Last week I looked at the
boundaries between Greenwich and Charlton, particularly in relation to the
Angerstein Railway. Before I start
talking about the riverside industries at Angerstein Wharf I thought that it
might be of interest to look at the area along the Angerstein Railway and one
particularly obscure railway related industry.
The Angerstein railway is
not only a boundary marker and a barrier in itself but to the east of it is a
large stretch of open land with virtually no road access. It stretches in a long downhill sweep north
from Bramshot Avenue and is mainly now used for the police car pound. Until the 1980s this police site was a
railway owned factory and much of the rest of the area is still in railway
use. Much of the southern part of the
area is some sort of pit – presumably dug out for chalk extraction.
This area is still in
Greenwich parish but is so much on the margins that it is hardly recognised as
such, and really not written up at all. On
Samuel Travers plan of 1697 it is shown as fields going up as far as Charlton
Road and the edge of Blackheath to the south.
The names of the fields are given – but not which field is which. In the
17th Century this is all Crown land but leased out and most
importantly they are associated with ‘that messuage or farm commonly called, or
known, by the name of Nethercomb Farm alias East Combe”.
Combe Farm was on the west
side of the railway and stood just north of what is now Westcombe Park Station.
It has featured in previous articles on the foot crossing over the Angerstein Railway
which was recently under threat. A
building at the back of the houses in Westerdale Road has been claimed as the
last remaining farm building – although this is disputed. The farm had a long and fairly distinguished
history – it was owned by the Crown, used by Henry VIII and later mentioned by
Samuel Pepys. There is a booklet about
it by the late Barbara Ludlow and Sally Jenkinson. (Combe Farm Greenwich, Gordon
Teachers Centre 1987). This details the farm’s early history and then gives extracts from
diaries about the lives of the Roberts family who farmed there in 1858. It was demolished
in 1901. Although the Roberts family
clearly were growers as shown in the diary extracts it should be noted that in
the 1820s advertisements for new leaseholders suggested ‘farm house easily convertible into a villa’.
In 1845 the whole area
between Combe Farm and Victoria Way was under consideration for a new and major
cemetery – presumably as the successor to Nunhead Cemetery which had opened in
1840, itself following on from other major cemeteries like Kensal Green and
Highgate. The scheme was, obviously, not
proceeded with.
In 1848 an incident
concerning 1,000 yards of copper wire by some men ‘calling themselves builders’ referred to a Mr.Nokes of the ‘Combe Farm lime kilns’. On the
1867 OS map a lime kiln is indeed marked. It stood south of the main railway
between Westcombe Park and Charlton and north of of the curve of railway line
which takes the line from Charlton round and down towards the Angerstein Line
and the river. Effectively it was inside
the ‘U’ shaped line easily seen on maps.
Today this area appears to
be some sort of clearing used as a rubbish dump reached by a path from the car
pound. This area is marked on other maps
as ‘old
chalk pit’ and
some old photographs show chalk’ cliffs
around some of the area. Was this chalk pit attached to the farm – who worked
it and when? Does the existence of the
lime kiln mean that it was still worked in the 1840s and 1850s? Nokes or - I guess - Noakes, is a common enough name in Greenwich where
one family with that name had a big fodder business and much else down by
Billingsgate. (I will try not to think about the Noakesoscope here). This is
however in the northern part of this large site.
In 1849 the Railway Tunnel
from Blackheath Station was opened higher up the site, nearer to the Heath itself.
This was the line built to connect Charlton and Woolwich to central London
since it had not proved possible to extend the Greenwich Railway through
Greenwich Park. Today it emerge – unseen – from under Bramshot Avenue where
single story shops and a lot of associated dereliction at the rear hide steps
down to the railway and the rather magnificent arch from which it emerges – a
piece of industrial history in Greenwich that no one ever sees. My I pad’s map system gives a great view of it but won’t let me copy it over. Two years later the Angerstein railway was
added with initially a direct link up to the tunnel. The line was built on an embankment allegedly
made up of the spoil from the tunnel. This formed a wide triangle with the line
going from Charlton to the Angerstein branch. The 1867 map shows some building
in it with some woodland nearby – there is no indication as to what this was or
indeed how anyone could reach it without crossing the live railway tracks,
In 1864 there was a
terrible accident in the tunnel when three trucks full of ballast became
stranded in the tunnel unknown to the signal staff based in Charlton. This wide
open area should have been very useful to emergency workers –but it had
essentially no road access except from Charlton Station and the footpaths from
Combe Farm.
The tunnel entrance/exit
below Bramshot Avenue is, obviously well below the natural ground level and implies
that this was dug out at some stage. I
have always rather assumed it is another chalk pit and in fact it appears to be
so. It might however just be a cutting dug out for the new railway line from
Blackheath. Is this another old chalk working which the builders of the
Blackheath tunnel took advantage of? If
so which of the many leaseholders of this piece of land undertook the
work? There is no sign of it on the 1697
Travers survey – so who, since then??
The rail line was finally
built through from Greenwich – and Westcombe Park station – to Charlton in 1873.
