The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Rotherhithe - Happy 300th Birthday!

St Mary's Rotherhithe in
September 2015

It is always difficult to know how to provide value on a post like this, because the church has been so thoroughly covered elsewhere (for example Stephen Humphrey's book The Story of Rotherhithe and the St Mary Rotherhithe website).  But it is impossible to maintain a blog that centres so firmly on Rotherhithe's past without talking about the church, because St Mary's Rotherhithe, maintaining a thriving congregation even today, has been central to the Rotherhithe village community for 300 years.  2015 is its tercentenary, a very special anniversary for a very special church.  So here's a short history of the church, and to celebrate its role in the community I have added special references to the maritime and river world that the church served, setting it in the context of its changing local social and economic background and highlighting one or two individuals of note who were connected with St Mary's.

I have added a list of the main sources of information for this post at the end, with my thanks.  Unless otherwise stated, all the hyperlinks in this piece link to earlier posts on this blog, which contain more relevant information.  Unless otherwise stated, photographs by Andie Byrnes.

St Mary's Rotherhithe is a Grade II* Listed Building located in the heart of Rotherhithe village, the oldest settlement area of Rotherhithe peninsula, and arguably the most attractive.  Referred to locally as St Mary's Rotherhithe, the full name of the church is St Mary the Virgin.  The church sits on St Marychurch Street today, but this name was only given to the road in 1892, before which it was Church Street, and before that Church Lane.  There has been a church here since the 12th Century.   Like all churches, its external architecture has not remained static, and its interior has undergone substantial changes.  It has been added to and altered many times, a product of the changes in the community that surrounds it and different needs at different periods of its history. It is located next to one of Rotherhithe's oldest buildings, an 18th Century house that became a school in 1742 but was probably built in the early 1700s.  These two lovely 18th Century buildings are surrounded by 19th Century buildings of all sizes and job descriptions.  The church's former overflow churchyard is now a small park, but the churchyard immediately surrounding St Mary's is partly preserved. 

St Mary's in 1623, by Samuel Palmer.  Taken from "The Story of
Rotherhithe" by Stephen Humphrey (1997, p.9)

Rumour has it that the first church was built on the remains of a much earlier structure, and included Roman building material.  A church was certainly here during the reign of Edward I the late 13th Century, when it was under the jurisdiction of Bermondsey Abbey, and parish records for the church date back to the 1500s.  Between 1537 and 1562 its rector, John Fayrwall, apparently managed to maintain his role at the church during the Reformation.  There is only one image that exists of the church that pre-dated the 1714-15 rebuild, and this was clearly a church that had itself been modified many times during its lifetime.  Drawn by Samuel Parsons and dating to 1623, it shows a nave with two tiers of windows, a northern porch, and a small eastern chancel. Buttress set-offs are shown all around the building. The 15th century tower at the west had a crenelated parapet, and a short needle spire.   A splendid monument to Captain Anthony Wood, who died in 1625, was moved into the 1715 church and tells something of the early 17th Century shipping character of Rotherhithe.  It shows a ship in full sail, in high relief, with a commemorative text beneath it - see the photograph below. Although the church underwent repair in 1687 it was in very poor condition.

The memorial to Captain Anthony Wood

During the 17th Century Rotherhithe's marshy and stream-incised interior was not suitable for habitation and could be used for little more than pasture.  All the activity in Rotherhithe at that time took place along the edges of the Thames.  The riverside was beginning develop east from central London, and Rotherhithe already had a ship building industry at this time.  The earliest known ship to be built in Rotherhithe was the 1654 HMS Taunton, commissioned by the Royal Navy for use in the First Dutch War.  The maritime wars of the 17th and early 18th centuries were the source of a considerable amount of income for private ship builders and repairers, and the river Thames was, of course, a vital artery for trade throughout the 17th century.  The residents of Rotherhithe at this time would all have been involved in trades involving the river and the sea, both commercial and military.  It was also a period of religious diversity.  From the same era as the above-mentioned monument to Captain Anthony Wood, a group of post-Reformation religious dissenters known as the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in the Mayflower from the Thames at Rotherhithe in 1621, and the captain and part-owner of their ship, Captain Christopher Jones, was a local man.   He died on the 5th March in 1622, in his early 50s, and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's in Rotherhithe.  During the 1705 flood and the 1714-15 reconstruction of the church many of the old churchyard monuments and memorials were lost, and the exact location of the burial of Christopher Jones is no longer known.  There is modern monument to him in the churchyard of St Mary's, depicting St Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, holding a small child.  It was unveiled in 1995, to mark the 375th anniversary of the voyage.  Two other Rotherhithe residents, John Moore and John Clarke, were included in the crew.  John Clarke was the First Mate of the Mayflower.  He was baptized at St Mary in 1575, so he was almost certainly born in Rotherhithe, and he died in 1622.  Clarke Island in Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts, is named after him.

Another contemporary of the old church was Peter Hills, whose legacy founded the charity school for the children of impoverished seamen in the immediate vicinity of St Mary's.  Peter Hills died on 26th February 1614, a century before the new St Mary's was built in 1714-15.  Fortunately, some of the memorials were taken from the old church and installed in the new one, and the Reverend Beck, writing in 1907, tells how the three portions of a monumental brass dedicated to Peter Hills and embedded into the floor of the old church were taken into the new church and, because they were so badly eroded, were mounted on wood and hung on the wall.  The brass includes a portrait of Peter Hills and both wives and the inscription reads:

Here lies buried the body of Peter Hill, Mariner, one of the eldest Brothers and Assistants of the Company of the Trinity, and his two wives; who while hee lived in this place, gave liberally to the poore, and spent bountifully in his house;  and after many great troubles, being of the age of 80 yeeres and upward departed this life without issue, upon the 26 February, 1614.  

This was made at the charge of Robert Bell.

Though Hills be dead,
Hills' Will and Act survives
His Free-Schoole, and
his Pension for the Poore;
Thought on by him,
Performed by his Heire,
For eight poore Sea-mens
Children, and no more

Photographs of the Peter Hills brass and the subscription board mentioned above can be see on the St Mary's Rotherhithe website at http://www.stmaryrotherhithe.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=4.

The Blome Map of 1673 showing the spread of
industry and habitation along the Rotherhithe riverside

By the late 17th Century the medieval church had fallen into serious disrepair, partly due to repeated flood damage throughout the decades that had not only destroyed furnishings but had seriously undermined the structural foundations. The river had been recorded breaking its banks in Rotherhithe throughout St Mary's long history, and in 1705 it did so again, flooding both the church and the graveyard.  The churchyard had housed a bone house, but this and the bones it contained were destroyed by the floods, and the site was unconsecrated so was not used for burials.

A church was vital to the community, its natural core, so plans were made to replace the existing church with a new one.  There was great hope in the local community that they would be able to benefit from the Fifty Churches Act, a government-inspired initiative to create more places of worship in London, funded by a tax on coal.  The argument outlined in the petition put forward by Rotherhithe residents was persuasive.  They attempted to convince the Commission that the community's multiple roles in bringing the coal that was being levied for the building programmes should qualify them for the a new church "being chiefly seamen and Watermen who venture their lives in fetching those coals from Newcastle which pay for the Rebuilding of the Churches in London and the Parts adjacent."  However, the bid for this funding was unsuccessful and the community had to pull together to raise the funds for the new church themselves.  Funding came from both voluntary contributions and the money that was charged for burials.  By 1714 they had raised £4000 (which the National Archives Currency Converter estimates at £306,360.00 in today's money), which was sufficient to purchase  a 1000 people capacity church, although financial difficulties were ongoing for many years afterwards and they had to defer plans to build a new tower.  The architect John James was appointed and it was he who established the essential ingredients of the architecture that we see today.  

St Mary's Rotherhithe in the with its 1747 tower, with ships in the
background and a rather untidy churchyard in the foreground.
From Beck 1907.

John James is generally considered to have been a competent but unremarkable architect. Although he built several residential and commercial buildings, and submitted a design for Westminster Bridge, his main income was derived from work on churches. He had worked for Sir Christopher Wren during the construction of St Paul's Cathedral, collaborated with Nicholas Hawksmoor on the construction of two London churches, one of which was in Southwark and, somewhat ironically, served as a surveyor for the Commissioners for the Building of Fifty New Churches.   Many of his churches featured tall arched windows, similar to those at St Mary's Rotherhithe.  John James is best known for the church of St. George's Hanover Square, London, a very different architectural conception from that of St Mary's. 

One of the more attractive of
the gravestones in the churchyard

In many ways the 1714-15 church of St Mary's Rotherhithe is a typical 18th Century building, with its simple rectangular plan, its clean lines and its distinctive arched and segmental-headed windows arranged over two tiers.  It is reminiscent of the style of Sir Christopher Wren, whose influence on post Great Fire London can be seen in many buildings in which he himself did not have a direct hand. John James built the church mainly in yellow brick, which was attractive and cost effective (and was used to build much of Rotherhithe's buildings) with decorative red brick used as dressing around windows and doors, only using the much more expensive stone elements for quoins (corner stones), window trim and other special features. The structure consisted of a nave flanked by internal aisles, a vestry and a sanctuary, but no chancel.  James retained the 15th Century tower as shown in the Samuel Parsons illustration above, the remains of which can be seen in the vaults today.  The church was provided with a burial ground, which surrounded it.  Some of the gravestones and tombs are still dotted around, but others have been removed.

The skills of local ship builders were employed in the construction of the interior fittings for the church, and the four internal Ionic columns were made of oak ships' masts, which were then plastered and painted white. Originally the interior contained galleries, box pews and an elaborate three-tiered pulpit.  The ceiling was provided with a central barrel vault. Although the carvings have been ascribed to Grinling Gibbons in the past, it is more likely that Joseph Wade may have been responsible for many of the more elaborate wooden carvings in the church, as well as the original reredos.  A monument to Joseph Wade is still hanging in the church, reading "King's Carver in his Majesty's yards at Deptford and Woolwich," which was erected on the south wall after his death in 1743.  See the British Listed Buildings website for the full technical description of the church.

The interior of St Mary's, showing two of the
Ionic pillars that were formed by masts
covered with a thin layer of plaster, and
mounted on pedestals.

18th Century Rotherhithe was increasingly busy and its increasingly industrial fate was partly determined by the building of the Howland Great Wet Dock in east Rotherhithe in the early 1700s.  It was probably the largest dock in Europe at the time (about half the size of  Greenland Dock, which is built on top of the site), and attracted ship repair yards as well as new ship building docks.  Between maritime commerce, the Royal Navy and the Great Dock, 18th Century Rotherhithe became an important base for people employed in maritime roles, from the lowliest rope-makers to the most prestigious ship builders. In the 1720s Mayflower Street was an elegant road of wonderful sea captain's homes.  Tragically, these are long gone.  At the other end of the social scale were less salubrious properties.  In 1722 Daniel Defoe encountered Redriff in his tour through Great Britain:  "We see several villages, formerly standing, as it were, in the country, and at a great distance, now joined to the streets by continued buildings, and more making haste to meet in the manner; for example, Deptford, this town that was formerly reckoned, at least two miles off from Redriff, and that over the marshes too, a place unlikely ever to be inhabited; and yet now, by the increase of buildings in that down itself, and the many streets erected at Redriff, and by the docks and building-yards on the riverside, which stand between both, the town of Deptford, and the streets of Redriff, or Rotherhithe (as they write it) are effectually joined." As Defoe describes, the interior of Rotherhithe was still quite marshy, and poorly drained, but a series of market gardens grew up, and the land became a mosaic of small plots turned over to all manner of horticulture.  Industry, river commerce and housing were all still concentrated around the edges of the land, along the Thames foreshore where every form of industry and commercial activity associated with the river took place, the most prestigious of which was ship building.  The most illustrious of the ship building enterprises were engaged in work for the Royal Navy and the Honourable East India Company. The best known of the Rotherhithe shipyards was Nelson Dock, now part of the Hilton Hotel complex. The adjacent Nelson House, which stands today and is quite lovely, was the ship builders house, and was built in the 1730s.  By the end of the 1700s Rotherhithe was beginning to develop along far more elaborate lines, with many more homes, commercial enterprises and docks.

In 1730 an administrative change led to a strong link between St Mary's Rotherhithe and Clare College, Cambridge.  Clare College purchased the advowson of the church, which meant that they now had the right to appoint new rectors to the church.  Advowsons usually belonged to Manors, enabling the local Lord of the Manor to influence the rector and the church's role in the parish, but they could be bought and sold, and the benefit to them for Clare was that it allowed them to place their own Anglican clergy beneficially, securing a position for the individual and allowing Clare to influence policy.  The first to be appointed was Thomas Curling in 1734.

The Barrow Memorial
1775

The 16th Century church tower did not survive the 18th century and the decision was made to replace the current tower and steeple in the 1730s, but this was not completed until 1747.  The job of building the new three-storey new tower was given to the improbably-named architect Lancelot Dowbiggin.  It was probably built to the original designs provided by John James, which could not be completed at that time due to funding problems.  The tower was completely consistent with the rest of the building, in yellow and red brick with stone facing and arched windows. Its parapet at the top of the tower features a modillion cornice. The tower was furnished with clocks on three faces, a steeple (composed of a louvred belfry with Corinthian columns, a lantern and small spire).  The new tower is shown above as it appeared in the late 1700s, and of course survives today.

The organ was created by John Byfield Senior in 1764-5, and although it has been restored some of the original pipes and its original case survives, decorated with musical instruments and trumpet-playing angels. The first organist was Michael Topping who was paid £30.00 per year for his services.  Years ago I stumbled across a vinyl L.P. of music recorded on the St Mary's organ and it has a beautiful resonance.  A decade later in 1775 another memorial was added.  Captain Thomas Barrow dedicated the memorial to his wife Elizabeth who died at the age of 62.  His own name was added to the memorial in 1789 when he himself died at the age of 72.  The monument is an impressive one, with a coat of arms over the dedication and various funerary symbols surrounding it.  The urn is a common funerary device on tombstones and mausoleums.  There's a short but interesting article on the Hand Eye Foot Brain blog about the contested origins of that motif.

