Greenwich Riverside Path

GREENWICH RIVERSIDE PATH

An exploration and walk between Greenwich and the Dome - guided along the historic riverside by a local historian

How to find your way...

... the walk is really easy - all you do is follow the riverside path all the way.

Start at Cutty Sark Station, walk to the riverside - there is then a short diversion up-river to the left - and then back, all the way down-river to the Dome.

If you are starting the walk at the Dome - just start at the end and work forwards. This area is changing rapidly with the demands of tourism and development. The text was accurate as of May 2000 - and we have tried to add in any predictable changes. However, as time goes by, change will come more rapidly.

Text by Mary Mills
Most graphics by Peter Kent
Copyright May 2000, Mary Mills
Printed version: ISBN 0 9535245 2 5

FROM CUTTY SARK, DOCKLANDS LIGHT RAILWAY STATION

Exit Cutty Sark Station into Greenwich Church Street. Turn left towards the river - you will see the Cutty Sark Ship ahead of you. Walk past keeping it on your right and walk to the riverside.

Fig 1

This area was the heart of old Greenwich - bombed in the war and then cleared in the early 1950s when the Cutty Sark was brought here. It was once an area of narrow lanes and riverside wharves used by fishermen, boat and barge builders, watermen and all the riverside trades. From the riverside here you can see a whole panorama of what once the heart of a busy industrial area.

Look on the other side of the river - this is the Isle of Dogs and inland, behind the buildings and trees on the riverbank, lie a complex of docks - the West India and Millwall system - built from around 1800 to provide safe unloading and warehousing for the thousands of ships coming here from all over the world. Many of those ships were also built on this riverside - until a hundred years ago these banks were home to many famous shipbuilding works. Just out of sight round the bend of the river is where Brunel's Great Eastern - then the biggest ship ever built - was launched sideways into the river. The docks were closed in the 1970s and now the massive main tower of Canary Wharf, along with a number of more recent towers, rise from what was once 'the City of Ships'.

Turn left up river and walk a short distance along the path between the flats and the river. The path ends at a jumble of old industrial buildings. This is Wood Wharf.

Wood Wharf was an active boat repair yard belonging to Pope and Bond until 1996 when a contract with Westminster Council was lost - but some unofficial boat repair work is still undertaken here. Planning permission was granted in 2001 for the wholesale redevelopment of this site.

Fig.

Moored alongside is Massey Shaw - from 1935-1971 the flagship of the London Fire Brigade fleet.

Fig. (embed)

In 1940, following distinguished service at Dunkirk, she was cheered by firemen on her way back upriver. She returned once again to Dunkirk in Summer 2000.

Fig.

In 1888 a remarkable ferry was built at Wood Wharf which involved a 270 ton counterbalanced landing stage on rails which moved up and down the foreshore with the tide. Considerable remains of this ferry mechanism are still on site and at low tide the rails and the doors to the counterbalance shafts can be seen from the foreshore. There are also some remains near the rowing club building across the river.

Wood Wharf was also home to the Anglo Swedish Electric Welding Co. Ltd. Here the earliest electric arc welding process was developed in 1912 by Scott Younger and a Mr. Kjellberg.

From Wood Wharf return to the view point at Cutty Sark Gardens.

Stop for a moment and look back upriver.

Immediately beyond Wood Wharf are Norway, Dreadnought and Granophast Wharves, the site of a planned new hotel complex and liner terminal associated with the off-shore deep water berth known as Greenwich Tier. A footbridge wil span the....

.. just out of view - entrance to the Ravensbourne River - here known as Deptford Creek.

... beyond are new flats built by Fairview Homes on the site of Deptford Power Stations. The first of these, which Sebastian Ferranti built in 1889, was the first power station in the world to transmit power beyond a small local area. It was followed by two others, all are now demolished.

.... beyond the new housing is the bulky square brick cold store belonging to Borthwick, the New Zealand meat importers, built c.1950.

..... beyond Borthwick's an arcaded frontage marks Paynes Wharf. From 1860-1913 this was the boiler shop of the world famous marine engine builders John Penn & Son.

...... beyond are modern sheds which mark the site of Deptford Royal Dockyard, until recently used by Convoys for newsprint transhipment to News International's Wapping presses. The sheds hide covered ship building slips of the 1840s. Under Henry VIII Deptford became the main and most important Royal Dockyard and very many famous warships were built here. The dockyard closed in 1869 and became the Corporation of London's Foreign Cattle Market.