This completed the railway lines on the site as they are today – although today
the Angerstein line does not connect to the tunnel mouth at all. The interchange of lines between Angerstein
and Charlton is complex and the subject of much discussion in railway books and
magazines – indeed the only part of this site in which anyone seems to take any
interest or had done any research.
Now – at sometime between
1873 and – well, 1902 – a factory was built in the site alongside the line
coming from the tunnel mouth. This is the site if today’s car pound and before the motorway was built
it seems to have been accessed from the, now demolished, northern section of Siebert
Road.
If this piece has so far
been all guess work and speculation I am afraid I need your patience because it
is about to get more so. The factory on
the car pound sit was the South Eastern Railways’ signalling works. If someone knows of anything written please
tell me. Otherwise it must be the most underreported
bit of railway infrastructure in England –and it only closed in the 1980s.
There must be people still around who worked there,
The South Eastern Railway
is said to have been pioneers of signalling systems. R.W.Kidner who wrote a number of books on the railway and studied it
in detail says ‘the
Southern was associated with signalling
experiments from its earliest days’....’also early in the field with telegraphs’. He devotes several pages to their innovations
but never a word does he say about this signalling works. The only reference I can find that he made to
the works is in a list of railway sites belonging to South Eastern where it is
the only item in the list that he is unable to give us an opening date or any
information at al
In the years before the
Great War there are number if small news items about the works. In 1907 an Mr.
Isaac Nimson was
said to have been employed there for 29 years – which puts the opening back
before 1878. But there are no buildings
shown on the site on the 1894 Ordnance Survey sheet. I can see that if the railway was trying to
do something clever they might have wanted to keep it quiet – but difficult to
stop the OS marking the existence of your buildings!
The little I know about the works comes from newspaper reports
–obituaries, court cases and – of, yes – the cricket club. By chance there is a
picture of the frontage of the works in 1945 taken soon after it had been subject to a V-2 attack – and the
devastation caused by it. Three people were killed, 81 sent to hospital. 20
houses had to be demolished and 200 affected – I assume they were mainly in
Siebert Road. The line of houses shown
on the right of the photograph are now under the A102m as it goes down to the Blackwall Tunnel and
were probably the bomb damaged ones. The
frontage of the works is quite difficult to see in the surrounding debris and
gloom but shows a large building running roughly East West which appears to be
constructed in brick with a slate roof, and there is a clearstory or vent along
the top. It looks as it was built about 1900.
This means that it was probably used for some kind of polluting work,
perhaps casting, went on inside or it it may have been an erecting shop. To the
left there is a substantial chimney. What is intriguing is that on the
right-hand side of this large building there are other buildings which appear
to be the size and shape of houses with a row of tall brick chimneys with
chimney pots on top of them. Chimneys of a similar structure in were seen in Sheffield
for furnaces or stoves for some kind of metalworking? This is a large works which must have had a
considerable output and used skilled labour.
Workers noted in newspaper
reports had jobs which include – saw sharpener, sawyer, employee of the engineers
department, charge hand and fitter; hammer man, draughtsman, Assistant Engineer
(permanent way), painters (there was a long dispute over painters pay in the
1930s). These jobs – and they are a tiny
random selection – are either artisan or skilled and supervisory. There are no basic level labourers and I think
that may imply that this was an establishment undertaking only skilled work
The site may also have been
used as a store, in 1931 copper wire requisitioned from there.
The organisation which gets
most coverage is the cricket club – which I think may have once included a
football club which was later dropped. In
1911 the annual dinner was reported as being held at the Angerstein Hotel - and
the local MP had been invited. There was
a display of juggling, by Melvin’s Juggling Troop and a duet from Madame Peak
and Melvin. There were some presentations
– there was a lot of fuss about handing over a hand jam dish.
On another occasion they
went to Tonbridge to play against the Onward Club (also all railwaymen). Then it was off to the Dorset Arms Hotel
followed by a smoking concert (i.e. Selections from William Tell and a Song – ‘Has Anyone Seen our Cat?’).
Later a Civil Engineers
Department was based at Angerstein. I found
a web site for ‘Wickham’ enthusiasts – little rail trailers - one of
which was used on site. There were also some reminisces from ex workers –some
describing how in 1976 the works dealt with ‘bogie aggregate hoppers’. I can
just remember once standing on Westcombe Park station platform when I saw two
men climb up onto the railway from the site and walk alongside the railway line
on the bridge over Westcombe Park Road. They had bags of equipment and some
sort of framework, chatted to the station staff and got on the next train. Maintenance clearly.
And stat is all I know about
the South Eastern Railway’s. Angerstein
signalling works. Guess it did
specialised work, probably a bit proud of itself. One more thing – there is a brick chimney on
the police pound site – you can see it from the road. It looks as if it’s being looked after. It’s
not a big chimney; it would have served a small steam engine, a boiler for a
bit of heating, nothing much. It is not one of the chimneys there in the 1945
bombing. But it is a relic of industrial Greenwich I suppose
Can I thank R.J.M.Carr and Steve Hunnisett for help, advice and a
picture from Steve’s
collection.
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