FIREPOWER – have
a Royal Salute in the Arsenal on 5th August 2002 at 12 pm. They have tours of the Arsenal in July and
August on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays 11.30 am and 2.30pm. They advertise Paintball activities at £1 for
10 shots. On the 190th anniversary of the
Battle of Salamanca, BBC Newsnight’s Mark Urban lecture will be based on his
book The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes: The Story of George Scovell, -
Scovell cracked Napoleon’s Grande Chiffre, leading to Wellington’s
finest victory in the Peninsula. Mark Urban is diplomatic editor of the BBC’s
Newsnight. The lecture will be held in Firepower’s Breech Cinema
SECOND SYMPOSIUM ON SHIPBUILDING ON THE THAMES AND THAMES BUILT
SHIPS NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, 15 FEB 2003
Papers include: William Evans,
shipbuilder of Rotherhithe Stuart Rankin. Thames built ships of the Orient Line
& Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. - Peter Newall. The General Steam Navigation
Company Yard at Deptford - Peter Gurnett. Early steamship machinery
installation and repairs on the City Canal, Isle of Dogs - Roger Owen. Coastal
shipping and the Thames - John Armstrong. Convicts to Australia. HMS Glatton
and HMS Calcutta - Brian Swann. An aspect of warship
TWO PICTURES OF TUNNEL
AVENUE IN THE 1920S
Mary Mills
GLIAS has been given two photographs by
Simon Bass. One of them shows what appears to be a factory yard, taken from
above, the other shows a crowd of people standing in the road. In both the
ground appears to be covered with something black, and shiny. The crowd are standing in Blackwall Lane in
Greenwich – since the distinctive frontage of the Inlaid Lino Works and an
advertisement for them can be seen in the background.
I have a fair idea what is being shown in
the pictures – since an account of it appears in ‘A History of the United
Molasses Company Ltd.’ (W.A,Meneight 1977).
3,000 tons of molasses had escaped from a tank and was making ‘its
ponderous and inexorable way into Tunnel Avenue’. As Mr.Meneight pointed out
this was not useful in an area where ‘trams were served by a conductor rail
running in a gully between the lines’.
Try as I can in the local papers I cannot find the date of this incident
which must have taken place in the late 1920s.
The molasses was used by the Molassine
Company which had a riverside factory on the Greenwich peninsula on part of the
site now largely covered by Hays and Amylum. In October 1999 we published an
article about them in the Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter. This
described how the company was founded in 1907 to exploit a Balkan secret
formula for animal food – and the company made a number of well known brands
including Vims which ‘all dogs love’ and a sphagnum moss and molasses based
feed for horses (also used as a plaster by First World War soldiers). The article included some memories of the
works contributed by John Needs and he remembered how Vims was frequently
mentioned in Norman Wisdom films and how the yard sweepings were sold as a
garden fertiliser ‘RITO’. The company eventually became part of Tate and Lyle.
Today there is a large red stone office block in Blackwall Lane which is said
to have been built by Molassine – although I have never seen any actual details
of this. Behind it are a number of large tanks. I cannot believe that these are
the same tanks which stood there in the 1920s and which leaked so dramatically
into Blackwall Lane and which Molassine’s publicity department described as a
landmark on the river, although it might be a good story to say so. To local people the most notable thing about
the factory was the smell!
GLIAS
NEWSLETTER
This edition is the 200th
Newsletter and contains a great deal of congratulation and a number of commissioned articles (no mention of GIHS
however much we might consider ourselves a daughter organisation!) . The issue contains news from all over London
– and includes three paragraphs on the Deptford Dockyard (Convoy’s site) by David and Olwyn Perrett giving some details of the site’s past history – and a
review of the play ‘The Gut Girls’ which has been going the rounds in
Lewisham. There is also a short mention
of the Blackheath Hole.
-----------------------
GIHS has now signed up with the British
Association for Local History and now receive ‘Local History
News’ . . No
mention of Greenwich in the current issue- but that’s something we can work on!
INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE
The Vol.28 Spring 2002 edition contains an
article on ‘The Porthcurno Story; this tells above the site of the Museum of
Submarine Telegraphy near Lands End, in Cornwall – and a bit about the Museum
set up there. It ends by saying that
next time the ‘intend to turn the pages back still further and visit Greenwich
on the river Thames where it all began’ – we wait with interest!
CHELSEA SPELEOLOGICAL SOCIETY RECORDS AND
KENT UNDERGROUND RESEARCH GROUP. REPORT 2001. VOL. 27
This excellent publication – which first
appeared in the 1960s – details everything you could want to know about
underground research in the past year.
Nothing in Greenwich borough appears this
time – but there are numerous dene holes and chalk wells in the surrounding
area of North West Kent and some
fascinating World War Two sites, some of which are only ‘somewhere in England’
INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW
This twice-yearly journal features in its
May 2002 edition Jonathan Clarke’s article on Mumford’s Mill in Greenwich.
Members might remember when Jonathan came to lecture to us about the mill and
his researches into it. This is a most
important article in a prestige journal – hopefully the start of many Greenwich
based articles in such places!
The Guide
The May edition of the Blackheath based
freebie magazine ‘The Guide’ featured an article on The Shipwrights Palace in
Deptford. This important house – in Lewisham, but right on the boundary and in
the bit that used to be in Greenwich – has been extensively renovated over the
past few years. This was the office
block and Shipwrights’ house for Deptford Dockyard – on the riverside ands worth
a fortune. However two Deptford residents – Chris persuaded Convoys to sell it to them and have begun to restore it.
CLAY PIPE MAKING
IN PLUMSTEAD
John McLean
My grandfather, William Luckett, lived in Palmerston Road, now a
crescent, in a terraced house. This had a side entrance to the back garden
where he had a ramshackle workshop from which he ran a one-man business
manufacturing clay pipes. These were predominantly for the beer industry and
later for tobacconists.
I was told that the pipes were given to customers who bought a pint of
‘porter’ in the pubs. Granddad received
four pence a gross for his pipes – from which you will understand that he was
unlikely to be a rich man. He ran the
business totally on his own and I can remember seeing rack after rack of pipes
of varying shapes and sizes in the roof space above his workshop.
There was an all pervading smell in the workshop, not at all unpleasant.
Presumably this came from the china clay, which he procured from Cornwall and
was delivered by rail to Woolwich Arsenal Station. How on earth he managed to transport such
heavy loads I don’t know – I believe he had a pony and trap at one stage but in
my time he used ‘shank’s pony’.
As far as I can recall – and I
apologise for my lack of memory – the process involved a mixing system to
acquire the correct consistency, a moulding process using cast moulds (iron)
with inserts for forming the bowl and a needle to form the airway.
Incidentally, I have one of granddad’s moulds with ‘Merry Christmas’ embossed
on it. Whether he had multiple moulds I
cannot say, but as a production engineer I would have thought it an obvious way
to go.
The final process after ‘fettling;’ or cleaning up the clay that exuded
through the joints in the mould, was to fire them in a high temperature open
furnace. Granddad had built this himself
and it was a bit like Dante’s Inferno. It had a chain lifted cast iron bucket
full of pipes which was lowered into a coke fire. But it all worked and
beautiful little and large clay pipes emerged. The chimney of the furnace was
incredible. Granddad used anything available to construct it – bricks, bits of
glass, rock, porcelain, - you name it, Granddad used it. How it ever resisted the ravages of nature I
do not know but it did. The only
mementoes I have is the mould and two small pots made from 'Arsenal clay’ and
‘Plumstead' clay,
Granddad’s
brother, Fred Luckett, was financially much more successful and he became a
well known builder in the Plumstead area living in Griffin Road and having a
works close to Plumstead High Street. I believe there is a garage in the High
Street with the Luckett name above it to this day
WOOLWICH WATER
By Jack Vaughan
There was a recent planning application for changes to the water tower of
the ex-Brook Hospital at Shooters Hill Road plus a possible threat to an
adjacent stone building known as Headway House, which fronts onto the
road. Study of Ordnance maps for 1869 and
1890 show the building to be the former ‘Kent Water Company’ pumping station.
The base of the tower itself has coupled with it a massive collection of
hydraulic apparatus, probably connected to Headway House, although the tower
post-dates the maps mentioned.
We are trying to determine if the House is threatened. We are also taking
an interest in the hydraulic arrangements mentioned above. The applicants have
refused to leave this apparatus in situ but will offer no objection to them
being removed and taken away for possible restoration and exhibition elsewhere.
The pumping station supplied water to the Barracks, the Royal Arsenal,
both Royal Dockyards (Woolwich and Deptford) and the Royal Military Academy and
is therefore a very significant industrial monument in Woolwich history ….
…… more of this later.
------------------------------
Mike Neill is extremely keen that all
members look – and approve or criticise his work on the Royal Arsenal which
will be used as part of the display in the new Greenwich Heritage Centre. At
the moment this is in the shape of a web site http://www.royal-arsenal.com/ and
members are urged to look at it. Mike also says that he will try and produce
this as a CDRom for this who do not have web access – or contact him via
Greenwich Council.
NO
NEWS – we still have no news of the event to mark the centenary of Greenwich
Foot Tunnel – last mention from Barry Mason was a note – saying ‘I took today off work and went down to Redhill to see Binnie, Black and Veatch. The
firm founded by the FT engineer, Alexander Binnie. Now a multi-national. The company is excited about the FT 100th
birthday on Sunday 4 August and today confirmed their budget of around £5,000
on the event. Our meeting laid down the ground-rules and outlined who does
what. We meet again, on site, in about 1.5 weeks. If you've got time to help
with all this, please let me know direct. If, for example, you work at Canary
Wharf and tunnel commute, can you firm help too? Tower Hamlets. Are you in?
More soon.
Barry
WHAT
A PITY – there is to be no celebration of the 50th anniversary of
the Last LCC Tram which was driven to the Tramatorium in the Woolwich Road, by
Alf Jago, Mayor of Woolwich – amongst scenes of great distress from the general
public. David Riddle points out that
Lewisham are to celebrate their ‘last tram’ (but Greenwich’s really was the
very last one).
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