We have now got up the Greenwich side of the Creek as far as Deptford Bridge. There is a very large area before we get to the Bridge itself though – this is historically called Albion and Ravensbourne wharves. It is the area now very largely taken up by Lewisham College and the Skill Centre. It had previously been corn mills owned by Robinsons. I thought I should leave the Robinson Mill complex until I write about the Lewisham side of the Creek –it was quite a complex area based on an old tide mill site and with many buildings on going down the Creek as well as those at Deptford Bridge. Anyway I have written about several corn mills over the past few weeks, including details on Mumford’s last week and I think we have all heard enough about them for a while.
Before Robinsons took over the site it was used by a building supplies and timber merchant’s business by the Trenchard family – and I wrote a bit about them earlier. There were two wharves, Albion and Ravensbourne. This is complicated even more because there was another Ravensbourne Wharf further down the Creek, sometimes called Lower Ravensbourne Wharf, which I have written about many weeks ago. Its guess work that I pick the right Ravensbourne Wharf but hope to get it right.
There appear to have been mills at Deptford Bridge on the site of these two wharves from at least the 18th century but who owned them and managed them is often not clear. There is said to have been a windmill here as well as the more obvious watermills. There is a mention of a windmill at Deptford Bridge as early as 1622 and that it was still there until the 1840s. I must admit to being a bit confused by this – the very authoritative Bert Reynolds (of Watermill Hoppers Facebook page) says that there was a windmill – and produces evidence of it – a little way back down the Creek on the site of a tannery which I have missed in these articles - and ought to backtrack and do it!. It is now part of the Merryweather site. There was also a mill at Tanner’s Hill which isn’t too far away. So – perhaps someone will enlighten me as to what there was at Deptford Bridge. Whatever - this north side of Deptford Bridge has been associated with mills and wharves for a long long time.
One of the strange things is that Ravensbourne Wharf seems to have been owned by Ford Madox Brown. Many people will know who he was – but for those of you who don’t – Ford Madox Brown was a painter in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. These were a group of young artists trying to get back to the principles of late medieval Italian art – they are very much associated with paintings of ‘stunners’ – unreasonably tall young women in pictures with subject matter frequently connected with King Arthur. (I actually quite like them). Madox Brown was however concerned with issues around social justice and his most famous paintings ‘the Last of England’ and ‘Work’ (digging up Hampstead) reflect this. Doubtless the rents from the wharf helped subsidise this work.
Ford Madox Brown seems to have inherited the wharf from his mother, Caroline, and her connections with the Madox family who lived in Greenwich and appear to have been timber merchants in the 17th and 18th centuries. Erasmus Madox in the early 18th century had owed several wharves including Deptford Wharf.
Clearly there have been wharves on the site of Ravensbourne Wharf for centuries but for the nineteenth century there is some information. Most of this seems to be sales advertisements in the local press and this alone must say something about the wharf and its location. In 1837 an advertisement appeared for the sale of a ‘twenty horse power condenser and high pressure steam engine by Wolf and Edwards’. Included with this were five coke ovens, ‘loose safety valves’ and a great deal more. There was also a ‘capital and substantial engine house’ of the ‘best stock bricks’ with skylights and gutters and other things which no purchaser could do without. There is no indication as to who is selling it, or why. I assume that ‘Wolf and Edwards’ is the partnership between Woolf and Edwards in Lambeth which had ended twelve years earlier in 1822 – and not the partnership between Wolf of Magdeburg and Edwards, Jnr. Whatever, someone had been using this equipment for some time and some purpose. A year later there is another advertisement for the sale of the eighth part of the wharf – I assume this is an ‘investment opportunity’ rather than an operator for the wharf who is wanted. No mention of the steam engine but it includes a coal shed, stables and counting houses. It ‘commands ... the high roads to Greenwich, Lewisham, Dartford and other cities and boroughs’.
The main point of interest is that it is being sold by ‘S.Teulon’ – it is not clear if he is the owner or an agent of some sort. Samue Teulon was one of the Greenwich ex-Huguenot community and was very busy in public affairs on an agency basis throughout this period – for example he collected money for the local gas company. His famous son was the quirky but much listed architect S.S.Teulon. I am told by a local researcher on the family that he had been bankrupt in 1832. It seems unlikely that he operated the wharf himself.
Ravensbourne Wharf was for sale again in 1873. By this time there is a draw dock, a manager’s house stabling for twelve horses, a pottery, a firebrick warehouse and much more. It had been used for the ‘wharfage of coal, stone, cement, brick’. The sale is for the other five eighths of the freehold for ’10 ½ years at an almost nominal rent’. Along with it were many other buildings in the sale, clearly part of an extensive estate- shops and houses Deptford bridge and in Blackheath Hill, and as far away as Coldbath Street and including Albion Street and the Ravensbourne Arms Tavern. Albion Street now seems to be called Russet way but the Ravensbourne Arms still stands, albeit no longer a pub, on the corner with Coldbath Street.
The next advertisement is even stranger. In 1877 Chobham, Surrey, gas works was for sale ‘also the lease and goodwill of a genuine coal and coke business. Ravensbourne Wharf in Greenwich’. (note the word ‘genuine’ – may I ask what a ‘fake’ coal wharf would be?). Also thrown into the sale are ‘Two valuable patents as yet undeveloped …. for the manufacture of improved railway sleepers and for safety valves for steam boilers’.
The next we know Ravensbourne Wharf is being operated by the Trenchard family who I mentioned some weeks ago and – builders merchants, timber merchants, and local councillors - who we will hear more of in due course. They also operated Ravensbourne’s neighbour, Albion Wharf.
Throughout the earlier nineteenth century there are various advertisements from a Benjamin Smith who says he is operator of Albion Wharf. They are however all for shops and houses adjacent to the wharf rather than the wharf itself, or the activities on it – that to me says ‘property developer’ rather than ‘wharf operators’. The advertisement stresses the ‘healthy and pleasant aspect’ and mention that there is a ‘good drainage’. (Now, why do they say that?).
I would also point to a long court case which does not mention Albion Wharf but says it is about a piece of land ‘between the River Ravensbourne and Deptford Bridge’. This was an asphalt works belonging to the Val de Travers Asphalted Paving Company with ‘eleven open cauldrons’. Val de Travers is the quite well-known name of a road making company but it is also a place, a source of natural asphalt in Switzerland. The court case does mention this and asks why this smelly activity is taking place in Deptford and not in Switzerland. I only mention this because as part of my research for my PhD I investigated sales of cheap gas works tar – would you believe that a sizeable proportion went to numerous east end based road making firms, all of them named after Swiss sources of natural asphalt?
Albion Wharf was soon being operated by the Trenchards. A long court case of 1900 details a delivery of sand there which was said to be important in legal terms as to how the amount of sand in a barge was to be measured. It was however triggered by a ‘slovenly manner’ and suspicion about the motives of various of the individuals concerned.
A shorter court case concerned Thomas Harbour, age 20, who worked at Albion Wharf. He punched his employer, Edward Trenchard, ‘in the eye and another in the mouth’. Reason not really given except he had asked for money. He got 20 shillings or 14 days.
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