Sugar House Island
Sugar House Island is a triangular-shaped 26-acre (10-hectare) area of land in the River Lea near Stratford, just south of the Olympic Park in the London Borough of Newham and part of the historic Three Mills district. The site is part of the Lower Lea Valley, and connects into 26 miles of waterside paths[1].
Heritage[edit]
HOrigin[edit]
Sugar House Island takes its name from a building (The Sugar House) which has long been a local landmark on the Three Mills Wall River waterfront as well as a road which runs through the development (Sugar House Lane). Both are thought to be named after the sugar refinery which operated on site from the early nineteenth century. The refinery was controlled by the Law Brothers, and then by William Corrie in 1853. It was set back on the south side of High Street, Stratford immediately west of Three Mills River.[2]
Frank Lewis asserts that The Sugar House is itself the earliest sugar refinery in Essex.[4] However the date now revealed by cleaning in the bricks on the front of The Sugar House (1882) indicates that this Victorian structure post-dates the last recorded existence of the sugar refinery by a number of decades. The 1894 Ordnance Survey[5] map shows where The Sugar House has been erected, in the cooperage believed to have served the gin mills by making barrels for the meat from its pigs.
The Sugar House is in a Conservation Area on site and is notable for its red brick finish with strong vertical accents through the buttresses which emphasise its industrial function. Its main architectural feature is a first-storey Diocletian window, with some Art-deco embellishment in the surrounding brickwork.
Mills[edit]
There are eight mills recorded at Three Mills in The Domesday Book, making The River Lea’s mills among the earliest tidal mills ever recorded.
During the Middle Ages, Stratford Langthorne Abbey acquired large amounts of land in the area. The Cistercian monks were skilled engineers who constructed artificial river-edge walls with wooden piles, compacting mud in behind with their bare feet. The mills are unusual for taking advantage of the tidal flow up the Thames Estuary and Bow Creek. A sluice trapped water at high tide and then released it at a controlled rate to drive the mill wheel on the ebb. At Three Mills, the outflowing water turned four large wheels driving twelve pairs of millstones.
By the time Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in the 1530s, the mills were grinding flour for the bakers of Stratford, celebrated for the quality of their bread and supplied the London. [1]
It is recorded that the mills also produced gunpowder for a short period in the 1580s.[6]
During the sixteenth century the three mills were reduced to two, and in the seventeenth century the mills began using the grain to distil alcohol. Three Mills became a major supplier to the alcohol trade and Gin Craze of London. The mills were part of an efficient supply chain supporting numerous other companies in the area. The mills generated direct work for its own workers, as well as carpenters and coopers locally. It also supplied a large piggery with the mash from the gin. In turn the piggery supplied meat to the Royal Navy Victualling Office (no doubt requiring barrels from the cooperage) and it supplied bones to Bow Porcelain Factory which began to thrive at Bow as well as fat to a soap making factory on site.
The current House Mill was built in 1776 on the site of an earlier mill and between two houses occupied by the miller and his family, hence its name. The Clock Mill opposite was rebuilt in 1817[7]. Ownership changed relatively frequently during the 17th to late 19th centuries, until 1872 when the Nicholson family, already well established as a gin producer, bought the site.
A third mill, powered by wind, survived until about 1840. The House Mill continued to operate until 1941 when the mills sustained severe air-raid damage. The site continued to be used for bottling and warehousing by Nicholson, and from the early 1970s until the early 1990s, by Charrington and Hedges & Butler.
In front of the House Mill and running eastwards towards the Clock Mill is Britain’s only listed roadway (Grade 1) with granite setts and flagstones dating from the nineteenth century. Much of the impressive internal machinery at The House Mill remains intact, and the building is open to visitors. The area is designated conservation area by Tower Hamlets. [2]
Nicholson and Lord's Cricket Ground[edit]
J & W Nicholson & Co was founded in the 1730s and produced Lamplighter Gin at Three Mills with a logo reminiscent of the lamps which still hang at the former distillery.
In 1864, their chairman (and keen cricketer) William Nicholson had advanced money to the MCC to purchase Lord's Cricket Ground with a further loan in 1889 for the Lord's Pavilion. It is believed that the change of corporate colours from sky-blue to the red and yellow of Nicholson at that time was no coincidence.
