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

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 22 ........... wishing for the coal hole

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family. *

294, 1973

Now we didn’t have a coal hole or coal cellar in 294, nor from memory did we ever have an open fire.

When we moved into the house in the early 1960s, Eltham was about to become a smokeless zone, and while we could have burned specially treated fuel mother put her foot down, arguing she had had enough of coal in the old house, which started our long connection with gas fires and paraffin burning stoves.

Of course, the whole Well Hall estate had been built without cellars, and so coal would have been brought round the back and carried through the garden of 296.

The coal bunker was still there when we moved in, and dad added a big tank for the paraffin which I think was delivered by tanker.

A coal hole, 2018

At the time I shared the wisdom of mother’s decision, but now I rather think it was a mistake, not least because we have open fires which are set and lit from autumn through till the end of spring and are cheaper to run than heating the whole house.

True we do use central heating, but it sits on the lowest setting and just keeps the remainder of the place from becoming “ice station zebra”.

And in line with the city’s regulations on burning coal, we have always used smokeless fuel since we reopened the fire places back in the early 1980s.

Sadly, while we have a coal cellar, I have never won the battle about reinstating it, which I confess only plays to my childhood memories of the coal deliveries.

Enoch Royle and son, circa 1930s

They began with that series of distinctive sounds which started with the crashing noise as a full hundredweight of coal shot from the bag into the cellar, followed by the slower and longer sound of the coal settling, and were accompanied by the smell, which took a few minutes to rise from the cellar but then lingered in the house for hours.

And like then, our coal comes from the coal man, once a fortnight on a large flat backed lorry, which long replaced the horse and cart.

Fireplace, 2016

In that respect, the continuity of coal deliveries was broken for just a few years, between the last of the old coal deliveries and our resumption which I suspect is not the case on the Well Hall Estate.

In the case of our house, the fire places were blocked up in the early 60s and a full thirty years later were still closed.

The previous owner had not only closed them off but built elaborate hardboard facades, omitting to insert ventilation panels which as everyone knows are essential.

Back then I thought these facades were the height of modernity, but now I like our open fires, although in our case the search for replacement fireplaces took us out of south Manchester and into the east and north of the city where these reminders of our Victorian and Edwardian past were still being ripped out, only to be snapped up by residents in Chorlton-m-Hardy, Withington and Didsbury.

Fireplace, 2016

All of which leaves me to wonder what happened to the fireplaces of 294, but that I guess is another story for another time.

And conclude with that obvious observation of the destructive impact of the old coal burning fire places on the environment.

Location; Well Hall and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Well Hall Road, circa 1970, a coal hole, 2018, and reinstated fireplaces, 2014, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, from the Simpson collection, Enoch Royle and father on Albany Road, Chorlton, cum-Hardy circa 1930s, from the Lloyd Collection

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall