John Day Arsenal apprentice

 

I was thinking about something to write this week – and I’ve had no net access for nearly a week – and so I have been looking at what I had on my system from the past. We had the first Greenwich Industrial History meetings in the late 1990s and we also had a bi-monthly newsletter. I used to get a lot of stuff sent for publication - much of it from elderly men who had worked in various local industries and wanted to tell people about their experiences. So, I thought, nobody’s ever going to read these old newsletters and perhaps I should dig them out andre-publish them somewhere.

One of the most constant and prolific of the contributors to these early issues of the GIHS newsletter was John Day. He didn’t live locally – I think he lived in one of those Surrey towns near the London border .... Woking?   Leatherhead? He had however undertaken the massive task of listing 30,000 engineering drawings for the Royal Artillery Library which was then based in the Royal Military Academy – now flats - in Red Lion Lane and he had beenbworking in the Rotunda.

Professionally he had been a                mechanical engineer following an apprenticeship in the Arsenal. He had worked for the Patent Office  where he prepared instruction books on Rolls Royce aero engines and much else, eventually actually retiring as Principal Examiner.  He was also a keen historian of artillery practice. He was particularly helpful to me when I researched the Blakeley Ordnance factory on Greenwich Peninsula and introduced me to experts on Blakeley and helped me to write an article which would otherwise have been an extremely innocent and inadequate description of this Greenwich works.

In contributing to Greenwich Industrial History newsletters he was very concerned to tell us about his apprenticeship in the Arsenal, writing a series of articles which will be far too long and detailed to put here individually which I might run as a series.  There were other people who wrote about Arsenal apprenticeships but John’s work was particularly detailed. He began with when ge went there in 1934 but said that the site was already well known to him then.

John explained that in the mid 1930s his father had been appointed as a craft engineer in the Arsenal’s Central Power Station and on Sundays John took him in a hot lunch in a basket. Then since everything was shut he had the ‘freedom to wander where I liked within the building’.  I must admit that I find this surprising - my impression of the Arsenal was that anyone not employed there would be very quickly surrounded by military should they do anything but go where they were told! Perhaps things were different in the 1930s.

 

He explained that at that time there were three grades of apprentices in the Royal Arsenal:

Trade apprentices who, as the name suggests were training in their chosen trade such as fitter, turner, pattern maker, etc. After six months they had one option to change their choice.

Student apprentices who spent a couple of years of practical work after college degrees.

Engineering apprentices who spent five years working at a number of trades while  studying for a degree.  Entry was by examinations and interview at the age of 16.  The average intake in the 1930s was about 12 chosen from some 100 to 150 applicants. For the first two years there was compulsory attendance for two days and two evening a week at what was then the Woolwich Polytechnic, The remaining three years were spent during term time at the Poly. At the end of the five years most of the apprentices had a degree in engineering and the necessary 36 months of practical training needed for membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

 

So he describes his application for an engineering apprenticship by saying ‘I have no recollection of any examination .... perhaps I was exempted by having matriculated with distinction in technical subjects.’ He described how he had also made a model of a ‘two cylinder boiler fitted pump’ which is apparently described in the London and Brighton and South Coast Railway’s magazine ‘Shop, Shed and Road’. He produced this model at the interview when they asked him if he knew anything about metal work. He says there was a pause ‘while the interview board thought of something else to ask me’.

 

He got his place as an Arsenal Engineering Apprentice and when list of successful candidates was published he was at the top.  He listed others who passed with him –Norman Lindsey – a future Lieut. Colonel with REME;  Robert Walker who became a civil engineer with the Port of London Authority; Sydney Bacon who retired with a knighthood as Director General of Ordnance Factories; Malcolm Starkey,

manager of a war time ordnance factory in Fazakerley, which made Sten guns. He later had a senior position with  Farnborough based motor valve manufacturers, Tranco.

 

On his first day he reported to the Apprentice Supervisor in the Central Office and was taken to the Gauge Shop for the New Fuse Factory. I understand that today it is not possible to identify one exact building which could be called the ‘New fuse factory’ -  although I stand to be corrected by people from the Royal Arsenal historical group.  As far as I am aware the fuse factories in the Arsenal during the Second World War employed many thousands of women but had no specific location and that any information about them would be top secret.

 

John commented that where he was first taken was the ‘Fuse pool room’ -  and I assume ‘pool’ does not mean snooker!  He says ‘the Gauge shop’ was the high accuracy part of the tool room. This whole complex of buildings was near the Plumstead Gate.

 

He was then handed over to Jim Hands to work as his apprentice. Jim made the jigs and tools for a specific product -  the Mechanical Time Fuse No 207 which he describes as ‘a short-term watch mechanism using a swing arm in place of the usual balance wheel’. This was made and assembled by women on the first floor of the adjacent building, which was called ‘The New Fuse Factory’. I am sorry to say that John said that it was always Jim who fixed the belts and bolts underneath the benches while he did all the work on top – and ‘it was a long time before I cottoned on as to why’.  An additional hazard for women workers in this very male environment which I have never seen mentioned in any article about the problems faced there. Stiletto heels have their advantages but I bet they weren’t allowed!

 

The first job John had was to ‘scrape the faces of depth gauges true and square  ... they had to be frosted and be accurate to a couple of thousands of an inch’. Made of a light alloy they were used in the Danger Buildings for measuring the depths of explosives in shells.

 

Jim next suggested John made himself some tools. He began by making an engineer’s square -  a precision L-shaped device  used for accurate checking of 90-degree angles and straight lines. He had to hack saw the shapes; grind the parts; rivet them and it all had to be acceptable to the View Room – accurate to less than one ten thousanth of an inch. John comments ‘I still have the square because I never dared use it.’

 

By then John had a motor bike - a 1920 Sunbeam ‘the Rolls Royce of singles which had cost £2 and which he had restored. Of course he was riding it in to the Arsenal everyday.  One morning, part of the handlebars caught in a man’s pocket, tearing it and his lunch fell out on the road.  That evening he came to see John’s father. He left with ‘a ten shilling note and an old jacket’.

Back at the Arsenal John’s father used his status as foreman of the Electrical Shop to get No.4. electricity substation specially opened morning and evening so John could ‘garage my bike safely in the dry’.

 

 

Riverside path

 

I think I would like to start this week by congratulating Greenwich Council on their new review of the Riverside path: Rethinking the Riverside - A Review of the Thames Path.pdf , .  It’s a great document which reports on the path, following a great deal of public consultation as well as looking at the views of various organisations with an interest - people from Greenwich University and others. I would very much like to congratulate Councillor Maisie Richards Cottell on having managed to get such a detailed work researched and published as part of her role as Chair of the Transport and Place Scrutiny Panel.  I probably shouldn’t say this - but when I was Chairing the predecessor Scrutiny Panel, fifteen years ago, producing such a document would have been beyond unthinkable! But there you go!

Having said all those congratulations I also think that they’ve missed some important issues about the path and some very, very major problems - which is not to detract from what they’ve done so far. They’ve done a wonderful job consulting with the public but there are others out there who will have to be dealt with. Sorry.

So – I guess you will wonder why I should put myself forward beyond my role as a member of the public. I will give a little bit of my own biographical details on this and my work on the path as a historian – I’m afraid the University will say ‘amateur historian’ - and the background to the use of path with some of the legal issues and public participation over the previous centuries. 

