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Sailing barges

 

One reason why I have been doing so many articles about Greenwich shipbuilding is that I hope soon to produce a booklet about it and so it’s all in my head at the moment.  I always hope that these articles get read by people who will get back to me if they think I’ve got it wrong.    There is one  subject I’ve always been very nervous writing about - because I know there are lots of  enthusiasts out there – and that is the red sailed sailing barges which all over the River when I was a girl.

I first started writing about Greenwich industry in the 1990s and often sent articles off to Bygone Kent for publication.    Bygone Kent was then edited by the late Pat O’Driscoll.  Pat had worked on a   sailing barge as a young woman and had then been a journalist specialising in articles about the River and had edited various publications on barges. When I sent in my articles about Greenwich industry and  Greenwich history generally she usually agreed them and they went straight off to the printer.  However if  they were about sailing barges she didn’t trust a word I  wrote and off  my article would go to one of the experts down in Kent somewhere and she would get them to rewrite it. Things are different now but I still feel that writing an article on sailing barges is a bit risky.

Clearly there have been barges of one sort or another on the River since considerably before the Stone Age but we can only experience for ourselves barges which date from the late 19^th and early 20^th  centuries.     There was a time, which I can remember as a child in the 1940s, when you could see sailing barges stacked in the river at Gravesend, all of them still at work. In the late 1960s in Greenwich I met men who were still working barges on the River . So these sailing vessels survived at work over hundred years after powered vessels had become normal on the River. 

These barges were immensely practical and dealt with most of the heavy haulage of London river and beyond – carrying the bricks,  the corn,  the rubbish  and everything else, and doing it cheaply and reliably. This was a large industry of haulage operators  many of whom we’re very wealthy.

Most of the barges could go into coastal waters - in fact have seen websites complaining that since they are describing river boats they can’t include Thames sailing barges because  they were designed to go out of  the estuary to the south and east coasts. They were flat bottomed to allow them to use the small creeks around the estuary in order to serve the many mills and other industrial sites on them.  They needed to be easily manoeuvrable and to be able to function with a minimal staff. 

Being powered by the wind made them even cheaper to run -  but I will leave  the technicalities of the sails to the many websites which describe them. However the sails and masts had to be able to come down quickly if the barge was expected to go up river – perhaps to industrial areas like Brentford and beyond - and they had to be able to get under many bridges to get there. I remember meeting a chap who as a boy had done that trip regularly -  but, he said, ‘ all we had to eat was Campbell’s Soup’.

Greenwich was  a centre for building these barges. Many of the articles I’ve written in the past mention some of these sites. One major boat building site was Pipers which was on what is now Riverside Gardens and Piper specialised in  very high quality racing barges.  Nearby them were several other  barge  builders -  Hughes on Providence Wharf and also Badcock.   Before them there  had been many others about who we know very little. There was also Shrubsall right the way down the Peninsular at Point Wharf -  down near  where the Bullet from a Shooting Star sculpture is now. Edmunds  were also in the area. Then, right up where  the Ecology Centre is now, was Norton’s.

 Perhaps I should also explain about the barge racing which was a major feature in the design of some of the barges built in Greenwich.  These races had begun in the late 19^th century when some of the big operating companies and their customers put up quite large sums of money as prizes for race winning barges – and some barges were built with race wins in mind rather than the haulage industry. The races still take place  but the number of participants today is restricted to those few remaining barges which are capable of  taking part.

The fact that they took part in races also says something about their speed. For many of these barges  it’s wasn’t just about getting the cargoes around but that they could move quickly if necessary - of course if the wind was right.  I’m not going to claim that I’ve ever had much to do with the world of sailing barges – and perhaps I’m too easily impressed - but in the 1970s I went on holiday on Xylonite. She is a steel barge named for one of the earliest plastics. We were in Faversham and one day her owner/operator said we would go to Harwich.  Now,  Faversham to Harwich is not an easy journey by road or rail but it turns out to be quite straightforward by water. You get out  into the estuary, turn left and then straight up the coast to Harwich. So we went out into the estuary and he turned into the wind to go north up the coast -  and she just took off!  This fairly plain vessel went over on her side and rocketed up to Harwich...and,  as I said, she isn’t one of the fastest barges. Impressive.

