The Manor at the end of the Howland Great Wet Dock (now Greenland Dock)

Update:  Thanks to Phil (@BermondseyBeat) on Twitter for solving the mystery.  There is a colour image of it and a full record for it at Collage (Guildhall Art Gallery and London Metropolitan Archives) here:  http://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/collage/app;jsessionid=81444C987D188671B61EE87B615CC857?service=external/Item&sp=ZGreenland+Dock&sp=30022&sp=X

This picture is taken from The Reverend E.J. Beck’s book “Memorials to Serve for the Parish of St Mary Rotherhithe” published in 1907 by Cambridge University Press.  Beck does not say where he obtained the image, which is a real frustration because it would be lovely to know more about the painter and where the painting is now located.

We know that the house was built at the same time as the Howland Great Wet Dock, which was built in 1696-1700.  The caption says that the house belongs to J. Wells Esq, (who was a local ship builder who invested in the Howland Great Wet Dock and its later expansion), having bought it from the “old Duke of Bedford who formerly resided there” and that the drawing is made in 1706.  There appears to be some writing in white at the base of the image in the dark area at centre, but it’s completely illegible.  There is also a sign shown on the building at far left, but I can’t make out what it says.  The scan is quite a good copy of a very poor black and white image.

I would very much like to know more about the painting.  As I said above, the current location of the painting would be good, as would the artist's name.  The obvious course of action is to  contact the Southwark Local History Library and Sands Picture library but I wondered if anyone reading this knows anything about it?

Were Rotherhithe notables slave owners? Were your own ancestors slave owners?

I am very glad that I joined the Port of London Study Group, which meets weekly at the Museum of London Docklands.  Every week we have two one-hour or one two-hour lecture about some aspect of the Port of London.  Research is conducted within the group, and external speakers are invited too.  I have only been a member for a few weeks but I am loving it. 

This week's visiting speaker was Dr Nicholas Draper from the Legacies of British Slave Ownership project.  He was superb.  The first talk put London's docks into the economic context of the slave trade, explaining how the trade helped to finance the eastward growth of the West India and London Docks on the north banks of the Thames, and how the trade operated.  One of the concrete outputs of the  Legacies of British Slave Ownership project is the database.   When slavery was abolished it was decided that slave owners needed to be compensated for the loss of their workers.  £20million was allocated to the compensation.  Over a period of four years the money was allocated and detailed records were made of who were compensated when their slaves were freed.  The Legacies of British Slave Ownership project allows you to search under various different parameters but perhaps the most interesting for some people will be looking up their family name to see if their ancestors were compensated in the past for the loss of their slaves, and were therefore slave owners.  An uncomfortable thought.  I must be safe on my father's side but I do worry about my mother's canal-building ancestors!  I haven't yet investigated that possibility. Here's the database address if you want to take the plunge and find out if your own family history includes slave trading: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

My head has been fizzing ever since with linkages, with the vast and complex network of different commercial interests and innovations, with the perception of that world becoming smaller by the day, with no ambition being too big, with the sense of the drive that adapted itself so painlessly to the idea that foreign people could be treated as commodities like sugar, tobacco, rum or pack animals.   Realities like the Empire and the slave trade are things that as a nation we are often embarrassed to talk about, but in tandem with other ventures, the slave trade was one of the complex enterprises that established the commercial foundations on which our economy and culture were built.  As mortifying as it is today to recognize the less honourable parts of our past, we cannot ignore that those financial successes helped to form the nation that we have inherited today.  Understanding how the slave trade fitted into the viability of the country as a commercial entity is essential to understanding our history.  The  Legacies of British Slave Ownership project is looking explicitly at some of the outcomes of the slave trade, at the contributions it made in a set of different but related areas, the "legacies" of the project's name.  See the Legacies website for more about these. 

What I am excited about from the point of view of this blog is that I am terribly uninformed about the slave trade, and I now know that there is an awful lot of research that I can pursue in the future with respect to Rotherhithe.  For example, now that I know that slave trade incomes helped to finance the docks on the north banks of the Thames opposite Rotherhithe, I am going to use the database to see if local ship builders, ship owners, ships' captains and local notables were involved in slave ownership and how that impacted the social and economic life of the peninsula.  It is almost certain that those who ordered East and West Indiamen from Rotherhithe builders had some interest in the slave trade, so that will be interesting to look into.  The Rotherhithe docks were very under-developed prior to the 1833 Abolition, although the Howland Great Wet Dock (1696) was funded partially by one family’s East India profits and was used at least partly as a winter base for East Indiamen, so that’s another avenue of investigation. 

But even after the abolition of slavery in 1833, dirt-cheap labour was still being transported from where it was in ready supply to where it was needed, and I want to learn more about that too.  For example, I posted a piece about the tea-clipper Borealis, built by Thomas Bilbe in 1864, well after the abolition of slavery, and that will now need rewriting.  Bilbe was involved in the movement of Chinese “coolies” to Cuba as cheap labour, and I really need to go back and rethink the piece in the light of what I learned today (not to mention that it wasn't my best piece of writing ever!). 

Today's lecture makes me look at everything I have been writing about Rotherhithe in a highly critical way and with a real sense of annoyance, although not for the first time.  One of the eternal and irritating problems of blogging history is that it is fragmented, pulled ruthlessly from its context.  It is the best way of using the time I have available to me, but I am always aware that the bigger picture is always lost in my blog.  Ships, buildings, people, all lifted from their social and economic past and presented like excavated pieces in an Edwardian museum.   I need to do something about that before too long.

So it's a huge thank-you to Dr Draper and the Port of London Study Group for giving me a lot of food for thought, and now it's back to my day job for the time being!

