Deptford
Deptford is an area on the south bank of the River Thames in southeast London, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and London Borough of Lewisham. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne. From the mid 16th century to the late 19th it was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards. This was a major shipbuilding dock and attracted Peter the Great to come and study shipbuilding. Deptford and the docks are associated with the knighting of Sir Francis Drake by Queen Elizabeth I aboard the Golden Hind, the legend of Sir Walter Raleigh laying down his cape for Elizabeth, Captain James Cook's third voyage aboard HMS Resolution, and the mysterious apparent murder of Christopher Marlowe in a house along Deptford Strand.
Though Deptford began as two small communities, one at the ford, and the other a fishing village on the Thames, Deptford's history and population has been mainly associated with the docks established by Henry VIII. The two communities grew together and flourished during the period when the docks were the main administrative centre of the Royal Navy, and some grand houses like Sayes Court, home to diarist John Evelyn, and Stone House on Lewisham Way, were erected. The area declined as first the Royal Navy moved out, and then the commercial docks themselves declined until the last dock, Convoys Wharf, closed in 2000.
A Metropolitan Borough of Deptford existed from 1900 until 1965, when the area became part of the newly created London Borough of Lewisham.
History
Ancient
Deptford took its name from a ford across the Ravensbourne along the route of the Celtic trackway which was later paved by the Romans and developed into the medieval Watling Street. The modern name is a corruption of "deep ford".Deptford was part of the pilgrimage route from London to Canterbury used by the pilgrims in Chaucer's late 14th century Canterbury Tales, including a mention in the prologue to "The Reeve's Tale". The ford developed into first a wooden then a stone bridge, and in 1497 saw the Battle of Deptford Bridge, in which rebels from Cornwall, led by Michael An Gof, marched on London protesting against punitive taxes, but were soundly beaten by the forces of King Henry VII.
Early modern
A second settlement, Deptford Strand or Deptford Strond, developed as a modest fishing village on the Thames until Henry VIII used that site for a royal dock for repairing, building and supplying ships, after which it grew in size and importance, shipbuilding remaining in operation until March 1869.Trinity House, the organisation concerned with the safety of navigation around the British Isles, was formed in Deptford in 1514, with its first Master being Thomas Spert, captain of the Mary Rose. It moved to Stepney in 1618. The name "Trinity House" derives from the church of Holy Trinity and St Clement, which adjoined the dockyard.
The Thames at Deptford was the scene of an aquatic pageant and water tournament on 19 June 1550 devised by Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln, for Edward VI. The first part of the entertainment saw combatants strive to throw their opponents into the river. After supper, a pretend fortress built on a boat and defended by William Wynter and a galley was attacked by sailors in four pinnaces. After a fire fight, Clinton won the castle.
Originally separated by market gardens and fields, the two settlements merged over the years, with the docks becoming an important part of the Elizabethan exploration. Queen Elizabeth I visited the royal dockyard on 4 April 1581 to knight the adventurer Francis Drake. As well as for exploration, Deptford was important for trade – the Honourable East India Company had a yard in Deptford from 1607 until late in the 17th century, later taken over by the General Steam Navigation Company. It was also connected with the slave trade, John Hawkins using it as a base for his operations, and Olaudah Equiano, the slave who became an important part of the abolition of the slave trade, was sold from one ship's captain to another in Deptford around 1760.
Diarist John Evelyn lived in Deptford at Sayes Court, the manor house of Deptford, from 1652 after he had married the daughter of the owner of the house, Sir Richard Browne. After the Restoration, Evelyn obtained a 99-year lease of the house and grounds, and laid out meticulously planned gardens in the French style, of hedges and parterres. In its grounds was a cottage at one time rented by master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons. After Evelyn had moved to Surrey in 1694, Peter the Great, the Russian tsar, studied shipbuilding for three months in 1698 while staying at Sayes Court. Evelyn was angered at the antics of the tsar, who got drunk with his friends who, using a wheelbarrow with Peter in it, rammed their way through a "fine holly hedge". Sayes Court was demolished in 1728-9 and a workhouse built on its site. Part of the estates around Sayes Court were purchased in 1742 for the building of the Navy Victualling Yard, which was renamed the Royal Victoria Victualling Yard in 1858 after a visit by Queen Victoria. This massive facility included warehouses, a bakery, a cattleyard/abattoir and sugar stores, and closed in 1961. All that remains is the name of Sayes Court Park, accessed from Sayes Court Street off Evelyn Street, not far from Deptford High Street. The Pepys Estate, opened on 13 July 1966, is on the former grounds of the Victualling Yard.