There are numerous websites giving vast amounts of detail on sailing barges. I was particularly taken with an article  on shipping wonders of the world (https://www.shippingwondersoftheworld.com/thames_barges.html). It describes barges  at the time when they were still operating  commercially. I found it very interesting and it describes in detail the sailing rig and why it works, as well as other construction issues  which I can’t possibly begin to even describe.

 However we are looking at barges built in Greenwich and there are quite a lot of them, very, very many that we know nothing about.  I thought I would pick on a couple of them and just described  a small amount about  them.  As far as I know the only Greenwich built barge afloat is Orinoco which I wrote about last week.

The most famous Greenwich barge - in fact, some people will claim, the most famous of all barges was Giralda built by Piper’s in 1897 as a racing barge and using all sorts of special design features.  Of course the race organisers expected the racing barges to be able to prove that they could also carry all the bricks and rubbish and stuff up and down the river like all the other barges. Giralda was never actually good at that but she was extremely good at winning races.  Enthusiast web sites give details of her designers and of the various men who commanded her during races.  And also of her really rather ignominious later career.

Another famous Greenwich  built barge and race winner was  Veronica built at Shrubsalls  in 1906 and eventually hulked  in 1976. There were many details about her and some relics at the Dolphin Sailing Barge Museum in Sittingbourne.   The museum had closed down and I’m not sure if they have ever reopened - I suspect not.  I don’t know what  has happened to the exhibits and pieces of barges like Veronica.  I understand that her mast is (or was) holding up the roof at Gravesend’s Riverview Park Library.  She was hulked - that means left to rot - down on the mud  flats  on the river Swale, near the crossing over onto the Isle of Sheppey.

I remember going to a Docklands History group back in the early 1980s where the most unlikely people were all claiming that they owned various of these abandoned vessels. They  all said they were going to restore them even though many of the  barges consisted of no more than a few planks  sticking out of the mud and  I am- sure that none of them ever sailed again,

 When I first started writing about sailing barges for my first book about the Greenwich Peninsula there were still two Greenwich barges, made by Pipers, afloat.   One of these was the James Piper. Alan and I went up to see her where she was still moored at Chiswick Mall and used as someone’s home. I thought she was most impressive and the vast space of the living room accommodation was amazing. However she has since been broken up and there is a very upsetting and brutal film on YouTube of this being done . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqp03pwG4Vo

The other barge was Wilfred which had being used for many years  as a Spanish restaurant on the Embankment. Only last year, in January 2024, she capsized in a storm  and  was raised but then towed away.   There are websites which say she has gone to be broken up but I am not sure  exactly what has happened to her.

 Thames sailing barges are an interesting and very involved subject.  There’s at least one replica barge built a few years ago – others use some of the ideas behind them when they were  commonly operational.   There is an awful lot written about them which I could only be begin to vaguely touch on here.  Not only has a lot been written about their operation but there are huge numbers of enthusiasts and of course many of the people who operate the few that are left are very much involved in promoting them.   Whatever I say here, quite honestly, is very inadequate.

BARGES AND LIGHTERS

 

Last week I wrote about the Rennie brothers shipbuilding business on Dreadnought Wharf in Greenwich and  said how difficult it was to research this clearly important company . Equally difficult are the many small ship and boat building business  on the Greenwich Riverside about which little is known and who appear in few written records – a single directory entry, payments in official records, or a brief mention in somebody else’s history.

In various articles and books I’ve  described as far as I can some of the big boat builders with sites in Greenwich –  and some of this article will be about the builders of famous and remarkable sailing I to them in a minute. There were however many other builders and they built very small boats and the humble lighter – the engineless  ‘dumb’  barges which carried everything and anything around the River and the docks. There must have been many thousands of lighters in the Port of London and someone had to build them.