Don't forget to visit the Legacies of British Slave Ownership project at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ and you can see one of Dr Draper's talks on the subject of slavery and its impact on London on Youtube: What does London owe to slavery? (26 Oct 2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzUxQwez9fM

Listing Greenland Dock - has anyone got any experience with the process?

Does anyone have any experience in getting buildings and other structures listed?

I have been talking to someone at Historic England (the newly renamed English Heritage) today and they said that Greenland Dock would be an ideal candidate for Grade 2 listing, and I have decided to start the process of trying to get it listed to protect it from future threats.  It is ludicrous that I have only just got around to doing it.  I always seemed to be too busy, but this was the kick I needed and I will just have to find the time!

I am happy to do the bulk of the work but anyone with previous experience to help guide me would be much appreciated.  My email address is in the header at the top of the blog.  Please get in touch!

Update at 23:35
I have started the listing process which, thanks to Historic England (formerly English Heritage) is available to do in stages online.  You can do a it, save it, go away and do the research for the new section, complete that, see what's on the next page, have a major panic attack and go away and cry for a bit and come back to it a few days later if required.  I'm impressed with the information that they provide, and the help that the share for people like me who really don't know what they're doing in the listing process.

For anyone interested in finding out more about the dock please read my posts on the subject:

Howland Great Wet Dock 1699-1807 http://bit.ly/1LtDVm3 
Whaling at Howland / Greenland Dock 1763-1806 http://bit.ly/1LMBu9T 
A History of Greenland Dock 1806-1970 http://bit.ly/1OvRhAS
Greenland Dock Turn-Of-The-Century Buildings http://bit.ly/1k5oaHR
Bridges of Greenland Dock http://bit.ly/1PgVY1q  
At Home in Greenland Dock: Cunard A-Class cruise liners http://bit.ly/1PgXvob
A snapshot of ships present in Greenland Dock in the late 1950s http://bit.ly/1G6oxvE

 

A short history of Greenland Dock 1806 - 1970

The 1807 CDC logo, showing the entrance
to Greenland Dock, with a granary on one
side and a sea of masts on the other.

Greenland Dock was established over the area occupied by the former Howland Great Wet Dock (1699-1807), which has been covered on a previous post. It was renamed Greenland Dock to reflect its use as a whaling dock (much of the whaling took place in Greenland waters) and the the whaling history has also been covered on a previous post (1763-1806).  This post takes up where that leaves off, in the first years of the 1800s, and ends with the closure of the Surrey Commercial Docks in 1970.  A future post will look at how it survived, its current uses and, of concern to local residents, the prospects for its future care under Southwark Council.

I had some trouble fitting in all the images that I wanted to include, so some of them are rather small.  On the other hand, you can click on any of them to see the bigger images. I have also played very fast and loose with paragraphs, splitting them where they don't actually need splitting in order to prevent images overlapping too badly. That gives it a rather fragmented feel, for which my apologies.

The Commercial Dock Company

In 1806, following the decline of the whaling industry, Greenland Dock had fallen into disrepair. It was purchased by William Ritchie of Greenwich. An entrepreneur, he believed that its fortunes could be turned around due to the rise in timber and corn imports.  He immediately began to raise finance and was so successful that a year later it became the property of the newly formed Commercial Dock Company, headed by Alderman Sir Charles Price.  It needed substantial work for conversion to a timber and grain handling dock, and was closed whilst this work was under way.  The engineer employed to make the changes to the dock was James Walker, whose likeness is captured in a statue at the top of Brunswick Quay.  Walker was only 27 years old at the time but had impressive experience working on the construction of both the West India and East India Docks where he had commanded the respect of his employers. The pre-existing buildings were demolished and were replaced with large granaries. 

The Commercial Docks in 1811

The dock was awarded an Act of Incorporation in 1811, after which it was able to operate commercially with a capacity of 350 ships.  Another dock was also completed for timber handling  and was ready for use at the opening of Greenland Dock, to which it was connected as the map to the left shows. On the map Greenland Dock is marked as "Commercial Docks" and the irregularly shaped dock above it, "New Dock," later became Norway Dock (now the development known as The Lakes).

Meanwhile, William Ritchie was busy with the creation of a  small thin dock, which was added to the south of Greenland Dock, parallel to its southern end, also shown on the map to the left.  This opened in 1811, the same year in which the Commercial Dock Company opened for business, with capacity for 28 ships.  It supplemented Greenland Dock, handling similar traffic as well as supplies for the local shipyards. It is shown on maps between 1810 and 1843.  Unfortunately I don't have any maps for the area for the 1850s or early 1860s but it had vanished by 1868, when the land was used for warehousing, so it had a relatively short lifespan of under 50 years, after which it clearly became redundant.

Greenland Dock in 1813, from a bigger painting by William Daniell in the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich)
It clearly shows the dock itself full of ships, warehouses and granaries and a dry dock that opened
out into the Thames, which was owned privately and was not part of the dock complex.  At this time
there was no connection between South Dock, shown on the far left, and Greenland Dock.  The
Grand Surrey Canal can be seen in the distance with ships passing down it.

 

The new Commercial Docks were not the only docks in Rotherhithe. In 1807 the entrance to the Surrey Grand Canal had been extended to incorporate a basin (where Surrey Water is now located) for loading and unloading ships; and at the same time the East Country Dock Company opened the East Country Dock, a long thin dock parallel to Greenland Dock to it east, so there was competition for the CDC from the word go. However, in 1850 the East Country Dock Company sold the East Country Dock to the Commercial Dock Company, which they renamed South Dock, for £40,000.  Between 1850 and 1852 the Commercial Dock Company expanded the dock, and connected it to Greenland Dock.

Greenland Dock in 1868

A connection to the rail network was established in 1855, which linked South Dock, Greenland Dock and Norway Dock.

Competition between Rotherhithe's two dock companies, the Commercial Dock Company and the more laboriously named Grand Surrey Docks and Canal Company resulted in the impoverishment of both.  Eventually the losses became untenable, business sense kicked in, and in 1865 the two companies were merged to form the Surrey Commercial Docks Company.  The two separate dock systems were connected by two locks where they ran along side each other, which enabled them to form one integrated, albeit complex dock network with entrances from the Thames from Greenland Dock at one side of Rotherhithe and Surrey Basin at the other. 

The Surrey Commercial Docks Company

John Wolfe Barry

The various ponds and docks of the system were renamed, making it much easier to distinguish them from each other because when they were originally built, most were just numbered and some of the numbers were duplicated across the two systems.  Greenland Dock retained its name.

The Ordnance Survey map of 1868 (above)  shows that Greenland Dock was lined with granaries as well as a steel yard and a small area of timber sheds.  The capacity of Greenland Dock had been extended by its connection to South Dock and the addition of Norway Dock, which by now flowed into Lady Dock, Acorn Pond, Lavender Pond and Globe Pond, a ribbon network of docks and ponds that had greatly expanded the capacity of the Commercial Dock Company.

In his book London's Docks, John Pudney's view of matters during this period was that  the Surrey Commercial Docks were more stable financial entities than those to the north: "While the dock systems on the north bank had proliferated in disarray, with much competition and little managerial competence, those on the south bank in the Surrey Docks system had prospered, with a regular regular dividend of 6 per cent, and had kept up with the needs of the times."  He puts this down to the sensible management of the directors, who were timber and grain merchants whose strategy was to retain existing customers and attract new ones by making continuous improvements.  Timber handling had begun to dominate throughout the Rotherhithe docks, together with grain, and as timber ships were not particularly long, there was no demand for big locks or docks.

Greenland Dock in c.1876, by Morgan and Laing

It was only when ships began to change that the owners of the Surrey Commercial Docks began to look at how to adapt.  New technologies had resulted in much bigger and faster ships that required bigger locks, docks and improved cargo handling solutions. Their solution was time-consuming, eye-wateringly expensive, and ultimately doomed to long-term failure.  Finding themselves in major competition with other Thames docks built towards the end of the 19th Century, it became clear that to stay competitive changes would have to be made to parts of the Rotherhithe dock system.  These were centred on Greenland Dock.  The plan to extend Greenland Dock, which was to include its connection to Canada Dock, was seriously ambitious. As you can see in the map below, the Grand Surrey Canal passed along the end of the dock and any dock extension would mean cutting across the canal's route.  There were also major roads that would have to be re-routed to accommodate the dock's new size, the dock railway would no longer be able to extend beyond South Dock, and  there were plenty of buildings in the way of the expansion, both industrial and residential, that stood in the way and would have to be purchased and demolished.  Once the decision was made and an Act of Parliament obtained, all of these changes could be implemented.  The engineer hired to make these changes was James A. MacConnochie.  MacConnochie had worked at a number of other sites, including Canada Water, and began work in 1894.  He had not been working on the project for long when he died in 1895, and was replaced by John Wolfe-Barry, a very experienced dock engineer who was knighted in 1897 for his work on Tower Bridge.  See his biography on the Grace's Guides website.

These two maps are designed to show the changes made
Greenland Dock between 1894 and 1914.  In 1894 it was a
short dock opening out on to the Thames with the Grand Surrey
Canal (in pink) running past its end.  In 1914 the dock was
now so long that the Surrey Grand Canal passed across its
middle.  At the end of the dock, a cut was established
(in lilac) to connect it with Canada Dock.  The unusual
lock walls extend into the dock, creating two "fingers"
(as they are still known today) either side of the
lock walls, and are highlighted in turquoise.

The extension works took ten years to complete and were hampered by repeated encounters with the highly unstable Thanet sand, which kept filling foundations and required major engineering work to neutralize.  The extension of the entrance lock was achieved by building it into the dock itself.  This meant that long vessels could use the dock but at the same time a second set of gates within the lock meant that smaller vessels could use the dock without using excess water. Water management within the dock system was an ongoing headache, with levels changing considerably during over a 24 hour period. The lock gates were operated with hydraulic machinery, which remains in position today. 

When completed in 1904, the dock measured 2250ft by 450ft and its lock was 550ft by 80ft, the measurements that it retains today.  It had cost a staggering £940,000. To put the cost into perspective, today the equivalent to £940,000 would be £53,636,400 (with thanks to the National Archives Currency Converter for their wonderful conversion application).

Greenland Dock remained connected to the Norway Dock section of the earlier Surrey Commercial Dock system and at its southern end, where the underpass to Surrey Quays Shopping Centre is now located, there was a new connection to Canada Dock, allowing ships to pass between the two largest docks in the system.  The Grand Surrey Canal now passed straight over the centre of the dock, which must have been an interesting navigational experience for all concerned.  The railway, which had reached as far as Norway Dock stopped just short of South Dock, meaning that cargo had to be offloaded from train wagons and onto road transportation for the onward leg of the journey - a far less efficient way of cargo handling than before.  The main dock roads had to be significantly re-routed and a swing bridges were installed to carry the road over the cut between Greenland Dock and Canada Dock and over the locks into both parts of the Grand Surrey Canal, thereby adding interruptions to traffic that are caused the same sort of traffic jams that build up at level crossings. 

