John Day Arsenal apprentice

 

I was thinking about something to write this week – and I’ve had no net access for nearly a week – and so I have been looking at what I had on my system from the past. We had the first Greenwich Industrial History meetings in the late 1990s and we also had a bi-monthly newsletter. I used to get a lot of stuff sent for publication - much of it from elderly men who had worked in various local industries and wanted to tell people about their experiences. So, I thought, nobody’s ever going to read these old newsletters and perhaps I should dig them out andre-publish them somewhere.

One of the most constant and prolific of the contributors to these early issues of the GIHS newsletter was John Day. He didn’t live locally – I think he lived in one of those Surrey towns near the London border .... Woking?   Leatherhead? He had however undertaken the massive task of listing 30,000 engineering drawings for the Royal Artillery Library which was then based in the Royal Military Academy – now flats - in Red Lion Lane and he had beenbworking in the Rotunda.

Professionally he had been a                mechanical engineer following an apprenticeship in the Arsenal. He had worked for the Patent Office  where he prepared instruction books on Rolls Royce aero engines and much else, eventually actually retiring as Principal Examiner.  He was also a keen historian of artillery practice. He was particularly helpful to me when I researched the Blakeley Ordnance factory on Greenwich Peninsula and introduced me to experts on Blakeley and helped me to write an article which would otherwise have been an extremely innocent and inadequate description of this Greenwich works.

In contributing to Greenwich Industrial History newsletters he was very concerned to tell us about his apprenticeship in the Arsenal, writing a series of articles which will be far too long and detailed to put here individually which I might run as a series.  There were other people who wrote about Arsenal apprenticeships but John’s work was particularly detailed. He began with when ge went there in 1934 but said that the site was already well known to him then.

John explained that in the mid 1930s his father had been appointed as a craft engineer in the Arsenal’s Central Power Station and on Sundays John took him in a hot lunch in a basket. Then since everything was shut he had the ‘freedom to wander where I liked within the building’.  I must admit that I find this surprising - my impression of the Arsenal was that anyone not employed there would be very quickly surrounded by military should they do anything but go where they were told! Perhaps things were different in the 1930s.

 

He explained that at that time there were three grades of apprentices in the Royal Arsenal:

Trade apprentices who, as the name suggests were training in their chosen trade such as fitter, turner, pattern maker, etc. After six months they had one option to change their choice.

Student apprentices who spent a couple of years of practical work after college degrees.

Engineering apprentices who spent five years working at a number of trades while  studying for a degree.  Entry was by examinations and interview at the age of 16.  The average intake in the 1930s was about 12 chosen from some 100 to 150 applicants. For the first two years there was compulsory attendance for two days and two evening a week at what was then the Woolwich Polytechnic, The remaining three years were spent during term time at the Poly. At the end of the five years most of the apprentices had a degree in engineering and the necessary 36 months of practical training needed for membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

 

So he describes his application for an engineering apprenticship by saying ‘I have no recollection of any examination .... perhaps I was exempted by having matriculated with distinction in technical subjects.’ He described how he had also made a model of a ‘two cylinder boiler fitted pump’ which is apparently described in the London and Brighton and South Coast Railway’s magazine ‘Shop, Shed and Road’. He produced this model at the interview when they asked him if he knew anything about metal work. He says there was a pause ‘while the interview board thought of something else to ask me’.

 

He got his place as an Arsenal Engineering Apprentice and when list of successful candidates was published he was at the top.  He listed others who passed with him –Norman Lindsey – a future Lieut. Colonel with REME;  Robert Walker who became a civil engineer with the Port of London Authority; Sydney Bacon who retired with a knighthood as Director General of Ordnance Factories; Malcolm Starkey,

manager of a war time ordnance factory in Fazakerley, which made Sten guns. He later had a senior position with  Farnborough based motor valve manufacturers, Tranco.

 

On his first day he reported to the Apprentice Supervisor in the Central Office and was taken to the Gauge Shop for the New Fuse Factory. I understand that today it is not possible to identify one exact building which could be called the ‘New fuse factory’ -  although I stand to be corrected by people from the Royal Arsenal historical group.  As far as I am aware the fuse factories in the Arsenal during the Second World War employed many thousands of women but had no specific location and that any information about them would be top secret.

