GLIAS NEWSLETTER REVIEW - SOME MEETINGS AND SOME WRONGS

There are a number of bits and pieces in the current GLIAS Newsletter about Greenwich and Woolwich (Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society  Newsletter 268 October 2013  www.glias.org.uk)

First they are advertising a meeting.

19th February 2014. GLIAS Lecture by Simon Davis of MOLA on Mediaeval Mills in Greenwich (assume this is about the tide mill found on the Lovell's site a couple of years ago).. It is at 6.30 at a new venue for GLIAS - The Swedenborgian Lecture Theatre in Barter Street near Kingsway Underground.

There is also a note about Enderby Wharf - and they - I think - are quoting from the Evening Standard of 18th September, Homes and Property
"Enderby Wharf (between Greenwich and the 02) which was first developed in the 18th century by a whaling company and was later used to manufacture cables and a cross-channel petrol pipeline to support the D-Day invasion is to be transformed when work starts soon to build 770 homes, the capital's first cruise liner terminal along with a hotel, shops and a rivertaxi pier."

- Now a lot of that is not quite right.  The Enderby Family had married into a whaling company family but they were not on that site in the 18th century but took over a rope walk and built a canvas works there in the late 1830s (see my web site http://greenwichpeninsulahistory.wordpress.com/).  Before that it had been a rope walk run by someone else, possibly a bleach and/or copperas works, and before that the Government Gunpowder Inspection Depot.    Yes the site was used to make cables - before 1930 the majority of all undersea cables were made there and of course Alcatel will remain on part of the site and still make components for underwater telegraphy there.  I am not sure I have ever heard that PLUTO or parts of PLUTO were made in Greenwich - and would be grateful to know more about that.   All of the information given about the number of houses and so on, I guess is likely to be changed.  My information is that a new developer is now on site for the housing, and no work has yet started on the terminal.  We will wait and see.