Millennium embroideries

 

I’ve been lent a very beautiful book ‘ Stitches in time ‘about the Millennium Embroideries – I was being urged to write something about the needlework - but then I thought 2000 its not long enough ago to count as history.  I am told that the embroideries had been on public display at the Greenwich Heritage Centre when it was in the building now appropriated by Woolwich Works, but that they had not been seen since the Heritage Centre was suddenly closed in 2018. 

The embroideries were done by a group of -very expert – local women, as a record of the  history of Greenwich at the Millennium embodied pictorially in stitches. I’m not sure if you can have a document which has no words, just pictures but, thinking about it, I don’t see why not . As this series of articles looks at many historical documents I suppose it’s valid for me to look at the embroideries.  Right!

But then I thought –‘the Millennium was 25 years ago’ and since then children have been born who are now parents themselves. However - 2000 - the year of the Dome!   There was a lot going on in my life then and I had started Greenwich Industrial History Society in 1998 with the late and very wonderful Jack Vaughan who wanted the world to know and understand the history of industrial Woolwich.  

When the news came out about the Dome coming to Greenwich for the Millennium I thought somebody should write a history of the Peninsula.  Some very posh ‘professional’ writers were being commissioned to produce books about it. Among them was Adam Nicholson who wrote ‘Regeneration’ for them - I would like to thank him because he bothered to talk to me and remembered me when I met him later.  I did bit more research and self published my little yellow book ‘Greenwich Marsh’.  Along  with its recent rewrite ‘’Greenwich Peninsula. Greenwich Marsh” it has always been my best seller then and now. -With the help of my husband I sold several hundred - all by post. Around this time I got tangled up in the ‘Ghost in the Dome’ and I spent a lot of time being interviewed by those periodicals interested in such things.

So Greenwich Industrial History Society – how does that fit with the embroideries?  Well, both are about the history of Greenwich - although we seem to have been running on parallel lines: we knew nothing about them and they knew nothing about us.

The book is riveting about how it was decided to produce the ‘Greenwich Bayeau tapestry’.  One of the main people behind it was Beverly Burford , who was Curator of the Museum at Plumstead. I had an awful lot of time for Beverly and very sad that she never lived to lead the Heritage Centre as she should have done over the coming years . The book also mentions the late Francis Ward, who was the part of Julian’s team at Woodlands Local History Library – and also Chris Foord who was Beverly’s assistant and who last year came to speak to Greenwich Industrial History Society about his current role in the London Borough of Kingston.

Someone else who played a key role in the embroideries was the late historian, Sally Jenkinson. I never met Sally but I was aware of her reputation and I am very aware of her booklet, among others on Enderby Wharf – its probably the first publication that mentioned Greenwich industry in any detail and the first to tell the amazing story of local work on telecommunications .  In retrospect, thank you Sally, very grateful.  There is also a chapter in the book from Crooms Hill based historian, Beryl Platts. who I understand work closely with the embroiderers on Greenwich history and what things should be represented.

I don’t know exactly what has happened to the embroideries now but there is a campaign going on and a lot of people have been making a big fuss about them. I wondered perhaps, as a historian,  I should look and see how these embroideries interpret Greenwich history. Perhaps I can say something here which will catch somebody’s interest and help the campaign get the embroideries back to where people can see them and appreciate the work that was done and what the embroiderers were trying to say.

I am far from sure if work on embroidery counts as industrial.  It has rather been popularly sold as a activity undertaken by posh ladies who didn’t need to have real jobs. I am however amazed at the amount of historical information that is around about embroidery.  I didn’t know that the National Maritime Museum actually runs classes and gives out information... and I also like to thank Beth Robinson whose work on mid-20^th century embroiders included interviews and an awareness of these issues.

Embroidery was a very, very big thing in Tudor England with intricately embroidered clothes as well as furnishings. There was so much of it that this can’t be the work of otherwise unengaged ladies. It must have been done by professional embroiderers and I would be grateful if anybody has any information about how they were organised. Were they out- workers doing it at home or was there a studio set up where they worked?  A lot of the work they did was using gold and silver threads. In the late 19^th century such thread, made out of precious metals, was done in a factory on the Lewisham borders which is now called the  ‘Silk Mill’. There were huge security arrangements there because of the value of the materials and I’m sure that the same value applied in Tudor England.  So where did Tudor embroiders do their work?

We start off with the  Celts and the Romans - we have a Celtic lady working at a loom and we have some Romans making a Roman Road. Each panel has many such images - I haven’t tried counting but there’s a lot! I suppose my remit is to see how industry is represented in the panels and if it It is proportionate with everything else. What I think it represents is not exactly Tourist Greenwich but what we would like visitors to know about and some interesting little details.

The panels on Vikings and the Middle Ages have very little if anything industrial. Every panel has a strip at the top depicting the River with lots of boats.  Well - they had to be built somewhere by somebody!  

And so on to the Tudors. That does include some mill with a nice little picture of the waterworks with the water mill at Brookmill.   Below that there is actually a picture of a cannon although nothing about where it might have been made.

The page on the Stuarts includes at the top a lot more shipping and of course Peter Pett with the Sovereign of the Seas. There’s a brief mention of the Mulberry or Charlton House although I’m not sure that counts.  And they do show the Woolwich rope works which I have never written about - and I ought to.  c

The Georgian page also has a lot more shipping but this was a very lively era working towards industrialisation and there really isn’t that much here There is one little ship which represents the Royal dockyards and there are some of the buildings in the Arsenal. It takes it that the Georgian era  finished  in 1837 - which is fair enough. But by then there were a number of foundries in the area as well as chemical works -  and early first attempt at making mechanical road vehicles.

Then inevitably it moves on to what it describes as ‘Victorian’ – and, yes, there’s lots there. The Greenwich railway, various activities at Enderby Wharf which could be of course e early days of the cable and telecoms industries although it doesn’t show that. There’s a picture of a fire engine although the text gives no reference to Merriweather’s. I am particularly pleased that right. At the top of the page is East Greenwich No. 1. Gas holder. A friend took a photograph of it and I put it on the Gas Holder Appreciation Facebook page where it’s getting lots of likes.

And SO to the 20^th Century which is all quite good. There’s lots of planes and boats and in fact it’s extremely crowded panel. It also includes in the margins a great deal of electronic apparatus. It’s all very good and I think we should congratulate the stitchers very much on what they produced.