Thamesmead

There is probably no area within the London Borough of Bexley that generates more comment and discussion than Thamesmead, a huge development of high- and low-rise blocks with interconnecting walkways that covers 130 acres of former marshland in the north of the borough near the River Thames.

Since the first residents moved into what was then a new riverside town in the late 1960s, the area has been plagued with social problems ranging from high crime levels with graffiti and vandalism to a lack of amenities such as shops and schools.

Many problems relate to the behaviour of a displaced population, most of whom came from areas of so-called ‘slum housing’ in the East End. But when the building of the town was first suggested in the early 1960s most of those involved had the feeling that the scheme would solve many of the social problems of inner-city London. They were encouraged in this by Thamesmead’s innovative design and the fact that it would provide an enormous number of new homes for the most needy people and was using land that was to all intents and purposes redundant.

Lesnes Abbey

The history of the site’s development dates far back beyond the Middle Ages. The area that Thamesmead now occupies was originally uninhabited marshland known either as Erith Marshes or Plumstead Marshes (it straddled what is now the border of the two London Boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley).

As early as the Bronze Age humans were active on the marshes, as evidenced by the discovery of a brushwood trackway during excavations for building the spine road through Erith in 1997.

Augustinian monks from Lesnes Abbey were the first people known to have reclaimed and drained land in the area. The Abbey had been founded in the 12th century by Sir Richard de Lucy on slightly higher ground to the south of Thamesmead. The monks cultivated their own crops and reared domestic animals and for this they needed level ground. They began draining land in the area now occupied by Thamesmead. The River Thames originally came right up to Lesnes Abbey and it is said that the monks used to fish from the abbey walls – sharks’ teeth have been found in the Abbey Woods.

In his History of Kent, Edward Hasted states that in 1279 the monks of Lesnes ‘enclosed a great part of their marsh near Plumstead’. This type of small-scale cultivation and animal farming was also taken up by local people, but in general the land was too wet and marshy to justify any attempt at large-scale farming.

The Royal Arsenal

The area also had great military and naval importance. In 1515 Henry VIII (r.1509 – 1547) ordered the building of the warship Henri Grace à Dieu as part of an effort to improve and enlarge the English Navy and to this end established a major dockyard at Woolwich, very close to the area now occupied by Thamesmead.

It was from this point onwards that the area became an important naval and military centre. The Thamesmead site, mostly on the Greenwich side of the boundary, was used for storing ordnance or ammunition from as early as 1565 and gradually more and more land was given over to what became the Royal Arsenal.

This institution made and tested guns and ammunition. The land was ideal for this purpose, as there were still very few people living in the area. In addition the marshy ground deadened the impact of explosions and therefore was safer when testing ammunition. One of the weapons tested on the marshes near Plumstead was called Mallet’s Mortar. It was meant to be portable but ended up weighing 42 tons! Mallet’s Mortar was not a successful invention – on its first test firing in October 1857 a fracture appeared in the metal and the project was abandoned.

The Royal Arsenal brought much-needed trade to the area as people employed in the munitions factories came to live in the nearby towns and villages. The area became more and more important militarily throughout the 18th and 19th centuries – England was at war with many countries, including France and Spain. The Crimean War of 1854 – 56 placed big demands on the Arsenal.

By the beginning of the First World War the Arsenal was operating at full capacity, providing employment for 73,000 people. However, partly because of isolated Zeppelin raids on the Arsenal during the First World War, officials became worried about the manufacture and testing of guns and ammunition so close to densely populated areas. The Arsenal was now surrounded by residential developments as London expanded further and further outwards. Therefore from the 1920s onwards the site was scaled down. Both the testing and manufacture of weapons were moved to more remote and secret areas.

The Second World War merely confirmed the need to move the Arsenal elsewhere. Its location was well known and it was easily visible, with the result that the Luftwaffe could target it for bombing raids – and this meant that surrounding residential areas were also badly damaged.

After the Second World War the Arsenal was less and less used. By the late 1950s the London County Council (LCC) had earmarked part of the land – together with about 500 acres of virgin marshland at Erith – to form the site for a new riverside town development to help cope with the demand for housing in the London area.

The Need For Housing

By this time, largely due to the effects of the war, London’s housing situation was critical. Pre-fabricated houses such as the ones that stood for a time in Brook Street, Belvedere, were being put up as a temporary measure to cope with the shortage. But a long-term solution was desperately needed. Some of London’s overcrowded population might be tempted out to Harlow, Hatfield and other towns built outside the metropolis in response to the New Towns Act of 1946, but it was clear that a development within the capital was also needed.

In 1963 a report highlighted the age and condition of much of the housing in inner London and declared that 500,000 new homes were needed in the following 10 years. The Erith marshland had been mostly unused but some was given over to allotments that were cultivated by the residents of Abbey Wood. The area was inhospitable and unsuitable for housing, but the expansion of London meant that land was desperately needed.