 

John commented that where he was first taken was the ‘Fuse pool room’ -  and I assume ‘pool’ does not mean snooker!  He says ‘the Gauge shop’ was the high accuracy part of the tool room. This whole complex of buildings was near the Plumstead Gate.

 

He was then handed over to Jim Hands to work as his apprentice. Jim made the jigs and tools for a specific product -  the Mechanical Time Fuse No 207 which he describes as ‘a short-term watch mechanism using a swing arm in place of the usual balance wheel’. This was made and assembled by women on the first floor of the adjacent building, which was called ‘The New Fuse Factory’. I am sorry to say that John said that it was always Jim who fixed the belts and bolts underneath the benches while he did all the work on top – and ‘it was a long time before I cottoned on as to why’.  An additional hazard for women workers in this very male environment which I have never seen mentioned in any article about the problems faced there. Stiletto heels have their advantages but I bet they weren’t allowed!

 

The first job John had was to ‘scrape the faces of depth gauges true and square  ... they had to be frosted and be accurate to a couple of thousands of an inch’. Made of a light alloy they were used in the Danger Buildings for measuring the depths of explosives in shells.

 

Jim next suggested John made himself some tools. He began by making an engineer’s square -  a precision L-shaped device  used for accurate checking of 90-degree angles and straight lines. He had to hack saw the shapes; grind the parts; rivet them and it all had to be acceptable to the View Room – accurate to less than one ten thousanth of an inch. John comments ‘I still have the square because I never dared use it.’

 

By then John had a motor bike - a 1920 Sunbeam ‘the Rolls Royce of singles which had cost £2 and which he had restored. Of course he was riding it in to the Arsenal everyday.  One morning, part of the handlebars caught in a man’s pocket, tearing it and his lunch fell out on the road.  That evening he came to see John’s father. He left with ‘a ten shilling note and an old jacket’.

Back at the Arsenal John’s father used his status as foreman of the Electrical Shop to get No.4. electricity substation specially opened morning and evening so John could ‘garage my bike safely in the dry’.

 

 

Riverside path

 

I think I would like to start this week by congratulating Greenwich Council on their new review of the Riverside path: Rethinking the Riverside - A Review of the Thames Path.pdf , .  It’s a great document which reports on the path, following a great deal of public consultation as well as looking at the views of various organisations with an interest - people from Greenwich University and others. I would very much like to congratulate Councillor Maisie Richards Cottell on having managed to get such a detailed work researched and published as part of her role as Chair of the Transport and Place Scrutiny Panel.  I probably shouldn’t say this - but when I was Chairing the predecessor Scrutiny Panel, fifteen years ago, producing such a document would have been beyond unthinkable! But there you go!

Having said all those congratulations I also think that they’ve missed some important issues about the path and some very, very major problems - which is not to detract from what they’ve done so far. They’ve done a wonderful job consulting with the public but there are others out there who will have to be dealt with. Sorry.

So – I guess you will wonder why I should put myself forward beyond my role as a member of the public. I will give a little bit of my own biographical details on this and my work on the path as a historian – I’m afraid the University will say ‘amateur historian’ - and the background to the use of path with some of the legal issues and public participation over the previous centuries. 

In the 1980s and 1990s I worked for an organisation which monitored development in London Docklands. Some of our staff managed to get questions asked in the House of Commons about the terrible mess which Tower Hamlets was making of their riverside path. Part of my job was going to meetings with what was then the London Rivers Authority – (later after the GLC was closed down it was ‘Association’). I particularly remember a report they did comparing various riverside walks in foreign capitals and I wonder what happened to that research -but they did much else. I wrote and self published a riverside walk around the Peninsula about this time. I was first elected to the Council in 2000 and there was then a full time officer working on the Riverside path. Inevitably the funding for his salary ran out.

