Lea Navigation - Brimsdown
The River Lea Navigation
The Navigation flows south and is joined by Mossops Creek from the north west
TQ 36406 97087
Heavily industrialised area along the Lea and the George V reservoir. Some sites here were breakthrough industries in electrical and metallurgical fields - lead, precious metals, thermionic valves and vacuum flasks - and much else.
Post to the south Ponders End
Post to the east George V
Aden Road
The first reference to the road name is in the 1890s
Paper factory in the 1920s
Slicing machine works in the 1930s
Rimex – metal finishes factory. Founded 1959
Alma Road
The Battle of the Alma, during the Crimean War, was in 1854. The road name dates from the early 1860s
The Alma Pub
Jute Cottages – The Jute Company owned 26 cottages and 3 pubs. All unfit to live in.
Enfield Tool Manufacturing Co., opened a factory in the 1930s
Brimsdown Lead Works. White Lead manufacturing was associated with a great deal of noxious pollution and danger to health. Ludwig Mond learnt of the Bischof process which meant that the people did not come into contact with the chemicals during manufacture. A pilot plant at Willesden had failed, and Mond wanted to be sure the process would not damage growing vegetables. H.C.Bainbridge carried out the research work for him. In 1925 it was taken over by Associated Lead Manufacturers.
Brimsdown
It is first mentioned as ‘Grymesdoun’ in 1420, but by the late 17th the G had become a b - ’Brymesdowne’ 1610. It is an industrial area in the 1990s gradually being taken over by big shed retail.
Duck Lees Lane
Spike Island – so called because of the poverty there
London Jute Works. Opened 1867 and employed the very poorest, many of them children and many of them Scottish. There were many floods and eventually local voluntary fund raising paid for prevention work.
Cortecine Factory. Opened 1874. This was an oilcloth of canvas and cork. Burnt down in 1897.
Ediswan Works for Edison Swan Electric Co. They took over the jute works premises and a factory opened when Edison and Swan merged in 1881. They produced the first miners’ lamps in 1886 and first high voltage lamps in 1894. Large scale production soon took off with glass blowing a major part of the work. In the research arm Professor Ambrose Fleming patented in 1904 the world's first thermionic valve (the diode) and William Thompson – Lord Kelvin – worked on mirror galvanometers. In 1920 they joined a consortium which became AEI. Closed in 1968. The old offices, dated 1890, are the sole remnant of Edison and Swan's works the exterior substantially modified to hide its Victorian origins. One building left which was used by Amstrad in 1998 and there is a plaque to Swan and Dewar, who worked here on the vacuum flask.
British Sangamo works. In 1920 this was producing 200 electric meters a day
Green Street
Brimsdown Station. This lies between Enfield Lock and Ponders End on One Railway. Built by the Northern and Eastern Railway in 1884
Signal Box. Demolished 2009, took a V1.
Goods Yard
Sidings off the railway curved south and east and then went north branching out. Lines went to Brimsdown Power Station; Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Works, the Royal Small Arms Factory in 1916,
British Ideal Patents and Furniture – made tubular steel furniture
Izaak Walton Pub
Ripmax Corner – works of Ripmax who deal in radio control models.
Jeffrey’s Road
Johnson Matthey factory. Johnson Matthey, now a major multi-national, traces its origins to an assayers business 1817, and they had risen to become a major company in the field of precious metals and other substances. In the 1920s they took over smelting works built on an area of gravel pits and waste land at Brimsdown meaning that many buildings are on piles above the old flooded pits. Initially buildings were corrugated iron sheds a blast furnace, grinding mills, and other plant. Here they recover metals from waste material – for example silver salts for the photographic industry using recycled metal.
Johnson Matthey site being used for the relocation of businesses moved from the Hackney Olympic sites.
Gravel pit on the site – filled with waste from Johnson Matthey, then bomb damage rubble, then Piccadilly Line waste.
