Lost Hamlets: Green’s End is Right Here (and the new Beresford Square)

Script

Beresford Square here in Woolwich has reopened after what has felt like an absolute age, bringing to an end its plywood era. This current incarnation showcases the square’s role as the obvious gathering place at the heart of Woolwich, but as I’m in a bleak mood I’m going to describe it as an early example of an out of town development that helped cause the downfall of the historical town centre. LOL.

Medieval Woolwich was the area around the River and High Street, and this was somewhere else entirely – Green’s End, a hamlet at the end of a green, where the local roads met. It was separated from Woolwich by farms, fields and orchards. As I can no more ignore a lost hamlet than a pigeon can ignore a dropped chip, let’s hit the old maps and photos and do a history while we dander round the lovely new square.

Here’s John Roque’s map from 1746. By this time Woolwich has the Royal Dockyard and the Arsenal is also established, known in those days as The Warren. You can also see Charlton on the map, separated from Woolwich by the fields, woods and sandpits that still shape our area.

Looking at Barker’s detailed 1749 map, we can see how the Ropeyards and the Warren have linked the town and the hamlet, and there is a rough triangle of buildings where our square is now. The lane to Plumstead heads east, and Warren Lane heads west to become the High Street as it goes through the town, leading onwards to the Lower Road to Greenwich.

The ancient Cholic Lane comes up from the common and is met to the south of Green’s End by Love Lane, at the time the route towards Charlton, then bends round the hamlet, with this stretch still known as Green’s End. The other lane that meets them here runs through orchards towards Woolwich Manor House, which was located where Hare Street meets the High Street now.

Although Cholic Lane was the main road from Woolwich to the London-Dover Road, it was a narrow lane and prone to flooding. This was obviously unacceptable for such an important road, so the New Cross Turnpike Trust were authorised to make improvements and in 1765 the New Road was completed, taking over the old lane and a new more direct alignment northwards, running to the east of the hamlet. To this day, we call it the New Road.

Powis Street was laid out between Parson’s Hill and Green’s End in 1782-3 as a bypass to the hectic High Street and Warren Lane. It was named for the Powis brothers, who had taken the leases on forty-three acres of fields in the area. As can be seen in Paul Sandby’s 1783 illustration of the view from Green’s End, the early days the street was just fenced off from the fields and was only really built up from 1800 when new 99-year leases were negotiated and bold claims made about development plans.

In the 1790s, the junction was tidied up and the now-elevated stretch of Green’s End nearest Warren Lane became known as the High Pavement. As Woolwich grew, Green’s End gained even more roads and became the place where the Army, the Arsenal and the Town met. Thomas Street and William Street (now Calderwood Street) date from 1805 and were named for two of the Powis brothers. To connect the Army’s activities on the Common with the Arsenal, the Board of Ordnance laid out Wellington Street then cleared the area of the square in 1812-13, demolishing a dozen or so cottages and other buildings including the first iteration of the Ordnance Arms pub, which re-established itself next to the New Road.

William Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford, was an army officer and politician who fought alongside the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War and led the failed British invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806. In later life, under Wellington as Prime Minister, he was the Master-General of the Ordnance and as such commissioned our gatehouse.

The oldest parts of Beresford Gate, now labelled the Royal Arsenal Gatehouse, were built in 1828 and can still be distinguished. A few years later the old Ropeyard was demolished and replaced with a new street which took its name from the gates, meeting Warren Lane in front of them. Further clearances took place in 1831, and the newly formed square also adopted the Beresford name in 1837.

Around this time, the local worthies realised they’d need a church at this end of town, so formed the Woolwich Proprietary Chapel Company and raised enough money to build it. Built in 1833-34, it had an imposing Portland stone façade with a tower looming over the new square. The first minister was an Irish Calvinist who drew the crowds and made Holy Trinity popular, but high pew rent kept the poor out. Less than 20 years later, after a falling out between a new minister and the congregation, the church was bought out by the Rector of Woolwich and finally consecrated as a chapel of ease to the parish church of St. Mary’s.

Over the years the Beresford gate was added to, but the basic structure of a wider road gate with a smaller pedestrian gate either side remains. The biggest and most obvious extension in red brick was completed in 1891, a time when much of the square had been or was being redeveloped due to the market moving here.

As the town’s money moved away from stinky old Riverside town, so did the town’s market traders. The market in Woolwich first received an official charter in 1618 and was based by the High Street where a new market square was developed in the 1720s. The market outgrew this and spread onto the High Street itself. In 1808 the town commissioners attempted to make a new market on what was then the edge of town, in what is now sometimes called the Bathway Quarter. They had laid out a new square, but the move failed miserably as it was then too far out of town to get much trade. By 1824, when the Commissioners tried and failed to sell the site, their market was being used as a sacking factory.

Some market traders had drifted back to the old market but many instead set up in Beresford Square, avoiding the tolls. For a long time, the authorities fought this, with the local Board of Health and Police periodically trying to clear the area, but the market hung on and by mid-Century had become a vital part of the local economy. Still, eviction attempts continued until 1879, when common sense prevailed and the Board of Health took over the Charter in 1887 and designated Beresford Square as the official market. Tramlines had arrived in the Square in 1880, and the market would continue here among busy tram, bus and car traffic for over 100 years.