The only reference I have ever seen to the building lighters is a photograph of one being launched from Pipers’ yard in East Greenwich but Pipers was hardly a small firm being the premier sailing barge builders on the river and the sort of works which always had photographs taken of their activities

There are plenty of websites describing lighters and I see that that the London Canal Museum had the exhibition about their history earlier this year.  The National Maritime Museum website points out the difference between lightermen and watermen and I wrote a bit about Watermen in articles about watermen’s stairs -  (which reminds me I still have a number of those that I’ve never written up).Anyway the NMM website explains that lightermen were concerned with the transport of  goods whereas watermen took people. The name lighter is always said to come from the fact that by removing goods from cargo ships they became lighter –and some claim a German adult source for the word

Over the past couple of days I’ve been reading a new book ‘Maritime Metropolis’ by Sarah Palmer and it’s talking about the Port of London before 1914. It takes  on all the big themes about the Port as well as the history of its management. It’s all about parliament and international trade and things like that.  It’s not going to mention although little companies but without them I don’t know where the big ones would be!  I’m very much enjoying reading the book, though.

To come back to all those little companies to those companies we see in directories. There were some on Deptford Creek and some along  what is now the area covered by Dreadnought Wharf and along the west bank of the Peninsula .They tend to be in offices buildings with some foreshore and they advertise lighterage and wharfage and in fact they provided services which kept the river industries moving – and surely many of them must still exist. I guess that a lot of them were much bigger organisations then we realise in their small office buildings. 

Dreadnought Wharf is now part of a walkway which goes along the Riverside and includes an area which was and still is called Wood Wharf .  There is a very interesting little book called ‘Wood Wharf’ by Ron Richards who talks some of the industries in that area. . He describes otherwise barely remembered businesses -  like the Bishop family who built barges and had a workshop and a sail making business here. He points out that in the mid 1970s there were still six barge repair yards along here before you reached the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

When I first met Ron he was working for a boat repair business called Pope and Bond who were based there on the actual Wood Wharf –as distinct from the road called ‘Wood Wharf’. They had been there only since 1967 and undertook boat and barge repair and were one of only a few such businesses left on the Thames – a vital facility for all craft using the River. They were carrying out contracts for the Greater London Council. Eventually they lost  a major contract and were forced to
close.  Ironically the Government had ‘safeguarded’ working wharves along  the River but had failed to do so for boat and barge repair works.There  was a huge effort made to save Wood  Wharf but it was soon and inevitably taken over by developers

But I wanted to return the builders  of the few remaining spritzel sailing barges – the ones which normally get all the attention. The only Greenwich built sailing barge which I am aware of still in sail  is Orinoco,  Check her out at https://www.facebook.com/SBOrinoco/?locale=en_GB,     An old friend of mine, Jim Hughes, who was a sailing barge  enthusiast had done a lot of research on Orinoco and was building a model of her. This was back in the 1990s.

Sadly Jim shad a stroke and a message was given to me that he wanted me to do something.  I managed to deduce from the few words he was able to say that he wanted me to see Orinoco then berthed at Hoo Marina.  So I went down to Hoo and took some photographs  - although as everybody knows I’m the world’s worst photographer!

When Jim died his widow ,  Elsie,- lent me a box of notes that he’d made of the background to Orinoco.  She had been built by members of the Hughes family (no relation to Jim) who had a boat repair and lighterage business on what was then called Providence Wharf, on the Greenwich Peninsula  -part of the area which is now Riverside Gardens. However it was not anything to do with the boat repair business which remained there until relatively recently.   Jim had done a lot of family history research into the Hughes family which I wrote up and sent to Bygone Kent for publication .  The editor then was the very wonderful Pat O’Driscoll, but she never published anything about sailing barges which I wrote without having it thoroughly inspected by one of the many enthusiasts she was in touch with.  However she eventually published the article with not too many changes.

But I soon discovered that Jim’s  research about the Hughes family’s past activities and work on Providence Wharf was only a small part of their story.  He did not know that they had moved  eventually to Dreadnought Wharf in succession to the Rennie Brothers, who I wrote about last week. There Augustus and Edmund Hughes changed the company name to the London and Tilbury Lighterage Company Limited’ and worked to carry out a wide range of river maintenance tasks. They did not restrict their work to the Thames or even to England. Reports say that they were dredging rivers and shallow seas in Argentina, Kuwait, Burma, Australia, and India –

The last family member who was involved in management of the company was Michael Hughes who died in 1976.  They merged with the construction giant RM.Douglas in 1991 and became Tilbury Douglas.  In 2001 they changed the name of the company to Interserve.  By then they had long left Dreadnought Wharf. The company was carrying out major construction projects worldwide -one. example is the Birmingham based National Exhibi I tion Centre but there were many more

Around 2020 The company began to experience financial difficulties and eventually went into  administration. As I understand it the Tilbury Douglas construction section is still going but the Interserve  parts of it have been closed down.  There are endless websites which describe the financial difficulties of the company as well as the past.

