So once again I am continuing down the Lewisham bank of Deptford creek at looking at it wharves site by site. Last week I finished at Normandy Wharf where there was an ‘artificial manure works’ – and there will be a lot more of them to come.
Last week I had a bit of a grumble about the way that road names in this area changed all the time in the 19th Century and I’m about to have a bit more of a grumble because it is really difficult to know where something is a lot of the time, and so I hope I don’t get it wrong. The bit of road which runs parallel with the Creek along the wharves I am looking at is now ‘Creekside’ – but earlier part of it was ‘Ravensbourne Street’ and later , for some time it was ‘Knott Street’ and then ‘Copperas Street’ . Some maps are different to other maps of the same area. Last week I looked at ‘Thomas Street’ which I said ran between Baltic and Normandy Wharves but it’s not shown on some OS maps or the insurance plans, although people seem to be living there.
This week I wanted to look at Sun Wharf which seems to have been the area covered by the Cockpit Arts building - and I’ll come back that later. In the 19th Century it was much more complicated because there were a series of small roads which ran from what was then Knott Street down towards the Creek. You can still see where these roads were today, although Thomas Street which I mentioned last week has completely gone. If you walk down the frontage of the Cockpit Arts building there are breaks which are where these old roads were.
This housing was built largely in the early 1850s and there are many advertisements in the press of the day for buying up blocks of them so that the purchaser could rent them out and make money from the rent – although we saw last week what could happen and that in Thomas Street Mr. Brown managed to avoid ever paying any rent at all. To complicate things even further these roads were originally called Lime Street, Sun Street and Fish Street. There was a road running parallel with the Creek called Wharf Place which joined up the Creekside ends of Fish and Lime Streets. However in 1873 the Metropolitan Board of Works changed the names of all these streets and they became Alvar Street, Benmore Street and Dugald Street with Hamar Place joining the ends of Benmore and Dugald Street. I have no idea where these names came from or why they were changed.
I rather suspect that these streets housed the poorest of the poor with a large the immigrant population. We have already seen that Thomas Street was seen as an area where Irish people lived and other accounts say that there were lots of Italians. The Booth Survey of 1899 grades streets with various colours according to the levels of poverty an these streets are coloured dark blue which is second to bottom - the actual worst is black. Booth mentions the entrance to the asphalt works in Alvar Street and I will get to that in a moment. In other streets he noted litter, dirty ragged children and a recent murder. The streets nearest the wharf were narrow with walls between them and the Creek itself and they housed costermongers and street sellers. He saw signs of great and continued neglect. Newspaper records show the usual stories of poverty, drunken fights and petty theft.
The first road we come to was Sun Street which ran between Normandy and Sun Wharves and was later called Alvar Street. Looking for anything about the street in the press and there are many cases, like that in the theft of two pieces of rope for which two residents of Alvar Street went to prison for seven days; or how in 1904 a John Harris got three days in prison for being drunk in Deptford Broadway; and also how Robertson was remanded in custody for breaking his mothers jaw. There are also cases involving young people like William Palmer age 14 who got seven days inside for stealing pins and, most tragically, in 1929 a small child of two years old who was run over by a motor lorry belonging to Val de Travers - she had ran under the lorry and her right foot and right hand were so badly crushed they had to be amputated.
So we come to Sun Wharf. I am sorry to mention this again but there is even more confusion over names. There were three Sun Wharves in this area: one was New Sun Wharf which I covered last July when I was writing about the wharves on the Greenwich bank and the other Sun Wharf nearer to Deptford Bridge which I wrote about in January, They are so easily confused.
I think that before the early 1860s that there was a pottery on Sun Wharf run by one the Parry family. And (this is another major moan) I am still trying to get hold of an article written in 1989 about Deptford potteries. However William Parry had a pottery in Copperas Lane, Church Street which sounds about right. He was making sewer pipes, chimney pots, flower pots, corrugated tiles – all the ‘redware’ stuff which we all know about and see and don’t think of as ‘pottery’ like all those nice jugs and mugs which we collect. This pottery closed in the early 1860s and I don’t know what happened there over the next 10 or so. I think it might have been something quite exciting but it is someone else’s research and I will report on it in due course.
