The Mills used to cover a large part of this area. Buildings remain at 162-164 Abbey Street. From Ideal Homes: "Bermondsey was known as a major industrial centre with particular specialisation in leather tanning and food processing. Its contribution to the history of paper-making is less well known. For about a decade at the Neckinger Mill, at the junction of Abbey Street and Neckinger, and now under the Neckinger Estate, Matthias Koops, in conjunction with Elias Carpenter, manufactured clean, white paper from waste and written paper. The process was to be transplanted to a much larger venture at Millbank, but the project failed. Koop's Neckinger Mill was sold to the leather firm, Bevingtons in 1805 and they continued to occupy the site until 1950."
The building is Listed and that site has more information.
2020: John Winter contacted us and we can do no more than pass his information on: "Elias Carpenter is a direct ancestor of mine. Joanne Southcott, the self proclaimed prophet, also worked at the paper mills. Elias bought one of the mills building and established the House of God (Primitive Christian). JS and EC were connected for some time. Plenty of documents with their names in them. A society and museum still exists for JS. From EC the Neckinger address went to the Bevington Leather who built new buildings. The building still exits. The leather company was taken over and then that one went bust only a couple of years ago. The building was left in his will and sold. The building next door was the Elephant and Castle Hotel, i.e. looks like the Leather maker did not buy and/or keep all the buildings. None of this is via family lore, all researched, e.g. You can search the British Museum for a cartoon on the House of God, Newington Butts."
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