There are many other websites under the Interserve name and I am far from clear which of them refer to the ex Tilbury Lighterage business and which are something completely different. Very many of them are charitable and I am very aware that Interserve gave a great deal of its profits to various good causes and some of these may be among these websites.

One of these maybe  the environmental charity, Groundwork. I’m aware that Groundwork gave a considerable amount of money to keep the Greenwich Riverside Path in good order and I remember walking down the path with Groundwork officers who were making notes about work which needed being done .

I said at the beginning of this article that there were many small businesses along the Riverside in small and unpretentious offices offering services using their lighters and small boats and that they were probably a bit different from the big companies which built the spritzel sailing barges.  I think that the Hughes brothers are a good example of this. When they were on Providence Wharf and later Dreadnought Wharf who would have thought that they had this huge international business which was to become a leading operator in river services worldwide .

Rennie brothers shipbuilders at Dreadnought Wharf

 

I have been trying to put together information about Greenwich shipbuilders. There is one  important firm which I’ve never written about – that is the Rennie brothers, George and John Rennie’s works on Dreadnought Wharf, just up river f
rom Greenwich Pier – although I did write about their Deptford Creekside engineering works.

Writing up the two Greenwich sites has been an exercise in frustration and why I’ve delayed doing it for such a long time. There are so many questions about them which are going unanswered. Clearly this was an important and innovative company but trying to put together something coherent about them seems very difficult. There is too much information but in other ways not enough.  What I say about them is correct but I always feel there is a lot more which remains out of my reach.

The Rennie brothers were the sons of the great civil engineer John Rennie. In the 1790s he had moved to London where he set up his own engineering works at Blackfriars. He had two sons, George and John, who inherited his business and after his death remained in partnership as G. & J. Rennie, although each specialised in a different part of the business and as time went on the works continued under their children. They carried on using the Blackfriars works initially but set up an engineering works on Deptford Creek which extended eventually to another site at Dreadnought Wharf with a Thames frontage . Hopefully this article is about their works on Dreadnought Wharf  but  by the mid 19^th century there were a number of ‘Rennie’  shipbuilders around the country  - particularly in Scotland. This obviously makes more confusion only too likely.

I wrote about the Rennie works on Deptford Creek when I was looking at Creekside industries and in my book about Deptford Creek.  It was sited on the Greenwich bank close to the railway line and was a large engineering workshop making boilers and engines and perhaps some small boats. The date on  which the works opened is not clear and although they are said to have been there by the 1830s they are not shown as being liable for rates or even in occupation on the mid-1840s Greenwich Vestry. tithe map.  I also speculated that it seemed unlikely that ships of any size could be built that far up the Creek given its narrow width and fall of water at low tide

Their occupation of Dreadnought Wharf site seems initially to have been an extension of the Creekside works. Dreadnought was a part the stretch of Thames Riverside which is now called Dreadnought Walk. The site which is actually on the corner of the River Thames and the Creek was in the 19^th century the Phoenix Gas Works who owned much of the land which became Dreadnought Wharf. They had leased it in the 1850s for shipbuilding by William Joyce who had  two shipbuilding slips there and although he had died in 1856  his firm had continued until 1866. It maybe that that  the  Rennies were using some of Joyce’s slips before eventually taking over the entire site..

Rennie brothers were responsible for some important vessels -one of these was a very fast iron paddle steamer called ‘Queen’.  It has not been easy to find very much about this vessel except that the National Maritime Museum has a 19^th century model of it. One other .problem is that there were several vessels in this period called ‘Queen and many others called ‘Queen of  ...  this that  and the other’.

 The ‘Queen’ dated from 1842 which means it is extremely unlikely to have been built in Greenwich or at the Creekside Works. There is one online suggestion that it was built at Blackwall by Ditchburn and Mare. It is said to have had a particularly important engine and given that it was commissioned by Rennie, who were engine specialists, that makes sense - but another online source says it was engined by Penn!.  This is all very confusing and the confusion is not helped when every other paddle steamer built in that period  seems to be called ‘Queen -something or other’.  I assume that it was built twenty years before the Rennies took on Dreadnought Wharf as some sort of demonstration of a technology and it needs putting into that context - perhaps someone could enlighten me?

