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  hilly 10:27 pm on May 1, 2012
  Tags: past, politics ( 9 )   

  Shooters Hill, Gladstone and the Right to Vote 

  

  Gladstone Plaque on Eglinton Road School

  I wasn’t aware that the nineteenth century Liberal Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone was once the MP for Greenwich until I noticed the plaque on the side of Eglinton Road School. But he was, between the years 1868 and 1878, which included the time of the first of his four premierships. His valedictory speech to about 3000 of his constituents at the Herbert Park Roller Skating Rink, now the site of Eglinton Road School,  lasted two hours. They must have been releived that this was  much shorter than his record budget speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer which took nearly 5 hours.  The speech marked the end of Gladstone’s time as Greenwich MP;  he immediately went on to campaign for and win a seat in Midlothian.

  With an election coming up in a couple of days, I was particularly interested in Gladstone’s part in extending the right to vote, but his farewell speech also resonated with other current events in that it was about his passionate opposition to a war in Afghanistan, the second Anglo-Afghan War, and included the passage:

  “Yes, gentlemen, the disease of an evil conscience is beyond the prac­tice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world. The penalty may linger; but, if it lingers, it only lingers to drive you on further into guilt and to make retribution, when it comes, more severe and more disas­trous. It is written in the eternal laws of the universe of God that sin shall be followed by suffering. An unjust war is a tremendous sin. The question which you have to consider is whether this war is just or unjust. So far as I am able to collect the evidence it is unjust. It fills me with the greatest alarm lest it should be proved to be grossly and totally unjust. If so, we should come under the stroke of the everlasting law that suffering shall follow sin; and the day will arrive—come it soon or come it late— when the people of England will discover that national injustice is the surest road to national downfall.”

  Gladstone was also a supporter of electoral reform and the extension of the right to vote, becoming known as “the people’s William”. The changes started before Gladstone’s time  with the 1832 Reform Act which is seen as the start of the move towards universal suffrage, one of the few things I remember from school history lessons. It could be argued that Gladstone’s support for electoral reform pushed the Conservatives into passing the Second Reform Act in 1867 which enfranchised 1,500,000 men, almost doubling the electorate. All male urban householders and male lodgers paying £10 rent a year for unfurnished accommodation got the right to vote. Gladstone himself was responsible for the Ballot Act in 1872, bringing in the secret ballot for elections, and the  Third Reform Act in 1884 which gave rural men the same voting rights as those in the boroughs. Even after this some 40% of men and all women didn’t have the right to vote.

  It wasn’t until 20 years after Gladstone died, in the 1918 Representation of the People Act sometimes known as the Fourth Reform Act, that the right to vote was given to all men over the age of 21, and women over the age of 30 who met  minimum property qualifications. Women finally achieved  electoral equality with men in 1928 in what was known as the Fifth Reform Act or the Equal Suffrage Act. Then in 1969 the age  at which someone could vote was lowered from 21 to 18.

  So it took a long time to get the right to vote, and many people battled and were punished with  jail or worse on the way – from the Levellers and Chartists through to the Suffragettes, which is one reason why I will definitely be voting on Thursday.

  

  Portacabin Polling Station on Donaldson Road

  The map below shows the location of all the polling stations in Shooters Hill, including the recently installed portacabin in Donaldson Road, though remember that you can’t go to any Polling Station in the ward – check your polling card for your station. There’s a good summary of the instructions for how to vote here, but don’t forget that we only get two preferences on the pink ballot paper for Mayor.

  Finally, the Guardian have a 10 question mayor maker, which may help anyone who’s wondered what the policies in the campaign actually are.

