So far I have written a vast amount about the Angerstein Railway – but nothing about it’s actual purpose or working. It was set up to service a riverside wharf – and there were many ideas about its future as part of the riverside and rail infrastructure.
John Julius Angerstein is of course famous – in addition to his mysterious origins – in Greenwich as a resident, and beyond for his links with national and international finance, possible slavery and the foundation of the national gallery. He died in 1823, to be succeeded by his son, John.
As the railway industry developed in the 1830s and 1840s John Angerstein recognised the need for freight links to the river and when he learnt of the aspirations of the South Eastern Railway to provide such links he began talks with the railway officials. He recognised that financially they would rather lease an existing wharf than construct or buy one. So, on this understanding he planned a private freight railway which would run over his own land from the South Eastern Railway tunnel on their 1849 line between Blackheath and Charlton. The only Parliamentary approval needed was for the crossing of the turnpike Woolwich Road and this was obtained in 1851. The line opened in 1852 and was immediately leased to the South Eastern Railway.
John Angerstein would have, of course been aware that on the north bank of the river oppose jis new wharf, that work was proceeding with the construction of the Royal Victoria Dock and therefore cross river links would be both useful and profitable
At this time railways were being planned all round the country. The archives of The Mercers’ Company, who had land on the Greenwich Peninsula, record approaches from several railway companies who wanted to build over their land. In 1852 both they and also Morden College, were approached by the South Eastern Railway, with a plan to connect the Angerstein Line to the Greenwich Railway from London Bridge and also to Blackwall and the North London Railway via a ferry. This ferry scheme was later dropped.
In 1853 the Mercers’ were approached by the, otherwise unknown and unexplained, Charlton and Blackwall Railway. It was hinted that docks were actually what they were planning and, then, in 1857 an application was made to Parliament for a large dock to be built on the Greenwich Peninsula.
It might be assumed that the South Eastern Railway was behind this dock scheme in that it was to be renamed the ‘Greenwich and South Eastern Docks.’ Plans of the proposed dock show an enormous scheme which would have taken up most of the land on the Peninsula. The length of the dock was to run north-south down the length of the land. The whole structure was to be in a ‘T’ shape so that the main north-south dock was met by another at right angles with entrances at Enderby’s Wharf to the west, and at the end of what became Riverway in the east (now roughly where The Jetty is sited) – where it would also have met the Angerstein Railway.
John Angerstein died in 1858 at around the time the scheme was put forward and the family interest in it devolved to his youngest son, William, who was standing for election to Parliament in Greenwich in early 1859.
In this period Greenwich saw a large number of Parliamentary elections and by elections with some lively campaigns – at a time when two members were elected to Parliament by Greenwich voters. They included local industrialists as well as David Salomans the first Jewish Member of Parliament. Another contestant was William Angerstein who had inherited much of his family’s land on the Peninsula. Local people and local industrialists threw themselves into these elections and one of the most assiduous was Coles Child – who had developed Greenwich Wharf in East Greenwich. In this context it should be noted that Coles Child was a director of the South Eastern Railway during the 1850s.
The scheme was noted with approval by the Kentish Mercury in 1858 just the election. Their leader writer spoke of the miserable time people were having in Greenwich ‘the silence is only broken at intervals by the sepulchral sound of the wheels of an empty omnibus…. even if you see some active pedestrian approaching the public baths, from having nothing else do to, his gloomy countenance renders it doubtful whether he is about to enter for the purposes of ablution or to drown himself’.
In 1858 the Dock was being presented as part of a package. The North and South Metropolitan Junction Railway would change everything – making travel throughout the capital easy and bringing peace and prosperity to Greenwich. A letter to the Mercury from ‘A Reader’ said At last there seems a chance of poor Greenwich being resuscitated and rising from the ashes. I and others have hailed the advent of the Greenwich and South Eastern Docks’.
The question was, of course, where did the candidates for Parliament stand on this issue? Votes were not secret then and in the run up to any election the Mercury was happy to print on its front page lists of names of voters with their voting intentions, week by week, as the election approached. On December 2nd ‘Straight’ wrote to them and enquired whether the candidates would ‘put their hands in their pockets … and assist projects’. The Mercury’s leader writer was happy to point out that some 40 acres of land which would be needed to build the dock were owned by William Angerstein.
In the following weeks Mercury Coles Child asked if Angerstein would be prepared to ‘make the Company a present of the land required’? A very acrimonious correspondence ensued with Angerstein refusing to make any clear statement about his intentions.
After 1859 the issue of the dock scheme went very quiet. It was raised again in the 1860s but nothing came of it until it was put forward yet again in the 1880s. Ostensibly it was not put forward by the South Eastern Railway although, as they paid for the Parliamentary deposit, it must have had something to do with them. It no longer included a dock along the length of the Peninsula, only the cross head of the ‘T’ junction.
The Angerstein line was managed by the South Eastern Railway from 1852 and they bought it outright in 1898. From 1875 maps show a network of six lines reaching the Riverside along with some buildings. It expanded year by year to a whole network of lines serving local industries.
It comes somewhat as a surprise that when it was first built it served sailing vessels. In 1875 a court case involved a sailor on a schooner which left Charlton for Goole with a cargo of fuller’s earth. This came from quarries in the Redhill area and was a major product transported from Angerstein for many years.
In 1912 the wharf was licensed to store petroleum and it has been used by Anglo-American Oil and others. In the 1970s it handled large stone boulders from Caldon Low for use in building the Thames Barrier – I remember seeing these vast lumps of stone, one per railway truck.
The wharf is still in use by the aggregates industry and 2.5m tonnes of marine aggregates for road and construction use are imported here annually. Specially-designed ships dredge licensed areas of sea beds around Britain for sand and gravel then, once at the dock, a series of scoops and conveyor belts extract the produce onshore, where it is graded. In 1993 it was used by Day Aggregates – they were originally Day & Sons Ltd a coal delivery company set up during the Second World War and later, based in Brentford but with depots all over the UK. It was also used by Aggregates Industries, based at Bardon Hill in Leicestershire and at Bardon quarry. Their products are brought down to Angerstein wharf by rail. Nearby are Murphy Aggregates who since the early 1950s have sourced sea-dredged aggregates using the company-owned dredger and wharf facility at Charlton. On Murphy’s wharf is Tarmac, said to be the largest ‘marine aggregate terminals’ in Europe. They are a major building materials company, and provide storage for aggregates for road coating materials.
There is a current operation by the Mexican company, Cemex, who work round the clock with a two shift system providing over a million tons of aggregates a year. They have five acres where 5,000 tonnes can be stockpiled while daily production is the same. They have operated in the UK since the 1940s on many different locations.
The development of Angerstein Wharf has been described as “a catalyst for the area’s development …. laying an important role in the transportation of many different types of goods including sand, ballast, coal and oil, over 165 years continuous operation”. It is now the only railhead left on the river and many of its users are hoping to expand. It is a busy industrial site now within an area full of new flats and I am well aware that many new residents, unfamiliar with river working, have a shock to see it near their new and expensive homes. The nature of the products it handles make dust inevitable and boats, of course, arrive with the tide and cannot be entirely silent as they unload in the early hours of the morning. I think we should be very grateful to the majority of new residents who understand this.
Perhaps, to finish, we could look at a journey taken by one train to Angerstein:
Several freight trains bring aggregate from Bardon Hill quarry Charlton each week. This train was pulled by a 3,300 bhp diesel-electric locomotive, probably most made in London Ontario. The load was 2,000 tonnes and the maximum speed 60 mph. It pulled twenty 100 ton bogie wagons loaded with granite chippings. It left Bardon Hill at 23.20 on a Sunday evening and turned north through Leicester to Syston, then through Melton Mowbray, Oakham, Corby, and at Kettering by 2.10 am. Then south down the Midland Mainline to Cricklewood, turning west through Acton Central, Chiswick, and Barnes Bridge. Then on through Wandsworth Town … Peckham Rye …Hither Green …Sidcup …Slade Green … Charlton to Angerstein Wharf – due at 6.37am on Monday. At Charlton the granite is mixed with tar to make Tarmac, used for road surfacing.
