I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for granting me this Adjournment Debate. My purpose in calling it is to share with the House one of London’s best kept secrets and one of its greatest opportunities.

Fifteen years ago, representatives of News International contacted me to announce the closure of Convoys Wharf. I met them on site, going down a narrow street in Deptford through an industrial gate set in high fences. I came upon a huge area of concrete peppered with massive sheds stretching to the waterfront. It was a vast, forlorn, windy expanse with a footprint similar to the whole of the south bank. My immediate fear was that the site was destined for millionaires’ housing, a gated community cut off from the rest of Deptford that would continue the hundreds of years of local people’s exclusion from their own Thames waterfront. Then I discovered that Convoys Wharf was the site of Henry VIII’s naval shipyard and the home of the great diarist John Evelyn. I sensed that this would be an historic battle, and so it has been, as I, with local people and Lewisham council planners led by John Miller, have sought recognition of the site’s supreme importance and of the imperative to secure a development appropriate to its unique heritage.

Let me outline the historical record, which I have taken—often verbatim—from the Museum of London archaeology report. The record goes back to the Domesday Book and the manor of Grenviz, the present-day Deptford. In the late 12th century, the manor passed to the de Says family, who named it Sayes court. The mediaeval manor house of Sayes court, which was constructed of wood, was certainly in existence in 1405.

Deptford increasingly felt the influence of Greenwich palace. It was given a great boost when Henry VIII decided to found a royal dockyard there. Lambarde wrote of Deptford:

“This towne was of none estimation at all until King Henrie the eighth advised (for the better preservation of the Royal fleete) to erect a storehouse, and to create certaine officers there”.

This Tudor storehouse was the nucleus of the shipyard. Erected in 1513, it survived in part until 1952. The great dock was probably built at this time, and the old pond at Deptford strand was adapted as a basin to accommodate ships in 1517. In 1581, Sir Francis Drake’s ship the Golden Hind was lodged in a specially constructed brick dock, becoming one of London’s very first tourist attractions. For 400 years, Deptford was the powerhouse of England’s navy. Local boat builder Julian Kingston has recorded:

“Hundreds of warships and countless trading vessels were built or refitted here including ships for exploration, science and empire. It was the ‘Cape Canaveral’ of its day and is associated with the great mariners of the time, such as Drake, Rayleigh and Cook”.

In 1653, John Evelyn took up residence in Sayes court. He modernised the house and laid out its vast gardens. He began with an orchard of 300 mixed fruit trees, and went on to create groves of elm and of walnut trees, a huge holly hedge, plots for melons, pears and beans, as well as a moated island for raspberries and asparagus, beehives and a carp pond. It was here that Evelyn carried out his planting trials, which formed the basis of his famous treatise “Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees”.

That other illustrious diarist Samuel Pepys recorded two visits to John Evelyn’s gardens in 1665. He saw

“a hive of bees, so as being hived in glass you may see the bees making their honey and combs mighty pleasantly”,

and Evelyn

“showed me his gardens, which are for variety of evergreens, and hedge of holly, the finest things I ever saw in my life.”

Samuel Pepys had major business at the dockyard, having been put in charge of Charles II’s great “thirty shipbuilding programme” in 1677. The Lenox, to which I will refer later, was the first of the ships to be built. In 1708, Master Shipwright Joseph Allin built a house on the site, and it remains intact today. It was bought in 1998 by William Richards and Chris Mazeika who are continuously restoring it. As shipbuilding developed, the slipways became vast structures of brick, concrete and timber and were then provided with cover buildings, an example of which is the Olympia.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Evennett.)