Every industrial history has to describe the local mills. But Greenwich it appears has very few, in fact only two of which there can be any detailed description. Most people will think at first of windmills but Greenwich has only twp, one ling gone and one now converted to a pub and several which once stood on Blackheath, are on the Lewisham side of the border. Water Mills – we can offer a pair of tide mills, but as far as water mills are concerned; only one is inside the Greenwich border. As we shall see the important and interesting ones are all in the Borough of Lewisham.
Windmills
The earliest known and perhaps most important windmill in the borough was that known as the Shipwright’s mill built in Woolwich in 1758. It is important for who built it and why it was built rather than in its structure as a mill. It was built by the Shipwrights Society from Woolwich Dockyard as a co-operative and is thus one of the earliest co-ops recorded. It stood in ‘Conduit Field’ in what is now Woolwich New Road, which was then called Mill Lane or Cholic Lane and was slightly south of what is now called Engineers House. Soon after its construction it was burnt down in an arson attac which attracted government attention, it was soon rebuilt. A drawing from 1845, by which time it was vacant and derelict shows an octagonal timber smock mill . It appears to have been let eventually to a private miller, was empty by the 1840s and demolished by the 1850s.[1]
It is thought that the Shipwigfhts Mill it was a successor to several others which stood in the area until the 18th century.[2] It is also possible that another mil stood in the early 19th century in the vicinitu of Nightingale Place. [3]
The only windmill in the borough of which there are any remains is that which is now a pub called The Old Mill in Old mill Lane on Plumstead Common. It is fnught to date from at least 1786 or earlier all and is thus possibly the earliest tower mill in this part of Kent .[4]In 1848 it was converted into a brew house, being disused. What remains is a four-storey brick tower which had four sails and a domed cap.
It is possible that there were mills in the south part of the Borough. There is reference to ‘a stump windmill’ at Horn Park Farm in 1833.[5]
It is perhaps remarkable that on the long ridge of hillside from Shooters Hill down to Deptford there are only these two windmills and maybe others remain to be discovered, although there is no known map evidence for them. And there were however mills on Blackheath and it is unfortunate that these are all in Lewisham Borough albeit within less than 100 yards of the Greenwich boundary. The boundary here is the main A2 road crossing the Heath. It is assumed, for want of other evidence, that these were all mills which ground corn.
It is thought that a windmill once stood on the Greenwich side of Blackheath at the north end of West Grove in the southwest corner of this area which was once called Windmill Field.[6] There was possibly another windmill on the east side of the Ravensbourne north of Deptford Bridge until at least 1840. [7] From an illustration that was a smock mill maybe assocated with a tannery.[8]
South of the boundary a mill stood adjacent to Hollyhedge House in the late 17th century, and is described as an open trestle postmill and the earliest on the Heath. [9] It is thought that this was encroachment on Heath allowed for the mill and that the house followed in due course.[10] The house is now a centre for the Territorial Army and the mill site is a mound with a water tank standing on it.[11]
Another was in what is now Morden Hill.[12] This was extant in 1745 but was built after 1706 as another open trestle post mill[13]. It should be note that there is modern housing in a ‘Windmill Close’ here.
Two mills were near what is now Talbot Place known as the East Mill and the West Mill, apparently to replace the demolished Hollyhedge Mill. They were on encroachments on the heath, granted by the Dartmouth Estate on a site where sand and gravel extraction was active in the area now called Blackheath Vale.[14] Goffers Road on Blackheath was once called Windmill Road and must have run past them. [15] Both mills were the subject of many paintings of the Heath and thus their eventual states of dereliction can be noted.[16]
West Mill. This stood on the site of the current ere Mill House, built in 1836.[17] It y have been the Holly Hedge Mill, dragged across the Heath when the lease expired around 1770[18] and it appears to have had the same miller. It appears to have been demolished in 1835.[19]
East Mill stood to the rear of houses in Duke Humphrey Road near the corner with Talbot Place and was thought to date from around 1770 and may have been standing in 1842 but was demolished by 1850.[20] It too may have come here from elsewhere – and may well have been the mill which previously stood near Morden Hill.[21]
Watermills
The area of the Borough of Greenwich is deficient in fast running streams suitable for mills. There were a series of mills worked by the power of the tides and we will come to them. As far as the more usual sort of mill is concerned a few streams trickle down the hillside from Shooters Hill to the Thames but do not ever seem to have been developed for milling. The only substantial stream boundary is the Ravensbourne; the boundary with Lewisham historically running at the centre of the stream that now on the Greenwich bank. This means that the Greenwich boundary runs alongside two important mills. They are so close that it is worth noting them.
