The Takeaway Shop

The Takeaway Shop: No, I'm not talking about one of Deptford's many fried chicken takeaways; the Takeaway Shop is a project by Amy Lord which is running from 20-27 January at Number 82, the gallery at the bottom of Tanner's Hill.

Here's what she says about it:

What do you know about where you’re living, where you wake up every morning? 

Archives are often unruly, dusty masses of paperwork and words locked away to keep them safe. What if you learn about the most interesting bits straight away? And more importantly, be able to TAKE them AWAY with you?



This will be a place for people to drop in and learn craft activities including book-binding and paper-making, and to collect real stories about the lives of the local residents, families and the history of the area. It will be a place to meet. 

People that come into the shop will learn how to create individual handmade books and be able to cut, paste and assemble their favourite bits of text, pictures, true stories, people and textures, to create THEIR own mini TAKE-AWAY archive.



I think it’s important to know the area you live in, it’s history, what came before it, and who lives here now. It’s the context in which you are positioning yourself, and your life.



82 Tanner’s Hill, Deptford SE8 4PN

http://www.amy-lord.com/the-takeaway-shop/

20th – 27th January 2012 

(Closed 24th)
10:30am – 6:30pm weekdays, 12 – 5pm Sat & Sun

Late night Friday 27th January as part of South London Art Map tour (until 8pm)



PLEASE EMAIL TO BOOK A SLOT [amy-lord at hotmail dot com]


Posted from The Deptford Dame

Deptford Copperas

Deptford Copperas:

Copperas Street is a topographical reminder of one element in Deptford's industrial past. Copperas manufacture began here in the seventeenth century and continued until 1828. Although now largely forgotten, the industry was once a highly significant one.

Copperas, or iron vitriol, is a ferrous sulphate. It was made from iron pyrites stone: not the shiny, 'fool's gold' form but heavy, dull black pebbles found in London clay and on Kent beaches. Once manufactured, Deptford copperas was used to make black and red dyes. (Other possible uses included production of sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, dye fixative, ink and gunpowder manufacture. It even became an ingredient of various patent medicines)

Sir Nicholas Crispe - whose main trade activities were in West Africa, and included the slave trade -established copperas manufacture in Deptford, off Church Street. The works had their own dock on Deptford Creek. An account given to the Royal Society in 1678 described the copperas bed as 'about an hundred feet long, fifteen feet broad at the top, and twelve feet deep, shelving all the way to the bottom.' The bed had clay and chalk at the bottom, with a wooden trough in the middle which led to a cistern. The iron pyrites stones were laid about two feet deep, then left to ripen for five or six years in the sun and rain before they began to produce a liquor of sufficient strength. New stones would be laid on top every four years to refresh the bed.

The liquor ran into a cistern which could hold seven hundred tons. The cistern was built from chalk-caulked oak boards; further boards sub-divided it to prevent leakage. Its liquid was pumped to a lead boiler some eight feet square where it was boiled with scrap iron for a week - thanks to improvements brought in by Crispe. Prior to his innovations, the process had taken about 20 days. This was expensive, as the fuel for this process was Newcastle coal.

Once sufficiently concentrated, the liquid was left in a cooler for a further two weeks for the crystals to form. Deptford's cooler was unusual in being made of tarras, a form of cement, rather than the more usual lead. It was twenty feet by nine feet, and five feet deep. The copperas would form five inches thick on the bottom and sides.

The copperas works are not simply a forgotten piece of local history or a byway of industrial history. Rather, researcher Tim Allen argues that they force us to reappraise the origins of the Industrial Revolution. Well before the development of the coal and steel industries in the north, these chemical works in London and on the Kent coast required capital investment and a long manufacturing process, and produced large returns. Copperas also contributed to many other industries, and was arguably a vital forebear of the modern chemical industry.

Image: Iron(II) sulfate [copperas], from Wikimedia Commons.

