MAUDSLAY TOMB

 Last week I wrote about Greenwich parks and gardens and how they related to local past industry.  I mentioned the new Green Greenwich Book and the entry in it for St.Mary Magdalene churchyard in Woolwich.  In 1892 it had been redesigned as a garden by Fanny Wilkinson, the first female professional landscape gardener. Then in 1966 it was upgraded by Woolwich Council to become a park. As a result most of the tombstones were removed and stacked around the perimeter and only the monument to Woolwich champion bare knuckle boxer, Tom Cribb, remained.

I said in my article last week that I knew of a rescue attempt not mentioned in Green Greenwich. This was for part of the tomb of Henry Maudslay - he had designed the tomb surrounded by railings himself but what was rescued were panels with an inscription.

In 1982, and after four years of negotiation and a change in church law, a group of historians got a number of young men from the military in Woolwich to help them remove the pieces of the tomb. Apparently these pieces were taken to the National Maritime Museum store in the Brass Foundry in the Royal Arsenal. There were three historians - Ralph Burnett and Jack Vaughan, President and Chair of Woolwich Antiquarians, and Alan Pearsall, historian at the National Maritime Museum. It was Jack who told me about it and gave me the photographs.

So who was Henry Maudslay and why were they so interested in him.  Maudslay was an extremely important 19^th century engineer. He was Woolwich born and trained in the Arsenal before moving on to other companies and eventually to setting up his own important works. In an outstanding career perhaps the most important thing was his invention of a metal lathe which enabled the manufacture of standard screw thread sizes. He did this by repeated testing and using his enormous skill. He made this first machine with an accurate screw which can be replicated to make others rapidly.

Maudslay came from very poor background.  In Woolwich his parents lived in Salutation Alley - a small and very impoverished street behind what was the Granada Cinema - now the Ebenezer Building.  His father had been a soldier but, wounded and disabled and he worked in the Arsenal as a storekeeper  Henry was born in 1771 and from the age of 12 was employed in the Arsenal making and filling cartridges. He later worked in the Carpenter’s Shop and then the Blacksmith’s Shop but never as a formal apprentice. From the start he was exceptionally skilled and his work was admired by everyone -  including the older skilled craftsmen. When he was eighteen he was recruited to work for Bramah in central London.

Bramah had designed and patented an unpickable lock. Maudslay made a set of tools that allowed the lock to be made at an economic price and followed this with much else. Along with his screw-cutting lathe which allowed standardisation of screw thread sizes for the first time, he produced a set of taps and dies that would make nuts and bolts consistently so that any bolt of the appropriate size would fit any nut of the same size..^[3 He also invented the first bench micrometer capable of measuring to one ten-thousandth of an inch.^] These were major advances in workshop technology enabling new steam driven machinery to be made much more accurately and very much faster – with all sorts of implications on issues like costs and safety.

In 1797, after having worked for Bramah for eight years, Maudslay set up his own business and by 1810 was employing 80 workers.  The firm moved to larger premises in Lambeth and included Joseph  Field and eventually Maudslay’s sons. Working for the Navy in association with Sir Marc Brunel Maudslay built a series of 42 woodworking machines to make wooden rigging blocks. These machines could make 130,000 blocks a year, needing only ten unskilled men to operate them - an early example of specialised machinery for assembly-line production 

Maudslay's Lambeth works specialised in the production of marine steam engines. His first marine engine was built in 1815, fitted to a Thames steamer named the Richmond. In 1823 a Maudslay engine powered  Lightning, the first steam-vessel to be commissioned by the Royal Navy. In 1829 a side-lever engine  for HMS Dee was the largest marine engine at the time.^[4]This work and more innovation continued longer after Maudslay’s deaty.