By the time of Booth’s poverty map in 1900, the old town had de-gentrified almost entirely and was now a notorious slum known as the Dusthole, with clearances already underway; the High Street was now a shabby precinct for the poorer Woolwich people. Powis Street was now the stylish main shopping street, with much of it freshly rebuilt and modernised, wholesale redevelopment enabled by the 99 year leases we mentioned earlier coming to an end. Wellington Street was also a respectable shopping destination. The further away from the stench of the river the better and all roads continued to meet at Green’s End. Our lost hamlet, as Beresford Square, was now the heart of Woolwich. A beating heart, too, as the workers pulsed in and out of the gates like clockwork.

I’ve spoken elsewhere already about Woolwich’s religious radicalism and will speak in future about the same on the political side so won’t go into massive detail here, but let’s just say we were the kind of town where a good speaker could easily attract a massive crowd. This included Will Crooks, who in 1902 became the country’s fourth Labour member of parliament when he won massively, taking the seat from the Tories. Arsenal workers would take their lunch break to listen to him when he campaigned here in the square. In 1907, he led a procession of 8,000 men from here to Westminster in protest against Arsenal job cuts.

At the time Crooks’ memorial service was held in the square in 1921, an observer noted that “the essence of Woolwich is Beresford Square”, calling it “Woolwich Bovrilized”. I think these days they would say “Marmite-ised” to add another layer to the joke. Anyway, they went on to say:

In the evening it belongs to aimless sauntering soldiers and their ladies. On Saturday nights it is a joyous county-town market-place, filled with cheapjacks, where the Cockney and the Kentish tongues are vigorously exchanged. On Sunday nights it is an arena where all the creeds of the world wrestle for supremacy: Salvation Army, Agnostic, Free Church, Socialist, Brotherhood, Ethicalist, Calvinist, Comtist, Hegelian, Bolshevist – there they gather and dispute . . . and evermore are moved on by the over-worked police. At all other times it is just Beresford Square, Woolwich, where you may buy the best of all fried potatoes.

If not distracted by a charismatic preacher or compelling argument, or a really good poke of chips, the workers would spill out of the Arsenal gates and into the pubs that ringed the square, of which just two survive, the Ordnance Arms and the Elephant and Castle. For most of the 19th century there were five pubs within falling distance of the gates, as can be seen on the 1853 map.

On the western side of the square was the Salutation, which can be seen on Barker’s map to have had a nice big beer garden. In the 1760s the inn was rebuilt and the gardens were replaced by cottages, accessed by an alleyway named after the pub. Later the pub moved a little closer to the gate and the 1760 building was split between a beerhouse called the Royal Lancer and a grocery. In 1892-3 the proprietor replaced both with a new, larger Salutation and built three new houses with shops, one of which remains and is just here on our left.

At the end of the row nearest Holy Trinity, in 1913 the Royal Arsenal Cinema Co. opened a theatre and cinema, expanded in the early 30s to hold 900. It was taken over by the Granada chain in 1952, and a year later re-named Century Cinema.

By the mid-20th century, most of the cottages in Salutation Alley had long been slum-cleared, but what little remained came down with the pub and cinema in 1961 to make room for the market pound and this piece of uninspiring late 60s crap, a building so boring even I can’t find anything nice to say about it.

Much more interestingly, while we’re talking about the pubs: although it’s hard to tell from the exterior now, all that remains of the old hamlet can be found at the heart of the Elephant block. 18 and 19 Green’s End are among the oldest in town, dating from the early 1780s. Number 18 was converted into the Elephant and Castle pub in 1848 and Number 19, now the newsagent, gained its shop extension in 1864. The pub’s single storey front extension was first built over its garden in 1884. At the time of its opening, it was one of at least five pubs with that name in London.

That front extension was replaced with a rather plainer bar in the late 1950s when the pub also expanded to include the property next door, 10 Beresford Square. By this time, the Ordnance Arms and Salutation had also lost their Victorian frontages. The pub on the corner of New Road, the Royal Mortar Tavern, kept its Victorian exterior and it appears in the mid-60s film SE18: Impressions of a London Suburb, linked to below. Also included is this photo from the 1950s showing a pleasing alignment old Elephant extension, the Ordnance Arms already modernised, and the Mortar behind it. The Royal Mortar Tavern was demolished in 1984, but the Royal Mortar Inn, adjacent, completed in 1891 to complete with the Ordnance Arms’ redevelopment, survives as the shops at 1 and 1B New Road.

The Ordnance has been held back as the last pub to discuss, coz I’ve got some potentially embarrassing photos from the late 90s that I was thinking to use as Blackmail material and wanted to give *fuzzy white noise* time to pay up. [CAPTION: THEY DID.]

The Ordnance has been more or less where it is since the original pub was lost in the first clearances; always successful due to its location, it had a yard and a stable block added in 1847. With the Market becoming official, in 1888 the proprietor Peter Edmund Brown decided it would be a good time to rebuild the whole of his island site, resulting in a much bigger premises for the hostelry as well as three double-aspect shops facing both the square and New Road. According to the Survey of London, the builder James Chapman got much work locally as a result and it is easy to see why, even with the island in a rather less glamourous state than the one with which the Mortar felt obliged to compete.

