With these articles I am continuing to work site by site down Deptford Creek. Last week we looked at Merryweather’s fire engine works- and stressed that it internationally known and that Merryweather engines are preserved all round the world –polished and on show at museums and rallies. The next site to the north is almost the opposite of that, really obscure and difficult to know much about. It is marked on maps as ‘Tramway depot’ – and that it is so little-known in itself surprising, since trams are a subject where there are many enthusiasts - model makers and those who search out old tram tracks, route numbers and the like. I have been to local history lectures where tram related facts of the most detailed minutiae have been given – so I would expect to find them about this site. But, apparently, no!
It is of course the case that Merryweather’s made tram engines . It appears that an early London tram company, the North London Tramways, operated 25 Merryweather cars, in 1885. But the new Greenwich tramways did not seem to take advantage of their neighbour’s services.
Greenwich had more than its fair share of tram related sites which may be why this fairly small site has been so overlooked. We have of course Greenwich Power Station, built by the London County Council to power the trams on the site of what had been a very, very large horse tram depot. The Power Station is very much still there and still servicing London’s transport. We also had the Central Repair Depot, again opened by the London County Council, where trams were serviced and repaired. That works was later, after closure, known as the ‘Airfix building’ and I am sure many people will remember it. It was on the Woolwich Road just past the bridge that takes the Angerstein Railway over the road. Today a little side road there is ‘Felltram Way’ named for Mr.Fell who was the tramways manager. Further down Woolwich Road at Penhall Road was the ‘tramatorium’ where all the trams which has been taken out of service were burnt and broken up. I wonder why, under the London County Councils ownership of the trams, Greenwich was chosen for these three important works.
The Deptford Creek tramway depot fronted onto Greenwich High Road and the site is now part the Merryweather Place flats. It ran down to the Creek and seems to have had a wharf there. It had been opened in December 1870 by the Pimlico, Peckham and Greenwich Street Tramways Co. It was then a horse tram depot – and I assume that means it had a large stable. The very large stables at East Greenwich, on the site on what is now the power station, was opened by the same company only four months later.
Newspaper reports of the day record that the section of the new tram line between Blackheath Hill and New Cross was opened on 12th December 1870 and that the continuation of the line to East Greenwich would open by the end of that month. I wonder if we can take it that by ‘Blackheath Hill’ they mean the site of the depot, which although not on Blackheath Hill itself is pretty nearby. They report however that on the day when the new tram line opened that it ‘created quite a stir’ in the neighbourhood. Some residents ’signified their approbation with roars from a crowd running behind and cheering vociferously’. This first route went: Blackheath Road– Greenwich High Road – Greenwich Church Street – Nelson Road – Romney Road – Trafalgar Road – Greenwich, William IV (King William Lane).
There is a plaque on the Tesco shop in Trafalgar Road – opposite King William Lane –which says that the building was owned by the London Tramways Company and became the London County Council tramway offices 1899-1910. It goes on to say thsat this was the terminus of the tram route from Westminster. I don’t know who put that sign up – I remember trying to find out when it first went up because I thought they might be able to come and tell Greenwich Industrial History Society about the trams – but no such luck, I never did track the right person down.
In 1874, the Pimlico and Peckham Company was taken over the London Tramways Company which had been set up in 1870. This happened so quickly that some doubt is expressed in histories of the tramways as to ‘whether the Pimlico, Peckham and Greenwich Street Tramway ever operated as an independent concern’. It is thought that probably it had always been planned to work this and other tram lines together with a new company and that they in fact always managed it from 1870 when their route from New Cross to Greenwich opened as the first stage of the new route.
This was of course a horse tram depot and we can learn a bit about how things were done there from reports of a big strike on the tramways in the summer of 1889 - when much of London was in the midst of the great Dock Strike. It was understood that a conductor employed at Deptford Yard had been sacked “Last Saturday he slipped off the car and hurt himself, and in consequence did not show up on Sunday. He sent word that he was ill, and on Wednesday, when he reappeared, was discharged, with the intimation that he did not 'suit'. He belonged to the Union”.