  Shooters Hill Ward Polling Stations:

  • Shrewsbury House Community Centre, Bushmoor Crescent, Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3EG
  • Portacabin Next To 1A Donaldson Road, Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3JX
  • St. Joseph’s R.C. Church Hall, Paget Rise, London, SE18 3QQ
  • Plumcroft Primary School, Nithdale Road, London, SE18 3PE
  • Slade Hall, Pendrell Street, London, SE18 2PJ
  • Timbercroft Primary School, Timbercroft Lane, London, SE18 2SG
  • Willow Dene School, Swingate Lane, London, SE18 2JD

  Chris Smith is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Chris Smith 11:00 pm on May 1, 2012

    Interesting article – Gladstone had his problems as an MP post the shutting of the Woolwich Dockyard though and it was touch and go whether he would keep his seat at one point. I have written more about it here http://greenwichlib.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/gladstone-and-greenwich/

    Reply
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  hilly 10:39 pm on April 25, 2012
  Tags: future ( 18 ), military ( 3 ), past   

  Academy Art and Cricket 

  

  The Parade at the Royal Military Academy

  The former Royal Military Academy, like the former Royal Herbert Hospital, is a gated community which is very frustrating if you’re interested in the local history illustrated by historic architecture, or even if you’re just nosy and like looking at old buildings. So I felt really lucky to find the electronic gates open while on a walk with my camera; a chance to have a closer look at what is happening with  “The Academy Your Piece of History” as the signs say.

  Lots of history happened in the Royal Military Academy in its 134 years – between 1805 and 1939 -  as the education centre for artillery officers. Its distinguished teaching staff included  Michael Faraday, and graduates included Earl Kitchener, Woolwich-born General Gordon and King Farouk I of Egypt. And some believe it was the place where Snooker was invented. The original architect was Sir James Wyatt, a proponent of the neo-Gothic style who was also the architect for the near-by Royal Artillery Barracks. The central library building, shown above, with its leaded ogee domed octagonal towers was modelled on the White Tower at the Tower of London, where Wyatt was based in his role as Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. It has been described as “An outstanding example of Wyatt’s Gothick style, and one of the most important pieces of military architecture in the country.”

  The developers, Durkan Estates, are creating 328 new homes on the site, converting the old Academy and erecting 3 new blocks of flats. They include Extra Care sheltered housing  in  Colebrook House and L&Q housing association affordable housing. So far the main work seems to have been on the new blocks, with little obvious change to the existing buildings.

  

  Church of St Michael and All Angels

  There have however  been changes in the area around the grade II listed former church of St Michael and All Angels, which is a key component of the developer’s vision to create an urban village with the church and great hall at its centre – the village square. Their plan is that:

  St Michaels and the All Angels will become an arts and culture centre, providing studio space for local artists and an open space for the use of residents for exercise classes, art lessons and cultural events.

  Essentially a pod will be built inside the church structure containing the 12 artists’ studios, and leaving a space for the cultural activities.  The church was built much later than the main part of the academy; its history is summarised in Chapter 10 of the brilliant English Heritage draft Survey of London Volume 48:

  Since the 1850s there had been a desire to provide the site with a chapel. Money had been set aside and plans prepared on two occasions, a contract even put out to tender in 1871. But other provision took priority and the cadets used the garrison church. Sufficient subscription funds were at last secured and the Academy’s chapel was built in 1902–4 on the site of the old drill shed, and dedicated as the Church of St Michael and All Angels. Maj.-Gen. N. H. Hemming, RE, deployed red-brick Perpendicular Gothic to fit in with the surroundings. A cruciform plan was intended, but want of money meant that the southern transept was not built until 1926. Inside there is an oak pseudo-hammer-beam roof. Furniture, decoration and an organ were all funded by charitable subscription and fitting out was gradual through to the end of the 1920s. The most impressive fitting was the First World War memorial west window of 1920, designed by Christopher Whall and his daughter Veronica to depict soldiers in historical uniforms paying homage to the Virgin and Child. An earlier west window, moved to the east, commemorated the fallen of the Boer War. The Academy’s chapel became the main garrison church after the Second World War. It closed in 2003. Thereafter memorials, furnishings and the decorative windows were taken to the Royal Artillery’s headquarters at Larkhill, Wiltshire, and Sandhurst.

