- Battersea Power Station being sold
- The Musical Museum
- Wandle delights
- G T Landmann
- From the Recording Group
- Former Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey
- White Hart Road Incinerator
- Asbestos
- Letters to the editor
- 145news.pdf
The 31-acre Battersea Power station site which includes Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's famous art deco power station is in the process of being bought by the Hwangs, a Hong Kong property owning family. The subsequent future of the power station is at present uncertain. Mr George and Mr Victor Hwang, the brothers negotiating on behalf of their family, are to buy the development's bank debt, almost certainly at a large discount. This debt is probably more than £100 million (see the Financial Times, 25 February 1993, page 9). Bob Carr
You may have noticed that at Brentford there has been scaffolding on the tower of St George's church that houses the remarkable collection of mechanical musical instruments founded by the late Frank Holland. Remedial work has been necessary to secure the stone cladding of the tower which was separating from the brick core. Fortunately the John and Ruth Howard Charitable Trust was able to donate £5,000 to assist with the expense.
The musical collection has been at St George's since 1963. On Sunday 28 March 1993 a 30th Anniversary Celebration was due to be held at the Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford. Apart from numerous musical performances the day was to include the showing of a 1925 film on the Wurlitzer Factory. Bob Carr
For details and booking contact the Musical Museum, 368 Brentford High Street, Middlesex TW8 0BD. Tel: 020 8560 8108. Web: www.musicalmuseum.co.uk
The river Wandle is justly famous as London's industrial river from its numerous water mills. Around 1800 there were as many as 90 sites using waterpower with up to 200 water wheels. In Morden Hall Park you can still see a water wheel at the former snuff mills (TQ 261 686) in a fine setting. These mills worked until 1922. The East Mill is an 18th-century brick-and-weatherboard building, its breastshot iron wheel now minus paddles. The wheel on the corresponding West Mill, built c1830, was removed in 1968.
Downstream from Morden Hall Park at the former Liberty's silk printing works (TQ 265 698) is a cast iron 12ft diameter undershot waterwheel dated c1840 which powered rinsing spools. It is 15 feet wide, would have produced about 15 horse power and last worked in 1952. Silk printing finally finished here in 1981, ending a local tradition of textile printing which had lasted 250 years.
Just upstream from Morden Hall Park, Ravensbury Mill (TQ 265 682) off Morden Road is credited as the last working water mill on the river Wandle; the wheels here drove woodworking machinery until the 1960s. The Rutter family had used this mill for snuff making from 1805 until 1926. Two breast shot waterwheels are inside the building. Nearby is a side road named Rutter Gardens.
Snuff mills were characterised by their choking atmosphere. For an account of a GLIAS visit to a working water-powered snuff mill in Sheffield see GLIAS Newsletter December 1986. Bob Carr
It seems a pity if the name GT Landmann (GLIAS Newsletter February 1993) is known to GLIAS members solely as that of a 'Royal Engineer'. Lt Col George Thomas Landmann (1779-1854) was a Sapper Officer, and a distinguished one, as the article on him in The Dictionary of National Biography shows. This notice is wholly about his active military career, mostly engaged on field-works and fortifications in Canada and in the Peninsular War; but after he left the Army in 1824 he turned to something much more interesting to us. He was joint projector (with George Walter) of the London & Greenwich Railway in 1831 and, as the railway's engineer until 1838, almost certainly the designer of its original viaduct.
This is well known and recorded in detail in RHG Thomas's The First Railway in London (1972). What is less well known is that he was associated with the design of the docks at Fleetwood for the Preston & Wyre Railway (1835-46), later part of the Lancashire & Yorkshire (J Marshall, The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, I (1969) pp81, 83). When and why the short street in north Lewisham was named after him is not clear; but somebody must have known at the time that he had made a conspicuous mark on the scenery of the locality. Michael Robbins
A small party of GLIAS members visited the Wandle Industrial Museum in its new site in Mitcham where they were welcomed by the Curator, Andy Vail, helped by Peter Harris and Bill Rudd.
The museum was originally founded in Wimbledon, helped by the Manpower Services Commission, in 1983. Following a disastrous fire (a tower block now occupies that site) they were assisted by the London Borough of Merton and now have a new building immediately adjacent to the old Mitcham Town Hall, opened in June 1991. The address is: The Vestry Hall Annexe, London Road, Mitcham. They are open every Wednesday afternoon and on the first Sunday afternoon of the month.