Some of the reports of the strike talk about the work of the Rev. F. Barclay, ‘of the New Kent Road – “who is known as the Tram Slaves' Friend” and they discuss the working conditions which the men who from the ‘Greenwich and Deptford yards’ complained about. They were on issues like how many journeys each tram team should take in one day – they wanted five and less on Sundays. They also asked that men could be paid at their own depots not have to go to New Cross to get their wages. There were many other questions - how long should they be in the depot before they got the tram car out on the road? How many breaks could they take during each journey? What about extra pay for Bank Holidays? Could arrangements for paying in the fares taken be done differently when the takings didn’t match the ticket sales and were short or too high? What about work for the day if their horses were not available? When could a driver or conductor could sit down? - ‘It is very hard for a man to be obliged to stand for seven, nine, and twelve hours without being allowed to sit down, especially when the horses are pulling hard at him all the time’.
It seems therefore that the Greenwich depot was used as we would expect with horse driven trams coming and going to a timetable and we would expect to find stables and facilities for the horses, as well as offices and some accommodation for the men. However, the insurance plans for the site, made in 1894 appear to show something rather different. First, I must apologise that the copy I have of these plans is so small that it is impossible to read much of the smaller print – and blowing it up with all sorts of fancy software is no help at all. So I can only identity the bigger buildings on the site.
The insurance plans show the site as ‘The London Tramways Granary and Fodder Mill’ and the buildings are very very close to and almost mixed up with those of the Merryweather works. Although later maps show an entrance and tram lines going into the works from the road, nothing like this is shown on the insurance map. The first building in from Greenwich High Road is marked ‘Tram shed’ and ‘Rolling stock’ but it is relatively small. Next there is then a long line of buildings going down to the creek. I can’t read what is on all of them but they seem to be stores – ‘corn store’ and two buildings marked ‘lamp store’ and some others. What appears to be a line of rails goes down parallel to this to the Creek itself and there are more buildings there. Parallel with these and next to Merryweathers are some much larger buildings ‘corn store’ and ‘fodder mill’. There is also a saw mill and a timber store (which I think belongs to the tramway and no Merryweathers!). Rails appear to go down to the little dock inlet which is now used by residential boats.
It makes sense that a horse tramways would need this sort of facility – and interesting that it adds yet another mill close to the big complex of mills around Deptford Bridge – and we will get to them in a few weeks’ time. It also appears that from 1899 it was known as ‘Deptford Wharf Permanent Way Depot’.
In 1896 the London County Council got an Act of Parliament which allowed them to operate trams. In 1899 the Council they took over the London Tramways Company and from then on these tram lines were operated by the County Council itself. They immediately began plans to electrify the systeme and do away with the horses, getting an Act of Parliament to allow them to do this in 1900.
Spare a thought here for the poor, hardworking horses ‘disposed of’ (I guess that means killed) in their thousands. The last horse tram ran on 30 April 1915.
The County Council appear to have used site, now called ‘Deptford Wharf, for transferring materials like stone and from barges and storing it here. We have reports of the amount of sand stored there, and that they used ‘Guernsey Granite’. We must assume that work went on here through the first half of the 20th century. The next report I have is of a bombing in 1944 when the machine shop is said have been ‘rendered unsafe’. I have also seem a photograph taken in 1951 of a strange mobile crane – it looks ‘home made’ and was used by the 'permanent way engineers based at Deptford Wharf'.
The County Council trams all closed in 1952 – and there are many films of the last night of the trams – with everyone going wild at New Cross and dancing on the roof the ‘last tram’ between New Cross and Woolwich. I have since found out that there were lots of ‘last trams’ and that one of them was driven by the Woolwich Mayor, Alf Jago, who was himself a real tram driver. The last tram from New Cross got to the old Greenwich/Deptford Wharf Depot early the following morning – held up by the crowds in Greenwich and particularly the nurses of the Miller Hospital, which was then opposite the site, showing their gratitude to the crew.
The site may have still been owned by London Transport in the 1960s when there was news of a new Managing Director recruited to redevelop it into a ‘modern cargo handling facility
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