There She Blows! - ad for Whaling Trade Symposium

‘THERE SHE BLOWS!’ – ASPECTS OF THE LONDON WHALING TRADE

DOCKLANDS HISTORY GROUP ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

THE MUSEUM OF LONDON DOCKLANDS

SATURDAY 23^rd MARCH 2013

Programme

9.45 Museum of London Docklands’ doors open - registration, tea and coffee

          
10.20 Chris Ellmers – Welcome and Opening Remarks
10.25 Dr. Janet West (Scott Polar Research Institute) – Introduction  
10.40 First Session - Chairman, Charles Payton
10.40 Paper 1: Alex Werner (Museum of London) – Revealing London’s Hidden Whaling History: An Appreciation of A. G. E. Jones, Whaling Historian
11.10 Paper 2: Hazel Forsyth (Museum of London) – The ‘Business of Striking the Whale’ The Muscovy Company and Early Whaling
11.40 Paper 3: Chris Ellmers (Maritime Historian) – ‘A Place of Blubber and Oil’: The Greenland Dock and the Whaling Trades
PM    
12.10 Dr. Stuart Frank, Charles Payton and Chris Ellmers – A London Whaling Miscellany

12.45 – 2.00 Lunch – This is not provided by the organisers. Local cafe details provided       

2.00 Second Session - Chairman, Chris Ellmers
2:00 Paper 4: Beatrice Behlen (Museum of London)  ‘In Whalebone Bondage Gall the Slender            Waist’: Fashionable Uses of Baleen
2.30 Paper 5: Dr. Stuart Frank (New Bedford Whaling Museum) – ‘Curiously Carved’: Scrimshaw and the South Sea Whale Fishery
3.30-4.00 Coffee/tea
4.00 Third Session – Chairman, Chris Ellmers
4.00 Paper 6: Charles Payton (Whaling Historian) – The Worlds of the Enderby Family
4.30 Paper 7: Jean-Thierry Du Pasquier (Whaling Historian) – The Enderbys and the Dobrée           Whaling Venture
4.50 Paper 8: Dr. Richard Sabin (Natural History Museum) – The Bay Wharf Whale and Early Thames Strandings
5.20 Edward Sargent, Chairman of the Docklands History Group - Concluding Remarks
5.30 Closure

Booking will be via the Docklands History Group website: www.docklandshistorygroup.org.uk. Bookings will open in early December.

LONDON WHALING TRADE SYMPOSIUM - EVENING DINNER

A Whaling Garland

With Music and Words Performed and Presented by Dr. Stuart Frank, Charles Payton and Chris Ellmers
This event is planned to take place in the Museum restaurant, Rum & Sugar, subject to fifty delegate and other bookings being made by mid-February 2013

London Shipbuilding Symposium Papers - an advert

        FOURTH SYMPOSIUM ON “SHIPBUILDING AND SHIPS ON THE THAMES”

The Proceedings of the above which was held in February 2009 at the Museum of London Docklands is now available. It is regretted that there has been a delay in publication due to a change in the editorship earlier this year. The volume is an A4 size, softback publication similar to those produced for the meetings held in 2003 and 2006. It is a limited run publication that will not be reprinted or sold elsewhere. The ten papers presented at the 2009 meeting were as follows:

1. Dr Damian Goodburn

Investigating Fragments of a Large Oared Ship, or Galley, of the late 13^th Century excavated from the London Waterfront. 18 pp., 7 illus.

2. Dr Janet Macdonald                                                                                                        

British Patents of Interest to Maritime Historians filed in London between 1780 and 1820, 12 pp., 8 illus.

3. Dr Cori Convertito-Farrar and Ken Cozens                                                                    

The Operations of the Trinity House Ballast Office in the Late Eighteenth Century, 15 pp., 3 Tables, 2 Fig., 5 illus.

4. Chris  Ellmers                                                                                                                                                            

‘This Great National Object’ - the Story of the Paddle Steamer Enterprize.  23 pp., 1 Table, 8 illus.                   
 5. Professor Andrew Lambert                                                                                                                              
Woolwich Dockyard and the Early Steam Navy, 1815-1852, 15 pp., 2 Tables, 2 illus.                                           

6. Dr Carlos Alfaro Zaforteza                                                                                                                                   

Sea Power and Technology Transfer: The Spanish Navy and the Thames Shipyards, 1844-1850, 13 pp., 4 Tables, 3 illus.                                                                                                        

7. Alexis Haslam and Duncan Hawkins with contributions by Christopher Mayo, Denise Mulligan and Andrew Skelton

Recent archaeological investigations at The Forge, Millwall and Payne’s and Borthwick Wharves, Deptford, 14 pp., 13 illus.                                                                                          

8. Dr Roy Fenton                                                                                                                                                          

London Tramps and London Colliers. 8 pp., 3 Tables, 2 Fig.                                                                               

9. Professor Ian Buxton                                                                                                                                            

The Output of Thames-side Yards from 1850 to 1914. 8 pp., 1 Table, 7 Fig., 3 illus.                                                       

10. Rif Winfield and Stuart Rankin                                                                                                                        

John I. Thornycroft & Co. - the Chiswick Years.  20 pp., 2 Tables, 12 illus. 

The cost per copy is £12.50, which includes £2.50 p&p for mailing to UK addresses.  To purchase a copy contact me, as below, with your mailing address and you can pay on receipt.  

The proceedings for the 4^th Symposium are being published and distributed on a non-profit making basis with any surplus funds after paying expenses being donated to the “Help for Heroes” charity.  The proceedings for the 5th symposium held in February 2012 are being edited by Chris Ellmers with the assistance of Jenny Collett, both of the Docklands History Group, and they will be distributed by that Group, probably early in 2013.

Dr Roger Owen     email: jr_owen100@hotmail.com      tel. no. 0208 777 7103

                                                                                                                 

Blackheath Caverns

Ever since last spring we have been meaning feature an article in the April edition of that wonderful publication ‘Subterrania’ – the article is  ‘Chalk Mining near Blackheath Hill, Southeast London. Including Jack Cade's Cavern’ by Anthony Durham

Ostensibly it is yet another account of the caverns known to lie under Blackheath Hill but the author does raise some interesting points and tries to examine the subject holistically.  However, to begin at the beginning – he says ‘ten years ago I had very little idea what lies under the ground near my home. But that all changed on 7 April  2002, when the A2 main road through Greenwich  collapsed into a big hole halfway up Blackheath Hill’.  Having opened up his interest he began to look further  and discovered more.

He started offering guided tours of where the holes were but met with problems because of his unqualified status.  He also contacted the authors of a local blog about Underground Greenwich and says they helped him.  He says he read Harry Pearman's important work in Vol 6 of the Chelsea Speleological Society – but doesn’t indicate that he has ever  spoken to Harry, which is a real pity (Harry has published a more recent article on the caverns in Vol.44).

Returning to the 2002 A2 collapse he says ‘Transport for London and  Thames Water were essentially gifted a get-out-of-jail- free card by a plausible story that the lime burners of three hundred years ago were a bunch of cowboys who repeatedly caused trouble to the road managers of that time’- I hope that isn’t referring to my rather shoved together talks on it – I am certain I never mentioned the word ‘cowboys’ , although I might have my doubts about the level of care and honesty exhibited by 17^th quarry workers – although Anthony Durham is ’inclined to stand up for those old lime burners near Greenwich, whose engineering and managerial skills, and respect for the  local community’ should not be under-estimated.

He gives the much quoted note about the activities of the Steers family  ‘In 1677 William Steers, Limebumer, was fined £40 for "not filling up, supporting and making good, safe, and  secure the King's Highway there against his Lime Kilns leading from Deptford to Blackheath, which said highway he hath undermined by digging, taking and carrying from  thence great quantities of chalk’ and so on. He pictures the Steers family ‘earning their living for generations on a patch of hillside that nobody much cared about, selling lime for rich people to build houses’

Returning to the 2002 collapse he discussed the spring line on Blackheath and the consultants' report paid for by Transport for London which explained that ‘most subsidence events are caused by water transporting soil particles underground and opening up ever-bigger voids, which finally collapse.’  But then he says ‘Unfortunately the report did a rotten job on the specific conditions of Blackheath Hill’ and adds that ‘little is known in detail about mining techniques used around Blackheath, even as late as the 1800s’.  he says ‘While digging into a hillside without modem machinery, miners will tend to create a vertical cliff or quarry workface with a horizontal area in front that is partly the floor of the digging and partly the top of a spoil heap’ and that ‘mining tended to transform hillsides’ . He then looks at the area around the hill and the landscape of cliffs and craters  - he is quite right, go out and look at it!  He asks ‘ how far those steps are man-made’

With reference to ‘Jack Cade's Cavern’  he discusses its exact position  and how it might be located by the casual passer by – but asks not to ‘pester (residents) in search of their underground cavity.’