 

When I came off the council 10 years ago I tried to set up a Friends of the Riverside Walk group and we had a couple of meetings but some hostility was quite clear and I abandoned it - which I’m sorry about now.

 

I guess it was originally just a walk along the river wall  - and we have no idea how old that is . In 1867 the Court of Queen’s Bench heard that it was there at the time of Norman Conquest and for all they knew it was Roman.  The public have walked it ever since but now they no longer walk on the river edge because of need for a cycle path and ‘health and safety’.

The oldest pictures which I know of which show people on the path are two of the 17^th century gunpowder works (then on the site of Enderbys).  In them people are taking the dog for a walk, sketching, chatting .. or just, well, walking.  A few years ago the Enderby Group did a footfall survey on the path – and things haven’t really changed, except for the bicycles.

Ian Nairn, was  a 1960s troublemaking architectural commentator with a short lived TV show.  He describes the path starting at the Blackwall Tunnel’s ‘pretty art nouveau gatehouse’ then says the walk goes down a passage alongside the Delta Metal Company “which zigs and it zags and it doesn’t give up and eventually comes out at the river”. I remember that passage well . When I worked at Delta Metal in 1970 the path there was modernised and paved, but totally isolated from the rest.  That is now the site of the golf course.

Nairn talks about the path taking “exciting forms...between walls ... under cranes ...nipping round the back of a boatyard’.  Much of that stretch was straightened out in the 1980s.  “A continuous flirtation with the slow moving river choked with working boats”. (if only!) 

The right of way on this whole stretch was taken to the Court of Queens Bench by Greenwich Vestry in 1867 in a case against the shipbuilders, Maudslay Son and Field who had blocked the path. They were on the site we now call Bay Wharf where they built Cutty Sark’s two sisters, Hallowe'en and Blackadder. The case had huge public support with the gallery crowded with local people shouting and clapping.    Mr. Soames whose soap works was on the site of the later sugar refinery said that companies would go out of business if the public could walk along the riverside past them.  The Court and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn didn’t agree and declared in favour of the right of way.  It is the same stretch which Greenwich Council went to court with in the 1990s when the then occupants blocked it  and the right of way was declared again.

North of this in 1868 Lewis and Stockwell Shipbuilders built a large a dry dock (where the hotel is now) and this interrupted the river path. I don't know how this was resolved by the Vestry who thought it was ‘not a good idea to give up these old rights in a hurry’ but thought new employment opportunities were important. (Nothing changes, it really doesn’t).

When the Gas Works was built in the 1890s on what is now the site of the Dome, the riverside path was closed right round its site.  Following an enquiry in the House of Lords Ordinance Draw Dock was built by the gas company as compensation for the closure.  I hope Greenwich residents visit the draw dock - which is still a right of way despite scary notices from the people in the Dome and the hotel.

As for Nairn he got to the “final exciting stretch past Greenwich Power station and another good Riverside pub , The Yacht”.   Then he says “God preserve it from the prettifiers” and, in a footnote “’They’ are trying to close it. Walk it as you would a country path, till they are sick to the guts”.

The council have intermittently taken an interest in the path - very much because of individual councillors. In the 1970s there was a councillors’ walk along the path set up by the late Derek Penfold. There are photographs but most of the participants are now sadly no longer with us – a young Jim Gilman .... librarian Barbara Ludlow.

It is only recently that’s the path has been seen as going right through the Borough on the riverside. The walk which Derek organised just went round the peninsula. You could get to Cutty Sark but what was then the  Royal Naval College was locked and barred and bolted.  I think the stretch through Charlton to the Barrier was probably in existence but I have a feeling that it wasn’t really possible to walk it but I’m not sure why. There was no way of walking into Woolwich and there was a long term blockage which was only resolved a few years ago.  You couldn’t walk through what is now the Dockyard estate and nor could walk at all along the riverfront in Woolwich and you certainly couldn’t put your nose in the Arsenal or you would have been removed with a military escort.

So where does this all leave us ? What can this new report add? For one thing I’m very glad to see  there is quite a bit of criticism of cyclists – for far too long many cyclists have claimed that they are so green in their method of transport  it’s perfectly OK for them to run you over if they feel like it. And I write that as someone who cycled up to London every morning in the 1980s. 

