Robert Batson's Estate
Covering a little over six acres, extending from the river
to Dolphin Lane, Batson's estate was the first part of
Millwall to be systematically laid out for building.
The land was bought in 1793 for £750 by Robert
Batson, senior, the Limehouse shipbuilder, from Ann
Whitaker of Loughton Hall, Essex. (ref. 23) She was a niece of
William Lea, whose family had owned it since at least
1710, when a small portion was let for building a windmill. (ref. 24) The mill was the only building and the land was
used for grazing, until 1800, when part of the site was
laid out as a rope-ground by John Lyney of Limehouse
on a 21-year lease. (ref. 25) The freehold of the rope-ground
was sold in 1810 to George Joad and Edward Spencer
Curling, esquires, of Blackheath. (ref. 26)
Figure 155:
Northern Millwall. Based on the Ordnance Survey of 1893–4. Inset shows the truncation of CubaStreet carried out by the PLA in 1938–9Key: A Robert Batson's Estate (extent in 1809): B Byng Estate (part): C Tooke Estate (part):D Mellish Estate (part)
Cuba, Manilla and Tobago Streets and
Westferry Road (east side between Cuba and
Manilla Streets)
Robert Batson, junior, who inherited the estate in 1806,
laid out two principal streets in 1807: Robert Street
(following the southern boundary of the rope-ground)
and Alfred Street, in 1875 renamed Cuba Street and
Manilla Street respectively. They were linked by Marsh
Street (merged with George Street and renamed Tobago
Street in 1876).
The ground south of Cuba Street was parcelled into
freehold building plots, mostly 15ft by 60ft, and costing
£30 or £35. (fn. a) The greater part of the south side of
Manilla Street was soon built up, the developers including
William Rattenbury, a shipwright of Limehouse Hole,
Thomas Seaborne, a Limehouse carpenter, and Edward
Gant, a yeoman of Millwall. About a half of the north
side of the street had been built up by 1817, but only a
few houses had appeared in Robert Street, and a few
more on the east side of Marsh Street. At least half the
plots on the estate sold intermittently for 40 years,
some remaining long vacant and changing hands before
building took place. Few were sold singly; pairs or blocks
of five being the commonest purchases. The buyers,
many of whom were from Limehouse, ranged from
labourers and artisans to merchants and gentlemen. They
included George Goldring, surveyor, of Limehouse, Sir
Charles Price, and Thomas Fossey of Batson's Wharf. A
number acted as each other's trustees in their respective
conveyances, and it is reasonable to assume that most
came from the same social and business circles, some no
doubt being associates or employees of the Batsons. In
1808 Robert sold 40 plots to his younger brother Alfred,
but 12 years later Alfred sold 17, still vacant, back to
Robert. Many plots remained unbuilt upon when Robert
Batson died in 1839, leaving the remainder of the estate
to Alfred, but by the late 1860s building was nearly
complete. (ref. 27)
Because of the long-drawn-out building process, Cuba
Street, Manilla Street and Tobago Street evolved only a
ragged uniformity. The houses were plain and mean:
two-up, two-down, terraced cottages with narrow roundarched doorways, mostly built to the edge of the pavement
(Plate 80c , d ). Rear extensions were built on to some
houses only after many years, and as late as the First
World War several houses still had no kitchen, scullery
or wash-house. There were two developments of tiny
dwellings at right angles to the street: Escott Cottages of
about 1840, built by William Escott, a local waterman,
later publican, and Wildman's Cottages (see below). Other
lots were occupied by sheds or stables. (ref. 28)
By the 1890s Tobago Street north of Manilla Street
had lost most of its residential character of 30 years
earlier. The west side of the street was occupied by
nondescript industrial and commercial buildings, some
of which remain. In the twentieth century industry
continued to make inroads into the housing throughout
the former estate, but only in the most half-hearted
manner. By the 1900s, and probably long before, most
of the houses, which were let entire to weekly tenants,
were in poor condition. The Prince Alfred beerhouse,
No. 22 Tobago Street, was rebuilt in 1906 for Truman,
Hanbury, Buxton & Company (architect B. J. Capell).
