Sticky stuff - Wylam

 I am very tempted as we continue to walk down the Greenwich Riverside to stop at Bay Wharf and look at more big sailing ships – but, no, perhaps later.. First we need to get involved all the sticky nastiness to come and perhaps explain it a bit.  As we continue down towards what is now the site of the Dome we are going to find lino, steel, gun dealers, opium dealers and much more –but every other site will be about tar.  Coal tar.  That’s right, sticky and black and now seen as dangerous.  In the 19^th century industry in some senses it stuck everything together,

 

I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently.  I’m deep - type type all day - in working on a book which is all about the stuff which was produced by the early gas industry and how, I’m afraid, it became a staple product which drove much of the industry on the Greenwich Riverside.  I might as well admit it was my specialist subject at the Poly and then the OU and I hope to do a Zoom talk on it for Greenwich Industrial History Society in November.

 

But, while we are still at Bay Wharf we ought to look at one more company here and one which was on a site at the edge of Morden Wharf and where a Colonel Francis owned what is described as a chemical works on Marsh Wall.  This was the Wylam Patent Fuel Co  where they made ‘briquettes’ - a way of turning otherwise difficult bits and pieces into a usable fuel.  It was recommended for use by industry – but more particularly for the ‘steam navy’ and it was claimed that 600 tons a week were being made.

 

It might be thought that the name ‘Wylam’ comes from the coal mining and coal transport village near Newcastle – birthplace of George Stevenson  – but, no, in this case it is named for a person, William Wylam, who held the patent. He came from Newcastle or Gateshead and may have been a merchant.

 

Wylam Patent Fuel was announced March 1844.   It was said to be ‘resembling a large brick’ which was made of peat and coal tar.  These were boiled together and then ground into a powder which was mixed with coal dust.  Usefully it could incorporate ‘large quantities of small coal  ... accumulated around every colliery’. This mixture was then pressed into the brick shape.  It could then be used as a handy fuel.

 

It was said to be ‘free from smell’ and ‘leaves but little ashes’ but has ‘25 % per cent more heating power than coal’ .took up less space and ‘is impervious to wet’.  hmmmm

 

Independent tests were undertaken to evaluate it for use by  ‘the steam navy’. They found that the bricks ‘appear to be composed of small pieces of coal forcibly compressed and cemented together by some bituminous substance’ and were far from being ‘free from smell’ as they “gave off a strong odour of mineral pitch” also “much smoke always appeared” and ‘the proportions of cinders ashes and clinkers were considerable’ and ‘soot also was in large quantities.   None of which sounds good.

 

Now I know the research I did for my PhD meant I looked at endless gas company records – that the Wylam Company were buying their tar from various local gas works - not of course from the big gas works on the Peninsula, because that wasn’t there, it hadn’t been built in the 1840s.  But there were lots of others in Greenwich and Woolwich and across the river. So it isn’t really a surprise that in 1848 the Chartered Gas Company (with works in Westminster, Shoreditch and Islington) refused to sell Wylam any more tar because they hadn’t paid for the last lot.  They survived this set back, moving a few years later to a larger site and then left.

 

Wylam were not the only manufacturers of briquettes in the area. When I wrote about the Deptford Riverside here some months ago I mentioned a Patent Fuel Company who used’Warlich’s Method’ and also tried to sell to the Navy. 

 

When I wrote here a few months ago about Cement on Morden Wharf I mentioned William Buckwell – and he also had patents for 'compressed or solidified fuel' and owned a 'composition' factory.  His activities all came out at his trial after he had been repatriated to Britain, having skipped bail and eventually been removed from a hay loft by the Italian police – but that’s another story.

 

Enderbys who I also wrote about a few months ago made something called ‘composition’ which they discussed with the City of London Gas Company – now why should they do that if they weren’t thinking of making something out of all that cheap tar.  In 1838 Mechanics Magazine reported on a new sort of ‘Paving Composition’ which turned out to be ‘pebbles in pitch’  and an 1826 recipe for ‘Compo’ turns out to be oil of turpentine with coal tar, resin, size and ochre.  One patent for ‘cement’ gives alternatives for ingredients like ‘clay, loam, mud, shale, road dirt, soil ochre, metallic oxides, sandstone and earth. Elsewhere recipes are given in patent specifications for fuel briquettes using wood chips, sawdust, sand and so on along with the tar.

 

Fundamentally any old rubbish would do – tar would stick it together and probably disguise its origins as well.

Colonel Francis is said to have owned the Wylam Company works on the Greenwich, and I don’t know who he was. I assume ‘Francis’ is his surname but it is often used as a first name.  He was a ‘fiery Sicilian’ born in Manchester.  Now, there was a Colonel Francis Maceroni who said that coal tar, mixed with pebbles would ‘answer every purpose of building’.   He also claimed to have laid down the first tar pavement ever in the garden of ‘Mr Bell of Greenwich’. I don’t know who he was – but if you live in a house built before 1830 have a look at your garden path it might be the first tarred path ever laid down..

Basically, useful as briquettes may or (more probably) may not have been they were a way of using up all that tar which the gas works were producing and didn’t know what to do with – and we will see more and more different ways of handling this as we carry on downriver.  We also will have a look at some artificial stone too.  You know, if you can’t make it, fake