Railway ambition - how Greenwich Railway hoped to reach the coast

 

Recently I’ve written some articles about the setting up of the Greenwich Railway - how it was built and some of the background.  We know that our local railway with its great brick viaduct was the first in London and that it has stood for over 190 years. It was built by the London and Greenwich railway company  and obviously they are now long gone.  In fact they had a very short existence but they had a lot of big ideas – and I thought it might be worth looking at them.

In the 1820s an enormous number of railway projects were proposed around the country – and some were for railways in South London and Kent.  A major concern was to get a railway through to the coast and the Greenwich Railway company had plans for this. I am very much relying here on the late Ron Thomas’s amazing and meticulous history of the London and Greenwich Railway, published in 1986.

We  all know - or think we know - some early railway history . For years horses had pulled wagons along railed paths or plateways.  Once steam locomotives became available public railway services became more of a possibility.  There were many proposals.  and in 1824 one was for a railway from London to Dover . It was called the Kentish Railway and Ron Thomas’s described it in the first pages of his book.

The Kentish Railway’s prospectus came out in December 1824 and proposed a line from London to Dover via Deptford,  Greenwich and Woolwich and then onwards to Canterbury and Dover .  Early advertisements stressed the vast profits which could be made by using  ‘locomotive machinery’.  Henry Palmer, its engineer,. wanted the line  to start at Bricklayer’s Arms in the Old Kent Road . This route would have avoided Greenwich while passing through Lewisham, Lee  Green and Eltham . However it was also planned to add a branch somewhere near the Brookmill Water Works and that would go to Greenwich.  In 1826 a Parliamentary Committee was set up to look at the project but no more progress was made.

In an earlier article I described the first meeting of  the London and Greenwich Railway Company which was set up by George Landman and George Walter in October 1831 and these meetings, continued along with development work.  Once the construction of the Greenwich Railway became a reality their thoughts turned to how it could be extended.  In 1833 George Walter had plans to set up a London and Gravesend Railway Company, with George  Landmann as engineer, and a year later, in 1834,  he added plans to extend this to Folkestone as the New Kent Railway. –

In early 1835 it was decided to advertise this London and Gravesend Railway project . An offer was made to potential investors to send for a chart showing what was proposed and also a large print showing an intended viaduct across Greenwich Park. This was sold in local shops and was said to originate with George Smith the company’s architect. Smith, who also worked for Morden  College and for the Mercer’s Company , contributed many of  the buildings we see in Greenwich today  - but the Greenwich Park Viaduct is not one of them.  It is said that a representative of the Admiralty arranged for all copies of the print to be destroyed - presumably working on behalf of Greenwich Hospital.  It would also seem to be a good way of stoking opposition to the railway in Greenwich.

On 8^th March a meeting was held in Woolwich of ‘Gentlemen opposed to the London and Gravesend Railway’. Participants thanked lawyers who had been working on objections to this scheme. A few weeks later a public meeting was held in Woolwich to discuss the scheme. George Landmann  was present and answered many questions from the audience. Some queries  were about investments, some about the work itself in Woolwich,  land purchase and much else. Doubts about the scheme were expressed in the audience but there was not complete outright opposition .

Meanwhile support came in an article about this plan by John Herapath in his Railway Journal  “to avoid the inconvenient circuitous route, it shall be carried by means of a handsome viaduct, straight across Greenwich Park. There is some opposition ... of the viaduct’s being likely to mar the beauty of the park ... but It will obviously increase rather than detract from the picturesqueness of the scenery”. Of course, there is nothing like a railway line running through a park to make the scenery better. While some rail enthusiasts might agree , it seems many others did not.

The Parliamentary enabling bill was lost at its Second Reading having been opposed by John Angerstein, then newly elected as MP for Greenwich. He objected on the grounds that there were plenty of steamboats and why did anybody want to build a railway,  which would fail because of competition from them. Landmann arranged for experimental borings to see if a tunnel under the Park was possible and also vibration tests which were done on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. In October the company was relaunched it as the Greenwich and Gravesend Railway. They also launched plans for a London and Dover Railway which was to go to Dover via Ashford and Maidstone with a  branch to Canterbury. However it also appeared that the rival South Eastern Railway had issued a prospectus for a similar route to Dover.

 In early 1836 Professor Airey, the Astronomer Royal, said there was no problem with the railway going through the Park –the objections were from the Admiralty. The Railway  Company said that it would place niches at stated intervals  between the piers of the proposed viaduct “wherein are to be placed busts of our most celebrated bygone Admirals leaving vacant ones for the reception of future naval heroes ... the whole to be surmounted by a colossal statue of his present Majesty in full Naval costume’.  This had no effect on the views of the Admiralty although the local papers made fun with satirical comments about it.

The Greenwich and Gravesend Railway Bill had its first Parliamentary reading in February 1836 and there was the usual flood of objections.  It was decided to postpone the Second Reading which essentially threw  the bill out.  Meanwhile the Greenwich Railway directors  opposed the South Eastern Railways new Bill for as line to Dover,  but a month later the amalgamated their plans with South Eastern as the Kent Railway.  Meanwhile more opposition to the scheme was being organised in Greenwich.  Ron Thomas described in great detail subsequent events in Greenwich with the opening of the Greenwich Railway itself and questions over the fraudulent means by which shares had been raised – and I’ll get to all that in a future article.

Attempts to get a railway out of Greenwich and through to Gravesend and the coast had effectively failed. Most history books will tell you that this was because of objections to the park viaduct from the Astronomer Royal. However  Ron Thomas – with more detailed research - summed it up differently “opposition to the railway did not come from the Observatory ...but from the Admiralty and  the vicar and churchwardens of Greenwich”. 

At the same time as this project to extend the railway beyond Greenwich was going on the Greenwich Company directors were involved in another one scheme, which Ron Thomas hardly mentioned except in one short paragraph. It has most recently been described in some detail in the Ship Wrights’ Palace blog . I have included details of it in articles and in my book on the Greenwich Riverside, and it concerns the project at Upper Watergate and Payne’s Wharf.

In 1835 a group of individuals associated with the London and Greenwich Railway,, promoted an Act of Parliament for a ‘Deptford Pier’ at Upper Watergate.   We can be sure this is the correct site since the site runs from ‘the boundary wall of His Majesty’s dockyard’.  This had been preceded by a prospectus for an elaborate and extensive area of grand buildings and promise of economic regeneration. This included plans for the’ Deptford Pier Junction Railway’.

The promoters took over the wharf by compulsory purchase;  an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1836 and the site was sold to them. The idea was for passengers to go by rail to the new pier and there get a boat. This may also have included construction of the, now listed, arcading along the riverfront.  This had been attributed to Penns but is now thought to be either by George Landmann, engineer to the London and Greenwich Railway, or by Lewis Cubitt who also had Deptford interests. Plans were also made for a steam ferry service but the  project had collapsed by the early 1840s, following court cases and with debts of £25,000. It was abandoned by 1846. A new Act of Parliament allowed the pier to be demolished and new watermen’s stairs installed.

These were massive schemes and had they gone through would have made the fortunes and fame of the promoters.The Deptford Wharf scheme was to have been a huge regeneration project with  a riverside railway terminal, associated buildings and what was effectively a new port. This would have been associated with a major railway line going to Dover and other another towns in Kent, None of it happened