As he points out the Cavern ‘has led an eventful life over the centuries, having been lost, found, lost, found,  and lost’ – and gives a brief history, including the inspection of it as a potential second world war air raid shelter .... ‘They found it exactly as their Victorian forebears had left it: graffiti, old bottles and all.’

He goes on to discuss some of the Blackheath lime burners and has unearthed some interesting  material from the Morden College archives. Has found other Steers – including a Liverpudlian ‘England’s first major civil engineer’ leading him to speculate ‘that Blackheath Hill was the real  nursery of British Engineering’. It’s easy for me to say ‘ of course it was’ – but Penn’s and their followers/trainees  were really mechanical engineers –and  I am not sure where we fit Perkins and his steam guns tests into this

He says, rightly, ‘Blackheath Hill is a whole landscape of industrial archaeology’  - and it is so well hidden by modern buildings and the traffic. 

Read the article – and I would like to get Anthony Durham along to talk to GIHS sometime

Subterranean Britannica.  www.subbrit.org.uk
April 2012 issue 29 Edited by Nick Catford editor@subbrit.org.uk

 

LIFE IN EAST GREENWICH AND ON GREENWICH MARSH
1950

By Arthur Cheeseman


The following account of life in East Greenwich - as it used to be - has been given to us by Rev. Malcolm Torry, of Holy Trinity Church, Greenwich Peninsula. He was sent it by Arthur Cheeseman, an old Greenwich resident, who now lives in the Phillipines
It was sent to him in connection with an church discussion he has organised on 11th - next Sunday - at Cafe Pura, in Oval Square - Remembering the Peninsula  by Jean and Peter Griffiths, who have lived around here all their lives, will introduce a discussion about previous residential and working  communities on the Peninsula, and particularly about the Peninsula during wartime. Plus input from Dr. Mary Mills

 Arthur says:

I’m writing this in no particular order: just as the memory works. I hope that it will help others to remember. 



Greenfell Street and the gasworks entrance

As a child I remember this area well. My grandparents (Father’s parents: he was born in number 28) lived on the Peninsula, and we had a lot of our relatives living in Greenfell and Boord Street, which were next to the gas works which where my grandfather used to work on the retorts. I remember that he always carried his shovel home and used to wear his belt with the buckle done up at the back so that he did not injure his arm on the buckle when shovelling.

 

Greenfell Street had terraced houses with the front doors in pairs. Most had two families living in them. At the top of the street was a post office and a fish and chip shop. I was too small to see over the counter, but there was always someone willing to lift me up for my two pence of chips.

 



St. Andrews - this is now O'Keefe's offices

The Mitre public house was next door. It laid back a little from the main road and had a road down the left hand side leading to the rear gardens.

 

On the other side between Greenfell and Boord Street was a transport café, the Terry Arms. One of my father’s aunts used to run it, “Flo” I think her name was.

 

To one side of Boord Street was St Andrew’s Church where my parents got married in 1942



A tram alongside prefabs in Blackwall Lane

The trams used to run from Blackwall tunnel to, I believe, Greenwich market. The only bus that went through the tunnel was a 108a: it had one side of the roof lowered so that it did not hit the roof. The lighting for the road was gas, strung across on wires to the centre.

Next to the church, and it still there, is Dreadnought School. To the rear of the school used to be allotments . I have no idea what was there before the allotments.



Dreadnought School - now the Horniman Museum store

Blackwall Lane used to be cobbled stones (not kind to bike riders). Blackwall Lane was cut in half by Tunnel Avenue where it ran north to the river and the gas works, the generating station, and Redpath Brown steel works. This is where the Pilot public house is next to about 6 terraced houses.

 



The Pilot pub and cottages

Where Blackwall Lane meets Tunnel Avenue there was a small cafe (forgotten the name, it may have been The Cabin) and a horse trough made from grey granite, and it used to have water in it. Next to the cafe was either the Dutch boy or Blue boy bag wash laundry. Many a time I had to help my brother Ted to push the pram full of wet washing home ( - the fight we had about who would push and who would ride).

 

On the other side of the road was a firm that made housing block/bricks (hollow block or breeze blocks). They used to use the ash from the gas works (coke works). This is where I saw my first black man in the early 1950s. 

 

Before they were bombed out my mother and my grandparents used to live in Ordnance Crescent which used to run round one side of the tunnel entrance. There were a few shops, but all I can remember is a cafe that smelt of damp tea. On the other side of the tunnel was yet another pub called the Star. It closed before I had a chance to drink in it.