The museum is very small. If many more GLIAS members had come, we wouldn't have been able to get in! There are a number of, necessarily, small exhibits focussing on the Surrey Iron Railway (which passed nearby), and some of the surrounding bulidings including the William Morris and Liberty works. There is also a feature on Mitcham's cricket green and on the snuff industry, important locally. The area is extremely important in the industrial history of London and it is impressive to see what the museum has done to show this in so little space. They also produce a members' newsletter and a number of publications. Members should check the prices of these they are all very cheap:
Peter Harris, who introduced the museum to us, has recently written a book - The Historic River Wandle, the Marton Section - which describes mill sites, with considerable detail, in the Merton area, including lists of owners (since the 13th century in some cases).
We would like to thank Andy, Peter and Bill for showing us round, and very much recommend that GLIAS members go and see what there is in this small museum.
The GLIAS Recording Group was lucky enough to be the quests of Tom Ridge and the Ragged School Museum for their meeting on 18th January. As members know, the Ragged School Museum is in Stepney, on the junction of Copperfield and Rhodeswell Roads; on the Regent's Canal. We were shown round the museum by Tom, who told us some of the background and we saw their current exhibition on the East End Clothing Trades, jointly set up with exhibits loaned from the Museum of Jewish Life in Spitalfields. We also saw the classroom where classes of children are given lessons as in a Victorian classroom.
We had lunch in the Ragged School Museum's restaurant on the Canal. This consisted of traditional East End pie and mash which Tom had got from a local shop. We are very very grateful to him for this. The meeting was a big success - and we are looking for other similar venues to meet at on Monday or Tuesday afternoons.
The Recording Group would very much like to hear from anyone with knowledge of the following: copper, arsenic, zinc, brass, tin, lead, alum, quarrying, cement and coal, to help with their recording activities. Please contact Mary Mills, tel: 081-858 9482. Mary Mills
Former Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey
Further to John Parker's report (GLIAS Newsletter February 1993).
Waltham Abbey was one of several mill sites in the middle Lea Valley that were making gunpowder in the late 17th century. Alone of these, the Waltham Abbey Works continued through the 18th century, and in 1787 they were purchased by the Government, who already owned the works at Faversham. John Smeaton had designed an up-to-date set of edge-runner incorporating mills in 1771 for the previous owners, and under the direction of (Sir) William Congreve, senior, Waltham Abbey became the centre of excellence for gunpowder production in the early 19th century. Steam powered incorporating mills were built from 1857.
In the 1870s and 1880s there was a major expansion of the works northwards, suitably isolated process buildings surrounded by blast mounds being scattered throughout the existing plantations of alder, willow and dogwood from which the raw ingredient charcoal continued to be made. It was this jungle' that John described in February and which is now a nature reserve. High and low level leats criss-crossed this area to provide transport and occasional water power.
In the later 19th century, guncotton and then cordite began to supplant gunpowder, and in the 20th century high explosives, including tetryl, TNT and then RDX were produced also. Much of this production took place on a further site to the south at Quinton Hill, acquired in 1885 and sold off in the 1980s. In 1941, the last pair of working gunpowder mills was put out of action by a bomb, and in 1945 the works became an explosives research and development establishment. This was relocated to Fort Halstead in Kent in 1991 and the site closed.
The site is largely in the Metropolitan Green Belt and it contains a site of special scientific interest on account of a large colony of herons that roosts in the trees. The Ministry of Defence has therefore appointed a firm of planning consultants, Civix, to develop strategies for using the site, with housing and commercial development in certain areas. and leisure and conservation uses (including a museum), for the rest, probably to be administered by a trust. Industrial archaeology has a high profile in the planners' minds and English Heritage is reviewing all the structures for listing and scheduling - some buildings were listed a few years ago but not those of technical interest. The site is just outside Greater London, so GLIAS is not directly involved, but I have participated in public consultations as a member of the Gunpowder Mills Study Group.
Meanwhile, surveys have been made of the state of contamination of the ground by chemicals, and a few highly contaminated areas are being dug up, and some others buried. Fortunately this problem is less extensive than feared. A contamination survey of some buildings of archaeological importance is under way more usually, buildings in explosives factories are disposed of by burning! The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (as the old RCHM is now called) is busy recording every building and earthwork on this 190 acre site - currently their biggest job. It is sad that the appearance of a lost continent, abandoned to the jungle, was already receding before the chainsaws and red plastic safety fences when the small party from the GLIAS Recording Group toured the site last November - how nice if the Royal Commission's photographers could have gone in sooner! Malcolm Tucker
During the late summer of 1992 the question arose at the GLIAS Recording Group: - 'How much of the Incinerator/Generating station in Plumstead remained?' I was asked to visit the site and met Mr. 'Tony' Dean in November 1992. Mr. Dean said that he would try to get the plans of the site as constructed and any history of the depot, these he hoped would be in the Borough Archives. I turned to my copy of 'The I.A. of South East London' to obtain background to the site and set forth to see for myself.
