‘cross wall’ was built from the River to the Plumstead uplands enclosing the marsh and in 1546 work was done to improve the drainage of Greenwich marsh. We know that work on Plumstead Marshes was done by Jacobus Acontyus, a professional engineer who had left Italy because of his religious views.  In 1566 John Baptista Castillion, one of Elizabeth’s inner  household, was authorised to oversee the reclamation of Plumstead Marsh, although the recruitment of suitable workmen proved difficult and led to delays.  It is thought that there was a break in the river wall at Greenwich Marsh before 1600 – this is the area which was called Bay Wharf until recently and it is where the new boat building yard is sited.  The wall was apparently never repaired here.

In the early 17^th century a proper system of administering Greenwich Marsh was set up and we actually have minutes of the Marsh Court from 1625.  The ‘court’ was made up of landowners and they met at the Green Man Tavern which was – until the early 1970s – at the top of Blackheath Hill.  The court levied the ‘wallscot’ and employed the bailiff.   The minutes are written in a script called ‘Secretaries hand’ which is very difficult to read if you aren’t used to it.  However when you do manage to interpret what it says it turns out that most of it is about clearing the ditches and maintaining the river wall – it is a wonderful history of four hundred years of bramble and nettle growth.  There are also, I’m afraid, several examples of large sections of river wall being weakened as stone was stolen by ships needing ballast to go on their way.

It’s important to realise that no-one lived on the marsh – it was made up of small holdings and firms.  Plots were owned by individual landowners and rented out.  Much of it was owned by charities who acted as developers from the early 19^th century.  Up until the 1990s the largest land owner was Morden College – and perhaps more about that in a future article.

The historic road pattern on the Peninsula is still recognisable today with Blackwall Lane running north from the Woolwich Road.  There was a fork, which ran from roughly where the flyover roundabout is. From this fork another lane branched off to the east bank of the river to where the Pilot Inn was built in 1801. Many people will remember this when it was called ‘Riverway’ but access to the river was cut off in 2000 by the New Millennium Experience Co. and it is now covered in blocks of flats.

There were also a series of drainage ditches. Bendish Sluice was on the west side; Arnold’s Sluice was south-cast of Blackwall Point; another sluice south-west of the Point and, King’s Sluice, near where the yacht club is now.  Bendish Sluice was visible and discharged into the river at Enderby Wharf until about five years ago.  I am told it is still there but hidden by the developers of the site.

In thr1890s ideas about local government changed and gradually the Marsh Court was taken into the administration of the Metropolitan, and later London Boroughs and the London County Council. For hundreds of years there has been a separate administration for the river and the foreshore – a series of Commissioners and Conservators now mainly under the control of the Port of London Authority.  With the riverside it is often difficult to know who is in charge!

I hope to come back and write more about the marsh in future articles – about the charities who owned it, how a repair to the river wall was undertaken in the 19^th century, and about how development has changed the area to what we see today.