I owe the entirety of this post to Stephen, who first shared this extraordinary postcard out of his family album – then went out and got its modern equivalent too…

What I love about this particular postcard is that it’s not just a scene of what is now Ashburnham Place (Stephen tells me it was Ashburnham Road, as the postcard says, at least until 1938 – he also has a map with it on) but that someone chose to make a postcard on the very day the road was being resurfaced. At first sight I thought the chap at the left was a chimney sweep – but there’s the roller further down the road and several workers.

I wonder if underneath it’s cobbles and this was recording the first tarmac in the street? Or whether, much like Google Streetview today, that was the day the publisher’s photographer visited the street and that was what they got. After all there were thousands of postcards made – they were the equivalent of email today and they were constantly needing new subjects.

But this postcard is fascinating for so many things – not least the strange pillar in the bottom right hand corner that still exists today

Everything’s so neat – matching fences and gates, matching privet hedges and an empty road (for obvious reasons, though I assume it wouldn’t have been rammed with cars as it is today.) And just get that cute lamp post…

Compare that with the same view, taken yesterday by Stephen:

My first thought is that other than the cars and wheelie bins, this scene hasn’t really changed much. There’s still a lamp post in the same place, though it’s not nearly as pretty. The walls on the left are still there, if cut down a little and the houses are generally still as they were – though their window-surrounds are painted now.

I’d say that the biggest change is actually just the sheer amount of clutter. Cars, bins, street furniture, rubbish in the front gardens (something the folk in the first picture wouldn’t have understood at all…) and greenery. But in general Ashburnham Place has come off pretty well if these two pictures are anything to go by…

Never heard of it? No, nor had I – and if you were to go by any histories or old maps of Greenwich you wouldn’t be any the wiser either. I haven’t found a single map that actually shows Kirkland Place as such. Some have the road marked, none seem to name it. And yet at least one Phantophile not only knew it but lived there for many years as a child.

I was puzzled when John contacted me about Kirkland Place where his dad had a shop in the 1940s and 50s, though it all became a little easier to pinpoint when he sent me this photo, courtesy of Morden College Archives (Morden College, of course, owned – and still own – large swathes of Greenwich; you will be pleased to know they have archived their considerable  history. Even better, Hilary Peters who, if you remember, was responsible for the fabulous little corner garden and Foot & Mouth Memorial at Ballast Quay, tells me that it is open to all for research (by appointment) – last time she tried, admittedly many years ago, it wasn’t open to women…)

But I digress. Because of a sign on the side of the shop, we can at least pinpoint where Kirkland Place was – 300 yards from the Seawitch Pub. The Seawitch was on Seawitch Lane, now Morden Wharf Lane and we know where that is:

The pub sounds a sweet little place. Mary Mills says in her (sadly out of print) Greenwich Marsh – The 300 Years before the Dome that it was slightly set back from the riverside path, with a little garden set aside from the roadway. I can’t really tell from this picture where that would have been, but I do like the jolly jack tar enjoying a pint on the left (not sure where this picture’s from – I’m suspecting Greenwich Heritage Centre)

The hostelry was built by one Charles Holcombe, a wealthy industrialist who’d taken a lease out on a large swathe of land, roughly where the old, dead Amylum site is now.

Don’t know if you know the delightful Valentines Park in Ilford – for many years it was closed up and used as council offices, but has been restored and is now probably one of the few reasons to visit Ilford. The gardens are particularly impressive – if you walk around them you can see garden history from Henry VIII’s time through all the major phases of horticultural fashion right up to the 1950s – but the reason I’m talking about it today is that it was Charles Holcombe’s gaff back in the 1840s when Ilford was a hell of a lot posher than Greenwich. In fact it was very smart indeed. It might have just lost the gigantic Wanstead House* a couple of miles away (a great story of the ultimate Regency Rake, a misused heiress and an embarrassed Duke of Wellington…) but in the Victorian age we’re looking at Blackheath-level poshness.

