London Bridge Station roof

Industrial Archaeology News is published quarterly as the newsletter of the Association for Industrial Archaeology.
Inevitably, as all us London industrial historians, know - London gets a bit left out in most of such circles. Few people outside of the lower Thames or the Lea Valley actually believe there ever was any industry in London. 
The current issue however has an article, by Dr. Robert Carr, on the situation at London Bridge Station -  there is always a time delay in such things getting written and into print, so perhaps someone will  update us on the situation.

Robert Carr says@

London Bridge railway station is one of the oldest in the world, the first part opening in 1836. Following numerous stages of rebuilding the station now occupies a large area on two levels immediately south-east of London Bridge. At least the fourth-busiest rail terminal in London, it is to be completely rebuilt as part of a masterplan.           

Currently the planned rebuilding will involve the  demolition of the large LBSCR (London Brighton and South Coast Railway) train shed covering  platforms 9 -16 to the southeast of the site. Built during 1864 - 67, the engineer for this Brighton terminus was F D Banister (1823-1897) with C H Driver (1832-1900) as architect. Although listed grade 11, English Heritage and the Victorian Society have decided not to oppose demolition.  

It is intended to integrate London Bridge as a whole so that at long last it will serve as a single station rather than being two awkward parts as now. As well as the LBSCR terminus there are the  former South Eastern Railway through platforms  for services from Charing Cross, Waterloo East,  Blackfriars and Cannon Street to south east  England. These three island platforms are to the north of the train shed at a higher level and very intensely used. The through platforms have just simple canopies of recent date to keep the rain off. The spacious and quieter Brighton terminus with an overall roof is to the south. As at St Pancras the train shed, and the rest of the station, is elevated well above the original ground level on brick vaults. It is said that the 1860s roof of the LBSCR terminus must go as the new tracks to be laid through it have to run at a different angle - not along the old alignment. At Victoria station for example, the old South Eastern Railway train shed did not impede the present day operation of the station and there it has been possible to retain it.  

Over the years a considerable amount of repair and renewal has taken place at London Bridge as would be expected for a railway station of this age. At one time the Brighton station had 10-11 platforms; there now are eight. Part of the LBSCR train shed roof to the east was rebuilt
following World War 2 bomb damage. The 1860s part of this roof which is listed grade II is essentially at the west end. This is considered to be structurally weak as there are insufficient wrought-iron tie rods and the roof presently functions as an arch rather than a truss. The least altered part of the original roof is at the widest part of the station where as part of the planned redevelopment it is essential to insert escalators.

 Banister's design for the London Bridge  LBSCR train shed roof was based on a 'nave and  aisles' plan, with a large barrelled roof running  longitudinally and two aisles, originally flat  roofed, flanking this central structure. The nave was based on a 'crescent roof' design and is the last of its kind in London. There were once similar roofs at Cannon Street, Blackfriars, Charing Cross, Birmingham New Street and Liverpool Lime Street. The roof in Liverpool is the only other example to survive. The train shed at London Bridge Station is of national importance.  

However since there is no officially  recognised opposition or even coordinated  protest the removal of this great Victorian train  shed now seems inevitable and the question  arises as to whether it might be relocated.  Rail world at Peterborough have put in an offer but could railway enthusiasts raise the huge sum of money that would be needed? It is unlikely. In any case could they maintain it subsequently, and isn’t a train shed at least eight platforms wide too big for Peterborough anyway? A more sensible suggestion is that it might be re-erected as a grand market hall, perhaps as part of some big urban development. Following closure of the 1850s Les Halles market in central Paris about forty years ago, some of the massive iron and glass building by Victor Baltard was moved to Nugent-sur-Marne. Have any readers visited Nogent recently and is the Pavilion Baltard there a success?  