St Mary's Rotherhithe and Rotherhithe village
in 1799 (the Horwood Map, copyright
www.motco.com)

It was only at the very end of the 1700s that ambitious plans for the development of new docks in Rotherhithe were made. In 1796 the surveyor Charles Cracklow proposed a new dock system, and William Vaughan, Director of Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation (founded in 1720) and spokesman for the West India Merchants, identified Rotherhithe, Wapping and the Isle of Dogs as suitable riverside sites for potential expansion of dockland areas. The new docks were proposed in order to meet the challenge of London's ambitions to become a global centre for trade. The following dockland developments were staggering, with architects and engineers hired to plan and build new docks in the late 1700s, many of which opened in the first years of the 1800s.  Inland Rotherhithe in 1801 was rural, a series of marshes, streams and fields.  However, the Thames banks were lined with shipyards where ships, barges and lighters were built and repaired.  Rotherhithe's most prominent ship builders were producing vast wooden vessels for the Royal Navy and the East India Company.  The only incursion inland was Greenland Dock which had been established on the east side of Rotherhithe in 1699.  However in 1801 plans were rolled out to build the Grand Surrey Canal, and in 1807 this opened and reached to the Old Kent Road before being extended later to Camberwell and Peckham.  The map of 1811 shows it as a conventional canal passing from Surrey Basin across a nearly empty Rotherhithe, but a 1843 map shows the extent to which the canal had been widened at this time, being renamed the Inner Dock, whilst the basin was the Outer Dock in order to compete with the other docks that were being built within the interior of Rotherhithe.  The canal was never a commercial success, being used mainly to carry the produce of the market gardens rather than more lucrative cargoes that its builders had foreseen, so expanding its margins to incorporate docks was a good way of generating additional income.  The canal's Rotherhithe section became an integral part of the network of docks that were constructed throughout the interior of Rotherhithe.  The docks changed the face of Rotherhithe forever, expanding London's ability to handle maritime commerce, attracting many more workers to the area and leading to the construction of a lot more housing.  By the late 19th Century Rotherhithe continued to be an important centre of ship building, for the construction of lighters, sailing barges, naval ships, fabulous tea clippers and even steam ships.  Prestigious ship builders and ship owners lived here, as well as wealthy ships captains and officers of the Honourable East India Company, but the ever increasing influx of dock workers meant that considerable new building was required, and many new blocks of terraced housing grew up along the river to house dockers and their families.

The Prince Lee Boo memorial in St Mary's

Many of the church's monuments reflect some of the more adventurous and overtly commercial aspects of the Victorian age, particularly memorials to various ship owners and captains and local dignitaries.  Most exceptionally, the church  contains a monument to Prince Lee Boo.  One of the local stories associated with the increase in British maritime trade concerns Rotherhithe resident Captain Henry Wilson and his return to Britain with the son of a Beleau Island chief.   Captain Wilson lived on Paradise Street (now part of Jamaica Road) and commanded the Antelope for the Honourable East India Company. When the ship was near the Pelew (now Belau) Islands in 1783 it was wrecked, badly damaged and was forced to beach on the island of Coo-Raa-Raa. The native inhabitants of the island were able to communicate with the sailors because one of the tribesmen and one of Wilson's servants both spoke Malay. The presence of the ship's dog seems to have helped bridge the two cultures - it was a Newfoundland named Sailor and the islanders had never seen a dog before. The two groups worked together to build a new ship, and when it was time to depart Abba Thule, the tribe's king (or rupack - which is the origin of the 1912 name Rupack Street), asked Wilson to take his son to England so that he could receive an English education. Sadly, Prince Lee Boo was only twenty years old when he died from smallpox in 1784, a mere six months after his arrival in England.  The memorial is almost almost illegible in my photograph but reads:

"In the adjacent churchyard lies the body of Prince Lee Boo son of Abba Thulle, Rupack or King of the island Coorooraa, one of the Palew or Palos Islands who departed this life at the house of Henry Wilson in Paradise Row in this parish on the 27th Day of December 1784 aged 20 years.  The tablet is erected by the Secretary of State for India in Council to keep alive the memory of the humane treatment shewn by the natives to the crew of the Honourable East India Company's ship "Antelope" which was wrecked of the island of Coorooraa on the 9th of August 1783.  the barbarous people showed us no little kindness."

Richard Horwood's 1799 map of Rotherhithe shows the church in its own churchyard, with a long thin burial ground to the south, on the opposite side of the road.  To the south and west were dozens of houses with gardens and yards, backing on to each other, as well as a small row backing on to the churchyard to the north.  There are few indicators of what some of these houses must have looked like, but the Peter Hills Charity School, which had been a home before it became a school, provides an idea.  Slightly later in 1814, William Gaitskell House is another example of the type of residential housing that has been destroyed.  Most of Rotherhithe is shown as marshy fields, and a section to the south west of the church, immediately to the south of today's Paradise Street and west of Lower Road is marked as Calanders Gardens, which were apparently the first of the market gardens that slightly enveloped the more cultivable areas of Rotherhithe.

The 1821 Watch-house

In 1821 a tiny watch-house was added to the edge of the churchyard, partly to provide the area with a much-needed police presence and partly to watch over and prevent body-snatching from the cemetery.  Body snatching was quite a lucrative trade.  Anatomists at Guys Hospital were very much on the look out for unclaimed bodies to dissect and analyse and grave robbing became a serious problem.  More about this on an earlier post.

Memorials continued to be erected in the church.  One commemorates Henry Meriton, a senior officer in the Honourable East India Company and participant in the Napoleonic wars who died in 1826.  An even more direct connection with the seas is represented by the altar table and two chairs, which were made from timbers that were salvaged from the famous and much-loved ship HMS Temeraire and are still housed in the church today.  In 1838 HMS Temeraire was broken up at the nearby Beatson Yard.  Temeraire, which had served at Trafalgar, was later made famous by J.M.W. Turner, who painted a somewhat fanciful version of her final trip upriver to the Beatson yard.  He had been visiting his mistress in Margate and on his trip home back into London on the Margate steamer saw the ship being towed in.  Breaking ships was a lucrative business, due to the ongoing value of the oak that was used to build them, and the various fixtures and fittings that could be resold or recycled.  Even old rope could be recycled, a task that had frequently been carried out in workhouses throughout the centuries (hence the phrase "money for old rope").  There is more about Temeraire and the Beatson yard on an earlier post.

Chairs made from timber from HMS Temeraire

The memorial to Reverend
Edward Blick in the churchyard

In 1835 Clare College nominated the Reverend Edward Blick as Rector of St Mary's.  This was a significant appointment, because Blick was a real activist on behalf of the community.  The Church of England had a lot on its hands in urban areas with the expansion of industry and the influx of people into towns where they came from rural areas to find work. As commerce and industry expanded, so did populations, and as well as new opportunities there were real social problems, including poverty, lack of education, and, from the Church's point of view, poor access to religious institutions and guidance.  Blick was one of the new generation of clerics who believed that the Church should be active in supporting the community in all these areas of concern.  Until 1838, three years after Blick was appointed, St Mary's was the only Anglican place of worship in Rotherhithe. Blick's main achievements were the establishment new Rotherhithe churches, and the opening of ten new schoolrooms.   Blick held the position until 1867.  The rather strangely located monument near to the tower of the church was erected in his honour.

The spire of St Mary's was rebuilt in 1861. The interior has changed considerably since 1714, mainly because of a major remodelling by Gothic revival architect William Butterfield. Between 1873 and 1889 Butterfield removed the galleries, lowered the pulpit from three tiers to one, added wrought iron rails to enclose the chancel, made space for a choir and added new stained glass windows.  He gave the interior a bright face-lift, quite contrary to post-reformation minimalism, and the altar was given a backdrop that is more than a little reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite ideas in its enthusiasm for gold and vivid colours.

Part of the churchyard was sold to the Thames Steam Ferry Company. Although Reverend Beck mentions it in his book (see below) he doesn't give any idea of when the sale was made.  However, a Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Rotherhithe in 1877 shown on the Wellcome Library website mentions it and gives the following account:

The Thames Steam Ferry adjoining Church Stairs, Rotherhithe, was formally opened by the Lord Mayor, of London, on the 31st day of October, 1877, on which occasion, the vestry caused a suitable address to be prepared and the same was presented to his lordship at the opening ceremony by Mr. Churchwarden Foottit on behalf of the vestry, the vestrymen and officers being in attendance, after which the Lord Mayor in his couch accompanied by the Vestrymen and Officers, was conducted across the Thames upon the company's ferry boat. 

Beck says that the land sold to enable its construction was at the northeast corner where the bone house had once been, and that the land was unconsecrated.  Given that it was a steam company it has to have been sometime in the 19th century, so I have plonked it in the middle.  Beck says that the Thames Steam Ferry Company used the land to widen the road and improve access to the wharf from which the ferry departed.  The venture was a failure, as this passage by Beck describes:

The expectations upon which it was founded proved delusive; the fine two ferry-boats with elaborate hydraulic machinery for the passage of vans and cars at all times of the tide failed to tempt the timber-merchants and contractors to shorten by nearly two miles the journey to London Bridge, and, like many other improvements born before their time, the Ferry did but herald the magnificent enterprise of Tower Bridge, with its bascules."

Reverend Edward Josselyn Beck

In 1913 the tower again caused problems and had to be underpinned. It was paid for by Hubert Car-Gomm in memory of his mother Emily.  The Carr-Gomms were the Lords of the Manor of Rotherhithe, a title that dated from Norman times and was related to property ownership and the rights of the incumbent within the local manor.  The Carr-Gomms were notable community benefactors.  Hubert became the Liberal M.P. for Rotherhithe in 1906, a more modern form of community service.  There are lots of photographs of the interior on the St Mary Rotherhithe's website on the Church Interior page.

In 1867 Reverend Edward Josselyn Beck succeeded Blick and held the position until 1907, another Clare College Fellow.  Beck's many contributions to the community included a history of the parish of St Mary's Rotherhithe (published in 1907).  Memorials to Serve for a History of the Parish of St Mary, Rotherhithe shows just how important the pedigrees of the incoming rectors were to the status of the church.   The photograph to the left was taken from his book.  Memorials also records some of the more influential local families of the time, painting a really evocative portrait of how Rotherhithe was put together and what sort of activities were carried out in the area.  It also, of course, emphasises the role of the St Mary's in community life.  As Rotherhithe developed and expanded throughout the 19th Century the clerics of St Mary's were responsible for extending community support, welfare projects and ensuring children's education in the further reaches of Rotherhithe as residential areas.  Beck himself was responsible for the establishment of several new parish churches but bemoaned the fate of St Mary's at that time in a rather sad section of the book:

We do not forget that the present congregation is far less able to contribute than those who were the resident parishioners in 1867; and the other churches which now quite naturally draw the church people who live in Union Road, in the Lower Road, in Plough Road, and in the streets on the other side of Southwark Park, where there were then market gardens and rope grounds, have left the old mother church almost derelict, surrounded no longer by streets of houses, by wharves, mills, granaries and high buildings, with scarcely an inhabited house near it, like a stranded hulk left high and dry on the shore.

The fate of old city churches is in some respect a sad one.  They possess the furniture and fittings and alter plate of a by-gone age, by their congregations have migrated to other homes, and St Mary's Church, Rotherhithe, if not quite so forlorn as St Nicholas', Deptford is yet out of the main stream of life to-day;  On week-days it is shaken by the vibrations of an endless procession of timber vans and other heavy traffic;  but on Sundays the neighbourhood is quiet that you might think St Marychurch Street and Rotherhithe Street a deserted thoroughfare."

The Old Mortuary of 1895.
Photograph copyright Time and Talents
http://www.timeandtalents.org.uk/page68/Lettings.html

One of his more grizzly roles was overseeing the establishment of the mortuary, built in 1895.  The mortuary was located on the far side of the extended churchyard, which now serves as a small public park situated between the mortuary and the 1821 watch-house.  The mortuary will be described on a future post, but was built to handle the dead that the River Police pulled out of the Thames. Now known as the Old Mortuary it is occupied by the Time and Talents charity.

With the demise of the ship building industry at the end of the 19th Century, Rotherhithe became a world of docks and dockers, fulfilling a destiny that began in 1699 with the Howland Great Wet Dock.  This was a far less differentiated world than that of the ship-builders and their workers, but one that needed more help than it ever had done before.   Churches, charities and individual benefactors helped to raise the standards of daily life, but throughout the centuries up until the end of the ship building industries it was clearly a real hotch-potch of diverse livelihoods, lifestyles and standards of living, a mixture of rich and poor. 

Other churches and chapels have come and gone, and only a few have remained.  Partly through the efforts of St Mary's vicar Reverend Blick in the late 1800s other chapels and churches were established to serve other parts of Rotherhithe as new housing was built.  These included All Saints on Lower Road (1839, destroyed in the early 1950s) , St Barnabas on Plough Way (1872, destroyed in the 1960s) , St Paul's Chapel (1850, destroyed 1955) on Ram Alley (later Beatson Street), Trinity Church in Dowtown, on the corner of Salter Road and Rotherhithe Street (1937, destroyed in 1940 and replaced in 1952), and various others.  More recently other churches have been added including the Catholic church of St Peter and the Guardian Angels in Paradise Street (1903), St Olav's Norwegian church (1927), built where the entrance to Rotherhithe Tunnel now stands, and the Finnish Church on Albion Street (1958) on Albion Street.  However, St Mary's continues to be the oldest and most prestigious of the area's churches.

St Mary's Rotherhithe, September 2015

Today St Mary's Rotherhithe has a lively congregation and sits in a thriving residential area, which would have staggered its 19th Century population.  It is in good condition, has the relative security of a 2* listing, and is clearly much loved.  The children's playground is ugly, but the churchyard is well cared for with original tomb stones, mature trees and flower gardens.  The former extended churchyard is now an attractive park with a rose garden at its centre.  The church and its land are in good company with the contemporary early 18th Century Charity School.  Surrounded by imposing but attractive 19th Century warehouses,  it is an oasis in a place characterized by many social and economic transformations.  The Reverends Blick and Beck might have been astonished at the metamorphosis from commercial and industrial to residential use, but I think that they might have been happy.

To end on a note of complete trivia, there's a lovely story from 1717 reported in Edward Walford's History of Rotherhithe (1872-78) from the Weekly Packet, dated 21-28th December 1717: "Last week, near the new church at Rotherhithe, a stone coffin of prodigious size was taken out of the ground, and in it the skeleton of a man ten feet long" but, as Walford adds, "this we do not expect our readers to accept as literally true" (p.137). Walford doesn't say why they were removing the coffin from the ground, so that will have to stay a mystery.

Visitors to the area will find that the church is closed during the week, although a side entrance is usually open to allow access to a vestibule which has a glass screen from where it is possible to get a sense of some of the church's interior features.  The church is open for Sunday services and Eucharists during the week. It is usually possible to enter the church after the Sunday service without disturbing worshippers after the service when the congregation has departed.  St Mary's receives enquiries from people who are researching their family history. Although the church does not have copies of historic Parish Registers of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, but these can be found at the Metropolitan Archives in Clerkenwell, London, and many are available on that website.

The Byfield organ of 1764, also showing
part of the lovely ceiling. Photograph
by Jim Linwood. sourced from Flickr.

• St Mary's Rotherhithe Church website http://www.stmaryrotherhithe.org. See the site for many more photographs
• Stephen Humphrey The Story of Rotherhithe. London Borough of Southwark Neighbourhood History No.6 1997
• Reverend E.J. Beck.  Memorials to Serve for a History of the Parish of St Mary, Rotherhithe.  Cambridge At the University Press 1907.  This edition by Bibliobazaar.
• Anon.  A Short Account of the Churches, Schools and Charities in the Parish of St Mary Rotherhithe.  British Library. Date uncertain - mid to late 1800s.
• Mervyn Blatch. A Guide to London's Churches. Constable and Company Ltd 1978 
• Elizabeth Williamson and Nikolaus Pevsner. London Docklands. An Architectural Guide. Penguin Books 1998
• British Listed Buildings website entry for St Mary's Rotherhithe: http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-471286-church-of-st-mary-rotherhithe-greater-lo#.VgxlwyvcrUU
• Edward Walford. History of Rotherhithe. 1872-78

Rotherhithe in 1914, fully developed with docks,
houses and foreshore businesses.  The location of
St Mary Rotherhithe is shown with the red box.

The south side of the church

St Mary's Rotherhithe in October 2015, with the more modern
extension added on its northern side built in the
style of the original building.

The former extended churchyard as it is today, with the spire
of the church visible at top right

Convoys Wharf site, Depford, now listed by World Monuments Fund

Built at the Royal Docks at Deptford,
Royal Sovereign, with shipwright Peter Pett.
Peter Lely c.1643 (photo sourced from Portcities).

Thanks to @brob11 on Twitter for highlighting this BBC News story, which is currently showing on BBC iPlayer at http://bbc.in/19Y1XUS.

It has been my week for drifting slightly beyond the confines of Rotherhithe into neighbouring areas. Over a couple of days it was Greenwich; this is much closer to home, with a news story about the former Royal Docks at Deptford.  

The 16th Century Royal Dockyard at Deptford, where Henry VIII's beloved Mary Rose was built and where Captain Cook set off on his voyages of exploration, is now in private hands and has been scheduled for development by Hutchison Whampoa.  Back in 2011, the Shipwright's Palace blog raised several good points about the failings of the development plans as regards the surviving dock features, and highlighted a vast list of fascinating events that took place at the dock and expeditions that began their lives there. 

The Victorian shipbuilding structures that are shown on the photograph below are just the tip of the iceberg, the real gold being the basin, a series of dry docks and mast ponds dating from the 16th Century period onwards, when vast naval ships were made for the Crown.  

The site as it was when it was being excavated
by the Society of Antiquaries of London, May 2012
(photo sourced from their website)

The site has now been placed by the World Monuments Fund on a Watch list of threatened heritage sites.  The WMF styles itself as the leading non-governmental organization for the protection of cultural heritage.  This may make life more difficult for the developers, Hutchison Whampoa who want to build the £1 billion pound Convoys Wharf development, consisting of 3000 new homes, many of them high-rises.

Hutchison Whampoa say that their plans are sensitive to the existing features, but being added to the WMF Watch list may help to ensure that the local heritage is made a focal point of the development plans rather than just given a nod in passing.

There's a report on the archaeology of the site from the Society of Antiquaries of London newsletter dating to May 2012.

Map of Deptford in 1623

The will of Edward Maister of Rotherhithe, Sailor and Owner 1582

Elizabeth I after the Armada in 1588

It is always difficult to find out information about the general public at different times in history, but I have recently found that a number of wills are available from various sources, mainly libraries and archives.  Most are not available online, but one or two are, so those are the ones that I am looking at first.  

It has really surprised me how much good quality information is available about individuals and their families from personal genealogy websites, which reproduce families' research into their ancestors. Some of the research carried out is to a very high standard. One example is the will of Edward Maister a mariner and ship owner of 16th Century Rotherhithe, who is an ancestor of a family named Douglas, who have done extensive research into their own past.  The way in which Edward Maister links into their family tree is described in part here:

http://www.cotswan.com/cole_branch.htm.

The Douglas Family History Site reproduces the will of Edward Maister (in his will it is spelled Master, but his wife, in her will, spells their name Maister) in full.  It is a fascinating read if you have the patience to stick with the only slightly unfamiliar16th century prose.  I have copied it here in full, in case the site vanishes at some point in the future, but full credit goes to The Douglas Family History website, their reproduction of the text and the extensive research that they have shared:

http://www.cotswan.com/edwardmaisterwill.htm

Edward Master / Maister was a resident of Redriffe (another name for Rotherhithe.  He died in 1582 during the reign of Elizabeth I, a year after she knighted Sir Francis Drake at Deptford for his successful circumnavigation of the globe, and six years before the invasion force of the Spanish Armada arrived.  I have been unable to find out anything about him, beyond the information contained in his will, but he was clearly a man of substance, able to dispose of a number of houses to members of his family, he owned or part-owned a boat or ship called the Mary Katherine and he was able to discharge the cost for his own funeral and service and contribute to repairs for the church.  He requested a burial at the Redriffe church, and was buried in the churchyard of an older church of St Mary's on 13th July 1882.  Burial records show him as a "howseholder."  He was survived by a wife, Magdalene, and two children Olive (his son, who had a son also named Olive and a daughter named Margaret) and Anne, who was unmarried at the time of the writing of the will, but went on to have six children, the first three of whom died young (Roger, another Roger, John, Elizabeth, Susanna and Catalina).  He also mentions family in Walton on the Naze, near Harwich on the Essex coast.

There is very little information available about Rotherhithe at this period. but the reign of Elizabeth I was a period of great maritime activity, which extended up the Thames.  Although previous rulers had eroded her father's navy, Elizabeth revived, profiting from the activities of traders and privateers who challenged Spanish and Portuguese ships in South American waters.  The Thames had been used for storing warships and  a lot of warship-related activities took place, including fitting, maintenance and repair. By 1520 a wet dock for 5 large vessels had been built and the area soon became established as one of the most important ship building centres of the country.  The first royal ship to bear the name of Tiger (HMS Tyger) was built at Deptford docks in 1546. She had a crew of 120, and 4 brass and 39 iron guns, and took part in the fight against the invading Spanish Armada in 1588. Trading ships coming into London created the demand for some form of control, and a system of "legal quays" were established under Elizabeth, which were controlled by the Corporation of London. These were created to handle all dutiable goods. They were located on the north banks of the Thames between London Bridge and the Tower of London but when they quickly became inadequate for the task they were supplemented by Bermondsey “sufferance wharves" creating a role for the southern side of the river in maritime trade.

Edward Master his laste wyll and testement ade the vith daye of Julye in the yere of our lord god, 1582, as followethe

In the name of god, amen. the vith daye of Julye in the yeere of our lord god, 1582. I Edward Master of redriffe 1 within the co[un]tye of surrye, sailer & owner, sicke in bodye - but perfecte of remembranc[e] at the makynge hereof - thanks be to almightye god - make this my laste wylle and testament in maner and forme followinge.

Firste & before all other things I geve and bequethe my soule to almightye god, my creator and saviour, and my bodye to be buried in the churche of redriffe at the discression of my frends wher they shall thinke mete.

And for such goods as god hathe lent me for a tyme in this world (my funeralls and debts discharged I geve as followethe firste I wyll that ther should be a serman at my buriall suche as the p[ar]son shall thinke mete, and to have for his payns vis viiid 

Also I geve to the poore box of the p[ar]yshe of refriffe towarde the reparacions of the churche, xxs

Also I geve to Magdalen my wyfe whomI make my sole executrix of this my laste wyll and testament - my house wherein I dwell durynge her naturall life, and more I geve to her all my houses w[hi]ch I have by leaces in redriffe duringe her life, saving that I wyll that Olive 2 master my sonne shall have the neare housse - yf he doe marye and dwell in yt.

And yf Mawdelen my wyffe chance to decease before Olive my sonne, and Anne master my daughter, then I wyll that olive master my sonne, and have my housse wher I dwell paiyinge to anne master my daughter and to her children after her els a yeere.

Also I wyll that mawdelen master my wyffe a quarter a pece, and I wyll that Olive master my sonne shall geve to his ii children, Olive master ye younger and magarett m[aste]r his daughter vli a pecen and also to my daughter anne master xli out of the porcion of his halffe quarter of the mary katheryn at the yeers of xxi, or ells at the daye of mariage,

Also I wyll that mawdelen my wyffe shall geve to Anne master my daughter in money - or houshold stuffe, xli and to kepe at her owne charges (yf she thinke yt for her profett) tyll the tyme of mariage. 

And I shall desire my wyffe to be good to Olive my sonns children as she hath bene, tyll yt
please god to sed hym to marye, and folowynglye to dwell together as they have done so longe as ye shall plese god to apoynte.

And for my houshold stuffe I wyll that mawdelen my wyffe shall dispose yt amonge the iii children to wytt anne my daughter, and Olivs ii children as she shall thinke good.

And yf yt fortune that anne master my daughter do marye and have nede of a housse - then I wyll that she shall have my newe housse duringe the tyme of the leace, rent free, and for the rent of the other houses by leace I wyll that olive master my sonne and anne master my daughter shall have ye equallye devided betwene them and yf one of them faile, then one to be an others heire, and, yf bothe faile then I wyll that olive master the younger shall have my housse wher I dwell, and margarett his daughter to have the other houses by leace, and yf anne master do marye and have children then I wyll that her children shall ???isye bothe the housse where I dwell, and also the other houses I have by leace indeferentlye devided amonge them.

And yf that they shall geve to vi of the nexte of my kynred dwellynge at walton of the nase by harwiche, vili to be equealye devided amonge them and yf all thes do faile & none to be founde, to make any fuste Hyll to any thinge of myne, then I wyll that yt shall come to the use of the p[ar]yshe of redriffe for ever.

Also I wyll that mawdelen my wyffe shall not forgett to geve to my sonne Olive in some parte of houshold stuffe at the tyme of his mariage - such as she can convenientlye spare, thus comittynge my soule and bodye my harte and mynd unto the lord my god yn the vith daye of Julye in the yere of our lord god, 1582 Sealed and subscribed w[i]th myne owne hand

            by me edward master presens of thomas addye p[ar]son of redriffe

Probatum fuit hu[iusm]o[d]i testamentum ven[erab]ili viro m[agist]ro Johe Hone legum Doctore Surr[o]g[ate] Decimo octave die mensis Julii Annus d[omi]ni 1582 Jura[men]to magdalene maister vidue Rel[i]c[t]e d[i]c[t]i def[uncti] et executricis in hu[iusm]o[d]i testa[men]to no[m]i[n]at Cui Comissa fuit Admnistracio &c de bene &c Jurat &c Salvo Jure n???s??ibus &c

New Book: Great Houses, Moats and Mills on the South Bank of the Thames

An Amazon alert has just informed me that the following book is now available for pre-order. I thought it might be of interest to other residents of the area. The price being quoted by different suppliers varies substantially so I would recommend that you shop around if you decide to pre-order it. Amazon and Oxbow books are both offering it for pre-order

Great Houses, Moats and Mills on the South Bank of the Thames: Medieval and Tudor Southwark and Rotherhithe (MoLAS Monograph 47, Museum of London Archaeology Service 2008) (Hardcover)
by Simon Blatherwick (Author), R. Bluer (Author)

Product details:
* Hardcover: 240 pages
* Publisher: Museum of London Archaeology Service (10 Oct 2008)
* Language English
* ISBN-10: 1901992837
* ISBN-13: 978-1901992830


Product Description
Regeneration in the 1980s-90s on the south bank of the Thames resulted in archaeological and historical investigations at Platform Wharf, Rotherhithe, and next to London Bridge, in Southwark. The development of both sites from the 14th century is of major interest. The Rotherhithe property was acquired c 1349 by Edward III and the existing house rebuilt by him in 1353-61 with two courts, including a riverside range of apartments. Royal interest ceased after Edward's reign, and the house passed to Bermondsey Priory in 1399. The fragmentation of the site into smaller properties, including ones with industrial uses, is charted. The Southwark site contained three notable residences during the medieval period and tidal mills on the waterfront.The 14th-century moated house of the Dunley family and a pleasure-house built by Edward II, the Rosary, were both acquired by Sir John Fastolf for his own grand London residence in the 1440s. In the later 16th century there was massive immigration into this part of Southwark and by the mid 17th century the former moats and gardens were built over with small properties and alleys. The moat infills produced exceptionally rich assemblages of domestic artefacts and ceramics, the waterside location preserved a wide variety of plants, timber structures and woodworking evidence.

Rotherhithe Heritage 1 - The background to the dockland heritage

This post is designed to put a short series of posts about the area's heritage into a broader historical context. It is impossible to explain the heritage represented by Rotherhithe without reference to the history of the stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to Greenwich. In this post I’ve started with Henry VIII and worked my way up to the date of the establishment of Rotherhithe’s Howland Great Wet Dock, the predecessor of Greenland Dock. This is a highly selective and cheerfully superficial sprint through history, but I hope that it provides a few foundations for the posts that will look at specific details about the area. I'll pick up on some of the things that I mention in passing below in later posts.

The area along the southern banks of the Thames was employed only sporadically until the reign of Elizabeth I. Henry VIII had established the Royal Dockyards at Deptford (and at Woolwich) in the early 1500s. The Thames had been used for storing warships and a series of storehouses had been built to enable fitting, maintenance and repair work to take place. By 1520 a wet dock for 5 large vessels had been built which considerably improved access to these vast ships for essential work to take place. The dock expanded at a considerable rate and this area became established as one of the most important ship building centres of the country.

The first royal ship to bear the name of Tiger (HMS Tyger) was built at Deptford docks in 1546. She had a crew of 120, and 4 brass and 39 iron guns. In the year that the Spanish Armada attacked, 1588, Lord Henry Seymour's pursuit of the Armada up to around the level with Newcastle included the Tyger. She was broken up in 1605.

The dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 effectively put an end to the mediaeval period, and introduced a new era of religious, social and economic behaviour St Saviour's Abbey in Bermondsey was dissolved in 1540. It was first acquired by Thomas Pope (who was the founder of Trinity College, Oxford) and the stone of the Abbey was used to build Bermondsey house, which was completed in 1550, complete with an ornamental summer house. It was later became the property of the Earl of Sussex. A Southwark News article says that the last upstanding Abbey building, the inner gatehouse, was destroyed in the 19th Century, by which time much of the site was covered in poor houses and factories.

Water mills were first recorded in Rotherhithe in 1554, by the area now known as the Surrey Dock Stairs (known as the King’s Mill stairs up until the 1860s). The water mill recorded at that time was owned by the crown and was employed in the manufacture of gunpowder. It may have been established and maintained by the monks of Bermondsey Abbey.

Following the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, Elizabeth I came to power in 1558. Her reign was an innovative and expensive one. An important proportion of the country’s national income was derived from London alone, from customs revenue. In order to regulate this income a Royal Commission was established to appoint twenty “legal quays”, which were controlled by the Corporation of London. These were created to handle all dutiable goods. They were located on the north banks of the Thames between London Bridge and the Tower of London but when they quickly became inadequate for the task they were supplemented by “sufferance wharves” which were established in Bermondsey. These wharves had a similar function but only had a temporary status - but they had effectively established a food in the trading door for the area south of the river.

In the winter of 1564-65 the Thames froze solid and many events and entertainments took place on the ice. the freezing process was considerably aided by the fact that the Thames was full of rubbish, including sewage, and that its flow was often considerably reduced. Today it is clean enough to be a suitable habitat for wild fowl and fish, it flows freely and is most unlikely to freeze - particularly given the effects (dare I say it) of global warming. Having ice-skated throughout my childhood and teenage years this comes as a vast disappointment!

In 1587 the Queen granted the right to Thomas Brickett to hold a gunpowder mill for 31 years. The warhf occupied land formerly owned by Bermondsey Abbey, which seems slightly ironic. Only a year later it was actually ceded to new owners who built water mills on the site.

Under James I (who reigned from 1603 to 1625) the waterfronts of Rotherhithe continued to thrive as ship building and repair yards, and a close community of riverside workers and their families became established in the area.

In 1605 the shipwrights of Egnland were incorporated, in order to make them more transparently accountable for their ship building activities.

In 1612 the Rotherhithe (Redrith) shipwrights were awarded a Royal Charter, which was a particular honour and indicates how important the Rotherhithe ship building industry was considered to be. A charter is a grant of authority – a type of contract made between people of unequal status. A Royal Charter was only granted by the monarch on the advice of his advisory committee, the privy council, in order to establish or formally recognize an incorporated entity, like a company. It was required for the establishment of any limited body.

In 1613 two local Master Mariners, Peter Hill and Robert Booth, founded a school for the education of impoverished sailors. The building still stands in Rotherhithe village, near to Saint Mary’s church, although its role has changed many times since the Seventeenth Century. Master Mariners were sailors who are qualified to captain a ship, whether or not they did actually take on the permanent role of a captain.

Rotherhithe’s Shippe Inn (later The Spread Eagle, then The Crown and from 1956 the Mayflower) was the departure point, in 1620, of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Pilgrim Fathers were not local people, but they departed from the Shippe Inn to Portsmouth en route to the New World in The Mayflower. They returned to Rotherhithe in the May of 1921. In fact, none of the crew or the passengers were from Rotherhithe, but Christopher Jones, the captain of The Mayflower and one of her owners, was buried at St Mary’s Church in Rotherhithe when he dies on 5th March 1622. Sadly his grave was destroyed when St Mary’s was rebuilt in 1715, following the floods of 1710, but a memorial was erected to him that still stands.

In 1621 two water mills were recorded near the Surrey Dock Stairs, run by Henry Grindley.

In 1642 the rift between Charles I and Parliament developed into Civil War. As part of the London suburbs, Rotherhithe became one of a string of defences that were built by ordinary people as part of the attempt to repulse the Royalist army. Twenty six forts and ditches were constructed. The Redriff fort was constructed near Paradise Street and left the village itself completely undefended. Fortunately for Rotherhithe the defences were never put to the test, and the Royalists were defeated.

In 1647 a second ship named HMS Tiger was also built and launched at Deptford Docks. She had 38 guns and saw exciting service for nearly 100 years. Because it gives quite a good snapshot of some of the remarkable history of the times, here's a brief review of her career, courtesy entirely of the HMS Tiger website:

"Her first captain, James Peacock, brought her fame when, during the Civil War, he commanded her during the siege of Colchester. She was with Admiral Blake in his pursuit of Prince Rupert in 1650, when he took Rupert's Guinea and Charles as prizes. In 1652 she took a Dutch ship, the Morganstar without a single British casualty. After taking part in the battle of the North Foreland under a new captain, Gabriel Sanders, she recommissioned for service in the Mediterranean. In 1666, early in the Second Dutch War, the Tiger, under the command of Phineas Pert, met a Zeeland privateer of 40 guns and although Pett was killed by the enemy's first broadside, his Lieutenant continued the fight for a further six hours, by which time the Tiger was too heavily damaged to catch the escaping enemy ship. Later that year Sir Robert Holmes flew his flag in the Tiger and sailed into the Terschelling Roads. With fire ships and a number of smaller vessels he raided the Dutch Fleet, destroying 170 vessels and severely damaging some shore installations. In 1672 Captain Thomas Harman took over the Tiger from John Turner under whom she had fought in the Battle of Solebay, and Captain Harman's first action was in defence of a fleet of colliers he was escorting along the east coast to the Thames during which he fought off eight Dutch privateers.


On 22 February 1674 the Tiger entered Cadiz Harbour close on the heels of a Dutch ship, the Schakerloo (Captain De Witte). Having been criticised for not having attacked the Tiger, De Witte borrowed 70 officers and men from his flagship and set sail, and soon he was engaged by Harman at close quarters. Each ship repelled boarders and after a long battle the Schakerloo was boarded by the victorious 'Tigers' as she began to sink. The Dutch had suffered 50 killed and 70 wounded, while the British suffered nine killed and 15 wounded, including Captain Harman who was hit below his left eye by a musket ball."

The famous diarist Samuel Pepys was a frequent visitor to Rotherhithe which, in his diaries, he refers to as Redriff. He was usually on his way to the Royal Docks at Deptford but liked to watch Rotherhithe ships being launched and frequented the local public houses. One of his diary entries records that it was too dangerous to walk alone through the streets. In 1664 he records that he visited Rotherhithe’s Cherry Gardens to buy cherries for his wife. The Cherry Gardens doesn’t exist today, except in the form of a small public gardens in Rotherhithe, which extends from Jamaica Road. It was a popular place for Londoners to visit during the first half of the seventeenth century. But by 1665 he was too afraid to venture into Rotherhithe because of the dangers of the plague.

The slightly less famous diarist John Evelyn, who used to have a home next to the Royal Docks at Deptford, is a major resource for information about the area during the 1600s. He lived through the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the death of Cromwell, the restoration of Charles II to the throne, James II, the revolution of 1688 and the reign of Mary II. He was closely associated with Charles II, and lived through the London Plague and the Great Fire of London. His diaries are fabulous records of London as a whole, but also offer almost unique insights about life on the southern edges of the river. His wife’s father sold him Sayes Court, a manor house and land on the edge of the Deptford Royal Docks. He turned the land into fabulous formal gardens, in which he planted rare and exotic plants, shrubs and trees – a bare handful of which actually survive today. And his personal association with the areas neighbouring his land make him a tremendous resource for the areas south of the river.

Evelyn records that in 1662 a massive fire took hold of a shipyard at Deptford, and it caused considerable panic both locally and in London itself. Rumours has spread on the instant that the Dutch fleet had sailed up the Thames, landed their men and set fire to the town. It was a time of serious and probably not unjustified paranoia.

The plague of 1665 wiped out nearly a fifth of the population of London. In Evelyn’s diarly entry for the 1st July 1665 he wrote as follows: “To Hampton-Court againe, hearing a judgement of a sermon here by Dr Turner: There died of the Plague in Lond. This Weeke 1100”. He next says: “There perished this weeke above 2000, and now there were two houses shut up in our parish”. By September of the same year 7000 individuals a week were dying, according to the records of the time. Many decades later, when digging the lock entrance to South Dock, workers found the skeletal remains of 100s of plague victims who had been buried in mass graves – just some of the 1000s who had perished.

Although at the time it was rumoured that the plague had spread from France, it now seems more likely that it arrived with trading ships from the Netherlands. Certainly, the first areas to succumb were dock areas in 1664, and it only spread to the City of London in the summer of 1665. The precise form of plague has never been determined, if indeed it was a plague in the strictest sense of the term.

In early September 1666 Evelyn described the Great Fire of London, which he watched from the other side of the river, in Southwark, from his coach. It horrified and amazed him. It devastated the buildings of London, much of it closely built housing, but it also effectively wiped out the lingering remains of the plague. Although this devastation was initially seen as an opportunity to rebuild London as a model city, the opportunity was lost. A number of fine buildings were created, but the vast avenues and the coherent structure envisioned by Evelyn and others was lost to time. Thatched roofs were banned at this time and remain banned today – one of the few exceptions is the modern reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, completed in 1998, which required a special permit for its thatched roofing.

None of Evelyn’s children were taken by the plague, but three of them died and were buried in the church of St Nicholas in Deptford of different illnesses. The church still stands today. One died of convulsive fits (1654), another of liver disease (1658) and he doesn’t say what afflicted his youngest child, who died in 1658. His adult daughter Mary, of whom he was considerably proud, died from smallpox, which appears to have been prevalent, and her epitaph remains at St Nicholas’s. Another of his children also died of smallpox. It is an indication of just how harsh life was in England at this time, even for a wealthy family. It must have been infinitely harder for the poor.

Another famous (or infamous) visitor to the area was Judge George Jeffreys. In 1681 at the age of only 33 he became Lord Chief Justice of England. Two years later he was appointed Lord Chancellor and later he was created Baron Jeffreys of Wem. He is known as Hanging Judge Jeffreys because of the punishment he handed out at the trials of the supporters of the Duke of Monmouth, who attempted to take the throne in 1685. He sentenced around 200 to hanging and a further 800 to transportation to the West Indies. In 1688 when James II fled the country, Jeffreys was placed in protective custody in the Tower of London. He died there in 1689 at the age of 44 from a kidney disease. It is said that he attended the Prospect of Witby on the north of the Thames and the Angel at the edge of Rotherhithe from where to watch some of the hangings to which he condemned those whom he had judged. A grizly thought.

Evelyn’s diaries make it perfectly clear that the Deptford Royal Docks continued to play an immensely important role in English ship building, retaining both the physical resources and the human skills necessary to produce and repair vast wooden ships. His diaries record two ships in particular. In 1668 the vessel HMS Charles I was launched from Deptford. A second-rate ship of the line, it had 96 brass cannons. It was rebuilt at Portsmouth in 1701 when it was renamed the HMS St George. It was built by a Master Shipwright of the King’s Yard named Jonas Shish whose company had been building ships for over 100 years and whose monument remains today in the nave of the Church of St Nicholas in Deptford. HMS St George was rebuilt again in 1733, and relaunched on 3 April 1740. She was finally broken up in 1774.

Jonas Shish died in 1680 but was succeeded by his son who, as a Master Shipwright, built H.M.S Neptune which was launched on 17th April 1663. The HMS. Neptune was the last of 30 ships built by order of an Act of Parliament. She was another second-class ship of the line. She was rebuilt at Blackwell with 90 guns, and was relaunched in 1710. In 1724 she was ordered to be again rebuilt, this time at Woolwich and was relaunched in 1930. She was renamed HMS Torbay and reduced to a third-rate 74-gun ship in 1750. She was apparently sold out of the navy in 1784. There were other ships named Neptune and Torbay, but this ship was the first to hold the name in each case.

In 1698, the same year that England formally recognized the slave trade, Evelyn’s Deptford home, Saye’s Court, was leased to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great, who came to the area for four months to learn about ship building and naval wartime strategy at the Deptford Royal Docks. He upset John

Evelyn considerably by holding wild parties and holding wheelbarrow races through the immaculate hedges and gardens of the property.

Evelyn moved away from Sayes Court in 1696 and died in 1706 at his family home. His wife Mary died three years later. Both Evelyn and his wife were buried in the family chapel in St John's Church at Wotton. In 1992 their skulls were stolen and have been recovered. Evelyn’s original diary is held at the British Library in London, U.K..

In 1684 the second Duke of Albermale, Christopher Monck was granted permission to form a market at Rotherhithe every Thursday and Saturday. The market sold a broad range of goods including cattle and pigs. He was also given permission to hold two annual fairs on the first Thursdays of April and in October, both of which lasted two days. He also established a ferry at Rotherhithe. He died in 1688 at the age of thirty five, and the market and the annual fairs appear to have ceased in 1792.

One of the information boards that was put up in Rotherhithe when the new developments were first put up, probably commissioned by the LDDC, is still standing next to the Ship and Whale public house on Gulliver Street, marking the presence of Randall's Rents. Randall's Rents is a slender alley leading up towards the Thames. It is the only remaining survivor of a whole network of similar passages which connected the dockers' homes with their dockland workplace. It was originally named Wet Dock Lane when it was laid out by local shipwright John Wells in 1698. The name was changed to commemorate the owner of a local shipyard who owned houses which he rented to the workers at his yard. I would love to see what it looked like in those days.

The next major date in the diary of the area was the construction of Howland Dock, which once occupied the area now covered by the much larger Greenland Dock. That will be the subject of my next Heritage post in a few days time.

Rather endearingly a 17th century Bellarmine/Bartmann jar was found in Platform Wharf in Rotherhithe in 1986. These are sometimes known as witch bottles and wer e sometimes used to ward off evil spirits. This example was owned by Pieter Van Anken, and bears the motif of an anchor. Filled with various objects, including personal items, the witch bottles were either buried or thrown into water.