Invisible Landscapes of East Greenwich
Invisible Landscapes of East Greenwich
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
East Greenwich has a rich and varied cultural and industrial history that has played a significant role in shaping Britain and, indeed, the modern world. But through successive waves of modernisation and economic transformation, the riverfront has been continuously rebuilt to accommodate the new. With each change, its history, the stories of the people that lived and worked here, and the importance of their contribution to society, is increasingly lost from view.
This is particularly true today. Perhaps more than at any time previous, Greenwich is poised for dramatic change. Home to some of the last continuous riverside brownfield sites in London, over the course of the next 20 years, Greenwich, and in particular East Greenwich and the Greenwich Peninsula, will be transformed beyond recognition into a modern high-density urban housing enclave. An assemblage of high-rise housing blocks, many as high as 40 storeys stretched out along the rivers edge east of the power station and around the Peninsula, this veritable new town will provide over 20,000 homes for upwards of 50,000 people, mostly young upwardly mobile urban professionals, upper middle class families and, no doubt, foreign investors seeking a safe haven in London’s ever-rising property market.
Like so many cities through the centuries, this wave of regeneration will eradicate what came before and superimpose a new order inscribed in the physical fabric of the urban landscape that will influence and shape the future of Greenwich and the lives of its residents for generations. And whilst the process of regeneration is an inevitable part of the growth and change of a city, the kind of rapid, developer-led regeneration we are witnessing threatens to eradicate the fragile threads of our collective history that imbue Greenwich with a sense of place and significance.
The image of Greenwich to the casual visitor and resident alike is anchored in the grand architecture and spaces of the World Heritage Site (The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich Park, the Royal Observatory, The Maritime Museum, Queens House, Trinity Hospital) and its historic town centre and market. But as one travels east of the park and the old naval college into East Greenwich, these historical narratives become more fragile and ephemeral, lacking the grand architectural statements to mark out their presence.
Like so many cities through the centuries, this wave of regeneration will eradicate what came before and superimpose a new order inscribed in the physical fabric of the urban landscape that will influence and shape the future of Greenwich and the lives of its residents for generations. And whilst the process of regeneration is an inevitable part of the growth and change of a city, the kind of rapid, developer-led regeneration we are witnessing threatens to eradicate the fragile threads of our collective history that imbue Greenwich with a sense of place and significance.
The image of Greenwich to the casual visitor and resident alike is anchored in the grand architecture and spaces of the World Heritage Site (The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich Park, the Royal Observatory, The Maritime Museum, Queens House, Trinity Hospital) and its historic town centre and market. But as one travels east of the park and the old naval college into East Greenwich, these historical narratives become more fragile and ephemeral, lacking the grand architectural statements to mark out their presence.
Here, amongst the small terraced workers houses crouching around the monumental power station and stretching east into the now mostly derelict industrial zones along the waterfront are the artefacts of an industrial history which, in spite of thier rapidly diminishing presence, are as profoundly important to Greenwich, Britain and the world as the invention of Greenwich Mean Time, the training of the British Navy, or the introduction of classicism to the British architectural palate
Like any industrial riverfront in a significant global city, Greenwich has been home to a vast array of industries over the years, from fishing, boat-building, sail and rope making to gun-powder manufacture, coal importing, cement manufacture, soap making, scrap metal and the import/export trade. Industries which, for the most part, are now gone. But amongst the decaying warehouses and industrial yards now being transformed into luxury riverside flats stands Enderby House, an unassuming grade II listed house that has borne silent witness to the birth and growth of a revolution.
It was, in factories on the site around Enderby House, that the technology of rope-making would provide the skills and expertise needed to armour the fragile copper telegraph cable that would span the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 1858. This momentous feat of engineering and vision would mark the beginning of a 160-year telecommunications revolution made possible by sub-sea cables, which Britain would dominate for 130 years. What began as telegraph cables and would later become telephone cables, would lay the foundations for the global economy, decide the fate of wars, reshape global politics, make the world a smaller place and ultimately, and ultimately, with the invention of fibre-optic cables, become the backbone for over 95% of global internet traffic, with all the societal and economic changes that that has brought.