But hey – I have no other reaason to mention Redbridge other than the fact that Holcombe lived there.

Anyway, Holcombe built the Sea Witch, presumably for workers (Mary Mills reckons it was probably named for a famous American tea clipper; others ‘on the internet’ assume that it’s got folklore traditions; I just think they thought it was a cool name…) and I have no reason not to think he was also responsible for Kirkland Place as somewhere for employees on his ‘brass foundry, tar and asfelt works’ to live.

By the time John was born in 1947, the Sea Witch had been dead for seven years, bombed in an air raid. He remembers peddling his little red car, from the shop, which was on the corner of Tunnel Avenue and Morden Wharf Lane, opposite where the old Dreadnought School (where he attended) still is now,  up to the bombsite and back,  trying to keep up with the Blue Circle cement lorries,  reach the Mechanic’s Arms, do a 3 point turn and peddle down the lane. It took many years to redevelop the area, but the glucose works labs, until very recently, sat roughly where the pub used to be.

When he was five years old John had to have an appendix op at St Alphages Hospital.  His family came to visit  just before he went down for the operation, then returned to the shop. As John’s 15 year-old brother Tony was coming round the corner of Tunnel Avenue on that night (around the time John was having the operation) he saw a shadowy figure on the flat roof of 10 Kirkland Place.  He ran up the stairs to the second floor,  lifted the roof door and walked out but saw nobody there. He’s never been able to explain what or who he saw. Could it have been young John, having an out-of-body experience? Who knows…

Thinking back to the Seawitch – don’t you think with all that development that we were promised wouldn’t happen and now is, that a proper, historic Thameside pub on the west side of the peninsula would be a lovely thing? Enderby House is empty…

*razed to the ground for building materials to pay off massive gambling debts, though much of the park and features – including the grotto, inside which, in truly Gothick fashion, said rake once locked said heiress. There are also two classical temple-style follies, but they’re on private property and you can’t see them. Not something you expect to find in a back garden in Ilford…

Seriously, though, Valentines is worth a visit.

Jack asks:

“My family have lived in greenwich for over 150 years, and I have been doing my family tree. On the 1881 census, my great x3 grandmother Eliza Moody ran a greengrocers and fruit shop at 121 Trafalgar road.
I was wondering if you had any pictures of this place from books or if you knew anyone that would possibly have a picture or anything. I have no name of the shop, just 121 Trafalgar road.”

The Phantom replies:

This is SUCH a common question. I confess that without trawling through every single book I don’t know if there is one that takes in that particular shop and sadly Real Life is utterly crazy at the moment; I just don’t have the time.

But it’s easy enough to do for yourself what I would have to do – nip over to the Heritage centre at Woolwich Arsenal and ask to see the photographs they keep that are labelled by street. There might also be other collections that will have them in so have a chat with the curators. It really helps to know where No. 121 is now (if it exists) so you can see where it is in the street and identify it by other things around it rather than just hoping there is something labelled as such. There could be pictures of trams or other things with that shop in the background.

There are other places to look, of course. The Heritage Centre holds many more books than I do for starters – a happy afternoon with a bunch of them might yield results. I’ve been having a chat with a chap who’s found a picture of his family shop in the Morden College Archives (more about that another day…) – could be worth seeing what they have, especially since they own a lot of the land north of (and including) Traf Road – if you look at the top of the building Tesco is in you’ll see the coat of arms.

For photos of streets now, Mike Curry has asked me to remind you that he has an exhibition of his travels around town  at The Greenwich Gallery, which is at Linear House, just behind Greenwich Borough Hall on Royal Hill. It’s on until the end of the month and if you go at weekends you can have a chat with the man himself…

Scott asks:

I’m thinking of buying a little house on Orlop Street. The street looks quite quaint, but what kind of reputation does it have now? I know that the orlop deck is the lowest deck of a ship with four or more decks and wondered if that were still indicative of the area today, or whether things have gone more upmarket. The prices, although relatively cheap compared to other parts of Greenwich, would suggest the latter, which is quite ironic considering how little money the original inhabitants must have earned.

The fact that we’d be close to the river, train station and park, yet away from the touristy part has great appeal, but I’d love some reassurance that I’m doing the right thing from someone (or people in the comments) who know the area well. Coming from Finsbury Park, it feels like a massive change, and almost a different city.

The Phantom replies:

There were several streets round East Greenwich named after parts of a ship – spare a thought for the poor residents of Frigate Street who, in the 1960s had become so far removed from the concept of shipping that they thought the name was rude and campagined to have it renamed the much more genteel Feathers Place. As far as I am aware there is no Poop Street. Now there is a name I’d campaign about.

It’s true that the Orlop is the lowest deck of a ship and there was a time when this charming little one-sided back street, running parallel to Traf Road was home to some of the ‘lowest’ residents in Greenwich Society, though Charles Booth was apt to be a little kinder.

These days, like all of the Pelton Road area, it’s all got a hell of a lot more gentrified and therefore, as you’ve noticed, expensive. East Greenwich still has a long way to go before it reaches Royal Hill or Ashburnham Triangle fancyness, but I really like the rough-around the edges feel it still has and we may well start to see more shops and facilities opening when the Heart of East Greenwich development starts getting residents.

I love East Greenwich – the people are generally friendly, the pubs are good (especially the Pelton and the Vanbrugh, jury’s still out on the new-look King Billy, nearest you, the only time I ate in there the food was okay, but my pal and I were entirely alone for the entire experience and the lighting felt very harsh, but I’d be willing to try it again) as you point out you’re close to the rivier and transport.

I don’t know what the configuration is inside the houses – some of those below-street level basements have been filled in, others haven’t – no idea how it is on flooding etc, though there are basements on bloomin’ Ballast Quay, mere yards from the river; it can’t be that much of an issue.

The only thing I would want some confirmation on, preferably from someone actually living in Orlop Street or knowing someone who lives there, would be the effect of being one-sided with shops backing onto your front door, and how that would affect noise levels, commercial bin-emptying and, at night, chaps who’ve been ahem, ‘caught short’ on their way home from the pub…

So – Orlop Street experiences please, folks…

Anyone know what’s going to happen here? Jeremy and I have been wondering what’s going to happen to the old bail hostel in Creek Road for some time now. It’s not the prettiest building ever but all breeze-blocked up it’s frankly a bit grim.

Usually when a sign outside a property says ‘acquired’ it means luxury flats – but does anyone have any further news? I’ve had a look through the council planning site and can’t find anything. I don’t have an agenda here – anything old and lovely (or otherwise, though there certainly were some incredible Georgian shops there not so long ago) clearly disappeared a long while ago – I’m just curious.

Okay – no prizes for guessing this building belongs to Morden College (sorry about the fuzziness). Why a lion? I have no idea – my only guess is that a turkey would have provoked sniggers among puerile Phantoms. I had a quick look in a couple of Morden College history books with no joy, but Neil Rhind’s bringing out the third in his Blackheath books at some point and I daresay the answer will have nothing to do with gobbling holiday meat.

I’ve often thought of doing a ‘collect ‘em all’, I-Spy-style trail around Greenwich and Blackheath on the various properties that bear the mark of one of the area’s biggest landowners (it’s a slightly weird thought that so much of central Greenwich is actually carved up between two charities). You’d certainly cover a fair amount of ground if you wanted to walk them all in a day.

Most of the proprietorial plaques you’ll find around town take the form of a black circle with a white lion (occasionally painted over) like this:

but I don’t know of another place where the College has built its badge into the very brickwork of one of its portfolio properties.

So folks – where is it? I’ll add a slightly wider angle later today (with, ahem, no accidental clues this time…)

UPDATE

Yes – of course, Dave, you’re right. But I bet not everyone notices the top of a building that looks so dull on the ground floor. Here’s a shot of the whole thing.

It is, like several buildings down Traf Road, quite a handsome fellow if you care to look up.

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.