  It’s a shame the stained glass windows have been removed; when I was there the windows were mainly plain leaded glass, and the inside was crammed with partitions and offices, making it impossible to see any remaining decorative features.

  

  Snippet of Durkan Estates' Plan of the Academy

  The Great Hall, which was once the RMA dining hall, will also be converted for community use – in a similar way to the church by inserting a pod within the existing building. As shown in the plan above it is just across the square from the church. It is proposed that it will provide:

  A space for all residents to use whether to watch a movie in the screening room, meet friends in the coffee area, dine in the private dining room, quietly read in the library, relax on the mezzanine or work in the office area. Spaces for everybody: designed for maximum flexibility.

  The plan also includes development of changing rooms for cricketers using the cricket pitch which is being re-created in the metropolitan open land in front of the academy; a cricket pitch was originally created in 1878. This is intended as a facility for the wider community, and the planning documents mention that it will be available free of charge to schools in the area. There are records of the Royal Military Academy cricket team between 1865 and 1938, playing games against teams such as the MCC and the Royal Military College Sandhurst. However their home games all appear to be played on the pitch at the Royal Artillery Barracks, rather than at the Academy.

  There’s a lot more that could be seen at the Academy, for example the Officers’ Mess shown below and interior fittings pictured by Urban Explorers.  And a lot more history to be discovered. It’s a great shame that the Academy and Our Piece of History is not more accessible to the whole community.

  

  Officers' Mess at Royal Military Academy Woolwich

  rue is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    rue 3:31 pm on April 26, 2012

    Lovely article, thanks.

    Reply
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  hilly 6:44 pm on April 3, 2012
  Tags: past, plum lane   

  Gas Decontamination Centre Conversion 

  

  Wikimedia Commons UK Ministry of Home Security poster

  Building work has started behind the hoardings around Furze Lodge in Plum Lane; they are  converting  the one-time World War II Gas Decontamination Centre into a total of 12 flats. The previously existing six flats are being refurbished and extended, and a further six created by adding an additional storey. The graffiti-decorated building had been unoccupied for some time, and damaged by fire a couple of years ago, so it is good that it is being refurbished and cared for again. Neighbours of the development had objected on various grounds such as being overlooked, and the plans were changed so that proposed roof terraces were at the Plum Lane rather than the Dallin Road side of the building to prevent this.

  For me an unexpected delight of the planning process is the production of a Heritage Statement when work is proposed on an historic building. These are fascinating documents if  you are interested in local history, providing a professionally researched history of the building. I’m surprised such precious sources of information aren’t collected and stored together in case they disappear into the morass of planning documents. The Furze Lodge Heritage Statement had disappeared from the on-line planning system, presumably another victim of the redesign of the Royal Greenwich Council web site redesign, but a kind, if overworked, member of the planning department sent me a copy.

  

  Furze Lodge before the conversion started

  The  Statement was written by Compass Archeology. They summarise the preparations for war in the Woolwich district, in particular on Shooters Hill which was a key strategic point on the second of three defensive “Stop Lines” around London – battle lines to stop or delay a Nazi offensive against the capital. The threat of aerial poison gas  raids was planned for through the establishment of  defensive procedures, which included the construction of Gas Cleansing and Decontamination Centres, such as the one on Plum Lane – built in just 8 weeks in December 1939 and January 1940. It was one of many in Woolwich district, others being set up in schools, public baths and health centres. The Heritage Statement describes the guidance on operation of the decontamination centre:

  The Organisation of First Aid Posts and Gas Cleansing Stations was centrally controlled and a Ministry of Health Circular dated 30th December 1940 instructed that all such stations should be built following a central model plan (cf. Figs 9-11). The circular stated that: ‘The essential features are that the decontamination section consists of four units for each sex.
  i) Outside stripping shed
  ii) Inside undressing room
  iii) Washing or shower room
  iv) Dressing room.
  The object is to prevent the spread of gas vapour from unit (i) onwards and each four compartments need to be sealed off from each other.

