Appleby Engineers in Greenwich

An earlier article I did – working down the west bank of the Peninsula – was about the Bessemer works on what is now the Hanson’s site – Victoria Wharf. A lot of things about it are very unclear.  However we know that Appleby Brothers – engineers and engine builders - were on the site from  1878. 

Appleby’s??   Who in Greenwich has ever heard of Appleby’s? Steam engine enthusiasts and some others will know about the Penn works in Blackheath Hill, and perhaps some other works in the Deptford area – but Appleby’s??    It turns out they were quite a big company and that they had several works in different parts of the country.  I know about all sorts of things which they made – but what was actually made in Greenwich has been very very elusive

A picture of the works shows a big important looking riverside building – There’s an impressive frontage, with a house at one end. Six rows of workshops and six big chimneys all smoking away.  There is some sort of overhead conveyor system, storage areas, big cranes and a barge being unloaded. so   they must have done something there!  I wonder if Applebys built that factory for themselves – or is it what the Bessemer family built before them on the site?

Applebys began at the Renishaw Ironworks near Sheffield in 1782.  Charles Appleby had worked
as an engineer in Russia and when he returned set up a works with his brother Thomas – hence Appleby Brothers – at Emerson Street in Southwark.  One account says they opened the Greenwich works in 1866 – and another says that in 1886 they broke the link with Renishaw and opened the Greenwich works – twenty years later! However Morden College confirmed a lease to them in 1879 and implies they had been there since 1874. More to the point Kentish Mercury reported in August 1878 that "The Bessemer Steel and Ordnance Works.... have been purchased by Messrs. Appleby Brothers.  Great activity”.

The Mercury described how the works was converted for general engineering by a hundred men. The pulled down the converter chimney, and the ‘massive foundation that carried the rolling mill’. The sheds were enclosed in an area ‘upwards of an acre ‘and a range workshops built for the foundry, boiler shop, turnery and erecting shop.

So – what did they make there? Again we are confused. Appleby advertised that at Greenwich they made Mining and Pumping Machinery, Engines, Boilers and Dredging plant, Cranes and Travellers, Bridges, Roofs and Railway Plant.  Trouble is it has proved very difficult to pin much of this down

A couple of years ago we were passed an email from a museum in Australia. This was the Goulburn Historic Waterworks Museum and they wanted information about the manufacturers of their principle exhibit – a Appleby beam engine, the only remaining complete and working engine of four delivered to Australia in 1883.  That date means that this impressive engine could have been made in Greenwich and the original Australian researcher thought it was.  However looking at the museum’s web site it seems they are saying very little about the origins of their engine at all.  John Steeds (and thank you to him) who has been researching Applebys for years thinks it was contracted out to a firm in Derby.  However it does give a good idea of the sort of installations Appleby were capable of. http://www.goulburnwaterworks.com.au/

Something we do have a contemporary reference for is the Greenwich Steam Ferry.  I wrote about this in a previous article for weekender back in February.  This ran from Wood Wharf (where the Sail Loft is now) and was a generally amazing installation.  An 1888 article in the journal ‘Engineering’ definitely says that the engines for the ferry boats were made by Appleby at their Greenwich works – so that is something. 

There are some other Appleby engines around if you know where to look.  There is one at an obscure museum in an obscure village in Norfolk – Forncett St.Mary.  There is a nice picture of it on their web site https://www.forncettsteammuseum.con.uk/  .  The museum thinks it was made at the Jessup Works in Leicester, although the date of 1897 means it could have been made in Greenwich. This engine was originally sold to Crosse and Blackwell and then moved to the Sarsons vine

gar works in Southwark.   

There is another engine which is now at Crossness Engines  in Abbey Wood. Peter Griffiths tells me this came from the Crosse and Blackwell factory at North Woolwich, from where it went to Sarsons and from there to Nestles HQ in Switzerland, and then back to – er - Peckham Bus Garage.  Crossness have it now and tell me that it was made in Greenwich.  You can go and see it there on their next open day. http://www.crossness.org.uk/

Crossness also have a record of a contract for well pumps, donkey pumps and sluice valves from Appleby in 1879

I do have one very solid article about Applebys in Greenwich. This is a report of a presentation dinner at the Crown and Sceptre - I don’t know the date but I guess its early 1880s.  This was to give a ‘very beautiful timepiece’ to two employees who were leaving to start their own business –Messrs Connes and Calvert.  The presentation was by Charles James Appleby, a third generation Appleby who effectively then ran the firm – he said that he had known the two employees for 20 years. Mr. Connes however said that he was the ‘first man to be employed at the firm some 30 years ago’  - and if he was talking about the Greenwich works the date of the dinner would have been in 1916 – by which time Charles James Appleby was long dead, so something doesn’t (again) a make a lot of sense. Perhaps they had moved to Greenwich from another Appleby works.

Anyway the after the dinner  they toasted ‘The firm of Messrs Appleby’, ‘The staff and the Employees’, ‘The Visitors’ and ‘The new firm of Connes and Calvert’.  Then there was some excellent singing and

‘the proceedings terminated with the National Anthem’.

From 1866 they had a branch in Leicester under Joseph Jessup and later in the 1890s they became Appleby & Jessup – but seem to have been taken over by Crayford based Vickers & Maxim.   I am very confused about when they actually left Greenwich.   They produced a catalogue with all sorts of pumps, engines and devices – but what was made in Greenwich?  In later years – under Vickers – they made all sorts of cranes and transporters but these are said to have been made in Leicester. From May 1910 they were Appleby Crane and Transporter Co.Ltd. and I was once told that the Temperley Transporter at South Met. Gas’s Ordinance Wharf came from them – I have a picture of it all crumpled up and wrecked after a storm.

Applebys were an important engineering firm who made many innovative structures around the