Most of the bridges around Greenland Dock were moved here from elsewhere, but the bolted cast iron lattice-truss bridge manufactured by Armstrong, Whitworth and Co. was added to its current location in 1904 when the lock was extended.  A magnificent structure, the bridge is one of the best features of Greenland Dock.  It was not fixed in its position. Its two parts could be swung to each side when tall ships needed to pass through the lock.  It was operated by vast hydraulic jiggers that worked by pushing water at very high pressure through pistons in the cylinder equipment to open and close the two halves of the swing bridge.  The hydraulic equipment is still preserved today in the pits next to the bridge on each side, although they no longer function.  Although the lock gates, the granite steps and the hydraulic gear have been preserved, the lock is now blocked off. The Grade II listed bridge was renovated in 1987 and still looks good.  

The delightful lock buildings, consisting of the harbour master's cottage and the tide gauge house were also built at this time at the side of the extended lock, both of which remain in situ. They were built when the dock and the lock were extended between 1894-1904. They were probably designed by James McConnochie (who is also thought to have been responsible for the dock offices on Surrey Quays Road) for the Surrey Commercial Dock company.  They are single-storey structures built in a pale yellowish brick (the yard office was of a paler, whiter brick), with a black brick plinth visible along the bases. The doors and windows set under red-brick jack arches with white keystones, and each building was topped with a black-tiled hipped roof (again, the exception is the Yard Office, which has a gabled roof).  Chimneys were provided for much-needed heat. They are lovely little buildings, nicely designed and were clearly intended to be good looking as well as functional. The lock keeper's office at Greenland Dock lock, headed by the Lock Keeper, was the equivalent of the modern edifice overlooking South Dock's lock entrance.  It was manned in thee shifts by teams whose role was to process ships in and out of the lock when the tide was right.  A lock keeper's office would have sat at every lock into the network of docks in Rotherhithe, and paintings of the office at the entrance to Surrey Basin survive.  The gauge house, next to the lock keeper's office, contained the equipment for determining the state of the tide.  It was essential for the correct operation of the lock for this to be precise.  The equipment consisted of a tide gauge that indicated the level of the river. 
 

Hydraulic machinery that operated
lock gates after the 1865 Greenland
Dock expansion and improvements

Many of extant features of the dock date to this time, including the hydraulic capstans, the rounded iron bollards, and hydraulic cranes that travelled up and down the dock along tracks. 

The expense of the newly expanded dock was not met by income from the timber trade, which was now in decline, and the company resorted to price-war tactics to try to win trade from other Thames docks, which benefited no-one.  The survival of London's docks was to fall on the shoulders of the Port of London Authority.

The Port of London Authority

In 1909 the Port of London authority was formed. Problems with river congestion, uncompetitive commercial docks and antiquated dock handling systems had plagued London for years.  Official investigations  were followed by the introduction of a Bill introduced by David Lloyd George and carried through parliament by Winston Churchill, receiving Royal Assent as the "Port of London Act, 1908," in December 1908. The decision was made to take the docks out of private ownership and amalgamate them under a single government body, the Port of London Authority (PLA), which also took on responsibility for dredging the main channel of the Thames and, following the First World War, upgrading parts of the newly consolidated London dock system.

Artist's impression of the Surrey Commercial Docks in 1909, the
year that the Port of London Authority became responsible for them.
Greenland Dock is the long expanse to the right of the picture, and
this painting shows clearly how Greenland Dock connected into
Russia Dock, the dog-legged dock that lies perpendicular to it
and into which it has a cut in the centre of its length.

In the Surrey Commercial Docks plenty of modernization took place, but in Greenland Dock it mainly took the form of new open-sided timber sheds for the deal timber trade and the building of a  general cargo warehouse of 75,000 square foot.

Alaunia at Greenland Dock

Although the main cargo handled at the Greenland Dock was timber, as well as some perishable foods, during the inter-war years one of the more unusual regular visitors was a division of the A-Class fleet of Cunard cross-Atlantic cruise ships.  Cunard's acquisition of ships of the Thomson Line in 1911 established Cunard's first direct service between London and Canada, and was the reason that Cunard acquired premises in Greenland Dock.  Following losses during the First World War (which included all of Cunard's A-class ships), eleven new "intermediate" ships were built by the Cunard company.  These had been designed to bridge the gap between their small and large, sometimes vast vessels and fulfilled a very useful role for Cunard.  Of these eleven, five made up the replacement A-class ships that moored at their home base in Greenland Dock.  All very similar, the Albania, Ausonia and Andania were sister ships whilst the Ascania and Alaunia differed in several ways. They were all turbine-driven and could reach 13-15 knots. They had particularly beautiful lines.  After the expansion of its lock, Greenland Dock was one of the few Thames docks capable of handling ships of this size.

Writing in 1929 the eternally enjoyable A.G. Linney loved the winter-quiet and bird life of the timber ponds, about which he admitted to feelings of sentimentality, but he was really unimpressed by Greenland Dock, which he described as "being kept busy by the arrival and departure of massive, modern-type, ugly and utilitarian steamers bringing huge quantities of provisions of all sorts from North America." But he couldn't help being fascinated by the ships that brought in timber during the late Spring and early summer:  "rustyish , sea-battered Baltic tramps with queer tall funnels and names painted amidships; plain dingy British cargo boats with little to give them grace;  and a certain yet undoubted proportion of elderly barques and barquetines."  Linney loved the Surrey Commercial Docks and was visiting just as the old sailing ships were becoming almost anachronistic anomalies.

Timber being unloaded from a ship onto the quayside
at Greenland Dock, beneath one of the mobile cranes
in 1927 (the crane tracks still survive
in places along the side of this and other docks)

Greenland Lock, filled with spritsail barges, 1930s
Port of London Authority archive

The Second World War

Canadian Cold Store, bombed in 1940

I have yet to write a post about how Rotherhithe was torn about during the Second World War by German bombing raids, but it was catastrophic.  The war lasted between 1939 and 1945 and the so-called Blitz began in September 1940. All of London's docks, reflecting moonlight, were easy targets for bomber planes and as important commercial centres of England's capital city were strategically obvious targets.

The Surrey Commercial Docks, its ships and warehouses, were devastated.  The losses throughout Rotherhithe were appalling. 

Greenland Dock's timber yards suffered repeated attacks and, thanks to the combustibility of the timber and the deliberate use of incendiary bombs, frequently burned but fortunately the loss of life was relatively small compared with the rest of Rotherhithe.  Damage was mainly to property.

the Dog and Duck public house before
its destruction in 1944

The Canadian Cold Store burned out in 1940, a building established in the early 1900s to accommodate perishables, mainly dairy products, imported from Canada.  The LDDC archive photograph, above, shows it with flames pouring out of it's roof and windows.  The heat must have been staggering.

One ship, the SS Empress Tristram was hit by a V1 flying bomb on 23rd June 1944 at 0413, killing five people. The bomb hit the portside decking and penetrated though to the engine room. The same ship was struck again by a V1 on the 12st July was moved to Greenland Dock for repairs. There was severe damage to 3 and 4 holds and a further six people were killed. The nearby SS Peebles was also damaged.  

The Dog and Duck pub, which sat between the lock entrances of Greenland and South Docks was obliterated along with other buildings by a VII rocket in October 1944, injuring 16 people.  The Dog and Duck was a famous old pub, but never rebuilt.

The Beginning of the End

Greenland Dock 1958

The 1958 photograph to the left shows a mixture of long low timber stores as well as more traditional warehouses at the top end of the dock.  Cranes line the quaysides but much of the heavy lifting was still carried out by manual labour, emptying cargo into lighters, small un-powered vessels of the sort that are gathered around the two ships in the foreground. The connection to Canada Water, now the underpass leading to Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, is clearly visible at the bottom of the photograph, with the road passing over it as it does today, on a lift bridge.  Whenever one of the Rotherhithe bridges was lifted to allow ships to pass through, massive traffic jams built up, remembered with more annoyance than nostalgia by some of the former dock workers who still live in the area.  The gathering of small vessels in the middle of the photograph mark the eastern entrance to the Grand Surrey Canal.  Opposite it is the inlet that led into another part of the dock system along the western route of the Grand Surrey Canal.

Greenland Dock in the snow, early 1950s

In spite of the appearance of activity on Greenland and other docks, the Surrey Commercial Docks never really recovered from the Second World War.  Cunard, for example, ceased to use Greenland Dock for its A-Class liners, other commercial fleets had been reduced during the war, international trade had changed and many shipping companies had to make fundamental changes in order to survive the post-war years.

Added to the serious difficulties that the post-war years imposed on the London docks, the main nail in its coffin was the shipping industry itself.  The entire character and organization of cargo handling operations was changing and all the associated ships and dockside technology were adapting accordingly.  Container transportation, new packaging systems and palletization, all involving increasing automation and much less manual labour, began to replace traditional methods.  These were serviced not by the older dock systems but by new dedicated docks that were positioned nearer to the mouth of the Thames, could handle larger vessels and included new state-of-the-art equipment.  The old inner Thames dock systems were being left behind very quickly.  Stuart Rankin gives some startling figures for the tonnage being handled, shown in the graph below, indicating the declining income of Rotherhithe's docks.  

Individual docks and ponds began to be blocked off and filled in even before the official closure of the Surrey Commercial Docks.  The PLA gained approval for the official closure in April 1970 and cargo deliveries were slowly run down until there was very little traffic by September of the same year.  As W. Paul Clegg puts it: "By the year-end it was all over, the last ship being the Russian timber carrier Kandalakshales (4673grt) which left on 22nd December.  The Russian services were transferred to the Royal Albert Dock, while others went to India and Millwall, and Phoenix Wharf."

By 1977 the land had been sold into the ownership of the Greater London Council (now defunct) and Southwark Borough Council, and most of the remaining docks were in-filled for safety reasons.  Various warehouse facilities remained in use, but the commercial life of the docks and its supporting infrastructure was effectively over.

In 1699 the Howland Great Wet Dock was established, and it took 271 years for the shipping adventure to come to an end.  Fortunately for Rotherhithe, the London Dockland Development Corporation came along and rescued Rotherhithe, salvaging traces of its heritage at the same time.  Greenland Dock is now surrounded by residential homes that overlook a very different vista, and this will be the subject of a future post.

Kandalakshales, the last ship to sail from the
Surrey Commercial Docks in 1970

Pacific Reliance (9337grt) in 1971.  A regular
of Greenland Dock, she transferred to the Royal
Docks after the closure of the Surrey Commercial
Docks in 1970

In this post I have not covered the two dry docks at the end of Greenland Dock that opened out onto the Thames and flanked the lock.  The post is already so long that I thought that these would be better covered on a post of their own.  They were not owned by the dock companies and were operated privately, so there is a solid argument for treating them separately at some point in the future.  



As usual with the dockland and shipping history of Rotherhithe many, many thanks are due to Stuart Rankin's excellent research.  He was by no means my only source, but where would I be without his booklets to give me a kick start?