In the 1980s and 1990s I worked for an organisation which monitored development in London Docklands. Some of our staff managed to get questions asked in the House of Commons about the terrible mess which Tower Hamlets was making of their riverside path. Part of my job was going to meetings with what was then the London Rivers Authority – (later after the GLC was closed down it was ‘Association’). I particularly remember a report they did comparing various riverside walks in foreign capitals and I wonder what happened to that research -but they did much else. I wrote and self published a riverside walk around the Peninsula about this time. I was first elected to the Council in 2000 and there was then a full time officer working on the Riverside path. Inevitably the funding for his salary ran out.

 

When I came off the council 10 years ago I tried to set up a Friends of the Riverside Walk group and we had a couple of meetings but some hostility was quite clear and I abandoned it - which I’m sorry about now.

 

I guess it was originally just a walk along the river wall  - and we have no idea how old that is . In 1867 the Court of Queen’s Bench heard that it was there at the time of Norman Conquest and for all they knew it was Roman.  The public have walked it ever since but now they no longer walk on the river edge because of need for a cycle path and ‘health and safety’.

The oldest pictures which I know of which show people on the path are two of the 17^th century gunpowder works (then on the site of Enderbys).  In them people are taking the dog for a walk, sketching, chatting .. or just, well, walking.  A few years ago the Enderby Group did a footfall survey on the path – and things haven’t really changed, except for the bicycles.

Ian Nairn, was  a 1960s troublemaking architectural commentator with a short lived TV show.  He describes the path starting at the Blackwall Tunnel’s ‘pretty art nouveau gatehouse’ then says the walk goes down a passage alongside the Delta Metal Company “which zigs and it zags and it doesn’t give up and eventually comes out at the river”. I remember that passage well . When I worked at Delta Metal in 1970 the path there was modernised and paved, but totally isolated from the rest.  That is now the site of the golf course.

Nairn talks about the path taking “exciting forms...between walls ... under cranes ...nipping round the back of a boatyard’.  Much of that stretch was straightened out in the 1980s.  “A continuous flirtation with the slow moving river choked with working boats”. (if only!) 

The right of way on this whole stretch was taken to the Court of Queens Bench by Greenwich Vestry in 1867 in a case against the shipbuilders, Maudslay Son and Field who had blocked the path. They were on the site we now call Bay Wharf where they built Cutty Sark’s two sisters, Hallowe'en and Blackadder. The case had huge public support with the gallery crowded with local people shouting and clapping.    Mr. Soames whose soap works was on the site of the later sugar refinery said that companies would go out of business if the public could walk along the riverside past them.  The Court and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn didn’t agree and declared in favour of the right of way.  It is the same stretch which Greenwich Council went to court with in the 1990s when the then occupants blocked it  and the right of way was declared again.

North of this in 1868 Lewis and Stockwell Shipbuilders built a large a dry dock (where the hotel is now) and this interrupted the river path. I don't know how this was resolved by the Vestry who thought it was ‘not a good idea to give up these old rights in a hurry’ but thought new employment opportunities were important. (Nothing changes, it really doesn’t).

When the Gas Works was built in the 1890s on what is now the site of the Dome, the riverside path was closed right round its site.  Following an enquiry in the House of Lords Ordinance Draw Dock was built by the gas company as compensation for the closure.  I hope Greenwich residents visit the draw dock - which is still a right of way despite scary notices from the people in the Dome and the hotel.

As for Nairn he got to the “final exciting stretch past Greenwich Power station and another good Riverside pub , The Yacht”.   Then he says “God preserve it from the prettifiers” and, in a footnote “’They’ are trying to close it. Walk it as you would a country path, till they are sick to the guts”.

The council have intermittently taken an interest in the path - very much because of individual councillors. In the 1970s there was a councillors’ walk along the path set up by the late Derek Penfold. There are photographs but most of the participants are now sadly no longer with us – a young Jim Gilman .... librarian Barbara Ludlow.

It is only recently that’s the path has been seen as going right through the Borough on the riverside. The walk which Derek organised just went round the peninsula. You could get to Cutty Sark but what was then the  Royal Naval College was locked and barred and bolted.  I think the stretch through Charlton to the Barrier was probably in existence but I have a feeling that it wasn’t really possible to walk it but I’m not sure why. There was no way of walking into Woolwich and there was a long term blockage which was only resolved a few years ago.  You couldn’t walk through what is now the Dockyard estate and nor could walk at all along the riverfront in Woolwich and you certainly couldn’t put your nose in the Arsenal or you would have been removed with a military escort.

So where does this all leave us ? What can this new report add? For one thing I’m very glad to see  there is quite a bit of criticism of cyclists – for far too long many cyclists have claimed that they are so green in their method of transport  it’s perfectly OK for them to run you over if they feel like it. And I write that as someone who cycled up to London every morning in the 1980s. 

So what should happen next – I think they do need to look at river users. There are a number of sports clubs – the rowers, the yacht club, the kayakers and others. But more than them they must talk to the people who use the river as a workplace.  It’s very easy to think that the working river has gone – and it’s a minute fraction of what it many of us will remember - but the river remains our biggest asset and we need to be careful what we do and remember that it will be here will be all gone and it will serve other communities.  In the short term now we need to consider very carefully what is built on the Riverside and we need to preserve all of the traditional access points many of which are covered by specialist legislation. We need to be quite clear that the sea wall is not a proper place for willow trees – this is not a babbling brook! We need to make sure that the public understands that this is one of the major commercial rivers of the world.

Liquid history and all that.

BOUNDARY 1O downhill from Rectory Field

 

I suppose I think I had better get back to doing the next episode of the walk around the Greenwich boundary. If I don’t do it soon it will take them nearly a year to get right round - which is really not reasonable! One of the reasons that I have delayed it is because the next stretch looks to be quite difficult.    I left the earlier section I described at the gates of what is now Rectory Field sports ground in Charlton Road and the boundary then crosses Charlton Road as it starts to go down the hill towards the river. That area is now all nice neat streets laid out in a proper order with twentieth century houses. In 1851 the walk went downhill through country house  estates.

Perhaps I should also explain - if there are any new readers – that over the past year every few weeks i’ve done another episode of a walk which went round the Greenwich= Parish boundary in 1851.  In the 19^th century these walks were undertaken quite often by the parish officials who went in procession with various local bigwigs, parish choir boys, and a number of children from local schools - including the workhouse school, as well as the other, mainly boys, local schools. The boundary is clearly not completely straight - to put it mildly - and has changed over the centuries. It includes a walk through industrial premises on the bank of Deptford Creek while a boat went up the middle  of the stream on the actually boundary. Also the boundary went through lots of private premises including some people’s houses where the procession would march straight through! So. where I left it last time was in Charlton Road after a fairly easy stretch walking down the side of Rectory Field.

The newspaper report of the walk says that next to Rectory Field entrance in Charlton Road was ‘Asses Milk House’.  Today that is known as ‘Poplar Cottage’; one of the oldest buildings in the area dating from around 1700 and the last Charlton example of the wooden houses which once proliferated in the area. Some years ago it was done up by the Blackheath Preservation Trust and is now painted bright pink. The 1860s OS map shows the boundary line and marks where boundary stones could be found. It marks one here but there is now no sign of it.

The newspaper report which we’ve been following says that it is thence ‘to the Duchess of Buckinghamshire’s brewhouse’.  Now clearly there’s no sign of this and on the other side of the road are a few houses between Wyncliffe Road and the boundary of Our Lady of Grace Church. In 1851 it was the site of Eastcombe Manor which is where the Duchess of Buckinghamshire was living. The OS map shows a big house facing the road with a semi circular garden in front of it. The boundary ran down its west side to extensive grounds to the rear. It is important to the layout of both the estate and the boundary to realise that the land falls away quite steeply from Charlton Rd down towards the Woolwich Road.

