All the advice on sleeping better tells you never to look at the computer and your email during the night. So, Monday night I was feeling quite smug - nothing to do all day Tuesday when I was giving a talk in the evening. My next week’s Weekender article was written and I could sleep all day. 3am and I looked at my emails and there it was - from the Greenwich Wire blogger –“ historic Woolwich Rotunda needs emergency repairs to stop it collapsing” and the more I thought about it the more I thought ‘I can’t let this go’… so …. here we are. I wrote this article up specially and quickly.
When I really thought about it and it was daylight, I guessed that the vast majority of people in Woolwich and in the Borough would have no idea what the Rotunda is. It’s been hidden away near the barracks with no signage for years. You don’t know it’s there and you can’t get into if you do manage to find out where it is.
There is no competition for it being the most eccentric building in the Borough - possibly the most eccentric building in London, and weird in a friendly sort of way.
Now I usually quote from ‘The Industrial Archaeology of South-East London ‘but they don’t list it. I don’t know why because I would have thought it was well within their remit. It is listed by Darrell Spurgeon in his ‘Discover Woolwich and its Environs’. So let’s start with an introduction to the Rotunda from Darrell. He says:
“The Rotunda. An extraordinary building which started life as one of six tents erected by John Nash at Carlton House Gardens in 1814 for a premature celebration of victory over Napoleon. It was transferred to this site to become the Museum of Artillery in 1820 and for this purpose John Nash added an elegant concave shaped nave roof to protect the canvas, placed it on a brick surround and installed a massive central pillar. In 1975 restoration the original canvas and lead roof were replaced.”
So it stands above the barracks, nearly in the woods, as a building which is built to look like a tent. The news that the army has neglected it is nothing new to those campaigners on Woolwich Common who have been trying to get the Army to take an interest in its non-military property for years. Many years ago I used to Chair a Borough Wildlife Group and there were always environmentalists asking if we could ask the Army what their biodiversity strategy was for Woolwich Common. Some hapless Council officer would be asked to find out, before admitting they were still trying to find someone in the military who would admit that there were burnt out cars on their property and that they were an eyesore. But that was a long time ago and I’m sure things must have changed.
The Greenwich Wire blogger has given details of a planning application to the Council by the owners to do some remedial work to the Rotunda. As ever with these applications there is a historical assessment of the building among the planning papers. These assessments are frequently well beyond dire but, I’m very pleased to say that the description of the Rotunda done by Wessex archaeology is actually very good – even if some vital source material isn’t mentioned. It’s very clear about the history of the building and gives details of construction and background. Congratulations to them!
Someone who wants to know more about the building would do well to read the paper which is part of the planning application for remedial work. Unlike other accounts it adds in a small building south-east of the main site which it said includes a forge – and that is much more like an item of industrial history than the exhibition tent is. It also details of some of the surrounding earthworks and their function. Although I wonder if by ‘forge’ they really mean ‘farrier’?
If you want to see the building - a road goes right up to it although it has some rather forbidding signage on it. You can just about see it on Google Street view from Repository Road as a sort of ghostly presence. Also on Bing systems’ Birds Eye View is a view from above - on which you can twirl round that amazing twisted tent from the pinnacle in a very satisfactory way. You can also identify the little building to the south-east, apparently once a forge.
Looking to see what other material I have around the house which I can reference about the rotunda there is of course the Survey of Woolwich – which, very surprisingly, I can’t see in the bibliography given by Wessex Archaeology. I would very much recommend the first half of the Survey’s description of the Rotunda when they talk about the exhibition for which it was originally built and how it later got to Woolwich. As this includes a lot about George IV – as Prinny – and of both Congreves, father and son. They all had their idiosyncrasies - it’s a lovely description and very informative.
The Survey describes the built structure as it was –‘audaciously designed’ and ‘challenging’ as a structure that looked convincingly like a military bell tent both inside and out. Obviously there were structural problems and solutions found. They also describe the surrounding ground layouts as a military training exercise but how once it was in Woolwich it had to be fitted in as a publicly accessible museum. It details the history of the Rotunda as a Museum, the use of the grounds around it and how there was a need to adapt as the military establishment began to change. It includes closure and the removal of the exhibits and the more recent use of the site as a boxing centre for the soldiers.
I would very much as recommend everyone reading the Survey on the Rotunda and its story and what an eccentric building. I have also been sent at the very last minute report on the building by Hisoric England of getting over 200 pages - much too long to quote here but a interesting read. -
I thought readers might also be interested in what the building was like when it was first used as a museum. I am now referring to Vincent’s ‘Warlike Woolwich’ which, I think, is from 1885 - the copy I have has no visible publishing date. It tells us that the museum is open free every day except Sunday from 10 to 6 in summer, 10 to 4 in winter. It says that the original museum in Woolwich contained the objects which the ‘great fire of 1802’ spared and that the museum ‘abounds with records of the fertile invention of William Congreve and his equally remarkable son’. It says that a catalogue of exhibits can be purchased in the Rotunda. Attendants, military and civil, are invariably intelligent and courteous to visitors and will point out and explain the objects of greatest interest. He then lists out those objects which he sees as being of the greatest interest. For example ‘a Chinese gun carriage barbarous in its construction’ and ‘iron targets showing the effects brought on by hardheaded shot and shell’. As he goes round the Rotunda there seems to be an enormous number of models of various types. The very first items are models of Plymouth and Sheerness Dockyards. I wonder what has happened for these exhibits - can I ask anyone in the Maritime Museum who happens to be reading this if these models of various dockyards are the ones which are now in the Prince Philip Centre in Kidbrooke. And what about the models of other places – for example ‘a magnificent model of Gibraltar’ and ‘a model of St James’s Park’?
But there are also various weapons from native sources - the result presumably of various colonial wars. For example ‘native weapons of Polynesia’ … ‘Chinese flags’… ‘A model of different modes of crossing chasms in India’ and so on. There ae also some real eccentricities ‘a wonderful cinder, all that was left when the old pound notes were destroyed - notes to the value of hundred thousand pounds went in the stove …. This is the cinder’. There is also a ‘model of making charcoal gunpowder’ and ‘ a curious doll in a cage illustrative of a plan suggested by Col Congreve for saving life from wrecks’…. a curious instrument for measuring time’. Where is all this stuff now - was it all thrown out or is it somewhere languishing in a museum store? 1483’ I understand that when the site closed most recently that everything went to the re-located Firepower Museum – even these eccentricities?
Incidentally it also gives a list of all the various guns which were displayed along with various models and ‘cases of arrowheads’ some of them showing ‘the principles by which the guns are made’ and models describing them.
I have written this article very quickly and out of sequence with others. But I think the Rotunda is so important and thus I’m very grateful to Greenwich Wire blogger drawing attention to the planning application. As I said, I guess most people now living in Woolwich will know nothing about the Rotunda because it’s been hidden away so many years. It’s an amazing and eccentric building.
Thanks Daryl Chamberlain, Peter Guillery, Chris Mansfield, Elizabeth Pearcey,
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