You are on page 1of 7

Peter Martineau's Sugarhouse

Contributed by Survey of London on March 9, 2017

The sugar refining industry in England began in the 1540s when


Cornelius Bussine, a citizen of Antwerp with knowledge of the ‘secret’
art of sugar refining, established the first sugarhouse within the City of
London. Several more followed, but it was not until the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries that the business of sugar refining truly
gathered pace in London. By 1750 there were said to be eighty
sugarhouses in the capital and a further forty dispersed across the rest
of England and Scotland. In spite of the noxious nature of the industry
and the propensity of its buildings to catch fire, most of these London
refineries were still then located within the City walls, close to the
Thames or Fleet rivers. However, the opening of the West India Docks
in 1802 lured the sugar trade east and a ruling by the Court of
Common Council in 1807 finally forbade sugarhouses to remain
within the City. At the close of the eighteenth century suburbs already
claimed a number of well- established sugarhouses owing to
comparative openness and access to the Port, but in the early
nineteenth century these distinctive buildings, and the cramped
lodgings of their workers, became defining features of the parishes of
Whitechapel and St George in the East. This shift eastwards coincided
with a renewed wave of German immigration following that of the
eighteenth century. Skilled and unskilled sugar workers as well as
ambitious businessmen arrived from Northern Germany helping to
transform the industry from a collection of small-scale enterprises,
reliant on a high degree of manual operations, to a relatively
industrialised and technologically advanced industry, both dynamic
and lucrative as a result of the nearly unrivalled British consumer
market.1
George Martineau, a descendant of one East End family of sugar
refiners, reflected that “in 1856….practically all the loaf sugar
consumed in this country was produced in the East End of London.”
The 1851 census demonstrated that over 90% of those engaged in the
London sugar-refining trade were resident in the borough of Stepney.
Whilst the London sugar industry experienced a period of particularly
profitable expansion in the 1860s and 1870s such extravagant
prosperity did not last. Whereas 1864 could claim twenty-eight
London sugarhouses, by 1880 only twelve remained. Affected by
duties, the rise of beet sugar and proximity to Continental
competition, the East End industry slumped, giving way to Liverpool
and Greenock, which were better placed for Caribbean imports once
London’s monopolies were loosened, before nationally subsiding not
long after. Building new refineries on the banks of the Thames in the
1870s, Tate and Lyle of Silvertown are the sole survivors of this East
End industry, having cannily diversified into syrup and been early
backers of the newly invented sugar cube. A single functioning
sugarhouse lasted into the twentieth century in Whitechapel.
Belonging to the Martineau family and located on Kingward Street,
the Company secured a joint license with Tate and Lyle of the Langen
cube-making process in the late nineteenth century and this delayed
their demise but could not halt it altogether. Martineau’s closed in
1961.2
Approx. locations of Whitechapel sugarhouses, c.1840, plotted onto
Grellier’s map, c.1840-5 (LMA, SC/PM/ST/01/002)

Of French Huguenot descent, the Martineau family had become one of


the most important names in the London industry in the nineteenth
century. Owning a number of Whitechapel refineries after their forced
relocation outside the City walls in 1800, the business was divided
between two Norwich-born brothers, David (1754-1840) and Peter
(1755-1847). David developed a group of sugarhouses at the south end
of Christian Street. Peter, on the other hand, established himself in the
north-west of the parish in airy Goulston Square.

In 1775 John Fry, a merchant of Finsbury, was owner of a warehouse


in the south-eastern corner of Goulston Square, formerly Cowley’s
Snuff House. Significantly however, by 1806 he was also in possession
of an apparently substantial sugarhouse located on the north side of
present-day New Goulston Street. This was a commercial partnership
with William Osborne, who had previously refined sugar on the site
with James Diass in 1801. The business failed however and Fry was
declared bankrupt in 1806; his assets, including the sugarhouse and
its contents, were auctioned off. The seized sugarhouse was awaiting a
new owner when a case against a theft of a loaf of sugar by a
sugarbaker was heard at the Old Bailey. Involving three sugar bakers
at the site as well as the clerk of the sugarhouse, John Bell, the
incident confirmed that the refinery was gated and possessed a ‘men’s
room’ – a lodging house for single male workers. The demise of Fry’s
business dovetailed with the Martineau’s arrival into Whitechapel
from the City. Two confiscated sites, a warehouse at nos 3-5 Goulston
Street and the sugarhouse on New Goulston Street, were transferred
to Peter Martineau who was quick to recognise the potential for
further development at the northern site. Sometime between 1813 and
1818, Martineau constructed a brick dwelling house, counting house,
new men’s room and scum house (used for producing lower grade
sugar by-products) facing onto both New Goulston Street and
Goulston Street. This new accommodation was located to the east of
the main sugarhouse and divided from it by a gated yard. Given the
flammable nature of the sugar and also the intense heat necessary for
the production of it, separation of the most dangerous processes from
on-site housing was typical. In 1817, Peter Martineau & Sons ‘of
Goulston Street’ insured stock, utensils and the brick sugar house for
£19 000 spread across five insurance companies (Sun, Eagle, Atlas,
Glove, Union). The additional new buildings and their contents were
insured with the Sun for £3000 one year later. This was comparable
to the seven-storey premises of Severn, King and Co at Commercial
Road, insured for £15 000 in 1819.3
Metropolitan Sewers Plan of Goulston Street and Neighbourhood,
Whitechapel, 1849 (LMA, SC/PM/ST/01/002). Site of Martineau's
sugarhouse marked 'Sugar Bakers' on Short Street (later renamed
New Goulston Street).

Whilst the strategy of insuring the sugarhouse with a number of


companies could not prevent the outbreak of fire, it certainly appears
to have limited the damage caused by at least one such incident. In
1825 it was reported that a fire destroyed nearly half of the main
sugarhouse building, but that the speedy arrival of three fire engines,
arriving from the three different insurers, curtailed the blaze with a
plentiful supply of water. In 1847 a new phase of building work was
undertaken by George Webb of Gowers Walk and modern refining
pans were set in place by him later in 1855. Webb was also implicated
in the construction of other local sugarhouses around this period:
Elers and Morgan’s at Goodman’s Stile (1849), and Davies’ at Osborne
Street (1855) and Rupert Street (1854). Overseen by Charles Furnivall,
Martineau and Sons added a furnace chimney in April 1862 and by
1867 it was noted to have possessed a steam works. By 1870 Peter was
dead and his firm, Peter Martineau and Sons, appears to have vacated
Goulston Street. Fairrie however regarded that the business stumbled
on for a further three years under Peter’s grandson Hugh and ceased
only on his retirement in 1873.4

You might also like