Greenwich Railway Bridge

 Last week I wrote about the setting up the London and Greenwich Railway.  Well -it might have been called the ‘London and Greenwich’ but to start with it only went as far as Deptford. 

By the time if officially opened trains had been running on various parts of the line for some time and it is thought over 300,000 people had travelled on it when they eventually had the Grand Opening, despite it only running between London Bridge and Deptford.  This was on 13th December 1836 and it was opened by the Lord Mayor of London.  People may remember twenty-two years ago the problems of invitees to the opening of the Millennium Dome had on December 1999 when they tried to get there and were all stuck at Stratford. Well, it was only echoing the opening of the Greenwich Railway a hundred and thirty six years earlier. Crowds of ticket holders arrived on time, they stood, they waited, start times were delayed and then changed, trains started, trains stopped, military bands played, church bells rang, cannons fired, and Beefeaters arrived sitting on the roof of a train, the Lord Mayor did his opening thing and left for a big celebratory dinner, then ticket holders arrived at Deptford - but there were no sensible arrangements for getting them back.

Despite all this fuss you still couldn’t get to Greenwich. All you could do, as I described last week, was to buy a ticket and walk across a footbridge to Deptford Station but only if you had the right bit of white paper and didn’t fall in a pond on the way.

Getting the railway across the Creek was a problem.  If they built a fixed bridge then they had to get consent from all Creek users – and there was no chance of that happening.  In fact injunctions were already flying about to stop them building anything all.  It was eventually decided to build a drawbridge – the first on any railway in England - and then they had to sort out the machinery – oh yes, and build Greenwich station.  There were also complications with the owners of Creek Road Bridge who did not want their toll paying customers to go cross elsewhere.

A new bridge was built and finished towards the end of 1838. I was known locally as ‘the Iron Bridge’ and is said to have made a loud clanking noise which could be heard at both Deptford and Greenwich Stations.  It had two arches one of which included a drawbridge.  This drawbridge could be opened in the middle by a complicated arrangement of pulleys and counterweights which took eight men to move.  On the principle of ‘sail before steam’ if a boat wanted to come up the Creek then the trains had to wait while these eight men opened the bridge and let the boat through. The requirement to lift the bridge was in the Railway Company’s Act of Parliament and any failure on the part of the railway, or its staff, to raise the bridge in a prompt and timely manner was a criminal offence. 

Lifting the bridge often took nearly an hour to complete, and of course sometimes there were all sorts of problems which held it up even more. When a passenger travelled down to Greenwich Station from London, people were said to have sometimes consult a tide table because trains could be seriously disrupted around high tide on Deptford Creek. Similarly, if somebody was meeting a passenger from a train they faced a long wait for delayed trains if the bridge over the Creek was lifted. 

Incidentally I think the sail before steam principle still exists and although the railway crossing now never opens, I have a feeling Creek Road Bridge is still obliged to observe this rile. But when the new railway bridge was built any vessels passing through at high tide were required to book a time slot in advance for the bridge to open.

All of this was of course massively inconvenient for what was from its earliest days essentially a commuter line.  However the completion of the bridge did allow trains to access Greenwich and end the arrangement where Greenwich passengers used Deptford station. 

It had been originally planned to build Greenwich station close to the North Pole Inn in a lane called Blue Stile but it was eventually decided to build it near another pub, The Prince of Orange in Greenwich High road.   At first passengers had to use a temporary station there and by July 1838 they could reach the trains up on the viaduct by means of a wooden staircase. There were also turnstiles and gas lamps – including lamps on the new bridge over the Creek. 

It was not until 1839 that the contract was given for a proper station at Greenwich. This is not the station which is there now – but it is thought it would have looked very much like it. It was designed by George Smith- who designed many other important buildings in Greenwich in this period, and was also surveyor to Morden College and to the Mercers Company.

The railway line on its viaduct crosses over what is now Norman Road and forms a sort of dividing line along the Creek and the road which ran parallel to it.  In 1842 the railway company built a road from the North Pole pub to the railway viaduct. Today this is called Norman Road and it goes all the way from Creek Road to Greenwich High Road but as we have seen in previous articles the road up to Creek Road had been called Ravensbourne Street.  The new section from Greenwich High Road was once known as Faulkner’s Road after one of the landowners and later was known as North Pole Lane and there was an extension to the Creek called Railway Place. 

This bridge over the creek and its opening arrangements lasted until the 1880s.  It was replaced – or refurbished - in 1884 and there were no improvements to the arrangements. When the new bridge was opened the rails had to be completely removed to allow a vessel to pass below and no less than twelve men were required to do this. 

Unbelievably this situation remained until 1963.  I started commuting up from Gravesend in 1959 and I have vague memory of trains held up because of the bridge over the creek. It was the subject of a lot of commuter grumbles but accepted as inevitable.  Why didn’t they change it earlier – 12 men to get it up and move the rails!! – on this busy commuter railway? Mind you, I always say if people think the trains nowadays are unreliable and crowded they clearly weren’t around in the 1950s!! 

Here is part of a letter of complaint about the railway – written two months before the railway opened:

The Directors of the Greenwich Railway most be a queer set of fellows. One would naturally suppose that they would endeavour every means in their power to consult the convenience and comfort of the public ….this, however, does not seem to give them one moment's concern; in fact it would appear that the very contrary….. ….. The Directors, thinking punctuality and dispatch have nothing to do with a railway, have upset all the old plans … and have so decussated the times of starting that it will require the greatest perseverance to unravel them. ,,,, It is astonishing how the public will continue to patronise it.

Nothing changes, it really doesn’t.

The large and dramatic iron bridge which now takes the railway over the Creek only dates from the mid-1960s. It is an electric vertical lift bridges designed to lift the railway track up to a height which would allow a boat to pass underneath.   It was, designed by A H Cantrell, Chief Civil engineer of BR Southern Region and built by Sir William Errol & Co of Glasgow. Such bridges are rare with probably only about dozen surviving examples in England – including road, railway and pedestrian use. Some are listed but are very different sorts of structures – for instance the Anderton Boat Lift of 1895 in Cheshire. The only other existing railway vertical lift bridge is thought to be the 1960s Kingsferry Bridge across the Swale into the Isle of Sheppey. So it is a relatively rare type of structure. 

Bridges like this were originally built in the mid-19th century on canals where barges were towed and did not have masts and therefore limited headroom was acceptable and a central pier would hinder navigation. Steel vertical lifting bridges with tall towers for provide sufficient were developed in the United States in the 1890s. The Deptford Creek Rail Bridge is a utilitarian structure with no architectural embellishments. 

It is not now used as a lifting bridge and Network Rail apparently considered demolishing the superstructure.  A long discussion ensued with a detailed report from English Heritage. The argument was complicated because the bridge is half in Greenwich and half in Lewisham. A 2009 heritage report on Deptford Creek by Design for London saw the bridge as a significant heritage asset – and there has been for some time – hopefully influential - public engagement on the heritage of this whole area.  It is understood the buttresses to the bridge are now listed but not the metal superstructure.

Currently the bridge has not been used for several decades and the lifting section was welded shut into ‘down’ position some years ago. However the pier it rests on dates from the 1830s with rusticated masonry - and this was listed with rest of the viaduct itself in 1995.  . 

A great deal of the material used in this article comes from the late Ron Thomas’s ‘London’s First Railway’ which is a simply super book which I would very much recommend.  I have also used the English Heritage assessment of the current bridge structure