Charity Auction of Greenwich Photo

Local Photographer, Mike Curry, who sent me some astounding pics the other day of the ORNC (if he lets me use them sometime, I'll show them to you...) has had a bit of a lab-accident. They printed the wrong picture for him as a really top quality Perspex/Aluminium work of art.

It's part of a private commission but this particular shot is not what the cusomer ordered. It's a fantastic print, though, too good to waste. Under the terms of his contract Mike can't sell it for profit - so he's auctioning it for Save the Children Fund on Ebay.

It's already reached £41, but there are ten days to go. Happy bidding!

Blitz

Sorry - still on historical stuff today - I'll move onto other things soon, promise! Following on from yesterday's Stockwell Street post,Steve sent me a couple of pictures of the immediately-surrounding area, in 1944, which shows the kind of bomb damage we were discussing. The originals can both be found at Greenwich Heritage Centre, a very, very interesting place.

The first picture could even be the V2 rocket we were talking about. It fell on 1st July 1944. It looks a bit close to Greenwich Station to be the one on the Stockwell Street drawing - but I find perspective in old pics hard to work out, and though you'd really need another photo taken from the other direction to be sure, it's entirely possible it's the same fellow.

Whatever, this is pretty serious stuff. An army of flat-capped workers are trying to clear the rubble, watched by what looks like the men from the ministry - or at least the council. I'm guessing the uniformed chap is the stationmaster.

The second is Burney Street, just across from Stockwell St. If you need to get your bearings, look in the top left hand corner - there's (what's left of) the Observatory. Presumably the row of buildings at the back is what's left of the North side of Gloucester Circus. That bomb had fallen a few days earlier, on 27th June. You can always tell where bombs fell in the war as you walk around Greenwich, as the old houses suddenly stop and modern buildings suddenly begin. In Burney Street's case, that's a block of flats and a police station today - perhaps the police station was to replace the one in Park Row...

Steve is a Battlefield Guide - just about to join the Guild and everything (I didn't even know there was a Guild of Battlefield Guides) and he's just about to do a series of Blitz-related South East London Walks. The first takes in Blackheath and Greenwich on Good Friday, April 2nd. If you're interested in touring the bombed-to-buggery sites of Greenwich, meet at All Saints Church, Blackheath, at 11.00am and be prepared to be walking for about two and three quarter hours. The cost is £6 per head.

Archaeology (3) How It Will Be Done

Back to Greenwich archaeology today, folks. I guess one positive thing coming out of the turmoil surrounding the area just now means that we're getting more opportunities for excavation than we've had since the end of WWII - though of course, at the end of the war, people were more interested in just getting somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to eat than finding out what previous Greenwichians had been up to.

How we deal with those opportunities is both exciting and a grave responsibility.

As you've probably guessed from the photo at the top, I'm back to the Stockwell Street site today, as I've been given a preview copy of of the Historical Summary by Alan Baxter & Associates that the work will be based on.

The photo (by Alan Baxter & Associates - as are all the drawings) was taken from the roof of St Alfege's and is one of the best views I've seen of the site - an area that's quite hard to get one's head around without plans. It's actually pretty damn huge and when the post-war buildings are gone it will be even bigger.

Much of the report itself contains basic history that we've covered many times before, so I'll cut to the bits I didn't know myself.

Something that amused me was that after going of for several hundred words about the seriousness of Greenwich as a historical site, the report suddenly changes tack right at the end of page five to robustly state that however important the rest of Greenwich might be, this little bit of the town "has not played a role in the significant aspects of Greenwich's history". Read: "Potential busybodies - object everywhere else but here, okay..."

Personally, if I were going to deter potential objectors, I'd point to the amount of disruption and damage already done on the site and suggest that it can't get much worse - that we might as well find out what's there and preserve what we can, then move on.
Dunno about you but I'd always assumed that the name Stockwell came from it being the town's water supplies - the Stock Well. Apparently that's just plain wrong - 'stoc' is Anglo-Saxon for tree trunk or post.

However much the report says that it played no significant role, Stockwell Street was part of the major east-west route through the town by medieval times, and at some point became known as The Broadway. It had two coaching inns - as well as the Spread Eagle there was also The White Hart and, (especially interesting to the Phantom Brewmaster, Rod) there were considerable maltings set behind, run by Frederick John Corder and Alfred Conyers Haycroft, but acquired around 1906 by Hugh Bairds &; Sons.

I get the feeling that the archaeologists are hoping to find some remains of those, though they haven't actually said yet. They've promised to let me know.