  And they also suggest how this was implemented at Furze Lodge, in the diagram below (click to enlarge).

  

  Compass Archeology's suggested possible layout of the Gas Cleansing Station/First Aid Centre at Furze Lodge

  There’s a lot more about Shooters Hill during the Second World War in the Heritage Statement, in David Lloyd Bathe’s excellent history of Shooters Hill, “Steeped In History” which can be seen in the Heritage Centre, and also in the Digging Dad’s Army material linked to from the side panel and in previous posts. The Heritage Statement summarises what “Steeped in History” says about the war in Shooters Hill:

  On the Hill there is evidence for structures for the defence of London such as pill-boxes (Bull Public House), anti-tank weapons and explosive booby traps. There is an air raid shelter in Oxleas Wood as well as numerous shelters in private gardens. The ARP had their Headquarters in Shrewsbury House, just across Plum Lane from Furze Lodge.
  In 1940 Hitler decreed his ‘Directive 16’ or Operation Sealion as it became known. Britain’s Home Defence Executive, under General Ironside, laid out a plan for a series of defences called Stop Lines. These series of defensive lines were designed to stop or delay the enemy during the invasion. The defence lines were manned by the Home Guard. Around London there was an outer ring. (approximately on the line of what is now the M25), then a middle ring called ‘Stop Line Central’ which included Shooters Hill, and finally a central core around Whitehall. Gun placements were sited near Oxleas Wood and a Spigot Mortar on Eltham Common. On Eaglefield Park there were zig-zag trenches stretching from where the barrage balloon was sited to the pond, possibly as anti-glider trenching.
  Bathe records a Fougase being set up on Shooters Hill ready to be ignited if enemy tanks advanced and there were Dragons teeth set up in Eglinton Hill and Brinklow Crescent (just west of the site). There were Barrage balloons in Eaglesfield Park, Shrewsbury Park (just south of the site) and Oxleas Meadow. A temporary water tank was located in the playground of Plum Lane School for the use of the fire service that was stationed there.
  The local Home Guard was the 26th County of London Battalion and its HQ was Lowood House (south of the study site), under the charge of WWI veteran Lt. Col. Rothery-Moss, whom Bathe records as being of ‘the old school’. On Shooters Hill Golf Course was the 145 ‘Z’ AA Battery, with their HQ in a nearby house named ‘Invicta’. Their barracks were six nissen huts with a similar battery on Blackheath. The Shooters Hill site was later used as a POW camp.
  During the course of the war Woolwich suffered 1604 high explosive bombs, 82 V1s, 32 V2s and thousands of incendiaries. There had been 717 deaths and 5,207 injuries. Of the 38,000 housing stock 1670 had been destroyed, 1610 seriously damaged and 34,199 slightly damaged. On the upper reaches of the Hill there was very little damage, the WWII Bomb damage maps in Greenwich Heritage Centre show some general blast damage to the north, either side of Dallin Road, but nothing else in the immediate vicinity.

  The Gas Decontamination Centres was never used in practice, there were no poison gas raids, so future residents don’t need to worry about lingering contamination. And from its situation on the summit ridge of Shooters Hill they will have amazing views over London and down to the river.

  

  Building work on Furze Lodge

  PS I’ve asked for the broken links on the planning application page for Furze Lodge to be fixed, following which the Heritage Statement should be here.

   
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  hilly 9:21 pm on March 28, 2012
  Tags: castle wood ( 4 ), past   

  Cottage Hospital to Castlewood 

  

  Woolwich, Plumstead and District Cottage Hospital

  The hoardings around the former Cottage Hospital on Shooters Hill have come down, revealing a restored and spruced up Queen Anne style house where not so long ago there was a boarded-up, vandalised wreck. Like other nearby historic buildings such as the Police Station and the Royal Military Academy, the Cottage Hospital has been transformed into housing by combining a converted and restored old building with new houses and flats. The picture at the top shows how it looked in its heyday, and that at the bottom how it is now – post-restoration and conversion.