So what should happen next – I think they do need to look at river users. There are a number of sports clubs – the rowers, the yacht club, the kayakers and others. But more than them they must talk to the people who use the river as a workplace.  It’s very easy to think that the working river has gone – and it’s a minute fraction of what it many of us will remember - but the river remains our biggest asset and we need to be careful what we do and remember that it will be here will be all gone and it will serve other communities.  In the short term now we need to consider very carefully what is built on the Riverside and we need to preserve all of the traditional access points many of which are covered by specialist legislation. We need to be quite clear that the sea wall is not a proper place for willow trees – this is not a babbling brook! We need to make sure that the public understands that this is one of the major commercial rivers of the world.

Liquid history and all that.

BOUNDARY 1O downhill from Rectory Field

 

I suppose I think I had better get back to doing the next episode of the walk around the Greenwich boundary. If I don’t do it soon it will take them nearly a year to get right round - which is really not reasonable! One of the reasons that I have delayed it is because the next stretch looks to be quite difficult.    I left the earlier section I described at the gates of what is now Rectory Field sports ground in Charlton Road and the boundary then crosses Charlton Road as it starts to go down the hill towards the river. That area is now all nice neat streets laid out in a proper order with twentieth century houses. In 1851 the walk went downhill through country house  estates.

Perhaps I should also explain - if there are any new readers – that over the past year every few weeks i’ve done another episode of a walk which went round the Greenwich= Parish boundary in 1851.  In the 19^th century these walks were undertaken quite often by the parish officials who went in procession with various local bigwigs, parish choir boys, and a number of children from local schools - including the workhouse school, as well as the other, mainly boys, local schools. The boundary is clearly not completely straight - to put it mildly - and has changed over the centuries. It includes a walk through industrial premises on the bank of Deptford Creek while a boat went up the middle  of the stream on the actually boundary. Also the boundary went through lots of private premises including some people’s houses where the procession would march straight through! So. where I left it last time was in Charlton Road after a fairly easy stretch walking down the side of Rectory Field.

The newspaper report of the walk says that next to Rectory Field entrance in Charlton Road was ‘Asses Milk House’.  Today that is known as ‘Poplar Cottage’; one of the oldest buildings in the area dating from around 1700 and the last Charlton example of the wooden houses which once proliferated in the area. Some years ago it was done up by the Blackheath Preservation Trust and is now painted bright pink. The 1860s OS map shows the boundary line and marks where boundary stones could be found. It marks one here but there is now no sign of it.

The newspaper report which we’ve been following says that it is thence ‘to the Duchess of Buckinghamshire’s brewhouse’.  Now clearly there’s no sign of this and on the other side of the road are a few houses between Wyncliffe Road and the boundary of Our Lady of Grace Church. In 1851 it was the site of Eastcombe Manor which is where the Duchess of Buckinghamshire was living. The OS map shows a big house facing the road with a semi circular garden in front of it. The boundary ran down its west side to extensive grounds to the rear. It is important to the layout of both the estate and the boundary to realise that the land falls away quite steeply from Charlton Rd down towards the Woolwich Road.

I should quickly say that several histories of the area say there were two Eastcombe Manor houses. the other later and posher on the site which is now Sheringham School. I can see no sign of this building on any available map and what is on the 1860s OS makes sense in terms of the newspaper report narrative of the procession, and which only mentions one buiding.

So, The Duchess of Buckinghamshire - and we need to be clear about the difference between our aristocratic ‘Buckingham’ and ‘Buckinghamshire’. This lady was Eleanor Agnes the widow of Robert Hobart, Duke of Buckinghamshire and a major politician.  She was believed to have been engaged as a young woman to William Pitt himself. The procession went through her grounds and I hope she looked out of the window and enjoyed watching them come past -she had only a few months to live and died in the October.