I should quickly say that several histories of the area say there were two Eastcombe Manor houses. the other later and posher on the site which is now Sheringham School. I can see no sign of this building on any available map and what is on the 1860s OS makes sense in terms of the newspaper report narrative of the procession, and which only mentions one buiding.

So, The Duchess of Buckinghamshire - and we need to be clear about the difference between our aristocratic ‘Buckingham’ and ‘Buckinghamshire’. This lady was Eleanor Agnes the widow of Robert Hobart, Duke of Buckinghamshire and a major politician.  She was believed to have been engaged as a young woman to William Pitt himself. The procession went through her grounds and I hope she looked out of the window and enjoyed watching them come past -she had only a few months to live and died in the October.

The newspaper report of the procession’s walk through her grounds can clearly be followed on the 1860s Ordnance Survey map. It begins by saying that they crossed the road to the ‘Duchesses’ brew house’ -  and  this is clearly visible on the map as a small building facing onto Charlton Road – I assume that this is some sort of functional outbuilding from her house – but it has crossed my mind that it could have been a pub – or perhaps not.  The procession then went diagonally through the corner window of a laundry. This is, I assume, is the Duchesses’ laundry and a report of an 1889 walk  makes it clear that they went into  the building and then out through the window -  and that should have been something to see!  The OS map marks a boundary stone, which is also mentioned in the newspaper report. So far so good.

The area covered by the Eastcombe Manor house fronting on Charlton Road, and its grounds is now covered with early 20^th century housing which bears no relation to the layout of the estate. Following the Duchess’s death the estate passed through a number of hands and in the 1880s there were attempts to sell the house and it’s grounds. It was eventually acquired by the Norwich Union Insurance Society, and got consent for housing from the London County Council around 1900 and was laid out accordingly. The house was demolished in 1904.

The boundary line appears to go down the right hand – west - side of the Duchesses’ grounds. There is a print of the house looking up the hill towards its rear, across the gardens. It is easy to see how a boundary line could run down the hillside on the east side of the house.  The newspaper report says that the line goes to ‘a boundary stone on the lawn near a yew tree’ near where there used to be a pond, and this stone too is marked on the map.  The next stone is described as being ‘beneath an apple tree on the edge of the lawn’.  The line then goes through an iron archway, passes a greenhouse and then exits through a gate in the fence.

The whole area is now early 20th century houses and the only way down the hill is on Wyndcliffe Road.  My guess is that this boundary line follows the eastern edge of Our Lady of Grace Church and the school which stands behind it, and also goes roughly  down the backs of the houses in Wyndcliffe Road.  This road was built and named by the housing developer with a made up word apparently meaning ‘steep downhill road face’.

I wonder what happened to all those boundary stones – and there were a lot more to come. Are any of them still somewhere down that boundary line; perhaps built into garden walls or just lying about unnoticed.  Apparently one house near the route has a stone built into its doorstep.

The gate out of the Duchess’s garden must have been roughly where Highcombe Road runs east West and which the boundary has to cross. Today it goes into the site of the allotments where we once grew some amazing beans and lambs lettuce.

The boundary continues down to the Woolwich Road, going straight down the hill and eventually following a long curve – it must once have been a footpath. Compare the 1860s Ordnance map with the satellite view on your laptop above the area and you can see only too clearly how it follows a downhill route between properties with a modern road system superimposed.  I also think that is very interesting that on the satellite view you can see that there is a line of mature trees going along the ends of the gardens in Wyndcliff Road, which seem to back on to the boundary.  I’m sure it’s accidental, but it says something about the relative stability of the area.

Having left the Duchess’s gardens the path turns to the north and the report tells us that we must ‘stick close to the hedge on the left hand side of the next two fields’. At the end of the second field was another boundary stone beside an elm tree on which a cross had been carved in 1835.  I guess – and this is all guesses anyway as I try to match the newspaper report to the map and the aerial photograph ... .. and I guess that this elm tree was somewhere near what is now the junction of Wyndcliff Road with Eversley Road. The procession continued to reach another boundary stone also marked on the map and the report says there are three trees - two oaks and an elm – with crosses carved on them.

The newspaper report gives no more detail but just says that the procession continued on this route until it reached Woolwich Road. This is a pity since it is very interesting area but it is quite difficult to be  clear where the path went. On the 1860 map the path can be seen gradually curving round and following the line of Victoria Way and getting ever closer to it. Past the railway it straightens as it nears the Woolwich Road.

 

Before reaching the railway a sand pit is marked on later maps. There is no bridge marked by which to cross the railway – did they just stumble across the lines? In 1851 this stretch of railway was only two years old. It came from the Blackheath tunnel on a curving route to Charlton Station across what had been fields of Combe Farm in Westcombe Hill. The link through to Greenwich was still some years away.

 

On the other side of the railway a sawmill is marked. This is an interesting area and one I think I should come back to.  I had thought that this might be the last episode but it’s clearly going to run on and on and next time we will see the procession go towards the River

the riverside path and me

 The Greenwich riverside – this is something many people think they know about when in fact they only know ‘tourist Greenwich’.  Ian Nairn, however, knew better and said something in the 1960s about the path that snakes its way round the Peninsula and beyond ‘’unknown and unnamed … the best Thameside Walk in London’.  Of course it is important, and interesting and my precept for a long time is that industrial London itself is important and interesting and something we need to talk about.

In writing about the riverside, personally, I had come a long way from being a 1950s teenage typist at Senate House, spending my lunch hours up in the Topography Section.  In the 1970s I made it to the polytechnic and academic research on the gas industry. In the 1980s I fell in with the industrial archaeologists and we started Greenwich Industrial History Society..  I learnt about how London’s industry was shaped and developed – I had a job involved with Docklands development, and later became a Greenwich councillor.  It took the coming of the Millennium Dome in 2000 to kick me into researching the other industrial sites  on the Peninsula and leading me down numerous rabbit holes. Not the least of this has been the discovery of a network of telecoms historians for whom Greenwich and Woolwich have vast importance and about which the tourists will be told nothing.

In 2018 I was offered the chance to write a weekly article on Greenwich Industrial history for a local newspaper. It came  with a promise to myself that it would be turned into a book, or a series of books, about the real Greenwich riverside – a major part of London's industrial heartlands.  It is all about l how the  local community has used the riverside, and how it has developed along with other urban structures. So I have now self-published a book on the riverside in the Greenwich parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Alfege – and I am now researching Deptford Creek.

It begins at the current Greenwich boundary – which sadly excludes Deptford Dockyard. This stretch takes in the earliest sites of the East India Company, massive marine engineering works and, of course, the first power station in the world - the vision of 23 year old Sebastian de Ferranti.   It continues to the Angerstein Railway  as the final downriver point on the Peninsula . That is writing site by site, chapter by chapter.

The itinerary covers the riverside but ignores ‘tourist Greenwich’ all  the way from Deptford to Angerstein. Just down from the dome is the site of a tide mill where an explosion in 1803 changed the history of the steam engine and where ‘Deptford chemist'  Frank Hills made a vast fortune.  Nearby was the enormous show place gasworks with the two biggest gas holders in the world. Also nearby was a site earmarked to make guns for the Confederates and Bessemer’s steel works (when everyone thinks he was up in Sheffield he was also down in Greenwich)

Enormously important on the west bank of the Peninsula were Enderby and Morden wharves where they made cables which took the earliest telegraph messages across the Atlantic, later across other seas and around the world. Before 1930 almost all subsea cables worldwide were made here and one thing that changed almost immediately was world finance.   . This was where the communications revolution happened. 

Back and nearer to ‘Royal Greenwich’ is Ballast Quay –old houses, a pub, and a garden. Ten years ago a 12th century tide mill was found on a  nearby wharf now covered with new flats–  from it we can trace the old routes back to the 'dens' of the Kentish weald. On Ballast Quay was the riverside court house of the Ghent Abbey which owned Greenwich from the 10th century until it was confiscated under Henry V.  Next to Ballast Quay is ‘Anchor Iron Wharf – and from recent archaeological reports on the area, industrial historian friends have identified a riverside forge - there in plain sight but unnoticed in famous paintings.  In this area were warehouses for the worldwide sales of the products of the Crowley ironworking empire whose 18th century Durham works was the “greatest ironworks in Europe”

Nearer to the Royal Hospital some  famous paintings show a tiny crane – and still here is Crane Street. The Palace and then the Royal  Hospital needed somewhere to unload supplies..  The Tudor Palace itself must have supported a massive service sector probably based in this area and that covered by Greenwich Power SDrtation.  The Power Station too is a remarkable building on a remarkable site and the subject of recent research which looks at myths about it and the Royal Observatory.

All of this research on the Greenwich riverside uncovers so much about its contribution to the modern world, to our national story as well as how local people lived their lives day to day. I seem to be on a mission to persuade people that there is more to Greenwich than Tudor Royalty and the Cutty Sark – and also to reference east London, Docklands and beyond.  Greenwich industry was a focus for innovation, technological experiment and expertise.  If I live so long I might be able to write my way as far as the Royal Arsenal and all those elite scientists who taught at the Royal Military Academy

Lockdown has given me the space to write and publish something every week and now turn it into a self-published book. I also still write and publish on the east London gas industry, plus a bit of local Labour history on the side.  I also run a Facebook page and a blog on Greenwich industry.  

Hopefully one day someone will listen.

Dr.Mary Mills

24 Humber Road, London, SE37LT

marymillsmmmmm@aol.com  

(would appreciate people not trying to ring me because of my hearing loss)

WOOLWICH CONSUMERS GAS WORKS

 

I need to start with an apology. Well over a year ago I wrote an article about the second Woolwich gas works - the Equitable Company works. I had previously written about the first works, owned by Thomas Livesey, and I mentioned it again last week in an article about river pollution. But there was another  Woolwich gas works – the Consumers’ Company Gas Works - and it’s that which I promised to write up ‘in a couple of weeks time’ - well over eighteen months ago! Sorry.

Early last year I wrote an article about the Plumstead Pure Water Company and I introduced you to Lewis Davis there. Perhaps I` should remind you again who he was: in 1839  he had a jewellers shop in Green’s End and described himself as a pawnbroker in the1841 census. He is also described as a ‘silversmith’, a ‘clothes dealer’ and a ‘glass warehouse’ and of course ‘a pawnbroker.  So I guess he just did the best he could and it turns out he was very successful – and was the leading activist in bringing bothbgas and water to Woolwich.

In 1832 the Woolwich Equitable Gas Company had been set up and had taken over the older works which dated from 1817. They had built a modern gas works, which appears to have been very successful. However, within only ten years there was considerable agitation against it - in which Mr Davis played a leading part. His problem was that although he used considerable amounts of gas in his business he was not offered the same discount on purchases as was afforded the Royal Dockyard and other public bodies. There were other grievances among the shopkeepers of Woolwich and so only a short time after the Equitable works were opened there were plans to set up a rival gas company. This was the Woolwich Protective Consumers Gas Co. and they issued a prospectus on 18th August 1843 .

There were numerous consumer gas companies being set up in this period. Some had quite complicated arrangements to ensure that ownership remained in local hands. It was a whole movement which was part of a series of ideas about how public utilities should be managed because private ownership often worked against the public interest. How this Woolwich consumer company was intended to operate is not really clear - they said in their prospectus that priority on share ownership would be given to ‘consumers’ but it is unclear how ‘consumers’ were identified, particularly before the gas works was operational. Probably the customers were mostly small shopkeepers from Woolwich.

They had purchased a site on the Riverside from Sir T. Wilson and the works was soon being set up.  It was in the area now covered by the Ferry Approach and possibly the Ferry car park and the Leisure Centre -  in the High Street, behind the Carpenter's Arms, and adjoining the  eastern side of Woolwich Dockyard.  They redeveloped the wharf on the west side of Glass Yard with two 32ft diameter gasholders, later  replaced by a a retort house, and in the High Street built an Italianate office building was erected next to the Carpenters’ Arms. Various writers say that a wall from the works still exists. Built of old pieces of firebrick and hard clinker it runs parallel to the River side of the High Street.

Then they held a banquet. This was for the Directors and officers ‘as a mark of the confidence of the shareholders ...  and an acknowledgment of the disinterested efforts and zealous exertions they had made’.  It was held at the George the Fourth Assembly Rooms where the window was lit up with ‘a splendid star of the gas supplied by the Company’. The dinner consisted of ‘the first luxuries of the season’. They toasted ‘the Queen ... discanting upon her virtues as daughter, wife, and mother’.   Late that night they ‘felt great pleasure in drinking the health of the gentlemen present, and . thanked them cordially for their kindness in drinking and the meeting  being enlivened by various songs and toasts’.

The initial charge for gas from the new works was eight shillings per thousand cubic feet, which compared favourably with the eleven shillings required by its rival. The first works Superintendent was ‘Chemist’ Marsh who had previously developed a test for detecting small grains of arsenic.

In 1848 it was unanimously resolved to appropriate the sum of £251. from the surplus funds of the company to purchase a suitable piece of plate, to be presented to Lewis Davis, ‘through whose exertions the company was first started’.

So,  the new gas company, set about making and selling gas cheaper than the Equitable Company who. of course, brought their prices down. As with all of these ventures, in the end they sorted the issues out - two companies selling gas in the town and more or less working with each other although no one would ever say so. In 1854 the Consumers’ Company changed their name to the Woolwich and Charlton Consumers’ Gas Company. Lewis Davis continued promoting gas and water companies and made a lot of money.

The Consumers’ Gas Company continued in Woolwich until taken over by the South Metropolitan in the early 1880s. During the lifetime of the company most newspaper reports about it are about  their share sales but there are occasionally other stories - and possibly many more that we know nothing about. The company minutes refer to ‘defalcations’ in the 1860s and again in the 1880s.  It is very unclear what exactly this refers to - probably some sort of accounting fraud.

Throughout most of the organisation’s existence the works Engineer was Alexander Stark. This is a common name, even in gas works’ construction circles, particularly in Scotland and it is difficult to identify a particular individual – although this Woolwich based man seems to have been Scottish.  He was not a young man as shown by the one piece of definite evidence about his family which is an obituary to his, Perth educated, adult son – also a gas engineer named Alexander Stark – and who died in 1884 aged 33 while employed as Assistant Engineer at Easton and  Anderson at Erith.

The most notable press reports during Stark’s time at the Consumers’ Company concern his arrest and subsequent trial on the charge of stealing lead and other items from the Royal Arsenal.  This of course is much more complicated than it would first appear. It took up many, many column inches in both the local and professional gas press with word by word transcriptions of the various stages of the trial and the various people also accused of this offence. appeared to excite much public interest, the court being densely crowded

Another person who features prominently in the case is James ‘Jaws’ Stark Alexander’s brother who also lives in Woolwich and worked with him on various contracts. They are accused of stealing 20 ingots of lead, a large quantity of iron pipe, and more, the property of the Crown. Also if Alexander, the works manager, had been ‘receiving’ rather than ‘stealing’ the items.  

In 1856 Alexander Stark had contracted to construct a gas works in the Royal Arsenal – I’ve written about that works here last year. This contract had been completed when information was received by Police-inspector Thompson, that during tbe month of March last a large amount of Government stores had been conveyed from tbe Arsenal by men in the employ of the contractor, and that a portion of the property would be found on his premises. A search was made, and in the cellar of Alexander Stark’s house the property mentioned was discovered. He accounted for the possession of it by stating that he had supplied similar articles whilst carrying out this contract, and had received the property found in repayment. The evidence against James Stark was that he had ordered a portion of tbe property to be removed to the premises where it was found. It appeared that the bulk of the property, and many other articles not mentioned in the charge, had been removed from tbe Arsenal by direction of Joseph King, a foreman in tbe employ of the prisoners. He had directed the carman to cover over the property with coke.

The trial went on for some time and attracted a lot of press attention with huge reports in the local press and apparently huge numbers of people attending the trial. It became more and more confused with witnesses who said they knew nothing. Alexander Stark seems to have remained it is post as manager at the works for many subsequent years. 

Perhaps the most important thing to note is his contract for the construction of the Arsenal Gas Works – this is in addition to his career as a gas manager.

Every year on New Year’s Eve a dinner was arranged for all the workers at the Consumer’s gas works. Thus was always a big event and noted in the local press.  There are other more local concerns raised  most will have been issues which affected all gas managers at one time or another. One long dispute concerns the amount of notice to be given before digging the road up – and what constituits an emergency , Another dispute was about whether they should paint the lamp posts chocolate brown or leave them – er er - lamp post colour.

In 1884 the company and its works were taken over - amalgamated - with the South Metropolitan Gas Company and closed down

  the making of town gas has been a constant subject as gas works after gas works has been wound up, anyone who lived in Greenwich in the early 2000s were remember all the problems caused by the huge East Greenwich Gas works and how ‘pollution’ was always the only word that could be used about its past - and the Dome and much else was built on the site. East Greenwich gas works was responsibly run and very modern, so just think what it was like with some of the very early gas works in London.  I have often said that the early London gas industry is a story of incompetence and fraud and obviously respect for the environment was not an issue that were concerned with.

I wanted to write this week about a court case in early 19th century Woolwich. This is about the first gas works in our area which was built in Woolwich in around 1817 and which I wrote about here in 2022. It involved a very early gas works –- in fact the first built in the area which is now the Royal Borough. It originated with a Mr. Livesey and a Mr. Hardy.  Readers might be aware that I have recently written a book about George Livesey, the late 19th century South London gas manager.  This earlier Mr Livesey, who was involved in Woolwich, was his great uncle, Thomas and Mr. Hardy was a coal merchant. Basically they seem to have built the works with a view to selling it for someone else to operate. They weren't actually able to sell it and had to continue to run it themselves for many years.  The works was sited near or on Roffs Wharf which was adjacent to Bell’s Watergate on the Woolwich riverside.

I need to put Thomas Livesey and the early gas industry into a bit of context to understand what was happening in Woolwich.  The first commercial gas works in the world was built in Westminster near what is now Horseferry Road and was operational by 1812.  Its first years were very difficult and it was not until Samuel Clegg from Manchester was appointed as Engineer that it was run with any sign of competence. At the same time a group of activists had managed to get Thomas Livesey elected to the Court of Governors and he became Deputy Governor - a role which he was to continue for many years.  He dealt with all the administrative problems which were necessary to make the gas works viable.

One of the problems encountered by the very first gas works was what to do with various wastes produced by the manufacturing process and this was something which would haunt the gas industry for many, many years. Worst was the waste from various methods of cleaning the gas up and make it smell less offensive.  There were negotiations with various water companies all of whom refused to allow this effluent to pass into their systems and so it was for a while stored in tanks on site and moved at the rate of 55 loads of week by contractors. There was also the opportunity to buy land on the site where the Tate gallery now stands and use it to store wastes in ditches and tanks.   Neither option was long term and clearly couldn't continue. Neighbouring companies and residents sued the company using the Common Law and so the gas company was paying out huge sums of compensation.

 Eventually the company applied to the Committee for the Navigation of the River Thames who said the effluent could be discharged into a special pipe which led to the River.

So what was going on in Woolwich? The new Woolwich works was very close to the River and it therefore seems obvious that all these nasty substances that they didn't know what to do with – just went into the River.  In 1818 a press report said ”Here is also another evil: the Gas Works, the days their drains empty themselves into the River,  and cover a great part of it in putrid scum, which may be seen swimming on the surface for miles.”  .... and in 1821 ‘An Important question, now that Gas works are becoming general throughout the kingdom, occupies the attention of the Magistrates of London-  namely, what extent does the flow of matter from such Works into any River, reduce the vital properties of its water?”

In 1821 Thames Fishermen asserted, that the London gas works, had already “destroyed much fish”. In that year there was also a pollution case involving the City of London Gas Company. They were effectively the second ever public gas works with a site at the City end of what would be Blackfriars Bridge.  The Lord Mayor’s office fined a Fisherman for using an illegal net - that is one which had a mesh which was not an allowed size. He was based on Dorset Wharf by the gas works and his defence was that he was removing dead fish from the River - not catching live ones to eat. The representative of the City of London Gas Company said that he had never seen a dead fish on Dorset Wharf and what he had to contend with was live eels which got in the works’ pumps also, he said, the mud around the area was full of live red worms. 

Cases like this and others continued in the City and in Westminster with the Gas Light and Coke Co. So there is reason to believe that these sorts of problems were common with all gas companies.

In 1822 an indictment was brought by the Corporation of the City of London against the defendants. The Proprietors of the Woolwich Gas Works, for ‘turning the refuse of the Gas into the Thames to the great annoyance of that neighbourhood, and to the destruction of the Fish in the River. Many Fishermen proved the nuisance of the injury sustained.’

This case of the King v. Livesey and Hardy was an indictment at the instance of the Lord Mayor of London, as Conservator of the River Thames ‘against the proprietors and assistants at the Woolwich Gas Works, for committing a nuisance, by causing tar, ammonia, &e. the residuum of the gas, to flow from their tanks into tile Thanes, by which a great number of fish were destroyed’.

The counsel for the Crown failed to prove that the defendant, Thomas Livesey, was the occupier or proprietor of the gas works, and it was therefore ruled by the Judge that he must be acquitted. He was then sworn as a witness, and said that he was the sole proprietor of the Woolwich Works, and that two of the defendants were his servants. He described the plan of the gas works, and that the nuisances complained of had only been committed in one or two instances, and that through unavoidable circumstances. This was corroborated by other witnesses.

A number of fishermen were called, who proved that they had ‘wells’ in the barge tier ‘in the river at Woolwich, not far from the bank of the river, where the gas works are. erected, in which they preserved fish, and that in consequence of the oily and noxious matter running from the gas works into the water, as many 100 fish had been destroyed in their vessels in o1ne-night’.

Mr. Nelson, the Deputy Water Bailiff of the River Thames, said, that in May 1823, the fishermen complained to him, and he saw the offensive matter swimming on the river, which flowed from the defendants’ pipe.

