These past few weeks us Greenwich industrial historians have been running round in circles what with the gasholders campaign and Enderbys. Personally I’ve also done a couple of booklets and I have a big backlog of articles, including this one, to write
In the middle of all this is came then news that the heritage centre in Woolwich is to close. Hopefully by the time this article is published we all know a lot more about this but at the moment it’s been a real mystery tour.
Many people will remember that the local history department used to be at Woodlands in Mycenae roads and that around 2000 it was merged with the Plumstead museum and moved as the heritage centre for a site in Woolwich arsenal. A few years later this was swept up into the Greenwich Heritage Trust which was based at Charlton House. In the last couple of days it is emerged that the Arsenal site is to close and the archives moved.
At the moment we know no more than that. I am writing the rest of this article in the hope it is not overtaken by events by the time it is published, In this context I thought I should write something about Greenwich.
The Heritage Centre in Woolwich has become very focused, and quite rightly, on the history to east of the borough . There’s been a lot about the Royal Artillery and about the Great War. Meanwhile in Greenwich itself the Borough Hall has suddenly become vacant. This hall was once part of Greenwich’s Town Hall - the buildings of which including the tower in Greenwich High Road were sold in the 1970s after Greenwich had been merged with Woolwich. Some of us began to think that the Borough Hall would make it very good history centre for Greenwich
People will say that Greenwich is overstuffed with museums but the National Maritime Museum is, well national, as is the Royal Observatory, and the Fan Museum. None of them are about Greenwich Up until 1889 Greenwich was an important town in Kent and from 1889 a Metropolitan Borough. It had its own Council and its own way of doing things. In 1939 it built its groundbreaking modernist Town Hall.
In the early 1960s it became part of the London Borough and the civic centre moved to Woolwich Greenwich had had a civic centre, a shopping centre and a busy industrial sector. It was very much a town where small industries and workshops proliferated which turned out small and innovative items. There was also a lively Riverside industry - fishing lasted into the 19th century, many small firms providing services to the river – lighterage, dredging and so on - and there has always been small boat and barge building businesses.
We should perhaps remember that quite sizeable vessels were still being built on the Greenwich Riverside into the 1980s. Its highly skilled population also worked in engineering and communications technology. We had the first suburban railway and the first centralized power station and so much more As I write this we don’t know what will happen to Greenwich heritage centre and there is no reason why it should continued to focus on Woolwich.
I am aware there that there are also calls to give a thought to the past of Plumstead and Charlton and what about Eltham? We need something that tells the world about Greenwich – this busy Kentish town with a history of innovation
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