The newspaper report of the procession’s walk through her grounds can clearly be followed on the 1860s Ordnance Survey map. It begins by saying that they crossed the road to the ‘Duchesses’ brew house’ -  and  this is clearly visible on the map as a small building facing onto Charlton Road – I assume that this is some sort of functional outbuilding from her house – but it has crossed my mind that it could have been a pub – or perhaps not.  The procession then went diagonally through the corner window of a laundry. This is, I assume, is the Duchesses’ laundry and a report of an 1889 walk  makes it clear that they went into  the building and then out through the window -  and that should have been something to see!  The OS map marks a boundary stone, which is also mentioned in the newspaper report. So far so good.

The area covered by the Eastcombe Manor house fronting on Charlton Road, and its grounds is now covered with early 20^th century housing which bears no relation to the layout of the estate. Following the Duchess’s death the estate passed through a number of hands and in the 1880s there were attempts to sell the house and it’s grounds. It was eventually acquired by the Norwich Union Insurance Society, and got consent for housing from the London County Council around 1900 and was laid out accordingly. The house was demolished in 1904.

The boundary line appears to go down the right hand – west - side of the Duchesses’ grounds. There is a print of the house looking up the hill towards its rear, across the gardens. It is easy to see how a boundary line could run down the hillside on the east side of the house.  The newspaper report says that the line goes to ‘a boundary stone on the lawn near a yew tree’ near where there used to be a pond, and this stone too is marked on the map.  The next stone is described as being ‘beneath an apple tree on the edge of the lawn’.  The line then goes through an iron archway, passes a greenhouse and then exits through a gate in the fence.

The whole area is now early 20th century houses and the only way down the hill is on Wyndcliffe Road.  My guess is that this boundary line follows the eastern edge of Our Lady of Grace Church and the school which stands behind it, and also goes roughly  down the backs of the houses in Wyndcliffe Road.  This road was built and named by the housing developer with a made up word apparently meaning ‘steep downhill road face’.

I wonder what happened to all those boundary stones – and there were a lot more to come. Are any of them still somewhere down that boundary line; perhaps built into garden walls or just lying about unnoticed.  Apparently one house near the route has a stone built into its doorstep.

The gate out of the Duchess’s garden must have been roughly where Highcombe Road runs east West and which the boundary has to cross. Today it goes into the site of the allotments where we once grew some amazing beans and lambs lettuce.

The boundary continues down to the Woolwich Road, going straight down the hill and eventually following a long curve – it must once have been a footpath. Compare the 1860s Ordnance map with the satellite view on your laptop above the area and you can see only too clearly how it follows a downhill route between properties with a modern road system superimposed.  I also think that is very interesting that on the satellite view you can see that there is a line of mature trees going along the ends of the gardens in Wyndcliff Road, which seem to back on to the boundary.  I’m sure it’s accidental, but it says something about the relative stability of the area.

Having left the Duchess’s gardens the path turns to the north and the report tells us that we must ‘stick close to the hedge on the left hand side of the next two fields’. At the end of the second field was another boundary stone beside an elm tree on which a cross had been carved in 1835.  I guess – and this is all guesses anyway as I try to match the newspaper report to the map and the aerial photograph ... .. and I guess that this elm tree was somewhere near what is now the junction of Wyndcliff Road with Eversley Road. The procession continued to reach another boundary stone also marked on the map and the report says there are three trees - two oaks and an elm – with crosses carved on them.

The newspaper report gives no more detail but just says that the procession continued on this route until it reached Woolwich Road. This is a pity since it is very interesting area but it is quite difficult to be  clear where the path went. On the 1860 map the path can be seen gradually curving round and following the line of Victoria Way and getting ever closer to it. Past the railway it straightens as it nears the Woolwich Road.

 

Before reaching the railway a sand pit is marked on later maps. There is no bridge marked by which to cross the railway – did they just stumble across the lines? In 1851 this stretch of railway was only two years old. It came from the Blackheath tunnel on a curving route to Charlton Station across what had been fields of Combe Farm in Westcombe Hill. The link through to Greenwich was still some years away.