Walking along the river’s edge east of the Cutty Sark Pub on Ballast Quay, it is hard to imagine the frenzy of activity that would have enveloped the water’s edge in the heyday of its life as an industrial waterfront. Some sense of it can be gained from a perusal of photographs, paintings and drawings of the area over the last 200 years. But this evocative landscape of derelict piers and abandoned industrial buildings does not easily yield up its own stories.
It is harder still to sense the connection to something so ingrained in, and fundamental to, modern life as the internet, with all its high-tech imagery of vast, climate-controlled data centres, light-flooded, funky offices and smiling, t-shirt-wearing internet industry billionaires. And yet, this vast infrastructure of the global economy is made possible by the millions of miles of sub-sea cables that connect the far reaches of the globe, the first of which was loaded onto a cable ship here at Enderby Wharf adjacent to Enderby House some 160 years ago. Whilst the river-frontage has been sold for development, the site is still the home to Alcatel-Lucent who continue to make telecommunications equipment on the site to this day, making Greenwich the oldest and longest-running telecommunications manufacturing site in the world.
Today, Enderby House is a site of contention. Soon to be dwarfed by multi-story modern housing development and hemmed in by a massive new cruise liner terminal for London, Enderby House represents a conflict between the desire for maximising profit and an ambition to preserve and tell the stories of the people and industries in and around this site that have had such a significant contribution in shaping the modern world. In the autumn of 2013, a small group of concerned residents (amongst them architects, historians, artists, archaeologists, journalists & philanthropists) began a campaign to turn Enderby House and the jetties on the riverside into a public amenity which would act as a fulcrum around which the industrial history of East Greenwich, and in particular the story of telecommunications technology, could be told.
The fate of that endeavour is uncertain. In an age where governments increasingly cede responsibility for the public realm to private interests, projects that do not seek to maximise the commercial potential of these valuable riverside properties are severely challenged. And yet without mechanisms to formally preserve, curate and share these stories that have had such a profound impact on the world, we risk losing sight of them forever.
Whilst the narratives that surround Enderby House are perhaps the most significant in terms of global impact, the industrial history of Greenwich is rich with the stories of the people and events that have made Greenwich the place that it is today. As East Greenwich undergoes its next rebirth as a site for luxury waterside living, we have an obligation to preserve these stories for future generations in ways that are significant and meaningful.
Technology, in particular communications technology, certainly offers some tantalising opportunities. Augmented reality and location-aware audio tours, combined with site-specific installations, allow us to situate the narratives of the past into the architecture of the present and enable them to be both discovered and explored outside of the context of a traditional museum gallery. The use of technology to make the curatorial space of a museum site-specific, whilst evocative, is only one aspect of making these histories more visible. A museum in Enderby House is, I believe, paramount to create a focus and starting point for any journey of discovery.
Equally important is the need to find ways of ensuring that the historical narratives of this community inform and guide our design processes and strategies for place-making in order to breath some sense of cultural continuity and into the new urban fabric which will unfold over the coming 25 years. It is not sufficient to simply make cursory references to a cartoon version of history in the form of oblique architectural references, street names or themed pubs. And it is not acceptable that it get erased by the sterile and corporate aesthetic that dominates so many of these new housing developments.
Through thoughtful architecture and a well-considered public realm that responds to the historical landscape rather than simply erasing it, we have the opportunity to create shared experiences that not only reveal this web of invisible landscapes of Greenwich but weave their histories into the fabric of the present in ways that will inspire a new generation of residents and form the physical and social matrix in which communities thrive and grow, rich with a sense of themselves and the place that anchors them as stories are passed from generation to generation and neighbour to neighbour.
This is the challenge and the opportunity we have in front of us. The decisions we make in the next few years will determine the future shape of Greenwich and whether we can create a place that is worthy of its visible and invisible histories.
I ask you to join us in our drive to help create a museum at Enderby House to tell the stories of this unique and important place, and to improve the quality of development and environment for all the residents of Greenwich by supporting the East Greenwich Residents Association in the creation of a Neighbourhood Plan to shape and drive development for the future.
It was, in factories on the site around Enderby House, that the technology of rope-making would provide the skills and expertise needed to armour the fragile copper telegraph cable that would span the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 1858. This momentous feat of engineering and vision would mark the beginning of a 160-year telecommunications revolution made possible by sub-sea cables, which Britain would dominate for 130 years. What began as telegraph cables and would later become telephone cables, would lay the foundations for the global economy, decide the fate of wars, reshape global politics, make the world a smaller place and ultimately, and ultimately, with the invention of fibre-optic cables, become the backbone for over 95% of global internet traffic, with all the societal and economic changes that that has brought.