In 1825 Marc Brunel began work on the first under water tunnel –the Thames Tunnel now the tube line between Rotherhithe and Wapping. To build at an innovative tunneling shield was designed and  made by Maudslay Sons & Field at their Lambeth works. Maudslay also supplied the steam-driven pumps that kept the tunnel workings dry.^]

Many outstanding engineers trained in his workshop, including Richard Roberts, David Napier, Joseph Clement, Sir Joseph Whitworth, and James Nasmyth.  Maudslay thus played a part in the development of mechanical engineering as part of a technological revolution

Henry Maudslay died on 14^[13] February 1831 and was buried in Woolwich. His sons and grandsons continued with the works . In the 1860s the company set up a shipbuilding yard in Greenwich,where Blackadder, Halloween and two Bospherous ferrres wer nbuilt.  It later became a boiler factory . In  the 1890s grandson Herbert Maudsley cancelled a meeting with landowners Morden College about disposal of the site of this failing Greenwich factory because he was ‘too busy sailing at Cowes’.

The firm went out of business entirely in the early 20^th century and a three day auction was held in Greenwich of all the effects of the company including everything from the Lambeth  works. The Science Museum were allowed to view items before the sale started and several  items went directly to them  Maudslay's original screw-cutting lathe was one of the items they took  and it is sometimes displayed.

Although most of his life was spent working and living outside of Woolwich Maudslay always remembered his life there and was eventually buried at his own request in what is now Churchfielda in what was the graveyard of St.Mary Magdalene.  There has always been a mixed response in Greenwich to honouring any of the many, many important engineers and technicians who lived and worked locally.  Maudsley is the only one of them to be included in the stained glass windows in Woolwich Town Hall. He doesn’t quite make the Victoria Hall along with Henry VIII and Elizabeth but he does have a section in the windows in the Public Hall at the back of the Town Hall complex.

Maudsley had designed his own iron tomb and tombstone and sadly this was cleared in 1966 in order to turn   the churchyard into a park . Thus the work done many years later by the group of historians to rescue the plaque from the tombstone and to preserve it,

Initially these pieces – three cast iron plates - were stored in the Royal Brass foundry by the National Maritime Museum but later they came into the possession of developer Barclay Homes. They were then acquired by the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust in 2018 and they are now at Anchorage Point store.  The trust investigated getting them conserved in 2022, but it was prohibitively expensive.

 

The inscription: ‘To the memory of Henry Maudslay born in this parish 1773 died at Lambeth February 15^th 1831 a zealous promoter of the Arts and Sciences, evidently distinguished as an engineer for mathematical accuracy and beauty of construction, as a man for industry and perseverance and as a friend for a kind and benevolent heart.

In writing this article I have had some difficulty in getting facts together. All three of the historians involved have since died. I had the photographs and a brief note from Jack and Julian Watson too – and as ever great thanks to him has managed to dig out a very very brief report from a Woolwich Antiquarians Newsletter from the 1980s.

There are a number of questions in my mind about the whole episode which I cannot find any information on.  What were the original negotiations which enabled the tombstone pieces to be removed from the churchyard? What was the change in the law?  I’m also far from sure who the young men in the photograph are.  I vaguely remember that they were from some sort of army apprenticeship scheme. Are any

Boundary walk 7 - Blackheath Paragon

 

This week I thought it’s about time I got back to the next episode of the walk around the Greenwich Parish boundary in 1851. This, if you haven’t read it before, is a report of what used to happen quite frequently in the 19^th century - a procession round the parish boundary of all the civic dignitaries with lots of young boys and girls from the church choir and local schools. It  was about nine miles long and took all day.  So far with this 1851 walk we began at Garden Stairs, near Greenwich Pier. We carried on to Deptford Creek and then walked up the Creekside as far as Deptford Bridge. Then a little way up Blackheath Road,  following a stream which once ran at the backs of the houses andmthern going south across what was then waterworks land.  Reaching the banks of the Ravensbourne  we crossed it and having ended up on the edge of Lewisham, turned back, crossing  railway lines and then back over the Ravensbourne to the site of the Greenwich Armoury Mill,  by then  called the Silk Mil. The route then went up Lewisham Road but before the end turned east up side streets and then into Blackheath Hill and up the hill to the Green Man.

There is a point  I need to make: I must stress that I am following a report based on the boundary as it was in 1851. The boundary changed – and still changes - constantly over the years. This version of the boundary does not go into Blackheath Village in the way it does today. Meanwhile,  I am very grateful to various people who have been going out and taking pictures of any boundary stones they can find  and  they are saying we need  a campaign to get boundary stones listed status  - because so many of them have vanished and some of them have gone very recently. However some of the pictures they have taken are of stones which are not on this 1851 route. Hopefully when eventually I finish this 1851 walk I could start looking at some of the variations which have appeared over the years and many of those will be in the Blackheath village area .

In the last episode of the boundary walk I followed it across Blackheath along the A2,  Shooters Hill Road.  I ought to point out that that is nt really accurate . The actual boundary line ran slightly south of the main road and I understand that that is supposed to have followed the Roman road – but it is so close that its hardly worth worrying about.

The newspaper report of the 1851 walk tells us to stop when we are about a 120 yards west of the northern end of St Germans Place.  Today it means stopping a short distance before the traffic lights from where the road from Blackheath Standard crosses Shooters Hill Road.    The place to stop is on the south side of the road and appears to be roughly opposite the end of Angerstein Lane on the North side.  so having got there the 1851 newspaper report says that there is a boundary stone marker but there’s no sign of it now . From here the boundary turns abruptly south going down to what is now Prince of Wales Road to somewhere near the bus stop – and I know that the bus stop has recently moved and I’m not sure where to!  There was oce a stone marker three too. The boundary crosses Prince of Wales Road and continues southward till we get South Row.  East of the pond in South Row there is actually,  and almost unbelievably, a boundary stone surrounded by a little fence!

The procession has now arrived at Blackheath Paragon – These elegamnly  designed houses are in limnked pairs behind their own little green which we need to pass over to get to the houses themselves. Theprocvession axtually  paseds through thrm.  The Paragon was built between 1795 and 1806, designed by archutcxtn Michael Searles for esate owmer John Cator. Theyb were very clearly built for posh pople and  room for carriages, stables, servant's quarters and large gardens wer provird. It suffered terrubly in the Second world war with bomb damage and and  thr restoration merant they were converted into flats.

So, Next we need to go round into the private road in front of the Paragon, where Alan reports there is now  “a boundary marker close to a horse-mounting block  -- and a metal post with no markings”.

In the 1851 newspaper report they are described as by a ‘tree of the edge of the slope in front of the Paragon dated 1792’. The report then says perhaps somewhat alarmingly” from where we passed through number 7 now Mr Wilcox”.  I don’t hope Mr Wilcox was happy with recession passing through his home It best by then have had a considerable number of little boys from the church choir of the various schools and no doubt some of their friends who would tag along.

Neil Rhind in his ‘Blackheath and its Environs’ tell us that ‘Mr.Wilcox’ was  Robert Wilcoxon, a glass manufacturer.  In fact he was partner with his brother in a long established family business in Fish Street Hill making looking glasses, wallpaper and similar items.

Having gone through  No.7 and its garden the boundary procession went diagonally through the garden of No.6., through the property’s stables “to a boundary stone near a pump in the garden”. I cannot see this boundary stone marked on the on the 1860s Ordnance Survey map nor am I entirely clear where the stables were. The resident at No.6. is not named in the newspaper report but it was Henry Hills . Now anybody who reads my writing stuff knows that I go on at length about Frank Hills, the ‘Deptford Chemist’;  Henry was his brother and the owner and manager of a chemical works at Amlwch, on the northern tip of the Isle of Angelsey. How did he manage this works while living in the Paragon at Blackheath??

This whole area at the rear of the Paragon, through which the boundary line went, is difficult to follow because it is now the site of Fulthorpe Road and the council estate – which changed the layout of the area and ignored the various plots of the 1850s. The newspaper report says that the boundary line and the procession having left the garden of No 6 went through another garden owned by a nameless man to a 1792 stone where the three parishes of Greenwich, Charlton and  Lewisham meet. The pond is easy to see on the map with a boundary stone at it on its north west corner - and this must be somewhere just off Fulthorpe Road.

