These letters appeared in the GIHS Newsletter of August 1999
From Patrick Hills
I have a photo of HMS Thunderer which might interest you asthe last battleship built on the Thames at Bow Creek , Thames Ironworks, 1910. Have to watch your head if you were up forward when A turret was training and your eardrums if she loosed off a couple of rounds. Come to that the photographer might have got a good coat of soot from B turret! I think if I’d been the skipper I’d have wanted to join the photographer when two rounds were fired to see what its like when two great shells start right over you.
From Iain Lovell
I was interested to see that my account of the Siemens Museum has aroused quite some interest. I have received a letter from Mr.W.Ford who as you know is researching the Woolwich factory and is anxious to trace any remnants of the Obach Library. Regretfully I think that the books and documents not accounted for have probably been destroyed, which is an act of utter vandalism!
From Ted Barr
Durham Wharf - As the factory which it served was designed to run on coal, then I’m sure there is a connection between the coal and the name of the wharf. In the 1920s coal supplies had become uncertain so a switch was made to oil. In the 1930s the then Chancellor of the Exchequer stopped an additional £1.5s 5d. on a ton of crude oil - so it was decided to revert to coal. I saw the boiler house change over. The colliers tied up at Angerstein Wharf and the Southern Railway unloaded into United Glass 13 wagons, of which there were hundreds, and shunted round to the United Glass sidings. After the new jetty was built the colliers tied up there and the Southern lost the business.
* The Charlton sandpit. Exactly as I remember it.
* East Greenwich Gas holders. Clearly shows the flying lifts.
* Another view of the gas holders taken from the footpath fronting the naval college. The beach exactly as I remember it as a child and the generating station and jetty’.
* Inside the generating station. Is anyone doing anything about this place?
* Flash fractionating column from Harvey’s being negotiated round Westminster Bridge (?). Note the two police motorcyclist escorts - almost certainly the famous Triumph Twins. Typical of loads like these were the giant propellers from Stones, Anchor and Hope Lane. Damage to Street furniture was common and had to be rectified and charged to the perpetrators!
*The Standard in Westcombe Hill with two LGA B ‘Old Bill’ buses of 48 route which ran from the Standard to Golders Green Underground Station. The only other buses at this point were Tilling Stevens petrol electric 75s. Woolwich Ferry to South Croydon ‘Red Deer Pub’. These had a long sign written boards, one each side, with the legend ‘To and from Woolwich Arsenal’. The direction sign at the Standard was gas lit and is featured in ‘The Rise of the Gas Industry’.
John Day’s electrical exploits in Vol.2.Issue 2. remind me that there is a very early IHP electric motor in the Museum at Plumstead Road. It ran the machine tools in a small engineering works in West Greenwich about turn of the century. I donated it to the Museum and also gave them a catalogue of the firm's products.
From Larry Button (Hamilton Canada)
Last November I was in London on business and took a boat down to Greenwich. The whole area was very busy and I had a chance to visit St.Alphege’s. and Straightsmouth where my gr-gr- grandfather lived. The people on the boat was interested in telling us about the Dome, Tidal barrier, etc. but I was more interested in the smell in the air which told me there was a soapworks nearby! When my family left East London they settled in the east end of Hamilton, Canada’s largest industrial city. They all worked at the Proctor and Gamble soap works - no mistaking that smell!
From at least 1832 - when it appears in Pigot’s Directory under the name of Boyd - my family (Button) owned a glass and china shop at 9 High Street Woolwich. I recall this was poor, rather disreputable area, however from studying maps I gather glass making in the area was fairly important due to the considerable sand deposits. I have a card indicating that in about 1907 the Button glass business was sold to W.Weight and Co,.wholesale medical bottle dealers of Glenville Grove New Cross Deptford. .
From Robert Hamilton
I have recently come across your newsletters while searching the web for details of a serious explosion and fire at a factory which occurred in the Greenwich/Woolwich/Erith area in the early part of the century. My great grandfather and two of his sons were involved. The incident was serious and the process in the factory involved shovelling sulphur witha rubber covered shovel. It didn’t occur during the First World War which would seem rule out the Silvertown explosion.
From Iris Bryce
I would dearly love to see inside Enderby House - I worked in the buying office which I think must be the office building with the decorated cable and gutta percha lintels. Enderby House was a no go area for the likes of me, even in 1941/2. I used to stand at my office window and watch the Management and Scientific Staff go in every lunch time. I think it must have been the Staff Dining Room - I was only on the lookout for the young white coated, blonde haired lab technician hoping he would look up and see the ravishing teenager!
I did a broadcast a week or so ago on Eastern Regional radio - it was called ‘The Regeneration of East Greenwich’.