SOME
OF GREENWICH’S OLDEST INDUSTRIAL REMAINS REDISCOVERED
On 13th May the Times, no less, announced in an article by Marcus Binney
that ‘Two Deptford residents with a passion for history have
discovered the foundation stone of one
of the first buildings erected by the Royal Navy’ and went on to describe ‘the
stone, bearing the date 1513 and the initials of Henry VIII set in an elaborate
flame-headed Gothic Arch formed of the finest moulded Tudor brickwork. This ‘originally stood over the entrance to a
magnificent 140ft long storehouse that formed the showpiece of a new Royal
shipbuilding yard built by Henry VIII at Deptford just upriver
from his palace
at Greenwich.
Our readers will know the story of the shipwrights’ palace on the
Deptford Dockyard site and how it was taken over and is being restored by Chris
Mazeika and William Richards. As part of their researches on the Dockyard they
began to look at the naval architect Samuel Bentham, since he had connections
with the Shipwrights’ Palace. Samuel’s brother, Jeremy, was the famous
economist whose corpse is preserved in a cupboard at University College – not,
as it turns out, the only relic kept there. Chris Mazieka was astonished one
day, while on his way to lunch, to bump straight into some bits of Deptford
Dockyard, itself!
In the Second World War bombing on the dockyard site had brought to
light the old Tudor storehouse within a Georgian storehouse which had been
built round it in the 1720s. In 1951 it was decided to clear the whole site for
commercial use. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings reported
that at least 80% of the Tudor brickwork remained as did several original roof
trusses together with a mullioned window, Tudor fireplaces and loophole
windows. The London County Council tried
to persuade the Admiralty to preserve these remains and the building inspectors
advised that it had ‘an outstanding place in naval history as one of the
earliest buildings of its class and as one of the starting points of the growth
of the Tudor navy,.’ Deptford Council
took a tablet which commemorated Peter the Great's visit to Deptford and 20,000
Tudor bricks went to repair Hampton Court.
Photographs existed of the arch and date stone but – as anyone who has
attended local history lectures on the subject in Greenwich will know – they
had gone into the care of the LCC and then completely disappeared. Until, of
course they were found by Chris Mazeika at University College.
The Times article left the mystery there – but a few days later a letter
appeared from Negley Harte, Senior Lecturer in Economic History at University
College, who said ‘ I can shed light on how the Deptford Dockyard founding
stonework and brickwork of 1513 came to University College’.. The hero who rescued it was Sir Albert
Richardson the ‘wonderfully eccentric architect’ who was professor of
architecture at UCL. He was given the
pieces by the LCC and they were put in what was then the Bartlett School of
Architecture – now the Department of Computer Science.
- The only thing the article doesn’t say is how you get in if you want to see these pieces! UCL is not the most accessible of buildings for the general public
2 comments:
I had a rather inconclusive interchange of emails with a member of UCL Special Collections and Archives staff in July 2018 who at first told me that the stone had been returned to Deptford and then said he had no idea where it was!
Retired as Master Chief Shipwright from Indian Navy in 1969 and currently engaged in ship construction activities in Indian Navy.
My training in INS Shivaji indian Navy Apprentice school and later at Indian Naval Shipwright School in 1956 to 1969.The cultural happenings are fresh under Royal Navy Instructors and school masters.
During my last visit London saw cultural aspect of Deptford dockyard site a very happier insight.
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