There is also the issue of the South Eastern Railway offices. Formerly in competition, the South Eastern Railway (SER) and the London Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR) came to a mutual agreement at the end of the nineteenth century and formed a Joint Management Committee in January 1899. To avoid the financial cost and risks of a formal merger the two companies remained officially separate until the Grouping in 1923, with the receipts split 59% to SER and 41 % to LC&DR.  Joint offices were built at 64 - 84 Tooley Street close to London Bridge station to the northeast. The building work occupied 1897- 1900 and the architect is believed to have been Charles Barry junior (1823-1900). If so, this is his only surviving commercial building, a distinctive polychrome edifice, listed locally, still in use and in good condition. The exterior has recently been  refurbished. These offices are likely to be demolished as part of the London Bridge redevelopment and this IS a matter of contention.  

One reason for the demolition is that a brick building close to the road is seen as a potential danger should a terrorist bomb be detonated in a road vehicle parked at the kerbside. It is recommended that for small cars there should be a clear distance of 30 metres from the kerb to the nearest building.  

A number of documents articulate the importance of security in design, including the RIBA Guidance on Designing for Counterterrorism (2010) and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure's, Integrated Security, a     Public Realm Design Guide for Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (2010). An outcome is the following  statement:-  'The identification and mitigation of terrorist  threats is not an exact science but one which  requires all those involved in the planning  process to make reasonable efforts to manage  risk. We believe the reduction in blast stand-off which would necessarily result from the retention of 64-84 Tooley Street would result in a materially different environment, such that the public benefit of a secure station would not be delivered to a similar extent through an alternative design proposal. ‘Dr lan Dungavell, Director of the Victorian Society, said that 'to knock this attractive historic building down to create a wider pavement is unnecessary and wasteful.'

 It was reported in February that the Mayor of London Mr Boris Johnson told local activists he would like to prevent the demolition of the South Eastern Railway office building in Tooley Street.  We await developments.

Robert Carr
Industrial Archaeology News  162 Autumn 2012

More info - should you want to find out more about AIA and perhaps teach them more about London industry aia-enquiries@contactds.bham.ac.uk   www.industrial-archaeology.org  - they are anxious to gain more members and to spread the news of their work.

Information about the News and the Annual Review from Liaison Officer, AIA Liaison Office, The Ironbridge Institute, Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Coalbrookedale, Telford TF8 7DX  01325 359846

Hope that's all ok

Commuting from South East London - GLIAS Newsletter

The latest GLIAS newsletter has arrived - and contains the following article about our local train services.

Do people think this is true?? Answers in our comments column please.

COMMUTING FROM SOUTH EAST LONDON

The weekday peak periods at London railway termini are bad, but are those at London Bridge the worst of all?  This congested station on a relatively narrow site is shortly to be dramatically rebuilt in an effort to improve the  situation (GLlAS Newsletter 257, p7) and a new line is already under construction to the southwest of the  station.

Evidence suggests that on trains to and from South East London travelling has generally been bad for a long time. R W Kidner on page 24 of his book 'The Southern Railway' (1958) mentions newspaper headlines such as 'appalling scenes at Charing Cross' and 'Girls crushed at Waterloo'. However, it is not clear if the incident at Waterloo was at Waterloo East or the main line terminus. Mention of fights breaking out at London Bridge  among frustrated passengers can be found on the internet, eg during hot weather in June last year and a 25-year- old woman, an architect from Lewisham, was mugged last September with little reaction from surrounding  passengers (Evening Standard 14 March 2012, p22).

Southern Region's Kentish lines were the most densely occupied in the world; see LTC Rolt, Red for Danger  (Pan 1966) page 275. It was in South East London that the Bullied 'double-deck' trains were introduced in an  attempt to pack more people onto a train of given length. These 4 - DD units held 122 more passengers than a  standard four-car train and first appeared from Lancing Works at the end of 1949. They ran from Charing Cross  to Dartford, and sometimes on to Gravesend and elsewhere. Accounts from people who commuted on theses  trains suggest that the experience was unpleasant and they were withdrawn on 1 st October 1971. Platforms were  lengthened and standard 10 car trains used instead. Two of the 4 - DD coaches have been preserved.

