The Enderbys - note from Barbara Ludlow

Barbara writes as follows:

I have recently written a two-part article for the Journal ofthe Greenwich Historical Society entitled 'Whaling for Oil' - the Rise and Fall of the 'Enterprising Enderbys'. Part two is about to be published in the Journal. The first part is about the foundation of their shipping business in the 18thcentury. Before this they owned a tannery in Bermondsey.
Samuel Enderby, died at Blackheath in 1797, was apprenticed to an oil cooper at Trigg Stairs in the City of London. He married the daughter of Charles Buxton, an oil merchant - a move which enabled him to become an oil merchant too - and also a ship owner. His first known house was 66 Hyde Vale, which he occupied in 1758. Other addresses are given by Keith Dawson (earlier post on this blog) living in Blackheath in different houses over the years - details of which Neil Rhind kindly supplied me with.
Information about who lived where is not the purpose of this small piece and I dealt with these details in part one of the article. My new article deals with the growth of the Enderby shipping, whaling business and the establishment of their rope and canvas manufactory in Greenwich. There is indeed an address for Charles Enderby in Greenwich - today the building is known as Enderby House on the edge of the riverbank in East Greenwich. He is listed in the 1841 Census in that house. At the same time his two brothers, George and Henry, were living with his widowed mother in Old Charlton.
Part Two of the article deals with Charles Enderby in the Auckland Islands and the establishment of the Enderby Settlement for The Southern Whaling Company. In 1849 Charles sailed from Plymouth as His Excellency Lt.Governor Charles Enderby. The Auckland Islands had been discovered by an Enderby whaling captain. The sad story of Charles and his settlement (some two hundred miles south of New Zealand) is in part two.

I am surprised that Keith Dawson did not not link Charles with Enderby House. He also says that Hyde Cliff was demolished for the building of the Catholic school, St.Ursula's. I have been to that school many tines and I am sure that the very old part of the school was once Hyde Cliff - I know that part of the school was in an old large house.