Rotherhithe Street Names - part 3

Again, just for fun, here is the third part of a look at how the streets in Rotherhithe gained their names. 
Part 1
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/rotherhithe-street-names-part-1.html
Part 2
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/rotherhtihe-street-names-part-2.html

Beastson Walk

The Beatson family were ship breakers during the first half of the 19th Century.  They purchased wooden ships from the Admiralty and elsewhere, the useful lives of which were over, to process for materials that could be re-used.  The most famous ships to be broken at the Beatsons' yard were Temeraire and Belleraphon.  The last of the Rotherhithe Beatsons, William Beatson, trained as an architect and was responsible for St Paul/Peter Chapel, now destroyed.  He moved to New Zealand, taking with him some items of furniture made from the timbers of the Temeraire.

1845 map showing the Commercial Docks

Commercial Dock Passage

Although all of the Rotherhithe docks became jointly known as the Surrey Commercial Docks, when they were first constructed, three of those docks were referred to as the Commercial Docks and were linked via Norway Dock to Greenland Dock, which opened via its lock onto the Thames.  They are clearly marked on the 1845 map of Rotherhithe.  The dock names were all changed as the grew in number and companies merged.  The three Commercial Docks were later renamed, and by 1868 they were called, from north to south, Lavender Pond, Acorn Pond and Lady Dock.

Cunard Walk
Between the wars, the ocean liner Cunard made Greenland Dock the home base for its A-Class liners, and they must have been quite a site coming down the Thames and turning into the lock.  These liners were covered in an earlier post.

Canon Beck Road, past and present,
from the BermondseyBoy.net website.

Beck Road

The Reverend Beck was the vicar of St Mary's Rotherhithe and its parish.  Following on from the work of Reverend Blick, for whom he had considerable admiration, he was an energetic supporter of the poor families in the area, making a considerable difference to their quality of life of  in the mid to late 1800s by working to establish new churches and schools. In these endeavours he was frequently supported with land or finance by the Lord of the Manor of Rotherhithe, Sir William Maynard Gomm and his wife Elizabeth.  He wrote a book about the history of Rotherhithe called "Memorials to Serve for a History of the Parish of St Mary, Rotherhithe" which is still essential reading for anyone interested in local history.

Canon Beck Road

Again, named for the Reverend Beck (see above)

Cherry Garden Street
The long vanished Cherry Gardens, which also gave their name to Cherry Garden Pier, were pleasure gardens where Londoners could come and relax in the 1700s.  Samuel Pepys, who often passed through Rotherhithe on his way to the docks at Deptford, made a note in his diary of collecting cherries for his wife from the gardens. 

Derrick Street

A derrick is a form of crane.  A single large Scotch derrick is preserved just off Odessa Street, where the Thames path can be rejoined, heading towards Tower Bridge, but there used to be many of them in Rotherhithe.  The Scotch derrick has been discussed on an earlier post. Derricks could also be attached to the side of buildings and to ships.

Gomm Road

Sir William Maynard Gomm was Lord of the Manor of Rotherhithe, and Mayor of Rotherhithe (1784-1875).  He and his wife were considerable benefactors to the local community, working closely with Reverend Blick and then Reverend Beck of the parish of St Mary, providing land and money for social projects, including schools and churches.

Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver Street
Named for the famous book Gulliver's Travels.  The author, Jonathan Swift, gave his fictional character Lemuel Gulliver a home in Rotherhithe.

King Stair Close
Named for the nearby waterman's stairs.  These provided access for professional watermen and lightermen to the river frontage.  There were stairs all along the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe frontage of the Thames, usually surrounded by an array of commercial buildings.  Kings Stairs still exist at the top of Cathay Street.

Needleman Street
The neeldemen were dockers who sewed up sacks of grain and other products that had been breached during cargo handling.

Pageant Crescent

Pageant's wharf is known from as early as the late 1600s.  No-one seems to know why it was so-named.  The usual explanation for odd street names is that they were named for a local pub, but there's no record of a public house of that name. Pageant's Wharf was in constant use as a shipyard, producing numerous ships for the Royal Navy, amongst others.  Part of the site was converted into the Lavendar entrance lock in the 1860s, part of it was converted into a fire station and the rest was used as a timber yard.  In the 1990s all traces of it were completely destroyed by Barratts, who built housing over the old site.

Renforth Street

Named for the town of Renforth in New Brunswick, Canada, on the Kennebecasis River, one of the major sources of wood imported into the Rotherhithe docks.  The town of Renforth was itself named after a British rowing champion who died of heart failure in a competition on the Kennebecasis River.

