Norman Road wharves

 They articles I’ve been doing recently are about the industries which were on the Greenwich bank of Deptford Creek working south down from the River to Lewisham. So far I’ve done sites from the River to Creek Road and then most of the sites between Creek Road and the railway bridge.  What I hadn’t looked at are the Creekside wharves which were between Norman Road and the Creek.  There a whole a ragbag of them and some of them change name as different operators used them.  But I feel that this probably reflects the sort of wharves you would find all round the country on small riversides like Deptford Creek. 

Today, going down Norman Road from Creek Road to the railway is to pass some industry at Brewery Wharf and then to be in a canyon with new identikit flats on either side of the road, just like everywhere else.  Then there is some industry before we get to the railway – some of it to do with the Tideway Tunnel, of which more in the future.  If you look at Google Street view - and you can look at the street all the way back to 2008 in stave’s and you can see how much the area on the Creekside of Norman Road has changed over the past 17 years. Chances are that however far we go back down Norman Roads and its Creekside it was much the same progression of small scruffy industrial sites.

There is no road running down from Creek Road to the railway on the 1844 tithe map – and presumably you had to struggle through the mud to get to the wharves – or go by boat.  By 1850 Ravensbourne Street had appeared and goes south from Creek Road to the corner of Claremont Street – and Claremont Street is still there.  Ravensbourne Street had houses on both sides of the road but also entrances to some wharves – Ravensbourne, Collier, and New Sun Wharves. In some advertisements it is described as ‘North Pole Lane’.  By 1895 it goes all the way down to Greenwich High Road, as it does now, and it called Norman Road – after the local landowner, a lawyer called John Manship Norman.  The rows of houses on both sides of the road remain into the 1950s – but by the 1960s are gone and I assume they were ‘slum cleared’.

The only wharf which has the same name consistently throughout the past couple of centuries is the first one next south of Brewery Wharf – Ravensbourne Wharf.  Like all the others it has dealt with coal- and what we are about to see is the vast amount of coal coming into the Ares on ships from the north of England – load after load after load.  At Ravensbourne Wharf H.Adams, coal and coke merchant  offered “Coals! Coals! Coals!” and added that ‘Telephonic Communication was Est bushed’.  There were occupants selling other things – In 1853 H.JGillard  with a works in Gothenburg sold ‘patent machine-made laths’ and had ‘experienced workmen’.  Ritchie and Smith stocked tiles – ‘Best Bangor and Port Madoc Slates’ along with chimney pots, fire lumps, and ‘Robin Hood’. L (I have no idea what that is either).  His workmen ‘craned, loaded and warehoused.. Goods of every description’.  

It has been poijtd out to me that late 19th century maps show two large tanks on Ravensbourne Wharf and it is suggested they are gas holders. I doubt that, but I don’t know – wood welcome inforato0m or ideas. Today on Ravensbourne wharf is a little theatre, bar and arts centre. All sounds good.  http://www.theoldjoinery.org/ Oh but No! It’s soon going to be the site of a vast great tall tower block.  https://nla.london/projects/ravensbourne-wharf

Collier Wharf a bit further down, did what it said – John C. Walton sold ‘Best Wallsend’ coal - as they also did on New Sun Wharf.   They were replaced in the late 19th century by Headley’s Oil Mills - or Headley Steam Mills – whatever you liked to call them.   They were a lot more up market than the coal wharves – their directors are listed in directories  of directors and the also had a Royal  Warrant – for the supply of ‘genuine linseed cakes, cotton cakes and rapeseed cakes’ to Her Majesty the Queen..  The site consisted of ‘a frontage of 1000 feet to the Creel, engine, boiler, cranes and other machinery,’

Headley’s were initially owned by the Goode brothers who made Goode's Desiccated food for horses.  – ‘valuable, nutritious and portable.  I shudder to think what was in it.  There seems to be a suggestion that it would be useful as a fortificati0on. An account describes how at Aldershot (I presume the army centre) that an experiment was made with the horse feed to ‘ascertain its resisting power against rifle bullets…after 300 rounds at a few bales it was found that a bullet would occasionally penetrate a bale.. But had not sufficient energy to enter a second bale’.  Thus a beleaguered army unit about to be attacked but with their defences broken might shift out the horse food to fill the breaches, see the attack off and live to see another day’.  Hope the horses enjoyed eating it.

Later an advertisement for Headleys mentions fish meal and fertiliser. And later still there is a report of a theft of tine belonging to the Ministry of Supply and which would have needed several lorry loads to remove – and would fetch much more than £1000 on the black market. 

Further down was Lion Wharf where Fry Brothers had a hire and haulage business. They had a considerable fleet of spritsail sailing barges 'The Portage’; Thomas and Arthur, Winnipeg. Assiniboine, Minnedosa. Neepawa, Our Girls – all apparently built for them and owned by Edmund Fry with an address in the relatively unpretentious Langdale Road, off Greenwich High Road. I

n 1913  Fry’s could deal with heavy road vehicles saying “their works are adequately equipped to carry out all kinds of wheel repairs, tire renewing, pressing-up, etc., to any make of motor wagon. …. should the repairs be of a protracted nature, Messrs. Fry. Bros. will … substitute a complete back-axle set … at a nominal charge”.   Something of the nature of the vehicles they dealt with was revealed by a summons for he breach of bye-laws at West Ham/. They had passed through West ham without a license to do so in their locomotive engine. They explained it had been hired by the local authority in Woodford and it was its way to its next hirer which was the local authority in Enfield. They were fined and should have had a London County Council 30s temporary licence.  I assume this was some sort of heavy road roller.

The roads we live on today were built by the likes of the Fry Brothers --- there are reports of their supply of granite to Deptford Borough Council…… another 500 tons of granite for Grove Park Workhouse… of refusal of their tender for construction of Bramshot Avenue in Charlton... of building a siding at Brimsdown station ... Kentish brown pit flints for Sunbury on Thames Council and so on and so on and many many more. They also used horses – wanted a smart youth who was an early riser to drive a horse and trap. And frequently advertised horses for sale, or wanted.

In the 1930s Fry’s appear to have developed and made the EffBee water softener.  Clearly a great many of these were sold but ‘to the trade only’ means that most advertisements for the softener are from local shops and agencies rather than from Fry’s themselves.  It was advertised as being ‘made in Kent’ - which I suppose includes Greenwich.  I would like to know more about these softeners – it was a technology being developed in this period but what exactly they used as the softening agent isn’t clear.  Also developing a water softener seems to be a long way from the sort of heavy haulage that Fry’s had previously been involved in.

Another wharf – Norman wharf – was acquired in 1903 as a Council depot to serve West Greenwich.   There were several other wharves with operators over two centuries who we assume were doing a useful job of work.  As we near the railway bridge there are some wharves still in use. The Brooksmarsh Trading estate is still with us. Nearest to the railway is a wharf in use in conjunction with the Tideway Tunnel project and barges can still be seen coming and going as they once did from every wharf.  There is a platform built out into the creek and work ongoing there.

Wharf by wharf has however fallen to the developers.  Some – Hilton’s for instance – are on a second phase of development. Soon there will be nothing but flats.  I am aware that campaigners are trying to open up the creek frontage with a footpath to provide some measure of amenity in the area but a working waterway has become something only to look at from the windows of our apartment.