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 17th 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 17th century and by the 18th 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 16th 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 19th 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!
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