Last week I wrote about the Old Floode Mill and said that this week I would write about the Robinson Mills. Many people will remember these mills which stood at Deptford Bridge and which were burnt down in the early 1970s. They were vast big buildings and made a dramatic impact on the main road as it crosses the Creek on its way up to Blackheath Hill. The impact of their size stretched down both Deptford Church Street and Greenwich High Road. On their sites now are buildings of Lewisham College and Goldsmith’s College.
Now - before we get any further I’m going to stick my neck out and say that I think that’s much of what I have seen in local histories and their accounts of the Robinson Mills at Deptford Bridge, is wrong. I think there were two different sites here and that their Deptford Bridge Mill was separate from the Olde Floode Mill.
First, I would like to add something to what I said last week about the Olde Floode Mill. I described how it is probably one of the Lewisham Mills described in the Doomsday Book which was eventually destroyed by a flood in 1824. Most history books will tell you that it was then taken over by Robinsons who rebuilt it. I am absolutely certain that that is not what happened. The Olde Floode Mill belonged to Christ’ Hospital and
after the 1820s references to the Olde Floode Mill are in connection with its leasehold ownership by T. & C.Kingsford who also had mills in Canterbury, Thames Ditton and elsewhere. At 24 Church Street, Deptford, Kingsford had a shop where flour and other items were sold as retail but most flour was sold through contracts for bulk supplies to workhouses and similar institutions. After the 1824 flood they advertised for someone to rebuild it. In due course builders moved in and I in my article last week I quoted an advertisement for the sale of the timbers from the old mill.
Kingsford were at the Olde Floode Mill until the 1870s when it was taken over by dog biscuit manufacturers, Thomas Ellis and who were the leaseholders when the mill was burnt down in 1880. The fire is said to have started at in the Church Street shop and their adjacent bakery which was a three storey brick building. The mill itself was wooden and was connected to the bakery by a covered bridge 20 feet above the road. Despite the pouring rain as the fire raged it was watched by several thousand people.
So, the Olde Floode Mill was not leased or owned by Robinsons until after 1880 and certainly not in 1824. In fact they did not have a mill at Deptford Bridge until after 1870.
So who were the Robinsons?? The family and their company still exist and come from the Crawley area. In the 19th century they were based in the area which is now mainly covered by Gatwick Airport and the sites of the historic homes of some family members are under the runways and the urban areas of Crawley. They were Quakers and, interestingly, the Friends Meeting House in Crawley which was built in 1675 through the involvement of a blacksmith called Robert Robinson. In Crawley there are memorials to Sarah Robinson who set up a training school for girls – and other good works. She also had a very large family of children.
In 1831 Members of the Robinson family – Joseph and Henry - leased a windmill in Lowfield Heath from the Constable family. It is a smallish post mill which both is and was in the Gatwick area. It was moved from its original site near the Airport a few years ago and is now a tourist attraction. The Robinsons installed a John Ancell at Lower Heathfield as the tenant and miller and did not surrender the lease until 1886. To know more about this mill see http://www.lowfieldheathwindmill.co.uk/ and I would like to thank them for a lot of additional information.
In 1837 John, Joseph and Mary Robinson went to Cayuga in America where they farmed, but after some years Joseph and the rest of the family returned to England because of unspecified ‘family problems’. Perhaps here we should note that Henry Robinson’s, since demolished, grand house at 16 Eliot Park on Blackheath was called ‘Cayuga’, The still standing coach house next door was built for Henry but the size of this corner site must demonstrate the family’s wealth..
In 1851 Joseph Robinson purchased a mill in Lewisham – which was almost certainly the mill at Lewisham Bridge. There is a picture of it and some information at https://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/lewisham/assets/galleries/lewisham/lewisham-bridge-mill.html
Joseph was soon joined at Lewisham by his brother Henry, who had experience of milling at Lowfield Heath, and they agreed he should manage the mill. It quickly became very profitable and they then purchased the freehold. In 1871 they could afford to build a new mill on the site at Deptford Bridge. This was in the area now covered by Lewisham College with a frontage partly on Church Street. They were joined there by their brother John, and eventually by Henry’s son, John Henry who was to manage the complex for many years. In the 1880s Deptford Bridge building was a ‘steam mill’ with seven floors, a granary and a number of associated buildings and described as ‘one of the finest structures in the metropolis … the proprietors being men of advanced ideas’. Thus Henry Robinson had gone from a small rural windmill to managing this huge and technologically advanced milling complex,
As Quakers the brothers were soon involved in local ‘good works’ – for example in 1861 Henry was at a Greenwich Peace Meeting. In the 1870s Henry was chair of a big temperance meeting with people from all round the area. At one such meeting a Band of Hope children’s choir sang and revisited their performance at a temperance fete at Westcombe Park. The choir has 100 members drawn from temperance societies in Greenwich, Deptford, Lewisham and Lee and had been trained using the ‘tonic sol-fa’ system. At the same meeting there was a lecture on the temperance question - the lecturer ‘adducing his arguments in such manner as to render the unanswerable. There were many more such events inevitably with one or other of the Robinsons brothers present.