....... finally on the bend of the river are Georgian warehouses of the Royal Victoria Victualling Yard.

CUTTY SARK GARDENS

The walk continues downriver. At Cutty Sark Gardens there are toilets, a café and a small Tourist Information Office. The Cutty Sark ship is open to visitors - but it is described in detail elsewhere and is not included in this walk. Follow the riverbank all the way.

At the point at which the riverside path enters Cutty Sark Gardens there is an inlet from the river. This is Billingsgate Dock. This name is found only in the famous London fish market and here, in Greenwich. This dock was associated with fishing - it was the main area for the boats of Greenwich's substantial deep sea fishing fleet. Greenwich fishermen went to the North Sea from at least Tudor times and they were among the first to invest in the new port of Grimsby - many of them business moved there in the nineteenth century.

The brick and glass Dome is the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel built by the London County Council in 1902 to allow Greenwich workers access to jobs in the docks on the Isle of Dogs - and better housing for dockworkers in South London.

Just before the pier, Garden Stairs descend into the river. This is a set of traditional riverside stairs used by licensed watermen as plying places. All these stairs are now under review by the Port of London Authority on issues of ownership, status - and their future.

Greenwich Pier dates from the 1830s but was partly rebuilt in the 1950s to allow the Cutty Sark to be put into her dock. So the upstream pier wall dates from the 1950s - while the main frontage dates from 1843 and the downstream corner from 1836. An entertainments centre is planned to be built on the pier. Throughout its history the pier has catered for pleasure boat services and trippers - as well as many, sadly shortlived, attempts to found river-based passenger transport services.

At the exit to Cutty Sark Gardens is the Pepys Building of the Royal Naval College. At one time this housed squash courts, and later, a miniature nuclear reactor, called JASON, that was used to train Officers attending courses at the Royal Naval College. On the wall are medallion portraits of naval heros - Anson, Drake, Cook, Howard, Blake, Benbow, Sandwich, Rodney, Duncan, Collingwood, Howe, Nelson, St. Vincent. This building now houses the Greenwich Tourist Information Centre and a restaurant. In the garden is an obelisk as a memorial to the New Zealand Wars, along with the recently re-located statue of Sir Walter Raleigh, previously in The Mall.

Continue along the river on the Five Foot Walk.

To the right are the complex of buildings which make up the core of the World Heritage Site. It replaced the Tudor Royal Palace in the late seventeenth century and housed the Royal Naval Hospital - an almshouse for elderly seamen. In 1873 it was taken over by the Royal Naval College which continued here until the 1990s. The buildings have now been almost completely refurbished for use by the University of Greenwich and the Trinity College of Music. Details of the complex can be found in most guide books to the area. Access by the public is now extremely easy and it is possible to walk round much of the area at will. At the start of the Five Foot Walk is the Bellot Memorial. Joseph Bellot was a member of the French Navy who died in an attempt to rescue the Franklin expedition.

Continue along the Five Foot Walk

The foreshore here was once known as Greenwich Beach - with sand so that children could play.

Half way along are some river stairs. These were the main river entrance to the palace of Placentia - they were later known as Hospital Stairs, Watergate Stairs or Queen's Stairs. This landing place has been used by every monarch since George I landed here to accept the crown of England.

At the stairs is the River Gate of 1849 and from it runs the the Grand Vista through the Park to the Royal Observatory.

This is the site of the Tudor Palace of Placentia. Industrial historians should note that it was Henry VIII's efforts to promote England as a European Power - and keep the manufacturing areas nearby - that turned Greenwich into an industrial town.

At the end of the Five Foot walk is a space once occupied by a treadmill crane - at one time the necessary power for industrial equipment was often provided by men. The waterman's stairs here are 'Crane Stairs'.

At Crane Stairs turn right into Park Row.

Trafalgar Tavern was built by Joseph Kay in 1837. Kay was Surveyor to the Royal Hospital Estates and undertook an extensive redevelopment scheme for them throughout central Greenwich. The Trafalgar is the only survivor of a number of large inns designed for use by visitors and where the Parliamentary whitebait suppers were held. However the Trafalgar has not always been used as a pub - for many years it was a hostel.

Alongside the Trafalgar turn left into Crane Street.

In Crane Street the remains of the offices of various wharfage and lighterage companies can be seen, now in use by a variety of businesses.

The Yacht pub - although rebuilt has a long history and is a traditional local pub. It has also been called the Barley Mow and the Watermen's Arms.

Until the late nineteenth century another large 'whitebait' pub, the Crown and Sceptre, stood at the end of this street.

The Curlew Rowing Club is said to be the oldest rowing club on the tideway. Locked gates go to their slipway.

At the end Crane Street is the junction with Eastney Street - this was once East Street and the end of traditional Greenwich 'proper'. Until recently very few visitors would have continued on down the path.

From Crane Street enter Highbridge and then go into a wider area here there are seats and river views. Note on the wall, plates recording high tides.

Here is the 'Strawberry Hill Gothick' building of Trinity Hospital. This is an almshouse for 21 old 'gentlemen of Greenwich' founded by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton in 1613 and now administered by the Mercers' Company. This building dates from 1812.

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View of power station from the Brochure for the opening ceremony - in possession of London Borough of Greenwich.

Walk under the jetty of Greenwich Power Station built by the LCC in 1906 to power London's trams. It is still operational and used as a back-up station to Chelsea's Lot's Road station for the London Underground. Within it, architecturally significant spaces have remained unused since the coal fired plant ceased to be used. Views from the top of the massive jetty are magnificent.

Under the jetty, but unmarked, the Greenwich Meridian crosses the riverside path.

Once under the jetty the path is intersected by a junction with Hoskins Street. Here are Golden Anchor Stairs, named for a pub which stood here in the eighteenth century. In Hoskins Street is the British Sailor - another local pub with a maritime name.

Continue along the riverside path between corrugated iron to emerge at Ballast Quay.

The derelict area through which the path has passed is Anchor Iron Wharf. This was the site of Ambrose Crowley's warehouses - his mansion was where the power station now stands. Crowley, originally from the Black Country, had an ironworks west of Newcastle and made a fortune from anchors for the navy in the eighteenth century. This was the site of his London depot. More recently the wharf was in the possession of C.A. Robinson, Iron and Metal Merchants, and a commemorative plaque to them remains on the building.

This open area with seating is Ballast Quay, a name which dates back at least 400 years. Chalk and gravel from pits in Greenwich and beyond was brought here for coal ships from North East England, which needed ballast for the return journey to the coalfields.

The houses here are called Union Place, and the pub was originallly called Union Tavern (now the Cutty Sark). They date from between 1804 and 1821, and are owned, as is much else along here, by the Blackheath based charity, Morden College whose 'Invicta' plaque can be seen on the houses. Their ownership began in the 1680s.

At the end of the terrace is the 'Harbour Masters House' dating from 1855. It is associated with the garden area on the riverside which was once the Port of London wharf. They were part of a mid-nineteenth century scheme for monitoring coal supply ships from North East England. In this part of the river, and downstream, were 'collier stands' where the coal ships had to wait for a berth in the collier docks across the river or at special berths up river. The delivery of coal to this area is of supreme importance - coal, was the fuel which made industry function. The shipping which delivered it was a massive industry in itself.

At the end of Ballast Quay the path meets a junction with Pelton Road.

Down Pelton Road can be seen Victorian cottages built for local workers by a developer, Coles Child, Morden College.

Fig.

Picture of cottages, with kind permission of the Trustees of the Martin Collection

A few yards down the street is the Pelton Arms pub. Street names in this area were originally taken from collieries in the Durham coalfield. The names of Pelton Road and the Pelton Arms relate to Pelton Main and Pelton West Collieries near Chester le Street, County Durham.

Pelton Road, follows the line of a watercourse, Willow Dyke, and the road was used for ballast brought from chalk and gravel pits to the south of here. Nearer the river there are granite setts in the road and a double kerb on the pavement.

Look up to see the concrete bases of two cranes at Lovells Wharf, which until 2001, graced this otherwise derelict site. The wharf was built for coal but from 1920s -1980s it handled the transhipment of metal by Shaw Lovell and Co.. The cranes were 'Scotch Derricks' - the larger one by Butters of Glasgow - but had been much altered from their original state. The cranes were thought to be the last of their kind on the river and their destruction, without warning, by the Morden College Estate was universally condemned.

At the next corner are further large concrete blocks used as bases for other cranes which have also been removed.

The path turns sharp left around an inlet known locally as 'Dead Dog Bay' - perhaps it was where animals which had escaped from the Foreign Cattle Market at Deptford were washed up, drowned.

A pathway leads off the riverside path to local estates. It is called Cadet Place and it is the last chance to leave the riverside and return to Greenwich.

The next wharf is owned by Tarmac. In the 1840s is was let to John Mowlem, the Victorian road building contractor. In the wall of Cadet Place is a jumble of random miscellaneous stone and it is a matter of speculation that some of this stone must have come from Mowlem's Yard.

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The Great Globe

On a headland at Swanage in Dorset stands The Great Globe - an enormous map of the world made of Portland Stone. This globe was made in Mowlem's yard here and then taken to Swanage, where Mowlem lived. Perhaps some of the stone in the wall of Cadet Place are 'offcuts' of the Globe itself?

The Tarmac wharf is still very busy with the transhipment of aggregate and during the daytime it is very likely that a boat will be at the wharf being unloaded. The cranes pass above a covering which protects walkers on the path below. This is now one of the very few places on the River where it is possible to see ordinary wharfage activity - even twenty years ago most of the river frontage would have been busy like this.

The next wharf is a jumble of boats. This is Piper's Wharf, still a working boatyard although no longer run by a Mr. Piper.

Fig.

Grand Turk at Piper's Wharf, April 2000

You will see all sorts of boats here waiting for repair - sometimes even large replica sailing ships used by film and TV companies.

James Piper rented this wharf in the late 1890s and soon began to build sailing barges here. One of the earlies was his prize winning racing barge 'the famous Giralda' - and many others including Surge, James Piper, Leonard Piper, Haughty Belle. Greenwich barges regularly won prizes.

The barge races are still held today but no Greenwich-built barge is still in sail to take part.

Sailing barges may look romantic but they were the heavy haulage carriers of the London river - no different to any heavy lorry. They were built at a time when most vessels were steam driven... because they were cheap to run with a crew of only two, could go inshore across shallows and up muddy creeks because of their flat bottoms but at the same time many of them could regularly cross the channel and go into European inland waters.

In later years all sorts of craft were built and repaired here by the Piper family. Inside the inland section of the wharf the name 'J.R.Piper' can be seen on the wall - but the site is busy and does not welcome visitors.

Note the jumble of disused equipment on the foreshore past the wharf.

Past Pipers there are a number of disused wharves - they include a site used by Joshua Taylor Beale and where the 'exhauster' was developed. This important piece of equipment was subsequently manufactured by Donkin in Chesterfield. Beale also made steam road locomotives on this site in the 1840s.

Eventually arrive at Enderby's Wharf. This is an important and complex area with lots to see.

The first jetty - on which stands a large iron structure - is Enderby's and a sign above the entrance marks it.

There is then a gap, and another, shorter jetty. Inland is a large factory, now operated by Alcatel. There are some large double gates into the site, and, behind the fence, some riverside buildings including an old house.

Between the two jetties there is a causeway into the river - from underneath it a pipe emerges. This is Bendish Sluice - a Tudor drain which drew water from the surrounding marshland. On the inland side of the path is some disused sluice gear. In 1680 this was the site of the Government Powder Depot where all gun powder for the forces was tested and distributed. The two jetties mark the sites of two massive seventeenth century jetties where hundreds of ships laden with gunpowder called.

The gunpowder depot was closed in 1770 and a factory to make rope built here. Rope was made in long thin buildings called 'rope walks'. The line of this can still be seen by peering through the double gates going into the Alcatel factory. Look right down the vista through the factory.

In the 1830s the factory was bought by the Enderby family. The Enderbys had whaling ships and fished in the Southern Oceans. 'Enderby Land' in the Antarctic is named after them.

The white painted old house behind fence is 'Enderby House' - built as a riverside home in the 1840s and now used as offices by Alcatel. The Enderbys built a large factory for rope and canvas manufacture here which was burnt down in the1840s. Before the Enderby family left Greenwich they were asked to tender for the first telegraph cable which was laid as an experiment between Euston and Camden Town stations.

The site was eventually taken over by cable makers Glass Elliott. Many important international telegraph cables have been made on site here. See the office block inside the fence - on the door are carved gutta percha leaves (the plant which provided insulation material for early cables). Over the lintels lengths of cable are carved.

The first Atlantic Cable was made here in the l860s and loaded onto Brunel's Great Eastern via a ferry. All around the two jetties are the remains of structures which allowed the cable to pass safely into cable-laying ships. On the large jetty is an iron structure for loading cable and some wooden gantries remain in the river.

Fig.

