The rope walk at Enderby Wharf

 

There is a lot of history at Enderby Wharf and we will e here for some time yet.  The earliest activity we know here was the gunpowder depot and eventually we will reach the Enderbys and the cables, but in between is something else which is much more conjectural. What happened at Enderby wharf between the power magazine closing in 1770 and the Enderbys moving in in 1830 – that’s 60 years which is a long long time.

 

The site of the gunpowder works is usually listed in official documents and on maps of the period as ‘Crown Land’ – thus owned by the State, rather than a private landowner.  It is said to have been leased to Henry Vansittart who then bought the site in 1803. Who then was Henry Vansittart? There were several distinguished members of this family in this period and more than one Henry.  The most famous Henry Vansittart is the man who became Governor of Bengal, but he had been lost at sea in 1770 so it cannot possibly be him.  One of his sons and a nephew were also called Henry.  Perhaps most crucially his widow, Emila, contiued to live in Crooms Hill. Strangely in some official documents the site continued to be described as Crown Land.

Vansittart also seems to have leased part of Dog Kennel Meadow which was the area now covered by Pelton Road. In 1770 he is said to have had a ‘whiter’s house’ there – is this referring to a bleaching business or something more?

In the past get a bright white on cloth it would be soaked in a bleaching agent and then left out in sunlight to ‘whiten’. The bleaching agent was often sulphuric acid or 'vitriol' as it was called then. In 1800 the old gunpower magazine site was leased to a George Moor for use as vitriol works. In this period the manufacture of ‘Vitriol’ is normally associated with that of copperas.  There were copperas works in the Greenwich and Deptford areas – I have written about them in earlier articles for Weekender.. George Moor was already involved with copperas works in Deptford. So were Vansittart and others involved in bleach works associated with an attempt to make copperas here? By 1832 the works was in the ownership of a Lewis Price & Co., a vitriol merchant based in Tooley Street so it seems likely that this bleaching/copperas business lasted until the Enderby family took over the site..

However, copperas and bleach were not the only things here - the future was in rope.  This is a large site and there is no reason why both the bleach and the rope works could not have both been here at the same time.  On some old maps a building is marked ‘Salution House’ – this has been seen by most people as misspelt ‘Salutation House’ – which would be the name of a pub. But why build a pub in the middle of a field on neither the river bank nor the road.  It could just as well be a building connected with a chemical works – like bleach and copperas.

In Woolwich there was a huge rope walk. Rope is essential for work with ships. Rope factories are called “rope walks” and they show up on old maps as long thin works. In the late 18^th century rope makers worked walking backwards with something like 40 lbs of fibre round their waists which they twisted with their fingers to make the rope - and in every working day they walked more than 20 miles. The great Woolwich Ropeyard had been set up under Elizabeth I, in to supply rope to naval warships. It was the first naval ropeyard in the country – and so was an early state industry undertaken through a contractor.  The rope walk itself was a covered building running the length of what is now Beresford Street. By the 17^th century it had a grand entrance in the High Street and adjacent to it were some very nice houses for the master ropemaker and his clerk. In 1800 the clerk was a John Hounson.

 

Around 1800 a rope walk was built in Greenwich on the site of the old Government gunpowder depot.  In the records a John Hounson is listed as the owner and my guess is that this is the same man who had been the Clerk in Woolwich - and perhaps he had decide to set up his own business.   

 

By 1808 however Hounson had gone and a James Littlewood was there with a ‘rope house, rope walk, houses and wharf’. Littlewood later described how he had borrowed £40 from friends in order to take the rope walk on “and, he said, where he should have succeeded, had not a conspiracy been formed to take it out of his hands". He went on that he has "made over the rope-walk to a person named Young, but received nothing for it, only a promise of his situation as foreman, with a salary of £250 per annum".  He was bankrupt by 1817. The depts. He had contracted there had led to a term of imprisonment in the Fleet Prison. He had then handed the business over to " a person named Young” and was employed himself as foreman. Soon after he was sacked by Mr. Young for stealing hemp, and began a legal action to get the rope walk back.

It emerged that at the time of this action he was actually a prisoner in Horsemonger Lane Jail in Southwark for operating an illicit liquor still and for selling the liquor in the prison. He appeared to have a close knowledge of several London prisons and was soon returned to one of them.   Once out of gaol he had "turned his attention to a private still in Kentish-town, and passed by the name of Smith". Since that had been discovered by the Excise he set up another still at Leytonstone, and then one at Camberwell, changing his name again to Cross, and when this was discovered he opened yet another still in Bethnal-Green. It then emerged that he had supplied Robert landlord of the Seven Stars in Whitechapel with a quantity of spirits. At the trial he admitted that he also used the name of Smith and within the past three or four months had manufactured three or four hundred gallons of spirits.

 

Mr. Young, who is otherwise unknown, kept the rope works and ran it for the next ten or so years.

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The rope works was purchased in 1830 by the Enderby brothers, Charles, George and Henry.  Over the next few years they developed the site by adding a sail making works and a hemp factory.   The rope walk remained on site and can be seen marked on maps of the telegraph cable works into the 20^th century.  Its length could even still be made out from the Greenwich riverside path until 2014 or so but the layout of Barratt’s high rise developments have now obliterated it.