Greenwich Peninsula - History

History

The peninsula was drained by Dutch engineers in the 16th century, allowing it to be used as pasture land. In the 17th century, Blackwall Point (the northern tip of the peninsula, opposite Blackwall) gained notoriety as a location where pirates' corpses were hung in cages as a deterrent to other would-be pirates.

The peninsula was steadily industrialised from the early 19th century onwards. In 1857 a plan was presented to Parliament for a huge dock occupying much of the peninsula, connected to Greenwich Reach to the west and Bugsby's Reach to the east, but this came to nothing. Early industries included Henry Blakeley's Ordnance Works making heavy guns, with other sites making chemicals, submarine cables, iron boats, iron and steel. Henry Bessemer built a steel works in the early 1860s to supply the London shipbuilding industry, but this closed as a result of a fall in demand due to the financial crisis of 1866. Later came oil mills, shipbuilding (for example the 1870 clippers Blackadder and Hallowe'en built by Maudslay), boiler making, manufacture of Portland cement and linoleum (Bessemer's works became the Victoria linoleum works) and the South Metropolitan Gas company's huge East Greenwich Gas Works. Early in the 20th century came bronze manufacturers Delta Metals and works making asbestos and 'Molassine Meal' animal feed.

For over 100 years the peninsula was dominated by the gasworks which primarily produced town gas, also known as coal gas. The gasworks grew to 240 acres (0.97 km2), the largest in Europe, also producing coke, tar and chemicals as important secondary products. The site had its own extensive railway system connected to the main railway line near Charlton, and a large jetty used to unload coal and load coke. There were two huge gas holders, of 8.6 and 12.2 million ft3 (240,000m3 and 345,000m3). The larger holder, originally the largest in the world, was reduced to 8.9 million ft3 (250,000m3) when it was damaged in the Silvertown explosion in 1917, but was still the largest in England until it was damaged again by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in 1978. Originally manufacturing gas from coal, the plant began to manufacture gas from oil in the 1960s. Its peak production of 400 million ft3 per day (11.3 million m3) in the mid 1960s is believed to have been the largest of any single site in the world. The discovery of natural gas reserves in the North Sea soon rendered the complex obsolete.

On the eastern shore was Blackwall Point Power Station; the original station from the 1890s was replaced in the 1950s by a new station which ceased operation about 1981. A large area including the site of the Victoria linoleum works later became the Victoria Deep Water Terminal in 1966, handling container traffic.

At the southern end of the peninsula Enderby's Wharf was occupied by a succession of famous submarine cable companies from 1857 onwards, including Glass Elliot, W T Henley, Telcon, Submarine Cables Ltd, STC, Nortel and Alcatel.

The peninsula remained relatively remote from central London until the opening of the Blackwall Tunnel in 1897, and had no passenger railway or London Underground service until the opening of North Greenwich tube station on the Jubilee Line in 1999.

Closure of the gasworks, power station and other industries in the late 20th century left much of the Greenwich Peninsula a barren wasteland, much of it heavily contaminated.

Surviving industrial uses today on the western side of the peninsula, between the river and the A102 Blackwall Tunnel southern approach road, include Alcatel, the recently closed (September 2009) Tunnel Refiners glucose plant (until about 2008 part of Tate & Lyle), and two large marine aggregate terminals on the Delta Metals and Victoria Deep Water Terminal sites. One of the two gas holders also remains.