As we continue down the Lewisham bank of the Creek towards the Thames we eventually get to where the railway crosses over along with the Ha’penny Hatch Bridge. Before we get there, alongside the railway, is the Creekside Centre. People might remember that before the Centre was opened it was a site which has been empty and derelict for years and years and years. Now, there was a reason for that.......
In the 1830s excitement and innovation was in the air locally. A steam railway – the first suburban railway in the world - was to come to Greenwich. Not only was this railway to be the first in London but it also would incorporate a number of novel features – there was a ‘boulevard’ along the whole route and an ‘inclined plane’ at Deptford and also plans for an integrated scheme of gas lighting.
The engineer to the London and Greenwich Railway Company was George Landmann who was a most interesting man. He had had a distinguished career in the Royal Engineers but had since worked as Engineer to the Imperial Continental Gas Association – travelling round Europe to construct gas works in Continental towns. In turning his hand to railway construction it is only natural that he should also think about how gas could be used as part of his railway scheme. I want to write a bit more about the railway next week and perhaps something about Landmann.
The Greenwich Railway Gas Company – was set up in 1836. It was proposed to light the line with gas lamps –"lights at a distance of 21 yards on each side of the railway and also a number of lights for the stopping places each end of the road making in all about 700 lights" and to supply gas lighting to stations and to cottages which were to be built in the arches under the railways. In a revolutionary step it was also proposed to supply the cottages with gas cooking apparatus. It seems very likely that another part of the plan was to make coke on site for use by the locomotives. The gas works itself was to occupy the site upriver of the railway on the Deptford side of Deptford Creek – the site now occupied by the Creekside Centre.
As plans for the railway began to emerge the Phoenix Gas Company became worried – their works was just down the Creek on the Greenwich bank – I wrote about it in Weekender May last year. Their solicitor Mr. Tilson took steps to see that a clause was inserted in the railway’s Parliamentary Bill requiring compensation for any damage to their gas mains and to establish relations with the new company. When the railway opened in 1836 Phoenix supplied the coke for the first locomotives but what Phoenix did not know was that Colonel Landmann had been in discussion with the rival South Metropolitan Company, based in the Old Kent Road, on the question of a supply of gas for the stations and for the line. When Phoenix found this out in 1836 they were not amused and pointed out that they had not been allowed to tender for these lights.
So, why was the railway company talking to the local gas companies. Why didn’t they use their own gas for lighting, and their own coke for fuel? In fact Greenwich Railway Gas Company does not seem to have been a success - and it is very unclear if it actually ever did supply gas to the railway line. There have been descriptions of the lights which people saw in 1837 and 1838 but we now know that the gas for them was supplied by South Met. Gas Works not the railway’s own gas making plant.
By 1838 the railway company had given up trying to make gas and the new works was abandoned and the site was sold to the The Deptford, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey Gas Light and Coke Co. On the Board was a John Barlow and it was his family who built and operated the works. They were contracting to build gas works all over the country and they had a lot of experience – many early gas works were built by them.
Perhaps we should have a quick look at the gas industry in the area. As I said above, from the 1820s gas lighting in Greenwich was supplied by the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Company from their gas works in Thames Street. From 1829 gas also was supplied by the South Metropolitan Gas Co. in the Old Kent Road – some of their holders are still with us and one of them is one of only a few which have been ‘listed; in London and so will be kept.
Deptford lay between the Phoenix and Old Kent road and, as more and towns had gas works of their own, Deptford people began to want their own gas lighting supply from their own works – and there had been attempts to do that.
In October 1834 Kentish Mercury announced a meeting 'for the purpose of considering the expediency of immediately forming a GAS LIGHT ESTABLISHMENT'. It was agreed that Deptford 'presents peculiar local facilities for the advantageous formation’ of such a body and it was proposed to call it the 'Deptford and Greenwich Gas Light Company'. In due course The Mercury carried a notice of the formation of the company. After such a good start it is shame to have to relate that nothing else seems to be heard about this proposal.
The Mercury later reported that a Deptford Gas Works had received an enabling Act of Parliament anda celebratory dinner was held in a pub on Deptford Broadway. It was a 'sumptuous entertainment' for a 'numerous and highly respectable' company. They toasted everyone and everything from ‘The Old Oak Tree' to ' The Army and Navy' and everyone else – but I do not think they ever built a gas works. The only little bit of doubt in my mind is that there was a gas works – a very small one – built near the Blackhorse Bridge on the Surrey Canal. As recently as 1986 there was a small gas installation there with a notice inviting you to ring the South Eastern Gas Board at New Cross for information. Perhaps that was the much-celebrated Deptford Gas Works.
The proprietors of the proposed Deptford gas company were all local: Charles Barlee - he was a Deptford coke merchant who was also a churchwarden at St.Nicholas Deptford and whose name is inscribed on bells there installed in 1842. Webster Flockton was a tar distiller based in Spa Road, Bermondsey - the Flocktons were a coal owning family and in 1871 a Webster Flockton is listed as Manager of the Llantwit Red Ash Coal Co. in South Wales. John Twells was the first Deputy Chair of the Greenwich Railway and he had been the moving spirit behind the Greenwich Railway Gas Works. He was related to Philip Twells the MP for the City of London and he had worked with Richard Foster, who was the majority shareholder in South Met. Gas Co.. They had worked together to build churches for godless south and east Londoners. Finally - John Wells was a local shipbuilder who built Bickley Hall in Bromley 1780 and later Redleaf at Penshurst, which later became the home of Frank Hills who I wrote about last week.
The group who took the railway gas works over were almost the same group of people - Charles Barlee, Webster Flockton, John Wells MP and John Twells – by then deputy chairman of the Greenwich Railway. This means that it was controlled by people who had an interest in the area and in the railway. And of course in selling their coal.
From 1838 on the Deptford Rotherhithe and Bermondsey Gas Company supplied gas to the people of the area in competition with the other local gas companies. Not too successfully however since in 1840 Phoenix secured the contract to light the parish of St. Paul's, Deptford – an area that the new company could well hope to have covered. The reaction of both the older gas companies to the newcomer was to lower their prices and eventually in 1841 a limited agreement on competition was made between the three of them. These anti-competition agreements were common in the early 19th century gas industry.
By the early 1850s there was yet another gas company in South London – the Surrey Consumers based in Rotherhithe which posed yet more competition. They made several attempts to buy up the now ailing Deptford works but by that time the Deptford Gas Works had a neighbour in the shape of Frank Clarke Hills. As I wrote last week and the week before he had a chemical works on Deptford Creek, next door to the gas works and he seems to have used it for his own purposes. In fact it eventually transpired that he had underwritten the Deptford Gas Works to the tune of a loan of £10,000. He had used the works as a testing ground for his various gas purification schemes. The gas works later claimed that there was a footpath through the site over which he had rights although this was contested by some of the ex-directors of the Deptford, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Gas Co.
The Deptford Works was eventually sold to the Rotherhithe based Surrey Consumers Gas Co. a gas company which in due course was taken over by South Met. The Deptford works was closed down in 1856, but probably continued to be used as a holder station only. It has transpired that some important mains ran through the site. It appears on the Ordnance Survey for the 1860s with three holders, the little dock and some buildings. By 1914 only the largest holder in the centre of the site remained. For many, many years the site stood vacant behind a very substantial wall.
And now it is the Creekside Centre. They opened up on the site in 2002 and have done a terrific job in opening up the area and helping people learn about the Creek. The one thing I don’t knew about it the little inlet – a small draw dock on the site. Perhaps someone can help with that – was it built as part of the short lived railway gas works??
Greenwich Industrial History Society needs
to change its published programme – Paul Wyatt who was booked to speak will now
do a slot later in the year. So the next
zoom meeting – 19th April – will be me – Dr.Mary Mills – on Lt. Col
George Landmann – Woolwich born engineer who built the Greenwich Railway, the
first suburban railway in London and the world. He had a very varied career as you will
hear. Watch out on GIHS Facebook page
for booking details in the days before 19th.
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