‘Queen’  was followed in 1846 by ‘Oberon’ one of three ‘packet boats’ built to ‘War Office specifications ‘of 300 horse- power, designed by the Navy Office’ for ‘use in the Ionian isles’  delivering mail. Clearly this indicates that the Rennies  had a viable shipbuilding capability. They had a big launch event for the ship at which  ‘Sir John Rennie took occasion to eulogise the astounding steamer-designing genius of the Surveyor’ .... ‘who, not at all ambitious of the honour, repudiated the supposed connection’. 

This lavish launch event was held at ‘the building-yard of Messrs. Rennie, the contractors’.  At a date in the 1840s this is not likely to be Dreadnought Wharf or indeed the Creekside works. I wonder if there is another possibility?  There are newspaper reports of a number of men -shipwrights -who were being prosecuted by a Deptford shipbuilder, William Ive.  This was about work which had not been done on the Oberon and it seems that Ive was himself a subcontractor working for Rennie.   Ive’s shipyard was on the site of what had been the East India Dock Shipyard, Deptford, later taken over by General Steam Navigation. Is it at all possible that this was where Oberon was in fact built and maybe was where the reception took place??

Rennie Brothers continued to make engines for ships built by other companies – sometimes those built by Ditchburn and Mare. So what ships did they build themselves?  I’m aware that my list of vessels probably misses out many from the 1840s and1850s.  However, from the early 1860s newspaper reports of launches from ‘Messrs Rennie’s building yard’ are relatively frequent and it can be could assumed that this means Dreadnought Wharf was in use.  Many of these were impressive vessels built for foreign customers but, as we will see, by the 1890s most customers appear to be British and purchased smaller vessels.

 

They also seem to have been making what could be described as river and dock infrastructure  amenity vessels.  In 1860 ‘His Grace the Duke of Somerset’  was in Greenwich to visit the premises of Messrs. Rennie and to see a gigantic floating dock  built for a foreign government’.  Of course there was also a ’sumptuous luncheon at the Ship Hotel’ .It seems unlikely that anything ‘gigantic’ could be made at the Creekside works  and by 1860 it’s perfectly possible that they were using Dreadnought Wharf instead.

I have picked a few vessels to describe below and hopefully they are typical of very many more built at  Dreadnought Wharf , several of which were important and innovative constructions.  The ones I’m  picking out to mention are a tiny sample of what they were in fact producing

 

In December 1863 Rennie launched a screw steamer to be called ‘John David’  built for Verbist of Antwerp.  The launch ceremony was performed by Miss Pietroni followed by the usual sumptuous luncheon at the Ship Hotel. It can be assumed that Miss Pietroni was the daughter of Charles Pietroni, of London-Wall, ‘a gentleman of great experience in steam-ship building ’ who had worked  with the Imperial and Royal Danube Steam Navigation Company, of Vienna . where he was involved with ‘ the Maria Dorothea, the first steam vessel and constructed at Trieste’ . the newspaper commented that ‘seldom has a better ship than the John David been built in this country’. The newspaper commented that this showed ‘the great dependence of foreign powers on our shipyards’.

In 1865 HMS African was built to serve as a tender for the naval establishment at the Cape of Good Hope and in 1868  HMS Manly, an  iron-paddle tug  was built for service at Portsmouth Dockyard . In 1870 two twin screw steamers were for ‘the Bengal famine fleet ... adapted for Indian rivers’. In 1879 they built a steam launch for the Indian Government to be used in Madras;

It was not only sales to India which were important-  even more so was South America. In 1872 the Riachuleo ateam dredger was built for harbour works at Buenos Aires.  For military use the Pilcomayo, a gun boat for the Argentinian Republic,  was built in August 1875  and in 1874 Mexico, a Sloop of War, was sold to the Mexican government. And in 1875 the Bermajo gun ship for the Argentine. There were many others.

