Woolwich Dockyard

So, as well as the Royal Dockyard in Deptford, there was another Royal Dockyard in Woolwich. Ships were used to fulfil the ambitions of various kings throughout the medieval and Tudor periods - they needed a Navy.  Henry VIII energetic and ambitious wanted to show foreigners how powerful he was. His father had begun by setting up dockyards at Portsmouth and Deptford.[1]

In 1512 Henry VIII commissioned his flagship, Henri Grace a Dieu, a warship of unparalleled size which was built on what later became Gun Wharf, east of Bell Water Gate near. This earliest site had rudimentary dry docks, a storehouse and other buildings. By 1540 a new Dockyard had been built further to the west where two acres were purchased as ‘Boughtons Dockys lyeing togyther envyronned wyth a Sandehill.”  This was two docks on a previously quarried tract of sand close to the churchyard’. Elizabeth visited in 1559.[2]

Woolwich was to become one of the most important shipyards of 17th century Europe. In large measure this was due to significant improvements, under way by 1607. Here the 17th century’s most prestigious sea-going ship, the Sovereign of the Seas, was built in 1634–7.  Throughout the 17th century the dockyard expanded and got busier and busier.  The dry docks were rebuilt, there were new slipways, sawpits, forges and a mast house. There were houses for the senior officers of the yard.[3] The purchase of more land  in 1639; allowed for  a new main entrance. The First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–4 impelled further improvement.

In the 18th century the site and its workforce doubled in size, and between 1700 and 1710 more ships launched from Woolwich than from any other English yard. Three new slips were built and a new mast pond, mast houses, boatsheds, a rigging house as well as a sail loft and officers' houses were built in the 1750s.[4] In the 1780s it was almost doubled in size with open ground used for storage of timber, and rows of seasoning sheds. There were two new mast ponds, offices and a new main gateway.

In 1814 Woolwich launched the first-rate ship Nelson, a second rate, eight third rates, and some fifteen smaller vessels, including frigates and sloops. Industriousness on this scale demanded a huge workforce.

In 1814 a large smithery was added and in the 1820s two new covered slips.  Part of the river wall was rebuilt in brick and the two dry docks. There was a steam-powered saw mill, a new workshop with steam hammers and a hydraulic chain and cable testing department.[5] From 1831, Woolwich became a specialist yard for marine steam engineering and a boiler shop, foundries for brass, copper and iron work, and an erecting shop were added. The dockyard expanded through the 1850s with a new rolling mill, and armour plate departments as well as a new sail loft and rigging store.[6]

However naval ships were fast outgrowing the yard, and there were problems of silt in the River and despite dredging many ships were having problems.

The Dockyard eventually closed in 1869 to great unemployment and distress in Woolwich.[7]

After closure the site remained in military use being used by the stores department based in the Arsenal and a number of offices were established on the site in connection with military and other official’ uses.  There were numerous workshops and a rail system which came in from the south-eastern main line.[8] There was a tunnel under Woolwich Church Street for the railway to access the site – which is now a pedestrian underpass which is decorated by a mural referencing the dockyard.[9]

In 1936 nine acres of the steam factory area were sold to the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society who established a factory to support their activities. It became an important regional distribution centre but by 1984 was no longer used. [10]

In the 1960s it became clear that the older eastern dockyard area would become vacant and the London Borough of Greenwich acquired it for housing and the Woolwich Dockyard Estate was built in the 1970s. The 1780s Clock house’ remains as a community centre, the gatehouse has intermittently been a pub and there are some cannon on the riverside walk.  There are some substantial remnants from the steam factory[11], and the former dry docks and two shipbuilding slips are linked by a long river wall. The present entrance gate from Woolwich Church Street, aligned on axis with the offices, was probably formed in 1784.

The Woolwich Dockyard School for Apprentices opened in 1844 in the wake of a Dockyard education scheme that the Admiralty had introduced the previous year. The Co-op Chapel of Rest was built as the first school for apprentices employed in the Dockyard. The gateway which lies next to it was built as the ‘west’ gate to the Dockyard specifically for the steam factory, A police station and other buildings connected to the police were built on the right side as you go in

In 1929 the area became part of the Co-op’s Commonwealth Buildings.  Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society had nine acres here with frontages to Woolwich Church Street as far as Warspite Road.