The ground floor lost its decoration in 1954, but the current works do I believe intend to restore them, as well as an entrance at the front of the building, lost to the new toilets in the 50s improvements. Sadly, the original Victorian horseshoe bar, which survived that dangerous time, was lost during the pub’s early 21st century incarnation as O’Connors. Less missed, apart from by me and the dust, is the massive metal tree added in the 1990s.

The upstairs nightclub and the large rooms upstairs where I used to live alongside *white noise* became the kind of hostel that would feature in a book called Down and Out in Plumstead and Woolwich; *longer white noise* probably less drug use *white noise* Do see Trip Advisor for more reviews by the occasional confused tourist and photos showing the same already decrepit bathrooms and kitchens from back in my day, when *extended white noise*. I wonder what happened to the shark?

Even after the Arsenal closed in 1967, the square remained busy with the market… and through traffic. The new town at Thamesmead promised even more congestion so drastic measures were needed. In 1969, the decision was made by the Greater London Council to demolish the gatehouse so that Beresford Street and Plumstead Road could be dualled. The mess of market and main roads had to be addressed.

Holy Trinity Church, sited awkwardly between the ends of Beresford Street and Warren Lane, was already gone. Despite once being the most fashionable church in Woolwich, declining attendance and lack of money had led to it becoming shabby and surplus to requirements. In the 1930s it had lost its front yard and portico to make room for a tram shelter and public conveniences. It was sold to Woolwich Borough Council in 1960 and demolished a couple of years later. New public conveniences were put on the site of the tram shelter in the 90s refurbishment, replaced with a nice-looking brick café in these latest improvements.

The extent of the 1960s demolition can be seen in the differences between the 1957 and 1971 maps. Demolition of the Beresford gate was of course opposed. It seems the expensive plans were delayed long enough that it was listed, and so the decision was made to plough through the jumble of Arsenal buildings behind it instead. I don’t think even Jon Shenanigans could make the current Beresford Street interesting, but the before and after pictures are somewhat impressive. The gate was refurbished once all the dust had settled and has since been used as office space.

The square was pedestrianised and further improvements in the 1990s saw the loss of the High Pavement, which was reinstated in the 2010 refurbishment. In 2010, I was able to get this photo of the old tramlines which were still under the square and, along with the old public toilets, exposed again during the most recent works and I believe are now lost.

Woolwich actually got off quite lightly in the 1960s compared to many places in terms of destruction – ERITH – and also never had an enormous shopping mall dumped in the middle of it like Bexleyheath, Bromley or Lewisham. This did mean that it lost its position as the premiere shopping destination locally, and soon even Eltham had more prestige as our big local names closed and the chains moved out. A lot of the Victorian town fell into neglect and was lost in the by the early 80s, including the entire block of pubs and businesses that existed where General Gordon Place is now, and the row of buildings next to the Tramshed across the New Road.

This area had been a field in the hamlet days, but by the middle of the 19th century had been completely developed with shops and other buildings facing a smokehole for the railway, which was where the pedestrian area is now, where the bus stops used to be, in front of the Equitable. The route of Love Lane continued as the alleyway through it, Peake’s Place. Woolwich Arsenal station opened in 1849, the area’s extensive sand and gravel works easily enabling a cutting for it to sit in. Electrification meant the smokehole could be closed, much to the relief of locals, in 1928.

The plan was to build the new civic centre here, with a new library, shops and offices. This never came to fruition and instead a temporary open space was established, with a children’s play park officially opened in 1985 by Blue Peter’s Simon Groom and Goldie. This was on the site of the Fortune of War pub and the last part of the block to be demolished.

It was soon forgotten that this popular park was meant to be temporary, but the basic amenities were soon shabby and required refreshment to match our big new screen, also meant to be temporary but also now very much part of the town. Works were completed in 2011. What’s left of the market has been here while Beresford Square was being done, but the reopening of the square means the water feature should feature water again soon.

I could grumble for hours about the dual carriageway crossing but apart from that there’s now a corridor of green and open spaces from Green’s End to the River. Now that we’re in the actual future, we can be grateful for the failed plans that made Green’s End green again and feel smug because the malls that made those other town centres so sexy in the seventies and eighties are now suburban blight.

References

The vast majority of the photos in this video are by Sir Chris Mansfield:
https://www.chrismansfieldphotos.com/
…the rest are mine (2008 General Gordon Place photos, blackmail material) or public domain.

The Survey of London, Woolwich:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/research/histories-and-theories-architecture/survey-london/woolwich

SE18: Impressions of a London Suburb
https://www.londonsscreenarchives.org.uk/title/182/
The film is a portrait of Woolwich at the beginning of its transition from independent industrial powerhouse into the often disregarded suburb of today.

Sources for everything else either Vincent or Jefferson (of blessed memory), or me (of terrible memory).
W. T. Vincent, The Records of the Woolwich District, 1890
E. F. E. Jefferson, The Woolwich Story, 1970

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=19.1&lat=51.49067&lon=0.06858&layers=170&b=1&o=100
Maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (https://maps.nls.uk/)

This Is Her: The Sad Fate of MV Royal Iris

Back to Woolwich! MV Royal Iris hosted and inspired some of the biggest names in music in the 1960s, and is fondly remembered by many Merseysiders – so how the heck did she end up rotting away in Woolwich?