Over the years various efforts were made to drain the land and protect it from flooding. The site originally chosen for development by the then London County Council straddled the London Boroughs of Bexley and Greenwich, which were created in the mid-1960s.

Thamesmead was actually developed by the London County Council’s successor, the Greater London Council (GLC), in conjunction with these two boroughs. The Ministry of Defence’s decision in the early 1960s to give the LCC 1000 acres of marshland previously occupied by the Royal Arsenal gave impetus to the project.

In 1966 the Woolwich-Erith Project, as it was then known, was formally launched by Sir William Fiske. In the foreword to the launch document, Sir William wrote: "It would be hard to exaggerate either the challenge or the opportunity which this three-mile stretch of London’s riverside offers to all those concerned with the planning and execution of its development. From land which has for centuries formed the marshes of Plumstead and Erith and in part has been given over to the munitions of war, a community of 60,000 will rise over the next 10-15 years. Between the broad reaches of the Thames and the hills of Abbey and Bostall Woods, a desolate scene will be transformed for the well-being of Londoners." (Woolwich-Erith: A Riverside Project, Greater London Council, 1966)

The project was not without its critics, who described the choice of location as ‘ridiculous’ because of the problems involved in land reclamation and building on peat, and also because of pollution from the nearby sewage works and heavy industry and incineration on both sides of the river.

The architect Richard MacCormac appraised the project in the Architects’ Journal in 1972 and made reference to this, stating how absurd was: ‘the decision to build a new community at Thamesmead, on 20ft of peat, next to a major sewage works and under an umbrella of pollution from Barking (on the north bank) and Belvedere power stations, which is obnoxious enough to prohibit building above 200ft’.

But the architects saw the problems associated with the site as a challenge. They were determined to design buildings that would thrive in this type of environment. There was the added incentive of offering homes to 60,000 Londoners who were desperate for decent housing.

‘Town On Stilts’

The initial idea was to build a series of villages on concrete platforms linked by bridges to keep the residential areas well above ground level and therefore safe from the threat of flooding. This plan was originally dubbed the ‘town on stilts’.

Architects working on the project visited The Netherlands several times to look at buildings in the Dutch Polders (areas of land reclaimed from the sea in a region very similar to the Thamesmead site). However, the release of more land meant the project was completely rethought and the result is what you see today.

Before any actual work on residential buildings could begin the engineers had to ensure that the site would be suitable for the builders. To this end a new central pumping station was provided, linked to canals and channels to ensure efficient drainage of what was still marshland. Three miles (5km) of Thamesmead’s riverbanks were raised and strengthened to prevent any future flooding. But water draining onto the marshes could only be discharged into the Thames either side of low tide and so had to be stored somewhere temporarily. The architects came up with the innovative solution of building into the design of the site five lakes, which as well as being functional in storing water could also be used as amenities for the population and would be aesthetically pleasing as well. The first of these lakes, none of which would be more that 2ft (0.6m) deep was Southmere Lake, opened officially in 1971.

In addition, earlier building foundations had to be excavated (these were recycled for use in road construction) and transport networks had to be set up before any building could start. Since about the year 1700, attempts to reclaim the land had mostly involved using convict labour to infill the marshland with various materials – including, in later years, rubble from the bombing of London during the Second World War. Obviously this type of labour could not be relied upon to have done an efficient job and no one had any real idea of the type of material used to infill.

Skilled engineers took samples and assessed how well the land would support the building of a major residential area. As a result of this survey some areas had to be refilled or stabilised. Another necessary preparation was to move munitions and incendiary devices from the site. This proved to be a huge task and was never completed – many unexploded bombs and bullets were found during the laying of the foundations and also subsequently by local children.

Building Begins

Finally, however, the site was declared ready for construction. Building of the first ‘neighbourhood’ (as the different areas were called) near Abbey Wood began in January 1967. This was later known as Newacres. The first phase of the building of Thamesmead comprised three stages and was in the area bounded by the railway line, Harrow Manor Way, the sewer bank and the Crossness Sewage Treatment Works. It comprised just over 4000 homes.

Even today the different areas in Thamesmead are referred to as Area 1 or Area 3, depending on when they were built. The first two stages were built using concrete slabs that were then fitted together, with the main accommodation on the first and second floors to reduce the danger of flooding. (Abbey Wood was badly flooded in 1953.)

Space for car parking and garages was located under the accommodation and walkways connected the different buildings. The piled foundations, in addition to lifting the areas to be inhabited above the danger of flooding, also served to transmit the weight of the structures through the clay, peat and alluvium to the load-bearing gravel stratum below.

This method of building was changed to more conventional, lower-level brick building after the river walls were raised and the danger of flooding subsequently reduced. The first residential construction, part of Stages I and II, was the five-storey tower block at Coralline Walk and Binsey Walk comprising 4/5 person maisonettes and old people’s flats.

Stage III was delayed for a variety of reasons, including the discussion over the merits of high-rise tower blocks and also because of worries over the possible impact on the new town of the river crossing that was being discussed at the time. There were doubts, too, over the suitability of the heavy concrete building system for this type of housing and as a result for many of the low-rise parts of Stage III the architects reverted to brick build.

