The Royal Slaughterhouse - and a tannery

 

Last week I talked a bit about Harold Wharf and how it was the site of the King’s Slaughter House and promised that I would put something here next this week about Harold Wharf and its past.

 

I am aware now that I am not really doing the wharves in strict order. The last two were about Sun Wharves – but next there is Evelyn Wharf and then Harold Wharf which was the site of the Slaughterhouse.  One reason I am holding back is that there were several potteries and I think maybe I should write about them all together – otherwise it might get confusing. So bear with me while I skip about a bit – miss wharves and then come back to them.

 

While I was writing last week about the King’s Slaughterhouse I was reminded that there were other industries here in the Middle Ages and under the Tudors when written records are a bit sparse. I thought I ought to say something about them too. A lot of what I know about these industries is based on the work of the late Christopher Philpotts whose work on the Creek and Deptford generally was commissioned by the Creekside Discovery Centre when it was still part of a Partnership programme back in the 1990s.  His work consisted of a report of various archaeological finds in the Creekside area. I’m aware that there have been some reports which I probably don’t have access to and of structures which relate to industries in the mediaeval and Tudor periods I thought it might be useful to mention some of these at the same time as the King’s Slaughterhouse.

 

I pointed out last week that a great deal of industry in this area must have originated in some of the service functions necessary of the Royal Palace. The Slaughterhouse was probably one of the most noticeable in terms of its output. Alongside it was some sort of field or pound in which the unfortunate animals waiting their death would be kept - and no doubt overhearing the deaths of their colleagues. We rather associate Henry VII with huge great joints of beef, swans and other birds - banquets which included lots of lots of non-vegetarian alternative. As I pointed out last time, catering at the palace would not only have been about the Royal dinner table but also necessary for the many thousands of hungrey people who worked there, including many men in various military positions all of whom I’m sure expected their dinners to consist of large amounts of meat.

 

It’s not surprising therefore that the King’s Slaughterhouse was such a prominent feature of the area. The roadway now called Creekside was originally known as Slaughterhouse Lane

 

The Kings Slaughterhouse was administered by a Government body which appears to have been in charge of provisioning and logistics for various Royal institutions. It was called the Court of Green Cloth and it was responsible for meat at the Royal Court and for setting up the service arrangements.    In he the 1590s the Clerk of the Green Cloth - that means the big man in charge - was Christopher Browne who was Lord of the Manor at Deptford,  Sayes Court, and into whose family John Evelyn was to marry.  The Court of Green Cloth serviced many more Royal bodies than just Greenwich Palace although over the years it gradually lost many of its functions. You will not b surprised to learn that it continued into until 2004 although by then it really just handled Buckingham Palace

 

Before the slaughterhouse was established there seems to have been some sort of facility under Christener Browne.  At Sayes Court there were ox-stalls with 34 bays, 8 of them reserved for the Kings cattle. Browne is also described as Keeper of the Kings Pastures.  Christopher Philpotts says that it is not known when the slaughterhouse was founded but he cites a John Bagley of the ‘Boiling House who may have been one of its officers and who bought property in the area in 1548.  He also says that there were fields in the area, belonging to the Browne family,  where animals for the Royal household were grazed.

 

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Slaughterhouse was on the bank of the Creek. It was 160 feet long from east to west and 50 feet wide and there was also a wharf and a pond.  This was on the site which became Harold Wharf and is now where the APT building is.  It is also said the owners of the Slaughterhouse failed to repair erosion to its riverbanks and its wharf collapsed in 1608 ‘decayed and clean fallen down’.

 

As well as killing things for the Royal table, the Slaughterhouse also did work for the Navy in the 17^th century when the Navy was unable to cope with demand at their Slaughterhouse at Tower Hill.   In 1649 the Slaughterhouse site was leased out to Daniel Dunne and later to Sir Nicholas Crispe.  Crispe is the man who founded the copperas works which was further down gthe Creek. John Evelyn bought the site in 1663 and by the next century it was a pottery - which I will deal with on a later article

 

 There were other industries here before what we would see as the ‘classical period ‘of industrialization – where we have have written records Christopher Philpotts mentions  gravel pits in the area near Deptford Bridge and Church Street  I’m intrigued by this because gravel pits would seem to have led to some changes in the landscape. In  the 21st century you only have to look at West London - particularly the Colne Valley - to see the results of continued gravel extraction in the huge lakes and pits. Clearly whatever happened in the mediaeval period would have been a much smaller scale but there must have been pits of some sort resulting.  I don’t know if any of the archaeologists who have looked at this area have taken account of any gravel extraction sites and how the landscape might have been changed because of them.

 

I am aware from what Christopher Philpotts said that there have been some studies of how the course of the Ravensbourne might have changed in this area and - as I said, when I was writing about the Olde Tide Mill – millwrights over the centuries must have built mill leats and done other water works. There may have been other mills in the area from Doomsday and earlier.

 

In a previous article I also mentioned limekilns some of which stood along the banks of the Ravensbourne from the early 19th century. the main concentrations of them seem to have been alongside Blackheath Hill – but near enough!

 

There were also osier beds.  These are basically small willow trees from which the shoots, small branches and twigs are removed in order to manufacture a range of items. This has usually been taken to mean baskets but there were multiple other uses - for instance things like fish traps and fences. A major use must have been in building construction because the walls of most humble dwellings would have been made up in wattle and daub - willow twigs and mud.

Thin rods of willow can be used for weaving into wickerwork. Willow is more pliable than most other woods, and can be bent around to form whatever it is being made. It is convenient and quick to grow and can be used as a short term planting in marshy areas. There was considerable industry in osiers on the marshy lands of the Greenwich Peninsula. On Creekside some osier beds were owned by the City of London’s Bridge House Estates. In 1608 John Chapman had half an acre of osiers near the Gravel Pits and William Chatterton had one acre near the Slaughterhouse

 

One industry I have not mentioned is tanneries and a number of 'tan houses'; are known to hae stood in the area. Tanning is very much a South London industry with a big concentration in Bermondsey where it persisted until relatively recently. There are prominent buildings like the Leather Exchange near Tower Bridge and also nearby is a statue of Samuel Bevington, a prominent leather merchant and tanner.

Of course near Creekside in Deptford is Tanners Hill – I don’t know where that name comes from but there is always the possibility it is connected with the Tan Houses nearby.  It is faintly amusing to see all the smart shops coming in this old area because tanning was a particularly noxious industry. 

Traditionally, tanning would be carried out in the outskirts of town, along with the lime kilns – which in our area stood away from the town near the main road.  Skins would arrive from the slaughterhouse dry and fouled with blood and much else. They would then have to be soaked in water to clean and soften them. Tanners then scoured them to remove any flesh or fat still clinging to them.  In order to get rid of the hair the skin would be soaked in urine and treated with a lime mixture, or just left to rot for some months and then dipped into a salt solution. The hair would be scraped off with a knife and then the skin would be softened by being treated with dung. Readers of Mayhew's 'London; will remember the 19^th century ‘pure’ finders who went round the streets picking up dog mess which they would sell to tanners.  There were other processes, none of which were any pleasanter.

Anything left would be used to make glue –although locally this was done at the skutch works on the Erith marshes which allegedly could be smelt from miles away.

The Royal Slaughterhouse must have produced vast amounts of skins to be treated so we should not be surprised to find Tanneries nearby. I guess that along with the lime kilns, the smells must have been unbelievable.  The area around the Creek before the 19^th century had fields and woods and the Deptford pink – but if you think it was idyllic - think about the tanneries.   I hope soon to get on to the potteries and I suspect they stank too.