Lea Navigation
Mossops Bridge was built in 1999 and is part of a path which links the Navigation to Brimsdown Industrial Estate and railway station
Mossops Creek
Dug by John Mossop and Co. gravel and ballast extraction in the 19th. It is now a nature reserve
Mossops Creek Bridge – part of a path which links the Navigation to Brimsdown. Built 2006. The bridge was designed for Enfield Council as planning gain for Olympic relocation sites and it uses innovative methods on retaining walls and construction.
Mossops Creek Path
Access to the Lea.
Northampton Road
1-3 Granville Tavern.
Riverwalk Road
Industrial units on a road leading to the Lea Navigation
Ruberoid Road
This is now a road within the Brimsdown Business area
Ruberoid. This American company made waterproofed roofing materials
Scotland Green
This small settlement has a mix of housing with some local authority tower blocks from the 1990s.
Stockingswater Lane
The road name dates from the 18th and is probably a field name
Leaside Industrial Estate
Remington Cartridge Factory. 1946 –This was the Remington Arms Union Metallic Cartridge Company, Ltd., an English subsidiary of the American arms company. It had a shotshell loading plant which loaded empty paper shotshells, imported from the US with powder. Closed 1946
Suez Road
Edwardson. The Enfield Soap Works had begun as a glue factory and in the 1920s began to make Edwardson's Easy Washer and expanded in the 1930s with Diamond Soap Flakes.
Sources
David Pam. History of Enfield 3 vols.
Field. Place names of London
Cohen. Life of Ludwig Mond
Morris. Archives of the Chemical Industry
Enfield Archaeology Society. Industrial Archaeolgy of Enfield
Smith & Carr. Industrial Archaeology of Hertfordshire and the Lea Valley
Lewis. Industry and Innovation in the Lea Valley
Lewis. Regeneration and Innovation in the Lea Valley
Lewis. London's Lea Valley. More Secrets Revealed
Lewis. London's Lea Valley. Britain's Best Kept Secret
Johnson Matthey web site
London Railway Record. articles.
Brimsdown Station. Wikipedia web site
Brimsdown. Wikipedia web site (Mossops Creek)
Remington web site.
Signal Box Forum web site
Ruberoid web site
The Navigation flows south and is joined by Mossops Creek from the north west
TQ 36406 97087
Heavily industrialised area along the Lea and the George V reservoir. Some sites here were breakthrough industries in electrical and metallurgical fields - lead, precious metals, thermionic valves and vacuum flasks - and much else.
Post to the south Ponders End
Post to the east George V
Aden Road
The first reference to the road name is in the 1890s
Paper factory in the 1920s
Slicing machine works in the 1930s
Rimex – metal finishes factory. Founded 1959
Alma Road
The Battle of the Alma, during the Crimean War, was in 1854. The road name dates from the early 1860s
The Alma Pub
Jute Cottages – The Jute Company owned 26 cottages and 3 pubs. All unfit to live in.
Enfield Tool Manufacturing Co., opened a factory in the 1930s
Brimsdown Lead Works. White Lead manufacturing was associated with a great deal of noxious pollution and danger to health. Ludwig Mond learnt of the Bischof process which meant that the people did not come into contact with the chemicals during manufacture. A pilot plant at Willesden had failed, and Mond wanted to be sure the process would not damage growing vegetables. H.C.Bainbridge carried out the research work for him. In 1925 it was taken over by Associated Lead Manufacturers.
Brimsdown
It is first mentioned as ‘Grymesdoun’ in 1420, but by the late 17th the G had become a b - ’Brymesdowne’ 1610. It is an industrial area in the 1990s gradually being taken over by big shed retail.
Duck Lees Lane
Spike Island – so called because of the poverty there
London Jute Works. Opened 1867 and employed the very poorest, many of them children and many of them Scottish. There were many floods and eventually local voluntary fund raising paid for prevention work.
Cortecine Factory. Opened 1874. This was an oilcloth of canvas and cork. Burnt down in 1897.
