The Silk Mill - the invention of tinsel

 

For the last two weeks in our journey up the Ravensbourne looking at industrial sites I have been writing about The Armoury Mill which I think that this is one of the most important sites on the river. We left the site when the Royal Armoury had become the Royal Small Arms factory and had then moved to Enfield where it was to grow and flourish to become a major part of the British arms manufacturing whatever is whatever. Today the site is a block is blocks of flats called The Silk Works and we need to see what happened to the mill in the 200 odd years between the armoury closing and the flats that are there today

 

I am sure a lot of us who grew up in Northwest Kent and South East London in the 1950s and 60s knew more about silk manufacture than most people. Like a lot of children I was taken on school trips to the Lullingstone silk farm where we were shown the whole process. Lots of us took home packs of eggs which ended up with a tray of smelly caterpillars in our unfortunate mother's kitchens where they needed to be kept warm. Later, once they had become cocoons, we would have to boil the poor creatures and then we could wind the beautiful silk thread off the cocoon them. I remember doing that and I’m sure a lot of people who were children then did the same. This process, obviously on a larger scale, is used in the production of silk to make cloth or whatever is needed.

 

Silk manufacture was famously encouraged in England but King James 1. He wanted to set up silk manufacturing and he said to have set up a small silk works at Charlton House. The unfortunate sacrificial worms eat the leaves of Mulberry trees and so there was a big push in the early 17th century to plant mulberry trees all over the place.  In fact you can hardly find a Mulberry tree today that doesn’t claim to have been planted by James I. there is by the way an excellent database of mulberries around London. https://www.moruslondinium.org/.  Locally there is of course the one at Charlton House –it's in the car park and drops its purple fruit onto people’s light coloured cars. There is another local one in the grounds of what is now called  Sayes Court Park in Deptford - which of course was once the gardens of John Evelyn’s home. I was once very touched to see a parent there was showing a child the mulberry tree and letting them try just one mulberry - because the rest had to be left for other children.  

 

So in 1819 the Armoury Mill moved to Enfield and the site was put up for sale and auctioned off in July.  The property included a house, a warehouse, lodges eight houses and many acres of land.  The mill itself was a two story weather boarded building with a slate roof.  There was a water wheel. and all the necessary equipment to manage the water which ran the mill. It is said to have been a huge and impressive building - and as a government building it would be. There were two iron cannon on the massive gate posts and these are now in front of the Manor House at Lee. 60 years later the site is still described as something that could pass for an outlying department to the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.  The area surrounding the building was encircled by a ‘venerable brick wall - stout and high’ . There was a large pond in front of the works and of course the Ravensbourne flowed alongside the site.  We should perhaps note that the local press during the late 19th century recorded many concerns about the state of the water and machinery in both the Ravensbourne and the mill pond at the works

 

Initially at auction the mill did not reach its reserve price. It was sold eventually to a miller from Vauxhall and then leased a few years later to Robert Arnold who was a silk throwster from Warwickshire. He installed machinery and began to recruit a workforce. 

 

‘Throwing’ silk is part of the process of turning the raw silk from the silkworms into usable thread. The raw silk is soaked in soap suds and then placed on rails and wound onto bobbins. It is twisted to form the eventual threads, but it is not drawn out as would be done in cotton and wool spinning. It will then be sold on to the silk weavers. It is thought that the raw silk which Arnold used would have come from China or elsewhere but from outside of Britain

 

Records show that Arnold was using as his workforce young girls who were being bound to him as apprentices from the poor houses of inner London parishes.  These girls were in their very, very early teens and some rather younger – they were bound until they were 21.  I do not know how well or badly they were treated and would be interested to know.  There are some real horror stories from some other places.

 

As time went on the throwing of silk became less important and work at the mill was on gold and silver wire drawing.  This product had many uses in decorative items both here and abroad. Some of it was used for the decoration of military uniforms.  The Lewisham Silk Mill was seen as one of the main manufacturers of this gold and silver lace thread in the country and as late as the 1890s there was a display at Chelsea Royal Military Exhibition as the best example of this work in the country.

 

In the 1840s Arnold brought his nephews Frederick and Edward Stanton into work at the mill. When he died they became owners of the mill and operators of the gold and silver thread manufacture. They were said to be good employers. The works however continued to be called The Silk Mill and that is said to be a name designed to hide the true fact that they were processing precious metals inside the factory. In the process of making gold and silver thread metal is drawn into the form if wire which is then flattened. Only water power was used and was especially suitable for this work because of its regular action.  However there were also two steam engines and steam hammer on site -probably ones inherited from the Armoury Mill

 

 Slabs of pure silver each weighing 1000 Troy ounces came from the Bank of England to be processed. Some copper – about 10% - was added to strengthen the metal and it was then cast into cylindrical bars then heated and hammered to give it extra strength. To remove hammer marks each bar was drawn through holes in steel plates then scraped with a tool leaving a silver bar 3 1/2 feet in length -nearly double its previous length and much thinner. The gold arrived at the Mill in the form of gold leaf although stouter and substantial than what would have been used for decorative paint work on wood. There was about 2% of gold to the silver.  The leaf was laid on the silver bars evenly and this was heated over a charcoal fire. It was held in vices and burnished and then was ready to be drawn into wires – using beeswax for lubrication. They needed strong men to do this part of the operation using a windlass. They needed wire was so fine that every ounce was drawn out to abut to between 500 and 2000 yards depending on what was needed. It was drawn through holes in steel plates and then through even smaller holes in diamonds and sapphires. The end result was finer than human hair. It was flattened by means of steel rollers made by Krups of Essen and then twisted round silk by spinning engines.  . Most of the finished article was sent to India where it was converted into oriental cloth – using gold threads at 1000 yards an ounce. Another story is that in order to make a transit instrument for an astronomer wire was drawn to 20,000 yards for an ounce of gold - traditionally a spider’s web would’ve been used for this work

 

In 1881 the mill is described as a “structure which could be mistaken for paper mill - it’s in pleasant grounds with approaches of water some acres an extent in front of it, with a stream which drives the middle wheel. It is maybe like a cotton mill”. It is described in 1921 is standing in picturesque grounds with an orchard and rhododendrons. The employer lived, on site there were peacocks and tennis courts on the site of what had been the millpond. The mill had its own band and they played at celebrations reported in the local press.

 

Much of the material which I’ve based this article on comes from Sylvia McCartney and John West’s book “The Lewisham Silk Mills£ - and I would very much like to recommend not only the book but also inside where reminiscences are included from ladies who they interviewed who had ctually worked at the mill. I’m afraid  very I don’t’ have space to quote them here but what they have to say about their work and the products using precious metals is absolutely fascinating.  A collection of items from the silk mill is in the Lewisham Council Local Study Centre.

 

Demand for gold braid for the military finally began to fall off during the Great War and by the 1920s the silk mill was clearly in trouble. It was wound up in 1926, and by that time the Stanton family had dispersed; the original managers had died or moved away. In 1929 the remaining precious metals on site were sold. Following that a number of other firms used the site – among them in 1930 Warp Knitters who made artificial silk; the Armoury Wire and Tinsel Company and many others.  There was a factory making zips, others making cable and switchgear and all sorts of other things. When the site was eventually cleared vaults are found under the orchard and among debris removed was lead shot from the old small arms factory. Culverts were revealed under the car park.

 

Firms came and went, until the site went for ‘redevelopment’ and there are now flats there.

 

However I wanted to draw attention to one of the most amazing characters from the factory and also what is a very remarkable and popular Greenwich invention.  That is tinsel - what you’re all going to have on your Christmas tree.

 

William Harris was born in Deptford and brought up in Greenwich in Mell Street. He began works in the rope works -which I assume was Enderbys. He moved to Deptford where brought up a family including two sons. In 1862  he began work at the Silk Mill as an engineer and stayed on for 50 years as the chief engineer. He was clearly interested in many other things. Earlier he had invented a throat tube to help diphtheria sufferers to breathe and made a special silver version for the German Emperor who was dying of throat cancer. He invented a printing machine for ribbon lace which was eventually passed to a firm in Preston who became the only people able to produce it. But his important invention is that of tinsel - one day he saw silk thread with bright shavings of metal on it and he set about fixing the shavings to the silk. He made samples and before long the mill had 300 men making tinsel and selling hundreds of pounds worth – so he made a fortune for others but didn’t benefit himself

 

Harris continued to have a remarkable life,  he set his sons up as a bicycle business in Loampit Hill - and they developed the Presto pedal cycle as one of the earliest manufacturers of bicycles like this in the country. William himself remained a cyclist into his 80s.  He was an activist with the artillery volunteers at Holly Hedge House and a crack gunner on the ranges at Plumstead.  He was also a musician in the band but I don’t know what he played. At the age of 84 he took his first aeroplane flight in a seaplane from Eastbourne. As he got older he was nationally known and at 102 he was London’s oldest living man although blind in one eye. He eventually attended the golden weddings of both his sons.

 

Although there doesn’t seem to be anything much left on the Silk Mills site itself to see now - we can at least remember Mr Harris and the invention of tinsel. None of this says much the great Tudor Armoury and its  mill. But both  posh Tudor Armour and gold and silver thread embroidery were about glitter and show.