Although the company no longer distilled after 1941, its former gin palaces are still popular pubs across London.
Printing[edit]
After the 1860s the site became an important hub for of ink, varnish, and colour-dye innovation supporting the growing printing industries in nearby Plaistow. Significant dye manufacturers in the area included Dane & Co (established in 1853), Harry Hodson & Co (established in 1862), Blackwell & Co (established in 1871) and B. Winstone and Sons (established in 1875). These companies are referenced in Kelly’s ‘Directory of Stratford’ 1899-1900.[8]
The Dane Group of Companies (previously Dane & Co, and now Dane Colour[9]) was established in 1853 and closed its operations at Sugar House Lane in late 1994, moving to Cheshire. This innovative print and ink manufacturer produced a wide range of products – inks for lithography, press and silk screen, as well as colour paints. The company was instrumental in the development of heavy-duty inks called ‘Bronze Blues’ and fluorescent pigments called ‘Swarda’. The Dane Group was the largest producer of Day-Glo pigments in the world with its products used in highlighter pens, workmen’s jackets and other safety products, paints, printing inks and plastics. Dane’s inks were sold all over England exported across Europe.
Water[edit]
The watercourses which surround Sugar House Island were once the main source of energy for the mills, which in themselves fuelled much of the area’s wider industrial development. The fact that the rivers were navigable out to the sea and into the centre of London up the Thames, facilitated water-borne commerce. The river also provided clean water for textile production (mainly Calico[10]) and laying out grounds for calico, which supported the development of ancillary uses, including printing and dye works.
Today the site has its own mooring community and Vastint UK has created a floating laundry and storage facility on the water for residents.
Ceramics[edit]
The Bow Porcelain Factory (New Canton), one of the first in England to produce bone ash, soft-paste porcelains (i.e. bone china)[11], was established at Bow in 1744 by George Arnold, alderman and haberdasher of London, Edward Heylyn of Bow, merchant, and Thomas Frye. It was in production by the end of 1747. By 1749 it had moved across the Lea to High Street, Stratford. Arnold (1691–1751) probably provided the capital. Frye was the technical expert. By 1750 the factory was trading under his name, and he continued to direct it until his retirement in 1759. During that decade it produced its best pieces. John Crowther, the last surviving partner, sold the factory in 1775 or 1776 to William Duesbury, who closed it and transferred the contents to his works at Derby. The Bow works stood on the north side of High Street, west of Marsh Gate Lane. Premises on the opposite side of the road were also used in connection with the works and “checking the location against modern maps, the factory is pinned down to what would have been 209-217 Bow Road".[12] [13]
Bridge Building[edit]
Bow-bridge in Bow and Stratford both take their names from fords (river crossing points) near Roman highways. This area is low-lying, part of the extensive marshland north of the meandering Thames and often subject to flooding during winter. The naming of Bow is said to have come about because Matilda or Maud), the wife of Henry I paid to have a bridge built over the water following an incident when she or her retinue ran into trouble during a crossing. In Leland's Collections he says the bridge was called “Bowe, because the bridge was arched like unto a bowe, a rare piece of work, for before that time the like had never been seen in England."[14] For more information on the bridge and Matilda’s bequests[15].
The present Bow Bridge was built in 1967 by the Greater London Council as part of a flyover and link to the Blackwall Tunnel approach road.
