Boundary Walk 2 - Greenwich Railway to Deptford Bridge

 

Three weeks ago I wrote here about the procession of church wardens and various officials who walked round the Greenwich boundaries in 1851 starting at St Alfege’s church vestry rooms. The procession was headed by the Superintendent of Highways, with the colours of the Greenwich Volunteers and an amateur brass band. Then came the Rev. Mr. North, of Trinity Church, with churchwardens, Evans, and Moore, two parish overseers, a group of Governors and Directors, R.S. Martyr, parish surveyor, and Mr. Kadwell, the parish treasurer.  Trinity Church, by the way, was the church which used to stand in Blackheath hill on the corner with Maidstone Hill. It’s a block of flats now but the church railings are all round the site.  I don’t know why Reverend North was doing this parish walk and not the actual priest at St Alphege’s.

First of all they went to Garden Stairs beside Greenwich Pier – which was the proper start point on the parish boundary. From there they processed along the riverside to Deptford Creek and then up the east side of the Creek.  We left them at the railway bridge where they were looking to see if they could find boundary markings on the bridge abutments. 

The report of the walk says that after leaving the railway bridge they went through ’Mr Norman’s grounds’. These were plots along the south side of the railway bridge.  The owner was John Manship Roman after whom Norman Road was named. He was a wealthy lawyer who, I presume, owned these pieces of land in Greenwich for investment reasons.

The procession then went through ‘Mr. Williams Tanyard’ which was on the edge of the Creek slightly up river of the railway bridge.  This means that they will have gone through the area which ten years later were the site of Joseph Bazalgette’s Greenwich Sewage pumping station – which, of course, is still there.  I do no
t know if any preliminary work was underway but, regardless, there is no mention of anything on the site in 1851.

So, they reached ‘Mr Williams Tanyard’. John Williams, a Bermondsey tanner, had established the works but had died in 1831. His two sons had inherited the works but had frequently quarrelled - often leading to the legal action. There appears to have been a windmill on the site, which could have been ornamental. The tannery was on the edge of the creek on land now covered by out buildings of the pumping station.

The report says that in 1827 a boundary walk had noted a marker stone here with some sort of inscription on it but in 1851 it ‘was not to be found’.  They say ‘the boys’ who are in the procession with them ‘encircled the point at the extremity of which a stump was driven in 1831 but which has also disappeared’.  I assume they mean that a marker was erected in 1831 but that it had gone by 1850. This is also the first we have heard of ‘the boys’ in the procession who I guess may have been choir boys – or perhaps just local lads following along with something which looked interesting.

When I tried to research the 1827 walk all I could find was the report of a trial for assault. This apparently described an actual fight when the procession got to Blackheath and which, inevitably involved two groups of young men.

The 1851 report also reminds us about ‘the Waterman’ who was in his boat going up the middle of the Creek which was the actual boundary line - because naturally the procession couldn’t walk on water. They said he would normally have walked up the Creek when the tide was low and of course today the Creekside Centre organises walks up the Creek at low tide.

At an island ‘called the Osier beds’ the Waterman got out of his boat and walked over to what was then another marker stone. This part of the Creek has been so churned up and altered by various owners and entities over the last two centuries it’s very difficult to be exact as to what part is being talked about here. The Osier beds are mentioned elsewhere – osiers are willows plants grown commercially to be harvested for basketwork and other such activities. These beds were, I think, on small peninsula on the Deptford side of the Creek which was the site of the Olde Tide Mill.  It has most recently been owed by Goldsmith’s College who I understand have just sold it. Comparing old maps of the Creek to the modern area is very, very difficult and even more so now following the insertion of the Docklands Light Railway above and alongside the Creek.

I wonder what happened to the missing boundary stones they keep mentioning. Often such stones get kept because they are difficult for contractors to move and they just get left when areas are changed. But what has happened here has been so drastic that I can’t imagine that even if they existed that anybody would notice them. they would just get picked up and slung into wherever all the debris was going.

The Waterman – who was still on foot and out of his boat - walked across the Osier ground ‘to where there was another stone’.  They say that on the centre of this stone was ‘a cross or mark’. I wonder what that was and I wonder what happened to the stone. He then went ‘across the island to the overflow’. I am not clear what this ‘overflow’ was. Even before the Deptford pumping station was built there were various sewers which emptied into the Creek and there were also considerable alterations to the line of the creek for various mill workings. However I rather think that the Creek may have been joined here by a tributary stream coming from the Brockley Cross area.

The report also mentions a stone on ‘the corner of Mr Cobbett’s floor cloth factory.”  I’m afraid that I seem to have missed Mr Cobbett and his floor cloth factory when I did the Deptford articles and my Depthford book. The factory seems to have been on Deptford Bridge with a frontage on the Creek. ‘Floor cloth’ is one of the predecessors of linoleum and widely made in this period. Mr Cobbett appears to have had a large and long established business.

At this point they say they were met by the parish officers and groups of boys from various Greenwich schools. Some were from ‘The Green Coat School’. This had been founded in 1672 by Sir William Boreman. It was to provide education and clothing for twenty boys born in Greenwich who were the sons of watermen, seamen and fishermen, especially if they had served in a war.  The charity was, and still is, managed by the Drapers’ Company. The School was in Prince of Orange Lane near what is now Greenwich station.

Other boys came from the ‘Grey Coat School’. This was the Roan School which is clearly still with us albeit in very different form but also originating in the 17^th century. It was based in Roan Street where there was once a pub called ‘The Grey Coat boy’.  The school was 46 Roan Street now a block of flats.  There is said to be a plaque over the door explaining all this – if any reader knows the whereabouts of this plaque please let us know, because it isn’t over the door now!!

The third group of boys came from ‘The Union School’.  This was part of the workhouse and run by the local Poor Law Union. The Workhouse was on the corner of Vanburgh Hill and Woolwich Road on the site of which is now the Library and Baths.  It was built in 1844 and included a large schoolroom. Most of the children would have been inmates at the workhouse – and I think we should say ‘hooray’ to the Greenwich vestry for including them in the procession on the same footing as the boys from the two charity – but still posher – schools. There were 25 of the Union School children present and that they appeared ‘clean and healthy was the subject of frequent remark - and which highly reflects on the management of the Union’.

Having been joined by these school boys the procession continued through to the end of Mr Williams’s tanyard and went on to ‘Mr Fearnly’s  premises in Greenwich High Road’ .This is another works which I missed in the Deptford book. James Fearnly was a coal and corn merchant on Hope Wharf – which fronted on to what is now Greenwich High Road and one of the endless blocks of new flats.  Aparently he was a land owner in Eltham.

So –eventually the entire procession proceeded to the centre of Deptford Bridge and stood in the middle of the road and sang the hundredth psalm

“All people that on Earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;

Him serve with fear, his praise forth tell;

Come ye before him and rejoice”.

 

And then they gave ‘three cheers’.

Having reached Deptford Bridge they crossed over to the south side and began a long meandering walk towards the water works at Brookmill – which I will describe when next I come back to this long procession.  We’ve only just started really!