Updated: Whaling at Howland / Greenland Dock 1763-1806

Greenland Dock, formerly the Howland Great Wet Dock, was used as a base for one of London's whaling fleets during the 18th and early 19th Centuries.  The whaling industry, although frequently attacked today, was an important contributor to British life, providing products for lighting, soap and lubrication oils amongst many other things.  

I have now expanded and updated the post I originally published about whaling at Greenland Dock, for anyone who is interested:

http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/rotherhithe-heritage-3-whaling-at.html

Greenland Fishing: English Whalers in the Ice
Charles Brooking 1750
National Maritime Museum

Updated: The Howland Great Wet Dock

I have updated and expanded one of my much earlier posts on the heritage of Rotherhithe.  The Howland Great Wet Dock was completed in 1699/1700 as a shelter for ships on the Thames, to protect them from storms, ice and piracy, and to provide them with repair and refitting facilities.  

It was the first of the docks to be established in Rotherhithe, at a time when Rotherhithe was largely rural, with only a small fringe of barge and ship building activity in the area of St Mary's church, at the borders of Bermondsey.  The Howland Great Wet Dock eventually became Greenland Dock. 

This post covers its history from 1695 to 1807:

http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/rotherhithe-heritage-2-howland-great.html

Rotherhithe Heritage 1 - The background to the dockland heritage

This post is designed to put a short series of posts about the area's heritage into a broader historical context. It is impossible to explain the heritage represented by Rotherhithe without reference to the history of the stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich. In this post I’ve started with Henry VIII and worked my way up to the date of the establishment of Rotherhithe’s Howland Great Wet Dock, the predecessor of Greenland Dock. This is a highly selective and cheerfully superficial sprint through history, but I hope that it provides a few foundations for the posts that will look at specific details about the area. I'll pick up on some of the things that I mention in passing below in later posts.

The area along the southern banks of the Thames was employed only sporadically until the reign of Elizabeth I. Henry VIII had established the Royal Dockyards at Deptford (and at Woolwich) in the early 1500s. The Thames had been used for storing warships and a series of storehouses had been built to enable fitting, maintenance and repair work to take place. By 1520 a wet dock for 5 large vessels had been built which considerably improved access to these vast ships for essential work to take place. The dock expanded at a considerable rate and this area became established as one of the most important ship building centres of the country.

The first royal ship to bear the name of Tiger (HMS Tyger) was built at Deptford docks in 1546. She had a crew of 120, and 4 brass and 39 iron guns. In the year that the Spanish Armada attacked, 1588, Lord Henry Seymour's pursuit of the Armada up to around the level with Newcastle included the Tyger. She was broken up in 1605.

The dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 effectively put an end to the mediaeval period, and introduced a new era of religious, social and economic behaviour St Saviour's Abbey in Bermondsey was dissolved in 1540. It was first acquired by Thomas Pope (who was the founder of Trinity College, Oxford) and the stone of the Abbey was used to build Bermondsey house, which was completed in 1550, complete with an ornamental summer house. It was later became the property of the Earl of Sussex. A Southwark News article says that the last upstanding Abbey building, the inner gatehouse, was destroyed in the 19th Century, by which time much of the site was covered in poor houses and factories.

Water mills were first recorded in Rotherhithe in 1554, by the area now known as the Surrey Dock Stairs (known as the King’s Mill stairs up until the 1860s). The water mill recorded at that time was owned by the crown and was employed in the manufacture of gunpowder. It may have been established and maintained by the monks of Bermondsey Abbey.

Following the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, Elizabeth I came to power in 1558. Her reign was an innovative and expensive one. An important proportion of the country’s national income was derived from London alone, from customs revenue. In order to regulate this income a Royal Commission was established to appoint twenty “legal quays”, which were controlled by the Corporation of London. These were created to handle all dutiable goods. They were located on the north banks of the Thames between London Bridge and the Tower of London but when they quickly became inadequate for the task they were supplemented by “sufferance wharves” which were established in Bermondsey. These wharves had a similar function but only had a temporary status - but they had effectively established a food in the trading door for the area south of the river.

In the winter of 1564-65 the Thames froze solid and many events and entertainments took place on the ice. the freezing process was considerably aided by the fact that the Thames was full of rubbish, including sewage, and that its flow was often considerably reduced. Today it is clean enough to be a suitable habitat for wild fowl and fish, it flows freely and is most unlikely to freeze - particularly given the effects (dare I say it) of global warming. Having ice-skated throughout my childhood and teenage years this comes as a vast disappointment!

In 1587 the Queen granted the right to Thomas Brickett to hold a gunpowder mill for 31 years. The warhf occupied land formerly owned by Bermondsey Abbey, which seems slightly ironic. Only a year later it was actually ceded to new owners who built water mills on the site.

Under James I (who reigned from 1603 to 1625) the waterfronts of Rotherhithe continued to thrive as ship building and repair yards, and a close community of riverside workers and their families became established in the area.

In 1605 the shipwrights of Egnland were incorporated, in order to make them more transparently accountable for their ship building activities.

In 1612 the Rotherhithe (Redrith) shipwrights were awarded a Royal Charter, which was a particular honour and indicates how important the Rotherhithe ship building industry was considered to be. A charter is a grant of authority – a type of contract made between people of unequal status. A Royal Charter was only granted by the monarch on the advice of his advisory committee, the privy council, in order to establish or formally recognize an incorporated entity, like a company. It was required for the establishment of any limited body.

In 1613 two local Master Mariners, Peter Hill and Robert Booth, founded a school for the education of impoverished sailors. The building still stands in Rotherhithe village, near to Saint Mary’s church, although its role has changed many times since the Seventeenth Century. Master Mariners were sailors who are qualified to captain a ship, whether or not they did actually take on the permanent role of a captain.

