Low tide at the Thames foreshore, Rotherhithe

Taking advantage of the late morning low tide yesterday, I took two friends down into the foreshore mud.  They had never ventured onto the Thames foreshore before, and we had for a thoroughly enjoyable few hours fossicking around.  We descended the stairs at the Surrey Docks Farm, crossed in front of Nelson's Dock at the Hilton Hotel (Cuckold's Point) and walked as far as the river would let us before climbing up the stairs at Columbia Wharf and walking to the Old Salt Quay for a bit of refreshment. After that we went for a potter along the foreshore at Hanover stairs, where the houseboat is moored, and where there were three Egyptian geese at the edge of the water, looking distinctly exotic and out of place.  We went to look at the old ships timbers that still lie near Clarence Pier before going for a wander along the water's edge.

Having seen what people pull off the foreshore at Greenwich and much further upriver I know how spectacular and fascinating some of the finds can be, but Rotherhithe produces much more modest offerings. The nicest piece of the day was a beautifully decorated piece of clay pipe bowl, with what looks like a climbing rose on the bowl itself and a traditional leaf pattern along the seam.

We picked one piece of pipe stem that was marked with the word PLUMSTEAD.  On the other side it reads very clearly H. DUDMAN.  A bit of pootling around on Google reveals that the maker was one Henry Dudman of Plumstead, Surrey, who was manufacturing clay pipes in the 1800s.  He lived at 71, Bloomfield Road, Plumstead, and pipe manufacturing was his livelihood.

The Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiacus) were lovely.  Originally from sub-tropical Africa, they were introduced into English country estates in the 17th Century for their ornamental properties.  Unsuited to the climate, they had a tough time surviving our winters, particularly as they breed in January, but eventually adapted and began to breed successfully.   They settled in Norfolk and although I've never seen them before have apparently spread extensively into the London area following a population explosion due to milder winters and the survival of more chicks.

The Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiacus)

We wandered by the side of Surrey Basin and through Russia Dock Woodland, which looked lovely in the sun.   Huge thanks to Jeanette and Elaine for a great day.

The old path that crosses the muddy foreshore
to the former Cuckold's Point ferry

The foreshore at Hanover Stairs

Globe Wharf, Rotherhithe Street

Rotherhithe Street aspect of Globe Wharf

Globe Wharf is a vast six-storey warehouse built in pale yellow brick at 205 Rotherhithe Street, SE16 5XS and SE16 5XX.   Although now converted to apartments, it was originally built as a granary. 

I thought that it would be quite easy to find out a lot about the building, if only because it is such a massive presence, but it has taken a while to assemble any sort of coherent account of Globe Wharf from a number of sources.

Apart from its immense size (it is 20 bays wide and 13 deep), the most interesting features include the fine quality of the bricks, the four elevation housings with pyramid-shaped roofs, a jibbed crane, the interior wooden floors on iron columns and the way that it curves along the line of the road.  It is Grade II listed and there's a short description of its features on the British Listed Buildings website.

Globe Wharf from the Thames

Globe Wharf was built in c.1883 by A.P. Keen and Co. as a granary, handling wheat, barley and rice.  It was  named after the Upper Globe Dock Shipyard, on the site of which it was built, where Henry Bird Junior had built small ships for the Royal Navy during the mid 1700s and where William Marshall had a timber wharf.  The builders of Globe Wharf retained the dry dock, but this was filled in and built over in 1907.  Rotherhithe's shipbuilding yards had steadily been replaced by granaries and other warehouses as shipbuilders went out of business the requirement for Thames fronting warehouses spread steadily east from Bermondsey.  It was probably the single largest Rotherhithe commercial building.  According to research by Stephen Humphrey, in 1887 it could hold 60,000 quarters of corn.

In 1924 Globe Wharf was converted for storing and milling rice by Thames Rice Milling, one of several rice mills in Rotherhithe.  There's precious little information available about the establishment and operation of rice mills in London, so the following is the tip of a poorly recorded iceberg.   Rice milling is the process of separating the white centre (the pieces of rice that we buy and eat) from the various layers of husk and bran that surround it.  The milling machine (a rice huller or husker) was invented in the late 1700s and consisted of a feeding chute, rollers of wood or steel that broke up the outer layers and separated them from the edible interior. The mechanism spread rapidly throughout the United States throughout the 1800s and by the 1920s was employed all over the world.  Rice, originally imported from Asia, was also grown successfully in Spain, South, Central and North America and elsewhere.  Thames Rice Milling is now dissolved. 

The towers on top of the building, described in the Grade II listing description as elevation housings, were present in the 1937 photographs.  I was unable to find out what these towers were used for, but fortunately a reader, GeminiX, added a comment as follows, which is really helpful:

Upper Globe Wharf in 1937

I believe the towers housed winching mechanisms for lifting cargo out of boats on the river. Originally there were beams extending horizontally out over the river from the top floor of the building, with cables running up from the end of these to the winch gear in the towers. The drawback of this was that cargo could only be lifted up and down/in and out, but not in a sideways sweep. The tower cranes (at least the two at the west end of the building) were replaced by the more modern crane that is still on the front of the building today. Their beams would have been removed, but the redundant towers remained. I think the tower at the eastern end retained its beam for longer, because the new crane couldn't cover that end of the building. Interestingly, I think there were only ever 3 towers, the fourth (2nd from the left as you look at the building from the north bank) being added by the developers 20 years ago to even up the look of the building.

