Another snippet from my collection of the Illustrated London News – this time from 8th March 1845, detailing a conflagration that nearly destroyed a major factory in what we would probably today more commonly refer to as the Greenwich Peninsula.

The factory was owned by the grandsons of Samuel Enderby – who had created a whaling empire that at its height owned owned or leased 68 whaling ships.

After the death of their own father in 1829, two of the three grandsons, Charles and George Enderby brought the land by the Thames that was to become the site of the factory so disastrously afflicted by the fire that will be shortly described.

The grandsons were an unlucky duo as not only did their factory suffer serious damage, but their shrinking whaling fleet was also doing badly (for which modern readers may have less sympathy) and a decision to invest the insurance money in a setting up a settlement on Auckland Island in the South Pacific ultimately bankrupted the firm.

One whaling historian described the Enderbys as “Clogs to clogs in three generations”.

Endersby Wharf is still a landmark on the Greenwich Peninsula, close to the now-closed off section that houses a soon to be demolished starch and sugar factory.

Not only were the two grandsons failures in business, but the third grandson, Henry scandalised polite society by openly living with a male opera singer in West London. Shocking!

DESTRUCTIVE FIRE AT EAST GREENWICH

About eight o’clock, on Sunday evening, the extensive premises belonging to Messrs. Charles, Henry, and George Enderby, patent rope, twine, and canvass manufacturers, at East Greenwich, were discovered to be on fire. The flames were first observed from without, in the rope-walk at the rear of the factory, which was a strong brick building of about 140 feet long by 40 feet deep. It was not till day-break on Monday morning that the firemen could extinguish the flames, when a scene of the utmost desolation presented itself. Of the main factory, which faced the Thames, as was the most prominent object on that bank of the river between Greenwich Hospital and Woolwich, nothing remained but its lofty walls, which in the course of the day were blown down with tremendous force by the wind.

The machinery it contained was most extensive, and its immense value can be better judged from the fact that its completion has occupied a space of ten years. The whole of it was destroyed, It is proved that the flames were first seen raging in the store-room in the rope-manufactory, which was detached from the main building, where there had not been a light for several weeks.

There was a considerable quantity of manufactured goods deposited there, which were seen perfectly safe a few hours before the outbreak. The supposition is, therefore, that the fire either arose from spontaneous combustion, or was willfully caused by some incendiary. The factory, or waterside premises, containing joiners’ workshops, spinning, card, and loom rooms, is totally destroyed. The hemp and spinning-rooms over the engine and boiler-house are burned out, and the iron roof has fallen in. The engine-room beneath is considerably damaged. The weaving workshops, fronting the factory, are greatly damaged; the roof has been partly demolished by the falling of the opposite walls. They contained twelve weaving looms, worked by machinery, which are all damaged. The dwelling-house of Mr. Enderby, on the north side of the factory, is much damaged by fire, and most of the furniture and its contents destroyed.; as are also the stores at the back, and part of the rope manufactory. The rope gallery, adjoining the manufactory, is a quarter of a mile in length; about 100 feet is gone, and but for the firemen cutting off the communication, the whole would have been levelled to the ground. Unhappily, upwards of 250 workmen are thrown out of employment by this calamitous event.

The exertions made by the military, parochial, and other authorities, as well as by the neighbours and workpeople, during the conflagration, were very efficient in saving much valuable property. The loss to the worthy proprietors, we are happy to add, is well covered by insurances.

The dominant concrete grain silos in North Greenwich are shortly to be demolished to make way for human silos in the form of modern blocks of flats.

While the associated factory stank rather badly, it provided jobs and added character to the area, so I am actually quite sad to see the area gutted and turned into bland buildings. Likewise, similar emotions for the narrow, inconvenient riverside pathway, which is to be ripped out and replaced with a wide, bland and quite boring pathway. All the fun is going to be taken away.

Due to the demolition work, the riverside path is due to be closed for several months, so I wandered over partly to get a last look at the area and also to check some details for something I am working on at the moment. Alas, the path has already been closed off – so I only got part way along before being forced to return.

I often walked along the pathway though so here are some photos from a set taken a couple of years ago

The photos below were taken today:

Towards the soon to be demolished Grain Silos

Looking over towards Canary Wharf

Relics from the days of an industrial river

Getting down under the piers

The path is now closed

The full set of photos taken today can be found here.

I was going to double round to the other side and walk to the far side barrier, but the combination of slippery river mud and an overconfident IanVisits, resulted in what is technically known as “arse over tit” and a lot of mud covering myself and my camera.

Opps!

Had to come back home to clean the camera, and myself. Maybe I’ll do the other side in a week or so.