The boundary line continues, and we must assume the procession followed it. It went from the junction of the three parishes through some asparagus beds to another stone and from there over ‘Mr Hobart’s stabling’on each side of which is placed a stone in the wall.’  Neil Rhind describes the area between The Paragonand the ailway in’Blackheath and its Environs’ but at no point does he mention a ‘Mr. Hobart’. Or indeed of a wall with a stone from 1841 on either side.

The procession then went through ‘an adjoining  garden ... which there is a water course or brook’. There is no sign of this watercourse marked on the 1860s OS map but it is almost certainly one of the Kid Brooks which the boundary line follows for a short distance in this area. This area is also all now under the Fulthorpe Road council blocks.

Finally we are at Morden Roadnand the report Takes us over to the carriage entrance gate of Wooden College and that seems as good a place to end here as anywhere. In the next episode we will pass through MordebCollege grounds

 

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A couple of weeks ago my article here was about the iron industry in the Weald  and I'm very grateful to some of my readers who have ctaken an interest in this and who have made a commetd

 one of them is from Peter who wanted to comment of the use of Wealdem iron in the area and points out a very famous example

 

 

the other comment is from Richard who has some ideas about road names and so on following what I said about Rhodes coming up from the wheeled area from Cowden in particular to ballast key

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parks and gardens with an industrial background

 

A couple of weeks ago I did an article about the ex gasworks sports field which is now the IKEA car park. I commented about how in the last 50 years or so we have lost a vast amount of green space which was used by various industries for all sorts of reasons. I wondered If we had replaced these spaces and in what ways?  What do we have in the way of open space today? Does that open space relate to the industries which have come and gone over the years in our area?   I’m helped by a new book, just published - its by Candy Blackham and it’s called Green Greenwich.Our Treasured Open Spaces.  and it claims to describe ‘woods, flowery meadows. parks and nature reserves ....  many sites which are found around almost every corner”.

On almost the first page is a site with a close relationship to industry - although its not about the open space but what was planted there. It’s quite old - going right back to the 17th century . It is a mention one of the historic mulberry bushes planted to encourage silk manufacture in England by KIng James 1. The unfortunate worms, whose chrysalises provide the silk thread, eat the leaves of mulberry trees and so there was a big push in the early 17th century to plant mulberries all over the place.  In fact you can hardly find a mulberry tree today that doesn’t claim to have been planted by James I!.  The first site in the book is, inevitably, Greenwich Park and the mulberry bush is in ‘The Queen’s Orchard’ – a garden you get to from Park Vista and which has had a troubled history over recent years and was known for a while as ‘The Dwarf Orchard’.

 

There is of course a more famous mulberry tree at Charlton House –it's just outside the house itself and is adjacent to the car park, where in the summer it drops its purple fruit onto the light coloured cars.of unwary visitors.   There is another very old tree in the grounds of what is now called  Sayes Court Park in Deptford – now in Lewisham but once in Greenwich before changes were made to Borough boundaries. Sayes Court was of course once diarist  John Evelyn’s home. There is by the way an excellent database of mulberries trees around London. https://www.moruslondinium.org/.  It shows many, many trees  all over  Greenwich borough but all planted much more recently.   I do note however that there is one listed in the grounds of 17^th century Trinity College on the Greenwich riverside and that the database gives no information at all about its age or provenance Does anyone know anything about it?

 

There are a number of parkland sites which were used for what I suppose we could describe as ‘communication technology’  but for semaphore rather than the electronic communications used today . There was a beacon on Shooter’s Hill in the 17^th century and by the 18^th century a semaphore station on the line of signals from the Admiralty in London to Deal in Kent. The Memorial Hospital is on the site of this Admiralty semaphore station - but still surrounded by parkland .

Associated with this is the site in Maryon Park where there was a semaphore station linked to one at Shooters Hill . It was also used for various tests for the Admiralty Compass Laboratory in Maryon Road including, apparently, a series of giant letters. Perhaps we should also note that this was the key site in the film ‘Blow Up’ although I am far from sure if a site being used as film location is industrial or not.  If it is industrial then the Old Royal Naval College down in Greenwich is a major industrial centre!

