THE UPPER KIDBROOKE 1

 

Last week I did what was an introductory article in response to a request for some information about Kidbrooke Village. I hope that article last week wasn’t too boring but I felt I ought to give a bit of background and also explain why it’s quite a difficult area to write about. I have a lot of information but was a bit perplexed as to how I could put it in a sensible order. 

Perhaps I should start with why it’s called ‘Kidbrook’. It seems that it means’ kite brook’. Michael Egan, who wrote a booklet ‘Kidbrook’, gives a list of 40 variants on the name of this bird going back to 1115.  Most writers have assumed that it means the bird we now know as a ‘red kite’, which may have frequented what was then marshy land.  Kidbrook fundamentally consisted of land around a network of streams running on the western slopes of Shooters Hill. Three main streams have been identified and writers on the area have described their various routes flowing west and south until they reach the river Quaggy, which then joins the river Ravensbourne near Lewisham Station – and flows on to become Deptford Creek.

I thought it might be interesting if I also followed the courses of these three rivers and see what lay along their routes; how they impacted on the area and how it has grown sand changed. Although stretches of the most southerly of these streams, the Lower Kidbrook, is still open in the fields alongside Kidbrook Park Road, most of the streams are now buried underground. We can’t see them but it doesn’t mean they’re not still there.  Road names often refer to them and also the marshy nature of the area.

I thought I should start with the Upper Kidbrook which was the most northerly of these streams and ran through the farmland south of the Dover Road, the A2. It appears that most of this stream is buried and there is virtually nothing to see of it so I hope that what I have written is comprehensible as  there is virtually nothing to see above ground and the about information is patchy, to put it mildly. I have been reliant on an article and notes by Michael Egan made in the 1970s before the motorway was built,  by information in Neil Rhind’s encyclopaedic works on Blackheath and a similar attempt  to  follow the stream by the current blogger, Running Past.  I’ve been working away on it and it’s going to be much longer than I thought so there will be lots of episodes and I might end up venturing extensively into Lewisham.

The Upper Kid Brook is said to originate in a marshy area near the corner junction of Hervey and Begbie Roads. Although the 19th century Ordnance map evidence doesn’t really bear this out but shows a stream running south from the main road. However I will stick with what the various writers on the stream have said and go to this corner junction which is also the corner of a large stretch of open land which is used by Blackheath Rugby Club.

This field has an interesting recent history. Throughout much of the 20^th century it was the sports field for the Harvey factory which was then in Woolwich Road on the East Greenwich and Charlton border. Charlton Athletic are also said to have trained there. The Rugby Club manages this old playing field as a community resource and for its own purposes.

I have always thought that factory playing fields are interesting creating a huge social infrastructure which we have now lost - their demise as factories have closed has added to our increasing social isolation. Harvey’s field is only of many playing we will encounter as I look at the various streams in the Kidbrook area.

I wrote quite a bit about Harvey works here in Weekender a couple of years ago. They were a metal fabricating company originally specialising in ‘holes’ - perforated  metal - had a copy of a thick catalogue full of hundreds of holes they could produce in metal. They also some very large metal objects like the huge dishes at the Goonhilly radio communications centre. There is a film showing one of their fractionating towers being taken to Scotland by road which I would very much recommend – is on YouTube.

Their Greenwich factory closed in 1977 and the sports field was sold to the Inner London Education Authority who wanted to build a school for children who were physically unable to access normal education. This school was never built and the old playing fields remained unused except by locals for dog walking and local children to run about. I very much remember debates at Greenwich Council in the 2000s when use of the site was considered and locals campaigned for it to remain a community resource – leading to its current management by Blackheath Rugby Charitable Trust. I remember making a speech about it at a Council meeting - but what I had to say is of no relevance here.

Whatever! The Upper Kid Brook seems to have risen and from the playing field area. The most recent writer that I’m aware on the Kidbrooke streams is the blogger ‘Running past’. They have actually managed to identify a spot which looks as though it’s the place a watercourse could run. But there is a remarkable lack of information about the next section of the Upper Kidbrook and we must assume that it is somewhere underground in a pipe or whatever and invisible from the mid 19th century. There has been almost nothing on any map that I have seen which shows or even hints at its course. Michael Egan said that he worked out the route of the brook from maps in the sewer records at Greenwich Council. He was researching pre-1980 and such records may not be available now

It seems Hervey Road followed the line of the stream when it was developed in the mid 19th century. The sewers were laid in 1870 but development seems to have been confined to the north side of the road. Following it leads us next to Eastbrook Road – one of many ‘brook’ names in the area as we will see. Running Past blogger points out there is a dip in Eastbrook Avenue which must indicate the path of the brook.  The late Neil Rhind pointed out that ‘Eastbrook’ is not the original name of the road and that it was changed in 1870. That change of name must indicate an awareness of the stream in this area.