 

On the other side of the railway a sawmill is marked. This is an interesting area and one I think I should come back to.  I had thought that this might be the last episode but it’s clearly going to run on and on and next time we will see the procession go towards the River

the riverside path and me

 The Greenwich riverside – this is something many people think they know about when in fact they only know ‘tourist Greenwich’.  Ian Nairn, however, knew better and said something in the 1960s about the path that snakes its way round the Peninsula and beyond ‘’unknown and unnamed … the best Thameside Walk in London’.  Of course it is important, and interesting and my precept for a long time is that industrial London itself is important and interesting and something we need to talk about.

In writing about the riverside, personally, I had come a long way from being a 1950s teenage typist at Senate House, spending my lunch hours up in the Topography Section.  In the 1970s I made it to the polytechnic and academic research on the gas industry. In the 1980s I fell in with the industrial archaeologists and we started Greenwich Industrial History Society..  I learnt about how London’s industry was shaped and developed – I had a job involved with Docklands development, and later became a Greenwich councillor.  It took the coming of the Millennium Dome in 2000 to kick me into researching the other industrial sites  on the Peninsula and leading me down numerous rabbit holes. Not the least of this has been the discovery of a network of telecoms historians for whom Greenwich and Woolwich have vast importance and about which the tourists will be told nothing.

In 2018 I was offered the chance to write a weekly article on Greenwich Industrial history for a local newspaper. It came  with a promise to myself that it would be turned into a book, or a series of books, about the real Greenwich riverside – a major part of London's industrial heartlands.  It is all about l how the  local community has used the riverside, and how it has developed along with other urban structures. So I have now self-published a book on the riverside in the Greenwich parishes of St. Nicholas and St. Alfege – and I am now researching Deptford Creek.

It begins at the current Greenwich boundary – which sadly excludes Deptford Dockyard. This stretch takes in the earliest sites of the East India Company, massive marine engineering works and, of course, the first power station in the world - the vision of 23 year old Sebastian de Ferranti.   It continues to the Angerstein Railway  as the final downriver point on the Peninsula . That is writing site by site, chapter by chapter.

The itinerary covers the riverside but ignores ‘tourist Greenwich’ all  the way from Deptford to Angerstein. Just down from the dome is the site of a tide mill where an explosion in 1803 changed the history of the steam engine and where ‘Deptford chemist'  Frank Hills made a vast fortune.  Nearby was the enormous show place gasworks with the two biggest gas holders in the world. Also nearby was a site earmarked to make guns for the Confederates and Bessemer’s steel works (when everyone thinks he was up in Sheffield he was also down in Greenwich)

Enormously important on the west bank of the Peninsula were Enderby and Morden wharves where they made cables which took the earliest telegraph messages across the Atlantic, later across other seas and around the world. Before 1930 almost all subsea cables worldwide were made here and one thing that changed almost immediately was world finance.   . This was where the communications revolution happened. 

Back and nearer to ‘Royal Greenwich’ is Ballast Quay –old houses, a pub, and a garden. Ten years ago a 12th century tide mill was found on a  nearby wharf now covered with new flats–  from it we can trace the old routes back to the 'dens' of the Kentish weald. On Ballast Quay was the riverside court house of the Ghent Abbey which owned Greenwich from the 10th century until it was confiscated under Henry V.  Next to Ballast Quay is ‘Anchor Iron Wharf – and from recent archaeological reports on the area, industrial historian friends have identified a riverside forge - there in plain sight but unnoticed in famous paintings.  In this area were warehouses for the worldwide sales of the products of the Crowley ironworking empire whose 18th century Durham works was the “greatest ironworks in Europe”

Nearer to the Royal Hospital some  famous paintings show a tiny crane – and still here is Crane Street. The Palace and then the Royal  Hospital needed somewhere to unload supplies..  The Tudor Palace itself must have supported a massive service sector probably based in this area and that covered by Greenwich Power SDrtation.  The Power Station too is a remarkable building on a remarkable site and the subject of recent research which looks at myths about it and the Royal Observatory.

All of this research on the Greenwich riverside uncovers so much about its contribution to the modern world, to our national story as well as how local people lived their lives day to day. I seem to be on a mission to persuade people that there is more to Greenwich than Tudor Royalty and the Cutty Sark – and also to reference east London, Docklands and beyond.  Greenwich industry was a focus for innovation, technological experiment and expertise.  If I live so long I might be able to write my way as far as the Royal Arsenal and all those elite scientists who taught at the Royal Military Academy

Lockdown has given me the space to write and publish something every week and now turn it into a self-published book. I also still write and publish on the east London gas industry, plus a bit of local Labour history on the side.  I also run a Facebook page and a blog on Greenwich industry.  

Hopefully one day someone will listen.

Dr.Mary Mills

24 Humber Road, London, SE37LT

marymillsmmmmm@aol.com  

(would appreciate people not trying to ring me because of my hearing loss)

WOOLWICH CONSUMERS GAS WORKS

 

I need to start with an apology. Well over a year ago I wrote an article about the second Woolwich gas works - the Equitable Company works. I had previously written about the first works, owned by Thomas Livesey, and I mentioned it again last week in an article about river pollution. But there was another  Woolwich gas works – the Consumers’ Company Gas Works - and it’s that which I promised to write up ‘in a couple of weeks time’ - well over eighteen months ago! Sorry.

Early last year I wrote an article about the Plumstead Pure Water Company and I introduced you to Lewis Davis there. Perhaps I` should remind you again who he was: in 1839  he had a jewellers shop in Green’s End and described himself as a pawnbroker in the1841 census. He is also described as a ‘silversmith’, a ‘clothes dealer’ and a ‘glass warehouse’ and of course ‘a pawnbroker.  So I guess he just did the best he could and it turns out he was very successful – and was the leading activist in bringing bothbgas and water to Woolwich.

In 1832 the Woolwich Equitable Gas Company had been set up and had taken over the older works which dated from 1817. They had built a modern gas works, which appears to have been very successful. However, within only ten years there was considerable agitation against it - in which Mr Davis played a leading part. His problem was that although he used considerable amounts of gas in his business he was not offered the same discount on purchases as was afforded the Royal Dockyard and other public bodies. There were other grievances among the shopkeepers of Woolwich and so only a short time after the Equitable works were opened there were plans to set up a rival gas company. This was the Woolwich Protective Consumers Gas Co. and they issued a prospectus on 18th August 1843 .

There were numerous consumer gas companies being set up in this period. Some had quite complicated arrangements to ensure that ownership remained in local hands. It was a whole movement which was part of a series of ideas about how public utilities should be managed because private ownership often worked against the public interest. How this Woolwich consumer company was intended to operate is not really clear - they said in their prospectus that priority on share ownership would be given to ‘consumers’ but it is unclear how ‘consumers’ were identified, particularly before the gas works was operational. Probably the customers were mostly small shopkeepers from Woolwich.

They had purchased a site on the Riverside from Sir T. Wilson and the works was soon being set up.  It was in the area now covered by the Ferry Approach and possibly the Ferry car park and the Leisure Centre -  in the High Street, behind the Carpenter's Arms, and adjoining the  eastern side of Woolwich Dockyard.  They redeveloped the wharf on the west side of Glass Yard with two 32ft diameter gasholders, later  replaced by a a retort house, and in the High Street built an Italianate office building was erected next to the Carpenters’ Arms. Various writers say that a wall from the works still exists. Built of old pieces of firebrick and hard clinker it runs parallel to the River side of the High Street.

Then they held a banquet. This was for the Directors and officers ‘as a mark of the confidence of the shareholders ...  and an acknowledgment of the disinterested efforts and zealous exertions they had made’.  It was held at the George the Fourth Assembly Rooms where the window was lit up with ‘a splendid star of the gas supplied by the Company’. The dinner consisted of ‘the first luxuries of the season’. They toasted ‘the Queen ... discanting upon her virtues as daughter, wife, and mother’.   Late that night they ‘felt great pleasure in drinking the health of the gentlemen present, and . thanked them cordially for their kindness in drinking and the meeting  being enlivened by various songs and toasts’.

