Working down the
Lewisham bank of the creek we have come to the corner of Church Street and
Creekside, at the Bird’s Nest pub. From
here is a stretch of wharves described, in the Conservation Area report, as
some of the oldest on the Creek. I am
not sure about that - but willing to believe it. I am also very aware that this area is full
of people who live, work and know about their area - while here am I, a
stranger from Greenwich, coming in and presuming to write about it. Please – I have great respect for the people
that run the various arts and other organisations here, and also for those who
live in the community of boats on the Creek.
Bear with me – I know you know more than I ever will – soon I will have
reached Hills wharf and the other chemical works where I am on much firmer
ground. In the meantime – Theatre Wharf.
There was, of course,
a theatre there. That is a historic
theatre –one in the 19th century – and not just the performances
which have been put on in recent years in the Birds Nest and the Big Red Bus.
The Bird’s Nest itself
was originally the Oxford Arms and dated from the 1820s. At some point – I
guess in the 1980s – it changed its name to the ‘Bird's Nest’ and became an
entertainment venue for the young arts crowd then moving into Deptford. This continues, although I also note the real
ale web sites tend to be a bit sniffy about it.
There is now the Big Red Bus – and I am aware of current plans to pull
the whole lot down.
So –to the
Theatre. I am know there are claims that
it dates from the 17rh century and was a haunt of Christopher Marlowe. Its not that I don’t believe them .... but ... From the reliable Arthur Lloyd web
site (which specialises in old theatres) I learn that the theatre which we know
was there opened in 1810 in an old building which had been a chapel and a
warehouse. It staged plays from 1816
with transfers in from a theatre in Windsor. Originally it was the 'Theatre
Royal' but they had to remove ‘Royal’ because, well, it wasn’t Royal. Also it was a bit wet from the Creek leaking
into the stage, and it was very narrow so they could only have boxes on one
wall . So the other wall, the one next to the Creek, had a mural of boxes
painted on it. It struggled on through
various bankruptcies and eventually closed in 1864. It was thren replaced by a Creek side
building on what became ‘Theatre Wharf’.
Theatre Wharf was used
– like so many others – by a coal merchant.
This was a Mr. Dixon who advertised “Coal! Coal! Coal!” in 1870 and also
told us that he had another wharf on the Surrey Canal. He was still there in
1906 with the ‘lowest London prices. Today
the wharf is the site of the Big Red Bus and tables and chairs for drinkers
outside the pub.
Following down the
Creek the next wharves are shown as ‘Sun Wharves”. This is immediately
confusing because there is another ‘Sun Wharf’ further down, and a ‘New Sun
wharf’ on the Greenwich bank - which I covered in an article last June about
the Roan Street gas holder site. That is
in addition to numerous Sun Wharves up and down the river everywhere from
Limehouse to Northfleet.
In 1858 Sun Wharf was
in use by Smith, Shepherd and Adams ‘coal and coke merchants’. They were also on New Sun Wharf across the
Creek. They advertised that they had recently come to an agreement with the
Marchioness of Londonderry for a supply of Wallsend Coal. The Londonderry coal fields were in County
Durham, ‘Wallsend’ being a generic word used for coal of the type originally
coming from Wallsend on the Tyne. This
coal would have been shipped down to Deptford from Seaham where the Londonderry
ancestral home was and where this particular Marchioness died. I once went to a lecture in Seaham where a
local historian told us how all their good Durham coal had been sent from there
down to ‘that lot in London ... and they sent us a lot of rubbish back’. The rubbish of course being good Kentish
chalk and gravel from the Greenwich area which went back up to Seaham as
ballast on the coal ships and which was dumped there. ‘They can come up from London and take it
back’ he said ‘we don’t want their rubbish’. I changed the subject by congratulating him that
Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer, had been born in Seaham Hall – but
he had never heard of her.