The Docks had been gradually declining from the 18th century; the larger ships being built found the Thames difficult to navigate, and Deptford was under competition from the new docks at Plymouth, Portsmouth and Chatham.
19th century
When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 the need for a Docks to build and repair warships declined; the Docks shifted from shipbuilding to concentrate on victualling at the Royal Victoria Victualling Yard, and the Royal Dock closed in 1869. From 1871 until 1913 the shipyard site was the City of London Corporation's Foreign Cattle Market, to which live animals were brought by cattle boat from four continents and from whence came about half of London's meat supply.20th century
The yard was taken over by the War Office in 1914, and was an Army Supply Reserve Depot in the First and Second World Wars. The site lay unused until being purchased by Convoys in 1984, and eventually came into the ownership of News International. In the mid-1990s, although significant investment was made on the site, it became uneconomic to continue using it as a freight wharf. In 2008 Hutchison Whampoa bought the 16ha site from News International with plans for a £700m 3,500-home development scheme. The Grade II listed Olympia Warehouse will be refurbished as part of the redevelopment of the site.Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Blitz in the Second World War – in November 1944 a V-2 rocket destroyed a Woolworths store in New Cross Gate, killing 160 people - contributing to the 703 civilian deaths caused by enemy action within Deptford Metropolitan Borough throughout the war. High unemployment caused some of the population to move away as the riverside industries closed down in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
21st century
The local council have developed plans with private companies to regenerate the riverside area, and the town centre.Governance
The Manor of Deptford or West Greenwich was bestowed by William the Conqueror upon Gilbert de Magminot or Maminot, bishop of Lisieux, one of the eight barons associated with John de Fiennes for the defence of Dover Castle. Maminot held the head of his barony at Deptford and according to John Lyon writing in 1814, he built himself a castle, or castellated mansion at Deptford. The location of the building is not known, but ancient foundations found on the brow of Broomfield, near the Mast Dock and adjacent to Sayes Court may be the remains of the building.File:South London Map 1800.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|South of London in 1800. The border between Surrey and Kent is shown running through Deptford, with parts of the area in each county.
Deptford was mostly located in the Blackheath Hundred of the county of Kent, with the Hatcham part in the Brixton Hundred of Surrey.
In 1730 Deptford was divided into the two parishes of St Nicholas and St Paul. It was also referred to as West Greenwich, with the modern town of Greenwich being referred to as East Greenwich until this use declined in the 19th century. The whole of Deptford came within the Metropolitan Police District in 1830 and was included in the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1855.
It was transferred to the County of London in 1889. Originally under the governance of the ancient parishes of St Paul and St Nicholas, in 1900, a Metropolitan Borough of Deptford was formed out of the southern parish of St Paul, with St Nicholas and the area around the Royal Dockyard coming under the governance of the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich.
Under the London Government Act 1963, the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford was absorbed in 1965 into the newly created London Borough of Lewisham, with the Deptford St Nicholas area becoming part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, with both these new boroughs now forming part of the new Greater London body. In 1994 the bulk of the northern part, including the former Royal Dockyard area, was transferred to Lewisham, an adjustment of about, leaving only the north eastern area, around St Nicholas's church, in Greenwich.
Deptford is split between two electoral wards - Evelyn in the north and part of New Cross to the south. Following public consultation, the Local Government Boundary Commission for England recommended in June 2020 that the Deptford wards should be unified and renamed Deptford.