If you have enjoyed this video, please consider donating the traditional cost of a coffee to the Greenwich Wildlife Network:

https://www.greenwichwildlifenetwork.org/how-to-help

Sources and further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Royal_Iris

IanVisits: Royal Iris – the Mersey ferry rusting away on the Thames
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-mersey-ferry-rusting-away-on-the-thames-36783/

Royal Iris awaits her fate
https://web.archive.org/web/20071107193943/http://www.irishseashipping.com/photofeatures/historicships/royaliristhames0806/royaliristhames0806.htm

Former Mersey ferry gutted by fire, BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg41k7e94dno

Mersey Ferries Meets Merseybeat: Riverboat Shuffle Cruises
Includes a picture of the Beatles playing on Royal Iris, taken by Mike McCartney.
https://www.merseyferries.co.uk/about-us/the-beatles/

Keith Chesworth’s 2006 pictures
https://web.archive.org/web/20100308191431/http://homepage.ntlworld.com/keith.chesworth/amerseyferry/real%20royal%20iris/realroyalirisindex.htm

2014 Urbex – Gabe 28 Days Later
https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/threads/mv-royal-iris-london-august-2014.91709/

Music Dayz fact for 25/8/61
The Beatles support Mr. Acker Bilk’s Paramount Jazz Band on the MV Royal Iris.
https://musicdayz.com/fact/16924/

The long and exciting career of SS Royal Iris, 1906-1961
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Royal_Iris Mersey

Pirate photo via SatKids https://www.paulmorris.co.uk/satkids/index2.htm

Lost Hamlets: In Search of Bedon Well

My newest Lost Hamlets Video is now up on YouTube!

Here’s the script:

In my previous video, “In Search of Wricklemarsh”, I mentioned my assumption that it was a lost hamlet. We have quite a few of them in what is now south east London. Many still exist in our (sub)urban consciousness as “where the local shops are” but often all that remains is a road name and a couple of suspiciously old houses surrounded by later developments.

This is the case for the one which always “springs” to mind for me: the lost hamlet of Bedon Well. It’s very familiar, as I go through it a lot on the bus and used to walk all over the area as a care worker. It was a great way to stay in shape. Anyway, it turns out that so is searching for lost hamlets and so I decided that Bedon Well had to be next on my list.

Before we turn to the old maps, here’s where I’m talking about in modern times. We’re in the area north of the old Roman road of Watling Street, on the Kent side of Shooters Hill. Bedonwell Road is marked in pink.

The hamlet is named on Edward Hasted’s 1778 map. It is visible but not named on the 1805 Ordnance Survey map then named in the 1863 map. Closing in on the detailed 1870 edition we have a lovely view of the field boundaries and the hamlet. The springs and stream can be seen more clearly on the 1898 map, as can the encroaching suburbs.

So, the Bedon itself is a very minor tributary of the Thames and is mostly culverted now and we meet it where it is set free to join the River. We’re on the Thames Path by Corinthian Manorway, in Erith, also where the Green Chain Walk starts.

There’s no safe access to the foreshore here, so we’ll just have to enjoy a wider view. It’s not far off low tide, making it easy to imagine how this area might have looked in less industrial times – more reeds, less rubbish, and stretching for miles. The whole area between Woolwich and Erith would have been malarial swamps until the medieval monks of Lesnes Abbey started building the river walls and reclaiming farmland.

I know very little about “north of the River” and on checking Google maps I’m kinda perturbed to discover that Frog Island across the River there – which I assumed was some sort of nature reserve – is in reality the Waste Management Facility for the East London local authorities. The tumulus at the top there is the actual landfill.

For some reason, it’s at this point in writing my script that I remember the late great Erithite Linda Smith saying Erith wasn’t twinned with anywhere- but it did have “a suicide pact with Dagenham”. It’s so nice round here, non-locals might have to take my word for it but it’s a brilliant joke.

We will next head to Holly Hill Open Space, by Riverdale Road, the north side of the Bedon’s valley, and pick up the line of the stream there.

In 1493 a chap called Robert Henthorpe left three shillings and fourpence to mend “a well callyd Beton Well”, meaning “praying well”, but it’s also suggested that the name Bedon comes from an old English word “bydan” meaning “shallow valley”, and that is geographically accurate, as can be seen, although my back would beg to differ, at least on the way up.

Until relatively recently, the stream ran behind the houses on this stretch of Riverdale Road before joining an older culvert but was lost when the flats on the corner were built in the 1960s.
We have now descended to where the Bedon enters the drain, at the junction of Brook Street and Riverdale Road.

Like most of south-east London, the first suburban settlers round these parts were Victorian gentrifiers seeking the Kentish fresh air which would be doomed by their arrival; their tidy colonies were doomed in turn by the success of the railways that had first bought them here. Their villas were consumed by the inter- and postwar development that turned the area between the Bexleyheath and North Kent railway lines into what has been described as a nameless, “featureless sprawl”. This certainly looks true when glancing at a modern map and I think if forced at feather-point to name the area Bedonwell Road is in, most people would just say Bexleyheath or Belvedere. By which I don’t mean they’d say either of those options, but that “Bexleyheath or Belvedere?” would be their answer.

