Place:Deptford, Kent, England

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Deptford (/ˈdɛtfərd/ DET-fərd) is a district of south-east London, England, within the London Borough of Lewisham.

From the mid-16th to the late 19th century, Deptford was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first Royal Navy Dockyard. The area declined as the Royal Navy moved out and commercial docks shut; the last dock, Convoys Wharf, closed in 2000.

Historically a part of Kent, Deptford became a Metropolitan Borough in 1900. This became part of Inner London in 1965, within the newly created county of Greater London.[1]

History

Deptford began life as a ford of the Ravensbourne (near what is now Deptford Bridge DLR station) along the route of the Celtic trackway which was later paved by the Romans and developed into the medieval Watling Street.[2] The modern name is a corruption of "deep ford".[3]

Deptford was part of the pilgrimage route from London to Canterbury used by the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and is mentioned in the Prologue to the "Reeve's Tale".[4] 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 King's forces.[5]

A second settlement, Deptford Strand, developed as a modest fishing village on the Thames until Henry VIII used that site for a royal dock repairing, building and supplying ships, after which it grew in size and importance, shipbuilding remaining in operation until March 1869.[6] 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.[7]

Originally separated by market gardens and fields, the two areas merged over the years,[8] with the docks becoming an important part of the Elizabethan exploration.[9] Queen Elizabeth I visited the royal dockyard on 4 April 1581 to knight the adventurer Francis Drake.[10] 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,[11] later (1825) 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,[12] 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.[13][14]

Diarist John Evelyn lived in Deptford at Sayes Court from 1652. Evelyn inherited the house when he married the daughter of Sir Richard Browne in 1652. On his return to England at the Restoration, Evelyn 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, Russian Tsar Peter the Great studied shipbuilding for three months in 1698.[10] He and some of his fellow Russians stayed at Sayes Court, the manor house of Deptford. Evelyn was angered at the antics of the Tsar, who got drunk with his friends and, 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.[15] 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 Victualing Yard in 1858 after a visit by Queen Victoria.[16] 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 Victualing Yard.[17]

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.[18] 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.[19] From 1871 until the First World War the shipyard site was the City of London Corporation's Foreign Cattle Market,[20] in which girls and women butchered sheep and cattle until the early part of the 20th century.[21][nb 1] At its peak, around 1907, over 234,000 animals were imported annually through the market, but by 1912 these figures had declined to less than 40,000 a year.[22] The yard was taken over by the War Office in 1914,[22][23] and was an Army Supply Reserve Depot in the First and Second World Wars.[24][25] The site lay unused until being purchased by Convoys (newsprint importers) in 1984, and eventually came into the ownership of News International.[26][27] In the mid-1990s, although significant investment was made on the site, it became uneconomic to continue using it as a freight wharf.[28] In 2008 Hutchison Whampoa bought the 16ha site from News International with plans for a £700m 3,500-home development scheme.[29] The Grade II listed Olympia Warehouse will be refurbished as part of the redevelopment of the site.[27]

Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War - a V-2 rocket destroyed a Woolworths store (now New Cross Gate),[30] killing 160 people.[31][32] High unemployment caused some of the population to move away as the riverside industries closed down in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[33] The local council have developed plans with private companies to regenerate the riverside area,[34] and the town centre.[35]

Governance The Manor of Deptford or West Greenwich was bestowed by William the Conqueror upon Gilbert de Magminot or Maminot, bishop of Lisieux,[36] 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[37][38] and according to John Lyon writing in 1814, he built himself a castle, or castellated mansion at Deptford, of which all traces had by then long since been buried in their ruins, but from the remains of some ancient foundations which had been discovered the site was probably on the brow of Broomfield, near the Mast Dock and adjacent to Sayes Court.[37][38][39]

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.[1]

Under the London Government Act 1963, the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford was absorbed in 1965 into the newly created London Borough of Lewisham,[40] with the area around the Royal Dockyard being transferred to Lewisham in a 1994 boundary adjustment of about 40 hectares (99 acres).[41] The electoral wards consist of Evelyn in the north and part of New Cross to the south.[42]

Geography View of Pepys Park, Convoys Wharf, Sayes Court, and over Deptford towards Lewisham

Deptford borders the areas of Brockley and Lewisham to the south, New Cross to the west and Rotherhithe to the north west; Deptford Creek divides it from Greenwich to the east, and the River Thames separates the area from the Isle of Dogs to the north east; it is contained within the London SE8 post code area.[43] The area referred to as North Deptford is the only part of the London Borough of Lewisham to front the Thames and is sandwiched between Rotherhithe and Greenwich. Much of this riverside estate is populated by the former Naval Dockyards, now known as Convoys Wharf, the Pepys Estate and some eastern fringes of the old Surrey Commercial Docks.

The name Deptford — anciently written Depeford meaning "deep ford"[15] — is derived from the place where the road from London to Dover, the ancient Watling Street (now the A2), crosses the River Ravensbourne at the site of what became Deptford Bridge at Deptford Broadway. The Ravensbourne crosses under the A2 at roughly the same spot as the DLR crosses over; and at the point where it becomes tidal, just after Lewisham College, it is known as Deptford Creek, and flows into the River Thames at Greenwich Reach.[44]

Deptford was mostly located in the Blackheath Hundred of the county of Kent, with the Hatcham part in Surrey.[45] It was regarded as two parts and in 1730 was divided into the two parishes of St Nicholas in the north and St Paul in the south.[15] The southern part by the ford was known as Deptford and the northern, riverside area was known as Deptford Strand.[46] 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.[47] 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 and became part of Greater London in 1965.

The area was split in 1900: the southern part, the parish of St Paul Deptford, became the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford;[48] while the northern part, the parish of St Nicholas Deptford, became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich.[49] In 1965 the Metropolitan Borough of Deptford was absorbed into the London Borough of Lewisham, then in 1994 the bulk of the northern part, including the former Royal Dockyard area, was transferred to Lewisham Borough from Greenwich Borough, leaving only the north eastern area, around St Nicholas's church, in Greenwich.[41]