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/