On the Thames frontage there is a red crane attached to the wall. This is a 20th Century addition, a lattice jibbed crane. It was not in place in the 1937 Port of London Authority panorama photographs, so it must have been added sometime later, during the tenure of Thames Rice Milling, which leased the building from Addis and Keen Ltd from 1934.  Now purely decorative, it was used to hoist cargo from boats moored outside.  It would have been easy for the company that converted the building to apartments to avoid the effort of preserving this piece of the wharf's heritage, so it is particularly welcome that it has been saved. Thames Rice Milling used the building primarily as a rice mill but also processed grain, flour and cereals in the same place. 

In the 1937 PLA photographs there was a rice chute on the front of the building, to the west of where the crane now hangs, leading from the roof down into the lower levels of the building. 

Apart from recessed bays, Globe Wharf's stark façades were unalleviated by any form of decoration when it was built, unlike warehouses like the smaller Columbia Wharf and Brandram's Wharf, which employed coloured bricks to add some interest to the design. The balconies are, needless to say, a modern addition.   The only decorative element is a dentilled brick cornice, which can be clearly seen in the third photograph just beneath the roof.  The brick is of a much higher quality than the usual London stock used for most warehouses and granaries in Rotherhithe, a much paler shade with a smooth surface without the usual pits and cavities. 

The building curves along a bend in the road.  As it would have been much easier to build it in a straight line, the original road presumably followed the same curve, as it does today.  The Thames frontage is perfectly straight. 

Immediately downriver are the Globe waterman's stairs, which are clearly visible in the second photograph. 

The building was purchased during the 1990s by Berkley Homes and was converted for residential use.   It was restored and converted into 138 apartments by P.R.P. Architects between 1996 and 1999, the modern conversion includes internal courtyards where brickwork shows different stages of the building's evolution.  I am told that a rice chute is preserved in one of these.

Globe Wharf in 1937, with one of the rice chutes

Rotherhithe Heritage #9 - 1825-1843

Bridge and dockhouse at Surrey Grand Canal
entrance to Thames. George Yates.

To recap briefly, the Napoleonic wars had ended in 1815. By the early 1800s, according to the first official population Census of 1801, the population had expanded massively in the southeast London area on the south of the river, and this meant that Southwark, Bermondsey and Newington were all beginning to be closely linked both with each other and with the city of London. Rotherhithe continued to remain apart from the main body of southeast London, with only a relatively small proportion of the peninsulas interior turned over to docks and ponds, but it had a massive industrial frontage onto the Thames where ships continued to be built in the shipyards that fringed the peninsula. It had a population of only 13,000 people by 1831 and was separated from the rest of the area by market gardens and drainage ditches. The above watercolour by George Yates shows the bridge and Dock House where the Surrey Grand Canal met the Thames on the west side of Rotherhithe.

In spite of its relative isolation early in the 1800s the population of Rotherhithe was growing, the shipping industry was healthy and London's infrastructure, and its connections across the Thames continued to be improved. The old London Bridge was replaced in 1831 with a new bridge designed by John Rennie senior and built by his son, John Rennie junior.

Going into the 1820s there were, as already discussed in the previous post, four dock companies operating in Rotherhithe - The Commercial Dock Company (established in 1807), the Grand Surrey Dock Company (established 1801), the East Country Dock Company (established 1807) and the Baltic Dock Company (established 1809). The map to the right shows Rotherhithe in 1828.

In 1822 the King and Queen Granary was erected downstream of the Bull Head Dock on the west of Rotherhithe. It had seven floors and was provided with its own dock for barges.

From the early 1820s it becomes difficult to keep track of the ship yards, their owners and lease holders. Not only were ship yards divided into smaller components or amalgamated into larger enterprises but they were leased out to different owners at different times and owner names changed as new family members joined the business or new partners were included. The uses of these shipyards often changed. Finally, the names of the shipyards were sometimes changed as well.

The Barnard Yard, managed by Frances Barnard since her husband died in 1805, was by now enormous, covering an area to the north of the modern New Caledonian Wharf development on Odessa Street, and was split into two parts. The lower yard was the larger of the two parts and was occupied by the partnership Frances Barnard, Son and Roberts for shipbuilding and repairs. The upper yard was occupied by F.E. and T Barnard and specialized in spar and mast making. Other ship builders leased space from the yards for projects for which their own yards were either too small or too busy.

Nelson Dock dates from before 1800 but it up until the 1820s it was known as the yard at Cuckold's point. Rankin suggests that the name change came about when the lease was taken by a shipwright named Nelson Wake. After the Randalls and Brents left the yard in 1818 it was split into two sections.

The floating dock at Rotherhithe shown above, right, dates to around 1820.

In 1825 construction of the Thames Tunnel began. I have covered the Thames Tunnel in detail on a separate post which can be found here:
http://russiadock.blogspot.com/2008/10/rotherhithe-heritage-8-thames-tunnel.html

Daniel Brent, sole survivor of S and D Brent had left Nelson Dock in 1815 and focused all his activities on Greenland Dock South Shipyard. The construction of the steamships The London Engineer (1818) and the Rising Star (1822) followed in 1826 by the warship Karteria (meaning perseverance). Partly funded by Lord Byron she was commissioned on a privateer basis by Captain Frank A. Hastings who had served at Trafalgar and was now working for the provisional Greek government. As a warship she was something of an innovation in many ways. She was a steam boat with two paddles but was also equipped to travel under sail. She had four 68 pound guns and her on board furnace meant that shot could be heated to the point where it had a lethal impact on opposition ships.  This had a devastating effect on the opposing Turkish ships. The ship, commanded by Hastings, became something of a legend. The success of both the Karteria together with the new type of ammunition in naval combat, eventaully led to sailing ships being abandoned by the navy, and to the adoption of armour on ships.

In 1829 the South Metropolitan Gas Company was founded in 1829 . It built works along side the Grand Surrey Canal on the Old Kent Rd and these were finsihed in 1833. The company's offices were added a year later.

In 1832 Rotherhithe became part of the Parliamentary Borough of Southwark. In the same year Rotherhithe was devastated by an outbreak of cholera. It extended from Rotherhithe to the rest of London. A massive 10% of the population of Bermondsey and Southwark were killed.

In 1835 a swing bridge was built over South Dock entrance, designed by James Walker. It was moved to the top of Greenland Dock in 1987, where it can still be seen and is still in use. In the same year an additional set of river stairs were added in a narrow passage next to today's Surrey Docks Farm and they named for a pub which no longer exists.

London's first railway, the London and Greenwich Railway was opened in 1836. Bermondsey Spa Road to Deptford. It was the largest brick structure anywhere in the world with 878 arches made of 19 million bricks. The viaduct was required both because of the marshy land and because the dozens of roads which it crossed. In December 1836 the railway was extended from Bermondsey to London Bridge, and the modern section of the viaduct that leads into London Bridge is original. The extension to Greenwich to the east followed 2 years later in 1838. Apparently there was a plan to enable horse drawn carriages to go up onto trains, and a ramp to enable this survives at Deptford Station but the plan was never actioned. The viaduct carried the railway over the Grand Surrey Canal and an 1845 picture of it by Smith (above left) shows St Mary's church to the left of the picture, surrounded by buildings, another church to the north (Holy Trinity) and a third right next to the railway arches on Deptford Lower Road (All Saints). The canal is clearly visible passing under the railway. Only 150 odd years ago and the traffic on the Thames is heaving with tall-masted ships.

Social work and addtional education continued to see improvement in Rotherhithe.  Edward Blick, Rector of St Mary's between 1835 and 1867, a former Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, carried out significant pastoral work on Rotherhithe, including projects to supply additional churches and to build schools. In 1836 girls ceased to be educated in the school established by Peter Hills and Robert Bell in St Marychurch Street and were instead educated at the new St Mary's School in Lower Road on land granted by Sir William Gomm to Edward Blick. Gomm was a considerable land owner with extensive land ranging over areas south of the Rotherhithe Peninsula which he had inherited in 1822. St Mary's remained a school for some 150 years. Another school, Trinity Halls, later affiliated to Holy Trinity Church, was opened in 1836 on Trinity Street (now part of Rotherhithe Street) and was amalgamated with another local school in 1875. It operated until 1910.

St Mary's Church was the only Anglican place of worship in 1838 but there was a need for more churches as the population grew and extended over a larger area. Three more were added between 1838 and 1850. Holy Trinity was built in Rotherhithe Street in 1837-8 by Sampson Kempthorne on land given by the Commercial Dock Company and was consecrated in 1839. (see picture right). The church that stands on the site now is a 1960s replacement for the original, which was destroyed by an incendiary bomb in November 1940. Christ Church was built in a simple Gothic style on the corner of Jamaica Road and Cathay Street in 1838-9 by Lewis Vulliamy on land given by Field Marshal Sir William Gomm who was buried there in 1875. There's a small photograph of it on the Diocese of Southwark website. It was declared redundant in 1964, was used as storage for the Diocese until 1974, was demolished in 1979, and the site is now occupied by the Bosco centre at the edge of King's Stairs Gardens. All Saints was built on Deptford Lower Road in 1840 was another Gothic style structure with tower and spire and cost £3000.00. It was again built by Samuel Kempthorne on land also donated by Gomm. Finally St Paul's was built in Beatson Street in 1850. None of them survive. St Mary's Church steeple was rebuilt in 1861. The north and south galleries were removed in 1876 and only the western (organ) gallery remains.

Of the non-Anglican churches those which served Rotherhithe residents in the 1800s include the Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate conception which was built on Bryan Road in 1858 and included a girls home and a convent. Two Wesleyan Methodist places of worship were established early in the 1800s - a chapel in Silver Street near Nelson Dock which opened in 1800 and lasted until 1926, and a church in Albion Street which opened in 1806. A Primitive Methodist church opened on Jamaica Road in 1856, and the Nonconformist Commercial Dock Chapel which was established in 1800 was served the dockland community.

Queen Victoria came to power in the June of 1837 following the death of her uncle William IV who died leaving no legitimate children. By now the power was very much in the hands of government, but Victoria was considered to be an important symbol of state.

Joseph Horatio Ritchie, operating out of the Greenland Dock South Shipyard where Daniel Brent also constructed ships, built the wooden-hulled paddle tug Dragon in 1838 but after this date the shipyard seems to have been turned over to repairs. The Dragon was made for the Symington Patent Paddle Towing Company.

The King and Queen shipyard to the west of where Globe Wharf stands is identifiable today by the bridge that passes over an inlet which is the remainder of the dry dock that once operated here. The upper part of the yard was taken over by William Elias Evans on the death of Peter Mestaer in 1818. The lower part remained unused for some time but Evans took that over too when his business expanded. He built steamers and carried out repairs. Rankin says that he was a poor businessman and in spite of considerable talent and skill experienced financial setbacks which forced him to give up the lower yard and occupy the upper yard exclusively. once again Rankin describes him as a pioneer who suffered impaired hearing which made him withdrawn and diffident. Between 1821 and 1835 he launched the Lightening and the Meteor (both to the right, above). Both were Post Office packet boats based at Holyhead "which proved for the first time that steamships could operate in the open sea all year round" (Rankin 2005, p.93). In 1826 he launched the Constitutionen for the Norwegian post office (picture left) - the first steamer to operate in the Norwegian fjords. He held the upper yard until his death and it continued to operate as two separate yards afterwards. The upper yard was renamed Prince's Dry Dock and the lower one became King and Queen Dock.

Packet boats and ships were carriers of people, freight and post. They were designed to be stable in heavy seas and could cover either large or small distances. The requirement for transportation of freight, post and passengers to the US saw the development of routes from London and Liverpool to New York. The importance of the Liverpool route expanded shipping -related activities on the Mersey, offering challenges to other ship building and repair centres. Many European migrants to the U.S. travelled on these packet ships. The requirement for packet ships was a boost to ship builders who had the skills and facilities to meet that requirement. An 1886 article reproduced in the New York times gives a lovely description of the joys of passenger travel on a packet between Liverpool and New York in 1842;

At the period of which I speak the sailing packets which ran between London and New-York, and between Liverpool and that port, were ships of 500 to 600 tons burden. The staterooms--as the little cabins ranged on either side of the saloon were termed--were below the sea level. They were incommodious, dark and ill ventilated. In fact, the only light they enjoyed was that furnished by small pieces of ground glass inserted in the deck overhead, and from the fanlights in the doors opening to the saloon, and this was so poor that the occupants of the staterooms could not even dress themselves without making use of a lamp. The sole ventilation of them was that afforded by the removal of the saloon skylights, which , of course, could only be done in fine weather. The consequence was that the closeness of the atmosphere was in the staterooms was at all times most unpleasant; while the smell of of the bilge water was so offensive as to create nausea, independent of that arising from the motion of the vessel. In the Winter, on the other hand, the cold was frequently severe. There was, it is true, a stove in the saloon, but the heat from it scarcely made itself appreciably felt in the side cabins. In other matters there was the same absence of provision for the comfort of the passengers. The fresh water required for drinking and cooking purposes was carried in casks; and when the ship had a full cargo, many of these were placed on deck, with the result that their contents were sometimes impregnated with salt water from the waves shipped in heavy weather. At all times the water was most unpalatable, it being muddy and filled with various impurities from the old worm-eaten barrels in which it was kept. Not only was the water bad, but the supply occasionally proved inadequate and when the voyage was an unusually long one the necessity would arise of placing the passengers upon short allowance. There was always a cow on board, but there was no milk to be had than what she supplied, no way of preserving it having then been discovered. Canned fruit and vegetables were equally unknown. There was commonly a fair provision of mutton and pork, live sheep and pigs being carried; but of other fresh meat and of fish the stock was generally exhausted by the time the vessel had been a few days at sea, refrigerators at that period not having been invented.

Over the next few years other railway were built which connected London and Greenwich.

From the 1830s ship breaking began to take over from ship building. Many ships that had been built to fight in the Napoleonic Wars met their end in Rotherhithe. The end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815/16 meant that the skills of shipbuilding and repair were now much less in demand.

It becomes difficult to keep track of the ship yards, their owners and lease holders. Not only were ship yards divided into smaller components or amalgamated into larger enterprises but they were leased out to different owners at different times and owner names changed as new family members joined the business or new partners were included. The uses of these shipyards often changed. Finally, the names of the shipyards were sometimes changed as well.

Amongst the shipyards which were prominent in the first half of the nineteenth century was John Beatson’s ship yard at Bull Head Wharf (which was renamed Surrey Canal Wharf). It was located near the Youth Hostel and Spice Island/Old Salt Quay where 165 Rotherhithe Street now stands (a modern building). Beatsons purchased warships from the Admiralty for breaking up. Examples include the Treekronen (74 guns) broken up in 1825 the Grampus (5o guns) broken up in 1832 and the Salisbury (58 guns), broken up in 1837, the Charybdis (10 guns) broken in 1843 and the Admiral Rainer, an East Indiaman converted to a prison ship and renamed the Justitia, broken in 1855. They also broke up two of the most remarkable ships that saw action in naval battles: the Bellerapheron and the the Temeraire. The HMS Bellerophon had been built in 1786 and was broken up at Beatson's in 1836. A 74-gun ship, she was built at Frindsbury (River Medway) by a builder named Graves. She was engaged at the battles of The Glorious First of June, the Nile and Trafalgar and was one of the best known ships of the Napoleonic wars. She is now perhaps best know for having held Napoleon a prisoner from July 15^th to August 7^th 1815 before he was handed over to the HMS Northumberland which took him to exile to St Helena. She was converted to a prison ship in 1824 , when she was renamed Captivity, before being broken up in Rotherhithe in 1836.

In 1838 the three-decked 98-gun second rate ship of the line HMS Temeraire was purchased for £5530.00 broken up at their yard on Rotherhithe. Built in Chatham in 1798 she had seen action at the Battle of Trafalgar. Like the Bellerophon she had served as a prison ship, and was then used as a receiving ship before being broken up at Rotherhithe. The ship was so famous and such an enormous vessel to travel that far down the Thames that this last voyage attracted crowds of people who gathered to admire and watch her and the event was reported in the London media. She was the largest ship ever to have travelled that far upstream (the biggest ships trusted for construction to private firms were 74-gun ships). She was the subject of Turner’s famous “The Fighting Temeraire”, and even though it seems that many of the details in this painting were incorrect it is still a fabulous testament to a once great ship. Turner may or may not have seen this event, but he certainly captured all the glory and sadness that surrounded her - the unutterable sense of something so magnificent being dragged to a sorry end. I had a copy of the painting hanging on my bedroom wall from when I was sixteen years old.