 ‘Rigging House, Sail Loft and Engine Store’ was on Woolwich Dockyard site and later in use as a glucose factory. Originally built between 1842 and 1846 by H. & M.D.Grissell of the Regent’s Canal Ironworks. London’. “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.”[12] This was later demolished for housing

One of the most defining features of an industrial landscape before the 1960s was the number of chimneys. These were mostly smokestacks coming from boilers. Woolwich has an outstanding preserved chimney.  This still stands in Woolwich Church Street – often with a ‘To Let’ sign on it.  I O was built probably in the early 1840s by ‘a specialist chimney engineer, now anonymous’.  It vented all the flues for the Woolwich Dockyard Steam factory.   It was reduced in height later to about 180 ft. and it was later used by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society when they had the site in the 20th century. [13]

The iron framed steam powered anchor forge or smithery, was erected in 1814–17.It  was designed by John Rennie and equipped to make the largest anchors and other ironwork. It was famous for being the first industrial use of steam power in a naval site,the first machine-driven facility of its kind in England. Boulton & Watt supplied the engines – two in 1814 to power two forge hammers, a drilling and boring machine, and a lathe, and for blowing forty-two fires, and another in 1815 as a second forge engine. The building was taken down in 1973–4 and re-erected at the Blists Hill site of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.[14] 

 

Several metal roofs that covered shipbuilding slips at Woolwich in the 1840s and 1850s were taken apart after the dockyard closed. They were then rebuilt at Chaham Dockyard.[15] The earliest was a still extant iron slip cover built over Woolwich No. 6 Slip in 1844–45, and in 1880 moved to Chatham Dockyard, to be a machine shop.[16] It is thought to be one of the oldest surviving examples of a wide metal frame structure.[17] Another, built in 1846–47, was moved to Chatham in 1876 and became the main boiler shop for their steam factory. It was restored in 2002–03 and is the mall of Chatham's Dockside Outlet shopping centre.[18] A third slip cover, built in 1856–58, was moved to Chatham in the 1870s. It became the main Engineering Factory of the dockyard, but was taken down around 1990.[19]

 

The former Dockyard Church was rebuilt in Eltham in 1932 as St Barnabas's Church. It was and built between 1856 and 1858, For 74 years it stood just inside the main gate. It could seat 1,200 people and was for the officers, workers, and Royal Marines. moved to Eltham Well Hall in 1932. The church was bombed in 1944 and was restored in 1956 with a new roof and remodelled interior.[20]

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[1] https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/royal-history/england-royal-dockyards

[2] Survey of London. Vol.48. Woolwich 2012 UCL Bartlett  School of Architecture

[3] Banbury. Shipbuilders of the Thames and Medway

[4] Survey Woolwich

[5] Survey

[6] Survey

[7] Survey

[8] Survey Woolwich

[9] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015_London-Woolwich,_Kingsman_Parade_05.JPG

[10] Survey

[11] https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1288807

[12] Historic England

[13] Survey

[14] New Civil Engineer. 1974

[15] Hawkins, Butler & Skelton. Iron slip cover roofs of Deptford & Woolwich Royal Dockyards 1844-1855. London's Industrial Archaeology No 13 2015

[16] Sutherland, R.J.M. Shipbuilding and the Long-Span Roof: Journal of the Newcomen Society, London, 1989.

[17] Hawkins, Butler & Skelton. Iron slip cover roofs of Deptford & Woolwich Royal Dockyards 1844-1855. London's Industrial Archaeology No 13 2015

[18] Hawkins, Butler & Skelton. Iron slip cover roofs of Deptford & Woolwich Royal Dockyards 1844-1855. London's Industrial Archaeology No 13 2015

[19] Hawkins, Butler & Skelton. Iron slip cover roofs of Deptford & Woolwich Royal Dockyards 1844-1855. London's Industrial Archaeology No 13 2015

[20] https://www.achurchnearyou.com/church/635 if you cheque the back door of the Kitchener I need the left to do the smell gone Because I’ve done all this all over with this Most of the floor over really doesn’t **** think I know he doesn’t/