Up until the 1970s Greenwich Peninsula was called ‘Greenwich Marsh’ – and at that time it was all factories and had been industrial since the 1840s. Before 1800 it was open marshland, except for a rope works on the west bank where there had also been a Government-owned gunpowder depot, otherwise there were a few huts and barns. And that was it.
on the west bank – where the Jetty is now – was a very famous place. It was called Bugsby’s Hole. Bugsby’s Hole The area is now all blocks of apartments and a riverside walk but until 2000 just alongside the jetty ran a causeway which went down into the river. It was removed by the builders of the Millennium Experience exhibition.
Bugsby’s Causeway had been there since 1800 and a road ran from it to the Pilot Pub and cottages, built in 1802. The road was called ‘Riverway’, but earlier it has been called ‘Marsh Lane’. It was a very lonely and isolated area but it was famous. Sailors round the world knew about Bugsby’s Hole – and there are other Bugsby’s Holes, named after it right across the oceans of the world.
From Tudor times in the River here you could see a constant procession of ships, and barges making their way up to London and back again passing Bugsby’s Hole. Right opposite on the north bank is Blackwall - where numerous great voyages began and ended. To sailors, to say something was done in ‘Blackwall Fashion’ was to say that it was the very best. From here the Pilgrim Fathers left for America.
Immediately in the other side of the river was the Blackwall depot of the East India Company –where out in the tideway great East Indiamen stood at anchor. 2 Most of them would have been built in the ship yards that stood between here and London. Think about these great ships and the skills of those who designed and built them - vast hi-tech vessels which went out to plunder the world, and founded an empire while they were at it. There were also great warships, nearly all London built – and vast number of small boats carrying goods, and passengers, and serving this great complex of maritime power.
All this you could see from Bugsby’s Hole. So – who was Bugsby? We don’t know. An early reference to Bugsby is in 1735 to ‘Williams the Pirate’ who was hung in chains at Bugsby’s Hole’. That is his dead body was hung here on a gibbet for all to see – he had died by hanging at Execution Dock in Wapping. Williams had “run away with the ship Buxton Snow bound from Bristol to Malemba Angola in Africa, and Murdered the Captain by cutting his Throat with an Axe”.
It has been said that Bugsby was a robber who had ‘a cabin’ in the marsh in order to ‘escape the vengeance of the law’ ‘cast himself into the river’ and that later ‘much treasure was found’. Well, maybe, but no records of him have ever been found. The name ‘Bugsby’ is common in the United States and the West Indies – does that point to a link with some of Thomas Williams’ friends out on the high seas. There is also a Mr. Bugby in America who has written to say that it may have been named for his ancestors who worked on ships here. So - Mr. (or even Ms) Bugsby remains a mystery - perhaps someone will find him or her one day.
NEW EAST GREENWICH
If you go and look at the Pilot pub you will see a plaque which says ‘New East Greenwich 1801’. New East Greenwich was the work of a developer - George Russell, a wealthy soap maker. George Russell’s workers were making bricks here in the late 1790s. Their foreman had a row with the Marsh Bailiff – saying - “Damn your eyes Mr. Sharp, if you come here I will polish your teeth and stop your eyes with mud, Sir!’ . He was then pushed into the river by a young lad called Bicknell – who was a future Greenwich Town Clerk.
New East Greenwich consisted of the Pilot, CeyIon Place cottages, a big house called East Lodge and a large tide mill – a water mill worked by the power of the tides. Why was the pub called ‘The Pilot’? Well, the area was for a while leased by a group of elite politicians, including Prime Minister Pitt. Pitt was - ‘the Pilot who weathered the storm’ in a popular song. Ceylon came under the British Crown in 1802 – hence Ceylon Place.
The cottages were built to house workers in the East Greenwich tide mill which 3 stood alongside where the jetty is today. This was a big industrial installation which ground corn through the power of the tides. Behind it, inland, were massive ponds were the incoming water was ‘impounded’ and then let out as the tide went out – so the mill could be worked round the clock. It had been designed by one, William Johnson, who went on to have - well, an interesting career. There are a number of things about this mill - but - first – while it was being built there was a very important bit of drama
HOW RICHARD TREVITHICK’S CAREER FALTERED IN EAST GREENWICH -AND CHANGED THE HISTORY OF THE STEAM ENGINE
Richard Trevithick was the ‘Cornish Giant’ the man who first achieved steam locomotion, and he who had come to London around 1800 with his revolutionary high pressure steam engine. What happened wasn’t really Trevithick’s fault but he was up against hot commercial competition. George Russell acquired one of Trevithick’s revolutionary new engines to work on the tide mill while it was being built. A boy was left to look after it but he went off to look for eels leaving something wedged under the safety catch on the boiler. The resulting explosion in the boiler was inevitable. Some workers were killed, one deafened and others injured. The survivors hailed a small boat and the injured were rushed up to St.Thomas’s Hospital at London The Pilot Inn 4 Bridge. News soon got out and Trevithick’s rival engine builders made very sure that the press knew all about the accident. For years Trevithcks’s reputation would suffer.
It was a bad start for New East Greenwich and the tide mill and soon after George Russell died. And it got worse. It became obvious that there were real problems with the construction and within ten years the mill was leaning badly. Brian Donkin, the Southwark based engineer, was called in and, working with the Dartford engineer, John Hall, the mill was more or less rebuilt at vast expense. After that it was worked as a corn mill and had a whole series of owners.
