Heavy chemicals on Deptford Creek

 

Heavy Chemicals on Deptford Creek
by MARY MILLS

Deptford Creek, the river Ravensbourne between Deptford and Greenwich,
has long been an industrial waterway. The mills on its length from Keston to
Lewisham processed not just corn but products which included cutlery, leather,
silk. Before its move to Enfield Lock the Armoury Mill supplied gun barrels
for the Napoleonic Wars. There were many important works on the river as it
nears the Thames and those of John Penn, William Joyce, John Bennet Lawes
are only the better known. Throughout Britain industrial museums give an
important place to their local fire brigade equipment, almost always made on

. Deptford Creek by Merryweather.

This article explores an obscure corner of Deptford Creek's industrial history.
The chemical industry leaves few remains, its processes are often secret, its
residues often noxious and hidden from the public. Deptford Creek-was home
to a series of interesting and important developments in the industry with con-
sequences for both the industry itself and the world beyond. Here, for a brief
moment, it was possible to stand on a marvel of modern technology and to see
on one side a dying traditional industry and on the other its replacement.

The traditional industry was the manufacture of copperas. The first processing
of this chemical in England, and in Deptford and Greenwich, is difficult to
trace. Copperas has been known in England at least since the 14th century. By
the late 17th century there was probably a considerable number of works
throughout the country. The best known, and probably the best documented,
were at Queenborough and Whitstable in Kent. Nearer to Greenwich were
works at Rotherhithe'and Blackwall.

What is copperas? Chemically it is 'ferrous sulphate heptahydrate', made from
the oxidation of iron pyrites. Pyrites was known as copperas stones and, for
the London works, was collected from the Kent and Essex shoreline. Land-
owners on the estuary employed agents whose 'pickers' gathered the stones.
The account books of Sir John Hayward record 17th century transactions for
stones sent by barge to Deptford from the Minster area of Sheppey. There is a
much quoted statement made by the nineteenth century chemist, Justus Liebig,

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that the commercial prosperity of a country can be measured by its consump-
tion of sulphuric acid. In this, before 1800, copperas played a vital role.

Copperas had several uses, as a black dye for hats and woollen cloth, inks and
marking material. It is said to have been used for 'facing' green tea. One of its
most important uses can be deduced from its other name, green vitriol. That is
'green' meaning raw sulphuric acid, for which 'oil of vitriol' is the old name.

The beginnings of the first copperas works in Deptford and Greenwich has not
been traced. The first records indicate a works which may have been started at
some time in the 17th century by a royalist entrepreneur and slaver called Sir
Nicholas Crispe. His grandson certainly owned the works and Crispe himself
as early as 1640 had been required to tell Parliament about his use of 'copperas
stones' and appears, in the 1660's, to have pleaded his promotion of a copperas
works as a reason why he should be released from prison. It is very possible,
however, that the manufacture of copperas on Deptford Creek is far older than
Nicholas Crispe, but as yet no evidence has come to light.

Crispe seems to have come from a village near Bath, but had strong City of
London links, his father having died while in office as the Sheriff of London.
He was active in a number of industrial applications, several of them in the
Greenwich area. In this period there were a number of apparently unconnected
Crispes living throughout the area. One, Edward Crisp, lived in Greenwich
and was a friend of Pepys. Another Sir Nicholas Crisp lived at Quex, near
Herne Bay, and had some connections with the copperas industry at Whitstable.
Research has turned up no connection between them. The promoter of the
Deptford works is by far the most famous.

The first reference we have to the Deptford copperas works is to a plan made
of the works in 1674. It was sited on Deptford Creek and covered the area
from the Creek to today's Creekside stretching slightly north of Creek Road.
The site appears to have been leased to Crispe by John Evelyn, or his father-
in-law, the previous owner. Strangely, although John Evelyn mentions Crispe
in his Diary, and some correspondence between them exists, there is no appar-
ent mention of the copperas works despite Evelyn's interest in scientific and
industrial ventures and the nearness of his home at Sayes Court. Perhaps this
lack of interest indicates that the works was too familiar for him to mention.

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Evelyn's letters to Crispe are somewhat curt. Perhaps he just didn't like him?
Crispe's friend, Daniel Colwell, described the Deptford works in 1688. The
copperas 'beds' were trenches of about a hundred by fifteen feet and twelve
feet deep. The stones brought from Sheppey were put in these and covered
with rain water. Left there for several years the liquid became concentrated
enough to dissolve a boiled egg in three minutes! The liquid was boiled to
crystallisation. This, strongly heated, produced 'oil of vitriol', leaving behind
another dye, Venetian red.

Colwell's description was published by the Royal Society and became very
well known. There is however no reason to believe that Crispe's was the only
copperas works in the area. A Greenwich property list of 1695 notes a site
'lately converted to a copperas works' owned by a Sir Samuel Thompson at the
end of Lamb Lane. There was also a 'passage to copperas house' and a large

" house called either 'Copperas House' or 'Ravensboume House'. It has been
described as 'Tudor'. It seems most likely that this Greenwich copperas works
dates from around the-same time, perhaps the 1670's.