There is a sketch of her by William Beatson at her final resting place at the yard, where she looks really very sad (at the National Maritime Museum) Some of her timbers were used to build altar rails, a communion table and two bishop's chairs which were installed in St Paul's Church off Rotherhithe Street (now destroyed). The table and chairs are in are now in St. Mary's Church, Rotherhithe where they were moved after the Second World War.

The foundations of John Beatson's house at the yard were found in excavations at the site in 2000 (Heard and Goodburn 2000, p.26). It was a Regency style house to the south-west of the wet dock with bow windows and steps leading up to a front porch, the facade of the house facing the wet dock which opened out onto the Thames to the east. Two rooms at the front were separated by stairs going to an upper storey and there were another two rooms at the back. The house had apparently been destroyed by 1894 because it does not appear on the map of that year. Adjoining the house was brick built warehouse which extended to the river. It can be seen, in part, on William Beatson's sketch of the Temeraire. It consisted of four levels each with a large door for unloading commodities. The site plan copied above is published in Heard and Goodburn 2000 (p.29) with the foundations of the house and warehouse clearly shown facing the dock.

Beatsons were also involved in ship repairs and timber imports, with a big storage building on the south side of Rotherhithe Street, opposite their Thames facing operation. In 1839 they sold 4062 sleepers to Taff Vale Railway.

In 1838 Bull Head Dock became a general engineering workshop for the Thames Bank Ironworks and in the 1840s the victualling yard was used to expand the gasworks and eventually the entire remaining site was sold to form the Surrey Entrance Lock and the Surrey Basin.

In 1840 the first postage stamp was introduced, part of a series of reforms to the postal system which standardized and simplified the formerly expensive and complex process of handling and delivering post.

A report which appeared in 1843 said that 30,000 of Southwark’s residents had no piped water. If you want to see a hair raising account of health and sanitation issues in the Southwark area at this time see Leonard Reilly’s book Southwark: In Illustrated History (1998, particularly p.56-61). Rotherhithe was one of the poorest areas at this time.

The 1843 map to the left shows the extent of the Rotherhithe docks and ponds at this time. The Grand Surrey Canal basin opened out onto the Thames at the west, and the canal had been widened at its northern end to form the Grand Surrey Inner and Outer Docks (the latter later becoming Russia Dock and now incorporated into the main thoroughfare through the Russia Dock Woodland). Greenland Dock to the south was half its present size with the Surrey Grand Canal passing across its end. The East Country Dock had been built in the early 1800s over 5.6 acres on land now covered by South Dock. The other docks, connected to Greenland Dock which had access out onto the Thames to the east of Rotherhithe are marked simply as the Commercial Docks on the map. They were, heading north, Norway Dock (today a housing development built into the shallow remains of the dock called "The Lakes"), Lady Dock, Acorn Pond and Lavender Pond.

The dockland areas of Rotherhithe were now increasingly focused on timber and grain. Timber ponds were used as part of the timber processing system. The timber, imported from Canada and the Baltic, was floated in the ponds in order to remove sap from the wood. Open sided sheds were constructed in order to store the timber. Grain also required dockside storage and granaries were built to accommodate it.

As well as ship building, maintenance and repairs around the edges of Rotherhithe and commodity handling in the centre of Rotherhithe there were numerous supporting businesses in the area. On the river front along the short section between King's Stairs to Elephant Stairs Humphrey (1997, p.41) says that there were 4 mastmakers, 1 shipmaker and 2 shop's blockmakers. Rope makers worked inland because of the space required for rope production but there are deeds in the Southwark Local Studies Library for one between Rotherhithe New Road and Southwark Park Road. A look at the 1843 map of the area shows rope walks at Bermondsey Wall East (formerly Rotherhithe Wall), to the west of Marigold Street.

Humphrey (1997) says that in 1843 the Commercial Dock Company was paying around one fifth of the parish's rates.

One of the most remarkable feats of the early 1800s in London was the design and construction of the Thames Tunnel. In 1842 the Brunel engine house was built and in 1843 the Thames Tunnel opened. The Brunel engine house, now a museum, provided a steam pump to remove water from the Thames Tunnel. It was restored in the late 1970s with a replica of the cast iron chimney added in the early 1990s. The shaft of the Thames Tunnel still survives and when work on the East London Line is completed in 2010 should be opened, once more, for visitors to view in person.

By the mid 1840s there was a clear dichotomy in the shipping activities in Rotherhithe between businesses operating on the Thames fringes of Rotherhithe and those operating in the expanding dock system within the centre of Rotherhithe. Ship builders were building a mixture of wooden, composite and iron ships but ship construction was being gradually replaced by repairs, maintenance and ship breaking. The docks mainly dealt in the handling of commodities - particularly timber and grain.


References in this post can be found in the site bibliography at:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/rotherhithe-bibliography.html

Rotherhithe Heritage 3 - The 1700s

In the Eighteenth Century Rotherhithe was still separated from Bermondsey by fields and market gardens, and was still fairly marshy.

