We have had a note from someone who worked at Anchor Iron Wharf - thats where the posh flats are down by Ballast Quay, it used to be a scrap yard - Robinson's Scrap Metal.
This is from David who says he used to drive the Grafton Crane on the rails there, beside the river and overlooked by Robinson's office. He describes a 'man in white' bringing down cast iron valves from the power station. He was white because he was covered in asbestos dust and was leaving a cloud of it wherever he went. Under the hydraulic press room, under tons of scrap, an old man was living 'he had an angelic face you would never forget'. David remembers clearing thousands of cartridges - he thought they might be live so he left them, and covered them up with empty scrap bins.
That all sounds pretty dreadful!
2 comments:
My mother worked as a secretary for C A Robinsons at Anchor Iron Wharf for 25 years, retiring in 1978. I think the original offices were ordinary houses right on the river front, next to the weigh bridge. These were pulled down in the late 1950's/ eary 1960's and replaced by 'modern' offices, which were still there last time I visited Greenwich. Although the offices were clean, the wharf was a filthy place often piled high with scrap metal which the huge cranes loaded onto barges. Much of the scrap was collected and delivered to the wharf by horse and cart. These were huge things, both cart and horse, and were part of our daily life as they plodded between Woolich and Greenwich throughout the week, along the Woolwich Road.
I have just found that this was my family’s business on my grandads side. Winifred Robinson was my Nan whose name is on the second stone opposite the Cutty Sark pub. I lived with my grandparents in Greenwich and never knew of this as what is interesting I have my own sheet metal manufacturing company that I started 20 years ago, a industry I fell into rather than aspired to at the time.
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