The buildings are red brick with white stone courses at first floor level and just below the eaves and quoined corners. The office block has a hipped roof with dormer windows on three sides and two chimney stacks. The wings have not been investigated. Inside are wood floors, plaster walls, wood panelled doors with heavy wooden architraves leading to large, well-lit rooms. The staircase to the first floor, mainly a canteen, has heavy wooden banisters and huge newel posts; a passage at the rear of the offices is tiled to a height of about 4ft and the floor is tessellated. The upper floor, not investigated, is said to be an accommodation flat.
The Tiled Hall has an arched double door entrance at the eastern end of the building with a pitched roof, large ridge lights and windows in the gable ends. The interior has tiled walls in white and brown. There is a room in the N/E corner of the hall and an overhead travelling crane (10 ton capacity), the full width of the hall. A raised platform carries a power switchboard at the west end. There is little or no evidence of the hall's previous use.
The North Hall, is of the same construction but slightly lower. Entry is by a steel roller shutter in the N/W corner. The roof and WI trusses look original and there is a wooden cat walk the whole length of the louvred vent. The south wall between the North and Middle Halls is new. There is a heavy sliding 'fire-door' in the eastern wall, south corner. Very little evidence of this hall's previous use.
The Middle Hall is similar to the North Hall with little evidence of its former use. The South Hall, with less white stone, is on a smaller scale and may well have been a later addition. There is a ramp to first floor level at the hall's western end. The ground floor is now a metal workshop and its ceiling is constructed of undulating riveted iron plates. There is evidence of circular holes about 18" diameter towards and parallel to the south wall. This iron ceiling rests on large box steel/WI girders. The concrete first floor gives no evidence of its former use. To the east of the South Hall there is evidence of building, its shape and purpose unclear. A tall narrow building runs N/S behind the Office Block (see plan) and, south of the 'Tiled Hall', another hall with a small single storey block attached to the south wall.
My thanks for their help and assistance with this preliminary report to Mr A Dean, all staff at Plumstead Depot and the Borough Engineer's Department. Peter Skilton
Asbestos is likely to be encountered at many old industrial and other sites, especially where lagging exists or where products requiring heat insulation or fire resistance were manufactured. For example, when power stations are being demolished, asbestos removal is an elaborate specialist operation. The attitude towards the use of asbestos constitutes perhaps the most dramatic U-turn in the use of any industrial material. It used to be regarded as one of the most useful non-metallic materials, now it is one of the most feared.
The former view is typified in the Penguin by W. R. Jones, 'Minerals in Industry' of 1955, where he writes: 'The remarkable combination of physical properties which make asbestos of such great value include its incombustibility, infusibility, fibrous structure, strength and flexibility of the fibres, inertness to chemical action, and freedom from decay', no hint whatsoever of the dangers of asbestos! The omission of the dangers is no fault of Jones, but simply that the hazard was not sufficiently appreciated at the time he was writing. Some legislation had been passed in 1931 to seek to cut down dust levels but it does not appear to have made very much impact. Asbestos is the name applied to fibrous varieties of a number of magnesium silicate minerals, three forms of which have been of industrial significance - crocidolite or 'blue' asbestos, amosite or 'brown' asbestos, and chrysolite or 'white' asbestos. The major producers of asbestos have been Canada. the USSR, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. In the 1970s, some five million tons a year were being mined. About 90 per cent of the world's production was of white asbestos.
Asbestos has been a ubiquitous material in industry, either used on its own or in combination with other materials. Important uses included - asbestos-cement for buried pipes, cladding and roofing sheets, floor and roofing tiles; in woven forms for theatre safety curtains, fire blankets, fireproof gloves and clothing; brake and clutch linings; valve packings; sound insulation in railway rolling stock; thermal insulation lagging of boilers and pipes; electrical insulation of cables, etc.; filters for liquids, fire resistant paints, etc. etc.
In sharp contrast to the above scene, the Asbestos (Prohibition) Regulations, 1985 now prohibit the supply of crocidolite or amosite or any product containing these materials for use at work. White asbestos products can still be produced but they have to carry a distinctive warning label. The removal of asbestos or demolition of asbestos-containing structures is also covered by regulations. Apart from the demolition aspect, discovery of its presence has led to the premature retirement of railway coaches, and quite often results in hasty evacuation of offices, schools and factory premisas when asbestos is found to be present.
The main hazard. of asbestos is from the inhalation of fibres. This can cause: lung scarring making breathing difficult; asbestosis, a form of pneumoconiosis (Gk. for 'dust in the lungs'); and mesothelioma, or cancer of the lining of stomach or lung. It is lung cancer which kills most asbestos workers and, although the latency period for the disease can be as much as 40 years or longer, once the disease develops, early death is the likely outcome. There is no safe level of asbestos dust, brown and blue cause more mesothelioma but white is not now regarded as safe. However, if it is incorporated in a product such as asbestos-cement or paint, it may be regarded as not hazardous unless disturbed by drilling, sawing, or abrasion. Don Clow
I found GLIAS Newsletter February 1993 very interesting, as always, and particularly John Parker's account of the visit to the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey. Readers might. be interested to know that there is a full account of the railways here in J M Jenkins' 'The Railways of the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey', Industrial Railway Record No 117 (June 1929), pp.385-415. It includes several maps which show the general lay-out of the site at different dates, as well as the railways. Men and horses provided the motive power at first, but in 1916-17 they were joined by Ruston locomotives which were started on petrol and then run on paraffin, and there were also battery locomotives. A shorter account, but making some additional points, is Brian Clarke's booklet The Eighteen Inch Gauge Gunpowder Factory Railway at Waltham Abbey' (the author, no date).
'I read Saskia Hallam and Keith Dickason's letter (GLIAS Newsletter February 1993) on their holiday to California. Two summers ago I spent three months in California with the Historic American Engineering Record, researching the history of the citrus industry in Riverside. From living and working there, I found the place to have an interesting and quite distinguished industrial history.
Riverside is a city of just over 200,000 people located 58 miles east of Los Angeles. Founded in 1870, its growth and prosperity was (and to some extent still is) derived from the citrus industry, the associated engineering industry which developed to supply it, and most importantly, in a semi-arid region, a supply of water. Much of the landscape of Riverside on the outskirts of the city (it must be mentioned that Riverside is not a city in the conventional British, or even European, sense) is still dominated by commercial orange groves irrigated by the Gage canal, built between 1885 and 1889, although real estate development is encroaching increasingly onto the groves (one of the reasons for the HAER team's presence). The downtown area is where the packing houses are located, strung out along the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific railroads along which freight trains hauled by eight locomotives can often be seen. Most processing today is carried out in modern buildings using hi-tech machinery. There is, however, one packing house, the National Orange Company house, which dates from 1898 and which is still running commercially, using machinery dating from the 1920s and 1930s.
The landscape of Riverside also reflects a large English influence; part of the area was owned by an English company, the Riverside Trust Company. Many of the old grove owners' houses thus display a distinctive English architecture and there are many fine examples of these wooden houses remaining. The other major influence on the architecture of Riverside, and indeed much of California, was the Spanish Missions. (The Spanish first settled in California in 1769.) There are many old packing houses built in this style, as is the Union Pacific Railroad Dep't. The most extravagant building in the city, however, is the Mission Inn, not just a building but a collection of architecture. The Mission Inn was begun in 1902 by Arthur B. Benton and was gradually added to in styles which include Mission Revival, Gothic, Greek, Spanish Renaissance, and Chinese. A truly amazing building, frequented in its heyday by presidents and movie stars, which, unfortunately, while I was there, was still not yet open to the public after renovation. (I did, however, manage to get a special tour of the building, including a visit to the Mission Inn Museum.) There are also some fine examples of craftsman-style bungalows in the city. Other aspects of industrial archaeology of note in the area include the Union Pacific Bridge over the Santa Ana River. This bridge formed part of the old San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad Company's line from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the port of San Pedro in Los Angeles. This 10-arch concrete viaduct conforms to the mission style of architecture, and at the date of construction was the largest concrete bridge in the world. A short drive down Highway 215 past March Airforce Base is located the Orange Empire Railway Museum, in Perris. The museum is the largest railway museum in western US and has an impressive collection of locomotives, streetcars and rolling stock, including a 1901 Brush Double Deck streetcar from Dublin. The museum is wall worth a visit and the workshops are fascinating.
Well, that's my plug for Riverside over with, but seriously the city has a lot to see, and it was one of the few places for the scientific and technological development of the citrus industry in the US. And it continues to be so, with the Citrus Research Centre Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of California at Riverside. Chris Foord