Two weeks ago I said that I would follow sites in the booklet ‘The Industrial Archaeology of South-East London’ and see what the places are like today compared with when they were listed 40 years ago. I said I would put them in alphabetical order, although I don’t know if I will always stick with that. This week it’s another site from Woolwich Dockyard – the ‘Apprentices School’.
What did SELIA have to say about it? “Few people could guess the Co-op Chapel of Rest was in fact built as the first school for the apprentices employed in the Dockyard. Before this school was built the apprentices were taught in hulks moored close the yard”.
And so, the next thing is to see what the Survey of Woolwich has to say about it. It says that the site was a very late part of the Dockyard and part of the expansion of the steam factory in the mid-19th century. The ‘steam factory’ of course being the Admiralty’s attempt to modernise Nelson’s Navy with all those wooden walls and complex sails and turn it into big battleships and the like with actual engines.. They seemed to think that was best done in Woolwich – and, probably, that with any luck it would stay there.
So – the site we are looking at is the Co-op Funeral buildings which are at the far end of Woolwich Church Street before you get to Macdonald’s and Warspite Road. There are huge windows with vehicles on show, you can’t miss it. Ruston Road will take you round the back if you want to look at that.
Church Street – then called Albion Road - was built in the early 1840s and the Dockyard expanded up to the road in 1844. In 1845 Roger Stewart Beatson, RE came from Portsmouth to take over the refurbishment and rebuilding of the Dockyard and was responsible for the smithery and various other buildings which I will get to eventually. The long wall which now runs along Woolwich Church Street must date from around then and at first workshops and warehouses for this part of the Dockyard were built alongside it. The gateway which lies next to the Co-op Funeral buildings is from much the same date. It was built as the ‘west’ gate to the Dockyard specifically for the steam factory so that didn’t get confused with the rest of the Yard. First, a police station and other buildings connected to the police were built on the right side as you go in. At around the time the gateway was built the Dockyard Police were taken over and became part of the Metropolitan Police and some officers lived on site.
Beason is also thought to have designed the school buildings, which are the subject of this article. They are on the left-hand side of the West Gate as you go in.
I must now admit to being more than a bit confused by the source material. On the web are copies of various reports and accounts of education in the Royal Dockyards. They don’t all match up in what they say and few of them mention Woolwich specifically. Of course I may have just read the wrong reports – and if so I am sure someone from
the Maritime Museum will read this and correct me. This is what seems to be consistent and makes the most sense.
The Woolwich Dockyard School for Apprentices opened in 1844 in the wake of a Dockyard education scheme that the Admiralty had introduced the previous year when little, if any, technical education was available.. These specialist premises are said to be for the teaching of marine engineering to apprentices drawn from the Royal Dockyards’ steam factories. Also that Woolwich was the first establishment in the country devoted to training for service in the steam navy and was important in establishing Woolwich’s reputation for engineering expertise.
In the information I have about the Woolwich school - and I suspect some of the reports available are talking about a different institution - it is said that it was set up in 1843.But elsewhere it is said that as a result of the Royal Commission in 1844 that an Apprentice School was set up at Woolwich which specialised in engineering training and that it was a great success.
Notes on the functions and work of these schools seems to me to consist of discovering and fostering an elite. I thought that apprentices were ordinary lads who wanted to learn a trade and needed a bit of book learning as part of that, but these Dockyard schools seem to have been more ambitious. The schools I have seen described in various reports seem to be following a programme where the boys were given an academic style introduction and gradually weeded out until one lucky lad is chosen from Deptford and Woolwich combined and allowed to go on to higher education and presumably a future as a master shipwright. The others fell by the wayside, one by one.
Apprentices of all trades were expected to learn English, mathematics, mechanics and later move on to technical drawing and electricity in future years. Eventually they would do professional stuff like engine fitting - or, for the few, naval architecture
Many of these reports give a vast amount of attention to detail, alongside complaints about the low pay of the lone schoolmaster. This sometimes includes stuff like the exact time of the dinner gong every day while remaining very unclear which schools they are referring to.
Regardless of who attended it and who learnt what there, the School survives much as it was built. It in yellow brick with stone dressings. From Church Street is is all big windows and flat frontage but walk through the entrance gates and see what a charming building this actually is. After the closure of the Dockyard it became offices, as did the former police station.
In 1929 the area became part of the Co-op’s Commonwealth Buildings. I guess most older people remember the days when the Co-op in Woolwich wasn’t just the couple of shops. The Royal Arsenal Co-operative .Society was a very big set up with considerable influence and an important organisation. Once the Dockyard ceased to function here they set up this part of it as a vast factory of works to supply their shops and other institutions. RACS was much more than just another shop; they had an Education Department and a housing estate and much else. - I suspect they were the only Co-op in the country which had actual mines and these remain underground – and I must do an article about them some time.
Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society had nine acres here with frontages to Woolwich Church Street as far as Warspite Road. They wanted this land for a new dairy, laundry and tea warehouse, and their works department. Conversions of numerous buildings were carried out under the supervision of the Society’s architect, and completed by 1932. Entry to it was from the old Steam Factory Gate, where RACS installed is own ironwork. There were workshops for repairing motor vehicles, tailors and boot-repairers and warehouses and much else along the main road.
Om the waterfront the three storey metal-framed buildings at slips 1 2 became s a butter, pharmacy and tea store, and the adjacent quayside became a range of grocery warehouses. By 1937 the site employed 1,426 workers and housed twenty-one industries and departments. It became an important regional distribution centre - RACS covering a vast hinterland beyond Woolwich over much of Kent and Surrey – remind me to write about that some time, too
RACS operations were gradually run down and wound up as the co-op became overtaken by other supermarkets. Eventually and sadly it became part of the big co-op movement based in Manchester where there is no memory and no understanding of what RACS once was. (I have had arguments with staff there who had never heard of it!!). By 1984 most of Commonwealth Buildings had been demolished.
The former school on the gate’s west side had become a mortuary chapel for RACS funeral-furnishing establishment. In 1961 it was enlarged, to plans by A. L. Foreman, the Society’s architect, with a road side showroom and large sheds to the west of the former school. It subsequently spread to the former police barracks and other buildings to the east and continues as Co-operative Funeral care. I note the address is still 2 Commonwealth Buildings.
It must be ironic that almost the only remaining memory of RACS‘s is the funeral service.
Ah, well, I suppose we will all need it one day!
Many of the websites advertising the service contain complaints from users. I have only used them once and they were fine - but very disbelieving when I said we would want more space as I was expecting a couple of MP s and most of Greenwich Council‘s leadership. They put us in the smaller chapel at the Crematorium. So we had three MPs, most of Greenwich Council’s senior officers and Councillors all standing jammed in a crowd at the front. But I don’t blame Co-op Funerals for that.
It is worth going down to look at this last bit of the Woolwich Dockyard steam factory. And I see on the web a blog page with a picture of the old police station which says it was a ‘factory’. Well, why not?
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