LESCO building

 

I’ve been writing these articles about Deptford Creek for over a year. This is article number 63. As I’ve gone through them because I want to turn them into a book had noticed that there are interesting things which I had been covered when I wrote the article.  So I thought that perhaps I should write about some of them now - and this week it’s the ‘LESC building’ in Greenwich High Road.

 

This is a small and obscure building - blink and you’d miss it- and also it’s not really on Deptford Creek.  Going towards London on Greenwich High Road past the start of Norman Road,  it’s on the right,  jammed up against a huge block of new flats on what used to be the site of a pub called The Miller which was originally The Swan.  It’s on the edge of the grounds of Greenwich Pumping Station which is what qualifies as being ‘on the Creek’ but it also had links to another very important site which is almost on the Creek, but not quite - Deptford Power Station.  It is actually an old electric transformer station and over the door is the word ‘LESC’ - which stands for ‘London Electricity Supply Corporation’. It is apparently still in use by UK Power Networks and dates from 1891 when it was built to step down high voltage power from Deptford Generating Station for use on surrounding streets.

 

The building was the subject of a very very good article by Richard Cheffins which we published in the Greenwich Industrial History newsletter. Richard was a meticulous local historian who is now sadly no longer with us.  His article was later reproduced in a small magazine, called ‘Industrial Heritage’ which I think has since gone out of business.  It was also the subject of an episode of the

Deptford based blog ‘Caroline’s Miscellany’ - and for I know elsewhere. It is very difficult for me to say anything original about the building and not to just copy down what Richard said, but I will do my best. 

 

The roots of the London Electricity Supply Corporation go back to the early 1880s. Electricity is something we now take it for granted but in the late 19th century its uses were localised and a small scale. Street lighting was dominated by gas - made in centralised ‘gas factories’ and distributed to customers via a network of pipes. If electricity were to be sold to the public it needed to be handled in the same way.  The Charlton‑based German company Siemens was one of the leaders in this research on how this could be done.

 

An Act of Parliament in 1882 allowed companies to the set up to supply systems electricity to companies and local authorities.  Various schemes followed - this a electric light station at 57 Holborn Viaduct was based on Thomas Edison’s Direct Current ideas but ran at a loss and soon closed.  Some buildings were lit by electricity but had their own generators.  In 1883 the Grosvenor Gallery, now Sotheby’s in Bond Street, was lit by electricity but Sir Coutts Lindsay, the owner, sold the surplus energy generated to the owners of neighbouring properties. He did this by forming the Grosvenor Gallery Electric Supply Corporation and hired 22‑year old Sebastian de Ferranti as its chief engineer.

 

So, who was Sebastian de Ferranti?  It  is one of the scandals of the Greenwich ‘regeneration’ process that almost nothing is mentioned about the young Ferranti - apart from naming a couple of minor pieces of grass in Deptford there is nothing to note his achievements, of world changing importance, here in our Borough. He was born in Liverpool of Italian and Polish parents and, a child prodigy, attended a school in Ramsgate where he was given space to work on various schemes with special tuition and support from a local electrician. When he was 14 he developed an alternator which was patented and widely used. Leaving school he was employed in the Experimental Department at Siemens Charlton works.  He set up a small manufacturing works for his own ideas and was then appointed as Engineer at the Grosvenor Gallery. He understood that if electricity was to be supplied on a large scale the manufacture needed to be outside of city centres and go to places where land was cheap and water and coal were available.  Thomas Edison had supported direct current based systems, and held many key patents. Ferranti worked on alternating current from early on, and was one of the few experts in this system.

 

The promoters of the Grosvenor Gallery scheme set up the London Electrical Supply Company and began to think about expansion.  In 1887 they asked Ferranti LESCO to take on the design of their proposed power station at Deptford. He designed the building, the generating plant and the distribution system. On its completion in 1891, it was the first truly modern power station, supplying high‑voltage AC power that was then ‘stepped down’ for consumer use on each street. This basic system remains in use today around the world.  He was just 23 years old.  

