News items yet again

Sorry to keep pushing my own works. Need to be a bit shameless maybe,

'Innovation, Enterprise and Change on the Greenwich Peninsula' is still available (but I have just opened the LAST BOX).  Copies are for sale at Sabo, Stockwell Street, The Warwick Leadlay Galley, Nelson Road,  Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Centre, and the NOW Galley, Greenwich Peninsula Square. or from me marymillsmmmmm@aol.com. Or from Rob who can also handle paypal.http://www.greenwich.co.uk/peninsula-book/
- and also buy some of Rob's wonderful calendars of Greenwich or the Thames http://www.londonphotocalendars.co.uk/royal-greenwich-2016/

Also -next week - I am doing presentations on the peninsula and its history:
16th Wednesday - 6.00-700 Greenwich Centre Library
17th Thursday - 7-8 Blackheath Library


Great launch event at the Greenwich Gallery for Peter Kent's amazing 'The Birth of London's Newest City'.  Go and see it - its on until the 23rd.  9-5.30  weekdays, 12-4 weekends.  Honestly. This is amazing.   
www.peterkentgreenwich.co.uk  www.johnpayne.com (the sponsors)


GLIAS NEWSLETTER.
As ever - various events
20th January - The Archaeology and History of the Kings Cross Goods Yard.  Rebecca Haslam.  6.30 Swedenborg Hall.
17th February. Father Thames. Still alive and kicking. The changing role of Thames Wharves.  David Hilling. 6.30 Swedenborg Hall.
16th March,  Gold Refining in London.  Michaele Blagg. 6.30 75 Cowcross Street
20th April The Restoration of Historic Buildings. An Engineer's perspective. 6.15 75 Cowcross Street
18th May. AGM.  Played in London. The Heritage of a City at Play. Simon Inglis  6.15 75 Cowcross Street

also:
Guided Towpath Walks by the Inland Waterways Association, all over Christmas. www.waterways.org.uk
10th February. Newcomen Society. Susan Mossman on 'Onward ever' Henry Bessemer and his Works.  5.45  Science Museum (bet she doesn't mention his Greenwich Works)
SERIAC - 23rd April. Kingston on Thames.

The GLIAS Newsletter also lists down items from the London Archaeologists Fieldwork Roundup for 2014.. Greenwich items are:
Enderby House. evaluation to locate c17-18 gunpowder magazine built 1694. Found C17 brick foundation and robbed wall of magazine
King Henry's Dock SE18. evaluation of site of Graving Dock found three phases of features: timber posts and a horizontal beam from an early phase: a wall from the second phase: and a mooring bollard and two brick structures 'most likely a dock crane' from the post 1850's phase.
Greenwich Market - building survey: designed by Joseph Kay. 1833. Hipped roof of market is steel based structure of 1905-8
Pelton Road and Commerell Street SE10. industrial buildings.
Convoys Wharf. found brick and concrete wall foundations and possibly crane bases from the Nineteenth Century; a stone structrure which could be part of Stern Dock Entrance and a possible continuation of a slipway wall. Also dug test pits inside and outside the Olympia Building and a cast iron structure of 1844 originally erected as cover for Slipways.

There is also an article praising Rich Sylvester's Greenwich Peninsula map  and urges that it be made more available http://fegp.typepad.com/friends/2010/07/east-greenwich-history-map.html

Arco Trent - another article in the GLIAS Newsletter  discusses Richard Wilson's ''Slice of Reality' which has been round the back of the Dome since 2000. It says that this was originally the Arco Trent built in 1971. 'Originally a dredger, in later life she served as a floating booster station, modified to assist other vessels in the discharge of aggregate at more remote locations, even in open water'.  She is currently used as a studi
Finally - there is a note in the newsletter from Gillian Friar who has a collection of books and research materials about John Evelyn and would be happy to donate them to someone interested. AG@Parfrey.co.uk


INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS
This is the Association for Industrial Archaeology's Winter 2015 edition.
They advertise their new web site industrial-archaeology.org.
The edition also includes an article on Enderby Wharf - this is by - er - me - and there is also a small advert for my new book - so, thanks AIA.

BLACKHEATH SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY
18th December  - talks on Mechanical Calculators, My Wife's Iron Fork, The Last Vulcan Bomber Flight. 
15th January - Managing the Crossness Nature Reserve.
both at Mycenae House n7.45

THE LENOX PROJECT
Their winter fair is 12th December (that's tomorrow) at Lewisham Arthouse, 140 Lewisham Way. 11-6.  lots of new t-shirts, and other stud with a 'fabulous design'.  You can also buy direct from them.  They also have a new brochure which is available on their web site. www.buildthelenox.org.

MARIE CELESTE DE CASTERAS. Ann Dingsdale writes: " I am researching the 1,499 women who signed the 1866 womens' suffrage petition in 1866.  We plan to celebrate the local women who signed with a walk in May to mark the 150th anniversary (40 years before the Suffragettes!)

I have been interested to find that one woman who signed in Greenwich took out some interesting engineering patents in the early 1860's, and if GIHS know anything more about her.   She was Marie Celeste de Castres SInibaldi, a naturalised Frenchwoman,born 1808, and married to a Corsican professor of Italian,  Luigi Sinibaldi. Iin the 1860's she was living at 1 South Villas, South
Street. Her son was an engineer,Napoleon Sinibaldi and hHer brother in law Pierre Sinibaldi was a
Military Engineer.

These are the details of the patents: 1862 October 31 No 2945. Improvements in the manufacture of armour plates for ships fortifications and forts, and in the manufacture of plates to be used  in the construction and building of ships and for other purposes, and  for attaching copper or other like protective metal to the outside of metal plates for making copper bottoms or bottoms with a similar protection to Iron ships. The method of constructing armour plates for building ships of war is to use laminated plates combining iron and steel and also plates of iron without steel perfectly wrought and to unite them by soldering with copper brass or other metal in the manner described. To procure great strength laminated plates of steel and iron are used in combination. Plates for building ships for the merchant service are manufactured in like manner but with thinner plates. By the same means I produce all other formation of iron for machinery, beams and other purposes.By the process described, an external coat of copper or other protective metal can be given to each plate of iron which when the plates are used in the construction of ships will produce the effect of copper bottoms

August 22, 1862. 2205. To Marie Celeste Sinibaldi of 1, South villas South-street, Greenwich, in the county of Kent, for the invention of "improvements in the manufacture of chains, and in the
apparatus employed therein."

LABOUR HERITAGE
Notes of meetings - but all they do is West London - and I know they would blame us for not offering them a  south east  London Labour Heritage Day.  However......
20th February  West London History Day.  Ruskin Hall, Acton,. W3
21st May AGM. Unite the Union Offices, Holborn, WC2
www.labour-heritage.com

EAST END WATERWAYS GROUP- only just over the other side of the river -  they have sent us details of their letters on planning proposals for the Hackney Wick area - 'the science park of the 1840s'.  Happy to pass details on.