For the record, when going down onto the riverside, I visually check that the tide wont be a problem for a couple of hours and also check that my mobile phone is working. Death due to downing by consequence of being a total prat on the river foreshore would be, frankly, quite embarrassing.

No long rambling thoughts, just a long ramble through South London to stop me sitting at the computer and doing the work I should be doing.

Herewith – some photos:

Greenwich foot tunnel – photos of which are officially not allowed any more

A sad forlorn Fozzie Bear abandoned probably by a child being dragged across a busy road – see Londonist for more lost bears

Severndroog Castle – a folly built in 1784 to commemorate Commodore Sir William James who, in April 1755, attacked and destroyed the island fortress of Suvarnadurg (then rendered in English: Severndroog) on the western coast of India.

Other photos – here, here and here

The view from Severndroog castle over an ornamental garden – with a sapling planted by some idiot right in the line of sight for photographers.

Rather a nice water fountain from the remains of an old house demolished by the London County Council.

The Two Towers – an old water tower and the more modern communications tower

The view from the cafe in Oxleas Wood – a good spot to stop and have a rest.

Wandering round through Welling and down to Plumstead Common. On the way, this dire warning on a small grass verge against letting cattle roam the land

Plumstead Common offers these views over East London. Not particularly scenic, but the scale of the view is impressive.

Thence home.

Each photo is geotagged on a map if you want to know where they were taken from – just click on the photo then the “map” link on the side menu on the Flickr website.

This is probably more the remit of The Greenwich Phantom, but as part of the Greenwich foot tunnel lies on MY side of the river, and this concerns a particular bugbear of mine, I shall talk about it.

The tunnel, for those who are not familiar with it is a 100 year old tunnel under the river linking Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs, and has lifts/stairs at each end.

I rarely take the lift down on the north side, as that seems a bit lazy, but occasionally I treat myself – and a while ago noticed in passing that a Health and Safety notice in the lift had been amended to state that photography was banned in the tunnel.

Thinking about it, I was sure there was a ban on flash photography, but now it seems to have been recently changed to a complete ban on all photography. Today though, the southern lift on the Greenwich side was actually working for once – although the operator in the lift was on the phone to someone and it seemed it was about to be turned off again.

Inside was a large, newish looking sign warning that photography is banned – but the health & safety sign was still unedited, and my suspicions were proved correct. The original sign only banned flash photography!

For some reason, over the past few months someone has decided that an existing (if dubious) ban on flash photography for health and safety reasons has to be expanded to a complete ban on all photography in the tunnel.

I’ve always been curious about the ban on flash photography as this is just a foot tunnel and hardly likely to cause anything more serious than a bit of annoyance to fellow walkers – and a lot less annoyance than screaming kids – but a total ban on all photography?

I use the tunnel a lot, and people are always taking photos down there without people dying or getting injured. An artist at the local market even sells rather somewhat arty photos of the tunnel.

What dire calamity has befallen the tunnel in the past few months that caused the H&S nazis to immediately clamp down on photography in the tunnel to prevent repeat of this mystery disaster?

The second report on my tour of HMS Illustrious, this time with more words and fewer pictures.

I was joined by four other fellow London Bloggers, and after meeting up and trying to watch the helicopter demonstration that was happening over the riverside, we had to leave that to register inside a tent being used by the Navy inside the college grounds. As I told the officer my name, she looked up and exclaimed (I paraphrase):

“YOU! I’ve been wanting to meet you. How do you keep finding out what our navy ships are doing?”

“umm, umm!”

I was now having a slight heart-attack as I worried that I had published something on this blog or the events guide that shouldn’t have been published and caused all sorts of problems!

I explained that I use public sources such as the PLA website, the Royal Navy’s own website etc – and it actually turned out that she wanted to help with letting me know about notable events in London, so that I can then pass that information along to you who are reading this. Heart attack over, we waited outside, while the rest of the group sniggered at what happened and whether I was about to be picked up by MI5 for disclosing secrets.

After a briefing, we crocodile marched down to the pier where one of the local tourist boats had been commissioned to take visitors over the to aircraft carrier – the ship being too far from the shore for a walkway to reach. As we pulled up alongside, the boat skipper kept barking out instructions to hurry up and mind the gap as we jumped over the floating platform, then up a steep staircase to the entrance and straight into the aircraft hanger.

As you would expect, the hanger where aircraft, and general cargo is stored, is vast – with two large hydraulic lifts at either end dominating the space. What looked like torpedoes (mistaken initially for canoes!) are stored here, and we waited to be split into smaller more manageable groups. The visitors were a mixture of veterans, Scouts and some ordinary looking people, like us.