In the 1840s it was acquired by a chemical manufacturer, Frank Hills, and he called it ‘a heap of materials’. Frank Hills is a whole saga in himself, and when he died in the 1890s he was one of the wealthiest industrialists in Britain. Frank’s father, had had a chemical works in east London where he had allegedly invented a process to make sulphuric acid. Frank was just one of a big family of sons most of whom owned chemical works – but they all worked together as a unit.
Frank bought a chemical works on Deptford Creek in the 1830s and also made steam driven road vehicles. He bought the East Greenwich tide mill in the 1840s when he married. Frank was busy, busy, busy and full of schemes. He patented a system for removing the bad smells from coal gas used for lighting – although it was invented by someone else, it was Frank who made the money. He more or less held the 19th century gas industry to ransom - they had to buy a licence from Frank, buy his mixture and then pay him to take the waste away. The waste was brought down here to East Greenwich where the old tide mill was used to process it into chemicals which could be sold.
By 1870 he was wealthy enough to take over a shipyard on the other side of the river where warships were built for the world’s navies. When he took the yard over they had just built Warrior – go and see her now in Portsmouth Harbour. Frank died in the 1890s - one of the very richest men in England. But his two eldest sons died soon after and his shipyard closed just before the Great War, leaving West Ham Football Club as a memorial. The tide mill was still standing when Frank died and it was sold to the South Metropolitan Gas Company, whose new super works was spreading all over the Peninsula.
The part of Frank’s site adjacent to Marsh Lane was sold to the electricity company. But before we go on to all that there are also:
MR HEWES AND THE YACHT CLUB AND ALSO THE YOUNG LADIES FROM EAST LODGE
The cottages and the Pilot Inn became home to a small isolated community. There was a big house here, on the riverside, called East Lodge – and that too had its moment of fame. East Lodge 6 In the 1830s it was used by one Jamet Hewes, who had inherited money from his uncle, Thomas Hewes, a famous millwright. Jamet is said to have been extremely eccentric but he was closely involved in yacht racing on the Thames. East Lodge appears to have been used as a mark point for such races in the 1840s and also used as a club house.
In the 1870s East Lodge was the home of Frank Hills’ foreman, Mr. Davies. He had a family of lively daughters who produced a family newsletter which described a happy life in their riverside home. They also described social life in the ‘Iron Room’ which was also used by the Thames Church Mission to Seamen and as a Working Men’s Institute.
The community in Marsh Lane was to continued to provide its own amusements and we have seen pictures of races held as part of a street party in the 1940s. When the Millennium Exhibition was held in 2000 it was intended to demolish the cottages because they were ‘old’. In a race against time we managed to get them listed because of the association with the tide mill – they are thought to be some of the oldest purpose built workers housing.
THE GAS WORKS
Although the great South Metropolitan Gas Works on the Greenwich Peninusla was built considerably north of Bugsby’s Hole by the 1890s it had spread to the edge of Marsh Lane. East Greenwich Gas Works was arguably the most modern works ever built. In the late 19th century the big gas companies built large super works - this was the last, built for South Metropolitan’s charismatic and inventive chair, George Livesey. This was his super works designed to be the very pinnacle the gas industry could hope for in terms of production, service and workplace relations. T
he tide mill site became Phoenix Wharf, which they ran as a chemical works. Nearby was the Coalite works – in separate ownership and also the Coal Research Station, which has continued elsewhere as a government laboratory. Opposite the Pilot stood, until the 1990s an amazing modernist building used as a chemical store. It appears in many films and pop videos of the 1980s when it was used as a studio.
THE STEELWORKS
In 1911 Redpath Brown’s steel works was built behind the Pilot and went down to the river. Redpath Brown were a Scottish steel erection company who over the next 80 years was subject to a number of takeovers and eventually nationalised. They provided structural steel for many well known buildings through the 20th century.
One of their proudest achievements can be seen by any rail traveller leaving Lewisham Station. Here is the bridge which collapsed in 1956 in a terrible train crash with great loss of life. The new bridge had to be assembled in super fast time and Redpath’s did it. The steel works closed in the 1980s and the site used as police riot training ground. The works canteen - on the site of East Lodge 7 - was used as a headquarters by Greenwich Yacht Club until 2000. Redpath Brown’s jetty was used by a rival yacht club – but that’s another story.
ELECTRIC ELECTRICITY
What we now know as ‘the jetty’ was built for Blackwall Point power station which stood on part of the old tide mill site. It opened in 1900 and was replaced, and nationalised, in the 1940s. The jetty was rebuilt in the 1940s too. The power station closed in the 1980s and the site was gradually cleared. Some parts of it remained into the late 1990s when it was demolished for the Millennium Exhibition – the Port of London scanner on its roof meant it was the last section to go.
Blur’s ‘Park Life’ video was made just before final demolition and you can see some of the power station buildings in it. I have in my garden a length of concrete in which is embedded the word ‘ELECTRICITY’ which I picked it up lying in the road there. so -
WHAT IS LEFT Well, not much! Marsh Lane is gone - and so is the causeway into the river. Bugsby is all but forgotten. The narrow riverside path has been moved back away from the foreshore with a fence and willow has been planted.
The entire ancient pattern of field, and plot ownership boundaries together with the roadways has been entirely destroyed. A block flats stands over the line of Marsh Lane and you can no longer walk direct from the Pilot to the Riverside – where many artists used to sit. The Pilot and most of the cottages remain. Parkland and a small hill cover the site of the mill ponds.
One relic is the memorial to gas workers killed in two World Wars, now in John Harrison Way. Look up river and the Gormley art work stands on some remains of the Gas Works jetty. Down river the Yacht Club is on what was Peartree Wharf. Over to the west Livesey’s world beating gas holder is still there – but not for long. And the jetty from the power station is still there More change since 2000 than in any time in the past.
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