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)
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