The Greenwich Park Line beyond Brookmill

 I am very aware that as I go up the Ravensbourne to Lewisham that I have been ignoring some very obvious infrastructure.   We need to look at two railways, one, is obviously the docklands light railway. The other one a much older railway.  It is ironic that there is much more to say about the older railway with several blogs describing its route and looking for remains.  On our route it includes a nature reserve – but that is on the Lewisham bank and we will need to note it once I have tuned round and started to go up the other way back to the Thames. 

It is a very strange thing but it is quite difficult to find much out about the Docklands Light Railway in its route up Deptford Creek.  The official handbook says very little about what was known as the ‘Lewisham Extension’ and there is barely mentioned in those histories of the Creek which I have access to – and I agree I don’t have copies of everything. (You need your own copy of source material these days with Lewisham Local History, I think, still closed and Greenwich barely existing).  On the web there is the basic Wikipedia article which all the other sites seem to copy from.  There is however also some interesting comments on some of the more unofficial pages which cover the DLR

So: -the official handbook – in 63 pages it says about the bit of line we are looking at “the route is then taken onwards by a twisting viaduct largely located over the river Ravensbourne and its tidal section of Deptford Creek to an elevated station named Deptford Bridge constructed over the main A2 roadway’. The valley of the Ravensbourne then follows a direct way towards the Elverson Road station.” Elsewhere it says ‘the extension to Lewisham was achieved as a project controlled and specified under the needs of a financial return on investment for the concession holder”. And that is. So now you know.  Fair enough

So: what can we find out from the net? from Wikipedia and elsewhere we discover that the “viaduct … crossed the serpentine Deptford Creek no fewer than five times’….it runs for a short stretch in the existing concrete channel of the River Ravensbourne …reversing 1960s canalisation’. On the political origins it I says ‘in 1988 London Transport and the London Docklands Development Corporation produced “A Transport Strategy for Docklands” which recommended ‘a link is built to break the transport barrier of the River Thames’ …..’The bill authorising the extension wasn’t debated until early 1992. .. The government wanted the rail extension to be funded by a private company under a “build-operate-transfer” agreement, where the company builds the railway, operates it for a number of years and then hands it over to the government. ..the contract was not awarded until September 1996, and the cost had doubled to £200 million, and although the project was supposed to be privately financed’ ….The winner was a newly formed company, City Greenwich Lewisham Rail Link (CGL Rail), a consortium of John Mowlem, Hyder Investments, London Electricity and Mitsui and Co…. the line was ceremonially opened on 22nd November 1999 by the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott,   So that is the official story

Throughout this period I was working for Docklands Fruit which had monitored and commented on the DLR from the start.  That wasn’t my job but I well knew the members of staff involved. My memory is that the extension was the idea of a joint working party between Greenwich and Lewisham planners – worked up, I think by Lewisham. The two boroughs were lobbying for it with enthusiasm.  Later I attended numerous community meetings, on the Isle of Digs in particular, where the extension would be on the agenda. I wish I had access to the Forum’s archive – last I heard it was locked up in a Deptford boiler house – but we will have produced all sorts of reports on it. I can only quote one abiding memory of a meeting on the Isle of Dogs which was against the Lewisham extension because we don’t want south Londoners on ore railway’.

So the DLR winds its way up Deptford Creek from where it leaves Greenwich Station and beings to turn south.  It cuts across an area which was once the site of tanks belonging to Greenwich sewage pumping station and crosses the creek.  It is supported on a pillar on the edge of what is shown on the maps as Raleigh Wharf. It crosses back over the Creek with two supporting pillars on the side of the Merryweather Place flats. It crosses back to the Lewisham side to run along the bank nearest the backs of buildings in Creek Street

So the point we have reached at the end of Brookmill Park and the waterworks estate on our way over up the Ravensbourne is more or less Elverson Road station on the Docklands Light Railway which is a brisk and sensible way to get to Greenwich from Lewisham.  Slightly down River of the station is the point at which a bridge once took another railway across the river. Then back again to the east bank and runs due south across what was Ravensbourne Wharf. It crosses Blackheath Road with Deptford Bridge station in the centre. It then runs south parallel with the east bank of the Ravensbourne and eventually over the river itself. We are told that the river was altered ND that the railway runs down the river bed. I can find no explanation, plans, assessment or anything else about this.

The other older railway was the Greenwich Park Line which ran from a station on the site which is now the Ibis Hotel in Stockwell Street, skirting to the north of Lewisham it crossed Lewisham Hull and joined the line to Nunhead and beyond. It opened on this stretch in as far as Blackheath Hill from Nunhead and from Greenwich in 1888 and closed in 1917 – and never really reopened.  It was never really a success.

There are considerable reams of the line in the area between Stockwell Street and Blackheath Hill to be followed and described in numerous blogs - I recommend 'Running Past'.    https://runner500.wordpress.com/tag/greenwich-park/

The line went under Blackheath Hill and I guess is still there. It was used as an air raid shelter in the Second World War and later as a factory. In 2008 September Subterrainea Brittanica, the underground research society had a look at it. Apparently there is a door into it within the God Bless Bakery in Plumridge Street.  There are still apparently rails in the floor.  Blackheath  Hill Station was on the Lewisham side of the road and even I can remember buildings still there. It is now a housing development called Robinscroft Mews.  From there the line carried on parallel to Lewisham Road, eventually cross it and makes its way to the Ravensbourne through the back streets now largely covered by the Orchard Esta

Inevitably the stretch of line between Blackheath Hill and the Ravensbourne is barely described. The various blogs and route descriptions I have found just skip over it.  I have yet to see a single picture – although one is mentioned in some footnotes it is not reproduced.  At the junction of Coldbath Street and Ravensbourne Place were two iron bridges which were later sold for scrap.  Bits of viaduct remained in this area but were replaced by housing in 1959. The line crossed the Ravensbourne itself on a brick bridge.  A picture of it would be really interesting.  

Today there is a foot crossing of the Ravensbourne close to where the line will have crossed going to almost the same point on the other side as the railway will have reached.

I’m not going to tell you now what was on the west bank of the Ravensbourne in the way of railway remains. There is, as it happens, quite a bit there but I have written enough here for one article and the remains of the Greenwich Park railway on the west bank can wait until I work back from Lewisham going north.  It will be very interesting and there is a mysterious church as well.