For the Defence, witnesses were called, who proved that in two instances the defendants' tar tank had overflowed by mere accident, and that there was now no communication between the gas works and the drain leading to the Thames.

 

In the years that followed Parliaments and various regulatory bodies tried to find ways of imposing some forms of pollution control on the gas industry. In this case the City of London with its role as Thames Conservators was involved and as ever the City was able to take action which other authorities were sometimes not able to afford or had the powers to do anything

To describe all the measures taken would take up too much space in this relatively brief article. I am aware of an article written by Canadian academic , Leslie Tormory,  ’The Environmental History of the Early British Gas Industry, 1812–1830’, which describes the problem and attempted solutions in detail. Can I add that from my own point of view I am very amazed to see that he has footnoted my PhD on the use of gas industry waste products. I'm totally amazed because nobody else has ever taken the smallest bit of interest in it. Anyway I would very much recommend his work on the problem of pollution by the early gas industry.

To return to Thomas Livesey and the 1820s.  It appears that by having interest in another gas company he had violated his elected position in the Gas Light and Coke Co. In order to sort this out in 1827 he published public notices:

LORDS, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN, At The Half Yearly Meeting of the GAS LIGHT and COKE COMPANY, held on Friday, the 4th of May last, of Proprietors were of opinion, that, in consequence of an interest in the Gas Works at Woolwich, I was legally disqualified until re-elected, from acting as Deputy Governor of the Company, and, yielding to such opinion, I have, for the present, ceased to act as Deputy Governor.

I cannot however, but feel highly gratified and flattered on the Resolution passed by the Court of Proprietors on the same occasion, which has determined me to abandon the interest I held in the Woolwich Works, and to present myself again to your notice for re-election. I have therefore earnestly to request the favour of your Support and Interest on Wednesday, the 30th day of May Instant, (which is the day fixed for the Election to take place), at Twelve o’clock case of my very best exertions will be devoted, (as they always have been since I was elected Director in 1813, and Deputy Governor in 1815) , to promote the success and prosperity of the Gas Light and Coke Company.

I  have the honour to be Your very obedient, humble Servant, Hackney, May 8,1827- THOMAS LIVESEY.

You will have to read my earlier article to see if he was telling the truth or not

Woolwich Ferry Gordon

 

I keep thinking it’s about time I did something about the Woolwich ferry. it’s a big institution which everybody knows about  - and that’s one of the problems which keeps me from doing it. There are hundreds and hundreds of sites on the net which tell you all about the ferry with varying degrees of accuracy and interest.

I have yet to find one which explains that it was one of the free crossings which the Government guaranteed to the people of east London to compensate for removing the tolls on the West London bridges thus giving free crossings to West Londoners whereas East Enders had to pay. The result was that the City of London built Tower Bridge, which of course is free, and Met. Board of Works built the Blackwall,  Rotherhithe and two foot tunnels - and of course the free ferry, of which they were very proud.

The ferry opened on the 23^rd of March 1889.  The London County Council had itself begun work only  only two days earlier. There were great rejoicings in Woolwich with flags and banners everywhere v and all sorts of jollifications all day.  Going through the press stories for its opening they’re all of them hugely congratulatory –  just one report in the local Kentish Independent does raise a few questions about allocation of tickets for the opening event and also the speaker. It says they expected it to be opened by Joseph Bazalgette but who they got was Lord Rosebery who declared the ferry open and ‘free for ever’. There were processions on both sides of the river followed by a banquet.

The ferry has continued ever since.  People from outside London always express amazement that  it still runs, but its still there, still free and - what’s more - we have just had a fourth generation of new boats.  There is an excellent, if very brief Greenwich Council web page about the various vessels which have been used on the crossing - all of them purpose built. I remember a TV show not so long ago which was looking at ferries around the world describing how amazingly high tech the Woolwich ferry was compared to most others - and here we were about to junk the boats because they were old. 

I thought it might be interesting to look at how the boats have changed over the years –in particular their names which might have something to say about how society was changing . In the 1880s they were  national heroes but ones who with local links, followed years later by important local politicians to today when one is understandably,  named for a young crew member killed in an accident - but the other is named for a sentimental singer.

For the first week or so that the ferry ran there was only one boat available. That was the ‘Gordon’ as the first of three which had been specially commissioned from R.H.Green and Co. just on the other side of the river at Blackwall.

It was named for General Charles Gordon – ‘Chinese Gordon’...’Gordon of Kartoum’ who had been killed in dramatic circumstances just four years earlier. He was very much a national hero with an incident filled and crowded career  but despite his reputation as the clean cut destroyer of colonial dissent he was  somewhat eccentric, to put it mildly . There have been many biographies but for quick look there is an excellent Wikipedia page which goes into enormous detail about his many doings -- leaving me to wonder what was really going on  with all this derring do - what supervision he had and if the government knew what he was getting up to.   I am also aware that there were other sides to him besides his military career but he had considerable local links with Woolwich and, as I will explain in a moment, with both Greenwich and Gravesend.

His main link with Woolwich is that he was born in 1833 in a house on a site up on what is now the Woolwich Common estate. The address won’t mean much now and I do myself remember a parade of impressive early 19^th century houses up there but they had been allowed to get in a very bad state and were demolished in 1971 . I can just about remember a big campaign to keep his house.  It had two plaques on it - one the usual blue plaque and another from 1902 put there by Woolwich Antiquarians. The main square in Woolwich is now called after him. 

There is also a memorial window to him in Saint Alphege’s church in Greenwich with a statement that he was actually baptised there. This must have been because of his links to Greenwich through if now the less so in Woolwich.  He was also an early cadet at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich where he trained as a Royal Engineer.

I hope I am not being disloyal to Greenwich - where I have lived for the last 50 years -but I was a `child in Gravesend and I am very aware that Gordon is seen as a hero there because of his founding of the ragged school.  As an Engineer he had been appointed as Commandant of the Thames Forts with a remit to upgrade river defences. He founded a school in Fort House where he lived and which stood in what is now Fort Gardens –  it was destroyed by a V2 in the Second World War.  Gordon’s involvement in work to help poor children. is more complex than only founding a school but that is what he is very much remembered for.

 A few years after Gordon’s death the then Mayor of Gravesend gave a patch of land next to Fort Ggardens which has ever since been the Gordon Gardens containing a very suitable statue of him on a pedestal - it’s like a very much lower Nelson’s column.

I am very aware that this is is just a few notes about monuments to General Charles Gordon and that there are many, many long books and articles about his very busy life and status as a national hero. To be fair he was clearly very clever and very competent He died eventually at the hands of insurgents led by one popularly known in England as the ‘Mad Mahdi’. I also note a quotation from a srecent history which says there seems to be a consensus among recent historians that ‘Gordon himself was probably considerably madder than the Mahdi’. Another more modern charismatic soldier who compares with him and his reputation was T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia.

Meanwhile let’s have a quick look at the ferry boat itself.  The Gordon was the first free ferry boat to operate across the Thames at Woolwich. Designed by Joseph Bazalgette, the boat took her maiden trip in service  on 23 March 1889 and did so for the next thirty four years. These  first Woolwich ferries were all paddle steamers which were licenced to carry 1000 passengers and up to 20 vehicles. They were eventually fitted with electric lights throughout. Their engines – 2 pairs each connected to a paddle - were made by Penns of Greenwich.

