HMS Tartar, built in Rotherhithe by John Randall in 1756

A view of Cuckold's Point by Samuel Scott, c. 1750-60

Built in Rotherhithe in 1756 by John Randall at Nelson Dock (Cuckold's Point), HMS Tartar was the second Royal Navy ship to bear the name.  She was a sixth-rate 28-gun frigate.  She was based, with alternations, on the design for the 1748 HMS Lyme by former shipwright, the naval architect and Surveyor of the Navy Sir Thomas Slade.    

Hundreds of ships were built for the Navy in Rotherhithe.  Whilst the Royal dockyards built the expensive first- and second-rate ships of the line, lower specification ships were often sub-contracted to private yards.  The hull and its interior fittings were the job of the sub-contractor and ships were usually taken elsewhere to be fitted with masts and rigging and, at another location, with armaments.  

John Randall was one of the biggest names in Rotherhithe ship-building.  Tartar was ordered when he had only just established himself at Nelson Dock but he also leased shipyards at Greenland Dock.  He later went into business as Randall, Grey and Brent and later Randall and Brent,  but at this time he is listed simply as John Randall Esq.  HMS Tartar was one of his smaller commissions - in 1761 he was contracted to build the Suffolk, a 74-gun ship of the sort that were to become the Navy's core.  Unfortunately almost nothing is known about John Randall or his son, also John.  The shipyard, the more recent remains of which are still visible in the carparks of the Hilton Hotel, is also quite poorly recorded at this time.  A map of 1746 shows one wet dock on the site, and by 1813 a second had been added alongside, but it is not known what the site looked like in 1756, when Tartar was launched.

The frigate HMS Tartar was build along the same lines of the earlier Lyme with alternations to improve stowage of men and the carriage of guns.  Tartar was originally planned as at 24-gun ship but four guns were added. Just over 587 tons (he average tonnage of a 28-gun frigate was 600 tons), she was 117ft 10in long and 33ft 9in wide.  On her upper deck she carried twenty four 9-pounder guns and on her quarter deck four 3-pounders.  She also carried 12 swivel guns.   She could carry up to 180 men.  Originally commissioned to serve in the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, she went on to serve for 41 years in various parts of the globe.

HMS Tartar in Barbados in 1764
From the ShipStamps website

Frigates had been in use in the Royal Navy since the mid 1600s.  The term was applied to a variety of designs but the role of the frigate was always the same - to move at speed, with sufficient firepower to defend herself and cause problems for others, but not as well armed as much slower but larger warships.  They were classed as fifth or sixth rate ships, depending on the number of guns they carried.  Frigates were used as scouts for the main fleet, and in battle they would assist disabled ships and take command of captured ships.  She could also take on ships of comparative size and firepower.  Independently, they were sent to foreign seas to capture pirates and foreign privateers in order to protect British commerce.  The 28-gun ships were phased out during the early 19th century - in 1794 there were 22 of them but by 1814 there were none remaining in service. 

The ship's first commander was Captain Lockhart, who used her to take out a number of privateers.  In 1756, still under Lockhart, she served in the Seven Year's War under a number of different captains. The Seven Years War lasted from 1756 to 1763 and has passed into history as one of Britain's naval triumphs.  Although its geographical reach was considerable, from America to India, it was mainly about power struggles and mercantile conflict amongst Europe's dominant countries. It was considered to be a massive success for Britain, which gained numerous territories in the Treaty Of Paris.  Tartar was paid off after 1763, undergoing survey and a refit, during which the ship's bottom was re-coppered, after which she sailed to Jamaica in 1764 to Barbados under Captain Sir John Lindsay.

The trip to Barbados was a scientific experiment that was of considerable importance to the Navy.  On board was William Harrison together with the H4 marine chronometer designed by his father, John Harrison.  Parliament had set up the Board of Longitude to offer a prize to anyone able to find a solution to the task of determining longitude at sea.  The first trans-atlantic voyage had been a success but the Board wanted further trials, so the trip to Barbados was undertaken.  It was hoped that the chronometer carried by Harrison would be sufficiently accurate to determine longitude.  Tartar arrived in May 1764 and Harrison returned back in England in July of the same year.  On arrival back in England the chronometer was found to be only 15 seconds slow and had been successfully used to determine longitude with great accuracy.  However, the Board dragged their heels in making payment and the full prize was never awarded to John and William Harrision.   

Tartar was paid off, refitted and recommissioned many times.  She was sent to the Falklands dispute in 1770 and took part in attacks on American during the American Revolutionary War.  In Portugal in 1779 her captain captured the Spanish 28-gun Santa Margarita.  In 1781 she was at the Battle of Dogger Bank and in 1782 she sailed for Jamaica and America.  By 1793 she was in the Mediterranean but in 1796 was back in Jamaica.  She took many privateers during her career.      

HMS Tartar was eventually wrecked off San Domingo in 1797, by then 41 years old.

Rotherhithe Heritage 3 - The 1700s

In the Eighteenth Century Rotherhithe was still separated from Bermondsey by fields and market gardens, and was still fairly marshy.

One of the earliest dates of note, south of the river, was that the Seamen's Hospital opened in Greenwhich, which took in wounded and, in John Evelyn's terms "emerited" seamen. Emerited seamen are those who were judged to have completed their public service and therefore received honorable discharges. During the reign of William III (William of Orange) it was the wish of his wife Queen Mary (Mary Stuart) that injured sailors, hurt during the wars, should be supported. Mary died in 1694 from smallpox and William raised a Royal Charter in her memory in the same year to build the hospital. The hospital was built in Greenwich near the birthplace of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The hospital was not thrown together by any old architect – its first designer was no other than Sir Christopher Wren. John Evelyn was appointed to the position of Treasurer for the project, and mentions his role briefly in his diary. The Greenwich Hospital opened in 1714 to care for old and wounded sailors, and a school was founded at the same time. The hospital met its true potential during the Napoleonic wars when the casualties reached extreme levels.

Either side of the lock leading into Greenland Dock (now blocked off but clearly visible) were the Greenland Dock (South) and Greenland Dock (North) shipyards. The dry dock that was included in the South yard is thought to date to 1700, but the North yard may have had a dry dock here as early as 1660. In 1702 the South yard was leased to the Burchett family. One of their first projects was the rebuild of the warship Monck.

The HMS Monck had originally been built and launched in 1659 in Portsmouth as a 52-gun third rate frigate. She was rebuilt in Rotherhithe and launched in 1702, now as a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line. She was wrecked in 1720 in a severe storm off British shores, although her crew and much of her cargo were saved.

The river had been recorded breaking its banks in Rotherhithe since Mediaeval times, and in 1705 it did so again, flooding St Mary's Church and its graveyard. The original church had dated to at least Mediaeval times and probably earlier. Christopher Jones, Captain of the Mayflower, and two of the ship's co-owners, were buried in the graveyard but their graves were destroyed by the flood. The reconstruction of the church was carried out in 1715-1717 to a design by John James in 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. Although a request had been made by the parish for government money from the Fifty New Churches Act (funded by the coal tax) this was rejected and the church was actually rebuilt by money raised from voluntary donations and burial fees. The new construction work of St Mary's had not been completed in the mid 1700s, but the skills of local ship builders were employed and the four internal columns were made of ships' masts. The new tower was started in 1747-8 by Lancelot Dowbigin who was the architect of the church of St Mary Islington, but it was probably constructed along the lines originally proposed by James. The organ was created by John Byfield in 1764-5, and although it has been restored some of the original pipes and its original case survive. The first organist was Michael Topping who was paid £30.00 per year. Some of the original Eighteenth Century furnishings survive in the church's interior. More of the church on a later post.

The London Online website says that the following is a list of public or watermen's stairs in use at the beginning of the eighteenth century, about 1707 in the Rotherhithe area: Tooley, Battle, Bridge, Pickle Herring, Still, Old, New, Savory's Mill,East Lane, Three Mariners, Fountain, Mill, Rotherhithe or Redriff, Cherry Garden, King, Elephant, Church, Swan, Globe, Shepherd and Dock, Pageant, and about nine or ten more until Deptford and Greenwich are reached. Comparing this list with those marked on John Rocque's map, 1746, and then again with Maitland, 1756, some had disappeared, others renamed. The Dog and Duck stairs, surviving to the south of Greenland Dock's entry lock, was established at least as early as 1723 and are still shown on maps of 1896. The stairs were all named after either a local landmark or a locally relevant story. In the case of the Dog and Duck there was a public house of the name in the immediate vicinity.

In the 1700s the two water mills were acquired by the Commissioners of Victualling the Royal Navy, to be a secondary victualling yard, supporting the one at Deptford. Victualling yards were established during the Dutch wars for the provision of goods and supplies to the Royal Navy. Ovens for the baking of ships biscuits were added at that time. There's a brief but very informative article on the National Archives website about the Deptord victualling yard which had been established in the 1600s.

In 1710 St Paul's Cathedral was officially finished - and if you go to the top of Stave Hill you will be able to see it very clearly.

In 1720 Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was published, and Rotherhithe, under its alternative name Redriff, gained some slight publicity because in the story it was Lemuel Gulliver's home village. It does not, however, have a large part to play in the tale!

In the 1720s Mayflower Street was an elegant road of sea captain's homes. Sadly these are long gone and in their place are now modern office blocks. I often visit a village on the west Wales coast called Aberdovey where the original sea captains' homes survive - they are substantial and very attractive. It would be lovely to know how the buildings would compare with those that once existed in Mayflower Street.

Rotherhithe and surrounding areas were beginning to expand towards each other. In 1722 Daniel Defoe encountered Redriff in his tour through Great Britain, which he published in three volumes between 1724 and 1726. His comments about London were less than complimentary about the way in which it had spread "in a most straggling confused manner, out of alls hape, uncompact and unequal". He goes on: "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 betweeen both, the town of Deptford, and the streets of Redriff, or Rotherhith (as they write it) are effectually joined".

The British History Online website has a fascinating comment about an attempt to grow vines in Rotherhithe:

Few Londoners, at first sight, would suspect Rotherhithe of having a soil or situation well suited to the growth of vines; but such would appear to have been once the case, if we may believe Hughson, who tells us, in his "History and Survey of London and its Suburbs," that an attempt was made in 1725, in East Lane, within this parish, to restore the cultivation of the vine, which, whether from the inauspicious climate of our island, or from want of skill in the cultivation, was at that time nearly lost, though there are authentic documents to prove that vineyards (fn. 2) did flourish in this country in ancient times. It appears that about the time indicated a gentleman named Warner, observing that the Burgundy grapes ripened early, and conceiving that they might be grown in England, obtained some cuttings, which he planted here as standards; and Hughson records the fact that though the soil was not particularly suited, yet, by care and skill, he was rewarded by success, and that his crop was so ample that it afforded him upwards of one hundred gallons annually, and that he was enabled to supply cuttings of his vines for cultivation in many other parts of this island.

Ship building continued to be of substantial importance in Rotherhithe with most of the river frontage turned over to ship building, repair and breaking. Other activities included rope and sail making.

The Birchett family who rebuilt the Monck had apparently left Greenland Dock (South) Shipyard by 1725, when the South Sea company (which was formed in 1711 and had somehow survived the South Sea Bubble disaster of 1720) appear to have held the lease as part of their whaling operation. The lease seems to have expired in 1730, which is almost certainly due to the failure of the operation. Whaling had changed radically since the early 1700s, with the main whaling operations moving away from previous bays to more remote and deeper locatitions at the edge of the Arctic ice fields (known as "ice whaling"). Ships had to be modified and reinforced to handle these conditions and experienced crew were required for these waters. It was difficult for the British to compete, but a final attempt was made by the South Sea Company during the 1720s and early 1730s. This venture was very costly and ultimately failed.

The most prestigious of the ship building complexes were engaged in work for the Royal Navy and the East India Company. The best known of the Rotherhithe docks 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.

Another shipyard was located where the scotch derrick is currently located (just off Odessa Street). Commercial Wharf was part of the Bedford Estate and ships were being built here from the 1740s. The shipyard was operated by timber traders Kemp, Collins and Co., but was certainly used as a shipyard by Thomas Stanton who, in partnership with one of the Wells family, built the East Indiaman the Royal George here in 1747 and The America in 1757. In 1758 Stanton built the Active and in 1759 the Carcass.

The HMS Active was a Coventry-class oak-built frigate. She was taken by the French navy off San Domingo in September 1778. She was one of a special set of 12 ships built to the design of Sir Thomas Slade, all 28-gun sailing frigates (sixth rate). Several of them were built at Rotherhithe, all of oak: Lizard (built by Henry Bird, launched 1757, hulked as a hospital ship in 1800 and sold for breaking to Sheerness dockyard in 1828), Aquilon (built by Robert Inwood, launched 1758, sold at Deptford 1776), and Argo (built by Henry Bird, launched 1759, broken up at Portsmouth 1776).

The HMS Carcass has a connection with Horatio Nelson, one of the "Infernal" class also designed by Sir Thomas Slade. She saw military action and was repaired and refitted several times before being sold to Constantine Phipps in 1773 when she was taken on an expedition to the North Pole. Nelson served on board as a midshipman. The expedition never reached the North Pole, arriving close but forced back by ice and returning to Britain in the same year. She was sold again several times, the last record of her being sold at Woolwich in 1784.

The transport infrastructure was as in much trouble by the 1700s as it seems to be today. Turnpike Trusts were established to manage the key roads that lead into London and one of these was the Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and Deptford Turnpike Trust which was established in 1748. Until 1750 the only bridge across the Thames was London Bridge, but as part of the improvement in the transportation infrastructure another bridge were now added: Westminster in 1750 and Blackfriars in 1769.

Humphrey (see Bibliography) lists the following Eighteenth Century ships which were all built in Rotherhithe docks: The Chesterfield, the Sphynx and the Tartar.

The Chesterfield was a Fourth Rate warship of the line with 44 guns, launched in December 1743 from the yard of John quallet at Pitcher's Point, which Humphery says is opposte todays Amos Estate on Rotherhithe.

The Sphynx was a sloop (a single-masted sailing vessel) with 24 guns, built at Allen's shipyard and launched in 1747/8.

The Tartar was a 6th rate, or Flower Class, with 28 guns, and was launched in April 1756 from Randall's shipyard. Her first captain was Captain Lockhart. She was wrecked off San Domingo in 1797.

Randall's (Randall, Randall and Brent, Samuel and Daniel Brent and Randall and Brent at different times), was one of the most important ship building companies on Rotherhithe, with three separate yeards of which only Nelson Dock survives. Amongst many commissions for the Royal Navy and the East India Company they build third rate ships of the line with 74 guns, the largest every to be built by private shipyards.

Here are other Rotherhithe-built ships, just as examples. The Minerva was built by John Quallet, Rotherhithe and launched: in January 1759. She was captured by the French in 1778, retaken in 1781, and renamed The Recovery in the same year. The Southampton was built by Robert Inwood, Rotherhithe and was launched in May 1757. She was wrecked in the Bahamas in 1812. The Nonsuch was built by John Quallet and launched on 29th. December 1741. She was broken up in Plymouth in 1766. But if you want to get a full sense of the volume of ships produced by Rotherhithe shipyards go onto the Ships of the Old Navy website and type "Rotherhithe" into the search engine - you won't be disappointed!

The Peter Hills School, which had been founded in 1613, continued to thrive. In the early 1700s it gained funding for 65 boys and 50 girls. It was expanded in 1739, when it included 77 boys, and was rebuilt in 1746 in St Marychurch Street. In 1731 it had 37 trustees, of whom 17 were sea captains. The surviving school building was moved to on the other side of St Marychurch Street in 1795 and it dates from the early 1700s, consisting of three storeys made of red brick. It is located next to St Mary's Church and is easy to spot thanks to the first floor figures of school children in blue and white. The building still has its Eighteenth Century doorcase and fanlight.

In 1755 a second charity school was built, called the United Society's School, located on the east of Rotherhithe.

In the 1760s the Wells family took over Commercial Wharf from Thomas Stanton, and purchased it from the Bedford estate. At the shipyard they constructed the Cornwall in 1760, the True Briton, also in 1760, and over 70 East Indiamen.

In 1765 a major fire in Princes Street on Rotherhithe was caused by the spillage from a pitch kettle which overboiled. Over 200 houses and warehouses, burned down. As with the Great Fire of London, the speed with which the fire spread was probably caused by both construction methods and the proximity of the buildings to each other.

The expeditions of Captain Cook to the Antipodes between 1769 and 1774 led to the establishment of trade between Great Britain and Austarlia and New Zealand. William Pitt became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1783. The slave trade continued to be of considerable economic importance to Britain which had coastal holdings in Africa, and the West Indies provided both staple and exotic items (imports of wheat, leather, cotton, rum, fruit juice, sugar, tobacco and mahogany, amongst other commodities) for an increasingly demanding western world. In the late1700s the increase in trade with the New World (U.S. and Canada). This caused numerous logistical problems because the Thames was only able to hold 600 boats in docks and on piers at any one time. Boats moored mid-Thames were always vulnerable to piracy. Part of the problem was not just that trade had grown threefold but that the average tonnage carried by ships had doubled. Up to 1400 ships with extra tonnage were now competing in a system designed to cope with a fraction of the cargo handling capacity.

One of the local stories associated with this increase in trade concerns Rotherhithe resident Captain Henry Wilson and Prince Lee Boo. Captain Wilson lived on Paradise Street (now part of Jamaica Road) and commanded the Antelope for the 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 communciate 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 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. See the St Mary's Rotherhithe website for more details.

In 1760 the Bedford estate leased the Greenland Dock (South) and (North) shipyards to John Randall (who was also operating out of Nelson Dock) and in 1763 the Howland Great Wet Dock (now Greenland Dock - see earlier heritage post), was purchased from the Fourth Duke of Bedford by the Wells family of shipbuilders. The Randalls, however, continued to hold the lease as per the original agreement.

A public house named the Acorn on Rotherhithe Street dated back to at least 1767 and gave its name to the Acorn Watermen's Stairs.

In the late 1700s new roads were added to improve connection between other major roads and the new bridges. In St George’s Circus the 1771 obelisk, which was built to commemorate the parish in which this network of roads met, still survives. It was named after the parish in which it was located. Other streets in and around Southwark were built in the later 1700s, crossing fields and leading to new roadside building, and increasing the traffic through the surrounding areas, including Rotherhithe.

The Bermondsey Spa was opened in 1780, managed by Thomas Keyse.

In 1789 a barge building and repair yard was established in Rotherhithe. by Charles Hay and Sons Ltd. However only a later building belonging to the company, dating to the Nineteenth Century, survives today.

War with France broke out in 1793, and Marc Brunel fled Paris, going to America to make his name as an architect and engineer. He came to the UK in 1799. His impact on Rotherhithe was to be considerable in the 1800s.

Bellamy's Wharf, today known as King and Queen Wharf, near Rotherhithe Village, was built by French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars in the 1790’s.

In 1792 the first deaf and dumb school in the UK was established at Bermondsey.

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.

The earliest part of Grice's Granary on Tunnel Road (now the Sands Film Studio and Rotherhithe Picture Library) dates to 1796-1800. It was extended at least once, but the oldest part consists of three section which are topped by three kingpost roofs. Kingposts are vertical wooden posts which sit on horizontal cross beams. The top of the kingpost forms the apex of the roofing rafter. The Grice family owned the building until 1857, but the name was apparently retained even after it changed hands.

In 1796 the Wells family, who had played such an important role in Rotherhithe ship building, purchased a share in a shipyard in Blackwall (Perry and Green) and ceased to operate in Rotherhithe.

I will keep adding to this post (and earlier heritage posts) as I learn more, so if you're interested it might be worth keeping an eye on it.

Bibliography

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.