The remains of the ground-floor front of brown glazed
brick still stand, partly enclosing industrial premises. (ref. 29)
Much clearance took place in the 1930s, on the initiative of Poplar Borough Council, and the PLA acquired
and closed the eastern end of Cuba Street, demolishing
the houses there and on the north side of Manilla Street,
in connection with improvements to the South West
India Dock. A new roadway linking the streets was made
in 1938–9. (ref. 30) By the Second World War both Cuba Street
and Manilla Street had become predominantly industrial.
A number of cleared sites were acquired by local firms
for extensions to their premises, including Thompson &
Son (Millwall) Ltd of Cuba Street, hydraulic engineers,
J. Bellamy Ltd of Byng Street, tank manufacturers, and
Wallis & Company of Tobago Street, sheet-metal workers.
Most of the remaining houses were closed in the 1960s
and a few have stood derelict since then.
Nos 31 and 33 Westferry Road (demolished). These
were built in 1813 by George Goldring, surveyor, who
also laid out a timber-yard on the ground to the south.
Both were very plain two-storey buildings of one bay. In
its original state No. 33 was square, and probably comprised only two rooms. The street door opened on to a
side passage giving access to the parlour, back stairs and
yard door. No. 31 was deeper and probably had a
two-up, two-down, arrangement. Both houses had been
extended by the late 1860s and may have been largely
rebuilt (Plate 80b ). (ref. 31) They were demolished c1993.
No. 25 Westferry Road, The Blacksmith's Arms.
The beershop at No. 25 was rebuilt as the Blacksmith's
Arms public house in 1904, a somewhat more decorative
building than the nondescript beerhouses which abounded locally before the Second World War (Plate 80b). It
was designed by B. J. Capell of Whitechapel Road for
Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Company, and built by
Sheffield Brothers of Islington. (ref. 32)
Later History of Joad & Curling's Ropeworks, No.
40 Cuba Street (demolished). About 1860 the ropeworks
was occupied by the newly incorporated Telegraph Cable
Company Ltd. Wire-rope and cables were manufactured
at the works by a succession of companies until the
mid-1880s. The western part of the site, fronting
Westferry Road, then became the Royal Iron Works of
Messrs Whitford & Company, replacing premises of the
same name in Commercial Road. Various one— and two—
storey workshops and stores were erected. Whitfords'
products included iron churches, bridges, staircases, tomb
railings, verandas, fireproof floors and lightning conductors. In 1910 the works were sold to C. & E. Morton
Ltd and rebuilt as part of the Dockside Preserving
Factory, to the designs of the architects Parr & Son (Plate
80a). Brick built, with concrete floors and a steel-trussed
roof, it was used for fruit and general storage on the
ground floor, with offices and laboratories on the first
floor and a jam factory on the top floor. (ref. 33)
Figure 156:
No. 16 Cuba Street, plans as built. James Green,boiler-maker, probable builder, 1868
Next to the Royal Iron Works, in 1887 Stephens,
Smith & Company took a 63-year lease of No. 40 Cuba
Street, which then comprised several old sheds, part of
the ropeworks. These were soon replaced by a brick-built
factory with a lofty skylighted roof (Plate 80a). The new
building was erected by Lewin of Millwall, builders, to
the designs of the local architects J. & S. F. Clarkson. The
business had been founded in 1875 by John Stephens, a
marine engineer, in Cuba Street. The original premises —
workshops and stables around a yard — remained in use
by Stephens, Smith until about 1900, when the site was
acquired for the Millwall Working Men's Club and
Institute. The works at No. 40, meanwhile, were occupied
by J. G. Statter & Company, electrical engineers, an
associated company. (ref. 34)
Stephens, Smith's activities by 1929 included the
manufacture and repair of small cranes, hoists, goods
lifts, dinner-service lifts, paint mixers, conveyors and
elevators, electrical separators for the mining industry,
light-steel constructional work such as hoppers and staircases, and the annealing and testing of gas cylinders and
chain. In the past products had included electric trams,
locomotives and launches. Stephens, Smith & Company
ceased to trade in 1969, by which time the Cuba Street
works were in the occupation of another engineering
company. For many years part of the building was sublet
to a succession of firms, including F. F. Scott & Sons,
shipping butchers and meat packers, who installed
refrigeration plant in the early 1920s. Among the later
occupiers was the Le Bas Tube Company, formerly of
Cyclops Works, Westferry Road. The building, disused
by the late 1980s, was demolished in 1990. (ref. 35)
Nos 15–19 (consec) Cuba Street. These date from
the 1860s (Plate 80c). Apart from their greater height,
comparatively large rear additions and absence of external
window-shutters, there was little to distinguish them
from their now-demolished early nineteenth-century
neighbours.
No. 16 (No. 10 Robert Street until 1875 and No. 11
Cuba Street until 1910) is the last house in the street to
be occupied as a home (fig. 156). It stands on one of a
pair of plots sold in 1813 by Alfred Batson to Thomas
Fleetwood Willats, shipwright, of Limehouse. The
ground was not built up until about 1868, when Joseph
Willats, a shipwright living a few doors away, sold it to
James Green, a boiler-maker. Green lived first at the
present No. 16, then at No. 18. He was probably the
builder of Nos 15, 16, 18 and 19, which he left to his
children, together with a house in Manilla Street, when
he died in 1875.
In 1902 No. 16 was sold by Green's daughter, then
married to a mercantile clerk and living in Leytonstone,
to a pier-head man of Byng Street. Sold for £257 to a
licensed waterman of Mellish Street in 1907, it was
probably let on weekly tenancies until the mid-1920s,
when it was bought by a bricklayer's labourer for his
family home. (ref. 36)
Wildman's Cottages and the 'Dock House' Beerhouse, Nos 35 and 36 Cuba Street (demolished). In 1828
two plots at the east end of Cuba Street, running east to
west with skew frontages to Dolphin Lane, were sold by
Robert Batson to Robert Wildman, a labourer. By 1853,
when he mortgaged them to a local publican, Wildman
was living in one of a pair of cottages he had built there.
The mortgage was taken over in 1854 by Ralph Price of
Price's oil works, for whom Wildman was probably
working: he was night-watchman at Price's in 1870, when
he gave the cottages to his son-in-law, James Beach, an
oil distiller, probably another of Price's employees. With a
mortgage from the Industrial Permanent Benefit Building
Society, Beach enlarged and amalgamated the cottages,
turning part into a coffee shop. A few years later Edward
Beach, a builder from Chelsea, covered the remainder of
the site with an intended public house, built on a 99year lease from James, with finance from the West London
Permanent Benefit Building Society. The Dock House
had three floors and cellars, with bars, kitchen and parlour
on the ground floor and three rooms on each of the upper
floors, including accommodation for lodgers. (ref. 37)
The whole property, including the beerhouse lease,
was sold by the mortgagees in 1884. For some years the
Dock House was owned by the licensee of the City Arms,
Westferry Road, but was later taken over by West's
Brewery Ltd. The PLA acquired both freehold and
leasehold in 1918–19, but the building remained open. A
night-club of sorts was held there in its latter years. It
was demolished about 1937.
The Millwall Working Men's Club and Institute,
No. 1 Cuba Street. The premises of the Millwall
Working Men's Club and Institute, designed by William
Bradford and built by Truman Stevens of South Molton
Street, were opened on 2 March 1901 by Sydney Buxton,
the MP for Poplar (fig. 157). Although the fact was kept
quiet at the time, the whole cost of about £6,000 had
been met by Stansfeld & Company Ltd of the Swan
Brewery, Fulham, who let the building to the club on
a succession of short leases. Stansfelds owned pubs
throughout London, but none in Poplar. (ref. 38) Brewers'
involvement in working men's clubs was then a controversial issue. The Working Men's Club and Institute
Union had long abandoned its early opposition to alcohol
in clubs, but was opposed to any form of tie with brewers.
The Isle of Dogs Progressive Club based in Cubitt Town,
of which the Millwall club was an offshoot, was briefly
expelled from the Union in 1901 because of its links with
Stansfelds. (ref. 39)
Bradford had designed the Swan Brewery 20 years
earlier. For the Millwall club he produced a sober-looking
building, solidly constructed of brick, with granolithic
staircases. The ground floor comprised a games room
with three full-sized billiard tables and two bagatelle
tables, a bar, and rooms for the secretary and doorman.
On the first floor was a concert room seating 500, with a
stage, dressing rooms and lavatories. (ref. 40)
The club's finances had been poor for some time
before it closed in August 1906. The building was
used for warehousing in 1909; by the mid-1930s it
was a graphite works called Eureka Mills. Subsequently
it was used as a canteen by C. & E. Morton Ltd and
as a neon-sign factory. In 1992 it was occupied by
Takara Belmont (UK) Ltd, manufacturers of hairdressers' salon equipment. (ref. 41)
The North Pole Public House, No. 74 Manilla Street.
The North Pole occupies four house plots fronting
Dolphin Lane, which were originally sold by Robert
Batson in 1808–9 but remained unbuilt upon. It was
probably built as a beerhouse in the 1860s. The present
shop-front dates from 1913. (ref. 42)
The Riverside From c1812
Development of Batson's riverside land began on the
formation of Westferry Road in 1812–15. Its main features
were characteristic of much of riverside Millwall. It was
piecemeal leasehold development with frequent change
of use and ad hoc building and rebuilding, and there was
always an uneasy relationship between the industrial and
commercial premises fronting the river and the shops
and beerhouses nearby. Although most of the old wharf
names have been preserved, the complex pattern of
nineteenth-century development has now disappeared
more or less without trace.
Batson's and Times Wharves, and Nos 6–16
(even) Westferry Road (demolished)
In 1813 George Henn, a ship-chandler, built a beerhouse,
later called the Waterman's or Watermen's Arms, No. 6
Westferry Road, on a 60–year lease on the corner of
Robert Street. In 1815 Prows Broad, a boatbuilder,
leased what was to become Batson's and Times Wharves,
building a residence for himself next to the beerhouse
and a boat-shop behind. (ref. 43)
A shop (later No. 12 Westferry Road), with a bakehouse
at the back, was built between Broad's house and a
cartway leading to the boat-shop. It was let in 1820 to a
local grazier, George Guerrier: later the cartway was built
over with another shop (No. 14 Westferry Road). The
remaining narrow strip of Broad's land was leased in
1819 to Winnall Dalton, a Limehouse ship-chandler, who
built a house there on the marsh wall. Dalton's house, of
basement and two floors, survived into the twentieth
century. (ref. 44)
By 1837 Broad had moved to Southwark, the boatshop was let annually and his old house had been divided
into two. One half (later No. 10 Westferry Road) was an
eating-house and the other (No. 8) was let to Thomas
Fossey, a timber merchant, together with a large yard
and a warehouse, sawpits and loft. This site, which
became known as Batson's Wharf, has been occupied by
timber merchants ever since. (ref. 45)
Figure 157:
Former Millwall Working Men's Club, Cuba Street, front elevation and plans in 1988. William Bradford, architect, 1900–1
A portion of Dalton's strip was subsequently occupied
by a house and shop, No. 16 Westferry Road. A jumble
of outbuildings and yards at the rear of Nos 12–16 was
approached by a path called Dawson's Court or Alley,
after John Dawson, who had acquired Dalton's lease by
1837. Dawson was in business locally as a lighterman
until the late 1850s. (ref. 46)
The greater part of Dalton's land and the site between
it and Batson's Wharf were subsequently brought together
as Times Wharf; the name was in use by the late 1850s.