A walk along the flight deck to a side corridor to see a quick display of fire fighting kit – especially important if the ship were to be hit in action. While there are fire-fighting specialists on board, everyone is trained and quite evidently if a fire occurs, you just get on with dealing with it.

Down some steep and cramped steps to the lower floor and along to the Operations Room where all the radar etc displays are shown and a talk about how many people work here, which varies from about 6 on a quiet day to 60 during operations. I’m not sure how you fit 60 people in there, but the human spaces are cramped throughout, so I guess it works, somehow.

Now a climb up, up, up, about 6 flights to suddenly emerge onto the flight deck itself! Here, it was a general free-for-all, where we could wander round taking photos as we wished, and yes we could walk right up to the top of the “ski-jump” ramp which helps the planes take off. Going up to the top was a slightly nerve-wracking experience for your correspondent who is a bit iffy with heights, and I certainly wobbled a bit when I turned round, looked down at the flight-deck and saw how high up we are.

It certainly takes a select sort of person who could work in such an exposed environment, especially when at sea where the deck is going be moving around all over the place. I asked later about sea sickness, and while the size of the ship helps it be be more stable, people do get sea sick, especially during the first few weeks of being posted to the ship, or during bad weather. I doubt I would cope myself as I have an annoyingly delicate constitution in that regard.

We also had the delight of seeing one of the huge lifts drop down to collect some equipment (and humans) and come back up again. I noted most approvingly at the lack of fussy Health and Safety barriers while this happened. As the flight deck had just been in use for the earlier flight displays, the lift movement was functional rather than being a show-off for our benefit. In fact, even though the ship was just at anchor, there still seemed to be quite a bit of work going on around the place. I wonder if they are ever able to fully shut-down for a day?

After a while wandering round the flight deck for a while, we were taken up to the main command center, where the captain controls the ship and flight movements. Despite the vast space on the flight deck and the hanger below, the rest of the ship is a maze of very narrow corridors and stairwells, with every spare space even within the corridors used for some function or storage. The human side of the ship is surprisingly cramped when you consider the size of the whole vessel, and something worth remembering when thinking about the working life on board.

Some aspects I noted as we walked around were little things, such as some of the door signs were carved out of wood, maybe as a memory of the earliest wooden navy ships. Also, each of the stair wells had a heavy door which could be dropped down to seal off the area, but some had notes that they were to be left open during operations. I also noted the floor, which is made of steel has quite substantial textures carved into the metal to make it easier to keep your balance. Little issues, but interesting to see the thought that goes into these small, but very important aspects of the design.

After getting up to the command area, a very tiny steering column was shown – and that is what drives the ship. Yes, I know you don’t actually need a huge wheel to drive a ship now, but it is still odd to see such a tiny handle being used to control such a vast vessel.

I asked about something odd I saw, but the lady I asked said she couldn’t say what it was for. Whether that was because she didn’t know, or because I am not allowed to know I am not sure, but her smile suggested the latter.

That aside, they were very free with letting us take photos of what we saw, although we were advised to check each time, just in case something sensitive was around.

Back down to the hanger and a moment for more photos and questions and that was the tour over. We had spent a surprisingly swift hour on board, and the tour showed the key bits we would have wanted to see. The guide who took us around didn’t try to baffle us with too much technical details – this was very much a “point, look, gasp, move on” type of visit, which was frankly, exactly what worked for our group.

They also  set up a table in the hanger to sell a few mementos, and I picked up a branded mug to add to my collection of cups (I’ll explain another day). Not sure if the money went to a benevolent fund, of if I just helped to pay for a tiny bit of a missile.

We waited for a short while to leave and were suddenly ordered to step back behind a line. Thinking something exciting was about to happen, as we were standing next to the huge lifts – actually, the next tour group had arrived, and they just wanted to make sure the groups didn’t get mixed up.

That was it – sadly didn’t get a chance to say thanks to our guides as they were already dealing with the next group – and we left as we arrived, via the stairs down to the river.

Back on shore, a visit to the display for the ships which will eventually replace HMS Illustrious, the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers and then a couple of beers at the aptly named Cutty Sark pub.

–

Overall, a fascinating visit and I saw, and learnt a lot without being overwhelmed with technical jargon, and came away with an appreciation that it takes a certain person to be able to work in such an environment. While not for me, I can imagine that life on board can be both hard work, and yet very exciting, with opportunities to visit far-flung countries.

Huge thanks to the crew and officers of HMS Illustrious for inviting us onboard, and to the Royal Navy liaison officer who arranged the details (and gave me the heart attack earlier!).

I was joined by The Croydonian, Caroline’s Miscellany, 853 and Gendal World.

More photos at my usual Flickr Account.