The major electronic communications site in the Borough – and the world! – is of course Enderby Wharf and Enderby House - now  converted into a pub. It does get a very brief mention in the new book but not in connexion with communications technology rather as a rope and canvas manufacturing area.  At  Enderby Wharf there is a sculpture near the pub which represents lengths of cable manufactured at Enderby’s - but disguised as a small picnic area. There are also of course various jetties with the preserved equipment for loading cables onto ships. Members of Greenwich Industrial History Society and readers of our Facebook and Instagram pagea will be aware that we have been very much pushing scheduling  status to support better protection for this equipment.

The other local major communications technology factory was of course Siemens and we have to wait to find out if any leisure open space is going to be associated with the remains of this factory. The new book does mention Barrier Park which is a piece of land somehow turned into parkland,  which runs between the Thames Barrier and the Woolwich Road and which was adjacent to the Siemens factory and its numerous associated works.

I suppose there is an argument where the whole of the Greenwich Riverside path could be considered a Parkland area.  There are various areas which might qualify.  One site of course is the private, but sometimes open garden on Ballast Quay, saved from a past as a commercial wharf by the late Hilary Peters.  Hopefully some legacy arrangements will be put in place to secure its long term future.

Many of today‘s open spaces are converted farmland – so many that I think that I ought to consider an article on late surviving farms  and what happened to the land. Of course there are some farm buildings, now in leisure use, throughout the Borough.  A major example is the Tudor Barn at Well Hall. The grounds of Well Hall were converted into a park in the 1930s by Woolwich Council . This included the renovation of the 16^th century barn turning it into an art gallery, and latterly a restaurant. It’s now a pub.

One park site which was farm land until relatively recently is the area which was used as a stud at Middle Park and now listed under Queenscroft Recreation Ground. In the mid 19^th century under William Blenkinsop this was the most successful stud in England producing four Derby winners and thus “the world centre for horse-breeding’.  The Middle Park Stakes are still run at Newmarket but we have all but forgotten this possible industry.

Woodlands Farm at Shooters Hill is today a community owned urban farm but it was a working farm owed by the Coop -   you could chose ‘your’ pig which they would raise and it would end up as your Christmas dinner.  I’m far from sure if that is industrial but another  part of the site, which was undoubtedly industrial,  is at the top of the hillside near Garland Road and High Grove.  It was  the site of the Co op abattoir –’the fastest beef gang in Europe’. Down in East Greenwich in the Ballast Quay garden is a memorial to aimals killed in the foot and mouth epidemic, but no memorial to all those killed on Shooters Hill.

Open spaces for leisure are sometimes created along with replacement housing as it is built. An example is on what was the Ferrier Estate which covered a huge and rather mysterious  industrial complex owned by the Royal Air Force. This included a barrage balloon factory and much else. All of that needs not just noting but also needs a lot of real research.

Cemeteries of course count as open space and contain the graves of many industrialists. The new book has an interesting story about the gardens of St Mary Magdalene Church in Woolwich, once the churchyard, and how graves were cleared of their stones and in order to make public open space. Hidden in the graveyard is the elaborate memorial to Woolwich boxer Tom Cribb.

What Candy Blackham may not have known was that there was another rescue mission in that graveyard, which was to find and preserve the gravestone of Woolwich born engineer Henry Maudslay- and that really is on my list to write up . We need to understand  why Maudslay is so important,  much more so than Tom Cribb if you don’t mind me saying so.  In all the stained glass windows in Woolwich Town Hall only one of the numerous important engineers from Woolwich is depicted - and that’s Henry Maudslay.

Now looking at sites which were once industrial but are now parks or gardens there are a vast number which were quarries and  chalk pits. It’s such a big subject I think I will do a special article about them. I also think I ought to do a separate article about some of the military sites which are nNow Parks and Gardens, I realise it’s difficult to argue that thr military aree industrial but there are a number of manufacturing sites as well,. It is a very very big subject particularly once we start looking at the role of the Royal Arsenal. There are a number of ‘tumps’which are now green and in leisue use.

