Westcombe folks will remember last week’s foray into the shops that have lined the little terrace to the South of Westcombe Park Station for the past hundred-odd years. I gaily ransacked Neil Rhind’s splendid History of Blackheath and Environs II for the information, but noticed that there wasn’t anything in the book on the teeny-tiny Station Crescent for me to plunder.

But ask and ye shall receive. I am delighted to be able to give you, in Neil’s own words, the little bit that got missed out from the book all those years ago.

Neil says:

“Never sure why I left out Station Road, Westcombe Park from Volume II. Probably exhaustion. After all, it ran to nigh on 500 pages, all typewriter clack-clack-clack and not word-processed in those days.
Herewith a quick catch up:

Station Road, sometimes Station Crescent and sometimes Beaconsfield Terrace. All on north-west side. More bootmakers than you could shake a stick at.

No 1: 1890. A grocery shop, run by Edward Pogson Barker and always known as Barker’s Stores until 1940

No 2: 1890. Greengrocery for ever. Started by John Cooper, then Zaccheus Harris, a widower, but Zaccheus and Elsie up until the late 1930s.

No 3: All sorts from 1891, starting as an estate agency, then a bakery and a builders’ merchants and from 1896 to 1940 toys, fancy goods, stationery and tobacco products sold by Joseph Allison Sole, then his widow, Isobel.

No 4: From1891 William James Jones, a bootmaker, then the Carter family in the same trade, but from 1905 oilman, hardware shop, and decorator, in the ownership and management of James Caleb Banks, or Caleb James Banks, or Cyril James Banks. Until at least the last (1939-1945) war.

A tiny shop nearer the station was variously a coal merchant’s order office, estate agency, builder, sweet shop, saddler, milliner, bootmakers, draper, ladies outfitter and an upholstery works, and a florist’s stall on the side.

Opposite, a small slip of a shop best known in recent years as the local Post Office (since 1915, closed a few years back) but a dozen or more trades from floristry to yet more bootmaking over the years.”

So, there you have it. Sadly there aren’t any current plans to reprint Volume II in its current form, but keep buying Volume I and Neil’s other book on the bit in the middle, The Heath and we might just show the publishers enough interest to get a revised reprint. In the meanwhile there are some rather fabulous new books to look out for, which I’m itching to get my sticky paws on.

In time for Christmas, we can expect the release of Neil’s latest work, a detailed history of the Paragon and South Row, as well as a couple of ‘fat pamphlets’ he’s been working on with some exciting other historians, one on the Pagoda & Montague House, the other on a rather amazing panorama that was rediscovered a few years ago. More on that at another date.

A History of Blackheath and Environs Volume III is scheduled for Spring.

BTW – apologies to Neil for filing him under ‘mostly’ accurate history. Being a Phantom of errors I simply do not have a section for ‘accurate’ history…

Christine asks:
Can anyone name all the shops from the sweet shop at the top of the steps – the first shop as you cross over from top of Halstow road where it crosses Humber Road? Then there was a super chemist, called Green’s; a greengrocers; some other shops  that I cannot recall; then, as the road turned down towards the station approach and down the steps, there was a food store that sold everything. Over the other side of station approach was the post office.  Does anyone have the history of all the shops around the Westcombe Park station area from Victorian times?

The Phantom replies:

Well, of course much of it is down to when in their history you want to know about them – in late Victorian times,  in the 20s/30s/ 40s/ 50s etc. Recently they have changed both purpose and owners far more regularly than they would have done years ago, but before the age of the supermarket, I guess the local greengrocer /chemist /sweetmonger would have stayed in the same generation for years.

I have always been rather fond of this little arcade. It doesn’t manage the same yumminess (or range) as the Royal Hill Lovelies, but then the demographic isn’t the same – and it’s closer to both the big sheds over on the Peninsula and the Blackheath Standard. But it still gets a fair bit of footfall, being so close to the station and some of the shops have been there for years.

I particularly like that it’s retained, somehow, some of the more ephemeral parts of its decoration – the post office may have gone but the pillar box is still there and if you look under your feet outside the mini mart, there are still the diamond-pattern tiles and, further up, the original York stone slab-paving.