Crispe died in 1666 and the copperas works passed to his grandson, also
Nicholas.He inherited only a third share of the works. The other partners may
have been his uncles, Thomas and John, or, perhaps, John Knapp, a salter of
London. Crispe also inherited another local copperas works at Blackwall on
the site of what was to become the East India Dock. This site was leased from
Sir Thomas Middleton, perhaps the brother of Sir Hugh, founder of the New
River. This younger Nicholas Crispe died in 1698 and the copperas works
passed to his sons Charles and John. In 1708 the Deptford works was managed
by a Mr Bird and it seems likely that the Crispes has less and less to do with
the works which continued to be passed on through the family and Knapp's
until it was sold through lack of funds. By the 1760's it seems to have been
managed, along with some other copperas works, by a consortium led by
Ephraim Seehl 'chymist' of Eel Pie House, at Robin Hood Lane at Blackwall
and Jacob Hagen, a Bermondsey merchant.

All of this changed with the coming to the area of a young haberdasher, Charles
Pearson. In the mid-1770's Pearson bought the Greenwich copperas works
with Ravensboume House and in 1780 married Elizabeth Radford, heiress to
one of the Whits table works. Pearson consolidated this by purchasing the other

 

 

Whits table works, and before 1802 controlled works at Walton-on-the-Naze
and Thames Ditton. He also appears to have taken over the Deptford works,
which he maybe already managed by arrangement with Hagen's family. Charles
and Elizabeth Pearson had several children, and his son, also Charles, was to
take over the business. One daughter, Elizabeth, kept a diary which described
how the family split their time between Greenwich, Whitstable and the fami-
ly's main home at Ludgate Circus. Travelling to Greenwich by the 'Bromley
Stage to Deptford' they walked down the Creek to the ferry. Her brother trav-
elled between Greenwich and Ramsgate 'by majestic steam yacht' the London
Engineer.

In this period the Deptford works included 'three pieces of land, garden and
wharf as well as 'tenements, manufactury and cottages'. In Greenwich there
were 'two coach houses, settling stills, warehouse, cranehouse, wharf as well
as 'a large chemical works, there since the end of the 17th century'.' In 1797
Ravensboume House was rebuilt following a fire, despite the fact that the
insurance documents had not been completed. Elizabeth recorded replacement
of the 'eagles' and 'old fashioned glass' despite 'great opposition'. Later Charles
Jnr. experimented on the woodwork with Mr Kyan's highly poisonous subli-
mate preservative.

Next to Pearson in the rate book for 1825, is an entry for William Beneke. His
relative, Johann Beneke, had extended the family business in Hamburg through
an interest in dyes. Caught up in the French wars, he had been imprisoned and
escaped from the fortress at Dinan. Discharged from the army he came to
Deptford in 1814 to found his verdigris works. He did not come alone, for also
at Deptford were William, described as a verdigris and colour manufacturer,
and Frederick, who later patented the manufacture of spelter of zinc.

'Verdigris', also called 'blue vitriol' and 'copper sulphate' was made by inter-
leaving rags soaked in pyroligneous acid between sheets of copper. At Deptford
there was no ready supply of wood or copper available, but perhaps a clue to
Beneke's interest in the area can be found in that he also made sulphuric acid
from 'pyrites which was thrown in the river'. Maybe he was attracted to Deptford
by the copperas works.

J June Burkitt, "The Town of Greenwich in 1848/1, Trans., Vol. lX, No. 1, 1979, pp. 7-20.

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Heavy Chemicals on Deptford Creek

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Another chemical industry was growing around Deptford Creek in the early
19th century. This is the early gas industry and although it seems strange to
describe it as 'chemical' that is what it was. Coal gas manufacture produced a
number of by-products which were sold to, and used by, chemical works.

The first gas works in the world opened in Westminster in 1811 and others
quickly follo~ed. In the early 1820's the Greenwich vestry had subsidised a
Ravensbourne Gas Company to build a works on the Greenwich bank of the
Creek. This failed and in 1825 a works was opened in Thames Street by the
Phoenix Company, already operating successfully at Bankside. Charles Pearson
Jnr was an auditor of the Phoenix and on friendly social terms with its origina-
tor, George Munro.

One chemical waste product sold by the gas works was ammoniacal liquor -
water in which newly made gas had been washed and rich in chemicals. The
Benekes were major purchasers of this liquor in the 1820's from most of the
London gasworks, including Phoenix. They bought having tendered for an-
nual contracts to remove the liquor, usually by barge. In the early 1830's they
rented the ruined Ravensbourne Company works from Phoenix.

In 1828 Johann Beneke left England, leaving William at the Deptford works.
Johann went to Germany to continue a distinguished career as a chemist and
metallurgist. He died in 1841. He may have been a member of tne Silesian
Jewish family who became Hamburg bankers and were associated with the
family of the composer, Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn. In 1842 the composer
stayed ai their home in Denmark Hill and his daughter married one of the sons.
Mendelssohn's son, Paul, became one of the founders of the German colour
company, AGFA, set up in the Berlin suburb of Rammelsburg, where Johann
Beneke had worked in 1828.

Pearson and Beneke's association can be deduced. In 1833 Pearsonoffered to
settle Beneke's account with the Hackney based Imperial Gas Company and
took over his contract for ammoniacal liquor supplies. What did Pearson and
Beneke do with the gas works liquor, not then used for either sulphuric acid or
colour manufacture? They may have tried to develop a new process, perhaps
for making soda, as was currently being done elsewhere in London.

 

 

North of the river was another industrial chemist buying large amounts of gas
works liquor and with an interest in new ways of making sulphuric acid. This
was Thomas Hills, based at the Brornley by Bow Steam Mills, on the site of
the modem Coventry Cross estate. Thomas Hills and a partner patented a
method of making sulphuric acid by what became known as the 'chamber proc-
ess'. It may be that Beneke also used this process in Germany and France.
Why we should be interested in Thomas Hills is that by 1840 his son Frank
was renting the Deptford Chemical Works from Frederick Beneke.

1840 is a very good date at which to stop and assess what was going on in this
part of Deptford Creek. In 1836 the first London railway had built its bridge
across the Creek. The railway had included from the start a supply of gas,
initially bought from the Phoenix Company but latterly from its own gas works
alongside the railway on the west bank of the Creek. The Greenwich Railway
Gas Works did not last very long and soon became an independent company
financed by Frank Hills. Those who crossed the Creek by railway in its first
years would have seen down-river on both sides buildings of the copperas
works owned by the Pearsons. The new gas industry was all around them - the
holders of the Phoenix Thames Street Works down-river to the north, the semi-
derelict 'Ravensboume Works' on the east bank north of the railway, and the
new Railway Gas Works to the south on the west bank of the river. Up-river of
the Railway Gas Works was Beneke's Deptford Chemical Works, now in the
hands of Frank Hills.

This then is one of the interesting juxtapositions in the development of the
modem world. On either side of this first London railway <l!e the old and new
technologies for the manufacture of sulphuric acid - copperas to the north,
Beneke's experiments to the south. Frank Hills was to make a further, all im-
portant, contribution.

The Deptford Chemical Works remained in the hands of the Hills family well
into the 20th century. This is not the place to describe the complicated story of
Frank Hills, his brothers and sons. But there is one very important part of his
activities at Deptford applicable to the gas industry and the manufacture of
sulphuric acid. One of the problems of early gas supply was the smell which
made it unsuitable for indoor lighting. The story of how town gas was made
cleaner is a long one but by the 1850's one of the means was by what was

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Heavy Chemicals on Deptford Creek

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known as the 'oxide process'. The newly made gas was passed through a mix-
ture which included iron oxide, and eventually the waste product of this proc-
ess could be used as a raw material for the manufacture of sulphuric acid in the
chamber process. Following many years of litigation, Frank Hills held a pat-
ent enabling him to licence gas works who used the process and to control the
supply and removal of the mixture.

In 1858 Frank Hills claimed that he had undertaken the experiments which led
to the patent at Deptford using the facilities at the ex-Greenwich Railway Gas-
works next door. A great deal of doubt was cast on this story but suffice to say
that the Deptford Chemical Works played yet another crucial part in the devel-
opment of the manufacture of sulphuric acid. Frank Hills died in 1892 worth
nearly £2m, and among the fifty wealthiest people in the Britain of his day.

The copperas works seemed to have continued until the mid-1830's when the
site was gradually taken up by other users. The new Creek Bridge was built
through part of the site and when Mr Huck, the Greenwich Miser, died having
fallen into the beds, he was pulled out by the bridge workers. By 1840 copperas
beds were an old technology marginal to the needs of industrial chemists. Old
Charles Pearson had died in 1828 worth £27,000 having already left the indus-
try to live in Maze Hill. Charles Pears on Jnr, although leading a more 'gentle-
manly' existence, tried very hard to diversify. His downfall, and eventual bank-
ruptcy, was caused by investment in the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway.
He died in 1850 apparently leaving nothing.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Evelyn Estate Papers, Sir John Hayward Papers, Kent Record Office.
Evelyn's Diary; Evelyn Collection British Library.

Minute books of Imperial Gas Light & Coke Co., Phoenix GL&C Co., South London GL&C Co. in
Greater London Record Office.

Poor Rate Books for Greenwich St.Alfege, Greenwich St.Nicbolas, Bromley St.Leonard.
Court Book, Bromley St.Leonard.

Miscellaneous deeds on Deptford site, Surrey Record Office, Guildford (acc.5139).
Elizabeth Pearson's Diary; other miscellaneous papers, Whitstable Library and Museum.
Family material from Mrs. Walsh (Pearsons), Messrs. Humpheries and P.Hills (Hills).

R.H.Goodsall "The Whitstable Copperas Industry", Archaeologia Cantiana vol.LXX (1957) pp. 142-59).
William H. George, "A short account of the Copperas Industry of the Isle of Sheppey" Tertiary Res,
Leiden, 311984, 5(4) pp. 169-72.

Daniel Colwall, 'Account ofthe Deptford Copperas Works", Philosophic Transactions 1677.
W.A.Campbell, The Chemical Industry, London 1971.

A. & N. Clow, The Chemical Revolution, London 1957.