Former Millwall Ironworks Building

Former Millwall Ironworks Building

This forge was built in 1860 by engineer William Henry Dorman and resident ironmaster John Hughes for C J Mare and Company, engineers and shipbuilders. It incorporates an earlier workshop of 1854, built for J Scott Russell and Company. The building is constructed in Flemish bond brick with corrugated iron roofs.

The structure comprises two long parallel halls aligned south-west to north-east, each divided into five bays with double end bays designed for the turning of heavy pieces. A workshop extends to the north-east.

The south elevation features a double-gabled design with stone-coped gables. Each gable has a round window above six keyed semi-circular arched recesses. The centre opening of the left gable was altered around 1980 with the insertion of a concrete arch. A cast-iron plaque marked '1860/C J M & Co' is positioned at the centre. The west wall contains four large circular apertures, now blocked, which originally functioned as ventilation openings.

The interior's principal feature is a central arcade of six cast-iron columns connected by cast-iron arched beams with pierced spandrels. Rainwater is carried through the columns from integral valley gutters above. Eight former furnace chimney breasts and associated furnace crane piers line the west wall, truncated at the top where they originally projected as small stacks, with adjoining piers that supported the furnace cranes. Two gantry frames were inserted later: a late nineteenth-century example to the east comprises a timber gantry frame with under-braced timber gantry beam, alongside a western composite frame of steel incorporating reused cast-iron columns from an earlier erecting shop and timber beam, supporting an early twentieth-century electric traveller. The western gantry is an unusual and probably rare early twentieth-century suspended gantry with electric traveller. Steel roofs were inserted between 1900 and 1927. The north-east wall of the workshop projection has segmental-arched blocked windows, forming the south wall of the 1854 workshop erected for Scott Russell. The west gable end of this building features a wide ground-floor opening with a reused central cast-iron column, connecting into the forge building.

When described by Barry in 1863, the forge contained six steam hammers powered by high-pressure air from a steam blowing engine fed by rainwater carried through the columns from the valleys. The 1854-60 conjoined workshop (now demolished) supplied this system. The forgings, plates and angles manufactured here from scrap iron and puddled iron bars were obtained from London's vast scrap market, a technique promoted by Mare that underpinned the continuation of London shipbuilding into the age of steam and iron. The forge and adjoining rolling mills for manufacturing armour plate (demolished) were supplied by a works railway. In the early 1860s, this establishment employed up to 5,000 men and notably provided them with a canteen, sports club and works band. Operation ceased in 1872-3.

Between 1889 and 1894 the building was converted into a workshop for Joseph Westwood and Company Limited, structural engineers and bridge builders. Their 1910 trade catalogue shows work ranging from airship hangars for the army to internal steelwork for buildings and railway bridges in India and Brazil. The building was used for the manufacture of iron and steel girders until around 1951.

Mare, who had come to prominence as principal contractor for Stephenson's Britannia Bridge over the Menai Straits in Wales, took over and expanded the Millwall site in 1859. He had also produced the wrought ironwork for Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge. The previous occupiers of the yard included William Fairbairn, who developed this yard from 1835 as the world's first yard for the specific manufacture of iron ships, and from 1848 John Scott Russell, noted for his work on the construction of Brunel's Great Eastern on a vast and partly surviving slip immediately to the west. This forge benefits from its group value association with a unique cluster of grade II buildings on this highly significant site, including Fairbairn's chimney shaft of 1836-7, designed to draw smoke through underground tunnels from the furnaces, and the Plate House of 1853-4, built as the erecting shop for the Great Eastern's 40-foot-high paddle engines, the only marine engine factory in London. Scott Russell's Counting House of 1854 at 264-6 Westferry Road and his house of 1854 at 268 Westferry Road stand close to this group, with the remains of the Great Eastern Slipway off Napier Avenue to the west. Opposite, on the south bank of the Thames, are the circa 1860 offices of John Penn and Sons (also grade II), the boilermakers who fitted many engines to Mare's ships.

This is the only surviving mid-nineteenth-century iron shipbuilders' forge in London, and possibly England, outside the Royal dockyards. The 1850s and early 1860s witnessed the zenith of Britain's leadership in this industry on the world stage. One of the forge's earliest and most important tasks was the manufacture of the stem frame for HMS Northumberland, one of the earliest ironclad battleships whose keel was laid in these works in 1861. Its protracted launch in 1866 accelerated the collapse of one of its major shareholders, the Overend Gurney bank, and precipitated the catastrophic decline of the London shipbuilding industry. After the 1860s, private yards on the Clyde and in northern England, notably William Beardmore and Company and Vickers at Barrow, continued to be responsible for building much of the iron navy and merchant fleet.