In 1923 the London County Council began replacing the first generation boats.  Gordon was replaced by another  Gordon built by Samuel White. And in 1912c’oldvgordon’ ws spold for  £1507 10s to a dutch company. A l1945 letter to the paper describes a visuit toa place in Holland Harry cold foliage ferry and seeing barges,

 By 1962 when they were scrapped it is said that these early ferries had covered around 4 million miles between them.  In 1936 Gordon was overhauled ad her vehicle deck and cycle area were enlarged.  These alterations proved very beneficial to the handling of both vehicular and cyclist traffic.

Over the years set both Gordons one  and two were in use = Toddlers fall into the water and rescued members of the crew who got a commendation for saving them., More typical were the suicides – pregnant single vwomen, ex soldiers and the never identified. I was found trapped in the paddle wheels =was found that before to havdrunk an entire bottle of Lysol. 

Morw dramatically in 1911 the ferry narrowly avoided a major accident when steamer Breslau hit the pontoon while Gordon was stationed there - with 200 passengers on board. Captain Young on the ferry cast off I went full speed off thus saving the ferry from an acciden- t for which she got a commendation and a £10 LB award from the Council. In 1923 a heavy steam lorry laden with barrels of oil fell between the ferry and the pontoon causing delays of many many hours.

You see- all human life is there

 

 

 

 

 

Ernie Bevin. MP for Woolwich

 

Over the past couple of months I have written two brief biographical articles of Members of Parliament for the Greenwich constituency. These days we have one Member who covers Greenwich and Woolwich - just one joint constituency but in the past they were separate. I thought that as I’d done two Greenwich MPs perhaps I’d better do one for Woolwich too and I was looking to see who that could be. There were many interesting people but one stood out - the great Ernie Bevin.

I rather suspect that nobody much these days, outside of political historians,  know anything about Ernie Bevin.  The better informed will sort of know that there was a politician called Bevan who started the National Health Service and I guess most of them would assume that is who I mean. The  two similar names were confusing enough at the time when they were both in the cabinet where Nye Bevan was a Welsh left winger and much less important figure then Bevin. 

Bevin had come from an impoverished childhood in rural Somerset to casual unskilled work in Bristol. Self educated and with a background in the Methodist church he had become involved in politics.  By 1922 he had set up, and was General Secretary of, the Transport and General Workers Union – at one time the biggest trade union in the world.  In 1940, and already recruited to a Churchill’s war cabinet, he was elected Member of Parliament for Central Wandsworth and continued to play a central role alongside Churchill and Clement Attlee.  In the post war Labour Government he was Foreign Secretary - a role which included both negotiating the future of the many constituent parts of the British Empire. but also the setting up of a reconfigured world  –-  NATO, Israel , the Marshall Plan, etc, etc. including working with and on Stalin, and the like. By 1950 he was also a very sick man.  He also had some prejudices which would not be acceptable to us today.

He had remained as MP for a seat Central Wandsworth and then suddenly in 1950 was proposed for Woolwich East – this is the main bit of central Woolwich.   It it’s not at all clear why, and I first thought to write this article with a view to finding out and I had been advised there was little in various biographies of him to explain this. It may have been because his health was so poor and his government role so massive that such a very safe seat  would allow for him not to be seen locally as a much as he should be -  and that turns out to be largely true. It is perhaps worth noting that Woolwich East Labour Party was the oldest Labour Party in the country having been founded considerably before the National Party which had copied its rules. In particular it was,and had been for many years, the largest Labour Party in terms of membership in the country.

The first newspaper reference I can find is from March 1949 where he addressed a wider Woolwich Party meeting on the foreign policy issues in which he was currently involved. This appears to have been an opportunity to introduce him to the wider membership of the local Labour Party having been chosen as parliamentary candidate by, I assume, their General Council. He told the meeting that he would have liked to have stood as MP for Woolwich many years ago but that he could not get released from his trade union duties to fight the seat - and so had eventually to take up the Wandsworth vacancy because of his role in the Cabinet. Of his age he said “ I am getting on, but I am only 21 in the arteries. The calendar does not always determine your age."

At around the same time the Conservative and Empire party had held a local meeting to introduce their election candidate – the  six foot tall Mr Campbell. He challenged Bevin to come and look at some substandard housing  with him - although I’m sure this never took place. He also managed to categorise some Labour women as ’grim faced harridans’.  Rather livelier opposition came from Woolwich Communist Party who also declared a candidate in the shape of their national chairman Palme Dutt.  We have perhaps forgotten the strong influence of the Communist Party in Woolwich  - they were still standing in local elections in the early 1980s - and in the 1950s the redoubtable Charlie Wellard was holding mass meetings in Woolwich Odeon with reference to working conditions at Siemens.

The local elections for the Council were in May 1949 and throughout the country results were not good for the Labour Party. In Woolwich Labour lost seven seats to the Conservatives – in the new Council  had 36 Labour councillors and nine Conservatives . This result sent party organisation staff off to see what could be done and in Woolwich this meant a review of work by Mabel Crout.  She had been running elections in the Woowich Party as secretary since 1906 when the party didn’t legally exist. She would act as Bevin’s  election agent and in the same year she herself would also be elected to the London County Council.

The general election was eventually called for the 23^rd of February 1951. Bevin was out of England on Foreign Office business and needed to get back.  He had been at the Colombo Conference held with a number of newly independent Commonwealth countries to discuss issues including economic development. Bevin had chaired it but was now so frail he was carried into the conference chamber ‘in a palanquin’.  Coming back he had stopped off for lunch in Alexandria with King Farouk and Prince Philip and then was picked up from there by a cruiser’, HMS Birmingham, and taken to Naples. He then undertook discussions with various Italians. He returned from Italy by train, with his doctor.   He had sent the text of his election address on in advance.

He was pictured submitting his nomination papers and deposit at Woolwich Town Hall accompanied by Mabel Crout and his wife, Flo.  It was recorded that the Town Hall cat was also present and it was noted that Bevin had made it up the sixteen steps into the Town Hall with only one pause. He was one of five candidates standing in Woolwich East - in addition to Palme Dutt for the communists and John Campbell for the Tories there was also to be a pacifist, Frank Hancock and a Liberal, Arthur Sage.

National election results saw a massive swing against the Labour Party and the Labour Government, leaving them with majority of only 5.  Of course Bevin won in Woolwich East with a massive majority - and publicly talked about the effort he had put in with local people and had made       speeches in many other places. In fact he had spent some time during the campaign in hospital and Flo and their daughter, Queenie, had put in a major effort to compensate.

in the new administration He continued as Foreign Secretary working with Attlee. The tiny majority meant that all Members would need to be present in Parliament to vote to get Government business through – but for the Foreign Secretary the gruelling round of meetings around the world would also have to continue. 

By April he was again in hospital.  He was usually a patient in the trade union financed Manor House Hospital in Hampstead - which closed only in 1999.  I remember it well; visiting my Paperworkers Union officer, Dad, when he was a patient there in the 1970s.

For the rest of 1950 he remained as foreign secretary although there was at least one other hospital admission which seems to have involved surgery of some sort.  Throughout this time there were constant rumours that he had told Woolwich Labour Party that he would not stand again at a General Election. These stories were always denied and then again stressed.

On 5^th January 1951 he dined at the Royal Naval College with the King and Queen and the French ambassador. Soon after there was a big party and dance at Woolwich Town Hall for Labour Party members – he left to the strains of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. The next day it was Abbey Wood ward New Year’s party at Federation Hall. In between  he was involved in discussions about the future of the Commonwealth, discussions with Eisenhower and Montgomery, discussions on the Argentine and  about Soviet Russia and the US.

In the next few months there were constant calls for him to resign as Foreign Secretary -   increasingly coming from ‘responsible’ sources. On 24^th February he held and paid personally for a  supper for 300 Woolwich Labour Party workers. He eventually resigned on 17^th March after what appears to have been pressure from Attlee. 

He died on 14^th April - in bed while working on some papers. Of course there were tributes from all over and huge crowds lined the roads as his coffin was taken for cremation to Golders Green.

This has been a very quick a very inadequate look at the life and work of this remarkable man and I’m sorry that Woolwich - and I suspect a lot of the rest of the country - have completely forgotten him.

PS  Perhaps we should also note a younger and fitter Labour Foreign Ssecretary who died very suddenly of a stroke in 1977 -  Anthony Crosland. There were revelations then about his diary and the workload he was expected to carry. 

 

 

 

Progress Estate

 

The First World War - the ‘Great War ‘- was declared in August 1914. It must have been quite clear to politicians in Woolwich that things had got to change and quickly. The Royal Arsenal - the principle manufacturer of arms and ammunition for the Government , was in Woolwich – it would need to expand rapidly and effectively. It was going to become a very, very big factory and a lot of people would work there.  Where were they all going to live?? 

In the first months of the war as the Arsenal began to expand and new groups of workers were recruited it was soon very, very clear that housing was going to be a real problem. In December 1914, Will Crooks, the local Member of Parliament went, along with a deputation from Woolwich Council, to the Government’s Local Government Board to say that something had to be done.  Within a month, at the end of January 1915 the Woolwich Labour Party’s paper, The Pioneer, announced that land had been bought and plans made for a Garden City at Well Hall in Eltham. It would provide family accommodation and would help to house the many specialist and skilled workers who were moving into the area. A team of architects had been set up by the Government, they were already at work and the Pioneer’s reporter had seen the actual plans

This would be a remarkable speed for getting together a small building plan – and this was for a whole estate. It was the framework for building what most of us know as the Progress Estate – it was originally called ’ the Well Hall Estate’.   It shows what can be done if normal protocols are ignored add official doors are opened everywhere. It shows that current bleats about the slowness of local government and planning depends on circumstances -  but even so the speed which this scheme was put together must be remarkable

Of course the estate itself is remarkable and there has been a very great deal written about it.  A quick look on the net will show endless major pieces of writing by Greenwich Council,  English Heritage and The Twentieth Century Society and many, many others about the estate and how it was set up. I think in all their minds is a question about how this estate, which was built under such pressure and in wartime conditions manages to still look so good and how when it was built met the highest standards of housing  design of the day.

I am very nervous about writing about it  because so much has been written and I’m almost bound to get it wrong.  However I have been aware for some time that for its centenary in 2014 a book about the estate was commissioned by the Residents Association, written by Keith Billinghurst  and self published with help from various local grants.  I’d never seen the book and had tried to get a copy and failed. However the Residents Association have now republished it  and so I thought a review might be in order now.

Basically I am very, very impressed.  As a local history it is based firmly on the estate and demonstrates it’s connections and influences from far and wide.

From the start it gives a major role to Woolwich Council and understands some of the personalities and local  politics.   As I noted above he makes it clear that the initial ideas for the estate came from Woolwich Borough Council and through the reports of the local Medical Officer of Health.

A major section of the book is ‘How garden suburbs came to be’.  The author looks at ideas about society and housing in the late 19^th century - beginning with John Ruskin - a South Londoner - and traces many links between the schemes and personalities.  I thought this was most interesting - it is a subject I am probably desperately ignorant about  but I thought the way influences on and links between individuals are traced and put together in the book was very important.  The final project he describes is Hampstead Garden Suburb and I had been aware of the various personalities involved there. So, despite an initial reaction to ‘Hampstead’ as fashionable and up market, I also knew about their work in the East End and in particular at Toynbee Hall, which is somewhere I used a lot in a previous existence.  He also makes the point that garden suburbs were never housing for the poor. He then goes on to explore housing and planning legislation in the early years of the 20^th century. Crucually at the beginning of recruitment for the First World War it was discovered that  many potential recruits had severe health issues which could be put down to poor quality housing.

Like every goods locally written and researched local history it describe the previous ownership of the site and some of its geographical features.   The detail is astonishing - down to individual trees, some of which are there is still there now.  It then moves on to the actual story of the construction of the estate in a great deal of extremely interesting detail about  issues like site layout, roads, gardens and parlours and much else – what building materials were used and how they were sourced. Of particular interest is that clinker used on the site all came from the Woolwich Council recycling generating station at White Hart.

In February 1915 nothing had begun on site but the first tenants moved in to the first finished houses in May and all 1,298 houses were finished by the end of the year. At the height of activities one house was being completed every two hours.  It was a major achievement.

The book goes on to describe every road on the estate, and to give the history of the person it was named after – William Cobbett... Admiral Seymour – and so on.   This might seem a bit nerdish and certainly would be so in a similar book aimed at an academic audience but this book was commissioned for people and by people who lived on the estate and it is just the sort of detail which people like to know and would be able to talk about in future years.  

During  the Great War the estate was managed by the London County Council but returned to the Goverment  Office of Works in 1920 .  It was then sold to the Royal Arsenal  Cooperative Society and it is because of them that it is known now as the Progress Estate – ‘progress’ is very much a Co-op word. I’m far from sure why RACS bought the estate and why it was not left with London County Council which seems a more appropriate body. The Co-op had built its own estate down in Abbey Wood, which, although providing quality housing for a similar aspirational community, but which really had no major garden city aspirations. I’ve also extremely unclear if they had a permanent housing management team at Abbey Wood since the vast majority of the properties were sold. 

I am reminded however of some of the work of space Blackheath based E.O. Greening some years earlier -- I’ve mentioned him in several previous articles about the Co-op and about Deptford. He introduced ideas of aspirational communities and mutual organisations helping working people to a better life. It’s close to the Garden City movement but not identical to it.  RACS provided  a community centre - Progress Hall  - which has had a  reach far beyond just the estate. I remember going to a film club there in the 1970s which had very, very good films which were not shown by the local commercial cinema..

This estate suffered considerably from bombing in the Second World War and every known instance is meticulously recorded in the book along with the damage done.  Again, this is just the sort of detail which local residents would be very keen to have – and which will come up in the memories people have of their lives and places which have been meaningful to them.

The last chapters deal with the end of the Co-op management of the estate and its transfer to Hyde Housing.

I have only been able to give a very brief outline of some of the elements of the Progress  Estate covered in the book, which, after all came out 10 years ago and everybody else has probably read it and knows it very well. It seems to me that the book manages very well to deal with details of interest to estate residents about their properties while also deftly handling  the ideas about what housing should be like.  It tells us most impressively about the speed with which the estate was built, the authorities involved in this and in particular the work, and career, of Frank Baines.

For other people who have not read the book – copies may still be available.  It is self published so I suspect it won’t be in any bookshops and has to rely entirely on kind helpers and the post to get it out to people .They say:

“Progress Estate Mutual Aid is proud to announce the re-publication of this fantastic book, all about the history of the Progress Estate in Eltham by Keith Billinghurst.  Please email progressestatemutualaid@gmail.com to order a copy. Limited signed copies available while stocks last!

 

The book was first published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Progress Estate, and is re-printed for the benefit of the local community. 100% of the proceeds will go towards funding community projects and events.

 

Standard price £13 +P&P. Discounts available for residents of the Progress Estate (£10) and SE9 (£12).”