Ladies-only compartments were numerous on these lines c.1979. From memory there was something like one or more in each 4 or 5 car emu. While one did occasionally see 'ladies only' compartments at St Pancras and Paddington there seemed to be far more of these on trains running between London Bridge and Dartford. Is this subjective memory at all correct? If there were more than usual there was almost certainly a good reason. Can any reader explain what was going on?

Bob Carr

(and thanks to GLIAS and hope neither they nor Bob will object to this - I promise to send any comments you append below on to them - and personally I don't remember any Ladies Only compartments)

Riverside Resource Recovery in Belevedere

The following, slightly edited, piece appeared in the July Newsletter of the Woolwich and District Antiquarian Society.  It is by Richard Buchanan, who tells us that some later adjustments may be made to the text, after which it will be circulated to the membership of the Blackheath Scientific Society. Thanks to WADAS, the Blackheath Scientific Society and Richard for allowing us to use this piece - and any additions and adjustments will be passed on here.

RIVERSIDE RESOURCE RECOVERY PLANT,
Norman Road, Belevedere.

Twelve members of the Blackheath Scientific Society went to the Riverside Resource Recovery Plant in Norman Road, Belvedere on the 12^th June. They were taken round, following an introductory talk by the Technical and Development Manager. It had cost £550m to build, with pay back expected within a decade,

The site, is beside the Thames just downstream from the Crossness Sewage Works, and had been highly contaminated borax works. Cory bought this in 1991, planning to build an incinerator. Bexley Council refused planning permission until an appeal, detailing the modern environmental techniques to be used, reached the Secretary of State - who granted permission in 2006, after which Bexley became fully supportive,

First Norman Road itself was rebuilt to take heavy lorries. It had been little more than a track across the marsh and the ground below needed consolidation for which bottom ash from elsewhere was used. The work involved land drainage - a significant subsurface river flows across the road and needed a culvert. This was done with the nature reserve in mind - one aspect was the temporary relocation of three water voles until he work was done. After their return they bred successfully and raised the population to 140 - enough to stock another reclamation. They and other environmental benefits of the works, cost £75m.  

The firm established Cory Environmental Trust in 2003 to provides grants to community schemes local to its business.

Cory are now commissioning their “Energy From Waste Facility". The latest methods are used to minimise flue emissions of dioxins, N0x, halogens and sulphur, keeping them below European limits. The chimney produces no visible emission apart from a slight shimmer. The plant takes 670 000 tonnes per annum of residual waste which would otherwise go to landfill  that is left after various London Boroughs have done their recycling and produces on average 72 MW, 66 MW exported to the grid.  Their main preoccupation is to burn waste in an environmentally friendly manner and avoid polluting the atmosphere - not to maximise generation - although they achieve 27'% efficiency, currently an industry best for such a facility. There are plans to improve this by selling waste heat. Heat is recovered in a water tube boiler, which produces superheated steam for the turbine whose exhaust is condensed, producing water that is recirculated to the boiler and warm air to feed the furnaces. Equipment is duplicated so that the plant can continue working even if something breaks down or needs maintenance. Only the electrical generator is unduplicated and even if that is not working the waste can still be burnt.

Only Bexley Council delivers residual waste by road, about 15% of the total. The rest comes from upriver boroughs by barge (which otherwise passed by on the way to landfill sites in Essex) for which a new jetty was needed. This is 201m long, connected to the plant by a 160m long pier (apart from the Thames Barrier it is the largest structure built in the river since the 19C). Even so the effect of the outflow from the sewage works means the jetty is not far enough into the river to avoid the occasional need for dredging. Two travelling cranes on the jetty take waste containers from 'barges moored alongside and put them on tipper trailers. These are towed by diesel tractors, across a weighbridge at the foot of the pier, into the plant. They had looked at other ways of transferring the waste, but had settled for one where failure of an individual unit would not cause a stoppage. Neither would failure (or maintenance) of one crane. 

