All you ever wanted to know about how we got our power across Greenwich and Woolwich

 I am a great admirer of Mary Mills and her work which over the years has revealed the industrial archaeology of where I grew up.

Entitled “Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich”* it is her most recent book and explores all aspects of how power was supplied across the borough and beyond.

Here can be found descriptions of the many and varied sources of power from wind, water and tidal mills along with coal, gas and electrical power.

And includes “'Woolwich's 'Secret City' - the Royal Arsenal - along with the oldest power station, as we would understand it, in the world, the largest installation for town gas storage ever and one of the first to generate power from domestic waste. 

This is a non-technical work aimed at the general reader and all those interested in how our world today developed”.

Starting in the Middle Ages the book moves through to the 21st century with the Optic Cloak at the Greenwich Energy Centre on the Peninsula and the innovative South East London Community Energy which “is a non-for-profit social enterprise. Formed by residents of Greenwich and Lewisham who want to play an active role in shaping the energy future of South East London …. taking action to combat climate change through generating renewable energy and tackle fuel poverty”.

It is one of those books which you can walk, with the locations of each site clearly outlined and speculation on those that have long gone as to what they might have looked like.  To this she has added plenty of old and contemporary images of the sites, supported by maps, and is fully referenced.

Amongst the images are the iconic Woolwich Tramshed fondly remembered by generations as the go to place for entertainment and the stunning cover to the story of Deptford Power Station.

And as an Eltham lad I couldn’t miss out our own Gas Works on a corner of Eltham Green and the failed attempt to build an earlier works behind Eltham High Street.

Added to which there is the intriguing suggestion of mills at Mottingham Lane, and at Horn Park Farm and “a mill or a series of mills at Lee in the Kidbrooke Parish area”.

All of which is fascinating and come with heaps of pictures of gasholders which I have to confess are another of those objects that fascinate me but are now very much an endangered “species”.

“Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich” is priced at £15 and is available from Amazon and is the sixth publication by the author.**

Location Greenwich & Woolwich

Pictures; cover & illustration of Deptford Power Station from the book,and memories of a different use for the Tramshed, the badge circa 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich by Dr MARY, 2026,  2026ISBN 979-81992-4195-3

**Greenwich Peninsula Greenwich Marsh A History of a Heartland, The Greenwich Riverside Upper Watergate to Angerstein, The Industries of Deptford Creek, The Early East London Gas Industry and George Livesey, A Biography