Ediswan Works for Edison Swan Electric Co. They took over the jute works premises and a factory opened when Edison and Swan merged in 1881. They produced the first miners’ lamps in 1886 and first high voltage lamps in 1894. Large scale production soon took off with glass blowing a major part of the work. In the research arm Professor Ambrose Fleming patented in 1904 the world's first thermionic valve (the diode) and William Thompson – Lord Kelvin – worked on mirror galvanometers. In 1920 they joined a consortium which became AEI. Closed in 1968. The old offices, dated 1890, are the sole remnant of Edison and Swan's works the exterior substantially modified to hide its Victorian origins. One building left which was used by Amstrad in 1998 and there is a plaque to Swan and Dewar, who worked here on the vacuum flask.
British Sangamo works. In 1920 this was producing 200 electric meters a day
Green Street
Brimsdown Station. This lies between Enfield Lock and Ponders End on One Railway. Built by the Northern and Eastern Railway in 1884
Signal Box. Demolished 2009, took a V1.
Goods Yard
Sidings off the railway curved south and east and then went north branching out. Lines went to Brimsdown Power Station; Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Works, the Royal Small Arms Factory in 1916,
British Ideal Patents and Furniture – made tubular steel furniture
Izaak Walton Pub
Ripmax Corner – works of Ripmax who deal in radio control models.
Jeffrey’s Road
Johnson Matthey factory. Johnson Matthey, now a major multi-national, traces its origins to an assayers business 1817, and they had risen to become a major company in the field of precious metals and other substances. In the 1920s they took over smelting works built on an area of gravel pits and waste land at Brimsdown meaning that many buildings are on piles above the old flooded pits. Initially buildings were corrugated iron sheds a blast furnace, grinding mills, and other plant. Here they recover metals from waste material – for example silver salts for the photographic industry using recycled metal.
Johnson Matthey site being used for the relocation of businesses moved from the Hackney Olympic sites.
Gravel pit on the site – filled with waste from Johnson Matthey, then bomb damage rubble, then Piccadilly Line waste.
Lea Navigation
Mossops Bridge was built in 1999 and is part of a path which links the Navigation to Brimsdown Industrial Estate and railway station
Mossops Creek
Dug by John Mossop and Co. gravel and ballast extraction in the 19th. It is now a nature reserve
Mossops Creek Bridge – part of a path which links the Navigation to Brimsdown. Built 2006. The bridge was designed for Enfield Council as planning gain for Olympic relocation sites and it uses innovative methods on retaining walls and construction.
Mossops Creek Path
Access to the Lea.
Northampton Road
1-3 Granville Tavern.
Riverwalk Road
Industrial units on a road leading to the Lea Navigation
Ruberoid Road
This is now a road within the Brimsdown Business area
Ruberoid. This American company made waterproofed roofing materials
Scotland Green
This small settlement has a mix of housing with some local authority tower blocks from the 1990s.
Stockingswater Lane
The road name dates from the 18th and is probably a field name
Leaside Industrial Estate
Remington Cartridge Factory. 1946 –This was the Remington Arms Union Metallic Cartridge Company, Ltd., an English subsidiary of the American arms company. It had a shotshell loading plant which loaded empty paper shotshells, imported from the US with powder. Closed 1946
Suez Road
Edwardson. The Enfield Soap Works had begun as a glue factory and in the 1920s began to make Edwardson's Easy Washer and expanded in the 1930s with Diamond Soap Flakes.
Sources
David Pam. History of Enfield 3 vols.
Field. Place names of London
Cohen. Life of Ludwig Mond
Morris. Archives of the Chemical Industry
Enfield Archaeology Society. Industrial Archaeolgy of Enfield
Smith & Carr. Industrial Archaeology of Hertfordshire and the Lea Valley
Lewis. Industry and Innovation in the Lea Valley
Lewis. Regeneration and Innovation in the Lea Valley
Lewis. London's Lea Valley. More Secrets Revealed
Lewis. London's Lea Valley. Britain's Best Kept Secret
Johnson Matthey web site
London Railway Record. articles.
Brimsdown Station. Wikipedia web site
Brimsdown. Wikipedia web site (Mossops Creek)
Remington web site.
Signal Box Forum web site
Ruberoid web site
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