The name Northfield Wharf was also in use for a time
in the mid-1860s, when 'No. 1 Millwall' (Batson's and
Times Wharves) was occupied by the Northfield Iron &
Steel Company Ltd. From the 1870s until the windingup of the concern in the early 1880s, Times Wharf
was the manure works of Arnott Brothers & Company,
chemical merchants and manufacturers, who also had
premises in Liverpool. Thereafter Times Wharf was
reunited with Batson's Wharf as part of John Lenanton's
timber-yard (see below). In 1893 Batson's and Times
Wharves were amalgamated with Regent Wharf to the
south, when a lease of the whole site was granted to
Lenanton (who nevertheless continued to sublet part of
Regent Wharf until the 1920s). It was not until the 1930s
that the expanding timber business finally swallowed up
the premises along Westferry Road. (ref. 47)
Regent Wharf
The future Regent (or Regent's) Wharf was let on a 61year lease in 1818 to Thomas Noakes, esquire, of Poplar,
and laid out as a timber-yard, with a residence on the
marsh wall. At the north-east corner a smaller house was
built, which became the Mechanic's Arms beerhouse,
No. 18 Westferry Road. Noakes's house, of two floors
and basement, comprised dining-room, drawing-room,
library, counting-house, kitchens and two bedrooms. It
was still standing in the 1920s. (ref. 48)
Regent Wharf (known for a time in the 1850s as
Norway Wharf) remained a timber-yard, though not
exclusively. In the early 1840s all or part of it was occupied
by the British Iron Company, iron manufacturers. By
1853 a small three-storeyed foreman's house had been
built at the road entrance, next to the Mechanic's Arms. (ref. 49)
In 1855 a two-storey timber-framed building was
raised, incorporating some earlier structure, along the
north side. In six bays, each with a steeply pitched
double-span roof, it comprised a coach-house with an
open upper floor, a weather-boarded stable and loft, and
open-fronted sheds over a sawpit. The rear of the building
was weather-boarded on the ground floor — partly over
brick nogging — but was otherwise merely of open framing
and bracing. The back and front gables were weatherboarded or covered in sheet iron. The ensemble, built in
contravention of the Building Acts, was flimsy: 'the joists
of the floor over the Sawpit Compartment sag under the
weight of the sawed stuff set up upon it to season, and
the Carpenter's work of the sides of the upper story and
of the roof is of the slightest and frailest sort.' (ref. 50)
A timber-built warehouse, stable and cart-shed were
subsequently erected along the south side of the yard.
They were used as a fibre works in the 1870s by N. W.
Chittenden & Company, who also had use of the wharf.
Charles Price & Company, the oil refiners (see page 410),
occupied the former fibre works from 1879, replacing the
old sheds with a two-storey brick-built warehouse. Prices
used the premises for storage of tallow, wax and oil until
the early 1920s. After a time in the hands of a general
wharfinger, they became part of Lenanton's timber
wharves. (ref. 51)
Lenanton's Timber Wharves
John Lenanton took over Batson's Wharf in 1864 and
Regent Wharf ten years later. By 1891 the firm of John
Lenanton & Son was 'one of the largest in the metropolis,
thoroughly representative of the old class of London
timber merchants, with all the go-ahead spirit of the
modern system'. (ref. 52)
Stocks held included teak and mahogany, English,
American and Australian hardwoods and White Sea,
Baltic and Quebec firs. Large quantities of logs and spars
were kept floating in the river, and further stock was
held at the commercial docks. The wharfside premises,
served by a steam travelling-crane, were largely given over
to highly mechanized sawmills and sheds for temporary
storage or seasoning. Although wood for shipbuilding,
including mast timber, was a speciality, Lenantons were
also large suppliers to builders, contractors and timber
merchants throughout the country. (ref. 53)
Most of the buildings — timber-built sheds of various
dates — were destroyed by fire in 1900. (ref. 54)
By the 1930s Lenanton's wharves included the site of
Regent Dry Dock (see below). Extensive modernization
was carried out. Plant and machinery for timber-handling
and milling was electrified, using a DC supply from
steam-powered generating plant. The principal buildings
were now open sheds of steel and reinforced-concrete
construction. A new neo-Georgian-style office block was
built in 1937. (ref. 55)
Because of the decline in Thames shipbuilding, less
teak — used particularly for decking — was now held, and
the firm specialized increasingly in softwoods. (ref. 56)
In the 1950s new concrete sheds were built, and
extensive new plant, including vertical and horizontal
log-sawing machines and an under-floor wood-refuse
collecting system, was installed. The building construction was carried out by the firm's own employees.
Further improvements included redecoration of the entire
premises to a uniform colour-scheme with blue for
machinery, terracotta for ancillary equipment and stone
colour for walls. In 1954–6 the office block was enlarged
and remodelled and a works canteen was built above the
entrance from Westferry Road.
Expansion continued with the acquisition of London
and Oak Wharves in 1958 and St Luke's School in 1971
(see below). A sheet-materials storage shed was built
on the school site in 1973. The architects of the postwar buildings were H. G. Turner & Partners of Haywards
Health. (ref. 57)
In 1986 outline planning permission for the residential
development of Lenanton's wharves, but in 1994 Lenantons remained in occupation. (ref. 58)