The Sketch of Jackwood

Jackwood House from The Sketch
Jackwood, Shooters Hill, the home of Nat C. Goodwin and his wife

Many thanks to reader Mike Smith for sending me a copy of an article entitled “The Splendour of the Modern Actor” from a weekly newspaper called The Sketch dated August 2nd 1899. The article was about the American actor Nat C. Goodwin and his wife, the actress Maxine Elliot, who lived in Jackwood at the end of the 19th Century and who I mentioned in a previous post about Jackwood. It includes a number of fascinating photographs of Jackwood as it was in 1899. The appearance of the house, shown in the photograph above, is the same as the Old English style mansion that was put up for sale in 1874.

Maxine Elliot and her sister Gertrude in their carriage in front of Jackwood House
Maxine Elliot and her sister Gertrude in their carriage in front of Jackwood House

The author of the article describes their journey by horse drawn buggy from Blackheath station up to the mansion in the woods of Shooters Hill.  The description of the interior of the house matches that in the sales literature:

The interior  is entirely lined with polished pitch-pine, and the great staircase with its open gallery is a triumph of workmanship, while the overmantels are of dark wood handsomely carved, many displaying the Arms of the first tenant, Sir William Plasted Wilde, whose crest and motto decorate the richly moulded ceilings, especially that in the drawing room, which is adorned with heavy pendants.

I think the Sir William Plasted Wilde mentioned should be really be Sir James Plaisted Wilde who became Lord Penzance, of the Mysterious P atop the gate leading into the walled garden in Jack Wood. Some of the details of the drawing room can just about be made out in the photograph below.

The drawing room at Jackwood: Miss Maxine Elliot and Mr. N.C. Goodwin
The drawing room at Jackwood: Miss Maxine Elliot and Mr. N.C. Goodwin

Much of the Sketch article is about the lifestyle of the tenants of Jackwood, and the way in which they had decorated the house, for example with Nat’s collection of native American artefacts which included the feathered head-dress of Indian chief Big Mouth and a selection of leather belts, one of which was fringed with a number of human scalps. There is a brief mention of the gardens:

But your hostess is insistent on showing you the grounds before luncheon, for the charming pleasances and the terraced rose gardens, enclosed on one side by a dwarf wall adorned by rounded Kentish gables and copied from Haddon Hall, are amongst the sights at Jackwood. These pleasant walks, paved in places with smooth red tiling, overlook the lawn tennis ground, at one end of which a mighty oak gives agreeable shade to onlookers, while further down the hillside the thistle-grown slopes are the playground of wild rabbits, which emerge from the thick underwood around in the cool of the evening. Through a vista in the forest, a favourite resort of the family, you may watch on Thursday nights Brock’s fireworks at the Crystal Palace far away in the distance.

Parts of the terrace shown in the photograph below are amongst the few remnants of Jackwood that survive today.

A fascinating glimpse into “society” life in Shooters Hill at the end of the nineteenth century. Thanks again Mike.

Maxine Elliot and her sister Gertrude on the terrace at Jackwood
Miss Maxine Elliot and her sister Gertrude on the terrace at Jackwood
From photographs by Thomas, Cheapside

3 Replies to “The Sketch of Jackwood”

    1. Yes, you’re right – I should have spotted that. The article in the Sketch mentioned William Plasted Wilde, but I think that’s a mistake because I can’t find any mention of a William, and the original owner of Jackwood was James who became Lord Penzance.
      I’ll amend the post to make it clear.
      Thanks for letting me know.

  1. Hello.
    Thanks for this interesting article. The ‘flower gardens’ as we call it was a favourite haunt of mine as a child.

    A question for you. We moved to Crookston Road in 1968 and my mother took us to see a dilapidated house (which was soon demolished) which she was told was Lady Kemp’s house. The only reference I can find to Lady Kemp on the internet is a couple of photos of her from 1938 planting a tree at the Memorial Hospital (which is, incidentally, where I was born). Do you know anything about her or the house in Jack Wood?

Leave a Reply to jezzie Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.