 

The site of Deptford Power Station is, of course, almost on the Creek being adjacent to the General Steam Navigation site at the point at which the Creek meets the Thames. The same new housing scheme covers the sites of both works, and, scandalously, manages to ignore both these major firms - particularly the revolutionary first power station, in the layout, naming and in fact everything in the building of the new housing.

 

the London Electric Supply Corporation. became a limited liability company in 1887 with a capital of £1million. The Electric Lighting Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Act 1889 (52&53 Vic. cap. clxxviii) was passed on 26 August 1889 and established among other things the ‘area of supply,’. This was mostly in the West End but included‘The District of Greenwich, except the superstructure of the Creek Bridge.’ The meant the area covered by the Greenwich Board of Works - a larger area than the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich though smaller than the present borough. It required the company‘lay down’  within two years ‘suitable and sufficient distributing mains for the purpose of general supply ........in the Greenwich District, Greenwich Road, London Street [together now forming Greenwich High Road], Nelson Street, Romney Road, Trafalgar Road, Lower Woolwich Road as far as the Union Workhouse [the site of the Greenwich Centre) Church Street, Stockwell Street, New Cross Road, the Broadway, Lewisham High Road and [Deptford?] High Street. As specified by te Act there should be two copies of maps detailing this now inherited by and deposited at the National Archives and one each at the London Metropolitan Archives and the Greenwich Heritage Centre.

 

Deptford Power Station had four sub‑stations, three in the West End and one at Deptford. The main power station, completed in 1891, was a revolution in the generation of electric power and as Deptford East, long outlived Ferranti himself who died in 1930. It lasted 66 years and survived two World Wars finally shutting down in 1957 and then demolished in the early 1960s. LESCo built Deptford West in 1928 - it was  decommissioned in 1983 and demolished in 1992. After the Great War LESCo was part of a committee with nine other electrical power companies operating in London which pooled resources and in 1925 became the London Power Company to which the assets of the component companies were gradually transferred - taking on Deptford Power Stations in 1928. Along with other companies LESCo, was dissolved on nationalisation  1948 and its assets were vested in the London Electricity Board, since privatised.

 

With the final demolition of Deptford Power Stations and the redevelopment of the site, there is virtually nothing to remind us of this pioneering work of generating electric power. You could live in Deptford , even on the site itself, for many years without having the first idea about Ferranti and the first ever power station  - no doubt many do. Has anyone ever asked the people who live on the site what they know of its past???

 

What Richard Cheffins said at the end of his article is ‘In this context the small sub‑station in Greenwich High Road has great heritage significance’.  Before finishing he had a bit more to say.

 He wondered - as I did  - if this substation was the ‘Deptford’ sub‑station referred to in early sources. But the evidence did not support it. He says “ the 1894 25” O.S. map clearly shows a continuous line of domestic-scale housing along this stretch of road with this stretch of road with the entrance next to the pumping station in Norman Road, The 1914 25” map shows these houses demolished and the entrance to the pumping station in its present location, flanked by a wall but between the gate and the pub there are no buildings, neither the LESC sub‑station nor the house to its right behind the wall which first appear on the 1930 LCC revision of the 25” O.S. map. Given that the sub‑station was unlikely to have been built during the First World War and would hardly bear the designation LESC after 1925 when LESCo’s assets were being transferred to the London Power Co., it would appear to date specifically from the early 1920s.”

 

However a couple of years ago the sub station was locally listed by the Borough - for which we should very mich thank our Conservation Officer.  There was additional research done then and the listing documentation dates the building to 1891. I note that it all provides evidence from the current owners who will have access to material which would not have been available to Richard.

 

It’s a very small and obscure building - but it is effectively the only relic of how Deptford was where the public supply of electricity began. Come on, this is a world first for something every one now relies on -  but it needs talking up.   Why do so many people seem to think it doesn’t matter? Why don’t we tell tourists about it??  Is it on the history syllabus in schools?  If not, why not???