Willis & Wright - Bowater - Segar Emery - Primrose

 

I have been writing about Morden Wharf and its industries for three or four weeks now.  The past of this area is very complex and there are lots of businesses which have been left out. This article is just picking up some of the more interesting of the others

 One of the earliest firms on Morden Wharf was Willis and Wright who signed a lease on the furthest part of the wharf downriver in 1842.  Here on the riverside today is a long jetty before the riverside path turns inland.  This is now called Primrose Pier and was it refurbished by Groundwork in 2002 with a new surface, seating and signage in order to be used for fishing or for a view point.  There appear however now to be new plans for it

Willis and Wright were the current managers of Champion’s Vinegar Brewery.  This major vinegar provider was based on the City’s northern border on the corner of Old Street and City Road.  This is now the site of early 20^th Century housing built by the Sutton Housing charity and, apparently, in the 1940s was known as ‘The Vinegar Ground’ –having latterly the site of vinegar manufacture by Sarsons.

 Champions Vinegar manufacture dated back to 1705 but and only had taken on this site in 1794.   The firm had a number of successive partners but the Champion family remained involved throughout and by 1832 they were the fourth largest vinegar brewer in the country.  A William Henry Wright was a partner from around this time and he was joined by George Willis who ran the company following a series of deaths in the Champion family but the lease of the site at Morden Wharf was signed by Elizabeth Champion.

Three years later a further lease was signed for a site to the north and Willis and Wright began to make bricks there. They had already built ‘a tar factory, house, chemical factory, and other buildings’ which had been the cause of some nuisance when ‘noxious matter‘had leaked.  It appears they were distilling the tar to make naphtha – tar oil.

Although it has to be a matter of conjecture as to why a major vinegar and mustard manufacturer would want to do this a clue can be found in a report on Food Adulteration produced in 1879. This summarised, says:

“An inferior kind of vinegar is made by the ....distillation of wood in the manufacture of naphtha.   The wood is placed in closed ovens and is heated to drive all the gases into condensers where they form a black tarry mixture of naphtha and acetic acid - to this lime is added... leaving.. a black strong smelling compound ... black lime salt ..which is then mixed with sulphuric acid and distilled ...... resulting in a mixture of acids possessing a disagreeable sour taste. Vinegar thus prepared is .... most injurious to health.’

Presumably this very cheap and nasty way of making something like vinegar was not profitable since they left the site in 1861. 

Another firm on Morden Wharf was, Segar Emery an American firm who leased a site in this area of Morden Wharf in 1904. They were timber merchant, specialising in mahogany. Emery was an American, with a timber business, the Emery Lumber Company and Samuel Segar was an English timber merchant, with an office in, Bishopsgate.

The Emery Company had timber rights in Nicaragua and the business appears to have been involved in the importation of tropical hardwoods. In Greenwich they had a mahogany saw mill plant and a dock on the riverside. The partnership was dissolved after only a year.  Subsequently the American firm was involved on arbitration between the Nicaraguan and the US governments

Like Segar Emery many firms on Morden Wharf were short-lived and their sites and their layout changed and overlapped. 

In a previous article I described the Glass Elliot telegraph cable company’s original works at Morden Wharf. As they grew o he at Enderby Wharf site they no longer needed the older site in Morden Wharf. The site was then leased to Bowater the paper manufacturer.

As I originally came from Gravesend Bowater’s was always well known to me and their beautiful 1960s water tower still sits rotting on the riverside at Northfleet. Their site in Greenwich was much smaller and paper was not made there.

At the end of the 19th century Bowater’s supplied newsprint to both the Daily Mail and the Daily Chronicle. The lease was in the name of Thames Export Packing Company from 1909 and work here consisted of sorting, shredding and pressing of waste paper into bales for export. Following a fire the site was rebuilt in 1912 including a new entrance. By the beginning of the Second World War Bowater’s was a multinational producing, 800,000 tons of newsprint annually... However this demand did not survive the war and the company began to make paper packaging and later corrugated cases.  

I the 20^th century the wharves on Morden Wharf gradually became more involved in h the transhipment of goods made elsewhere rather than sites where actual manufacturing went on.  The wharf here was named Primrose by Froud Ltd who had leased it in the 1930s but why this name was chosen is not known – it seems to be far too ‘pretty’ a name for an area which must have been pretty  dirty and smelly in the 1930s.  Soon after the inland part of the site was used by Molassine.  I wrote about Molassine, animal food manufacturer, for weekender in.....

In the 1970s the Primrose Wharf Company produced a booklet advertising their wharfage services and what could be provided. There were of instance, customs and excise facilities and tanks storage for liquids. There was also open air storage and a heavy lift crane.  There is a list of the shipping agents who they worked with and an impressive list of ports which they could export to - Kingston, Jamaica, Tampa Bay... Montego Bay and many more, all in the Caribbean and Central America. His was to be the future of several Greenwich riverside sites.

Morden Wharf is now the subject of a current planning application by the developers UandI – and far be it from me to comment on that directly. I will however just point out that they appear to be planning a boathouse which “could provide a permanent mooring for Gloriana - the Monarch’s Royal Rowbarge, which was 'expertly crafted to mark Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012'.