Industrial development[edit]
"The river Lee (or Lea) runs from the Thames to Hertford, with a branch along the Stort Navigation. Unlike the other canals in London it was not constructed in one primary phase of building, and also unlike the other canals it is a canalised river, not an entirely new canal. Navigation took place in the first millennium, with the Vikings apparently taking the opportunity to plunder the unfortunate people of Hertford. Work on improving the river's navigability is recorded as early as the fourteenth century and in 1425 there was an Act of Parliament to provide for further improvements. The River lea Commissioners, who used to run it, date back to this period. As was so often the case, where rivers were improved for navigation, there were arguments between barge owners and mill owners who preferred the available water to be used to mills rather than locks. The navigation was much used for carrying grain for beer and bread making and those who might lose their livelihoods from the lower prices that became possible as a result of cheaper transport also objected to improvements. Disputes over the right of navigation reached the Star Chamber, a superior court of justice, in 1594, which ruled in favour of the boats."[3]
The River Lea Act 1767[16] authorised extensive improvement works to the Lea, formalising it as a canalised river though extensive improvement works including locks, new sections of waterway and, importantly, the construction of the Limehouse Cut, a straight section linking the Lea Navigation at Bromley-by-Bow to the Thames at Limehouse.[17]
Clayton's map of 1821 outlines a dock to the south of the High Street, reached from the Lea by a short channel. This was West Ham’s earliest proper dock and may have been built by the Middlesex and Essex Turnpike Trust, which owned and occupied the site in 1843 and 1854. It was initially known as Stratford Dock, but later became Meggs Dock, possibly named after local ladder-maker John Meggs[18]. The dock was filled in at the turn of the 20th century when it became known as Mill River Wharf.
The location of the nearby waterways and the establishment of a railway station at Stratford in 1839 continued to play a large role in the industrial development of the area. Thirty four businesses were established around Stratford High Street between 1800 and 1859[19], many of which supported larger firms at Plaistow and Silvertown which were becoming known for printing and chemical factories respectively.
From the middle of the eighteenth century, London began its transformation into the world’s first metropolis. The River Lea acted as a boundary between London and its industrial supporting land, with the area to the east where manufacturing and industry moved when the London Building Act in 1844 ruled that it should no longer be accommodated within the city.
In the 1930s the area underwent a major change. In 1930 Parliament passed the River Lea Act, improving drainage and navigation. The Prescott Channel was subsequently constructed to serve as a flood bypass, from Three Mills Wall River to the Channelsea River. To the west of Sugar House Lane the Three Mills Back River was filled in, and the southern section was paved over to form Hunts Lane.
Development[edit]
European property developer Vastint[20] purchased the site in 2010 and began the process of developing a mixed-use district called Sugar House Island, after The Sugar House. Outline planning consent was granted in 2012 and the process of remediating the land, including replacing the site's 1.2km of river wall took place over the next four years. Construction of the first phase, Dane's Yard, began in 2017, due to open in 2019.[21][22]
References[edit]
- ↑ Wainwright, Olly. "Guardian, The river that London forgot".
- ↑ "West Ham industries". VCH Essex Online.
- ↑ Lewis, Frank (1976). Essex and Sugar. London: Phillimore. ISBN 0850331072. OCLC 3378866. Search this book on
- ↑ 1891-, Lewis, Frank (1976). Essex and sugar : historic and other connections. London: Phillimore. ISBN 0850331072. OCLC 3378866. Search this book on
- ↑ OS London 1:1,056 - Sheet VIII.31. "Ordnance Survey of Stratford Three Mills".
- ↑ Fairclough, Keith (August 1966). "Gunpowder Production At Tide Mills Along The Lea". Gunpowder Mills Study Group Newsletter: 21.
- ↑ "London Unveiled".
- ↑ Kelly (1899–1900). Directory of Stratford. Search this book on
- ↑ "Dane Colour".
- ↑ "West Ham: Industries | British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-02-18.
- ↑ "Industries: Pottery, Bow porcelain". British History Online. 1911.
- ↑ "East London History".
- ↑ "Bow porcelain manufactured in 18th century East London". scottishantiques.com. Retrieved 2019-02-18.
- ↑ Lysons, Daniel (1811). The Environs of London: Kent, Essex, and Herts. T. Cadell and W. Davies. Search this book on
- ↑ "History of Matilda".
- ↑ "Engineering Timelines". Engineering Timelines.
- ↑ Skempton, Professor A.W. (1981). John Smeaton, FRS. London: Thomas Telford Limited. Search this book on
- ↑ "Sugar House Lane Heritage Assessment" (PDF). Newham Council Heritage Assessment. April 2008.
- ↑ Kelly. Directory of Stratford. Search this book on
- ↑ "Vastint".
- ↑ "Evening Standard article about Dane's Yard". 2018-05-11.
- ↑ "Evening Standard article on the wider area". May 2018.
External links[edit]
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