Dockland Heritage
The Colour Makers
You are standing on the Wharf of what was once a colour factory, where the raw materials of chemical colours were manufactured for use in the making of paints, printing inks, plastics, rubber and paper.
The firm which employed many local people moved from this site in 1986. Until then, inside the rather gloomy workshops with their complex of pipes and equipment, mounds of pure colour glowed like heaps of jewels — green, yellow, indigo and blue. Faming brilliant scarlet bubbled in steaming vats and overalled women shovelled the thick, wet steaming masses of purple and aquamarine onto the drying racks. Coloured smoke issued from the boiler chimney and pigeons with pink tinted feathers strutted on the roof-tops.
The first industries on the site, in the middle decades of the 19th century, had been concerned with ship building. Burrells acquired the wharf and workshops in 1888 by which time ship building had declined in Millwall. The company already had a well established export business, trading in paints, chemicals, drugs and oils.
Initially, Burrells used the Millwall factory for paint manufacture but the production of dyes and pigments gradually became more important until in 1943 the company sold their interest in paint and concentrated on
making pure colour.
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