The Brookmill was on the site of what became the Kent Waterworks. It is immediately south of the A2 Dover Road at Deptford Bridge in an area which has now been developed as a park. This mill was noted in 1586[22] and in the seventeenth century was owned by John Evelyn. It was taken over in 1701 and eventfully became the Kent Waterworks, and then the Metropolitan Water Board.[23]
Further south still and bordering onto Tesco is the site of the Armoury Mill – noted in an earlier chapter as the mill attached to the Royal Armoury in Greenwich. The mill is first noted in 1299 as a corn mill called Toddesmill. After the Armoury had left for Enfield the mill was put up for sale. It was then used for the ‘throwing’ of silk and gold and silver wire drawing. In the 1880s they began to develop and make what became known as tinsel – and which they sold in huge quantities. The company closed in the 1920s and the mill continued to be used by a succession of businesses until the Second World War. The site was partly cleared, and any finds destroyed. In the 1980s the area of the mill pond became Tesco car park.[24] Modern flats on the site are called ‘The Silk Works’.
Tide Mills
Tide mills were once common on tidal rivers and there were several along the Thames – and probably more to be identified. The mill wheel is turned by the incoming tide and can then be impounded in a pond behind the mill and to process reversed. We can identify four in our area, one on the Ravensbourne, two ancient one and one 18th century one on the Thames.
The early medieval tide mill discovered in the early 21st century has been described in an earlier chapter. A great deal of information about it is still unclear. It is also said that a tide-mill operated in Pot Mead, on the Deptford Riverside at what was later Borthwick Wharf.[25]
The one remaining mill structure in Greenwich is Mumford’s Mill, now converted to flats. It is however impossible to describe it without its earlier history as part of the Old Flood Mill (in Lewisham).
This mill site probably dates from before Domesday when mills in Lewisham are noted. It is first identified in 1157 when the rents for a Deptford mill were granted to Bermondsey Abbey. The Abbey retained this income until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. It was later acquired by Christ’s Hospital. The mill itself, known as the 'Flodmell', was established north of Deptford Bridge by the fourteenth century and operated here until it was destroyed by flooding in 1824.[26]
It was re-built by J H Robinson, who turned it into an 8 floor steam-powered roller flour mill with the creek only used for barge traffic.[27] Later the mill buildings expanded towards Deptford Bridge and also covered the former osier ground, later the Skill centre site. The mill closed in the 1960s, and was demolished after a fire in 1970.[28] The site has since been used as a Lewisham training centre.
The eastern part of the site however is in Greenwich. There was a limekiln and wharf on the east bank of the Ravensbourne by 1481. This was later the site now now occupied by Mumford's Mill and new housing on what was a Cash and Carry. Mumford's Mill was founded in 1790 and the present building was erected in 1897. It included a ‘towering, visually arresting, technologically sophisticated grain silo’. This was designed by the architect, Aston Webb and ‘it perhaps also signalled in suitably attention grabbing form the final complete change over from traditional stone milling to roller milling”.[29] The mill survived into the 1960s by specialising in cake flours. It then became home to a number of small businesses and has now been converted into flats.
There remains one other mill. This is the early 19th century tide mill built in East Greenwich as part of a proposed new industrial area.
The mill, was sited on a remote part of riverside in
the earliest days of the 19th century developed as part of ‘New East Greenwich’ by
a soap maker, George Russell [30] and soon
after he applied for permission to build a wharf and causeway into the river.[31] This causeway was to remain in place until
1999 when it was removed by the New Millennium Experience Company. Soon after a
William Johnson constructed a mill here for Russell.[32] Russell also built a pub, the Pilot, which
still stands and a group of cottages and tenements, as well as a ‘big
house’ called East Lodge. The mill was described
by Olinthus Gregory while still under construction. [33]
In 1803 it was the scene of an explosion in the boiler of the high
pressure steam developed
by the Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick. This famous accident, in which a number of
workmen were killed, was caused by negligence on the part of the boy in charge
of the engine but did great harm to Trevithick and to steam engine development.[34]
The mill seems to have been used for grinding corn
but within a very short time developed problems with its construction and had
to be rebuilt.[35] It was bought by Frank Hills in 1842 who used
is as the site of a chemical works processing gas industry purification waste.[36]
Frank Hills had bought the mill in 1842. Colourful and unscrupulous he is generally
described as ‘the Deptford chemist’. In
fact his interests extended far beyond Greenwich and Deptford and he was to die
a very rich man. He died in 1895. The tide mill site was sold to the
South Metropolitan Gas Company. They
continued to run the chemical works as their Phoenix Works and this remained
into the 1980s. The site is now largely
grassland north of the Pilot. The mill building was eventually demolished. It
is not clear when and it may or may not appear in photographs into the 1920s.
The massive mill ponds to the west of the mill appear on Goad plans of 1927 and
may have persisted for longer. A feature marked ‘cooling pond’ is sown in the
same place on maps of the early 1950s.
It was otherwise completely forgotten.[37]
[1] Survey of Woolwich
[2] Survey of Woolwich
[3] Cumming. The Windmills of North West Kent and Kentish London
[4] Cumming
[5] Cumming.
[6] Rhind. The Heath
[7] Philpotts.
[8] Cumming
[9] Cumming.
[10] Ideal Homes. Web site. A drawing of this mill from a collection in the British Museum is reproduced on the Blackheath Society Web site. It shows a timber mill alongside the house.
[11] Cumming.
[12] Rhind. The Heath.
[13] Cumming
[14] Rhind. The Heath.
[15] Running Past. Blog site. The author reproduces a painting of 1835 of the two Talbot Place mills, by Edward Cooke from the Victoria and Albert Museum, reserved collection. It shows two timber mills some distance apart in a rural setting and with what appear to be chalk extraction in the foreground. For interest the author has included a modern photograph from the same spot – showing the open heath with sports facilities
[16] Cumming
[17] British Listed Buildings. Web site
[18] Cummings. In a comment on the Blackheath Society web page
[19] Rhind. Blackheath Village and its Environs,
[20] Rhind Blackheath Village and its Environs.
[21] Cumming
[22] Philpotts. Deptford Creek
[23] Steele. Turning the Tide.
[24] McCartney and West. The Lewisham Silk Mills.
[25] Philpotts
[26] Philpotts
[27] Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter. Vol. 2/2
[28] Philpotts
[29] Clarke for English Heritage. Mumford’s Flour Mil.
[30] Russell v. Sharpe Chancery 1808
[31] City Conservators. Minutes
[32] Patent 2411 “Machine for obtaining a self moving power or perpetual motion; is cited as the relevant patent among several taken out by Johnson. See The Engineer 12 VIII 1901. Johnson also wrote an article explaining his system in the Times 20th December 1800. The mill has recently been descried and analysed by Brian Strong in London’s Industrial Archaeology
[33] Gregory. Mechanics. 1807
[34] Weale. Treatise on the Steam Engine. Also extracts in James Watt papers (notes thanks to Rev.Dr.Richard Hills), Southwark Inquests. City of London Record Office, Times 16 September 1803. Trevithick. Life of Richard Trevithick,
[35] Greenland. Brian Donkin. Brian Donkin’s diary, (Derbyshire Record Office)
[36][36] There is no biography I am aware of. See chapters in my PhD Thesis The Early Gas Industry, OU 1995. Also Mary Mills. The Early East London Gas industry and its waste products. 1998. The same information in similar chapters on Hills can be found in Belton. Founded on Iron. 2003
[37] A detailed history of the mill, by me, is awaiting publication in London’s Industrial Archaeology.
No comments:
Post a Comment