Rotherhithe

Rotherhith, vulgarly called Rederiff, was anciently a village on the south east of London, though it is now joined to Southwark, and as it is situated along the south bank of the Thames, is chiefly inhabited by masters of ships, and other seafaring people.

Rotherhithe, was anciently a village on the south-east corner of the metropolis, though it is now joined to Southwark, and as it is situated along the south bank of the Thames, is chiefly inhabited by captains of merchant ships, pilots, sailors and such like people.

Rotherhithe, corruptly Redriff, a manor and parish on the right bank of the Thames, in the county of Surrey, between Bermondsey and Deptford. It is not mentioned in Domesday Book, and was, at the time of the Conquest, a hamlet in the royal manor of Bermondsey. The name appears as "Ætheredes hyd" in a charter of A.D. 898, printed in Birch's Cartularium, vol. ii. p. 220. In the 17th century it had come to be so generally called Redriff that out of twenty trade tokens, recorded by Mr. Burn, nineteen spelt it Redriff; in the twentieth it was Rothorith, 1666.¹ Philip Henslowe used to send his horse "to grasse to Redreffe." The charge in 1600 was twentypence a week.²

The living is a rectory. The church, dedicated to St. Mary, was built 1714–1715 on the site of a smaller church. It was enlarged and the steeple added in 1738. It is a large brick building with stone dressings, and a lantern, and columns of the Corinthian order. The architect is unknown. In the churchyard is the monument erected by the East India Company to the memory of Prince Lee Boo, a native of the Pelew or Palas Islands, and son to Abba Thulle Rupack, or King of the Island Coo-roo-raa, who died from the smallpox in Captain Wilson's house in Paradise Row, December 29, 1784. The inscription records that the stone was erected "as a testimony of the humane and kind treatment afforded by his father to the crew of the Antelope, Captain Wilson, which was wrecked off the island of Coo-roo-raa on the night of the 9th of August, 1783." Besides the mother church there are three or four district churches. Rotherhithe has always been much inhabited by seafaring people. Admiral Sir John Leake (d. 1720), distinguished on many occasions, from the Relief of Londonderry to the Battle of La Hogue and the reduction of Barcelona, was born at Rotherhithe in 1656. Manning states that the brave old Admiral Benbow was born in Wintershull Street, now Hanover Street, Rotherhithe.³ But this is a mistake; he was born at Coton Hill, Shrewsbury. Gulliver, so Swift tells us, was long an inhabitant of the place. "It was as true as if Mr. Gulliver had spoken it," was a sort of proverb among his neighbours at Redriff. In Rotherhithe are the extensive Commercial Docks. The south entrance to the Thames Tunnel was in Swan Lane, but since the tunnel has been appropriated for the passage under the Thames of the East London Railway it has been closed to foot-passengers. Rotherhithe has many wharves, stairs, docks, yards, granaries, manufactories and shops, connected with maritime and river traffic.

On June 1, 1765, a fire broke out in a mast-yard near Rotherhithe Church, which destroyed 206 houses.

Some discussion having arisen in connection with Turner's grand picture of "The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838," as to where was the last berth of the good ship, the Rev. E.J. Beck, Rector of Rotherhithe, wrote a letter to the Times (December 20, 1877), in which is the following interesting passage:—

She was broken up not at Deptford, but at Rotherhithe, at the ship-breaking yard then in the occupation of the late Mr. John Beatson. It may interest your readers and the admirers of Turner's beautiful picture to know that the exact spot to which the good ship was towed is within a few yards of the Surrey Canal entrance of the Grand Surrey Commercial Docks. It so happened that while the Temeraire was still in process of destruction a chapel of ease to the old parish church of Rotherhithe was being erected within a short distance of the ship-breaker's yard, and Mr. Beatson presented to the architect (who was a relation of his own) sufficient timber to make the holy table, altar rails, and two large sanctuary chairs, which are still in use in the church of St. Paul's, Globe Street, Rotherhithe, consecrated in June 1850. The last of the wooden ships broken up in the same yard was the Queen, about five years since. The figure-heads of various old ships of the Fleet still adorn the entrance gates in Rotherhithe Street.—Times, December 20, '77.

The last line will recall another memorable picture, "Old Friends," by H.S. Marks, R.A., which attracted much notice at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1879.

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¹ Burn, Desc. Cat. of London Traders Tokens, p. 201.
² Henslowe's Diary, p. 81.
³ Manning's Surrey, vol. i. p. 229.