I can’t name the shops recently, as they’ve changed quite a bit (and continue to change – I notice the old Animation Studio is being turned into a rather upmarket-looking florist; good news since that place has been inactive for years) but, thanks to the superb (and disgracefully out of print) definitive volume about the area by Neil Rhind, Blackheath Village and Environs II (the first one, about Blackheath Village itself, is back in print, but the equally-exhaustive second book, which takes in our side of the heath as well as the Cator estate and the more Kidbrooke-y side (wanna know who lived in your house? Chances are that if you’re in his catchment area Mr Rhind will tell you in this book) has never been reprinted.

I can’t think why – there must be more people in the wide area covered by book two who are potential customers – but there is usually a copy in the library (if it hasn’t been closed…) and occasionally they bowl up second-hand (talking of which, I was pleased to see a new secondhand bookshop in the centre of Greenwich – a dedicated Oxfam bookshop on College Approach. It’s pricey but these days second hand books tend to fall into two categories – expensive, and can’t-give-it-away.)

Rhind tells me that ‘Beaconsfield Terrace, ‘ built around the 1890s (it’s at the bottom of Beaconsfield road in case you’re wondering) is, along with the shops on Westcombe Hill, were the only commercial premises allowed on the Westcombe Park Estate. And when you come to think of it, yes, it does seem a bit odd – not a corner shop, not a pub, or at least until you get to the Royal Standard. Presumably it was some sort of temperance-thing.

Neil Rhind accepts that the shops changed a lot over the years, but reckons there’s a strong pattern. At Number 103, your sweet shop, Christine, was, in the 1920s, E. Hartley and Co. but between 1909 and the late 1920s is was Luffman & Peacock (a fabulous name for a confectioners.) If memory serves it’s a private house these days.

105 was a butchers, which is kind of chilling given that it’s now the local vetinery surgery and 107, now flats, a grocer and branch post office.  Its original owner was the equally-delightfully-named Edward Pogson Barker, but in the 1920s it became your chemist, Christine, run by John Codnor Wilson.

Number 109 started out as a greengrocers, became a milliner’s (we just don’t get hat shops round these parts any more…) and from the first year of the Great War until the middle of WWII was Jarvis the bootmaker. Am I right in thinking that the sports therapy place is there now?

Neil Rhind tells me that number 111 has been a lot of things – a stationer’s, tailor, printer and grocers, and in the 1930s was Humber Radio (presumably selling wirelesses rather than broadcasting…) 113 was a dairy – first owned by Griffith Robert Hughes, becoming a branch of Edward and Sons and finally being subsumed into United Dairies. It’s now a hairdressers.

What I can’t find is any reference to the shops that turn the corner into Westcombe Crescent going down towards the station. Am I missing something, Neil?

I wasn’t planning to talk about this today, but Joe mentioned a fantastic website in one of the comments yesterday that’s really worth a longer look.

The Hunthouse is a wonderful collection of maps, street names, directories and general dip-in-able stuff to do with London. I was particularly interested in the stuff about street name changes (which Joe was digging around yesterday for stuff about Blackwall Lane) which was compiled from, among many other things, another list compiled by unsung local hero Fred Rayment ((BTW just for the record I don’t know where Fred was from, so I don’t know how local to us he was, just that he was local to London). Fred almost certainly didn’t get a medal for his list, but the people of London had reason to thank him for his labours, and now we do too, for somewhat happier reasons.

I have spent far too long this morning digging around the street changes on the site (using the v. useful Control/F function to skip to the Greenwich ones as it covers all of London) – telling us when they happened and, to some extent why.

Basically, when the London boroughs were amalgamated to make the LCC it became clear that a lot of the most popular street names were really,really overused. Confusing to post office and citizen alike. So, a massive street-renaming took place around about 1912 to make things a bit clearer. And it does seem sensible to lose general names like Green Lane, Back Lane London Road, Wellington Street etc for more locally appropriate ones. For a long while, as they were changed, roads often carried two signposts – the old and the new names together, so that everyone could get used to them. And this was fine in peace-time.

But during the Blitz, two names for a road when no one could see very much anyway because of the Blackout became really perplexing. People reporting fires were often, understandably, distressed and local street names and fancy new ones got muddled up, resulting in a while bunch of false callouts.

Fred Rayment, a London fireman, took it upon himself to create a list for the brigade to prevent confusion. Sans computer, sans internet, just slog. See what I mean about the local hero thing?

His list has only  comparatively recently been discovered by his son, who thankfully realised the significance of it, and although it was without dates at the time (history wasn’t much of  a priority when you were being bombed every night) he recognised what a useful tool it could be now.

Sadly as the link above points out, none of the other people who were involved are still alive so it’s hard to verify the accuracy of Fred’s list without hours of work, but random checks have been made and they all play out just fine.

It’s been added to and embellished by various folk since then and I think it’s great. In fact the only thing that would make this list utterly perfect would be a an explanation of why some of the smaller street names were changed (why, for example, change the charming ‘Bear Lane’ to the unremarkable ‘Old Woolwich Road’? I guess it explains what the road used to be, but no one needed it before, why bother now?)

But, as we have discovered with the strange cases of Nevada Street andStraightsmouth (which, thanks to this list, I now know used to be Browning Place and Church Fields until 1912)  we still have no idea why someone chose Nevada and Straightsmouth as suitable monikers for those particular roads. And who got to choose the new names? Was it a committee? The Lady Mayoress? A lottery? A newspaper competition? Who knows…

Okay, it’s just a series of lists, on the whole, but as a tool for local/family/London historians, this site is superb. I shall add it to my links, for future use (yeah, yeah, I know, the links page needs a total overhaul. Where does the time go?) but for now, take a little glance – it’s fascinating. Just make sure you do it in your tea break or you won’t get any work done today.

Okay, a bit of an oddity today, folks.  Wouldn’t your first guess, looking at this old postcard, be that this was the view from Tunnel Avenue,  somewhere up between the old fire station and Shopping Cart Valhalla? But the caption is very clearly Blackwall Lane, East Greenwich. The weird thing is that I’ve trudged all the way down both roads and, unless it was taken where the new tunnel approach road now slices the old Blackwall Lane in two (unlikely since the gas holders would be too close) I have absolutely no idea where it was taken.

Sadly no one ever sent this card, and there’s no other identification on it, other than it’s by AES & Co, SE15, so I don’t know when it was taken. It’s a slightly random subject for a postcard, but I guess people used them like phone calls then, so any subject went. I’m delighted this shot was taken as it’s completely fascinating.

The gas holders provide the anchor, but because we don’t have two of them any more, it’s harder to get the exact angle any more. Nothing else appears to exist any more, unless the building peeking between the trees on the right is the old school that still lives on the peninsula.

I’m guessing this is 1920s or early 30s, judging from the clothes of the people (the woman and the little girl look a little later, but the chap walking along’s flat cap and the young gent catching a lift on the back of the truck imply earlier. If I were a tram or mortorbike expert I might be able to date it  more accurately.  Don’t you wish we still had lamp posts like that in East Greenwich?

The houses on the left look quite pre-fab-y, but I am having a lot of difficulty working out what they were replaced with. Let me show you what I mean.

This is the scene right up near the Vanbrugh Hill/Woolwich Road cross roads.

As you can see, we’re nowhere. You can’t even see the gas holders and even if you could, they’d be far too far away.

Okay, moving on down:

This is getting more like it. I mean these flats are definitely post the postcard and the gas holder is just behind it. Only trouble is that so is Rothbury Hall, which would have been in any picture from this angle:

So, we have to take it further down. Funny, I thought these buildings were older, too:

And, frankly, that gas holders are still too far away, not to mention the angle of the road I’d have to stand at to get the same pic.

Ah, now this is getting better, but no, the angle’s all wrong. Of course, the road itself would have changed over the years, though.

Let’s nudge a little further down.

No – we have the distance about right-ish, but when I look at the postcard, the angle’s all akimbo again.

One last pic today, I promise, folks. This, from Tunnel Avenue, just where it meets Blackwall Lane. Closer, but still not what I’m looking for.

So – after a conversation with Mary Mills, to whom I am grateful for for the following photos, I now believe that it’s actually somewhere around that bodgy bit where Blackwall Lane and Tunnel Avenue collide with the A102(M)

I had discounted it because by this point I was convinced it was Tunnel Avenue, but it looking at these photos from the early 1980s, I think Mary’s right.

It could well have been messed around with when they built the motorway, so who knows.

Sounds like a road name that’s been around as long as the pub, doesn’t it.  It certainly never occurred to me to question it. But when Old China was doing some renovation work, a whole bunch of newspapers the previous owner had used to line the carpets fetched up, along with a rather splendid f Humphreys Skitt ad offering a six-room house for £4,000,  this curious Mercury clipping, from 1967.

Several things surprise me about this – not least that the Eastney Street, like Park Row, once continued across Trafalgar Road, implying it’s older than Trafalgar Road (the old Woolwich Road runs along by the power station) despite the newness of pretty much everything along it. I’m assuming that the bomb that destroyed the old Park Row Police Station did for the middle of Eastney Street, making way for what Pevsner describes as

a rare example of work by Stirling & Gowan for the L.C.C. (1965-8) a quadrangle of four-storey maisonettes with a carefully balanced, not quite symmetrical front to the road, with the ingenious motif of upper balconies passing through projecting wings. The monumental expanses of plain brickwork, the rather self-concious corner windows, and the play of cubic volumes recall, no doubt intentionally, the workers’ housing of the early Modern Movement on the continent.

I really must get a picture of the Trafalgar Estate to go with that (and indeed Feathers Place, which, at the Plume end still has some very nice old places).

The  other thing that surprises me is that people from Greenwich, who, surely in 1967 would still have had very strong links to all things maritime, would have been ignorant enough not to know what a frigate is – to the point where they thought it sounded a bit like a (not very) rude word.  Seems an eminently sensible name – after all we have Ballast Quay and Orlop Street – Frigate Street sounds rather good to me.

In the event, I agree that Feathers Place is rather grander. Perhaps it was more that the people wanted to be associated with Greenwich’s toffs than her sailors…

Stephen asks:

“Do you know anything about the Old Woolwich Road and Orlop Street area in the 1910s/1920. My family once lived at 14 Orlop Street and 9 Old Woolwich Road (which I believe was the Princess Alice Pub). Also are there any Blakeley’s still living in Greenwich?”

The Phantom replies:

Twentieth century history in Greenwich is much harder to find than the really old stuff, curiously enough, especially in ‘poor’ areas like the East, but there’s a little hope at hand, which I’ll talk about in a moment.

First a little pre-history – in the marvellous online version of Charlet Booths notebooks that I was mentioning the other day, both Orlop Street and Old Woolwich Road are mentioned, though not really in what you might call glowing terms.

Orlop Street wasn’t the sort of place you’d want to go of a dark night:

“A row of modern houses facing south. Two floors and a basement. Venetian blinds, many kept down. Very poor class. One or two rooms. Labourers who don’t work; wives do washing. “They live on fried fish and beer.” Not on map.”

In King William Lane, which ran between Orlop St and Old Woolwich Road,  ”Only a rag shop, on west side. Man is poor but works hard.” 

Booth considered Old Woolwich Road a little more mixed:

(Trafalgar Road to Marlboro’ St.) On north side is a row of 2 storied houses. Most of the people keep the house (Hardy lives in one of them.) (Hardy ? Perhaps a descendent of the Admiral? – TGP) From Northumberland St to Marlboro’ St the houses are new. 2 Floors + attic. better class people (a word I can’t read- TGP) a few servants here and there. Pink, to park houses. The south side is 3 + 2 storey houses, near all are old except a row new Trafalgar Road. Pink. N up Purple on map. 

So – you get the picture – we’re not talking Crooms Hill here. By the twentieth century things hadn’t changed an awful lot if the only book I’ve every read that mentions Orlop Street is anything to go by. 

Remember Greenwich(I reviewed it back in 2008) is, a totally different Stephen has tipped me off, currently to be found on Amazon Marketplace at a single shiny penny, (+p&p, natch.) Take my advice, East Greenwichers. Spend a penny (so to speak). Iris Bryce’s account of East Greenwich in the early to mid 20th Century is fabulous – personal, well-written and, unlike so many local memoires that just waffle a bit about blacking and taking a trip to Margate in a charabanc, tells a driving story that is almost novel-like in its pacing. I love her account of working in the Crown pub, and being allowed up to the landlady’s boudoir, a magical realm of velvet and plush, fringing, flounces and furbelows.

Iris Bryce tells a story of strict social strata – and her place within it. Her family were poor – but that didn’t stop her parents being snobby about people less well off than them. They lived south of Trafalgar Road, which meant that the people on north side might as well live on Mars. She was strictly forbidden, in particular, to have anything to do with the tough kids who lived in Orlop Street, and she was actually rather scared of them. I confess I’ve always been rather fond of this sweet, one-sided street; it’s somewhat smarter these days.

I’ve been trying to work out which would have been number 9 Old Woolwich Road and it appears to have been opposite what is now Frobisher Court at number 10, and is photographed by yet another Stephen (Craven, since I have to mention his full name under the CC license). Seamus (who could at least have changed his name by deed-poll for the purposes of this post) was asking me about it recently, but I have to admit I’ve not found out much. It has the date 1834 above its original name, The Man In the Moon. I can’t find out much about it, but Mary was mentioning the other day that it was the site of a murder before it was converted. I intend to find out more about that. 

That would put the Princess Alice in that little sliver of land that is being used as a car park by Greenwich Inc. I find myself wondering if it was a younger pub than the Man in the Moon, and whether perhaps it was named not for Queen Victoria’s ‘forgotten’ third daughter but the terrible disaster of the SS Princess Alice which collided with the Bywell Castle in 1878 (by weird coincidence the same year that the real Princess Alice died.)

If you’re interested, there’s a list of landlords here – it starts shortly after the disaster.

So – more to find out. This is a work in progress after all…

There is a ‘feel’ about Old Woolwich Road. It’s a backstreet that was once a front-street, carries buildings of all kinds and styles, is at once residential and industrial, historical and modern, and it bridges Greenwich, going from the end of the Old Royal Naval College through to Christ Church in the east. It’s one of my favourite streets in Greenwich for its very variety. 

I mean – just look at it. From the car park that lives under the threat of development (every street seems to have one these days) through the estate that I am convinced would have once had the wartime stretcher railings we can see elsewhere in South London, the funky Meridian School which is doing very nicely for itself, thank you, these days, the street just keeps on giving. There’s the new bit of Trinity Hospital – I know people moaned about it before it was built but I think it looks really good – they’ve clearly made effort to create something that will provide interest for the future. 

There’s the Star and Garter, whose history I’d love to know more about – the building’s really, really interesting, but having had just the one drink there I can’t really talk about the pub itself, then there’s the curious little estate – I’m guessing turn of the 20th Century – which manages to be both quaint and mysterious.

Of course that mystery could be that by that point the street gets really dark, being in the shadow of the power station, something I’ve written about again and again and again and again and again and probably more times, except even I can’t find my way around the Phantom archives. 

Out the other side, and the road becomes briefly industrial with the garage, the stone shop and the highly enjoyable auction,not to mention the interestingly redeveloped Marlborough Hall before turning back into classic East Greenwich nineteenth houses, including that wonderful double-bow-fronted place that used to have about fifteen landrovers parked outside it. Right at the end, there is a little series of stucco-fronted, arch-doored terraces, ending with the three-bobbled tower of Christ Church and Greenwich’s answer to the Flat Iron Building.

Right, so – there you have a basic lie-of-the-land. Hmm. Didn’t mean to get carried away there, this was supposed to be a brief introduction for a story from Scared of Chives, but hey, I’ll let it lie now I’ve written it. Just imagine that I’ve done a short, succinct intro to the subject I actually wanted to write about, the power station, okay?

So where was I? Oh yes. SoC was wandering along Old Woolwich Road, an exercise I can recommend for the reasons outlined above. It’s not as cute as the Thames Path or as quick as Trafalgar Road, which both go between roughly the same places, but there’s stuff to see everywhere, if you’re prepared to look. 

SoC stopped outside the new Trinity Hospital building to check out the sundials, which are indeed, worth a look. He was just examining them, presumably as baffled by them as I am, when a chap popped out from nowhere.

He seemed happy to chat, and SoC, who is a man after my own heart, steered the conversation to everybody’s favourite mystery – what the hell goes on inside the power station. He learned all kinds of groovy snippets, which I now pass onto you.

We’ve talked about the kestrels who nest in the chimneys; workers have spotted two nesting pairs, who apparently bring back squirrels from Greenwich Park to feed the chicks with. But I had no idea that there’s a bat colony (of about 30) in the east section of the building. I don’t know what sort they are, but wildlife experts have made a hole so they can get in and out at night. I think that’s brilliant – just adds to the whole ‘gothic’ thing the place carries. 

Talking of gothic – that south-east turret. I know, I know, I bang on about it like nobody’s business, but it is just damn weird. And, I now understand, it always has been. It used to have a water tank in it (because of the low pressure) and the windows were regularly opened to cool the water. But the builder who put the small windows in at the top didn’t get paid on time so he carefully put the latches on the outside, so people would have to lean out to open each window. I have no reason not to enjoy this story as true – here’s one of the offending latches:

SoC tells me there are noises it will be pulled down. This will be over my cold, dead tricorn. That building is the best bit of the whole station – without it Greenwich will be the poorer.
There is improvement stuff going on in the main building, though, I understand.  ’They’ are currently trying to re-fit the east part to add more turbines but are having problems shifting the old stuff. This may lead to using explosives, so if you hear something don’t necessarily think the worst, though the powers-that-be, aren’t blind to the possiblity that the power station could be under threat from terrorists, so it doesn’t feature on certain maps. I’m not sure which maps they’d be, given that it’s plain to see on the Streetmap ref. I gave you at the top…

SoC also tells me “MI5 say there was/is an increased threat from, for example, the IRA and that’s why 15 cameras have been installed around the place. There’s also a net/fence thing around the fuel tanks on the northern side to stop a – say, ruck-sack with incendiary device being thrown onto them.”

The guy told SoC a couple more tidbits that day. The  apple trees on the road/pavement outside are apparently a mistake by the council, who don’t normally plant fruit trees, and the single-storey, long building in the stone-yard opposite used to house a workshop fixing TVs – called, SoC thinks, Trafalgar TV – or similar.

Scared of Chives thanked the chap and went on his way. As he turned towards Christchurch Road, he turned, to wave a last cheery farewell. The man had disappeared. He has never been seen since.*

*Okay, I made that bit up. Didn’t know how to finish the post…

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the name ‘Moseley?’

Yup, me too. Which is why I’ve always felt a little iffy walking through Moseley Row on the Peninsula, even though the spelling’s wrong. It’s clearly a modern road, so someone named this knowing full well the connotations the name carries. It’s been eating me up for some time, and I finally got round to tackling the issue the other day.

I made a cursory foray into various history books, to see if there was a famous Greenwichian Moseley, preferably nothing to do with Blackshirts or F1, but the most I could find was a mention of an Anne Moseley, spinster, in the Charlton church parish register. I’m sure Anne was a very nice Charlton spinster, but she didn’t sound the sort of person that late 20th Century road-namers would immediately choose.

It was Mary Mills who put me out of my misery and told me that the little road is named for her predecessor, Marian Moseley, who was Peninsula Ward councillor until her untimely death from a stroke, just before Christmas 1999.

Mary tells me Marian was a popular figure, who who worked in the local co-op bakery and lived on the Catelock estate with her sister Margaret.  With the shock of her passing, there was much local call for some kind of memorial to her life and work.

It was decided that one of the new Peninsula roads should be named after her, and everyone expected it to be ‘Marian Moseley Row.’ When it came to the grand unveiling, however, the sign revealed carried the shorter – and ever-so-slightly-disturbing ‘Moseley Row’. Perhaps Greenwich council place-naming office  misunderstood; perhaps they were trying to save on road-sign metal, who knows.

There was outrage, since despite the difference in spelling, frankly the lovely Marian wasn’t – and still isn’t – the first person who springs to mind on seeing that particular road sign but Mary and Co. were told it was too late to change it. Once a road sign is chosen, that’s it, apparently.

Be careful what you wish for, folks…

John asks:

“We are considering a house move from West Greenwich to East Greenwich to Pelton Road, close to the Pelton Arms pub. We really like the area but don’t really know much about it. Any issues we should be aware of?”

The Phantom replies:

The Pelton Road area is a very interesting one, and one that I keep meaning to write about historically. I’m quite a fan of it myself. I like the funny little roads like Caradoc, Hadrian and Bradyll Streets, with their cute terraces and straight-onto-the-street frontages (I particularly like the way Caradoc Street curves so it’s always a slight surprise where I end up…) which were so ‘typical’ of South London’s recent past they were used as a set for the recent Only Fools and Horses prequel.

And I really like Pelton Road itself, a street of two sides – the lovely, tight terraces on the east, larger terraces on the west, with decorations ever so slightly above their station – huge downstairs windows and just-that-little-bit-too-big ornamentations, which lift my heart every time I see them. I also like the (not unbroken, but still nice) picket fencing around them which gives them a distinctive neighbourhood feel. Annoyingly I don’t seem to be able to find photos of either of my favourite parts of Pelton Road.

Closer to the main road, there are some post-war infill flats. Be careful as you walk past in the summer – I’ve been water-bombed by oiks as I’ve walked past and I’ve seen the little tykes do it to others, too. It’s not all bad – I always enjoy looking at someone’s rather splendid collection of decanters on a ground-floor windowsill as I walk past (in the Phantom sou’wester…) There are more little terraced houses in the streets still owned by the Morden Estate. There are also a couple of good cottages on Pelton Road itself.

Hmm. Things to look out for. Well, obviously no one really knows what Lovell’s Wharf will bring us (apart from a bricked-up Thames Path, of course.) I suspect much of the really heavy work in Pelton Road itself is over now, but I wouldn’t discount heavy construction vehicles, dust and noise.

The Pelton Arms itself has gone from being a frankly unexciting place to being somewhere I actively choose to go to. The new guv’nor has really upped the ante with bands, good food, themed nights and free cheese on Sundays (you can’t go wrong with free cheese…) Don’t be fooled, though, by what have to be the most inviting looking seats in Greenwich, in the corner by the open fire. You’ll walk in, think ‘Wow – we’re in luck!’ and quickly nab said squashy seats before red-facedly sloping off to somewhere else five minutes later to cool down.

I’m sure you’re not the kind of person that moves in next door to a music pub then complains there’s music going on – but do bear in mind that very close to the pub might be a little louder in the summer.

The other pub, the Royal Standard, isn’t quite so well regarded, despite its splendid mascot ; the noise from here is not music related. I don’t know how much actual trouble they get, but anecdotally, I’ve heard that it gets loud at closing time.

Trotting on, I’ve already mentioned the water-bomb menace from the flats (actually it’s not that bad, happily the little herberts are dreadful shots); I’m not aware of any other trouble.

Something you might want to look out for is the Catholic church at the end. The church itself is rather sweet, and I really like the Priest’s House, but I understand that they keep trying (and so far failing) to develop their community hall into ‘luxury’ flats. It all went quiet with the economic downturn, but now money’s tighter than ever, the proposal could rear its ugly head again.

And then there’s the playground, that can’t have seen a child for bloomin’ decades. It was clearly a lovely little corner once – it’s been landscaped and just at the moment its overgrown charms include naturalised bulbs and blossom from once properly planted trees. I assume it belongs to the school though how any inner city school has enough land they can just let some go to waste is beyond me. In my heart I would love to see it going back to being a little community garden (it would make a great urban orchard) but every time I pass it I wonder how long it will be before some grasping developer notices it.

And that’s all the news that I can think is fit to print. I know people who read this blog live round there. Why is it so great? What’s not so good? Do tell…

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?