As I noted above Alvar Street led to an entrance to the asphalt works and this was the works, and eventually he head office of the well known Val de Travers Company. Now back in January – and this is an apology not a moan - when I was writing about Deptford Bridge I said that there was a court case about that the Val de Travers asphalt works which was causing a nuisance. The newspaper report said that the site was between Deptford Bridge and the river Ravensbourne but I think now that that was a mistake and that the site which caused the problems was here at Sun Wharf - down river of the Railway Bridge rather than Deptford Bridge. In 1871 which is the date on which the complaint of nuisance was made is the same year that Val de Travers took on Sun Wharf. They were to remain there for many years – and I although it is now described as How did Travis company ‘a dormant company’ I note on various company information websites that the company accounts are right up to date as of three months ago, and there must be a reason for that.
Val de Travers itself is a remote Swiss valley near the French frontier and here is a rock mine there which asphalt. When I was researching the early gas industry I noted a number of companies which were based on the Isle of Dogs and they had the names of Swiss valleys where Asphalt is to be found. I was also aware that these companies were buying vast amounts of gasworks tar and I guessed that they were using this to make their road making and other products. I have no reason to believe that the Val de Travers company was doing this and there seems to be every indication that they drew their asphalt from mines in France, Sicily and Germany and it was this which was are processed at Sun Wharf to make road making materials but also other things like roofing, damp course materials, flooring and much else. There is a great deal of information about the company and its products on the net
Their presence in Deptford was greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm and before they had been open a year the local authority was bringing a case against them for nuisance. They said they had 11 open cauldrons each 10 to 12 feet in length and 6 feet in width some of which was connected to a chimney shaft which was at a lower height than the neighbouring houses. The cauldrons were heated by coal in open furnaces and gave off offensive thick white vapour. Mr. Pink, the local Medical Officer, and some local doctors gave evidence – one doctor saying that he had to visit some patients several times a day because of the odour from the works and how this was causing nausea and sickness among the strong and healthy. Many witnesses were called all saying how awful it was and Val de Tracers ‘should be removed out of the district‘and away from an area where the works was surrounded by houses on all sides.
What is remarkable about this is that they should complain so vociferously about a tar works while more or less ignoring the chemical works and four or five ‘artificial manure’ works which must have stunk to high heaven – but !!
Soon after the court case Val de Travers made changes to the way things were done in the works and the chimney was greatly enlarged and heightened to become a feature of the district. They were to stay there a long time busy and with a huge lorry fleet. By the late 1960s they were in some trouble and the Sun Wharf headquarters was said as a financial drag on the company. It took nearly a year to sell it but eventually Val de Travers moved out when the site was sold in 1972. I don’t know who bought it but rather suspect it might have been Lewisham council.
I don’t know if the big office block which is now the headquarters of Cockpit Arts - and about to be redeveloped - dates from Val de Travers day and if it is their old head office building. It looks like major it could be. Before Cockpit moved in it was known as Drake House at one time and used as a small business centre owned by Lewisham Council. On the wall is a huge mural which very much dominates the street and which dates from 1989. It is called ‘Love over Gold’ and painted by Gary Drostle. working with local schools and I understand it has recently been renovated which is really good. It’s terrific.
We need to return to the housing which was once on most of the landward side of the site. The middle road was Benmore Street and at the end Dugald Street with Hamar Place linking them together at the Creek side of the wharf. I’m afraid that it is still an area dominated by violence and drink – and ultimately terrible poverty.
So - here are the Hudson family men drunk and wielding pokers – one of whom, known locally as ‘The Benmore Bully’, hit one of the wives until she fell, knocking her teeth out with a poker; and here we have three lads in their teens sent down for 14 days for gambling with a ha’penny in the street; and here we have a woman in a road accident giving birth to a stillborn child whose husband gives evidence that they’ve been living on a pound a week but are sometimes given a potato; and here we have three lads of 10 and 11 bound over and threatened with a ‘good thrashing ‘ for stealing three eggs. There are hundreds of like cases in the local papers – so I won’t go on.
Next we will come to Kent Wharf and some really terrible smells.
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