The council currently has plans to sell off what they
described as ‘Plumstead power station’.
This is the, rather
grand, building hidden away in White Hart Road – and yes it was built to
generate electricity. But it was so much
more. It’s a good example of the way the
Borough treats so much of its past. You
take something which is outstandingly innovative and well designed and
interesting and relevant to today. You
marginalise it for most of a century and then you sell it off while never
mentioning it to the world.
Once upon a time Plumstead was separate from Woolwich. It was a small local authority but in the
late 1890s Woolwich was about to swallow them up.
In the 1890s electricity as a means of power in streets and
homes was coming in fast. One big expense
was street lighting. Might it be more cheaply done with electricity from the Council’s
power station? Another expense was
domestic and commercial waste. So why not put the two problems together? In the 1890s new housing was being built at a
tremendous rate in Plumstead and the Council needed
bricks and road making materials.
In 1897 Shoreditch Council had built an incinerator where
local rubbish was burnt to generate electricity for local people. Plumstead could do the
same. They
were not the only local auhority with this idea and they visits were organised to
electricity stations in Leyton, Shoreditch, St Pancras and Brighton, to
discuss experiences and ideas. Later they visited Liverpool, St Helens, and Darwin.
They appointed an Engineer-Surveyor – Frank
Sumner – and he was to design and build the new station. He had had a career in
several local authorities, including, most recently Bermondsey where he had
done much
work on sewers and planned alterations to the Council Chamber.
In Plumstead and Woolwich along with the
generator he had also constructed 20 miles of sewers, 8 miles of
streets, made plans for a new Library Public baths and wash houses at
Plumstead, and a coroner's court and
mortuary, widening Well Hall Road from Eltham to Shooters Hill, Tramway and
street improvements . He went on to become City Engineer to the City
of London, where he inaugurated central lighting of the City, and was largely
responsible for the Fleet Street widening scheme.
So the
Plumstead scheme went ahead. Tenders were accepted very often on the basis of
engineering excellence, rather than lowest bid. Plumstead Vestry Rules insisted
that a "schedule of hours of labour and rates of wages" should be
included in all tender documents. Local
companies like Johnson & Phillips, were prominent in the list of successful
tenderers. The plant and street cabling made up a lot of the overall cost of
the project. Council Officers and Councillors checked the progress of the
construction and installation of the Station. Plans for a tramway giving direct
access for coal from a Thameside Wharf via a tramway to the power station, had
to be objections from the MOD, the intermediate land owner. A well was dug but the water was too and produced scaling
in the boilers. n. It is interesting that
The scheme was barely agreed when Plumstead Vestry went out of
existence but the new Woolwich Borough Council continued with it and financed
it with a loan from the London County Council. There was however a snag. In
Woolwich electricity was provided by a private company with a big works by the
riverside in central Woolwich. Plans were going ahead for the Council to buy it
up. This grew and grew larger and more magnificent until it was nationalised in
1948, then ‘notably efficient’ and the only functioning power station in the
country built by direct labour. It had
three landmark chimneys and Woolwich was very, very proud of it.
The new ex-Plumstead generating station/destructor was opened by
the Woolwich Mayor in 1903 while a lot of whingeing went on in the local press
about the cost. And then it got rather forgotten and they stopped generating
electricity there in 1923 – Globe Lane was so much more efficient –although of course it used expensive coal rather
than rubbish as fuel.
At Plumstead they kept on burning the rubbish. They did other things too – from the start
they had manufactured road making materials and bricks from the burnt waste. Before
the 1960s most household and other waste would be ash and clinker from coal
fires and its high carbon content made it possible to get high temperatures and
leave ash and waste of the sort which brick makers used. Woolwich was proud of its local housing build
with Council made bricks.
As time went on facilities for some
of the more unmentionable aspects of Borough life opened on the White Hart Road
site – disinfection, special cleansing, and a laundry for foul bedding which
still functioned into the late 1990s.
And then there were the pigs – I am very unsure when they arrived but
there were certainly pig stys on site. I
think they lived on the food waste which the Borough collected – as late as
1953 the Woolwich Tenants Handbook gives instructions about using the bins
provided for food scraps. The pork went
to the Boroughs homes for old people and children.
Waste incineration ended in 1965 and the magnificent building was
used for storage. The waste went to
landfill I’m afraid. By then everyone had forgotten the original aspiration to
generate electricity from waste, make bricks and everything else.
All sorts of stuff was stored there. I guess every time the borough had installed anything
– from light bulbs to gas meters and baths – and there had been a few items
left over, they were kept ‘just in case’.
There were shelves and shelves and shelves of unused spares going back
to the 1920s. There were also piles of bits
which had been saved from demolished buildings – plaques, ornamental stonework
and so on. I remember that Jack Vaughan, the first chair
of Greenwich Industrial History Society, had a long list. Every interesting building that was pulled
down in the 1970s and 1980s in Woolwich Jack would look for any nice bits of decoration
or memorabilia or what have you and insist it was saved t use on any suitable
new build. What happened to all of this stuff??
Most of it was never seen again.
GLIAS ran a visit
there and one of them contacted English Heritage. And so it was listed. The report notes its complex plan, its
elaborate interiors and the integrity of its design. Frank Sumner did a good
job
It really is a very, very grand building which has sat in this
obscure corner of the borough for nearly 120 years.– but no one ever sees it
and very few would know it was there. It was built for the people of Plumstead
and – I guess – to show them off a little as well as to provide them with the
very latest in municipal technology.
Recently it has been part of the Crossrail site and the new
line gives a very good view of it.
And what did two futu4 hi3 – uh will uy it net wk they d
with it.
Much of this article is
based on research carried out by Dave Ramsey into Plumstead municipal buildings
and Frank Sumner. There is also some
reference to the Survey of Woolwich. Thanks to Debs for
recent information, and John Kennett for some pictures
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