The train-like blocks were however integral to the whole design as they were meant to act as noise and wind barriers for the lower-rise housing they surrounded and they were finally completed in the area to the north of the sewer bank in the early 1980s.

First Residents

The name Thamesmead was chosen by a local resident, Anthony Walton, who won £20 for his suggestion. The first family, the Gooches, moved into their ‘luxury, three-bedroomed maisonette’ in Coralline Walk in June 1968 to much fanfare and publicity. But problems, notably ‘rain penetration’, had already been encountered with the new housing (even in the show home!) and no more residents moved in until the following year.

The building of Thamesmead was only the first part of making the town work. As residents began to arrive from the housing waiting lists of inner London, so attention turned to the incoming population. It wasn’t only the needy and destitute who ended up at Thamesmead – many people were desperate to move to the new town partly as a result of the publicity. Many were lured by the GLC’s glossy brochures featuring lakes with yachts and colourful artists’ impressions of tree-lined canals coupled with ultra modern accommodation.

Thamesmead also had its own nature reserve called Tump 53 on reclaimed Royal Arsenal ground (‘tump’ refers to a hillock or mound).

The planners had stressed the need for a proper community to develop at Thamesmead and had tried to facilitate this by designing many different types of housing on the one site (different sizes, tenures, private, public, etc), which they hoped would result in a mix of social classes and age groups. In addition the first council tenants to be moved to the town had been fairly well vetted to check that their housing records were good.

The GLC, for the first time, also appointed a community development officer specifically to cater for the needs of the new community and to help people settle.

A New Town Within a City

Unlike other outlying new towns such as Milton Keynes, Thamesmead benefited from its central location, which meant that people were more willing to move to it. In addition, excellent transport facilities meant it was very easy to get to and from central London. Uniquely, although Thamesmead was a ‘new town’ and built on the scale of the early post-war towns, it was a new town built within a capital city. It may seem hard to believe it today, but when Thamesmead was being built and even long after the first families had arrived, coach loads of professional visitors would descend on the area to consider the architectural and sociological aspects of the development.

Surveys have revealed that 47 per cent of residents in the town worked in Central London, emphasising this point. The plan for Thamesmead was that it should be a self-contained, balanced community with facilities for such things as recreation, housing and education fully provided for within the town itself.

However, by the end of the development of Stage III Greenwich Council were finding it hard to fill vacancies in the high-rise blocks and accusations of the dumping of anti-social tenants in Thamesmead by other councils were already beginning to surface.

By 1980 these empty dwellings were becoming a serious problem and vandalism and graffiti were becoming rife. The GLC tried several ‘offers’ to fill this housing – to single people or groups of single people willing to share or on a first-come, first-served basis to people willing to take on a property in need of repair. These had some success, as have the efforts by Thamesmead Town Ltd in attracting people, but they have inevitably compromised the initial vision for the community.

Thamesmead was developed and managed by the Greater London Council up until the abolition of the GLC in 1986. A referendum was held in October 1985 to find out how local residents wanted Thamesmead to be run after the council’s abolition. The majority of voters wanted the area to be managed by a private company run by residents, so in March 1986 Thamesmead became the first residential estate in the country to be run by a private company controlled entirely by residents. Thamesmead Town is a company limited by guarantee, it has no share capital and is non-profit distributing. The board of 12 manages not only the residential development but also the commercial areas, open spaces, recreational facilities and industrial estates.

There are ambitious plans for the development of a proper town centre and also riverside housing development. Thamesmead Town now has about 45,000 residents.

Crossness

The Crossness Pumping Station stands at the northern tip of Thamesmead, right beside the river in an area now occupied by the Thames Water Authority Sewage Treatment Works. The station was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1865 and was built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who at that time was the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Board of Works. In those days sewage from the nearby area was pumped untreated into the River Thames and Crossness was part of Bazalgette’s new system of sewers and treatment works intended as the solution to the poor sanitation levels in the capital.

It was hoped that this would in turn greatly improve the health of Londoners and particularly their resistance to epidemics of typhoid and cholera that were fairly commonplace in the mid-19th century.

The engines at the works picked up the effluent from the sewage outfall works and held it until after each high tide so that when it was pumped out into the River Thames the tide would carry it out to sea.

The station and its engines are slowly being restored by the Crossness Engines Trust and the engine house is one of the few Grade I listed industrial buildings in the Greater London area. The engines were last working in 1953 and are the largest surviving rotary beam engines in the country and probably in the world.

Bibliography

Thamesmead: Back to the Future – A Social History of Thamesmead, Wigfall, Valerie G., Greenwich Community College Press, 1997

The Development of Thamesmead, Marechal, Brigitte, Universite de Paris XII, Val de Marne, 1978
(unpublished thesis)

Thamesmead: A Riverside Development, Greater London Council, 1967