Cave in the Grounds of Woodlands House?
AS asks:
Having studied old maps of the area, I see that there was a cave in the grounds of the old nunnery in Mycenae Road, which is now Woodlands House. I wonder if this cave is well known, whether it is man made or a natural phenomenum. I expect it is blocked up now. I would be very grateful if anyone knows anything about this, and any history behind it.
The Phantom replies:
I don't know of any caves there - though Greenwich being Greenwich, the whole area is riddled with holes and passageways, and there could be one.
What I suspect it's more likely to be though, is the remains of an old ice house.
Ice houses were popular in the days before refrigeration and were usually situated in the darkest, dankest area of a house's grounds, to try to keep them cool. They were generally giant brick-lined pits often several metres deep, with a roof that was then often covered with a mound of soil, and shaded by trees, though some were disguised as little summerhouses or quaint cottages.
What happened was that during the winter ice was harvested from local ponds and shipped back by horse and cart to the ice house, where it was packed really solidly until, ideally, it was full. The contents were then used throughout the summer for keeping food chilled and making drinks and desserts. It wasn't always of the purest possible quality...
Nearly all major estates had an ice house, and Iunderstand that Woodlands was no exception. If it was covered with a mound of earth, it may well look like a cave, especially if the trees have grown up around it. Presumably it would have been abandoned at some point and small children (and Phantoms) happening upon it in the undergrowth could well have fantasised it was a secret chamber - which of course, in some respects by that time it would have been.
I have no idea if it still exists or even whether it was in the bit that is still green at Woodlands(the Angerstein estate stretched down as far as the river) but it would make sense for an ice house not to be situated too far away from the kitchen. I am sure that if it is still there it will be well blocked up as by their very nature ice houses have very deep shafts and are very dark indeed - a potentially lethal combination...
Maybe someone has some more information? Am I barking up anywhere near the right tree?
Having studied old maps of the area, I see that there was a cave in the grounds of the old nunnery in Mycenae Road, which is now Woodlands House. I wonder if this cave is well known, whether it is man made or a natural phenomenum. I expect it is blocked up now. I would be very grateful if anyone knows anything about this, and any history behind it.
The Phantom replies:
I don't know of any caves there - though Greenwich being Greenwich, the whole area is riddled with holes and passageways, and there could be one.
What I suspect it's more likely to be though, is the remains of an old ice house.
Ice houses were popular in the days before refrigeration and were usually situated in the darkest, dankest area of a house's grounds, to try to keep them cool. They were generally giant brick-lined pits often several metres deep, with a roof that was then often covered with a mound of soil, and shaded by trees, though some were disguised as little summerhouses or quaint cottages.
What happened was that during the winter ice was harvested from local ponds and shipped back by horse and cart to the ice house, where it was packed really solidly until, ideally, it was full. The contents were then used throughout the summer for keeping food chilled and making drinks and desserts. It wasn't always of the purest possible quality...
Nearly all major estates had an ice house, and Iunderstand that Woodlands was no exception. If it was covered with a mound of earth, it may well look like a cave, especially if the trees have grown up around it. Presumably it would have been abandoned at some point and small children (and Phantoms) happening upon it in the undergrowth could well have fantasised it was a secret chamber - which of course, in some respects by that time it would have been.
I have no idea if it still exists or even whether it was in the bit that is still green at Woodlands(the Angerstein estate stretched down as far as the river) but it would make sense for an ice house not to be situated too far away from the kitchen. I am sure that if it is still there it will be well blocked up as by their very nature ice houses have very deep shafts and are very dark indeed - a potentially lethal combination...
Maybe someone has some more information? Am I barking up anywhere near the right tree?
Labels: Ask The Phantom, Underground Greenwich
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
17:22
8 Comments:
This rings something of a bell. When Manor House Park in Lee was given a make-over about seven or years they dicovered (rediscovered?) an ice-house for the Manor House and that is a very similar period of building to Mycenae House.
Blackheathen
Yup, sure sounds like an ice house to me. Me and my mates used to play in the grounds of a rather grand abandoned house in Southgate (north london). By the old greenhouses underground there was a completely spherical brick lined room which was supposed to be the ice room, apparently the spherical nature of the room was better for retaining the cold? I am no scientist but as a kid I found it mesmerising to think of it full of ice all summer long. Later I found out that the house was designed by Nash and excavated the lake for keeping Pike and Carp and so that ice could be gathered in the winter. It is now part of the Priory chain which helps people with obsessions about caves!
there used to be a grotto (as in Lourdes) left over from the days when the place was a nunnery. But it was entirely above ground and was demolished before it fell on someone. There's no ice house at Woodlands listeed in Sylvia Beamon's national directory of ice houses.
There was a grotto, I remember playing in it at the regular parties held there until about 1982. I don't know when it was demolished.
Benedict, me too. There's an ice house in the grounds of Sundridge Park in the borough of Bromley. Friends and I used to camp out in it all night.
It became mythical - a bit of a secret - although the amount of crap people had chucked into it over the years meant it was a badly kept one! All the same, it was hard to find as it was in the woods surrounding the old building (Blair Witch Project?) and we always went at dusk.
As you say, spherical brick. It had a hidden opening leading into a brick tunnel of about 10/15 feet long and then a large 'room' with a drop of 20 feet or so.
Somewhere, I have a photo or us camping there with a bonfire - in the tunnel. If we could see the one here it would be clear immediately what it was.
I suspect that if it were a grotto, it owuld have been from the original house. I can't imagine nuns building a grotto, somehow...
I had an Auntie who was a nun and she was mad for a grotto, grotto crazy infact although she called them pixie shrines.
I worked at Woodlands from 1970 to 2003 in the Local History Library. I remember the grotto and its demolition well. It was built by the Little Sisters of the Assumption - the order of nuns which used Woodlands as a convent from the 1920s to about 1967. The grotto was an attractive feature of the lovely grounds. The nuns also built Mycenae House in the 1930s as their Novitiate House.
The Angerstein family had an ice well in their very extensive grounds but all traces of it have gone.
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