I’ll have to choose one for next week!

 

IKEA CAR PARK - SOUTH MET GAS SPORTS

 

I see from various online newspages and blogs that the Council Planning Committee has decided to allow flats to be  built on the site which has been used in recent years as the car park for the Ikea store in East Greenwich.   It has been a car park for some time although before IKEA was built it wasn’t tied  to any particular shop . I guess some of us will remember when the ‘Teletubby’ Sainsbury’s was on that site but they didn’t manage the car park – that was down to a difficult to contact agency. The result was that that car park was the  centre of most of the crime in East Greenwich -  I remember only too well the police reports of this major crime spot for the area But I shouldn’t run ahead with the past of that particular piece of land.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the history and background to the site of Ikea and its car park. So, first, more generally,  let's get back  to the 1960s - when I first moved to Greenwich. It was very different then when there were a lot of very big factories in Charlton, and on the Peninsula.  Most  of them had their own sports clubs where workers could go and play football , or whatever. These  clubs were a major social feature and  as well as a huge range of sports many of them held had weekly socials and dances. There were many exchanges with workers from other factories –sporting league tables as well as lively social events.

All round the area there were sports fields - large green spaces in between the factories and the houses - something we never hear about when people talk about the horrors of the industrial  past.. Some of these still exist – one of  them is  Siemens old sports field  -now very much used as the extension car park for Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlton Park Lane.. Usually these sports fields would have more space than that taken up by football pitches and that would be let out to workers as allotments. I could go on about the whole allotment movement at length and we do have few left - but most of the land which was used by local people to grow their own vegetables is now under supermarkets and warehousing.  A loss not only of cheap fresh food but also of fresh air and exercise.

So let's look at the background for this piece of land which is now the IKEA car park. On the oldest maps I have it is just a piece of marshland in Horn Lane – the old road , still there, parallel to Peartree Way. In the 1890s it was part of an ‘ammunition works’ which I guess is the Dyer and Robson firework factory which I've written a bit about in the last few weeks.

In the 1890s the gas works was extended at its southern end by the purchase from Frank Hills’ descendants of his chemical works to be their Phoenix Wharf. In 1902 a further stretch of land was added specifically for allotments  and  “organised recreational games’ to be managed by the Council of the Metrogas Amateur Sports Association. This was then the new sports ground for employees at East Greenwich Gasworks.  South Met Gas Co’s older works already had their own arrangements -for instance the West Greenwich gas works in Thames Street used the gas holder site in Roan Street for sports. All South Met’s gas works had an ‘institute’  where various well appointed recreational facilities were available to workers. The East Greenwich Institute was however nowhere near the new sports ground but close to the main entrance in Grenfell Street.

Metrogas Sports Association undertook some activities as an ‘umbrella’ organisation covering all works . For instance In 1902 they held their Annual Dinner in a Fleet Street Hotel. Around the same time they made the arrangements for an boxing tournament against the north London  gas works embodied in the Gas Light & Coke Sports Association. This north London club’s football team was also to meet a team drawn from South Met. gasworks. Metrogas also selected cross-country runners for the ‘London Business Houses Senior Team Championship’.

The new ground was laid out with young trees in Horn Lane  ‘which will prove a pleasing feature on one of the best-appointed grounds in South London”. Sadly the first sports day held at the new ground was a ‘washout. ‘Excellent arrangements’ had been made but “shortly after the commencement of racing a thunderstorm put an end to proceedings. They had to run the race programme  again a week later.

Early reports of events at East Greenwich Sports ground always seem to start with a report on the weather and sadly too often it appears to be too wet and the ground was too marshy underfoot.  These early  reports seem to be only of races -  sprinting, walking and cycling;  sometimes obstacles.  There is no mention initially of organised games like football, bowls or cricket.  Note however the walking races; something which seems not to happen now. There was nothing like a speed walker,with elbows tucked in and Blackheath rather specialised in them.

Early  on there are pictures of an otherwise explained event known as “Pork Pie Sunday” but generally events settled down, predictably,  to athletics and team games involving opponents from other local factories. It was however to be taken very seriously because  ‘There is a mistaken idea that .. children have a right to play aimlessly on tlic ground while authorised matches are in progress. “ Thus anything lighthearted or untidy was to be discouraged and I will refrain from mentioning the photograph I have seen, taken in the 1980s, which shows a well known local personality, aged 8, running round the field unsupervised ... tut tut.................

There were however a number of formal events –dinners and the like  -where various men congratulated each other.   – I note an earlier event where foreign visitors were entertained in a marquee to a celebratory lunch –one where the toasts between host and guests took what time than the tour of the works

Produce from the allotments featured in an annual ‘flower show’ held at the Institute. The judges ‘spoke very highly of the flowers and vegetables ..  an excellent show of begonias... a large stall, well filled with flowers and vegetables ... to be sold for the benefit of the Seamen's  Hospital’. Prizes went to the cricket team and the photographic section. Later,in the evening, an “excel!ent entertainment was given by the "Checks" Concert Party” with dancing on the lawn and music from “the Co-Partnership Institute Orchestra”.

As time went on there were regular flower and vegetable shows with a huge list of prizes for vegetables in various categories -rooted beetroot-. ..Cabbage..-IMarrows.-.. beans ... -climber peaa - .. dwarf peas.-..  Shallots. .. parsnip-- and so on.

In January 1997 there was some excitement on the sports ground with what I suppose we should describe as ‘an air crash’.  This was a de Havilland biplane piloted by a Roland Watson of the London Light Aeroplane Club at Hendon. Mr Watson explained that he had been flying around for about an hour trying to return to theairfieldathe Stagg Lane  -but generally being lost because there seemed to be some fog around. He had searched cod a place to land and saw the playing  field and tried to land . Flying low over the site the they machine hit a football boundary post’  and his plane hit the ground and turned over. This was lucky because it meant Mr Watson wasn't hurt at all, got out and walked away.

I'm sure there are many stories to tell about events on the sports ground at East Greenwich over the next 50 of years or so. The most recent press story I can find which relates to the ground is from 1982 . This was a prize giving event which SEGAS apprentices from all over southern England attended. - The most recent sporting event mentioned is from 1963 where what appears to be a County cricket match was held there between the Kent Second Eleven and the Worceseter County side –which says a lot about the standard of facilities there.. 

I assume that the sports club closed with the gasworks although I don’t know that – perhaps an ‘Old Flame’ wil enlighten me.  I am very aware that Metrogas still exists and has a big sports field over in Eltham.

I remember the East Greenwich field sitting there unused with no sign of sports equipment or allotments. There was a strange pavilion building in the middle which was used as offices by a number of regeneration agencies throughout the 1990s –I’m sorry  I have’ t the space here to go into all that - perhaps another time?

Because the site had been part of the gas works was deemed polluted and therefore not acceptable to be used for anything other than commercial buildings. So it was all tarmaced over as a car park . I am sure people will remember the ‘Teletubby Sainsbury's’  which was built there and which was supposed to be a revolution “the building design incorporated environmentally conscious features and gained critical acclaim, being shortlisted for the 2000  Stirling Prize. It was billed as "the first Green supermarket in the world"  Then how it was pulled down after just fourteen years–closely followed by the death of the architect, Paul Hinkin of Chetwood Associates. But that s all another story. 

Then IKEA was built on the site – with its concrete roof garden by way of compensation.

I am going to say and say it once that there were lots of sites like this all over Greenwich - green spaces which were cared for. They provided a space for sporting activities of all sorts - not just football and racing but bowls, and boxing and much else. There were dances and flower shows,. and  a whole social life. Something for everybody.  I remember my disabled Dad running socials at his print works sports club down in Gravesend.  They also provided somewhere where people grew fresh vegetables  --getting an allotment today is virtually impossible . We all moan about young people with their noses permanently in their phones – but really – what else are they to do??