Walking along the river’s edge east of the Cutty Sark Pub on Ballast Quay, it is hard to imagine the frenzy of activity that would have enveloped the water’s edge in the heyday of its life as an industrial waterfront. Some sense of it can be gained from a perusal of photographs, paintings and drawings of the area over the last 200 years. But this evocative landscape of derelict piers and abandoned industrial buildings does not easily yield up its own stories.
It is harder still to sense the connection to something so ingrained in, and fundamental to, modern life as the internet, with all its high-tech imagery of vast, climate-controlled data centres, light-flooded, funky offices and smiling, t-shirt-wearing internet industry billionaires. And yet, this vast infrastructure of the global economy is made possible by the millions of miles of sub-sea cables that connect the far reaches of the globe, the first of which was loaded onto a cable ship here at Enderby Wharf adjacent to Enderby House some 160 years ago. Whilst the river-frontage has been sold for development, the site is still the home to Alcatel-Lucent who continue to make telecommunications equipment on the site to this day, making Greenwich the oldest and longest-running telecommunications manufacturing site in the world.
Today, Enderby House is a site of contention. Soon to be dwarfed by multi-story modern housing development and hemmed in by a massive new cruise liner terminal for London, Enderby House represents a conflict between the desire for maximising profit and an ambition to preserve and tell the stories of the people and industries in and around this site that have had such a significant contribution in shaping the modern world. In the autumn of 2013, a small group of concerned residents (amongst them architects, historians, artists, archaeologists, journalists & philanthropists) began a campaign to turn Enderby House and the jetties on the riverside into a public amenity which would act as a fulcrum around which the industrial history of East Greenwich, and in particular the story of telecommunications technology, could be told.
The fate of that endeavour is uncertain. In an age where governments increasingly cede responsibility for the public realm to private interests, projects that do not seek to maximise the commercial potential of these valuable riverside properties are severely challenged. And yet without mechanisms to formally preserve, curate and share these stories that have had such a profound impact on the world, we risk losing sight of them forever.
Whilst the narratives that surround Enderby House are perhaps the most significant in terms of global impact, the industrial history of Greenwich is rich with the stories of the people and events that have made Greenwich the place that it is today. As East Greenwich undergoes its next rebirth as a site for luxury waterside living, we have an obligation to preserve these stories for future generations in ways that are significant and meaningful.
Technology, in particular communications technology, certainly offers some tantalising opportunities. Augmented reality and location-aware audio tours, combined with site-specific installations, allow us to situate the narratives of the past into the architecture of the present and enable them to be both discovered and explored outside of the context of a traditional museum gallery. The use of technology to make the curatorial space of a museum site-specific, whilst evocative, is only one aspect of making these histories more visible. A museum in Enderby House is, I believe, paramount to create a focus and starting point for any journey of discovery.
Equally important is the need to find ways of ensuring that the historical narratives of this community inform and guide our design processes and strategies for place-making in order to breath some sense of cultural continuity and into the new urban fabric which will unfold over the coming 25 years. It is not sufficient to simply make cursory references to a cartoon version of history in the form of oblique architectural references, street names or themed pubs. And it is not acceptable that it get erased by the sterile and corporate aesthetic that dominates so many of these new housing developments.
Through thoughtful architecture and a well-considered public realm that responds to the historical landscape rather than simply erasing it, we have the opportunity to create shared experiences that not only reveal this web of invisible landscapes of Greenwich but weave their histories into the fabric of the present in ways that will inspire a new generation of residents and form the physical and social matrix in which communities thrive and grow, rich with a sense of themselves and the place that anchors them as stories are passed from generation to generation and neighbour to neighbour.
This is the challenge and the opportunity we have in front of us. The decisions we make in the next few years will determine the future shape of Greenwich and whether we can create a place that is worthy of its visible and invisible histories.
I ask you to join us in our drive to help create a museum at Enderby House to tell the stories of this unique and important place, and to improve the quality of development and environment for all the residents of Greenwich by supporting the East Greenwich Residents Association in the creation of a Neighbourhood Plan to shape and drive development for the future.
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