Location:
- Grid reference: TQ39127903
- x=539140
- y=179050
- 51°29'36"N; 0°0'16"E
- Civil Parish:Greenwich, London
Clinker manufacture operational: 1866-1898
Approximate total clinker production: 159,000 tonnes
Raw materials:
- Not known. Upper Chalk (Seaford Chalk Formation: 85-88 Ma) was quarried for ballast nearby, notably at Charlton (TQ)541400,178400, but Ashby’s and Hollick’s probably sourced “spot market” chalk from no particular source. A barge-load a day would have kept them going.
- Possibly Medway Alluvial Clay
Ownership:
- ?-1866 Winkfield Bell and Co.
- 1866-1900 Hollick and Co. Ltd
- 1900 APCM (Blue Circle)
Also called Morden Works. The site occupied only 0.67 Ha and had 56 metres of riverside, still called Hollick’s Wharf. The plant was used by Winkfield Bell & Co for Roman Cement manufacture and Hollick, who had previously made Portland cement on the Medway at Borstal Court, converted the five bottle kilns (80 t/week) to Portland production in 1866. The initial 1900 m2 of slurry backs was extended to 2600 by 1895, and it seems that a further three kilns (70 t/week) were added during that period. The plant came under the control of W. M. Leake (West Thurrock) in 1898. A fire on 30/8/1898 destroyed the mill building, and it did not re-start. All product was shipped by barge. Under Blue Circle, the wharf remained in use for barges until the 1970s: the rest of the site became first a soap works, and now lies under the Amylum sugar refinery.
Power supply
No information
Rawmills
No information
No rotary kilns were installed.
Sources:
- Primary Sources:
- Newspaper articles
- Greenhithe Archive
- Mary Mills, Greenwich Peninsula, Greenwich Marsh: History of an Industrial Heartland, Amazon, 2022, ISBN 979-8669957155
- Ordnance Survey 1:2500 mapping
- Confirmatory Sources:
- nil