In Volume III of his great work on Blackheath Neil Rhind gave a lot of detail about the farmland which through which the Kidbrook streams ran before development in the late 19^th century.  There were a number of farms in the area but very little information about which farm covered which particular piece of land.  Neil makes it clear that several of them were under one management and he also discusses some of the crops grown there. This was not in any way subsistence farming but businesses growing for sales in the adjacent urban areas or in central London.  I think it very likely that they were selling to, or under contract to Greenwich Palace and later to the Royal Hospital.

Working westwards the next road we come to after Eastbrook is, or was, Woodville Road. Neil Rhind says that some houses were built here in the 19^th century, when no.2b was occupied by a Thomas Clack who was chief electrician on cable ships for TELCOM.  The road was apparently renamed Rochester Way in the 1930s but was later removed for the A 2 motorway. A small relic of Woodville Road can be found in Woodville Close which can be reached via a brick lined corridor alongside the motorway from Hervey Road to a small enclave of housing. No mention is made of the brook here.

The next feature today on the presumed route of the brook is a major obstruction - the A2 motorway heading for Dover. It emerges into Kidbrook from the beneath the roundabout which it entered as the Blackwall Tunnel Approach road. It dates from the early 1980s and was constructed` after Michael Egan’s booklet was written.  I suppose a future researcher into the line of the Upper Kid Brook would find much information in the records of the construction of this section of the motorway since it must pass underneath it. The motorway itself runs below ground level in a cut  - as I recall this was to cut traffic noise following a campaign undertaken by lady members of Greenwich Communist Party. Unlike now, there were no yoga classes in the 1980s to distract them.

Before the motorway was built we could continue to follow the line of Hervey Road . Once across the motorway Hervey Road has been renamed ‘Annesley Road’ and it takes us to Kidbrook Park Road. Neil Rhind gives some interesting information on occupants of the road given the RAF’s use of land to the south and in the Second World War. At no.10 was the Colquhoun family – Cecil Colquhoun was Director General of Aircraft Production from 1941. Earlier 10 had been the home of Sir Ernest Swinton  ‘responsible more than anyone else for the development of the tank in modern warfare’.. At no.11 was Lt. Col. Charles Phipps, Director of Factory Safety during the Great War. At no.15 William Mosses, a leading trade unionist in federating craft unions in the Great War period.

To be continued ............................. 

 

KIDBROOKE - AN INTRODUCTION

 

A friend of mine keeps telling me that I ought to write one of these articles on the history of Kidbrooke Village  -he says It would he says be a big great big best seller - well – OK!

I gather that ‘Kidbrook Village’ is the name used for the new centre and the replacement housing for the much hated Ferrier Estate.  Perhaps people think that some time in the past there was an old fashioned type village here and they ‘d like to know about it. To a certain extent that is true but it was a very long time ago and not in the area where the new housing is being built now.  I will do my best to explain all that  - but there are a lot of different subjects in the past of Kidbrooke and I think it will take me several articles to work through them – so, yet another series!

And can I remind people that these articles are supposed to be about industry in Greenwich – there was industry in Kidbrook but it needs digging out from all the other stuff and the really big industrial sites there are all tangled up with the Royal Air Force. But, after all, industry with a close relationship to the military is nothing new in Greenwich - so I’m sure I can cope with that.  These future articles are going to be by way of an introduction to Kidbrooke and partly an explanation as to why it’s so difficult to write about it in way you do most towns and villages

There is already a very interesting history  booklet entitled ‘Kidbrooke. Eight Hundred Years of a Farming Community’ by the late Michael Egan. But it is a collection of subjects rather than a straightforward description of the area.