We saw on the older maps that back in the day the area was rather less anonymous, dotted with named hamlets, woods and farms. Some of these names survived to become modern road and estate names but others were lost with the arrival of suburban settlers. There was a big house and a smithy at Bedon Well, as well as a scattering of cottages. The stream fed the ponds serving the wealthy Parsonage Farm, once owned by the monks of Lesnes Abbey but by Victorian times owned by the wealthy Vinson family, who issued their own local trading tokens. The postwar development and allotments along Streamway are on the site of their farmland and watercress beds.

Bedonwell sits just south of Lessness Heath, the name of the Domesday settlement, the wider area when it was part of Kent and the heath itself. Part of that heath, to the east of the settlement, became known as Belvedere after the view and a later wooden tower built to look at it by local landowner Sir Culling Eardley, who inherited the land in 1847. He also improved the path over the heath to a road and built the first villa houses. As he continued to sell off his land and the railways arrived, a suburban village evolved and continued with the ancient name of Lessness Heath, quickly spreading as far as Bedonwell Road. However, it’s now usually known as Nuxley Village, a name applied by estate agents when Bexley Road, the road running north from Bedonwell, was renamed to Nuxley Road in 1939. The council road signs say Belvedere Village, but I don’t know anyone who actually calls it that.

Bexleyheath station is just to the south of Bedonwell, but it’s only in Bexleyheath because it’s where they put Bexleyheath station, and the town grew to meet it; the commercial centre is a good 10 minute bus ride away. Bexley New Town, as it was originally known, spread from the old Roman road over farmland and onto the heath which was once notorious for highwaymen. Here we see the area before the new town then its creeping progress towards the station, location marked with a pink spot, from 1805 before the town, to 1870, 1898, and then 1920, with the first new roads for the imminent explosion of interwar development.

We can still see the field boundaries and lanes reflected in the dense suburban layout of today, and some the developers turned into the main roads of the area, including Long Lane and Bedonwell Road. New roads included King Harold’s Way and Okehampton Crescent, which continued the line of the road to East Wickham.

Yeah, so that’s it, in terms of Bedonwell. There isn’t even an amusing historical name that sounds cheeky to modern ears. Apart from the UFO landings, there’s nothing interesting to report about this area.

Oh yes, the UFO landings! It turns out that this area is something of a hotbed of UFO activity. There was a sighting in 1952 over by Bexleyheath town centre, but then on a hot July Sunday in 1955 there was an actual UFO landing reported here, by multiple witnesses, including a young locum GP. Margaret Fry had been on her way with him to the doctor’s surgery in King Harold’s Way when she, the doctor and a load of kids had their close encounter, beginning when her car was overshadowed by the craft.

The UFO they saw was a classic flying saucer, which Mrs Fry described as “blue/ silver/ grey/ pewter texture, yet none of those colours.” Quite a group had been there, and the event had been covered in the local press after being reported by someone else. When the story was covered by the News Shopper fifty years later, they appealed for other potential witnesses and one of them, Rodney Maynard, who was 15 at the time, came forward.

He and his workmates were on their lunch at a building site here on Streamway and on hearing a commotion had run up to investigate. He confirmed he had seen a craft big enough to cover the junction and go over onto the pavements and described it as “black, sleek and streamlined with a surface like polished metal. It was very fine and beautiful. It certainly wasn’t a prank.” Mr Maynard saw it lift off from there and then hover briefly over the school before flying away.

Mr Maynard said he had never forgotten his close encounter, but told the Shopper he did not talk about it because “people would think you were barmy” and further, “our mums kept telling us we had not seen anything”.

Mrs. Fry, on the other hand, began a lifelong interest in ufology. Her 2004 book, available for Kindle, includes several other local sightings and encounters, and is £1.99 well spent as I had no idea we were so well connected round here. Pricelessly, Mrs. Fry also adds another layer of fun to the issue of where exactly we are, calling it Erith, reminding me that until the formation of modern greater London and with it the borough of Bexley in 1965, this area would have been in the borough of Erith, formed from the old Erith parish during the Victorian boom.

Mrs Fry describes further UFO incidents in the area in July 1978, including one witnessed by herself and several neighbours and another when an “egg shaped silver disc” flew down King Harold’s Way, witnessed by three older children, who she later interviewed and describes as “sensible”. As a fellow member of that generation, I like to think those safety films scared us into not being completely stupid, at least, but honestly? From the top of the 422 bus in good weather, the idea that this is something of an alien tourist route isn’t too far-fetched. It’s far more believable than the idea that this area is Erith!

Sources and further reading

Who was so RUDE as to call the area a “featureless sprawl”, as well as an “amorphous suburb” (repeatedly)? https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2023/06/londons-most-amorphous-suburb.html

Nonexistent Nuxley Village: Arthur Pewty’s maggot sandwich

Holy Wells of Kent: http://theweepingcross.co.uk/Holy%20Wells%20of%20Kent.pdf

Bedonwell House: https://www.facebook.com/ErithandBelvedereHistSoc/posts/bedonwell-house-once-the-home-of-charles-beadle-before-his-move-to-essex-to-beco/952620644867204/

Flying saucer’s famous landing, News Shopper: https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/1246945.flying-saucers-famous-landing/

Link to the Stars, Margaret Fry: https://www.amazon.co.uk/LINK-STARS-Margaret-Ellen-Fry-ebook/dp/B008WUCN7I?ref_=ast_author_dp

Lost Hamlets: In Search of Wricklemarsh

New video on YouTube!

I’ve pasted my full script and blurb below – including the drinking game, of course!

In this video, I am somewhat further afield in South East London in search of the ancient settlement of Wricklemarsh. It now only survives as a road name, but what a wonderful name it is, sounding like somewhere Puddleglum might have lived. I’m currently suffering with my back, so let’s see how far down the eponymous Road we can get before my spine gives out. Apologies for the terrible camera work, I’m no Mike Jelves even when fit.

When my family moved back to Woolwich in the 90s, we lived off Shooters Hill Road and the nearby Wricklemarsh Road caught my eye, as it would, and at some point, I also saw an old map that showed Wricklemarsh as an area. Without doing any research I vaguely assumed the road was a remnant of some old hamlet or similar, probably lost under housing development and/or the Rochester Way Relief Road and remembered only in the name.

I recently found myself with time to kill in Kidbrooke so went for a bimble and came across Wricklemarsh Road again. It was clearly of the 1930s and I couldn’t see anything that might indicate a lost hamlet. Again, I vaguely blamed the A2, but this time was determined to do some actual research, somewhat easier now than in 1993 – although of course in those days I’d have been able to visit the nearby Woodlands Local History Museum, which became the Greenwich Heritage Centre, which is now CLOSED, and I will take every excuse to mention this.

Not to be too clickbait-y about it but what I discovered shocked me. I mean, I wasn’t as surprised as I was back in the day when I discovered wee Jimmy Krankie was not only a lady, she was married to that fella, but more surprised than I am these days when a government fails to deliver its promises on social care.

(FIG 1) Here you can see the general area we are talking about. This road I’m now marking in pink (FIG 2) is the modern Wricklemarsh Road, as you can see bisected by the A2 there not far from where it joins the Sun in the Sands roundabout on Shooters Hill Road, once the Roman road of Watling Street.

Wricklemarsh is mentioned in Domesday Book as a vil, the basic administrative unit, smaller than a manor. Its name is given as something like Witan-marsh, probably caused by a Norman scribe corrupting the local names of Wrickle or Writtle-marsh and nothing to do with the Witan. Writtle and wrickle mimic the babbling brooks and streams that would have cascaded down Shooters Hill into the marsh. In Domesday times, by which I still mean the 11th century and not now, it had ploughland enough for four teams of oxen, or around 50 inhabitants and an area of about 500 acres. It was pretty much the same size as its neighbour, Lee. (Everyone in South East London has a neighbour called Lee, or maybe Leigh these days.)

The area is next mentioned, as Writtlemarsh, in King Edward I’s 1284 rent accounts, the amount paid suggesting it had changed little since Domesday. After that, it barely troubles history until the 16th Century, from when we start to know about the many families whose hands it passes through, including well-known local names like Hervey and Morden. If you’re interested in who they all were, please see my main source for this bit, Wricklemarsh Revisited by Michael Egan, which is linked to below. Over this time, we can see the name settled down as Wrickle- rather than Writtle-marsh.

Wricklemarsh continued as a sleepy agricultural hamlet, though not an isolated one; in Tudor times it would have been called upon by Greenwich palace when they had visitors and needed extra supplies. The ancient Watling Street would have made it just about possible for farms around here to supply London with dairy, and they wouldn’t have had to get up too early to get to nearer market towns like Woolwich.

Things were eventually to change though, and the inevitable gentrification set in. This began in the 1720s, when the estate was bought from the Morden family by Sir Gregory Page, who had made his fortune in South Sea company stock before the bubble burst. He demolished the old manor house and built a stately home (FIG 3) set in a landscaped parkland which was rather smaller than the Domesday vil, there being 273 acres left after the various land sales over the years.

(FIG 4) On John Rocque’s epic map of the area around London in the 1740s Wricklemarsh is labelled Ridley Marsh, perhaps a gentrification or mishearing of the old name, and the extent of the park can be clearly seen. Blackheath Village doesn’t exist yet, hence the snobbery around it not being a “proper” ancient village, but you may also be able to see there that it’s the area labelled “Dowager’s Bottom”. (FIG 5) The Dowager in question was Lady Susan Morden, last resident of the old manor house; the Bottom refers to the area’s geography, not hers. Her home was probably on the site of Park House, (FIG 6) built in the 1780s and now in Cresswell Park, serving as the presbytery of the late Victorian church next door.

It was too frustrating to try and match Rocque’s map perfectly to a modern view but here’s (FIG 7) my best effort, with the new house sitting at the junction of modern Blackheath Park and Pond Road. The pond is long gone, but a boundary wall and a path remember its location. (FIG 8) Nearby Morden College is also very much still there, alms-houses which the sale of Wricklemarsh estate helped to fund in perpetuity. To this day the charity founded by Sir John Morden is dedicated to supporting older people.

Wricklemarsh was a very stately home indeed, very much in the style of the time, and I’ve linked to as many more pictures as I can find of it below. Designed by John James, who was also architect of the Ranger’s House in Greenwich, it was famous for its lavish interiors and Sir Gregory’s art collection, which included a Rubens and a Van Dyck.  According to a contemporary description, Wricklemarsh was “one of the finest houses in England, resembling a royal palace rather than a residence of a private gentleman.” He also had a house at Westcombe Park and one at Well Hall, Page House, which hung on until 1931, and was where Edith Nesbit wrote The Railway Children.

When we move to the Ordnance Survey map published in 1805 (FIG 9), we can see that the house, now in Wricklesmarsh Park, has been reduced to stumps. Despite costing £90k (the modern equivalent of around £16million to build), it was not long for this world, itself falling quickly to further gentrification. Page and his wife died without issue, and the estate passed to his great-nephew Sir Gregory Turner, who added Page to his name per the will and became Sir Gregory Page-Turner. (FIG 10)

Page-Turner decided to sell up, and in 1783 the estate was bought by another name locals will recognise, John Cator. Prior to his purchase, the government considered buying the estate to use for the military academy, which ended up in Woolwich. The survey done at the time enables us to reliably impose the boundaries of the estate on a modern map. Egan does this in Wricklemarsh Revisited and there’s no point reinventing the wheel so here is his map imposed on the modern aerial view. (FIG 11)

Cator bought the estate for the ridiculously knock-down price of £22,250, just under £3million in today’s money. He already had his own stately pile at Beckenham and had no interest in the Wricklemarsh house, which, unfashionable and vandalised, was considered surplus to requirements. Some of the estate was leased for development, like Montpelier Row and the Paragon. The house was slowly demolished from 1787, with ruins standing until 1808, the remnant we saw on the 1805 map. The ruins were something of a tourist attraction, becoming the subject of a watercolour by Turner (no relation, as far as I know) and an oil painting by William Marlow entitled Elegant Company in the Ruins of Wricklemarsh House, which I have also linked to below. (FIG 12)

Cator did take the bits he liked of Wricklemarsh and used them at his home Beckenham Place, (FIG 13) now a municipal golf club. With them went the last trace of Wricklemarsh on the maps, until its revival in Wricklemarsh Road during the inter-war building boom.

Cator’s nephew John Barwell Cator further exploited the parkland for its development potential, and from the 1820s the Blackheath Village we know today really began to take shape. The Cators that followed him were further able to take advantage of the early arrival of the railways, (FIG 14) and the area developed into the affluent Victorian suburban village which it essentially still is. There was some very tasteful postwar redevelopment, (FIG 15) but Blackheath benefitted from early gentrification and therefore nimbyism and is better preserved than many older competitors. Traces of Wricklemarsh Park and its boundaries can still be seen in the shapes of roads. (FIG 16)

None of these roads is Wricklemarsh Road though, (FIG 17) which runs towards the area but it’s clear that it wasn’t part of the ancient estate. In Victorian times, the area of the estate is identified as Blackheath Park, and where Wricklemarsh Road will be is still fields south of Shooters Hill Road, in blue. (FIG 18) By the time of the postwar aerial photo, Kidbrooke has been taken over by housing and the road has been fully developed. It has a junction with Rochester Way, marked green, the 1920s bypass to the ancient road. (FIG 20)

I’ve no doubt anyone who has had this video suggested to them knows all about the abandoned London Ringway plans, but if not, links below and gosh, enjoy that rabbit hole. The South Cross part of Ringway 1 would have destroyed most of south London and even Blackheath Village was significantly threatened by the demolition required to build a cut and cover tunnel for an 8-lane motorway. Although this was getting off very lightly indeed compared to everywhere else, there were protests and a counter proposal for a bored tunnel was made and looked likely.

The East Cross part of the Ringway around here took over existing plans, like the already underway vital improvements to the Blackwall Tunnel approach, which were complete by the late 60s (FIG 21), and the Dover Radial motorway, at a late stage of planning to replace or bypass Rochester Way from the Sun in the Sands roundabout and down to meet the South Cross at Kidbrooke. This was also considered essential, and the required compulsory purchases had been made.

To most of south London’s relief, the Ringways were cancelled in 1973, but people living around the increasingly unsafe Rochester Way were righteously angry that their necessary road had been lost to a folly. Years of lobbying and pro-motorway protests ensued to ensure that the Dover Radial plans still went ahead in some form. The resulting Rochester Way Relief Road was finally finished in 1988. (FIG 22) In the area where it divides Wricklemarsh Road, the old Rochester Way still runs alongside the A2 as a local road.

I didn’t make it to the end of Wricklemarsh Road, but it carries on like this ‘til it hits the tidy wee postwar estate at Corelli Road. (FIG 23) So, I must get to the point and actually answer my own question “what happened to the lost hamlet of Wricklemarsh?” Well, it isn’t truly lost, it just got gentrified early and we call it Blackheath Village. Although personally, I’d prefer it if we used its proper name, Dowager’s Bottom.

It was also apparently called Dowager’s Hole, but let’s keep it PG.

BLURB

Slightly further out than my usual stomping grounds, in this video I am in search of the lost hamlet of Wricklemarsh. What I found shocked me.

This channel is not monetised, and I intend to keep it advert free, but if you’ve enjoyed it enough to want to be supportive, please consider donating the traditional cost of a coffee to the Greenwich Wildlife Network:

https://www.greenwichwildlifenetwork.org/how-to-help

This video also has a drinking game, of course.

Shot or swig, depending on how drunk you want to be, when you see or hear:

  • A vape cloud
  • “remnant”
  • “ghost”
  • Wricklemarsh Road sign
  • My thumb
  • Walking stick in shot
  • My shadow

REFERENCES AND FURTHER VIEWING

Wricklemarsh Revisited, Michael Egan, Archaeologia Cantiana, Vol.110 for 1992

Blackheath village and environs, 1790-1970, Neil Rhind, 1976 https://archive.org/details/blackheathvillag0001rhin/mode/2up

1767 architectural drawing of the south front https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1881-0611-174

Wricklemarsh House, drawings by John Charnock, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-126992 and https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-126996

View of the Seat of the Late Sir Gregory Page of Blackheath on Blackheath in Kent, https://www.thedicamillo.com/house/wricklemarsh-house-wricklemarsh-blackheath-house/

An Early Turner Water-Colour Identified, John Brushe, The Burlington Magazine https://www.jstor.org/stable/877932

Money equivalent calculations via the Bank of England calculator, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

The A2 at Kidbrooke is a mess because of the abandoned Ringways project, of course! https://www.roads.org.uk/ringways/southern/a2-a2m

Pathé footage of protests on the un-widenable parts of Rochester Way, in favour of the Dover Radial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Deq1in-zw

Footage of the A2 building works at Eltham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-0N_fuih_I

I believe Jay Foreman is still the set text for London’s Abandoned Ringway Project 101? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUEHWhO_HdY  

South Cross Route maps and info https://www.roads.org.uk/ringways/ringway1/south-cross-route

Pathetic Motorways: A22(M) Dover Radial Route https://pathetic.org.uk/unbuilt/a2m/

Old Woolwich is Mostly New (Woolwich Walks)

My latest video will premiere at 8pm on Sunday 22nd December.

Please enjoy my infodump on Woolwich, with a wee bit of Belvedere!

Unlike my previous video, this one I’m pretty sure is entirely accurate but please feel free to point out anything you think I’ve got completely wrong.

DRINKING GAME: http://welovewoolwich.co.uk/old-woolwich-walk-drinking-game

I may monetise in future, but for now I’m doing this for fun and the love of this town so if you’ve enjoyed this video, please make donations in lieu of buying me a coffee to The Greenwich Wildlife Network. https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=4AQM4AQNYYX6W

THANKS TO

This video would not have been possible without Mike Jelves, ig: jetblacksquares_selondon

Photos credited to CM are from the archive of Chris Mansfield, www.chrismansfieldphotos.com

Photos credited to RG from godisinyourtypewriterblog.wordpress.com

The National Library of Scotland, doing the Lord’s work with layered maps: https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.6&lat=51.49375&lon=0.06298&layers=260&b=ESRIWorld&o=100

Those cool postwar aerial photos have been licensed by Historic England specifically for this video, see them and more: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/

The Sainsbury’s archive is a glorious thing: https://www.sainsburyarchive.org.uk/

“Old” Woolwich Walk – Drinking Game

Whether you’re joining me for the premiere on Sunday 22nd December or just looking for an excuse to drink at any time, I’ve got you covered with the official drinking game!

You’ll need a pint or two and some shots.

Do a shot when:

  • You see a sundial
  • Joggers!

Take a swig when:

  • I promise a future walk
  • There’s a bus
  • “remnant”
  • “wee bit”
  • Reference to the River smelling
  • “ghost”
  • “neglect”

If you’re teetotal or the designated driver:

  • Make someone else of your choice do a shot every time a church or cleric is mentioned

If you work in town:

  • Shot when you see your place of work
  • Pint down in one if I mention it!

If you see yourself in the video, and aren’t me or Mike:

  • You are officially the winner, and should immediately finish your own, and everyone else’s, drinks, then do a victory lap

If you are me or Mike:

  • Shot!!

If you’re Chris Mansfield and want to get plastered:

  • Take a swig when one of your photos is credited

If you’re me and want to get plastered:

  • Shot when you know that was a shit take on that voiceover bit but just really wanted to get it finished.

Woolwich in Film: The Silent Playground

Alt title: “My Woolwich video ended up with loads of Deptford”

I hope you enjoy my first video!

The Silent Playground is a 1963 British drama movie filmed in south east London. This video looks at the Woolwich parts, as well as what turned out to be Deptford!

Pictures of old Woolwich are from Chris Mansfield, unless otherwise stated https://www.chrismansfieldphotos.com/

Pictures of modern Woolwich are by me unless otherwise stated.

Other sources: Stephen Craven on Geograph https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/235… L

ayers of London https://www.layersoflondon.org/

Google Earth images by Google Earth, lol

Aerial photos: Britain from Above https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/

Maps and aerial photos: National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore

Unfortunately the movie is not available to buy, so let’s hope Talking Pictures TV keep showing it as often as possible!

Music licensed through Adobe Stock.