One of the earliest dates of note, south of the river, was that the Seamen's Hospital opened in Greenwhich, which took in wounded and, in John Evelyn's terms "emerited" seamen. Emerited seamen are those who were judged to have completed their public service and therefore received honorable discharges. During the reign of William III (William of Orange) it was the wish of his wife Queen Mary (Mary Stuart) that injured sailors, hurt during the wars, should be supported. Mary died in 1694 from smallpox and William raised a Royal Charter in her memory in the same year to build the hospital. The hospital was built in Greenwich near the birthplace of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The hospital was not thrown together by any old architect – its first designer was no other than Sir Christopher Wren. John Evelyn was appointed to the position of Treasurer for the project, and mentions his role briefly in his diary. The Greenwich Hospital opened in 1714 to care for old and wounded sailors, and a school was founded at the same time. The hospital met its true potential during the Napoleonic wars when the casualties reached extreme levels.

Either side of the lock leading into Greenland Dock (now blocked off but clearly visible) were the Greenland Dock (South) and Greenland Dock (North) shipyards. The dry dock that was included in the South yard is thought to date to 1700, but the North yard may have had a dry dock here as early as 1660. In 1702 the South yard was leased to the Burchett family. One of their first projects was the rebuild of the warship Monck.

The HMS Monck had originally been built and launched in 1659 in Portsmouth as a 52-gun third rate frigate. She was rebuilt in Rotherhithe and launched in 1702, now as a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line. She was wrecked in 1720 in a severe storm off British shores, although her crew and much of her cargo were saved.

The river had been recorded breaking its banks in Rotherhithe since Mediaeval times, and in 1705 it did so again, flooding St Mary's Church and its graveyard. The original church had dated to at least Mediaeval times and probably earlier. Christopher Jones, Captain of the Mayflower, and two of the ship's co-owners, were buried in the graveyard but their graves were destroyed by the flood. The reconstruction of the church was carried out in 1715-1717 to a design by John James in the style of Sir Christopher Wren, whose influence on post Great Fire London can be seen in many buildings in which he himself did not have a direct hand. Although a request had been made by the parish for government money from the Fifty New Churches Act (funded by the coal tax) this was rejected and the church was actually rebuilt by money raised from voluntary donations and burial fees. The new construction work of St Mary's had not been completed in the mid 1700s, but the skills of local ship builders were employed and the four internal columns were made of ships' masts. The new tower was started in 1747-8 by Lancelot Dowbigin who was the architect of the church of St Mary Islington, but it was probably constructed along the lines originally proposed by James. The organ was created by John Byfield in 1764-5, and although it has been restored some of the original pipes and its original case survive. The first organist was Michael Topping who was paid £30.00 per year. Some of the original Eighteenth Century furnishings survive in the church's interior. More of the church on a later post.

The London Online website says that the following is a list of public or watermen's stairs in use at the beginning of the eighteenth century, about 1707 in the Rotherhithe area: Tooley, Battle, Bridge, Pickle Herring, Still, Old, New, Savory's Mill,East Lane, Three Mariners, Fountain, Mill, Rotherhithe or Redriff, Cherry Garden, King, Elephant, Church, Swan, Globe, Shepherd and Dock, Pageant, and about nine or ten more until Deptford and Greenwich are reached. Comparing this list with those marked on John Rocque's map, 1746, and then again with Maitland, 1756, some had disappeared, others renamed. The Dog and Duck stairs, surviving to the south of Greenland Dock's entry lock, was established at least as early as 1723 and are still shown on maps of 1896. The stairs were all named after either a local landmark or a locally relevant story. In the case of the Dog and Duck there was a public house of the name in the immediate vicinity.

In the 1700s the two water mills were acquired by the Commissioners of Victualling the Royal Navy, to be a secondary victualling yard, supporting the one at Deptford. Victualling yards were established during the Dutch wars for the provision of goods and supplies to the Royal Navy. Ovens for the baking of ships biscuits were added at that time. There's a brief but very informative article on the National Archives website about the Deptord victualling yard which had been established in the 1600s.

In 1710 St Paul's Cathedral was officially finished - and if you go to the top of Stave Hill you will be able to see it very clearly.

In 1720 Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was published, and Rotherhithe, under its alternative name Redriff, gained some slight publicity because in the story it was Lemuel Gulliver's home village. It does not, however, have a large part to play in the tale!

In the 1720s Mayflower Street was an elegant road of sea captain's homes. Sadly these are long gone and in their place are now modern office blocks. I often visit a village on the west Wales coast called Aberdovey where the original sea captains' homes survive - they are substantial and very attractive. It would be lovely to know how the buildings would compare with those that once existed in Mayflower Street.

Rotherhithe and surrounding areas were beginning to expand towards each other. In 1722 Daniel Defoe encountered Redriff in his tour through Great Britain, which he published in three volumes between 1724 and 1726. His comments about London were less than complimentary about the way in which it had spread "in a most straggling confused manner, out of alls hape, uncompact and unequal". He goes on: "We see several villages, formerly standing, as it were, in the country, and at a great distance, now joined to the streets by continued buildings, and more making haste to meet in the manner; for example, Deptford, this town that was formerly reckoned, at least two miles off from Redriff, and that over the marshes too, a place unlikely ever to be inhabited; and yet now, by the increase of buildings in that down itself, and the many streets erected at Redriff, and by the docks and building-yards on the riverside, which stand betweeen both, the town of Deptford, and the streets of Redriff, or Rotherhith (as they write it) are effectually joined".