In the early 20th century John Henry Robinson was Chair of the Miller Hospital, which stood in Greenwich High Road. It recalled the Robinson's Sussex roots and how in 1896, when Crawley's first hospital was opened the road it stood in was renamed ‘Robinson Road’ in memory of Sarah Robinson whose training school building was used by the hospital.
By the 1870s Henry was involved in the London Flour Millers Association and in 1878 he led their deputation to Parliament on the Weights and Measures Act. John Henry too was to later be Chair of this organisation. At the mills there were sick and welfare schemes for employees and an institute and sports club
I have described above how the Olde Floode Mill, then in the possession of Messrs Ellis, was burnt down in 1880. The very next year the Robinsons new mill at Deptford Bridge was burnt down. The report in the local paper actually began by listing the many fires in local industrial buildings over the previous few years but said ‘As destructive as these fires were they will not bear comparison ‘. The mill was said to be full of new American machinery. The fire began on the third floor with flames from the ‘exhaust spout’. Soon there were fire engines from all over east London with a hundred firemen led by the ever heroic captain Massey Shaw. Thirteen steam fire engines were at work, one working from the yard of Messrs Ellis tide mills. ‘It was a scene of terrible grandeur’. Happily all the ‘valuable horses’ were saved and only one fireman was injured who was ‘taken to the Seamen’s Hospital’ but not ‘kept in’.
The mill building was a complete wreck but was rebuilt. Within a year permission was given for a new chimney shaft and we are told a 12 horse power gas engine had been installed. The new mill is the one that people will remember at Deptford Bridge. It was built on the ‘roller mill’ system which, as it replaced older mills, was allowing the industry to be expanded by wealthy companies who could afford large factory style mills while putting small local mills out of business. It was the future – although eventually mills like the Robinsons mill in Deptford would themselves be too small to operate economically. In 1882 their new mill was arranged to minimize the risk of fire –there is in a detailed description of the fire prevention system as well as the drill employees must follow in case of fire. It is said that work there was mainly processing animal feed stuffs.
I don’t know exactly when the Robinsons took over the Olde Floode Mill but on an insurance plan of 1897 it is marked as “J. & H. Robinsons. Tide Mills’. The site is now covered by the Goldsmiths buildings, Asquith Gibbes Hall and Ken Langley House, Deptford Learning Centre. Robinsons’ buildings are shown on the 1897 plan but their names are very, very difficult to read. The word ‘mills’ can be made out on the actual tide mill site and on a smaller building alongside. There is also a large group of warehouses. At the Deptford Bridge site there is a larger complex of buildings – again very difficult to read. One is clearly marked as ‘roller mill’ and another bigger building is also a mill. So, it seems that the main mill is that on the Deptford Bridge site and the Floode Mill was still there but not extended or enlarged – and probably not actually used.
In an 1887 description of the Deptford mills the Floode Mill is not mentioned. However, it describes a tidal dock on the creek by which barges can deliver wheat. We are also told the roller mill was in two parts and there are details of the wheat cleaning processes, and the warehouse. Steam power was provided by a horizontal compound engine, named the Gladstone, with two beam engines, and a row of boilers.
Robinson’s Deptford mills continued to work into the 20th century. They were managed by John Henry Robinson who died in 1933 and although he had lived in Blackheath initially he eventually moved back to Surrey as did other family members.
After the Great War the great Robinson mill was
becoming older and in comparison to new mills being built, smaller. Similar
firms were being overtaken by the giant milling companies - Rank, Spillers and
the Co-op. In 1921 the Robinsons joined the Associated London Flour Millers – which
was a consortium of milling companies which also included Mumford’s Mill next door to Robinsons on Deptford Creek. Only ten years later in 1931 they were bought
out by Rank. As the twentieth century progressed so the larger firms both
diversified and upgraded technically. Although smaller mills closed throughout
the 1960s the old Robinsons mill survived into the early 1970s as part of Rank, Hovis, McDougall
The Robinson Deptford Bridge mill was burnt down in 1970 – or at least I think it was since I have been unable to find a report of the fire. Clearly the press in the 1970s did not find fires as exciting as they did in 1870 and of course there was no Captain Shaw in charge. It was clearly the end of an era.
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