Rotherhithe’s Shippe Inn (later The Spread Eagle, then The Crown and from 1956 the Mayflower) was the departure point, in 1620, of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Pilgrim Fathers were not local people, but they departed from the Shippe Inn to Portsmouth en route to the New World in The Mayflower. They returned to Rotherhithe in the May of 1921. In fact, none of the crew or the passengers were from Rotherhithe, but Christopher Jones, the captain of The Mayflower and one of her owners, was buried at St Mary’s Church in Rotherhithe when he dies on 5th March 1622. Sadly his grave was destroyed when St Mary’s was rebuilt in 1715, following the floods of 1710, but a memorial was erected to him that still stands.

In 1621 two water mills were recorded near the Surrey Dock Stairs, run by Henry Grindley.

In 1642 the rift between Charles I and Parliament developed into Civil War. As part of the London suburbs, Rotherhithe became one of a string of defences that were built by ordinary people as part of the attempt to repulse the Royalist army. Twenty six forts and ditches were constructed. The Redriff fort was constructed near Paradise Street and left the village itself completely undefended. Fortunately for Rotherhithe the defences were never put to the test, and the Royalists were defeated.

In 1647 a second ship named HMS Tiger was also built and launched at Deptford Docks. She had 38 guns and saw exciting service for nearly 100 years. Because it gives quite a good snapshot of some of the remarkable history of the times, here's a brief review of her career, courtesy entirely of the HMS Tiger website:

"Her first captain, James Peacock, brought her fame when, during the Civil War, he commanded her during the siege of Colchester. She was with Admiral Blake in his pursuit of Prince Rupert in 1650, when he took Rupert's Guinea and Charles as prizes. In 1652 she took a Dutch ship, the Morganstar without a single British casualty. After taking part in the battle of the North Foreland under a new captain, Gabriel Sanders, she recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean. In 1666, early in the Second Dutch War, the Tiger, under the command of Phineas Pert, met a Zeeland privateer of 40 guns and although Pett was killed by the enemy's first broadside, his Lieutenant continued the fight for a further six hours, by which time the Tiger was too heavily damaged to catch the escaping enemy ship. Later that year Sir Robert Holmes flew his flag in the Tiger and sailed into the Terschelling Roads. With fire ships and a number of smaller vessels he raided the Dutch Fleet, destroying 170 vessels and severely damaging some shore installations. In 1672 Captain Thomas Harman took over the Tiger from John Turner under whom she had fought in the Battle of Solebay, and Captain Harman's first action was in defence of a fleet of colliers he was escorting along the east coast to the Thames during which he fought off eight Dutch privateers.


On 22 February 1674 the Tiger entered Cadiz Harbour close on the heels of a Dutch ship, the Schakerloo (Captain De Witte). Having been criticised for not having attacked the Tiger, De Witte borrowed 70 officers and men from his flagship and set sail, and soon he was engaged by Harman at close quarters. Each ship repelled boarders and after a long battle the Schakerloo was boarded by the victorious 'Tigers' as she began to sink. The Dutch had suffered 50 killed and 70 wounded, while the British suffered nine killed and 15 wounded, including Captain Harman who was hit below his left eye by a musket ball."

The famous diarist Samuel Pepys was a frequent visitor to Rotherhithe which, in his diaries, he refers to as Redriff. He was usually on his way to the Royal Docks at Deptford but liked to watch Rotherhithe ships being launched and frequented the local public houses. One of his diary entries records that it was too dangerous to walk alone through the streets. In 1664 he records that he visited Rotherhithe’s Cherry Gardens to buy cherries for his wife. The Cherry Gardens doesn’t exist today, except in the form of a small public gardens in Rotherhithe, which extends from Jamaica Road. It was a popular place for Londoners to visit during the first half of the seventeenth century. But by 1665 he was too afraid to venture into Rotherhithe because of the dangers of the plague.

The slightly less famous diarist John Evelyn, who used to have a home next to the Royal Docks at Deptford, is a major resource for information about the area during the 1600s. He lived through the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the death of Cromwell, the restoration of Charles II to the throne, James II, the revolution of 1688 and the reign of Mary II. He was closely associated with Charles II, and lived through the London Plague and the Great Fire of London. His diaries are fabulous records of London as a whole, but also offer almost unique insights about life on the southern edges of the river. His wife’s father sold him Sayes Court, a manor house and land on the edge of the Deptford Royal Docks. He turned the land into fabulous formal gardens, in which he planted rare and exotic plants, shrubs and trees – a bare handful of which actually survive today. And his personal association with the areas neighbouring his land make him a tremendous resource for the areas south of the river.

Evelyn records that in 1662 a massive fire took hold of a shipyard at Deptford, and it caused considerable panic both locally and in London itself. Rumours has spread on the instant that the Dutch fleet had sailed up the Thames, landed their men and set fire to the town. It was a time of serious and probably not unjustified paranoia.

The plague of 1665 wiped out nearly a fifth of the population of London. In Evelyn’s diarly entry for the 1st July 1665 he wrote as follows: “To Hampton-Court againe, hearing a judgement of a sermon here by Dr Turner: There died of the Plague in Lond. This Weeke 1100”. He next says: “There perished this weeke above 2000, and now there were two houses shut up in our parish”. By September of the same year 7000 individuals a week were dying, according to the records of the time. Many decades later, when digging the lock entrance to South Dock, workers found the skeletal remains of 100s of plague victims who had been buried in mass graves – just some of the 1000s who had perished.

