Albion Sugar

 

Last week I said that I would take some of the items from the 1982 book‘ The Industrial
Archaeology of South-East London’, and see what has happened to the sites chosen in 1982 over the past forty years - and tell you a bit about them.up  Doing it alphabetically -  if I start at ‘A’ I have a site which I will call ‘Albion’ (you will understand why in a moment) but which in SELIAis called ‘Rigging House, Sail Loft and Engine Store’ and it was on Woolwich Dockyard site.

So, what does SELIA say about it? It says a lot. Most of the entries in SELIA are just one or two lines. This one is quite lengthy.

“This building is most important one remaining on the site and is currently in use as a glucose factory.Originally built between 1842 and 1846… the riverside slipway was covered over in 1857 … it presents a brick façade to the river … the rear building is a remarkably modern appearance even though dating from the mid-19^th century …. It is a four-storey structure of cast-iron load bearing sections …  work is by H. & M.D.Grissell of the Regent’s Canal Ironworks. London’.

In order to find out more I went to something which was not available to SELIA’s authors –‘The Survey of London, Woolwich’. A book which came out in 2012 following a great deal of research by Peter Guillory and his team as part of this University College based long-term study of London parishes –the series began in 1894and has since moved on to Wapping, and, I think, Chelsea. Anyway if there is anything to be known at all about any building in Woolwich which might be interesting – well, here is where to find out.

In the chapter on Woolwich Dockyard the Survey says: In 1850–1 substantial buildings were erected to ... provide a rigging house and an engine store… linked in 1856 by the addition of a range .. to provide workshops for riggers and sailmakers. This was, deceptively, given an arcaded brick façade to the river, but it was otherwise a cast-iron framed structure, probably designed by Col. Greene. (It was) a significant precursor of a building that has great renown in structural history, Greene’s Sheerness Boat Store.

So – what is the ‘Boat Store’ at Sheerness and why is it so important? There are lots of historic buildings’ people going on about it and its poor condition. 

Here’s Historic England: “Since the destruction of the Crystal Palace and the first South Kensington Museum, this is the earliest surviving example of a multi-storey iron-frame and panel structure. Its condition is rapidly deteriorating.”

Here’s The Victorian Society: one of the Top Ten Most Endangered Victorian and Edwardian Buildings in England and Wales. …..the all-metal frame, made rigid by portal bracing, was pioneering. It was subsequently adopted by early skyscrapers in Chicago, and universally used for modern steel-framed buildings.

Oh! Right!  So what happened to the Woolwich Dockyard Building. Let us guess? – Oh, it was demolished in 1981!But before that it did have another life for the army’s Inspection Department -  but,remember, I was going to call this site’Albion’

One day in 1966 my friend, Sylv, said her husband, Cliff, had got a new job.  He had been working at Tunnel Glucose in Greenwich and was now at somewhere called ‘Albion’.  I had no idea where that was but, as it happens, I now have a pamphlet dating from 1929 about the Albion S is ugar works on the Woolwich Dockyard site

Now, before people start saying that sugar manufacture must mean thereis a slavery link, the answer is ‘I don’t know’. I know that Tunnel Glucose used maize to make sugars but the Albion booklet says that they had ‘raw sugar’  delivered.  I also know that many works used beet sugar rather than imported cane.  Anyway I would be grateful for anyone who could tell me if they know what raw materials Albion used and where it came from.

Albion were set up by Gillman and Spencer, Bermondsey cereal millers,to make invert sugar for the brewing industry. They were very pleased to find the old rigging store and they wanted to build there an invert sugar plant to the most modern designs.Albion Wharf was ideal. They said thebuilding was a ‘thoroughly substantial structure’, with a river frontage and a ‘granite wall 400 feet long which no private concern could afford to build today'. There was an 18 feet berth from which goods could be taken direct to the warehouse and an inletfrom the Thames ‘was a means of supplying water in unlimited quantities’.  There was a private railway siding connected to the main lines ‘available for speedy and economical work’and ‘a splendid road skirts the premises’.  They had found a good Works Manager in Mr Thomas Dick ‘there is no better-known figure in the sugar industry’ coming to London from Greenock. And this booklet has a whole set of really great pictures – far too many to show here, sadly.

Albion eventually closed in 1979 although there are had been extensions - a large maize silo was added in 1962, and there were further improvements later.  When they went the site was cleared.

The site is now all housing and I understand it was built by Fairview homes I am pretty sure it is the area which is now along Harbinger Road and I don’t  know what the ‘Harbinger’ name is al about except that it describes somebody who comes from Harlingen in the Netherlands. Perhaps somebody knows why those very names were used.

I’m sure that’s a very nice with wonderful views of the river and I will guess that hardly anybody who lives there knows anything about the rigging store or the glucose refinery.