The booklet has a good chapter on the boundaries of Kidbrook with all the boundary stones and marks which fit very well with the series of articles I’ve done here recently about the procession around the Greenwich Parish boundary - some of which, of course, are shared with Kidbrooke. Michael was a bit of an expert on these boundary stones and in addition to the booklet wrote a number of articles about them.  One of the last articles I did about the Greenwich procession featured a photograph of Michael, kneeling on the ground and looking intently at a boundary stone on the Greenwich - Charlton border. I’ll certainly pick up on what he says about the boundaries of Kidbrooke and it will do very well as a sequel to the articles on the Greenwich Parish boundaries.

 I  think boundary stones are a subject which will, hopefully, encourage you to go out into streets and look for various features, which have been there for centuries -  and I’m always very happy when I can do that.

I also think we should take on the long northern border of Kidbrooke featuring the A2 – the ancient and crucially important Dover Road.  That also must make a contribution to the area and some of the things alongside it. Pubs are one thing, and we could note water works sites, and hospitals.  I said in an article a couple a couple of weeks ago that at the start of the National Health Service in 1947 Greenwich Parish had at three big general hospitals. I have to admit now that one of them was on the Kidbrook side of the street.

Another subject which might get you out into the streets looking at stuff are the three Kidbrook streams. These streams are crucially important to Kidbrooke’s history and I will talk a bit about that, and, like the boundary stones. Michael took them as a separate chapter and had another separate article about them published elsewhere.

A number of other people have written some quite diverting articles and blogs about the three Kidbrooke streams and what you can see of the remains of them - where they went and where they still go hidden away. If you follow their route you come across a number of interesting buildings which were built on land which was available here. I think it might be very worthwhile  to talk a bit about some of those institutions as we come to them.

Michael does go on for the short chapter about the earlier village of Kidbrooke. This seems to be centred on the northern part of Kidbrooke which is around the current church and a long way from the new village which is south of the railway station. In fact today the railway station stands between the two bits of Kidbrook which is like a figure of 8. The southern section has
 the new housing and interesting features like Sutcliffe Park while the north has the more historic areas and some older housing.  Michael describes in as much detail as he could the village which grew up with its church but those details are very, very sparse and depend strongly on the little we know about that original parish church in that area - concluding that where there is a functioning church there is likely to be a functioning community.

The only trouble is that by about 1400  the village had disappeared and remained disappeared for the next five hundred or so years.  Was caused by the Black Death? That certainly wiped some villages out in Kent as elsewhere. Personally I find that a bit difficult = Kidbrooke no distance at all from Greenwich, Woolwich and Charlton. It certainly isn’t isolated in the way that some of these plague struck villages were, and surely if somewhere so close to these urban centres had been decimated by infectious illness wouldn’t we know about it in the histories of those towns.

This huge gap in the history of Kidbrooke is strange – what was happening there?  I’ve written a bit in the last couple of weeks about the histories of local government administration in Greenwich but kept quiet about Kidbrook.  It is described as a ‘liberty’ and that’s a very very unusual and special definition of an area and I think we should find out why it is called that.

Michael continues with a long section on what happened in Kidbrooke over the next five hundred or so years - and I guess he had very little documents and archives to go on. What he used were property transactions  about large tracts of land in the Kidbrook area which were being passed down  in aristocratic and wealthy families.   To find something a bit different I’ve been looking at the British Library newspaper database which isn’t something Michael would have had access to.  I wanted to see if I could find any of those little stories about various  people working locally and the things that happen in their lives. No-  all I got was a long series of newspaper notices of births and deaths of various doings and property dealings of the same aristocratic and wealthy owners of the estates locally.  None of this has actually very much to do with what was going on in Kidbrook itself!  I’m perfectly willing to believe that all these large tracts of land had  farms on them and had professional management = and this was not subsistence farming but growing for sale in the City of London and the inner urban areas.

 I’ve seen articles about how on Mile End Road coming into the city it was jammed every morning with carts full of vegetables and fresh bread. Every day coming down from the Lea Valley were vast amount of vegetables - all specially grown Tesco as a supermarket chain grew from the Lea Valley Growers.  I’ve also read about the boats which came down the Thames every morning from up river fruit farms bringing often quite exotic produce into the City.  I do wonder however if Kidbrook farms might have had contracts to supply Greenwich palace complex.

 The Greenwich peninsula was not good for arable farming.  Fields were let to butchers  who had bought ‘beef on the hoof’ and allowed the animals to rest and recover from what would often been a long and possibly traumatic walk into London so that they were in best condition when they were slaughtered. Other fields were led to cab hire and other bodies which used horses and to give them  much needed rests and breaks from the streets.  Kidbrook may have been the same.