The British History Online website has a fascinating comment about an attempt to grow vines in Rotherhithe:

Few Londoners, at first sight, would suspect Rotherhithe of having a soil or situation well suited to the growth of vines; but such would appear to have been once the case, if we may believe Hughson, who tells us, in his "History and Survey of London and its Suburbs," that an attempt was made in 1725, in East Lane, within this parish, to restore the cultivation of the vine, which, whether from the inauspicious climate of our island, or from want of skill in the cultivation, was at that time nearly lost, though there are authentic documents to prove that vineyards (fn. 2) did flourish in this country in ancient times. It appears that about the time indicated a gentleman named Warner, observing that the Burgundy grapes ripened early, and conceiving that they might be grown in England, obtained some cuttings, which he planted here as standards; and Hughson records the fact that though the soil was not particularly suited, yet, by care and skill, he was rewarded by success, and that his crop was so ample that it afforded him upwards of one hundred gallons annually, and that he was enabled to supply cuttings of his vines for cultivation in many other parts of this island.

Ship building continued to be of substantial importance in Rotherhithe with most of the river frontage turned over to ship building, repair and breaking. Other activities included rope and sail making.

The Birchett family who rebuilt the Monck had apparently left Greenland Dock (South) Shipyard by 1725, when the South Sea company (which was formed in 1711 and had somehow survived the South Sea Bubble disaster of 1720) appear to have held the lease as part of their whaling operation. The lease seems to have expired in 1730, which is almost certainly due to the failure of the operation. Whaling had changed radically since the early 1700s, with the main whaling operations moving away from previous bays to more remote and deeper locatitions at the edge of the Arctic ice fields (known as "ice whaling"). Ships had to be modified and reinforced to handle these conditions and experienced crew were required for these waters. It was difficult for the British to compete, but a final attempt was made by the South Sea Company during the 1720s and early 1730s. This venture was very costly and ultimately failed.

The most prestigious of the ship building complexes were engaged in work for the Royal Navy and the East India Company. The best known of the Rotherhithe docks was Nelson Dock, now part of the Hilton Hotel complex. The adjacent Nelson House, which stands today and is quite lovely, was the ship builders house, and was built in the 1730s.

Another shipyard was located where the scotch derrick is currently located (just off Odessa Street). Commercial Wharf was part of the Bedford Estate and ships were being built here from the 1740s. The shipyard was operated by timber traders Kemp, Collins and Co., but was certainly used as a shipyard by Thomas Stanton who, in partnership with one of the Wells family, built the East Indiaman the Royal George here in 1747 and The America in 1757. In 1758 Stanton built the Active and in 1759 the Carcass.

The HMS Active was a Coventry-class oak-built frigate. She was taken by the French navy off San Domingo in September 1778. She was one of a special set of 12 ships built to the design of Sir Thomas Slade, all 28-gun sailing frigates (sixth rate). Several of them were built at Rotherhithe, all of oak: Lizard (built by Henry Bird, launched 1757, hulked as a hospital ship in 1800 and sold for breaking to Sheerness dockyard in 1828), Aquilon (built by Robert Inwood, launched 1758, sold at Deptford 1776), and Argo (built by Henry Bird, launched 1759, broken up at Portsmouth 1776).

The HMS Carcass has a connection with Horatio Nelson, one of the "Infernal" class also designed by Sir Thomas Slade. She saw military action and was repaired and refitted several times before being sold to Constantine Phipps in 1773 when she was taken on an expedition to the North Pole. Nelson served on board as a midshipman. The expedition never reached the North Pole, arriving close but forced back by ice and returning to Britain in the same year. She was sold again several times, the last record of her being sold at Woolwich in 1784.

The transport infrastructure was as in much trouble by the 1700s as it seems to be today. Turnpike Trusts were established to manage the key roads that lead into London and one of these was the Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and Deptford Turnpike Trust which was established in 1748. Until 1750 the only bridge across the Thames was London Bridge, but as part of the improvement in the transportation infrastructure another bridge were now added: Westminster in 1750 and Blackfriars in 1769.

Humphrey (see Bibliography) lists the following Eighteenth Century ships which were all built in Rotherhithe docks: The Chesterfield, the Sphynx and the Tartar.

The Chesterfield was a Fourth Rate warship of the line with 44 guns, launched in December 1743 from the yard of John quallet at Pitcher's Point, which Humphery says is opposte todays Amos Estate on Rotherhithe.

The Sphynx was a sloop (a single-masted sailing vessel) with 24 guns, built at Allen's shipyard and launched in 1747/8.

The Tartar was a 6th rate, or Flower Class, with 28 guns, and was launched in April 1756 from Randall's shipyard. Her first captain was Captain Lockhart. She was wrecked off San Domingo in 1797.

Randall's (Randall, Randall and Brent, Samuel and Daniel Brent and Randall and Brent at different times), was one of the most important ship building companies on Rotherhithe, with three separate yeards of which only Nelson Dock survives. Amongst many commissions for the Royal Navy and the East India Company they build third rate ships of the line with 74 guns, the largest every to be built by private shipyards.

Here are other Rotherhithe-built ships, just as examples. The Minerva was built by John Quallet, Rotherhithe and launched: in January 1759. She was captured by the French in 1778, retaken in 1781, and renamed The Recovery in the same year. The Southampton was built by Robert Inwood, Rotherhithe and was launched in May 1757. She was wrecked in the Bahamas in 1812. The Nonsuch was built by John Quallet and launched on 29th. December 1741. She was broken up in Plymouth in 1766. But if you want to get a full sense of the volume of ships produced by Rotherhithe shipyards go onto the Ships of the Old Navy website and type "Rotherhithe" into the search engine - you won't be disappointed!

The Peter Hills School, which had been founded in 1613, continued to thrive. In the early 1700s it gained funding for 65 boys and 50 girls. It was expanded in 1739, when it included 77 boys, and was rebuilt in 1746 in St Marychurch Street. In 1731 it had 37 trustees, of whom 17 were sea captains. The surviving school building was moved to on the other side of St Marychurch Street in 1795 and it dates from the early 1700s, consisting of three storeys made of red brick. It is located next to St Mary's Church and is easy to spot thanks to the first floor figures of school children in blue and white. The building still has its Eighteenth Century doorcase and fanlight.

