What is left from Woolwich Dockyard

 

Last week’s article was about the basic history of the Royal Dockyard in Deptford and I thought I should also do something about the Royal Dockyard in Woolwich - but I’ve done several articles about that in the past with quite a bit of the background history.  Perhaps I should look more generally at what actual remains there are of the Royal Dockyards – things we can go and see.

In the Deptford Dockyard article I did mention some of the things left at Deptford - and I’m sure there is lots of things there that I just don’t know about.  It seems we have this huge site which is still just as the archaeologists left some years ago – please tell me if I am wrong! The one Interesting building still there is ’Olympia’. But this article is going to be about Woolwich so I’ll leave Deptford for now.

There are some remains of Woolwich dockyard which are no longer in Woolwich. I mentioned above the Olympia warehouse at Deptford and it was one of the huge roofs which were built to cover shipbuilding slips. I hope sometime to do a whole article about them because there’s been quite a bit written up about them in industrial history and shipbuilding journals. There were several at Woolwich and the survivors of them are those that were moved to Chatham Dockyard in the late 19^th century.

One of the ones which went to Chatham has gone but there are still two very much in use there. The first was innovative 6 Slip erected at Woolwich, in 1844–52  thought to be the oldest surviving example of wide metal frame structure. It was moved in 1880 to Chatham where it was adapted for use as  a machine shop.  Currently, it's an empty, skeletal structure awaiting redevelopment. The other iron-framed slip cover at Woolwich was built in 1847–8 and was ‘wider in span, more robust and about double the price’. It was moved to Chatham in 1876 to become their main boiler shop. It’s since been restored and you can go and see it as the Mall of Chatham Dockside Outlet Shopping Centre

Even further away from Woolwich than Chatham is Blists Hill Museum in Shropshire. That is where part of the Anchor Forge or Smithery from Woolwich Dockyard is.  It was built in 1814 and designed by John Rennie – for the first industrial use of steam power  for the Navy, and where the largest ironwork could be made plus the manufacture and assembly of steam engines. The centre section is now at Blists Hill Museum as part of am local ironworks exhibit. I am getting together information about how it got there and I promise I will write this all up here soon. And ‘thank you’ to  those people who have already given me information. What I would really like to know is who funded it - it must have cost a lot of money to move all that stuff up to Shropshire

So what remains on site from the Dockyard in Woolwich?  Start at the Ferry Roundabout.

Going from Woolwich Ferry in the direction of Greenwich the road passes a very long wall on the right which dates from 1833. The first section of the Dockyard is on our right as the road - Woolwich Church Street  - leaves the Woolwich Ferry roundabout. The oldest part of the Dockyard is on the right and I will come back to that at the end of this article.

On our left is The Mitre pub and a path which leads steeply up to the churchyard and St Mary Magdalene church is at the top.  There is a brick retaining wall apparently holding up the land between the road and the churchyard. The wall slopes down to ground level at the corner of Church Hill.   Cross over the road to the Dockyard wall - on the other side of the wall, is Maud Cashman Way but it is so far below us that down there are two storey houses with roofs lower than Woolwich Church Street. 

Once there must have been a continuous hillside between the church and the river – but now there is just Woolwich Church Street and empty space! The Survey of London, Woolwich volume, says that the Dockyard was originally built in a quarry and they give quite a bit of detail.  So, perhaps that empy space is the earliest industrial relic of the dockyard! I must add it to my list of quarry remains along the Riverside between Greenwich and Woolwich!

Along the road is th4 junction with Francis Street opposite what became the main gate to the Dockyard. This is a grandish gateway with two stone piers on either side with an anchor and rope carving on them; obviously original. Once inside the gateway,on the right. are two buildings  - one of them was the Guard House built in 1788, with a pleasant looking loggia and it was originally a single storey building. Next to it is the Master Warden’s Lodgings built at around the same time. In 1980s they were together turned into a pub called ‘The Gatehouse’. That has now gone - and I’m not going to speculate why – and they have now been converted into flats.