Russell Place
Russell was the surname of the Duke of Bedford.  In 1695 a parcel of land on Rotherhithe was given as a wedding gift by the Howland family of Streatham to their daughter Elizabeth  and her husband the Marquis of Tavistock and the future second Duke of Bedford. Together the families built the Howland Great Dock, a site that was finished in the early 1700s following the granting of an Act in its favour in 1696.

Waterman's Walk

Timber Pond Road
The Rotherhithe timber ponds were established to float timber imported from Canada and the Baltic.  At one stage, timber accounted for 80% of all imports of cargo into Rotherhithe.

Waterman's Walk

Watermen were responsible for ferrying people across and along the Thames in small boats, whilst lightermen carried out the highly skilled task of moving barges with no form of propulsion up and down the Thames. Watermen and lightermen had their own guild.

Bermondsey Yesterday and Today

I've found another local website that appeals to me considerably: Bermondsey Boy.  There are various aspects so the site, but the bit that I particularly like is a section "Bermondsey Yesterday and Today" that compares photographs of Bermondsey in the past, with photographs taken in the same place, often from the same angle, today.

Here's a good example from Rotherhithe's Canon Beck Road (at http://www.bermondseyboy.net/2010/08/16/bermondsey-yesterday-and-today/#post14) but do have a look at the rest of the section.  There are dozens of then-and-now photographs to look through, and they are truly fascinating.  A good use of the Google Maps "Street View" feature.  I love the glimpse of a ship over the wall at the end of the road in the earlier photo. So sad that the lovely block of solid housing was demolished to be replaced by one of the low cost but fashionable architectural schemes that characterize parts of Rotherhithe.  Not that they are unattractive, but their predecessors were really quite lovely in many ways.

Rotherhtihe Street Names - part 2

Again, just for fun, here is the second part of a look at how the streets in Rotherhithe gained their names. 
Part 1 can be found here:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/rotherhithe-street-names-part-1.html
Part 3 is here:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/rotherhithe-street-names-part-3.html

From Linney 1929

Acorn Walk

Named for the Acorn Pond, which was itself name for a pub that no longer stands.  The Acorn Pond was located where the modern housing development was built at Downtown, incorporating the Surrey Docks Medical Centre.  Its purpose was to float the timber imported from Canada and the Balkans.

Brunswick Quay

When Greenland Dock was extended at the end of the Nineteenth Century it absorbed a yard called the Lower Brunswick Yard. The houses and road that make up Brunswick Quay were built over the edges of the yard, which is marked on the 1896 map of Rotherhithe.  New Brunswick in Canada was one of the many sources of the timber that was processed and stored in the Rotherhithe docks, ponds and yards.

Deal Porters Way

The deal porters were the highly skilled handlers of deal - planks of softwood. Many eventually wore leather hoods with tails which were wrapped over the shoulder for protection. Stacking the planks in piles up to 60ft high was highly skilled. The deal porters worked the Surrey Commercial Docks throughout the early and mid 1900s, a job which was passed down from father to son.

Lady Dock, centre right, in 1921

Lady Dock Path
If you ever catch the 381 bus you'll be accustomed to hearing the stop being spoken by the recorded voice "Lady Dock Path, the Ship York." Lady Dock Path was named for Lady Dock, which is shown on the 1894 map of Rotherhithe, and was connected to the Thames first through Norway Dock, which opened into Greenland Dock, which had lock access to the Thames.  In spite of its name, the current path runs through the site of the old Norway Yard,which ran along the east side of Norway Dock, 

Moodkee St

Although I cannot find out what, if any, the local connection may have been, Moodkee refers to a famous battle that took place in the Punjab area of northweast India.  The first battle in the First Sikh War, the Battle of Moodkee took place on 18th December 1845.  Indian and British troops formed a joint force against the Presidency of Bengal's Punjab army, the Sikhs of the Khalsa.  The battle was named for the Punjab town of Moodkee (which can also be spelled Mudki). For more about the battle see http://www.britishbattles.com/first-sikh-war/moodkee.htm. 

Elephant Lane

I have been unable to find out why this street was so-named.  The obvious supposition was that there had been a public house of the name, but I can't find any record of one, so I wonder if it wasn't something to do with the above-mentioned Battle of Moodkee.  As part of the preparation for the battle, stores were moved to the Punjab using three hundred camels and sixty elephants. It seems a bit of an unreasonable stretch, even though the two roads are close to each other, so if anyone has a better answer, do let me know!