At the plant the containers are backed onto one of several tipping bays and the waste is shot into a vast storage bunker, 25m high (partly below ground level - the whole building is only 27m high), The containers  taper slightly, being wider at the mouth, to ease discharge but even so there are hydraulic pokers to dislodge  stuck waste. Occasionally, when a container is emptied a lump of hot waste will spontaneously combust in air - there is a water hose to quench it. An exit weighbridge checks the amount delivered. The bunker normally holds 8000 tonnes, but 11000 on a Friday, and as much as they can get in on Christmas Eve, to give a four day supply. Depending on the quality of the waste (that from Kensington & Chelsea is better, with much restaurant waste) they might do a crude sort, using a grab crane (again one of two) over the bunker.  Air is sucked down through the waste bunker and into the furnaces to prevent dust flying and to control odours. (At the end of the row of tipping bays is an unloading bay that juts into the bunker, and can be used to remove decomposing waste if the plant were to be shut down.)

However the grab cranes main task is to load 30 tonnes of waste per hour into three high level hoppers, each feeding a furnace line, Below the hopper a hydraulic ram pushes the waste onto a moving grate, in several sections, agitated to ensure even combustion, This operation is controlled automatically, maintaining the furnace temperature above 8500C, typically 950°C. When the waste is burnt out (after a transit time of about an hour) the grate feeds the ash residue (about 26% of the in feed) including large unburnt lumps (e.g. of resolidified glass or aluminium, even charred tree trunks) into a bottom ash hopper. This has to be emptied on a two-daily basis; special blue containers are used, and taken away in barges for recycling. This involves extraction of various metals etc., glass lumps are crushed and sorted into sand  at 4mm; aggregate; and coarse aggregate at 1Omm, for road foundations.  Glass is no longer colour sorted for recycling to glassworks but, crushed, to the construction industry. 

The whole plant employs 63 people, though with the waste bunker charged and the bottom ash bunker clear, the automation means that only two are needed at night.   

Richard Buchanan              .

Joe's pictures

GIHS member Joe has shown us his albums of pictures taken along the East Greenwich riverside
- we've been scan scan scan with them all day  - there is a very small selection below with more to come.

and by the way - this afternoon has seen the relaunch of Rich Sylvesters East Greenwich History Map - more to come about that as well.
(thanks for the chocolate biscuits Rich)

Lovells Wharf crane

Lovells Wharf Crane - with the Grand Turk in the background
and the Goodyear airship in the sky

Boats and bits at the current boatyard adjacent to what was Piper's Wharf

Gantries, silos and boats on the riverside wharf at what was Amylum/Tunnel Glucose

Looking inland from Morden Wharf - buildings of Amylum glucose refinery
and the Greenwich Distillery

Gantries on what was Victoria Deep WaterWharf
with some of the Bay Wharf barge slips on the right

Modern Anchor Iron Wharf with plaques, removed from earlier buildings
on site about previous owners

Trams

Great Charlton tram pictures this morning on the Charlton Champion blog Charlton Champion

Here's some more pictures to complement that:

and - the Charlton Champion site now includes a link to pictures of the Tramatorium http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/charlton-trams/b/20ff175e-8c90-4017-ba5b-a08600ad4833/

The yard at Feltram Way - The London County Council repair depot

Use of a special tram telephone box - a box like this stood near the Blackwall Tunnel entrance - suspect it has gone as part of an Olympics tidying up process - is it still there??

A tram arrives at its final destination at Penhall Road tramatorium

Woolwich tram turning circle

The paint shop at Feltram Way depot

Happy to add more pictures if there is popular demand!!

