It was admittedly very exciting to find that my namesake (as yet connection unproved) John B Lawes had a chemical works on the very site where I have just exhibited. It is in fact, TOO WEIRD.
John Bennet Lawes founded the chemical fertiliser industry in 1842, with the development of wet process phosphoric acid technology. He was a self taught agricultural chemist and early Victorian entrepreneur who patented a process whereby ground coprolite was mixed with sulphuric acid resulting in a more soluble form of calcium phosphate or "superphosphate".
Coprolite is fossilised animal dung and composed chiefly of calcium phosphate along with minor quantities of organic matter (it is possible to infer the diet of the animal which produced the coprolite on examination). Superphosphate production factories were rapidly built around the country, where coprolite could be extracted. It had been discovered in 1840 that crops grew more strongly where the coprolite existed, but the mineral was not insoluble in water so couldn't be used until Lawes found a way to make it work. Bone ash was also used and many industries around the creek were based on using the discarded body parts of cattle.
Lawes was the founder of fertiliser (although wikipedia has some bloke called the Rev John Stevens Henslow as the one to patent the extraction process, so some more research is required!).
Lawes' first chemical works straddled the south of the present Faircharm site and the north of APT's site. This predates the present APT building.
I saw a map today at a consultation exhibition by Thames Tunnel (Thames Water) at Creekside Centre which showed the chemical works, but I've yet to track this map down. Rather ironic that Lawes made a fortune out of fossilised shit, and now I'm living in Shit Central, this area being one of the largest concentrations of sewage confluence...resulting in one of the few areas on the Thames discharging effluent into the Thames during heavy rain. The overflow is next door to the Ahoy Centre, where I have mudlarked on many an occasion and where some of my pottery fragments have been found.
At the Thames Tunnel consultation today I learned that the tunnel will merely be an overflow pipe, and not as I thought, a giant tunnel of shit channeling all out to sea. On the contrary.
After Creekery I thought my name would be associated with mud (my name is mud), but now it appears it is historically associated with shit. On my doorstep.
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