But my best guess for the use of Kidbrook farm is grazing for commercial milk production.  Apparently in the early 20^th century three of these farms were owned by Express Dairies  to supply milk to their shops and so on.  My case rests!

We could move on quite quickly from this to the current situation. From the mid-nineteenth century suburban housing was moving into the northern section of Kidbrooke with a new church and community buildings and the large sites which had been big farms we’re easily sold off to the County Council and developers for housing –  big facilities like the first comprehensive school. In the 1930s there was a big industrial site in the area - the rather mysterious RAF base. It included things like the barrage balloon headquarters, a language school and various other things, all of which we can happily look at.

A big site is taken over by the County Counsel and the Ferrier Estate  very much against the wishes of Greenwich Council and turns out to be a total disaster.

So I will write this as best I can sand with all my good wishes the new developments and the hope that we’ll be successful with new facilities better than the  hapless Ferrier.  Meanwhile I think we should all relax and go along to our local yoga club.

JOHN DAY - PIECEWORK, EXPLOSIVES PIER AND BIG 1930S BIKES

 I thought I should do another episode of John Day’s reminiscences of apprenticeship at the Royal Arsenal in the 1930s. This one will cover piecework; the Crossness Explosives Pier and then a lot about  big bikes in the 1930s.

In my last episode I ended with a story of a man being paid for ‘piece work‘ .  John then described what this meant.  It was all very complicated and so i saved it up to include it in a new article where I would have more space.

 ‘Piece work’ was a system of payment where each job came with a card bearing the price that that job would earn. That price had been set by the ‘price fixer’ who was supposed to know exactly how long each job should take .... and inevitably  set off a number of arguments.  John explained that in the Arsensal there was a minimum wage that a workman was expected achieve based on the cumulative value of the jobs he had done during the week and they should at least equal the minimum wage. If he consistently did not do so there was a fair chance of his “getting his cards”. I assume everyone knows what ‘getting their cards’ meant ......  I’m sure in this day and age there’s a totally different system - it’s a long, long time since I last had the sack!

 

 A reasonably skilled man could exceed the minimum and be paid for all the work he had done up to a set limit, which was about one and a half times the standard wage. A good man could exceed this and on Saturday mornings you would see men shuffling the week’s cards to get as near the maximum as possible while leaving some cards for later weeks. This caused problems if a man left, as he could have cards for several week’s work which had never been done and the cards for it had never been counted.

 

Apprentices were not on piecework, though occasionally one of the older ones, on a repetitive job, would go on it to earn a little more money. If a man had an apprentice, adjustments were made for instructing time and for money earned for him by the apprentice.  John commented “Most of the time it probably balanced out”.

 

John said that he could not remember if working ‘a closed week’ earned him overtime or a week off later.  An apprentice’s wages in the first year was 12/-a week from which contributions for ‘unemployment’ – 10d. - and a friendly society contribution - 12d. - were deducted.  As a result he received just under 11/-  a week.  There was a rise of 2/- at the end of the year and the wages went on up until, when he was 21, he got 63/- as a young journeyman - the union rate

 

[12/- is twelve shillings – about 60p.    10d. – 4 p.    12d. is 1 shilling - 5p.   11/- is eleven shillings, 55p.   2/- iz two shillings – 24p.    63/- is £3.15p.]

 

The friendly society membership was for sick and similar insurance and his stamped card had to be sent in every six months. He belonged to the Ancient Order of Foresters whose secretary was Brother Moss of Verdant Lane, Hither Green.  The Foresters still very much exist with a big headquarters in Southampton and they date from the 1830s, set up to help workers ‘as they walked through the forest of life”.

             

John also gives descriptions of various areas within the Arsenal. One was a story of a visit to Crossness Explosives Pier.  This was located on the River at the eastern end of the Arsenal in what is now East Thamesmead - Thamesbank Place is apparently on the site.  It was a specialised facilty for loading ammunition and gunpowder from the nearby tumps - used as magazines. For more information and some pictures see https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/royal-arsenal-piers.html

 

Sometimes John would visit the pier to accompany a specialist, Andy Clements. after a call about equipment needing attention. It meant a trip out to the eastern end of the Arsenal, often in the wet. They liaisded with the ganger on the pier who he describes as ‘an excitable Maltese whose name was Cordelli’.  Once there Andy would keep Cordelli talking while John surreptitiously moved the offending drum on the crane slightly. Then Andy would go up to the offending crane, wave his arms about and shout strange words whereupon the crane would begin to work again – Cordelli, he said, was ‘convinced Andy was practising some kind of magic’.

 

He also describesd ‘a near miss’ on that pier. A three-phase electric capstan was being installed and John had the job of wiring it up to its starter which was hung on the rear of a small wooden hut which straddled the rail tracks.  Looking round the hut he saw a couple of railway trucks heading straight him. The inevitable happened, the trucks hit the hut which toppled over onto the starter and ‘everyone on the land side of the pier thought I was underneath’.  Happily he had nipped out of the way.

 

He then describes what he calls ‘The short lived Royal Arsenal Sports Association Motor Cycle Club’.  This was in 1935 and I guess that many of you will be more interested in the bikes themselves rather than the people or the Arsenal. Happily John describes a number of the bikes which the members had and I’ve been looking them up on the net. It hasn’t always been easy to match up the information which John gives about the bikes with what I finding on the websites – but I’m happy to get corrected information and I’m sure there’s lots of you out there who will have it. I’ve also tried to find out what they asre worth today.  There’s nothing like the big bikes. It’s been said they were too noisy and dripped oil – but wasn’t that the whole point?

 

He says the club began in the Electrical Shop with Bill Beresford who had ‘03 Norton’ which I can’t identify. Norton were of course the long established Birmingham company who in the 1930s were manufacturing motorcycles for the military and other official bodies in their thousands . I also note that in the 1930s their  civilian machine was the ‘International’ with a strong reputation in professional motorcycle racing and described ‘ as evoking a golden age of motorcycling’.  I also their post war reputation plus a short term ownership by Plumstead based AJS. Value today from £5,000 to £25,000 plus.

 

Then there was Bill Croft who ran the battery shop that charged and repaired all the dilly and other accumulators in the Arsenal.  He had an Enfield Twin and side car’ Royal Enfield were a Redditch company also making machines in vast numbers. A1 search says “premium, high-performance luxury motorcycles often paired with sidecars.” Value today Today from £8,000 to £25,000 plus.

Percy Harris rewound small armatures an- it was said that he did more private vacuum cleaners than official motors. He had a 649cc vertical twin Triumph and sidecar, described elseswhere as ‘one of the most iconic engines in British motorcycling history’. Designed in 1931 as an overhead-valve parallel-twin motorcycle for the Coventry based British Triumph Engineering Company and designed primarily as a durable sidecar hauler. Value today - one is currently advertised at £16,5000.

Meredith Smith – Merry Smith was in the drawing office. He was responsible for the heating in the about- to be- re-opened Nottingham Ordinance Factory. I was aware that the Arsenal had had various branches all around the country and I’d visited one In Scotland  but I was unaware of this one on Nottingham. It seems to have employed many thousands. It had opened during the Great War but later the site had been closed and sold and was then repurchased in the 1930s when it seemed likely that the Second World War would happen. It’s now a trading estate dominated by the buildings of the Experian Company. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROF_Nottingham.   Norton overhead valve motorcycles were introduced in 1922 and were iconic British singles and twins known for performance

Len Shum worked in thed drawing office,  He had a Overhead valve Raleig36  ‘iconic British machines., single-cylinder and later twins, renowned for racing success’ from the Nottingham manufacturer. However Raleigh had stopped production of motorcycles a year before this. Today they sell at between £3,000 and £9,000.

Len Dent. He had a MAC Velocette described as ‘economical, unglamorous transport’ quality machines hand built by a small firm in Birmingham. Value today £3,500 - £8,000.

 

Charles Day – John Day’s father who had a 1150 cc Brough Superior and sidecar- the  Rolls Royce of motorcycles. This is a machine produced by the son of the original Brough manufacturer, Nottingham  based Brough Superior – whose machines were almost all custom built.  Value today £45,000 - £400,000  (!!!)

 

Then there was John Day himself with a model 9 Sunbeam. Wolverhampton based Sunbeam was actually a subsidiary of ICI but in the 1930s was taken over by Plumste I ad based AJS. This 6493cc OHV single-cylinder British motorcycle produced from 1924 to 1939,  was known for its high-quality construction. One currently for sale £6,785.

 

The club met on Sunday mornings at the Prince Imperial Monument facing the Royal Artillery Institution. I'm a bit confused by this and I can’t find a reference to the Prince Imperial monuments on the Arsenal site. The Prince imperial was the son of French Napoleon III who livede in England in exile - the Prince was killed in 1879 in one of the Zulu wars. The Prince Imperial Monument is said to have been his statue which stood outside the Royal Academy buildings in Academy Road and since moved to Sandhurst. I think where they actually met was in one of the two Riverside Guard houses on the Arsenal site where the Prince's body is said to have rested after it was brought to England and before being taken for burial.

The motorcyclists went for runs round the Kent lanes or to a local motorcycle sporting event.  They ran a road trial which entailed following route cards at a set speed, there being time checks at unknown points. John thought he would do quite well in this his first motorsport event, but “had I not thought I knew better than the organisers in how to get from a to b.” The club only lasted a 

Greenwich local government 1890s-2026

 

Last week I did the first episode of what I intended to be a sort of background to the Borough  and who was in charge of it and when – and how the system worked. I said that I would have to look at the various areas separately as  they were all very different and that I would start with Greenwich itself as it was the most complicated of the parishes involved.  But, I would carry on later and do Woolwich and other areas like Plumstead and Kidbrooke.  In fact I have a request from a reader  for me to do Kidbrook soon.

So, as far as I could I covered the background to the institutions involved in the earliest years of  Greenwich as an expanding urban area - albeit one with a large national institution within it.  I also covered the ownership of some of the land and how that affected how it was run.  I finished in the early 17^th century when - like everywhere else – there were changes to the responsibility for various bits of local infrastructure – changes to the poor law and the responsibility of local parishes for those unable to look after themselves.

 Institutions evolved to care for orphans, the sick, the insane, the old, and those unable to support themselves. Over the years ideas and institutions changed and evolved which means that its history is enormously complex. So I think I will describe that part of local administration at another time and concentrated on the basic administration of the area - otherwise I’ll never get finished.

 There are a number of excellent websites about local welfare provision - ‘workhouses’ covers  Greenwich in enormous detail – as does ‘ Lost Hospitals’.  {see https://www.workhouses.org.uk/Greenwich/  and https://www.ezitis.myzen.co.uk/}.  he complexity of all this meant that when the National Health Service was set up in 1947  Greenwich had three big General Hospitals.  It all needed sorting out!                                                                              

However in this article I will concentrate on what was happening with basic administration from the 17^th century. The responsible body was the parish but it didn’t function like a church organisation.  I have written a number of articles about the gas industry in Greenwich in the early 19th century and it very much illustrates the parish authorities at work.  They had identified that gas lighting, which was just coming in, would improve street lighting and help with people’s perceptions about danger in the streets. Contractors were identified  and interviewed and when it emerged that some procedural rules  had been broken one of the parish officers resigned. In due course contracts were drawn up and because of public concerns a town meeting was called which all ratepayers could attend. Following a failure to set a rate a ‘writ of mandamus’ was issued -  a very unusual move and one which only applied to civic malpractice and not to the church.

In my book  on George Livesey I talked a bit about the campaign in the 1840s and 50s to bring the London private gas industry into some form of regulation over pricing, quality and relationships with local authorities.  This was part of a London wide movement which was dominated by South London based politicians.  Long term one result of this was the eventual setting up of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855 with a remit to sort out sewage disposal – although it worked on many other issues, including the gas industry.

Local representatives on the Metropolitan Board were delegated from a new network of local area boards of works. For Greenwich, this was St Alfege and St Nicholas  Parishes - as well as St Paul’s Deptford Parish which is now in Lewisham.  I’ve looked vain for some exciting press coverage in the setting up of these bodies in this system but it seems to be largely unremarked apart from a bit of bleating that there were more North London councillors involved in the Metropolitan Board than there were South Londoners and also some objections from Greenwich residents that they were being lumped in with Deptford.

Twenty or so years after it was set up the Greenwich Board built itself a ‘town hall/ office block  with meeting rooms. This is the building which is now known as West Greenwich House which effectively served as a town hall in the years before the Second World War. It very different now from what it looked like when it was built since it was bomb damaged in the Second World War, losing its porch and  dome. It is now an independent  arts and community centre. I’ve no idea what it’s like inside now but at one time the rooms were all named from 1930s  Greenwich councillors - let’s hope they still are.