They were also producing smaller vessels for British users in the 1870s. In 1875 Atlas an iron paddle tug was built for General Steam Navigation- she was eventually badly damaged when run into by a lighterage  tug at St Katharine’s Dock in 1876. In 1892 they built a tug , Crescent, for local Deptford tug owners Jesse Jacob and in 1904. Robin for General Steam Navigation.  They continued to build tugs and lighterage vessels. In 1909 they built a vessel for Hope Lighterage who were taken over by the Gas Light and Coke Company. It was eventually renamed ‘Beckton’.

Most famously in 1905 they built some of the steamboats for the ill fated London County Council river service –one of the boats was to be called ‘Rennie’! It should be noted perhaps that some of the records say that they were commissioned to build these as subcontractors for Chiswick based Thornycroft.

In 1912  they moved to Wivenhoe in Essex, closing what was described as ‘the oldest remaining firm of shipbuilders’.   Although that quotation gives the impression that they had always been at Dreadnought Wharf   I think we know this was not so. Some 60 men lost their jobs   but the whole of the skilled emp¥ovés will be given the opportunity of transferring their services to the new shipbuilding yard..... At present there are one or two vessels in hand, including`an oil-tank steamer, and there is enough work for about a fortnight’.

 

In Wivenhoe they were to specialise with Forestt  to  build a life boats - but that’s another story

Boundary Walk - Morden College to Trout Common

 

Well, I thought it was about time I got back to the walk going round the Greenwich  Parish boundary. It’s been six  weeks since the last episode.  Perhaps they stopped for lunch - but six weeks would be a very, very long lunch break even for the parish officials.

This has been an account of a walk around the Greenwich Parish boundaries in 1851  following a contemporary using a newspaper report of it. These walks used to take place annually and they were more like a Procession than a walk.  They had started at Garden Stairs down near Greenwich Pier and consisted of the Parish clergy and the churchwardens. This was in the days when the Parish acted as  the local authority so there  would  be lots of officials - people who today would work for Greenwich Council. They would be accompanied by lots of school children and the church choir and various others and the procession round the Parish boundary ould take them all day.  I’ve been writing it up in  short stretches  and I this, I think, is episode No.8.  I’ve been following them from the newspaper report and  also have a report of a replica walk whichw took place in 1980 and that was described with some notes from Julian Watson, who used to be the Greenwich Local History librarian, in the Greenwich Local History Society’s Journal , 2020.

I’m looking at where I they stopped last time after going round the Paragon in Blackheath.  I ended up outside the Lodge at the bottom of the drive of Morden College where there is a boundary stone. One of the other things I’ve been doing in the past six weeks is trying to find out more about the remaining boundary stones. Some have gone missing, even since 1980, in the last two or three years.  I’ve been trying to encourage people to think about them and wonder if there’s some way we can get them preserved. We need a bit more publicity about them so people know to that they exist and how old they are.

So, this section starts outside the lodge of Morden College and the boundary stone which is up against the wall at the end of Morden Road.  Morden College is in the south east corner of Blackheath and dates from the late 17^th century when Sir John Morden set up what was essentially an alms house - an old people’s home. This was for distressed ‘Turkey merchants’ -  men who had put their money into trade and the ship that they had relied used had been lost at sea along with their  investment. They had lost all their money and were now old and needed support.  Morden College has  just carried on ever since and recently it’s expanded a lot and they now have more accommodation including nursing homes. At one time I used to get asked to their garden parties and they didn’t have anyone as common as the Mayor of Greenwich to greet guests  - no, we had the Lord Mayor of London him/herself and the Royal Artillery Band playing excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan.  

The newspaper report of the 1851 Parish walk says that the boundary line goes from the stone at the Morden College Lodge  to another stone ‘ under the elms’ on the college premises.  I think that means going straight ahead up to St. German’s Place  - but after nearly 200 years am I likely to find those elms? Indeed Morden College premises are extensive and have clearly changed too. On the Ordinance Survey map for the 1860s there are a lot of dashed lines for boundaries - but none of the familiar ‘BS’ signs which are marked across Blackheath and show where there are, or were, boundary stones.   So where next?

