Convoys Wharf
Convoys Wharf also covers most of the site of Sayes Court manor house and gardens,[1] one-time home of the diarist John Evelyn.
Having been sold by News International in 2008, it is now owned by Hutchison Whampoa Limited and is subject to a planning application to convert it into residential units,[3] although a large part of the site has safeguarded wharf status.
[10] The dockyard is also associated with the knighting of Sir Francis Drake by Queen Elizabeth I aboard the Golden Hind,[11] the legend of Sir Walter Raleigh laying down his cape for Elizabeth,[12] Captain James Cook's third voyage aboard Resolution,[13] Frobisher's and Vancouver's voyages of discovery, despatching ships against the Spanish Armada,[14] as well as for Nelson's battles including Trafalgar.
[17] At the mouth of Deptford Creek, on the Fairview Housing estate, there is a statue, designed by Mihail Chemiakin and gifted by Russia commemorating Peter's visit.
It was largely shut down from 1830 to 1844;[8] shipbuilding then resumed on the site, but in 1864 a Parliamentary Committee recommended that the Royal Dockyards at Deptford and Woolwich should be closed.
[20] The Foreign Cattle Market was taken over by the War Department in 1914, on a tenancy agreement from the City of London Corporation, for use as the Royal Army Service Corps Supply Reserve Depot.
[15][25] During the Second World War a bomb destroyed one of the storehouses in the adjacent Royal Naval Victualling Depot and killed a number of men; a plaque was visible in the early 1970s commemorating this tragedy.
The structures of the yard proper, the docks, slips, basins, mast ponds, landing places and stairs, constitute a substantial architectural fabric that is currently extant, though largely invisible, being covered by superficial accretion or infill.
[34] In October 2000, 'Creekside Forum' set up the 'Convoys Opportunity' umbrella group in response to the News International Ltd plan to sell the 40-acre (160,000 m2) Convoys Wharf site.
[35] Convoys Opportunity, composed of community organisations, churches, businesses and others in Deptford and beyond,[36] campaigned to have the News International scheme refused and the safeguarding order upheld.
In 2002 News International applied to the London Borough of Lewisham for outline planning permission to erect 3,500 residential units on the site.
[37] On 18 May 2005 a 50/50 joint venture company of Cheung Kong Holdings and Hutchison Whampoa entered into an agreement to acquire Convoys Wharf, to develop it as a mixed residential and commercial project, with News International retaining a profit share in the sale of the luxury homes proposed.
[45] A planning application to build a first major residential block of 456 flats, the first of 22 plots in Hutchison's masterplan, was approved by Lewisham Council in June 2020.
[46] A detailed planning application for plot P01, at the eastern end of the river frontage, was submitted in April 2023; it related to a 12-storey development containing 247 new homes, with ground floor retail/leisure floorspace and residential amenity space.
The ship would actually be constructed on the dockyard site, and would form the centrepiece of a purpose-built museum which would remain as a permanent part of the development of Convoys Wharf.