In 1755 a second charity school was built, called the United Society's School, located on the east of Rotherhithe.

In the 1760s the Wells family took over Commercial Wharf from Thomas Stanton, and purchased it from the Bedford estate. At the shipyard they constructed the Cornwall in 1760, the True Briton, also in 1760, and over 70 East Indiamen.

In 1765 a major fire in Princes Street on Rotherhithe was caused by the spillage from a pitch kettle which overboiled. Over 200 houses and warehouses, burned down. As with the Great Fire of London, the speed with which the fire spread was probably caused by both construction methods and the proximity of the buildings to each other.

The expeditions of Captain Cook to the Antipodes between 1769 and 1774 led to the establishment of trade between Great Britain and Austarlia and New Zealand. William Pitt became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1783. The slave trade continued to be of considerable economic importance to Britain which had coastal holdings in Africa, and the West Indies provided both staple and exotic items (imports of wheat, leather, cotton, rum, fruit juice, sugar, tobacco and mahogany, amongst other commodities) for an increasingly demanding western world. In the late1700s the increase in trade with the New World (U.S. and Canada). This caused numerous logistical problems because the Thames was only able to hold 600 boats in docks and on piers at any one time. Boats moored mid-Thames were always vulnerable to piracy. Part of the problem was not just that trade had grown threefold but that the average tonnage carried by ships had doubled. Up to 1400 ships with extra tonnage were now competing in a system designed to cope with a fraction of the cargo handling capacity.

One of the local stories associated with this increase in trade concerns Rotherhithe resident Captain Henry Wilson and Prince Lee Boo. Captain Wilson lived on Paradise Street (now part of Jamaica Road) and commanded the Antelope for the East India Company. When the ship was near the Pelew (now Belau) Islands in 1783 it was wrecked, badly damaged and was forced to beach on the island of Coo-Raa-Raa. The native inhabitants of the island were able to communciate with the sailors because one of the tribesmen and one of Wilson's servants both spoke Malay. The presence of the ship's dog seems to have helped bridge the two cultures - it was a Newfoundland named Sailor and the islanders had never seen a dog before. The two groups worked together to build a new ship, and when it was time to depart Abba Thule, the tribe's king (or rupack - which is the origin of the name Rupack Street), asked Wilson to take his son to England so that he could receive an English education. Sadly, Prince Lee Boo was only twenty years old when he died from smallpox in 1784, a mere six months after his arrival in England. See the St Mary's Rotherhithe website for more details.

In 1760 the Bedford estate leased the Greenland Dock (South) and (North) shipyards to John Randall (who was also operating out of Nelson Dock) and in 1763 the Howland Great Wet Dock (now Greenland Dock - see earlier heritage post), was purchased from the Fourth Duke of Bedford by the Wells family of shipbuilders. The Randalls, however, continued to hold the lease as per the original agreement.

A public house named the Acorn on Rotherhithe Street dated back to at least 1767 and gave its name to the Acorn Watermen's Stairs.

In the late 1700s new roads were added to improve connection between other major roads and the new bridges. In St George’s Circus the 1771 obelisk, which was built to commemorate the parish in which this network of roads met, still survives. It was named after the parish in which it was located. Other streets in and around Southwark were built in the later 1700s, crossing fields and leading to new roadside building, and increasing the traffic through the surrounding areas, including Rotherhithe.

The Bermondsey Spa was opened in 1780, managed by Thomas Keyse.

In 1789 a barge building and repair yard was established in Rotherhithe. by Charles Hay and Sons Ltd. However only a later building belonging to the company, dating to the Nineteenth Century, survives today.

War with France broke out in 1793, and Marc Brunel fled Paris, going to America to make his name as an architect and engineer. He came to the UK in 1799. His impact on Rotherhithe was to be considerable in the 1800s.

Bellamy's Wharf, today known as King and Queen Wharf, near Rotherhithe Village, was built by French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1790’s.

In 1792 the first deaf and dumb school in the UK was established at Bermondsey.

It was only at the very end of the 1700s that ambitious plans for the development of new docks in Rotherhithe were made. In 1796 the surveyor Charles Cracklow proposed a new dock system, and William Vaughan, Director of Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation (founded in 1720) and spokesman for the West India Merchants, identified Rotherhithe, Wapping and the Isle of Dogs as suitable riverside sites for potential expansion of dockland areas. The new docks were proposed in order to meet the challenge of London's ambitions to become a global centre for trade. The following dockland developments were staggering, with architects and engineers hired to plan and build new docks in the late 1700s, many of which opened in the first years of the 1800s.

The earliest part of Grice's Granary on Tunnel Road (now the Sands Film Studio and Rotherhithe Picture Library) dates to 1796-1800. It was extended at least once, but the oldest part consists of three section which are topped by three kingpost roofs. Kingposts are vertical wooden posts which sit on horizontal cross beams. The top of the kingpost forms the apex of the roofing rafter. The Grice family owned the building until 1857, but the name was apparently retained even after it changed hands.

In 1796 the Wells family, who had played such an important role in Rotherhithe ship building, purchased a share in a shipyard in Blackwall (Perry and Green) and ceased to operate in Rotherhithe.

I will keep adding to this post (and earlier heritage posts) as I learn more, so if you're interested it might be worth keeping an eye on it.

Bibliography