The initial charge for gas from the new works was eight shillings per thousand cubic feet, which compared favourably with the eleven shillings required by its rival. The first works Superintendent was ‘Chemist’ Marsh who had previously developed a test for detecting small grains of arsenic.

In 1848 it was unanimously resolved to appropriate the sum of £251. from the surplus funds of the company to purchase a suitable piece of plate, to be presented to Lewis Davis, ‘through whose exertions the company was first started’.

So,  the new gas company, set about making and selling gas cheaper than the Equitable Company who. of course, brought their prices down. As with all of these ventures, in the end they sorted the issues out - two companies selling gas in the town and more or less working with each other although no one would ever say so. In 1854 the Consumers’ Company changed their name to the Woolwich and Charlton Consumers’ Gas Company. Lewis Davis continued promoting gas and water companies and made a lot of money.

The Consumers’ Gas Company continued in Woolwich until taken over by the South Metropolitan in the early 1880s. During the lifetime of the company most newspaper reports about it are about  their share sales but there are occasionally other stories - and possibly many more that we know nothing about. The company minutes refer to ‘defalcations’ in the 1860s and again in the 1880s.  It is very unclear what exactly this refers to - probably some sort of accounting fraud.

Throughout most of the organisation’s existence the works Engineer was Alexander Stark. This is a common name, even in gas works’ construction circles, particularly in Scotland and it is difficult to identify a particular individual – although this Woolwich based man seems to have been Scottish.  He was not a young man as shown by the one piece of definite evidence about his family which is an obituary to his, Perth educated, adult son – also a gas engineer named Alexander Stark – and who died in 1884 aged 33 while employed as Assistant Engineer at Easton and  Anderson at Erith.

The most notable press reports during Stark’s time at the Consumers’ Company concern his arrest and subsequent trial on the charge of stealing lead and other items from the Royal Arsenal.  This of course is much more complicated than it would first appear. It took up many, many column inches in both the local and professional gas press with word by word transcriptions of the various stages of the trial and the various people also accused of this offence. appeared to excite much public interest, the court being densely crowded

Another person who features prominently in the case is James ‘Jaws’ Stark Alexander’s brother who also lives in Woolwich and worked with him on various contracts. They are accused of stealing 20 ingots of lead, a large quantity of iron pipe, and more, the property of the Crown. Also if Alexander, the works manager, had been ‘receiving’ rather than ‘stealing’ the items.  

In 1856 Alexander Stark had contracted to construct a gas works in the Royal Arsenal – I’ve written about that works here last year. This contract had been completed when information was received by Police-inspector Thompson, that during tbe month of March last a large amount of Government stores had been conveyed from tbe Arsenal by men in the employ of the contractor, and that a portion of the property would be found on his premises. A search was made, and in the cellar of Alexander Stark’s house the property mentioned was discovered. He accounted for the possession of it by stating that he had supplied similar articles whilst carrying out this contract, and had received the property found in repayment. The evidence against James Stark was that he had ordered a portion of tbe property to be removed to the premises where it was found. It appeared that the bulk of the property, and many other articles not mentioned in the charge, had been removed from tbe Arsenal by direction of Joseph King, a foreman in tbe employ of the prisoners. He had directed the carman to cover over the property with coke.

The trial went on for some time and attracted a lot of press attention with huge reports in the local press and apparently huge numbers of people attending the trial. It became more and more confused with witnesses who said they knew nothing. Alexander Stark seems to have remained it is post as manager at the works for many subsequent years. 

Perhaps the most important thing to note is his contract for the construction of the Arsenal Gas Works – this is in addition to his career as a gas manager.

Every year on New Year’s Eve a dinner was arranged for all the workers at the Consumer’s gas works. Thus was always a big event and noted in the local press.  There are other more local concerns raised  most will have been issues which affected all gas managers at one time or another. One long dispute concerns the amount of notice to be given before digging the road up – and what constituits an emergency , Another dispute was about whether they should paint the lamp posts chocolate brown or leave them – er er - lamp post colour.

In 1884 the company and its works were taken over - amalgamated - with the South Metropolitan Gas Company and closed down