 

I am looking at Michael Egan’s excellent little book written in 1983 on Kidbrook which has a short chapter on boundaries – except, of course, he wrote about the Kidbrook boundary rather than the Greenwich. He included a helpful map. It’s quite clear that this is another area where many boundaries meet as shown on his map and on the Ordnance Survey.  Michael Egan says that the next stone ‘is on the path towards the College in tombstone shape at about the point where the Upper Kid Brook crossed the path’.  The Upper Kidbrooke was a stream and of course old boundaries often follow streams or set them as markers.

So the route goes from Morden College Lodge north on the footpath which goes alongside Morden College gardens towards St German’s Place. I don’t know about any elm trees here but the first big tree you come to is a flowering chestnut. (There is a picture of it on Google Street View showing it in flower).  If you peer through the railings of Morden College gardens there is a boundary stone just a couple of yards inside which I think must be the one he means. After this I’m afraid the Kidbrook boundary goes off in a different direction to the Greenwich one which it continues to go O north up along St Germans Place.

The newspaper report of the 1851 walk says there is another stone. also within the railing,  but in ‘the corner adjacent to the foot entrance gate’. This is a very difficult area to look at with lots of undergrowth and bits of broken curb stone at what appears to be a disused entrance to Morden College and there seems little chance of finding anything. It’s a pleasant enough footpath and probably not much used.

It might be worth noting here that on one of the oldest maps we have of the area,  the 1697  Travers plan of Greenwich, that the Greenwich boundary then did an enormous loop east  here in into what is now Morden College property. On the map it says it is ’The Brick Bridge going to Sir J Morden’s new hospital’.

Perhaps I should also  briefly pick up on the road name of ‘St Germans’. Michael Egan’s book on Kidbrook has a couple of pages on the landowning Eliot family and how they became the Earls of St Germans in 1815. The 1697 Traver’s plan marks ‘Eliot’s’ somewhere near the corner where the Mordenn College Lodge is today.  Their local land holdings were sold but the present Earl of St.Germans is still the Lord of the Manor here – he is aged  only 20 so we can only wait and see if he ever takes an interest in Kidbrook.

The route carries on up St Germain’s Place and as the Greenwich Historical Society Journal says 'goes past Christ’s  College’ and reminds us that this private boys school was founded in 1823. It continues to the corner of the slip road from Shooters Hill Road.  I am very confused about the name of this slip road which is parallel to the main A2road.   On historic maps it is called ‘St Germans Terrace ‘ but there is currently no road name sign I can see nor is there a name given on any of the usual maps . Very confusing. The Greenwich Historical Society say that it’s ‘on the boundary line’ and that it is ‘the old Canterbury Way’ - meaning it is the line of old Dover Road before the current A2 was installed. 

The newspaper report tells us that the procession went ‘to a stone just round the corner from Shooters Hill’.  That stone is there, almost right on the corner, with ‘GP’ for ‘Greenwich Parish’carved  on it. At this point the boundary turns east and continues up the no-name slip.  The 2020 account says ‘we pass the tea caddy houses’ and reach another stone outside ‘no 20 Shooters Hill Road’ – or, as the newspaper report says ‘a stone at the end of the terrace’.   There is a stone at the base of the wall between nos.20  and 22 – and I suppose at one time this was indeed the end of the  terrace .  But it is not quite at the end of the slip road - it’s a small stone and very much p against the wall.  It would be very easy to miss.

The procession continued going east.  By now they must have been very weary and you can see their feet dragging as they get the Shooter’s Hill Road. To cheer everybody up on the other side of the road is The Sun in the Sands Pub - or rather what used to be the Sun in the Sands pub. The report in the 2020 journal says that the Parish procession used to stop here for lunch.  I have no idea what the lunches were like in the 19^th century - although I very much appreciate that the 1980s walk stopped further back at the Princess of Wales where and at least you can sit outside in the sunshine and look at the ducks on the pond  while all you could see at the Sun in the Sands is more traffic. No lunch would be available today since I think the pub is closed  and has planning permission to be converted into flats.  And I’m sorry if it is closed because it’s an old pub on the main road and that’s interesting

Hungry or not the procession will have continued on up Shooters Hill roads until they get to No. 122  where tucked in against the garden wall is yet another boundary stone. This is the point at which procession crossed the Dover Road and began to go north. 

In fact they crossing the road over to Trout’s Common ......................where??