Although at the time it was rumoured that the plague had spread from France, it now seems more likely that it arrived with trading ships from the Netherlands. Certainly, the first areas to succumb were dock areas in 1664, and it only spread to the City of London in the summer of 1665. The precise form of plague has never been determined, if indeed it was a plague in the strictest sense of the term.

In early September 1666 Evelyn described the Great Fire of London, which he watched from the other side of the river, in Southwark, from his coach. It horrified and amazed him. It devastated the buildings of London, much of it closely built housing, but it also effectively wiped out the lingering remains of the plague. Although this devastation was initially seen as an opportunity to rebuild London as a model city, the opportunity was lost. A number of fine buildings were created, but the vast avenues and the coherent structure envisioned by Evelyn and others was lost to time. Thatched roofs were banned at this time and remain banned today – one of the few exceptions is the modern reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, completed in 1998, which required a special permit for its thatched roofing.

None of Evelyn’s children were taken by the plague, but three of them died and were buried in the church of St Nicholas in Deptford of different illnesses. The church still stands today. One died of convulsive fits (1654), another of liver disease (1658) and he doesn’t say what afflicted his youngest child, who died in 1658. His adult daughter Mary, of whom he was considerably proud, died from smallpox, which appears to have been prevalent, and her epitaph remains at St Nicholas’s. Another of his children also died of smallpox. It is an indication of just how harsh life was in England at this time, even for a wealthy family. It must have been infinitely harder for the poor.

Another famous (or infamous) visitor to the area was Judge George Jeffreys. In 1681 at the age of only 33 he became Lord Chief Justice of England. Two years later he was appointed Lord Chancellor and later he was created Baron Jeffreys of Wem. He is known as Hanging Judge Jeffreys because of the punishment he handed out at the trials of the supporters of the Duke of Monmouth, who attempted to take the throne in 1685. He sentenced around 200 to hanging and a further 800 to transportation to the West Indies. In 1688 when James II fled the country, Jeffreys was placed in protective custody in the Tower of London. He died there in 1689 at the age of 44 from a kidney disease. It is said that he attended the Prospect of Witby on the north of the Thames and the Angel at the edge of Rotherhithe from where to watch some of the hangings to which he condemned those whom he had judged. A grizly thought.

Evelyn’s diaries make it perfectly clear that the Deptford Royal Docks continued to play an immensely important role in English ship building, retaining both the physical resources and the human skills necessary to produce and repair vast wooden ships. His diaries record two ships in particular. In 1668 the vessel HMS Charles I was launched from Deptford. A second-rate ship of the line, it had 96 brass cannons. It was rebuilt at Portsmouth in 1701 when it was renamed the HMS St George. It was built by a Master Shipwright of the King’s Yard named Jonas Shish whose company had been building ships for over 100 years and whose monument remains today in the nave of the Church of St Nicholas in Deptford. HMS St George was rebuilt again in 1733, and relaunched on 3 April 1740. She was finally broken up in 1774.

Jonas Shish died in 1680 but was succeeded by his son who, as a Master Shipwright, built H.M.S Neptune which was launched on 17th April 1663. The HMS. Neptune was the last of 30 ships built by order of an Act of Parliament. She was another second-class ship of the line. She was rebuilt at Blackwell with 90 guns, and was relaunched in 1710. In 1724 she was ordered to be again rebuilt, this time at Woolwich and was relaunched in 1930. She was renamed HMS Torbay and reduced to a third-rate 74-gun ship in 1750. She was apparently sold out of the navy in 1784. There were other ships named Neptune and Torbay, but this ship was the first to hold the name in each case.

In 1698, the same year that England formally recognized the slave trade, Evelyn’s Deptford home, Saye’s Court, was leased to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who came to the area for four months to learn about ship building and naval wartime strategy at the Deptford Royal Docks. He upset John

Evelyn considerably by holding wild parties and holding wheelbarrow races through the immaculate hedges and gardens of the property.

Evelyn moved away from Sayes Court in 1696 and died in 1706 at his family home. His wife Mary died three years later. Both Evelyn and his wife were buried in the family chapel in St John's Church at Wotton. In 1992 their skulls were stolen and have been recovered. Evelyn’s original diary is held at the British Library in London, U.K..

In 1684 the second Duke of Albermale, Christopher Monck was granted permission to form a market at Rotherhithe every Thursday and Saturday. The market sold a broad range of goods including cattle and pigs. He was also given permission to hold two annual fairs on the first Thursdays of April and in October, both of which lasted two days. He also established a ferry at Rotherhithe. He died in 1688 at the age of thirty five, and the market and the annual fairs appear to have ceased in 1792.

One of the information boards that was put up in Rotherhithe when the new developments were first put up, probably commissioned by the LDDC, is still standing next to the Ship and Whale public house on Gulliver Street, marking the presence of Randall's Rents. Randall's Rents is a slender alley leading up towards the Thames. It is the only remaining survivor of a whole network of similar passages which connected the dockers' homes with their dockland workplace. It was originally named Wet Dock Lane when it was laid out by local shipwright John Wells in 1698. The name was changed to commemorate the owner of a local shipyard who owned houses which he rented to the workers at his yard. I would love to see what it looked like in those days.

The next major date in the diary of the area was the construction of Howland Dock, which once occupied the area now covered by the much larger Greenland Dock. That will be the subject of my next Heritage post in a few days time.

Rather endearingly a 17th century Bellarmine/Bartmann jar was found in Platform Wharf in Rotherhithe in 1986. These are sometimes known as witch bottles and wer e sometimes used to ward off evil spirits. This example was owned by Pieter Van Anken, and bears the motif of an anchor. Filled with various objects, including personal items, the witch bottles were either buried or thrown into water.