You'll see in Alan Baxter's next drawing, a charming tea garden (it's on a map of 1885), presumably for all the teetotallers from the Bible Christian Chapel that was also there. I've been looking to find something about the chapel and not found any mention in my 1901 copy of Life and Labour in London, which lists and describes (often in less than glowing terms) the funny little churches that dotted Victorian Greenwich like a holy rash, though Charles Booth does admit that that particular area of the town was "overdone with religious effort."

There was also a roasting house in 1894. Roasting what? Hops? Coffee? Chickens? I'm sure someone will tell me. It's possible they'll find some remains of that.

The first big thing that really affected the area, which will have got rid of most of the medieval remains, was the coming of the railways - with the extension of the London to Greenwich railway in 1878 and the ill-fated Greenwich Park Railway, which I really must write about sometime (I confess I'm a bit scared of doing so - there are so many rivet-counter railway enthusiasts who'd point out all the bits I'd most certainly get wrong.) Suffice to say that some bright spark thought that what Greenwich really needed was a line between the town and, er, Nunhead. Perhaps the cemetery was a big draw (it is now, btw, absolutely fantastic...), perhaps it was just that railways were THE thing to do and that bit of land was free.

It lasted until WWI, and bits of the station hung around as a timber yard until the 60s (and, of course, there is a small part of the line still in existence, as the delightful and much sought-after Prior St allotments.)

Nevertheless, Stockwell Street was still essentially cute. Here's a picture from Greenwich Heritage Centre, showing the street in the 1930s:

If there was one single thing that really did for Stockwell Street as a site, it was the Second World War. Alan Baxter's drawing shows exactly where it suffered a direct hit:
It's unlikely that the Nazis were actually aiming for the Stockwell Engineering Company - a little factory that was making radar parts at the time, which after the war made kitchen utensils known as Westware (anyone still got any?); more that they were aiming for the railway, or, even nothing at all, just dumping-off bombs, a favourite South London hobby of theirs.

There wasn't much coming back from a V2 rocket. The Post Office was completely obliterated but the maltings, and several houses, both on Stockwell St and King William Walk were badly damaged.

As a by-product, though, it did mean that, when the ghastly John Humphries House was built in the 1960s, there was finally an excavation of the old well. Don't you just love this old picture, courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, where they've discovered the (or at least AN) old well. The antiquarian John Stone, who first called for it, would have been in ecstasies - sadly The Phantom Webmaster discovered he died in the early 1930s.

I've asked if they'll be digging out the well again when JHH bites the dust; I don't know yet. But wouldn't it be great if Hengham Peng (named from the Irish Roisin Heneghan and American Shih-Fu Peng, BTW) incorporated the well into the foundations; perhaps with a glass floor, or visitable cellars, like the charnel house at Spitalfields?

A Host Of Golden Daffodils

Well, okay, eight. But it's eight daffs that weren't out at Phantom Towers even yesterday. Could Spring be finally arriving?

Sign Of The Times

A short break from what's started to turn into 'archaeology week' today (more tomorrow, 'fraid...) to focus on something that's soon to be history.

A few days ago I learned that there is a planning application for the demolition of the Old Friends (10/0331/D1, if you're interested - more details from alex.smith@greenwich.gov.uk.) I understand it was a bit of a surprise as it was generally assumed that planning permission wasn't necessary, but hey - there it is.

The poor old place is in a right state, ever since the scaffolding went up, demolition began then suddenly stopped for no perceivable reason. I can't see that it can be saved now - even if there was a beery knight on a white charger ready to pour cash into a pub that may or may not get custom if the 'New Heart for East Greenwich' ever gets built. It would be nice to think that Woolwich Road could pull its socks up but I'm not holding my spectral breath.

Todya's story is a bit different, though.

I'm not entirely sure what Janet, living at Gravelbourg in Saskatchewan, Canada, was doing reading this blog last week, but, suddenly realising that the Old Friends we were discussing was the same Old Friends where her great grandfather was licenced victualler between 1881 and 1891 and, indeed, the same Old Friends where her grandfather and his five brothers and sisters were born, hurriedly got on the blower to the property management company dealing with the demolition plans.

She's just told me the company is going to save the sign for for her, and it will be crossing the Atlantic Canada-wards. I was particularly interested as only the day before Janet's email arrived I'd wandered past and wondered what would be happening to the sign; I'm glad at least that will be saved, even if it is going abroad. I mean - it's hardly the Madonna of the Pinks...

Janet's been told it's in pretty poor shape, but it doesn't look that bad to me. I've asked her to send us a pic when she puts it up in Gravelbourg.

Archaeology (2) How It COULD Be Done

It's an ill wind that blows no one any good, isn't it. Or in this case, ill rain. While the rest of us were cursing that bloomin' awful weather last August, over in a secret location in Greenwich Park, Rosie was getting rather excited.

The soil is so thin up on the hills there, that given a bit of footfall - or, in this case, rainfall, stuff starts to appear. Greenwich has been occupied at least since Roman times, probably before that, and you just never know when - or where - curiosities will turn up. In this case, it was a double line of what looks like medieval bricks.

Rosie started photographing them when she realised that these weren't just random - that they, along with hundreds of shards of broken tiles, formed a sort of zig-zag pattern and extended for about 50 feet. She's kindly sent me a few pictures - it's worth clicking on a couple of them to see a bit more closely.)

Now. At this point I confess I would have just assumed that it was already recorded and that "someone" had done proper excavations and all the history stuff. Happily, Rosie wasn't as complacent as I would have been (a lesson for us all.) She asked around, and realised that no experts she knew had any idea about it. She read whatever she could but found nothing mentioned. No map records anything at all there, and since the earliest plan is from 1676, it looks as though whatever was built there must be earlier (or too unimportant to be recorded, of course.)

Last week, a friend of hers suggested she ask an independent brick expert about the probable age of the shards. He said that in his judgement they are "in all probability Tudor." BTW I read the other day that Tudor bricks are so small because they used to be sold per brick, as opposed to per square yard. The smaller the bricks, the more you had to buy.

"It's been suggested that they might have come from the Tudor palace by the river after it was demolished," says Rosie, "but this didn't happen till after 1676 so is unlikely. It's odds on that we are looking at the remains of a Tudor structure of some kind, in which case it will be the only one in the Park - apart from some underground conduits."

If this is the case, it's extremely exciting stuff. I don't know where exactly the remains are - the site's already in a very fragile state and Rosie's keen not to have too much human (or equine) trampling with all the terrible weather we've been having. "Bits of tile are already getting kicked around so it needs some protection urgently," she says.

But if nothing's ever been found there before it just goes to show how historically fecund the park is - anything could turn up anywhere at any time.

So - what's going to happen to it? Well - you can probably imagine that there's nothing in the way of any cash to actually excavate the site, though English Heritage would like to see a community volunteer project supervised by a professional archaeologist to examine the site more closely, record it and then either cover it over or perhaps leave it fenced. It would then be available for proper excavation if/when the money became available.

That sounds like a plan to me - I'm pretty sure there are Phantomites out there who'd be interested in joining a project like that (especially if it was weekend-based, rather than weekday when so many people are at work...)

The Park is owned and managed by Royal Parks which are a sub-set of the DCMS but, perhaps surprisingly for such a very historic site, they have no-one specifically responsible for the archaeology as far as Rosie knows. English Heritage have no jurisdiction over it, their role is purely advisory. So - it seems that it's up to the new Greenwich Park Manager, Graham Dear, to use his discretion over what to do about this new site. Let's hope he does the right thing during his watch.

The obvious question is whether it's in immediate danger from the Olympic plans. "It's not on the route of the cross country as currently published," says Rosie, "so shouldn't be affected by the grass enhancement measures they plan to begin on as soon as they've got planning permission. There might be an issue over whether it should be surrounded by a spectator exclusion zone like the one promised for the Saxon barrows but that can wait until it's been decided how best to protect the site."

There's more, apparently, to be read about the find in next Sunday's Independent. What's really important to remember though, is that this isn't just a random event. Greenwich Park teems with history and we have no idea what's lying just under the surface. It's up to us, now, to make sure that there's something left for future generations to discover...

Faded Greenwich (11)

Not the advertised post today, folks. I decided I wanted to find out some more information before posting, and am having difficulties doing so, so instead I bring you, courtesy of the Phantom Faded Greenwich Hunter, Roger, Number Eleven in the series...

It's on the side of Number 35, Blackheath Road (just before it becomes Blackheath Hill, a few metres before the turning for Greenwich South Street) and, as far as I can read, it's advertising a plumbers' merchants. Since this is a little alley, if memory serves, I'm guessing the actual premises were down there, and they were just using the side of the house as a hoarding. Of course, I suppose the merchant himself might have lived in the house.

A lot of the houses along that part of Blackheath Road are really rather lovely - and, presumably before the A2 became quite so congested, were probably very posh indeed. I particularly like the ones with the little wrought iron balconies, though some of them really have seen better days now.

Anyone know anything about this plumber?