The Greenwich Board also had a works department on a wharf in the area now housing known as Riverside Gardens; then adjacent to Granite Wharf and later called Badcock’s Wharf.  When the Board of Works were abolished the Depot remained as part of the new Greenwich Council until 1904.  The entrance to the yard was in Chester Street (now Banning Street) and there was a ramp, leading from the centre of the yard to a jetty and wharf – probably for use by dustcarts which had to access the jetty from which rubbish was tipped into barges. The ramp remained until the site was cleared and rebuilt by the current developer

Over the years the Board undertook work on local infrastructure – predominantly on main drainage but also road widening,  particularly at Deptford Bridge. For many years the Board Chairman was Thomas Norfolk who was in charge of the brewery at Deptford Bridge. He came from Bromley in Kent and had been at school in Greenwich where he was a friend of John Penn, the engineer.  He was the manager of Mr. Lambert's Deptford Bridge brewery who in  1829  married Lambert’s daughter becoming owner of the brewery which was thenceforth known as ‘Norfolk Brewery’. When he retired the Board of Works gave a public banquet to celebrate his work as Chair with speeches and toasts about how conscientious he was. At his death in 1887 he was buried in the presence of at least 1,000 people alongside his wife, mother of his ten children`           

The Metropolitan Board of Works was replaced in 1889 by the London County Council a directly elected body to which Greenwich sent elected representative. There are many histories of the London County Council which became a pioneering body running many different services. Many of its works remain in current use in Greenwich today.

In 1900 the Greenwich Board of Works was replaced by the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich which covered eventually just the parishes of St Alphege and St Nicholas  - Charlton and Kidbrook becoming a separate body. The Metropolitan Borough was really very much like the Borough we understand today although with different powers and services.

The Metropolitan Borough covered a great many services and clearly they had many buildings all around the Borough. For basic services the Board of Works yard next to Granite Wharf was used for a short time but soon replaced by Tunnel Avenue Depot.

There is no detail on maps showing the earliest years of Tunnel Avenue Depot  However, buildings must have existed there since and in 1919 the Borough’s disinfection station was moved here from Banning Street. Disinfection is a means of dealing with ‘verminous persons’ and their possessions and in some Boroughs, cyanide chambers were used for infested property. There also seems to have been  a rubbish destructor at the depot in 1926.  Jetty Road was built to get rubbish to a concrete jetty but the jetty which remains now is more modern although also used for rubbish to be tipped into barges and then carried off to Essex. The only exception was food waste that was sent to a neighbouring Borough – almost certainly Woolwich, to be sold as food for pigs. The depot was bombed several times during the Second World War. The council disposed of it in the early 21^st century but the disinfection/ bath house, the jetty and some wall remain in other use.

In the new Metropolitan Borough the Board of Works building, now West Greenwich House, was used as a town hall but in 1939 a brave new town hall was opened at the bottom of Royal Hill. This building has been  written about widely and with enthusiasm. It was very, very special. The architect they appointed was Clifford Culpin – whose father was then the Labour Chair of the London County Council.  It was one of a succession of modernist public buildings which he and his partners built in that period. Famously Pevsner described Greenwich Town Hall as “the only town hall of any London borough to represent the style of our time adequately”.   It was part of a movement across Europe to build civic buildings differently. It was art deco, functional, ‘avowedly modernist’, to ”consciously reflect” a progressive left-wing Metropolitan Borough. Or, as contemporary architectural commentator, Owen Hatherley has said, “You gradually realise it is an extraordinary work of art”.  It had a tower from which the people of Greenwich could see the river and it included many interesting decorative features. In brick, it is “moderate modern.. rectilinear but not aggressive’.  It’s easily the most important modern building in the Royal Borough, probably also in South London.

The London County Council and the Metropolitan Boroughs lasted into the mid 1960s when the then Conservative governments wanted to include places like Bexley and Bromley as part of the Greater London Council to replace the London County Council. As part of these changes the Metropolitan Boroughs were twinned with some of their neighbours In order to make larger ‘more efficient’units. This interestingly led to endless disputes because many  boroughs didn’t get on with their nearest neighbour.  Greenwich was merged with Woolwich which was a much bigger borough. This meaning ex-Greenwich councillors were very much in a minority.  In the early 1970s it was decided to sell off half of the revolutionary architecture of the new Greenwich Town Hall.  In the years since all Council offices have been moved to Woolwich. A few weeks before writing this article it was decided to sell off the rest of the town hall and there is no longer a civic presence in Greenwich.