Reviews and snippets from August 1999

BOOK REVIEWS AND SNIPPETS FROM AUGUST 1999

Many of the books reviewed below were self published  - and some authors have died, moved or run out of stock. So, most contacts of how they can be obtained have been removed.  Sorry.  Comments, where necessary in [ square brackets and italics].

GREENWICH  AUTHOR WRITES ABOUT SYDENHAM!

GIHS Member, Darrell Spurgeon has just published his latest guidebook - ‘Discover Sydenham and Catford’ (we can’t have this Darrell!). 

PS. Its a very good read about a very interesting area.

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GLIAS NEWSLETTER .Congratulations to the new look under a new editor, Robert Mason!  The June 1999 edition contains an article on ‘More about Deptford Gas Works’ and a contribution from Bob Carr - ‘Thames Sold Off and Name Changed’. This refers to the MV Thames, one of the ships which took sewage sludge from Crossness to dump in the Black Deep,and which is now redundant.  Thames was the flagship and is now, says Bob, the Anastasios IV registered at São Tomé e Principe near Libreville in West Africa.  She left London to be refitted in Greece on 28th April.

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LOVELL’S WHARF - a very short booklet on the site and its background can be made available at cost. Please contact marymillsmmmmm@aol.com

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LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. (no less) contained an article by Iain Sinclair  - ‘All Change. This Train is cancelled’ - about how to get to the Dome. Iain Sinclair is a novelist known for his descriptions of east London - and he has not missed out on  Greenwich and the history of the peninsula ‘the inhabitants of the peninsula were feral inbreeds comfortable with the maggoty underside of history .... ammunition manufacturers, the skull hammering intoxification of the South Metropolitan (later East Greenwich) Gas Works .... the Molochs in workers cottages and burrows.. mutated as they came to terms with the by products of the gas industry; the tar; the sulphate of ammonia; the trains; the phenol; the never ending noise (grinding thumping whistling, clanking),. Smells that have mixed and mingled for generations in increasingly complex chemical combinations gift unwary tourists with stomach-churning hallucinations, flashbacks to ancient horrors, dizzying premonitions of catastrophe....’. (blimey!)

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ELTHAM SOCIETY MAY 1999 NEWSLETTER Contains many articles about life in Eltham - including a history of Eltham and District Motor Cycle Club - the Chairman of which was a test rider for Matchless.

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BYGONE KENT.   Vol. 20 No.6. contains an article ‘The First Greenwich Gas Works. How it fell down’ together with a letter from Brian Sturt (‘the GLIAS gasman’)  filling in some of the gaps in the first instalment of this series on Greenwich’s early gas works which had been in No.5.  Vol.20 No.7. contains ‘Greenwich Railway Gas Works’.

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WOOLWICH ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY NEWSLETTER for June featured an article ‘ Our trip on the Jubilee Line’ which could, quite honestly, be enough to out you off it for ever and ever. 2 ½ hours underground and then told to walk back along the track! Oh - it was a special practice for an emergency (still, rather them than me).

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BOOKS ON GREENWICH INDUSTRY

** Mary Mills. Greenwich Marsh. The 300 Years Before the Dome. [sorry, I sold out years ago, happy to send digitised]

** Jess Steele. Deptford Creek. Surviving Regeneration. From Deptford Forum Publishing. 

** Rita Rhodes. An Arsenal for Labour.  £12 from Holyoake Press, Co-operative Union, Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester, M60 0AS.

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English Partnership's Greenwich Peninsula News has fluttered through the letterbox as I write. On page 2 is the plan for the Greenwich Pavilion ‘a dramatic eye catching steel and glass structure .... it will house a dedicated exhibition about development of the Dome, the history of Greenwich and the Peninsula. ....!

[whatever happened to the Greenwich Pavilion?? Is it still round the back of the Dome?]

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Requests for information

.. are there still two concrete anchor posts on Shooters Hill for a vast great, but never built, bridge  over the Thames?

....is there an old railway tunnel under the Woolwich Road in Charlton, where mushrooms are grown?

.....if the Westcombe Park Station tunnel is replaced by a bridge - do we press for iron work there to be retained

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A MIRACLE - when Ted Barr posted off the letter reproduced on pp 5-6 he enclosed copies of the picture postcards mentioned.Sadly, when it arrived the envelope was empty - with a note that it had been ‘damagfed by machinery’. (on the front was proudly emblazened the fact that Leeds is now a fully automated Post Office’.  Time went by. Then 6 weeks later Woodlands Local History Library received an envelope from the Northern Rock Insurance Office in Newcastle.  Inside it, with a compliments slip, were Ted’s post cards

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DO GO - to Christ Church Forum to see, in the foyer, the old clock miraculously restored by our Chair, Jack Vaughan. The original hands can now be seen from the street. There was an ‘opening’ ceremony in June - with the Deputy Mayor.

[No, don't go - the Forum threw it out a couple of years ago]

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The annual summary of the Greater London Archaeology  Advisory Service contains details of work on the following sites of interest in Greenwich:

Greenwich Reach. The Stowage: Evaluation. Roman finds and alluvial deposits. A Saxon ditch, a mediaeval ditch and alluvial deposits, post mediaeval Trinity House almshouses, waterfront structures associated with the East India Company, shipbuilding dockyard including timber revetments, two slipways and subs containing shipbuilding debris and pottery wastes.

Greenwich Marsh land between A102M/Bugsby’s Way. Evaluation. Alluvial sequence overlain by Neolithic/bronze age peat overlain by further alluvial deposits.

Warrren Lane. Site investigation. Post Mediaeval dumping and levelling deposits.

Thames Foreshore at Arsenal. Watching brief. Peat horizon and post medieval modern foreshore artifacts