Posted from Caroline's Miscellany

A death in the marshes

A death in the marshes:

A tragic story from 1877:

'At daybreak on Saturday morning a boy employed to frighten crows from a cornfield discovered the body of a gentleman up to the waist in water in the marshes forming a portion of Woolwich Arsenal, The body was subsequently identified as that of Mr David Darling, a pensioned officer from the Royal Arsenal, of 7 Amersham Grove, New Cross. The deceased was last seen alive at the grave of his wife in Plumstead Churchyard, and it is conjectured that in walking through the marshes he was overtaken by the darkness and got into a bog from which he was unable to extricate himself' ('Lost in a Bog', The Times, 5 March 1877)

The elements of Kent marshes, a churchyard and a frightened boy put me in mind of a story written not long before, albeit set further out in North Kent (believed to be based on the marshes around Cooling, beyond Gravesend):

'Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard... and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip' (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861)

Posted from Transpontine

History of Albury Street. Final Part.

History of Albury Street. Final Part.:

History of Albury Street. Part 8

No. 37.
Old buildings in the neighbourhood with a romantic past such as Deptford’s are invariably associated with well known historical figures. It is reputed that Admiral Benbow lived at No. 20 Union Street, north side (Now number 37) and that Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton spent some time at No. 19 (now number 34) the house built by Reyalls and Pearce.




No. 34.
It is unlikely that Admiral John Benbow who died in 1702 ever lived in Union Street. He leased Sayes Court in 1696 for 3 years from John Evelyn, but does not appear to have been there much. His son, John Benbow the Traveller, who died in Deptford in 1708 and in great poverty, might possibly have lived in Union Street. No evidence has been seen to prove or disprove that Lord Nelson stayed there. It is of greater significance that from the first, Union Street was inhabited by men connected with the Royal Navel Dockyard. Lucas’s will mentions houses occupied or in the possession of five sea captains and three shipwrights. Union Street must have been with these people, the most affluent in the parish, in mind. As the mortgage made with John Loving, the block maker, suggests, it was these people who provided some of the capital needed by Lucas. The rate books which go back to 1730 on the south side, and to 1750 on the north side of the street, show that this link with the dockyard was maintained until it closed in 1869. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there are signs that the occupants of some of the houses were of a lower social order. For instances No. 24 Union Street on the north side in 1851, was in multiple occupation, the heads of the three families being a labourer and two sawyers. But even then fourteen occupiers of thirty-two houses were craftsmen employed in the Royal Naval Dock Yard or were master mariners. Perhaps the most striking thing at that time was the number of private schools or academies flourishing in the street, which seem to have occupied no less than four houses.

Albury St, North side still mostly intact.

The last vacant site in Union Street was filled in 1838 when No.7 on the north side was built. Already, No. 21 on the same side had been pulled down and replaced by a pair of houses first rated in 1829, but by-and-large, Union Street remained intact until the end of the nineteenth century. In the last quarter of the century Lucas’s own house on the south east corner and No.2 on the south side were demolished and replaced by a single building facing the High Street, and the public house (King of Prussia) was rebuilt. In 1882, Union Street was renamed as a part of Creek Road and in 1898, became Albury Street loosing its anomalous numbering. The final re-naming of the street was necessitated by the re-aligning of Creek Road to join, at its west end, Evelyn Street, thereby at last obscuring the field pattern shown in the map of 1623, cutting off the north east corner of James Browne’s land. But even up the time of the Great War, Albury Street remained very much as Lucas left it. But by 1921, the south side had been broken and two large gaps appeared in the terrace in the middle and at the west end.

Since the Second World War these gaps have been made wider and recently they coalesced leaving just four houses of the original twenty-three. The north side has been luckier. A few houses at each end of the terrace on this side have be altered or rebuilt and since demolished, but a sizable number of the houses remain These houses are among the few survivors in the whole of London from the first two decades of the eighteenth century and although the gaps in their ranks are to be regretted, the four houses on the south side of the street and the longer series on the north must be seen as one of the most important treasures architecturally and historically among domestic buildings in London.