Odessa Street

In the early Nineteenth Century Odessa was an important Russian port on the Black Sea, exporting grain and flour.  Some of that grain was brought into Rotherhithe docks, including South Dock, and wharves, including Odessa Wharf.  The Odessa Wharf building, near the Ship and Whale public house, is one of the oldest surviving in Rotherhithe, dating to 1810, and was used for the storage of grain imports.  The original brick-built warehouse has now been converted to apartments, and runs along the side of Randall Rents, a right of way that predates it. 

Onega Gate

Named for Onega Yard, which is marked on the Ordnance Survey 1894-96 map. It was located just north of Norway Dock and immediately fronted Commercial Dock Road, part of which is now Redriff Road. It began at the inlet from Norway Dock into Lady Dock where a swingbridge crossed the cut. It extended the full length of Norway Dock to the east of the bridge where a set of large buildings ran across the end of Norway Dock.  Onega was a Russian coastal town, where English industrialists were granted rights to fell timber and set up sawmills for export to English processing depots. The Onega Yard in Rotherhithe was one such timber import yard.

Randall's Rents
Randall's Rents is a slender alley leading up towards the Thames, along the side of the 1810 Odessa Wharf building, one of the oldest remaining buildings in Rotherhithe. Randall's Rents is the only remaining survivor of a whole network of similar passages which connected the dockers' homes with their dockland workplaces. 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 local shipyard owner, John Randall, who owned houses that he rented to the workers at his yard. The shipyard built many beautiful ships for the Royal Navy, including the HMS Ganges and the HMS Culloden in 1779 and the  HMS Serapis in 1799.  I would love to see what it looked like in those days. 

Ropemaker Road

Rope making was an essential part of ship building activities in the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries.  The bigger the ship, the more rope was required for rigging. Warships and tea clippers were major consumers of rope.  The longer the rope required, the longer the rope-making premises (rope walk) required.  There were various rope walks in the area.  By 1843, the nearest rope walks to Rotherhithe were along the Bermondsey Wall, roughly half way between the Angel public house and St Saviour's Dock. A functional rope walk is still visible in London's Chatham dockyards, which is a quarter of a mile long.  See more about the Chatham rope walk,with photos at http://www.thedockyard.co.uk/NetsiteCMS/pageid/740/About_the_Ropery/explore_ropery.html/About_the_Ropery/explore_ropery.html.

St Paul's Avenue

This road, opposite Globe Wharf, is named for the Nineteenth Century church of St Paul that used to be located here.

Quebec Way

Quebec was one of a number of sources of wood, which was processed and stored in the timber ponds and yards in Rotherhithe.  The 1896 map of Rotherhithe shows a Quebec Pond together with the Quebec Upper and Lower Yards. It is also shown on the 1921 map, above.  The yards ran the length of Russia Dock (now Russia Dock Woodland) on its western side. In the Second World War, on the first day of the London Blitz, the Quebec Yards were bombed by the Luftwaffe. At that time a store for deal timber, the yards burned in an immense fire.  The modern Quebec Way crosses the former site of the pond, where the printing works are also sited.

Dockland and maritime phrases that have survived into colloquial English

Just for fun, here are a few dockland and maritime idioms and phrases that have survived into modern colloquial English.

HMS Victory in 2008.
Photo by Andrea Byrnes

First-rate, second-rate and third-rate
Today if we call something first rate we mean that it is at the top of its class, something really rather special, whereas something third rate is really rather poor.  Originally, these were terms associated with different types of Royal Navy ships of the line that were built in the 16th century at the Deptford Royal Docks, Rotherhithe and elsewhere in Britain.  First-rate ships, which had three decks and around 100 canons, were almost prohibitively expensive to build and maintain, and only a few were in service at any one time.  The HMS Victory, which in preserved in Portsmouth, is the only surviving First-rate ship of the line.   First-rate ships were only built at the Royal docks but third-rate ships could be built at lesser shipyards, including some of those around Rotherhithe.  Each class of ship had its own benefits and a third-rate was not considered to be inferior to a first-rate, so the modern usage of the term has altered the original sense of the rating system.

Toe-rag
Nick name given to grain porters in the docks and convicts in the early 1900s. They wrapped the sacking rags around feet and legs to protect themselves against the sharp grain residues. It has passed into the modern vernacular as a somewhat insulting term applied to individuals who are considered to be generally useless or unpleasant.