Deptford Creek Pumping Station

Deptford Creek Pumping Station

On Wednesday Diana Rimel was kind enough to come to the GIHS meeting to talk to us about Sir Joseph Bazalgette - the Metropolitan Board of Works Engineer who transformed London's drainage/

Diana gave us the picture, copied above,  which comes from an 1861 edition of Illustrated London News.  It shows a temporary pumping station on Deptford Creek while the construction of the sewer is carried on in the foreground.  In the back ground are the arches of the Greenwich Railway and masts and chimneys of riverside activity and industry.

I have also been sent this extract from one of Bazalgette's reports on the subject - I also understand this has been reproduced in a book on the subject, and this is to acknowledge that author.


Mr. Bazalgette said in his Report : — "last year this Board fearing that further delays might arise before they were enabletd to carry out the main drainage, had determined upon and taken steps for the execution of temporary works, at a very large pecuniary sacrifice, in order to afford those districts immediate relief.    ..... I therefore recommend that the order of the Board, for the erection of a  temporary pumping-station at the mouth of the Earl sewer, be rescinded ; and that in lieu thereof, the first permanent pumping station at Deptford Creek, intended to raise the sewage of the low-level sewer into the main outfall channel, be at once constructed."


- the pumping station of course being the one which now stands in Greenwich High Road - and which Diana spoke at length about in her report

How a German architect upgraded the Royal Laboratories

The current English Heritage Research News carries an article on German involvement in the Royal Laboratories, Woolwich by Peter Guillery.

(for the full text of the new Survey of Woolwich - available for comment http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/research/buildings/survey-of-london/woolwich/woolwich-volume48/ )

Peter first describes how barricades erected in Dresden's Republican uprising of 1849 were said to be of a quality not seen before in street fighting. This has been attributed to supervision from Gottfried Semper, the Head of the Department of Architecture in Dresden's Academy of Fine Arts, and architect of the city's opera house and art gallery. The rebellion was crushed, and Semper forced into exile, aged 45. A year later he arrived in London.

Semper first years in London were, apparently not happy – Peter says he "fell into impecunious depression’ but he got a government appointment, as Professor of Architecture through Henry Cole – the man who set up the Great Exhibition and, as a result, the V and A.

The Royal Arsenal,  like the Royal Dockyards was moving into the use of steam ­power but work on this was slow. The Royal Laboratory itself was housed in buildings from the 1690s and “was the target of the first major mechanising reconstruction” Building design was usually handled by Royal Engineers and the job was given to a Capt. Thomas Bernard Collinson, RE who had previously helped map Hong Kong and New Zealand

The Royal Laboratory buildings still stand in Woolwich and for many years have been separated in the way they originally stood. However in the 19th century there was a covering over the quadrangle between the two and Peter continues with the plans for this in 1853. “An area about 300ft by 138ft was to be covered on a grid of ninety cast-iron columns for a vast openplan steam-driven ammunition factory with a north-lit 'saw roof' and around 500 lathes”. Collinson sought help and was advised to write to Semper – who came to Woolwich and took on the job.

Peter says that Collinson's letters to Semper, survive in Zurich, and indicate that Semper was given responsibility for the entire form in detail of the iron frame and roof. Ironwork was supplied by Benjamin Hick and Son of Bolton and the factory was hastily erected. He goes on “The frame here was robustly moulded with octagon-section columns, as in the Crystal Palace, which Semper knew intimately and admired, though he deprecated the spindliness of iron in other contexts. The north elevation was eccentrically ornamental, with reliefs of cannon in the spandrels and a circle-pattern frieze depicting ammunition under a cornice bearing the initials of members of the project's committee”.

Semper moved to Zurich in 1855 “and his Royal Laboratory frame had become an archetype. It was the model for numerous later iron-framed workshops at the Arsenal, even into the 1880s. Some of these still stand. Semper's factory continued as the Royal Laboratory's main machine shop until after the First World War. It was not taken down until the 1970s”.

English Heritage. Research News. No 17/18 Spring 2012