My thanks A Quiney for allowing me to reproduce his thesis on Union/Albury Street.

Posted from Old Deptford History

New war memorial plaques unveiled at Hither Green

New war memorial plaques unveiled at Hither Green: A SET of war memorial plaques to replace ones which were stolen for scrap earlier this year have been officially unveiled.

Creekside conservation area proposals

Creekside conservation area proposals: Lewisham Council has now made more information available online about its proposals to create a new conservation area covering Creekside and the Crossfields estate.

The character appraisal document is certainly worth a read if you have any interest in the history of Deptford, there's quite a lot of research gone into this and it explains some of the history of Deptford Creek and its many wharves, as well as the development of the Crossfields estate which is considered a fine example of London County Council's early social housing estates and marks the start of the redevelopment of inner city slum areas.

The council is holding a public consultation event next year at the Creekside Centre, on 7 January 2012 from 11am-3pm if you want to find out more about the implications this move would have for the area.

There's also an online survey with about four questions with yes/no answer options which are fine for those of you whose responses are cut and dried. If you want to contribute something a bit more useful there's also a box at the end for any other comments, or of course you can write direct to the planning conservation office, the contact details for which are on the council's website.

Naturally the creation of a conservation area should in theory offer protection against the loss of Creekside's unique character - although some commenters have already raised the issue of lack of enforcement on our other main conservation area, Deptford High Street.

On the High Street we are seeing a creeping erosion of the characteristics that make it worthy of protection, and enforcement by the council seems to be sorely lacking. Landlords are ripping out old windows and shopfronts with impunity, whacking in their replacement frames and solid security shutters without even bothering to wait for planning permission to be granted. And when planning applications are rejected, as in the case of Paddy Power's alterations to the former Deptford Arms, the council does not seem to be willing or able to enforce its own decisions.

With proposed changes afoot, such as Workspace's plans for the Faircharm Estate and rumours that Railtrack wants to replace our landmark lifting bridge (which no longer lifts but still acts as a landmark) it is unsurprising that the council is looking at ways to protect Creekside.

However the existence of the Creekside 'village' development and the fact that the other side of the Creek is in Greenwich borough does raise several questions such as: is it too little too late? and what (if any) implications would it have for plans by Greenwich to redevelop the other side of the Creek?

Lewisham Natureman Mural

Lewisham Natureman Mural:

I love this mural which popped up recently at the end of Cressingham road (SE13), by the railway bridge. Intriguingly it says underneath 'To the legend of the Lewisham Natureman'. Anyone know what that refers to? Nice little detail, there's a Lewisham crown logo at the bottom with a daisy growing out of it.

At his Wildcornerz site local artist and psychogeographer Jack Thurgar refers to 'The mysterious city explorer, specimen collector and shaman Solomon Wild... Both online and in real space i look for any trace of him. He is thought to be connected in some way to a strange old legend of 'The Lewisham Natureman', thought to have its roots in South East London's local graffiti scene. The Lewisham Natureman has never been seen and is only represented by a small carving, that can be found [normally hidden] in the wastelands, train sidings and rivers of the borough. This has given way to the belief that this character is not human at all but actually a spirit of the wild; a contemporary Green Man or Hern the Hunter, wandering in the wild, no-mans lands of south london. Some say Solomon is studying / hunting this legend, others say they are the same character'.

I suspect that Solomon Wild and the Lewisham Natureman are alter-egos springing from the artist's mythopoetic imagination (or shamanic journeying if you prefer), rather like Southwark's John Constable/John Crow. But that's all good. There's loads of interesting stuff at that Wildcornerz site, including films of wandering up the River Quaggy and this piece filmed on last June's Summer Solstice in wasteland off Baring Road, SE12: