Phantom Favourite Front Gardens (8)
Alderburgh St, SE10
Right down the bottom of the Peninsula, tucked away between the various industrial estates and the A102 M flyover, two dainty little streets quietly exist in that strange place that is neither Greenwich nor Charlton, but something all of its own. Fearon St and Aldeburgh St could just be tatty little nothings tacked onto an unexciting business area - but they're not. The residents keep them neat and tidy and there are lots of little touches in them that makes me realise that this is a community that likes being where it is, and has a little unique flavour to it.
There are some sweet window boxes and filled tubs, early-days hedges and tidy flowerpots, but my favourite is an unassuming Victorian terraced house on Aldeburgh St with topiary grandeur punching above its weight.
Two great boxes of box, stepped like Aztec pyramids, a pair of square 'braziers' burst with an unfettered 'flame' of tufty growth on top from a simple brick wall. There is nothing else to muddy the view - no extra flowers, ornaments, hanging baskets, gnomes, wishing wells or birdbaths - and that's what makes this statement so bold.
A gardener of taste lives here.
Labels: Free Greenwich, gardens, Green Greenwich, topiary
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
07:48
17 Comments:
I have often wondered about the border between Greenwich and Charlton. I suppose before they slapped the Flyover on top of the house along Woolwich Road (does anyone know how many houses had to be demolished?) that 'The Little Enclave' would have been Greenwich and the Angerstien Railway bridge would have been the most obvious 'border'.
I know that the Old Tram Depot was marked as Charlton and The Greyhound Track was definitley in that borough but where the border line goes is anyones guess.......
I must say those box shaped buxus look really neat. I was trying to make my two into two symmetrical cubes but at the moment they resemble deflated rugby balls in a collision with a wet cardboard box.
Do you think they use a ruler,set square and spirit level?
Well impressed of Greenwich!
The Blackwall Tunnel was constructed 1892-1897. Although Westcombe Park stn was opened in 1879, it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The Halstow Rd and other houses to the north of the line were built late 1890s (or at least, they don't appear on maps c. 1890, but are there in 1900!). So basically, the A102 became a major road around the same time as much of the area's housing went up - the later widening and building of the flyover would have had some effect, but from what I can see on maps from 1870s to early 1900s, the A102 was the boundary between Greenwich and Charlton from the point at which a boundary was needed (ie the two villages weren't separated by several fields...).
FWIW, Maze Hill and Westcombe Park areas both appear as the 'East Greenwich enumeration district' on the 1901 census, along with the whole of the peninsula.
If anyone's seen a map with boundary lines marked on it, pre-1890, I'd be interested in knowing details.
I like the topiary! Though every time TGP features another front garden, it just adds to the guilt I feel over the mess that is ours...
p.s. - Dazza, here's a map of East Greenwich in c.1870
http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/greenwich/central-greenwich/map-east-greenwich-01279.htm
and here's one of Charlton and Woolwich the year before:
http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/greenwich/woolwich/map-woolwich-1869.htm
There wasn't much in between! I have later paper maps which show the building development but don't know of any better ones online. Maybe if others do, they could be added to the links on here?
C'mon kirsty get those gardening gloves on! The weather is going to be ok at the weekend, pop along to Columbia rd on Sunday lunchtime just when they are begining to pack up and you can get yourself some real bargins! Plus who knows by the middle of summer you may have been featured in the Phantoms Top Ten.
You've just put me in mind of a document I've got tucked away somewhere that might help to show how the road was built - the A102 is very recent indeed. I'll see if I can look it out...
I'm quite sure when the road between the Sun in the Sands and the tunnel was built - I moved to Greenwich in mid-1969. When we looked at the house in January of that year we drove away up Westcombe Hill and the Mway wasn't there - but when we moved in - in June - it was open. The bit from the Sun in the Sands to Eltham wasn't opened until the late 1980s though and I can remember visiting people in some of the houses along the line of the old 'arterial' road.
I know the houses on the South Side of Woolwich road must have been demolished to make way for the flyover in 69 as there is a gap in the numbers. I think I worked oit out to be about 5-10 houses missing or at least numbers!!
As for the North side of the road, I can't find any maps showing the junction as it was. There must have been a fair few roads joining around there as you have the one from Westcombe Hill, Woolwich Road and Horn Lane all joining in the area. Though how they all matched up to Tunnel Avenue is another mystery. I would have thought that Westcombe Hill and Tunnel Avenue would have joined but they don't seem to be heading in the same direction. Any suggestions?
PS. Thanks for the map Links Kirsty, but they miss out the bit I'm interested in. IE Workhouse to Tram Depot. Anyone got any of those? By the way I live close to the Old Jet Garage so have a great interest in the area around me. I have recently seen a map of the area, but can't remember where, showing a road joining Denham Street and Chilver Street running parallel along the back of Tunnel Avenue. Anyone know what it was called?????
Dazza - give me til tomorrow morning. I think I have something to interest you...
you tease.........LOL
HMMMM... I have a paper map of c.1900 which shows a road going to the tunnel - I assumed that the northern part of this was what's now Tunnel Avenue, and was the forerunner of the A102, which seems to have been built over parts of Tunnel Ave (by the tunnel entrance and the sliproads for the flyover). I thought it must have been about the same width as, or slightly narrower than, the Woolwich Rd; it looks from my map that Tunnel Ave formed a crossroads with Westcombe Hill and Woolwich Rd (as Dazza suggests), and that the missing Woolwich Rd houses would have gone when that bit of Tunnel Ave was absorbed into the A102 and turned into a motorway. I.e., the Tunnel Ave/Westcombe Hill road effectively cut through the Woolwich Rd from the 1890s or so, and formed a boundary between Greenwich and Charlton at that time, and the A102M pretty much follows that line.
Is that not correct? The map is so small scale that it's difficult to deduce anything with accuracy. And I'd better clarify, I was only looking at the area north of the railway, which runs along the bottom of my map - I wasn't commenting on the route of the A102 as far south than the Sun-in-the-Sands, which is way off the map. Also, I wasn't trying to suggest that the road was called the A102 in the 1890s, which I realise on re-reading could be the interpretation! I meant that on my map there is a road leading to the tunnel which crosses the Woolwich Rd at the site of the flyover. Oh, I'll shut up now, it's all getting too confusing.
Dazza - yes, the problem with the maps of the area round the flyover is that most C19th ones go only as far as the workhouse/hospital - because there wasn't anything to the east. But it's frustrating, because I'd like to see what wasn't there just as much as what was!
Benedict - I think I need to do something to the back garden first, before the neighbours complain about the colonisation of theirs by the overgrown plants in ours...
Looking forward to seeing your map, Phantom!
It's surprising what you can find when you atart looking.....
I've turned my drawers inside out (ooooer, missus!!) and found a map of 'Charlton' dated 1914 showing the junction of Westcombe Hill/Tunnel Ave. And it doesn't excist!! In fact Westcombe Hill comes down alongside the Angerstien Railway joining Woolwich Road as it goes under the bridge. Tunnel Ave and Horn Lane join at the Old Fire Station. I often wondered why the station was so far back, now I know.
As an aside, the terrace of houses on the south side of Woolwich Road start at the Angerstien Hotel right the way to the Railway line without a break. Hence when they pushed the Flyover through they must have demolished several of them.
Cor ,they must have had strong builders in them days ,to push a flyover over dazza!
Westcombe Hill used to join Woolwich Road almost opposite the top of Aldeburgh Street, which has been renamed Farmdale Road. It thereby followed the old goods railway line. I well remember a policeman on point duty at this junction, just on the Greenwich side of the railway bridge. Yes, the goods railway is the boundary between Charlton and Greenwich. I was a resident of Aldeburgh Street from l952 - 1975. The main demolition area for the A102M was from the flyover to the Firestation and part of Horn Lane, the now end of Westcombe Hill was made up in 1969 when the road opened. And YES, we were very much part of East Greenwich.
oh my goodness! I've just dug out the map Dazza mentioned, I'd completely forgotten about it - and it's all starting to make sense. Though the map I have been looking at certainly doesn't... I think it's just that it's on such a small scale that it *looks* like Tunnel Ave joins Westcombe Hill, sorry!
The flyover really made a mess of the area, didn't it?
BTW, on checking the 1901 census again, Fearon St is in the ecclesiastical parish of St George in the civil parish of Greenwich and in the municipal ward of Greenwich Marsh. But so are all the streets east of it up to and including Hardman Rd. I couldn't find Dupree Rd in 1901. Victoria Rd is the first street in Charlton - civil parish of Charlton, eccl parish of Holy Trinity, municipal ward of Charlton & Kidbrooke. And looking on the 1914 map, it does indeed look like the boundary was where the back gardens of Dupree Rd and Victoria Rd meet. The boundary then continues SE to include everything west of Wyndcliff Rd in Greenwich - well past the Angerstein railway.
Oh, and if anyone's at all interested, Chevening Road didn't exist in 1901 either, despite the surrounding roads having been built in the 1890s. It was added in as an afterthought in 1904 when the inheritor of the Page Estate decided to develop just a little bit more of the back garden... everything between the Lower Rd (now Woolwich Rd) and the hospital cemetery.
Fascinating. And I have successfully avoided doing any work for the past hour or so...
I've always been fascinated by borders between places. For my money, Greenwich proper is, without doubt in my tiny mind, bordered by the A102 (then it's Charlton), the Blackheath exit to Greenwich Park (Blackheath), Blackheath Road (Blackheath and Lewisham proper), the river (Isle of Dogs) and Creek Bridge (Deptford).
I walk to work in Deptford from near the Cutty Sark pub and once over the bridge I consider Greenwich behind me and the badlands begin! :-)
if you go to the Woolwich Road end of Farmdale Road there is a slot across the road (unless the recent road works have destroyed it-it was there last year). This was a slot for a pad to change traffic lights when that was a through road into Woolwich Road
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