As if London and its history is a dream of Shooters Hill

Some time ago this site included a post on Evey Hammond, a fictional Shooters Hill resident from the graphic novel V for Vendetta. As it turns out its author Alan Moore has a special interest in the area, and wrote a piece of ‘psychogeography’ about Shooters Hill and one of its most talented residents, comic artist Steve Moore.

The piece is entitled Unearthing, and features in the 2006 collection “London: City of Disappearances”. The essay has since gone on to become an audiobook (excerpt above), a photobook, and a live performance.

A Tale of Two Cities

This latest bit of hilliana, by Charles Dickens, was stumbled across in the Shrewsbury House Library, and since the copyright has expired it’s reproduced in part here. This scene takes takes places in 1775, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the serialisation of the story began in 1859, so it’s not necessarily a historically accurate account of the hill at that time, it is however Dickens at his (late era) best:

II. The Mail

It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!” the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it—like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

The above is just a snippet of the chapter although subscribers will have got the thing in their email/syndicator, to read the whole book, click through to project gutenberg ebook #98.

A.H. Bagnold

In the previous post on notable hill dwellers, it did occur to me that one of the more interesting historical figures, or should I say historian figures was Colonel A.H. Bagnold, who lived in a nice big house in Oxleas Woods, and wrote the first local history in the Articles on Shooters Hill extracted from the parish magazine of Christ Church, Shooters Hill by A. H. Bagnold from 1936-38 which is still available at the local libraries – I hope to report on these at some point, but here are the locations in case it takes me a while to get round to it (as these things generally do):

Location Section Dewey Index
Greenwich Heritage Centre Reference Library 942.61
Greenwich Heritage Centre Reference Library/reserve 942.61
Woolwich Library Reference Library/local 942.61

I did find a little excerpt of bagnold on the internet however on the greenwich-guide website for August the 5th

Further experiments in the velocity of electricity, 1748 on Shooters Hill. Not being satisfied with earlier results (see: Aug 14) the experimenters arranged a circuit of two miles of wire [the Leyden Jar phial being in the middle of the circuit] . . . several discharges were made but the observer who held the two ends of the wire “always felt himself shocked at the very instant of making the explosion”, which was within his view. The conclusion was “that the velocity of electricity was instantaneous”. (Articles on Shooters Hill by Colonel A.H. Bagnold, Parish Magazine of Christ Church, Shooters Hill 1936/1938)

Actually colonel Bagnold was father to one of the hill’s most famous dwellers, Enid Bagnold, who’s first book Diary Without Dates was written in the turret of the old house, and was about her experiences volunteering at the Herbert Hospital around the first world war. She went on to write National Velvet, among other notable/notorious works, and in fact she really should join Boy George and Fanny Craddock in the list of notable residents. (Another thing that I could get round to doing).

Shooters Hill The Comic

The fact that various (in)famous people have been residents of Shooters Hill has not really done much for the area, and so I haven’t really gone into it. Actually the Shooters Hill Hall of Fame is already partly documented on the hill’s Wikipedia entry, which is perhaps more useful for it’s discussion on the use of the apostrophe. Incidentally this issue was also taken up by a contributing editor at current archaeology.

Anyway, one of the more controversial hill dwellers is, perhaps not surprisingly, a fictional one from a comic book (well, graphic novel to give it a ‘grown up’ description) who becomes the apprentice of a ‘morally grey’ bomber loosely based on the character of guy fawkes… no wonder the illustrator was worried about getting his phone tapped!

v for vendetta
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
v for vendetta
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Well, it seems that the choice of Shooters Hill as a location was made so that they could realise a vision of London under water…

v for vendetta
V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd