Woolwich Dockyard

After walking through the old industrial site next to the River Thames I rejoined the  pathway on this new walkway. 

Across the river I could see the large Tate and Lyle refinery. It is the largest sugar refinery in Europe and one of the biggest in the world.  In 1878, Henry Tate started producing sugar cubes here. In 1882 Abram Lyle began refining sugar in a factory a short distance away in Plaistow, to make Lyle's golden syrup. In 1921 the  companies merged to form Tate and Lyle. 

 

The River Thames is London's link to the open seas. It was important to control the seas and be able to defend the capital. The Tudor kings were the first to build Royal dockyards. The first one was built in 1496 in Portsmouth by Henry VII.  A few years later in 1512, another Royal dockyard was founded here by his son, Henry VIII to build his flagship Henri Grace a Dieu (Great Harry) the largest ship of its day. Woolwich was probably chosen as it would have been close to Henry's palace at Greenwich. A number of large ships were built here but there is little evidence of that today.

Walking away from the river you enter what used to be the dockyard.  The dockyard was a self contained community of highly skilled workers.  Within the site were houses for senior officers, a school and churches. A clock house was built here in 1670 where the drawing of full scale ship designs took place. This clockhouse was built in 1783. It is currently a community centre.

This was the main entrance, built in the 1780s with the rope and anchor design on either side.

I walked back to the riverside and here facing out to the river are two large cannons. There was a landing stage in front of the cannons but I couldn't get close enough to see if any of it remained.

 A little further along the Thames Path are the remains of two dock areas from its time as a dockyard. The dockyard finally closed in 1869. The site was subsequently used for military storage. In the 1960s Greenwich Council aquired the land for housing.

The site was subsequently used for military storage, as an annexe to the Royal Arsenal. In the 1920s western parts were sold off, principally to the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society for its Commonwealth Buildings depot. The older eastern dockyard was not disposed of until the 1960s, when Greenwich Council acquired it for housing; here the Woolwich Dockyard Estate was built in the 1970s. Speculative housing developments to east and west followed from 1989. Little remains from the dockyard’s early centuries, the oldest survival being the Clock House, offices of the 1780s. There are more substantial remnants from the steam factory, and the former dry docks and two shipbuilding slips are linked by a long river wall, all naval construction of the 1810s to 1850s. A separate part of the parish west of Warspite Road is also covered in this chapter. From the 1860s this was dominated by the Siemens Brothers factory, first producing telegraph cables, then telephones up to the 1960s. Several of Siemens