Back to Deptford
Creek, Sun Wharves and Smith, Shepherd and Adams. James Smith, is described as a ‘ship owner
and coal merchant’ and in 1852 he had bought Leigh Hall at Leigh on Sea,
outside Southend. Leigh with its long
estuary frontage was no doubt a handy town to be a ship owner in but Leigh Hall
was the local ‘big’ house. The purchase
implies he was pretty wealthy. Henry
Adams was dead some time before 1885 and is described as a ‘coal merchant’
. He appears to have lived in the New
Cross area and also had two impressively large houses in Hove – though neither
as big as Leigh Hall.
Their business seems to have been taken over by John
Waddell and Sons who were on site there from at least 1888 when they were advertising ‘Finest Anthracite
Coal’ from The Great Mountain Colliery, Llanelli- which of course is in Wales
not County Durham. Work on that mine
had only begun the previous year – and in fact was in a village with the
interesting name of ‘Tumble’. Clearly,
also, it was nothing whatsoever to do with Wallsend.
Waddell began to tell
people in their advertisements that on some of their sites they operated under
the ‘style of Smith, Shepherd and Adams’ and also that they had taken over an
‘old established coal merchants and coke manufacturers in East Greenwich’. This East Greenwich site was what later became
Lovell’s Wharf and is now Riverside Gardens.
There had been a number of coal
merchants before Lovells and the site has originally been developed by William
Coles Child some forty years previously – forty years presumably qualifying it as
‘old established. Waddell seem to have
had works all over the country -
including a site in Falkirk, Scotland - although I am aware that there
were a number of other firms called ‘John Waddell’. They also had an ‘order
office’ in a shop in the nicer part of Blackheath and no doubt elsewhere.
Back in Deptford there
is a report of the inevitable beanfeast in 1895 at the Rose and Crown at
Riddlesdown. The Rose and Crown is no more
and neither is the cricket pitch where Waddell’s workers played a game after
their dinner where the toast was ‘The Firm’. After tea they returned to
Greenwich ‘about eleven’.
Also inevitable but
unusual is the action taken by Waddell in the Lord Mayor Court to recover from
their ‘traveller’ £1l 16s and 7d. said to be overpayment. Behind this lay a long dispute about rates of
commission and a contract with a Welsh Colliery company and a series of contracts
with differing rates. No doubt the legal
action cost more than the £11!
Another company on Sun
Wharves in the 1890s was Donald McCall & Co. who said they were on premises
previously occupied by Trenchard & Sons – who I looked at last week. They said they were manufacturer of
‘Kingston’s patent antifriction white metal’ – giving their address for that as
27 Greenwich Road, probably Trenchard’s old works.
I think that in
reality McCall’s were scrap dealers – twice Mayor of Greenwich Donald McCall
would no doubt rather be described as a ‘manufacturer’. They are described as ‘dealers in old iron,
copper and brass’. Mr. McCall was engaged one day in looking though his stock
and found a funny looking copper tube and in order to remove some solder he
heated it up. It turned out that the
copper tube was part of a consignment of scrap from the Maxim-Nordenfelt works
and were shells for their quick firing guns. Three people ended up in hospital.
A long case involving
McCalls and the death of an employee also tells us something about their works.
The case was brought by the widow of a man who had been sitting under a ‘stack
of files’. He was Joseph Bridle, had
been with McCalls six years and earnt 28/- a week. One day he was employed in breaking up boilers
when it began to rain. He went to shelter in the boiler house, went up a ladder
and then sat down to clean some brass.
Coming back down the ladder the stack gave way and he fell and died. A
long court argument then ensured with various ‘expert’ witnesses as to the safe
level at which these files could be stacked at – and I must admit to not knowing what they
actually mean by ‘files’ – whatever they are they are big and heavy and made of
metal. It ended with the jury unable to agree – and poor Mrs. Bridle going back
to going out to do washing for a living and feed her four children.
Apart from the safety
implications that all sounds much like dealing with scrap than making white
metal, to me.
Next week I will
continue with at least one more of the industries on Sun Wharves and then on to
Evelyn Wharf and beyond – there is a long way to go yet
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