Dutch Courage

Free Trade Wharf. Photograph by Adrian Pingston
(Public Domain)

Taking a boat ride from Greenwich to St Katharine's Dock I listened to the crew's commentary, which said that the term Dutch Courage (now used to indicate bravery derived from the consumption of alcohol) actually dates to the Great Plague of London in 1665. The City of London was sealed off to prevent the spread of the plague, which effectively cut it off from any food supply. The story was that the only traders brave enough to approach London were the Dutch, who left food on jetties in return for money that was left there for them. The reference to alcohol comes from the story that the Dutch would drink liquor before entering the area, to bolster their courage The Dutch were granted the freedom of the river Thames in return for this life-saving service. According to the boat's guide, they used to travel down the Thames as far as the wharf now located by the brown "lego" building called Free Trade Wharf. I've never actually found a documentary confirmation for this, but it's a good story! Most of the explanations available for Dutch courage refer to a type of gin developed by the Dutch and consumed by troops during the Thirty Years War.

Money for old rope
Rope which had deteriorated to the point where it could no longer be used as rope was sold to prisons and workhouses where it was dismantled into its original fibres. This product was known as "oakum" and was used to seal the gaps in ship decks. The payment for the redundant rope became known as "money for old rope".

Flotsam and Jetsam
Two separate terms for things that were found floating on the sea or river surface in the 16th and 17th Centuries.  Today, the words are used together to indicate that something (or someone) is worthless.  In the past, flotsam referred to items that were released by the action of the sea itself or were accidentally released into the water (like the remains of a sunken ship), and jetsam referred to items that were deliberately thrown overboard from ships. 

Rotherhithe street names - Part 1

Brunel's tunnel

Just for fun, this is the first in a series of posts about how Rotherhithe streets got their names.   Some of them, like Brunel Road, are very easy to explain.  Others are much less obvious.

Part 2 of this short series can be found here:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/rotherhtihe-street-names-part-2.html
Part 3 is at:
http://russiadock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/rotherhithe-street-names-part-3.html



Brunel Road

No prizes for guessing that this road was named for Sir Marc Brunel, architect and engineer of the Thames Tunnel, the world's first tunnel to pass under a river. Marc Brunel was supported in the project during its earliest stages by his better known son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Brunel Engine House is now a museum in Rotherhithe village, and part of the tunnel which has been available for public viewing should be open again in 2010 when the East London line re-opens.

Gataker Street

Named after Thomas Gataker who was a Puritan and the rector of St Mary's in Rotherhithe village from 1611-54. There's a biography of him on the A Puritan's Mind website.

Lower Road

This was formerly called Deptford Lower Road and was the lower (most southerly) of two roads available to take from Deptford to London Bridge. Rotherhithe Street, the longest road in London, followed the line of the Thames and, at least when Samuel Pepys was frequenting the area, was considered a fairly dangerous route for the wealthy to travel alone.  This was the upper road.  A new second route, which was simply known as the lower of the two roads was safer and shorter, following a line from Deptford that bypassed the need to go around the perimeter of Rotherhithe. 

Paradise Street
The palace of Edward III was referred to as "paradise," and seems to refer to an enclosed property. The ruins remain visible outside the Angel public house, at Bermondsey Wall East.

Rotherhithe 1911

Redriff Road

The term Redriff is another name for Rotherhithe. There are a number of theories about where the name comes from. One is that older maps mark red gravel beds, so the name might have meant "red reef".

Rupack Street

This is connected to the story of Prince Lee Boo, who was brought back to England from the Pelau Islands to be educated. The story is shown on an earlier post. Prince Lee Boo's father was the island's king or, in the local language "rupack".

Salter Road

This road was named after Dr Albert Salter. Dr Salter started work at Guy's Hospital in the late 1880s but was so shocked by the poverty of patients that he was treating in the Bermondsey area that decided to devote his energies to improving conditions in the area. He moved into Bermondsey (his house can still be seen in Wilson Grove) and established several institutions to support local people including an insurance society, a home for convalescing patients in Kent and a school on Sunday mornings for adults. He continued to work as a doctor, charging a minimal fee for patient visits. Dr Salter's wife Ada was London's first female mayor. Their only daughter, Joyce, died in 1910 of Scarlet Feaver at the age of eight.

Teredo Street

The Teredo is actually a bivalve mollusc, but its more common name is a shipworm because it appears worm-like due to its elongated body and reduced trilobed shell, which is specialised for wood boring. The Teredo was an absolute plague to the builders of wooden ships and other submerged wooden items like piers, pilings and docks. From the late fifteenth century attempts were made to protect wooden hulls from this sort of invasion by the application of copper sheathing.  A good example of hull sheathing can be seen today on the Cutty Sark in Greenwich, following her restoration.  The Teredo was also the inspiration behind Marc Brunel's design for the manufacture of Rotherhithe's Thames Tunnel.