Kent Iron Works and Cowan

 

Continuing with our walk down the Greenwich bank of Deptford Creek.  And we are still north of Creek Road, and in Norway Street.   So, turn south, walk to the end of Norway Street and get to the junction with the main road.  To your right is a wide strip of pavement with a flower bed on it.  This tiny area which was once Kent Wharf and, as might be expected, in the 19^th century it was used for coal transhipment.  On its north side it runs along the small dock which comes off the Creek towards Norway Street.

In 1840 Kent Wharf was used by Pope Brothers. They were coal merchants with numerous depots, including ones in Bristol and Goole, in Yorkshire, as well as numerous outlets in London including Dockhead, Wapping and at Highbridge Wharf in Greenwich. In 1833 they sold “Best Hetton's, Stewart's, or Lambton's Wallsend”, all from the Durham coalfield.  Their head office seems to have been in Abingdon Street in Westminster – which still runs along the riverside and would in 1840 have been very near Westminster Gas Works.  Their trade card includes a rather famous drawing of a collier ship of the day.  Pope Brothers seem to have been ubiquitous with depots everywhere – and maybe originating from Bristol.  Searching on the net I have found several references to a coal mining Pope Brothers in the US – are they the same people?

Also with an address on Kent Wharf in 1840 was Thomas Baker Knott, a timber merchant with an auctioneer’s business in Deptford High Street, later described as a builder and coal merchant.  His level of prosperity can be gauged in that he was also a shareholder in the, short lived, Deptford Pier Company – which proposed a link from the Greenwich Railway to a Thameside wharf at Upper Watergate.. He died in 1853 described as ‘of Deal’ the Kent port – he had clearly retired to the seaside.

By the late 1850s the site had become the Kent Iron Works and in occupation by J.Todd & Co. Todd described himself with the slightly old fashioned title of ‘millwright’. However John Todd held a number of patents, including in 1859 one for “Improvements applicable to screw propellers in the propulsion of vessels” - which was anything but old fashioned. He had also patented “an improved machine for straightening, bending, curving, and circling beams, bars, and plates of iron, or other metals”.  What happed to John Todd and the Kent Iron Works is not clear as dates for him and his successor are not consistent.  Most likely he had gone out of business before 1860 when the site was sold by auction.  In 1858 he had published a long list of machinery for sale and which it is assumed he was making.  “The Kent Iron Works ... fit for many other purposes” together with a list of machinery on the site to be disposed of.

Todd’s successor at the Kent Iron Works was Thomas Cowan, who had been born in St.Petersburg Russia. His father, John, for the previous 30 years had been an engineer in the Russian Government Service, coming to England with his family on the outbreak of the Crimea War in 1854. Thomas had had a privileged upbringing and education there and in England he completed his schooling at Brighton, served an engineering apprenticeship with the firm of J and G Rennie and attended lectures at the Royal Government School of Mines .  horrox

 

In England the Cowans had settled at Deptford, and John Cowan owned the Kent Ironworks in Greenwich  - I assume he had taken it over from John Todd.  In 1861 Thomas was living in Deptford with his mother and sister, aged about 20 and described as a ‘Civil engineer’.  At that time he took out a patent with a John Grieve Winton for "improvements in the means for actuating machine hammers, which said improvements are also applicable to pile-driving, and other such-like machines and purposes. He took Kent Iron Works over when he was 22.

Cowan seems to have been one of a group of young men interested in building a car. What had happened was that one of the last steam cars to run experimentally on Kent roads was built by the man who became the torpedo manufacturer, Sir Alfred Yarrow.   Yarrow was born in Islington and trained as an engineer.  As a boy, together with a friend, James Hilditch, he experimented with a whole range of inventions. Eventually in 1861 they developed a steam car and in 1861 this was manufactured by Thomas Cowan at the Kent Iron Works.

Yarrow's vehicle was driven from Greenwich to Bromley once a week. This was to demonstrate the machine to possible purchasers. In Bromley they party would stop for 'some refreshment' before returning to Greenwich.  People along the route were clearly disturbed by the noise of the engine. It is said that one old lady seeing go past ran to her window.  Seeing the flames and smoke she thought the devil was there.  It has not proved easy to discover the truth of this of this story  Many of the early road vehicles are supposed to have led to stories of how people thought  they were 'the devil' .  It is hard to believe that by 1862 there could have been any old ladies left on the roads around Bromley who did not know what a steam vehicle looked like!  She probably had good reason for disliking the smoke and noise - perhaps 'the devil' is the term she was using for Yarrow and his noisy young friends!

They later took a longer trip, to Horsham –“ a distance of nearly forty miles in which its capability  at ascending hills was severely tried’.  This must have been a difficult journey and there must have bee a good reason for undertaking it.   It cannot be a co-incidence that a year later Thomas Cowan married Fanny Mitchell, from Horsham.

On another occasion the carriage met a mounted policeman whose horse took fright and threw him, breaking his leg.   This is said to be the incident which led to the infamous 'red flag act by which all steam vehicles had to proceed at the pace of man who had to walk in front of them holding a red flag.   I must admit to some doubt about this statement.   There is no obvious sign of the story in local papers. There was a series of Acts of Parliament and amendments to do with road transport in the early 1860s and the red flag requirement (which was only sometimes in force) was part of one of them.  Members of Parliament were concerned about road surfaces and the damage done to them by increasingly heavy road vehicles. They also wanted to give power to various local authorities to control where these vehicles were allowed to go and where not

In the back of Parliament's mind must also have been the dangers involved in these very young men (Yarrow, like Cowan, was only 20) driving heavy vehicles over ordinary roads at night while fuelled with drink from the numerous 'entertainment' stops.

Cowan however was manufacturing all sorts of steam driven engines and other devoices – it’s hard to work out how it was all done on such a tiny site

 

By 1866 Cowan was Bankrupt and the Kent Iron Works and its contents were offered for auction. In 1871 it was in the hands of a Thomas Cook, engineer, who was also bankrupt within a year. By the 1880s the site of the Kent Iron works was in the hands of the coal merchants, Dowells, like all the other sites in this part of the Creek.