Great Eastern as she came out of Sheerness - her decks and rigging are full of cheering people. As she left the Thames, loaded with cable, crowds watched from the banks - and bands played 'Goodbye Sweetheart'.

Ever since the days of Glass Eliott and the Atlantic Cable cable has been made here. For a long time the factory was owned by the Telegraph Construction Co. - Telcon. This became Standard Telephone Communications (STC), now Alacatel, who make repeaters for today's submarine cables here.

This is where modern telecommunications - the Internet - had its origins.

The next section of the walk is dominated by Amylum's Glucose Refinery. Amylum make specialist sugars in a wheat-derived process and much of their plant can be seen behind the wall of the path.

After Enderby Wharf the first jetty was built as a rubbish-tipping plant by the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich. Here dustcarts would tip Greenwich's waste into barges for transhipment. It was closed in the late 1950s and is now owned by Amylum and is sometimes used.

Next are huge disused silos belonging to Amylum. Until recently this wharf was used for the delivery by ship of maize from East Anglia - stored in these silos.

Up until the 1930s the Amylum site was used by Thames Soap and Candle Works who made - for instance - British Carbolic Soap. Inside the Amylum factory some buildings from the soap works remain. It was owned by the local Soames family - one of whose daughters was to become Olave Baden-Powell, the first Chief Guide.

Before the path bends to the left we pass the laboratory buildings of Amylum. This was the site of the Sea Witch Pub - probably named after an 'opium clipper' ship.

The locked gate on the corner was once a road back to Blackwall Lane called 'Morden Wharf Road'. 'Morden' of course reflecting the landowners of these sites, Morden College in Blackheath.

Follow the path round as it turns left, then right. This area is known as Morden Wharf - named for Morden College.

As the path turns it is easy to look back at the banks and the river walls. These walls are easily the most important structures in the area since they keep out the tidal force of the river. It is not known when they were first built - probably in mediaeval times - but they could be older. There is nothing very old to see because, obviously, the wall is repaired and replaced continuously - any break would be a disaster!

It is here that Kuper, and then Glass Elliott, made the first telegraph cables - the start of the Thames cable making industry. The wharf was also the site of Hollick's Cement Works and it is sometimes known as Hollick's Wharf. There were a number of cement and artificial stone works along this stretch of the river.

At the end of Morden Wharf is Primrose Pier. This pier was opened to the public by Amylum some years ago. In 1999 it was the subject of a resurfacing and partial restructuring by the Groundwork Trust team.

Primrose Pier was used by Molassine - an animal foods manufacturer whose products were based on molasses stored in predecessors of the giant tanks seen inland. Molassine were the company most responsible for the smell which haunted this area for many years - the Greenwich 'pong'!

From Primrose Pier it is possible to look at a wide panorama on the other side of the river.

All along opposite are the sites of a number of major ship builders, Dudgeon, Samuda, Yarrow and Stewart - in operation when this was the major ship building area in Britain - probably in the world.

Out of sight around the tip of the Peninsula at Blackwall were the sites of Ditchburn and Mare and Thames Ironworks - (where The Warrior was built) - on either side of the entrance to the River Lee -'Bow Creek'. In the same area were the East India Docks. On the riverside at Blackwall housing covers now the site from where the Pilgrim Fathers left for Virginia. At the furthest point within view was Wigram and Green's Blackwall Yard - now the site of the Reuter Building.

Coming nearer to Primrose Pier along the north bank of the river from Blackwall among the new housing can be seen the northern ventilation shafts to the two bores of the Blackwall Tunnel, - the older one mushroom shaped, the newer one with an eliptical shaft rising from it.... the entrance bridges to the West India Docks (the 'blue bridge')... Thames Water's storm water pumping station, the Temple of the Winds, designed by John Outram.

After Primrose Pier the path continues a short distance before going inland. It skirts round a large inlet where derelict concrete buildings stand on the shore.

This inlet is Horseshoe Breach which marks a point at which the river had broken through the sea wall at some time before 1626 - when the detailed records start.

The breach was developed in the early 1860s by the National Company for Boat Building by Machinery, founded by an American, Nathan Thompson, who aimed to make 5,000 identical boats a year - and was quickly bankrupted. It was taken over as a shipbuilding site by Maudslay Son and Field in the late 1860s. Their first ship was the Lady Derby and they subsequently built a number of ships including two iron hulled sailing vessels, Halloween and Blackadder - sister ships to Cutty Sark.

The derelict white buildings which remain on site are disused barge repair slips built by Humphrey and Grey.

Follow the path round.

Ahead, dominating the view, is the East Greenwich No.2. Gas Holder - the last remains of the East Greenwich Gas Works. The Works was opened in the early 1880s as a super-efficient green field works for South London by the South Metropolitan Gas Company under its charismatic Chairman, George Livesey. The gasholder, which dates from 1886 was, and may now be again, the largest in the world and built to revolutionary engineering designs. It suffered damaged from an IRA bomb in the '70s, but was repaired.

At the end of the path before reaching the Tunnel Approach is the red stone office block of Molassine and, once on the A102, to the left is the Art Nouveau gatehouse of the Blackwall Tunnel from the 1890s.

Fig.

Victoria Deep Water Terminal

The path emerges onto the A102 near the Blackwall Tunnel entrance. It is possible to reach the Jubilee Line Station, and the Dome, by crossing the A102 by the footbridge and walking towards the Dome - the entrance will soon be seen. However, it is not a very nice walk!

When this walk was first written - in March 2000 - the path did not continue any further alongside the river. However, the path now continues from Bay Wharf downstream.

Past the barge slips is the large area of Victoria Wharf. Until the mid-90s this was 'Victoria Deep Water Terminal' where two large orange derricks were situated. It had previously been the site of a small steel works owned by Henry Bessemer and his sons in the 1860s, and subsequently some of the site was used by an artificial stone works owned partly by Bessemer and partly by one of the Ransome engineering family from Ipswich.

From the 1890s it was one of the sites used by Walton's Greenwich Inlaid Linoleum Works - a revolutionary process for mosaic linoleum subsequently transferred to Nairn's Works in Kirkaldy, Fifeshire.

Some other parts of this site were taken up by Appleby Engineers - who made a wide variety of engineering items, including marine engines, locomotives, etc. but probably concentrated on cranes and transporters. A steam engine made by them is located in a museum at Forncett St. Mary.

North of this a large site was occupied from the 1830s by Bethel's tar and chemical works. This became a specialist factory for the production of tarred blocks for road paving. By the mid-twentieth century much of this area was covered by Delta Metal's bronze and brass foundry.

Further north on the riverside a considerable barge building and repair trade was carried out. This included Horace Shrubsall's barge building works, which came here from Ipswich and Limehouse and where many famous sailing barges, including Veronica, were built. Also in this area Hughan built Orinoco - the last Greenwich-built sailing barge still active.

The Millennium Dome site starts at Ordnance Draw Dock - built by the Gas Company in the 1880s as compensation for closure of other traditional plying places. This is a public right of way. North of here, inside the Dome area, were a number of interesting sites.

In the late 1860s Blakeley's gun foundry was built here, financed by Dent's Chinese opium business, to build heavy ordnance for foreign customers. Blakeley had designed a new sort of ordnance and historians are discussing the relationship of his patents to those of William Armstrong. Many of Blakeley guns were used by the Confederates in the American Civil War. Blakeley was bankrupted by Dent's financial failure and died in mysterious circumstances in Peru.

Subsequently part of the site was taken over by Stockwell and Lewis who built a dry dock here - now under part of the Dome. One of Stockwell and Lewis's ships, the Bulli, still exists as a wreck in Tasmania. Another ship builder in this area was John Stewart.

In the 1880s most of this area was purchased by the South Metropolitan Gas Company for their 'state of the art' out-of-town gas works - and they considered themselves the biggest and the best! This part of the works was used as a chemical factory - the Ordnance Wharf Tar Works and here, the great guns which Blakeley had not finished, were piled up around the entrance, and eventually sold in the 1970s,

The Dome itself largely occupies the area of the gas works - built in the 1880s by the charismatic George Livesey. He is an important figure in the development of the gas industry in this country and East Greenwich was considered his model works. He was also an important advocate of labour co-partnership.

Alongside the Dome is the equally spectacular North Greenwich Jubilee Line station and bus terminus. With three platforms, this is said to be the largest underground station in Europe.

Further information on the riverside industrial area can be found in Mary Mills' 'Greenwich Marsh. The Three Hundred Years Before the Dome' £9.95 from 24 Humber Road, London, SE3 7LT.

Increasing numbers of local historians are studying the history of' this area - a lot of information is available from Greenwich's Local History Library - and there are also a number of school and drama projects.