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Filling in the gaps of Erith’s history
By Linda Piper
Cliff Pereira holds nutmeg other spices at the display of Erith's town
history BE1328-02
* Cliff Pereira holds nutmeg other spices at the display of Erith's
town history BE1328-02
A new exhibition has just opened in Erith Museum which uncovers an
intriguing new dimension to the town's history. Chief reporter LINDA
PIPER finds out more ...
ROGER Griffith said in his account of the Thames in 1746: "Erith, a
small town on the Kentish shore, is remarkable for little else but
smuggling".
But as researcher Cliff Pereira has revealed, there was a whole lot more
to Erith in the 17th and 18th Centuries than contraband.
It has taken him four months of painstaking work to plug a gap in the
town's history, searching through maps and ship's manifests and diaries.
Mr Pereira, 45, from Springfield Road, Welling, even found someone with
his own surname staying at the Running Horses pub during the 1881
census.
He said: "Most people know about the Royal dockyards of Henry VIII and
the growth of industry on the riverfront in Victorian times.
"But I wanted to know what was going on in between."
In fact Erith had become an important part of one of England's
best-known monopolies the East India Company.
Because the Thames is comparatively shallow between Woolwich and Erith,
it was impossible for the company to send its ships from the Port of
London, fully laden.
So they sailed down river to Erith, where they took on ballast and heavy
goods before setting sail for the Far East.
And on the homeward journey, they would off-load cargo and ballast
before returning to London with the remainder of their goods.
The exhibition gives a flavour of the sort of cargoes being carried and
how the modern-day industries of Erith grew from their beginnings with
the East India Company.
It also traces the links between well-known land-owning families such as
the Wheatleys and the company.
An engraving from the 1700s (below) shows dozens of ships sailing down
the Thames and several moored off Erith.
If you look carefully you can see the houses scattered down the
riverfront and a pier stretching out into the river.
The houses are also likely to have included company warehouses.
One of the star exhibits of the exhibition, which also coincides with
Black History Month, is a clay pipe recovered, like many others, from
the Erith foreshore.
The pipes were tossed overboard by sailors and most are completely plain
in design.
But this one has a bowl in the shape of an African's head.
Mr Pereira explained: "The pipe would have been filled with tobacco,
probably from Virginia.
"It happens that an agent local to Erith, called Biggs, had plantations
in Virginia, at Chesapeake Bay, which grew tobacco, rice and indigo.
"And the workers on those plantations were likely to have been slaves
from West Africa."
The use of saltpetre as ballast on homeward journeys and its use in
making gunpowder resulted in powder houses developing along the
riverfront the precursor to the later armaments industry.
Cotton and linen bales were off-loaded for bleaching in Crayford, a
forerunner of the textile industry in the area which ended with the
closure of the David Evans silk mills.
Even for those who think they know the history of Erith, this is a
fascinating exhibition, made more so by Mr Pereira's running commentary
on the exhibits.
It is hoped he may be persuaded to give some talks at the museum about
the free exhibition, while it is still on display.
The exhibition runs until the end of December and the museum, in Walnut
Tree Road, Erith, is open on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2.15pm to
5.15pm and on Saturdays from 2.15pm to 4.45pm.
11:45am Wednesday 19th October 2005