Once through the gates the Clockhouse Community Centre is straight ahead. It was an office block – Woolwich Dockyard never had an Admiral Superintendent! - built in the 1780s. I did a long article about it here last year.

On the riverside the granite River Wall goes all the way along the length of the Dockyard from Trinity Stairs in Warspite Street to the Ferry Approach.  On the Riverside past the Clockhouse is a gun emplacement built in 1835 and a central landing place built in 1847. There’s a circular platform as a turntable for naval guns - made of course - in the Royal Arsenal. They were thus enabled to turn – but today they are pointing at the London Borough of Newham. 

Nearby and also on the riverside are 19^th century stepped docks of granite, built themselves on the site of earlier docks. These are the earliest extant dry docks associated with the steam navy. Modern steel caissons seal both docks, which are permanently flooded. They are, or were, used for fishing and recreation as the South-East London Aquatic Centre. I would be interested to know more about their current status and use.

Back in Church Street and further on from the ferry roundabout we go past the spectacular chimney and we should be very pleased that it still exists.  It was probably built in the early 1840s by a specialist engineer and it vented all the flues for the Woolwich Naval Steam Factory and in the 20^th century by the Royal Arsenal Co-op Commonwealth Buildings, on site from the 1920s.  It is 180 feet tall, reduced from 208 feet, and octagonal in stock brick.  There are said to be underground tunnels connecting it to the River.

Even further down Church Street there is another gateway into the Dockyard site.  This was the entrance to the Steam factory – to build steamships when the Navy realised that the great wooden sailing ships of Nelson’s Navy needed to be replaced. The gateway was later used as the entrance to the Co-op’s  Commonwealth Buildings factory and the decoration on the gates here is thought to have been put there by the Co-op.  Alongside the gate are the buildings now used by the Co-op funeral department but which were built as the Apprentice School. I did a special article about them last year. On the other side of the gateway is what was the Police building  of 1843.

Beyond them are many buildings of the steam factory which still survive several of which were also used by the Co-op as part of Commonwealth Buildings. If you wander around this area you will see many 19^th century buildings and there is a great deal of detail in the various listings documents and in the Survey of London, Woolwich.  Some of them were built by Royal Engineers.  One of these is the concrete Woolwich Store Warehouse built in 1914 when the dockyard was being used as a military store depot.

Now there are three more things to look at. If we go back to the Woolwich Ferry there are a number of new blocks of flats on a site called Mast Quay – these are the flats which have recently been the subject of some publicity by Greenwich Council. This is the oldest part of the dockyard but also the part most recently used for shipbuilding.  There are two Shipbuilding Slips which are now a feature of the housing estate. They are both replacements for older slips and they are probably very much older than anything else here. No 6 slip was Lengthened and straightened in 1844-6 and has been used most recently, in the 1970s, for the building of some fairly substantial  ships by Cubow – again this is a subject I have written about here last year and the works of the Cunis family here,

Now that leaves us with two more Dockyard relics although neither are particularly maritime. One of them is the old railway tunnel which goes under Church Street from Prospect Vale, near Woolwich Dockyard Station. It is now a pedestrian subway under the main road. It was built in the 1870s when the Dockyard was being used as a military store depot to connect the yard with the North Kent Line.  There is also a tiny bit of line left in a completely derelict condition going from the main line towards Prospect Vale in the adventure playground.

There is another subway under Church Street going to the shops in Kingsman Parade. This was built for the residents in the – then new – Dockyard Estate and has murals by Greenwich Mural workshop supervised by the, sadly late, Steve Lobb.

The other thing is a building which is still in use but not on site – and even more surprising. This is St Bartholomew’s church in Rochester Way, Eltham, at the Well Hall roundabout. This church, by Sir George Gilbert Scott, was once down by the main gate of the Dockyard. It was rebuilt in 1932. It’s not as it was originally because it was bombed quite badly in 1944 and restored in the 1950s.  But it’s still in use – although I don’t know if it includes any reference to maritime construction.