 

I can remember walking down the steel steps of the ventilation shaft of the tunnel and walking back on the half pavement to the arch at the start of the tunnel. If my mother had known what I had been up to I would not have sat down for a week.



advertisements for soap made on the
Greenwich Peninsula.

 

The riverside walk was a wonderful playground when I was young. It had a mini marina with small boats, mostly DIY type or made up from ww2 MTB craft. There was a tar barrel quay, and wood by the acre. I did not venture down that way because they had a large dog.

 

There used to be a train that ran down to the quay once a week to be loaded with timber and the tar barrels, which were very flimsy. It’s lucky that the tar was hard. That was part of my Saturday morning walk: down Horn lane, which had allotments to the rear of the gas works sports field, round the river down to Blackwall Lane, up Tunnel Avenue and home: that was until my mum got me a paper round at the ripe old age of eleven: 5 shillings a week - I was rich.

 

I forgot - there was a petrol station between Tunnel Avenue and Blackwall Lane, and on the other side of the road was the Telcon cable works and the council yard. This was on the left hand side of Tunnel Avenue after the  Blackwall Lane intersection.

There was a very large cement cistern left over from the war for emergency water supply. There was a group of about 20 prefabs, and just past the cistern was a row of cottages in a horse shoe shape. It may have been called Identerden cottages - followed by even more prefabs. There was a factory that made soap: the smell was nasty.

 

Well, that’s all for now - brain getting hot. Could someone let me know if I made too many errors?  Love and prayers to all,

A celebration in Riverway - the bit of road which ran between
The Pilot and the river - now disappeared

 

Arthur Cheeseman.    

United Glass Charlton

We are reproducing below this fabulous picture of the United Glass factory in Charlton.
The owners are keen to know more about the picture - the artist, the scene, anything

then three came along at once

Three newsletters through my door ...

GLIAS October.  Newsletter
(Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society)
This edition is remarkably, in fact, totally bereft of any mention of Greenwich and Woolwich.
This is not good.

Woolwich Antiquarians October Newsletter
Although, of course, this has lots about Woolwich in it - there is little which could be described as industrial.   Pity about that too.

Lewisham Local History Society Autumn Newsletter
Strictly speaking of course we should only note items which are about the bit of Lewisham which used to be Greenwich - however, it does include an account of one of our members, Tom Sheppard, who has sadly died and to whom a memorial 'happy occasion' was held in September. 

Greenwich Industrial History Society - next meeting.
Tuesday 16th October    at The Old Bakehouse, Bennett Park, SE3 (rear of Age Exchange shop)

at 7.30

is PETER KENT - local artist and commentator - with his Riverwatch. 

and  - to go with this - we have also had news of  -

UNLOCKING THE HERITAGE OF GREENWICH RIVERSIDE with Thames Trail

 an  interactive photo walk and phone app

The Viewfinder Photography Gallery announces that they are creating the  Thames Trail that will encourage the local community and visitors to  explore the industrial, shipbuilding and trading heritage of Greenwich, from its 19th century heyday to the present.
Work has already started –  the photo walk will launch in June 2013, available online until at least  2018. It is being funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
It will begin at  the Cutty Sark and follow the riverside path past the O2 Arena to the  Thames Barriers. Many wharves, jetties and other signs of the  industrial past remain, often unknown and unnoticed, yet they tell an  important story about the river and Greenwich itself.
Archive material   from Greenwich Heritage Centre, including paintings, photographs, maps  and industrial documents, as well as specially commissioned interviews  with local historians and residents, will enable participants to  imagine what the area was once like, to see how it has changed and how  it continues to evolve.
The Trail will document the evolving nature of  the riverside. Regeneration and development are rapidly changing  Greenwich's waterfront and shifting it from an industrial to  residential and commercial area. Whilst on the photo walk, participants  will be encouraged to take their own photographs of the riverscape as  it is today – these photos will be published on the Viewfinder’s  website.
There will be many opportunities for members of the public to  volunteer (lunch and travel expenses provided), gaining new hands-on  research skills and experiences.
Louise Downham, the Viewfinder  Photography Gallery’s Chair (louise@viewfinder.org.uk), says: “We are  keen to hear from anyone interested – please do get in touch to discuss  how you might be involved in developing this exciting project.”  Opportunities in October 2012 include testing the photowalk route,  contributing to interviews (either as interviewer or interviewee) with  local residents and historians, learning to use research archives or  conducting independent research, selecting archive material for use in  the Thames Trail app and contributing to the Thames Trail blog. In February and March 2013, volunteers will test the accompanying app and assist in promoting the project.