Redpath Brown structural steel

 

This series of articles has been moving north up the east side Peninsula looking at sites an industries along the Riverside. It is now nearing Greenwich Yacht Club and soon after that the Charlton Boundary.   Roughly where the offices and entrance of the Ecology Centre are now was the site of Norton‘s Barge Yard.

I see that there is a block of flats near the riverside in John Harrison Way which is called ‘The Norton’ and I hope this is named after Norton’s Barge Yard. When development started on the Peninsula I gave a huge list of names to the Council’s road names person in the hope that some of the blocks of flats and roads being built could be named to reflect some of the people and businesses which were there  in the past. I don’t know that very many were used – although in the area around John Harrison Way some sailing barge names have been used – Reminder is one  Anyway, it’s good to find that one barge builder on the Greenwich riverside may have been remembered - although I bet but no one who lives there  has any idea who ‘Norton’ was or what he did.

 

I must also admit to knowing very little about Norton’s myself. It which down closed in the late 1960s.  Most of what I know comes from conversations and articles by Pat O’Driscoll who took a lot of photographs there in the 1950s. She also worked on sailing barges and has written extensively about them and their builders on the Thames and Medway.

 

I have a copy of a plan of the part of the Greenwich riverside where Nortons had their works – but I don’t know the date of it. It shows separate sites for ‘R. Norton’, ‘Norton Bros’ and ‘Norton Junior’. In an article published in Bygone Kent (April 2005) Pat said that two brothers had started the business in 1902 and that they came from Tunbridge. An undated photograph shows an elderly gent with white whiskers, The caption says that this is the original Richard Norton who first opened the yard. Dick Norton, who Pat O’Driscoll remembered, was his son.  There also appears to have been a barge building family named Norton in Brightlingsea in the 19^th century but I don’t know if they were connected. (https://earthhome.tripod.com/nortons.html

 

Richard Norton built three spritsail barges at Greenwich in the early 20^th Century. In 1901 he built a barge called Scud which was later owned by Charles Burley Ltd of Sittingbourne who made Dolphin brand cement and bricks. She lasted until 1980 when she was broken up at Milton Creek, near Sittingbourne. In 1907 he rebuilt a barge which had originally been called Empress and which had been built in Faversham in 1877 and damaged in a collision in the Thames. She was renamed Scudo when rebuilt.  Finally, in 1916, he built a barge to be called Serb which was originally owned by R.W.Paul, the Ipswich based maltings and animal feed firm. She is said to have been used to load coal at Tilbury . In 1940 her owners were asked to help with the Dunkirk evacuations and she was towed Ramsgate.  However it turned out she was not needed and never actually went. She was later owned by Alfred Green and based in Hammersmith.  She was wrecked off the North Foreland in 1954.

 

By the 1950s the yard itself was unpretentious in the extreme. They did not have a wharf as such and operated on the foreshore with a set of barge blocks running parallel to the shore. They were by then only engaged in repairs and maintenance work. There were couple of old lighters which were used to moor craft alongside and sometimes a vessel would moor up on the Dorman Long jetty slightly down river. Inland there was a wicket gate in a corrugated iron fence, behind which was the Redpath Brown and Dorman Long works and a tap for water. Norton’s had two sheds by the riverside path. One of these was for storing tools and other useful things. It was tumbledown but the tools inside it were traditional and would be a treasure trove today. There were bins containing small pieces of iron work  bolts, spikes and rings - and trunnells (also called tree nails). Dick Norton still had his original trunnel plate which he had used since he was a boy for making oak pegs. In the shed there were “blocks,  leeboard hangings, chain by the fathom, iron round rod and square rod,  and chaffcutter wheels’. There were also workshop tools and a forge and a quenching bath. The woodworking tools were uncommon and peculiar to the trade. Outside were the remains of old sailing barges like The Royal George which had been cut down on the River and beached. There were also pieces of old leeboards, masts, chains, anchors and so on.

 

The other shed was the home of the last employee at the yard. This was Fred and he had all sorts of bits and pieces which he had turned into furniture with a coal range for cooking and heating and water from the tap under the fence at Redpath Brow’s. For lighting there was an oil lamp. For getting about and doing some shopping he had a soapbox on wheels. Eventually he had a fall and was carried off to an old people’s home, whether he liked it or not.

 

Dick  Norton retired in the 1960s and died in 1973 and gradually the site was cleared.

 

People who visited the yard in the 1960s took many photographs. I’ve included some here. Most are by Pat O’Driscoll and I’d like to thank her for letting me have them.

 

I can just about remember, when I first moved to Greenwich, the jumble of old sheds along the foreshore and a lot of interesting bits and pieces over the years. Greenwich Yacht Club had been in an adjacent shed like building but later moved into what had been the Redpath Brown canteen.  One day a member of the Yacht Club offered to take me along the riverside and show me the remains of Norton’s Yard. There wasn’t much to see - even the barge blocks parallel to the river had been removed. He showed me various lumps of wood and bits of fencing which could’ve been anything but which he said were part of the yard and I duly took photographs of them.

 

When the New Millennium Experience Company moved into the area they just cleared everything regardless of whether it might be interesting or not.  Now there are flats everywhere inland and tidiness along the riverside.  Its all very boring.