  I love maps, especially old ones, so it was fascinating to see the history of the building illustrated in a sequence of 6 maps from 1869 to 1991 in a “map regression” presented by developers Turnhold in their Supporting Statement for the planning application. The maps clearly show the hospital develop from its original T shape with the addition of wings and annexes over the years. The statement also contains an interesting set of photographs of the building before it was restored. The early history of the hospital is described on the Lost Hospitals of London website:

  The Woolwich, Plumstead & District Cottage Hospital was founded in 1888 by Mr. William Woodford, who remained its Honorary Secretary until 1912.

  

  Memorial stone at Castlewood

  A half-acre site on Shooters Hill was leased from the Secretary of State for War in December 1888 and the foundation stone for the building was laid by the Duke of Cambridge in September 1889.

  The Hospital opened in November 1890. The 3-storey building contained 12 beds, two of which were reserved for private patients.

  By 1912 the Hospital had 12 beds and 2 cots. Schoolchildren referred by the LCC for removal of tonsils and adenoids accounted for a great number of admissions. The Hospital also undertook herniotomies and minor operations. Out-patients were also seen, although there was no formal Out-Patients Department.

  The Cottage Hospital buildings stopped being a hospital in 1928 when patients were transferred to the newly opened War Memorial Hospital further up Shooters Hill.

  English Heritage have recently released a draft of Volume 48, Woolwich, of their Survey of London. This is an excellent read for anyone interested in local history, and covers the story of  Woolwich in marvellous detail. It’s a pity it doesn’t cover more of Shooters Hill, but Chapter 10 does bring the story of the Cottage Hospital up to date:

  The cottage hospital was adapted as a training school and home for nurses. After subsequent use as a carpenters’ workshop, in 1962 Bexley Hospital extended and reopened the premises as Castlewood Day Hospital. Final health-service use in the 1990s was as the Signpost Castlewood Centre, for the rehabilitation of teenage drug-users. Turnhold Properties acquired the disused hospital and, after a period of dereliction, the buildings were converted in 2011–12 for Family Mosaic, a housing association, with the Hill Partnership as developers and contractors. Forge Architects supplied designs, with details and subsequent work by Saunders Boston, architects. The result was Castlewood, a complex of five flats and six houses incorporating a new pale-brick terrace to the rear, of two and a half storeys.

  So the building’s name is now Castlewood, presumably because it was once the Castlewood Day Hospital. Not to be confused with the mansion named Castlewood, shown on 1914 and earlier maps, which once stood in Castle Wood to the south of Severndroog castle, or another former mansion, Castle House,  home of Major Charles Phillips who donated the land for the War Memorial Hospital.

  

  Former Cottage Hospital today

   
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  hilly 6:57 pm on March 8, 2012
  Tags: castle wood ( 4 ), past   

  Shooters Hill Shelter 

  

  Samuel Edmund Phillips memorial in Shooters Hill shelter

  I came across the name Samuel Edmund Phillips while reading about his son, Major Charles Edmund Stanley Phillips O.B.E., F.R.S.E., F.Inst.P., who used to ride his horse from Shooters Hill to his workplace at the Royal Marsden Hospital in South Kensington. I often walk up Shooters Hill past his memorial shelter near Christ Church School, and wonder about its place in local history. Samuel’s obituary in the Electrical Engineer records that he achieved a lot in his life of just 45 years:

  It is with deep regret we have to record the death of Mr. Samuel Edmund Phillips, which occurred somewhat suddenly at his residence at Shooter’s Hill, Kent, on Saturday last. He had been in failing health for some years, and suffered greatly from an internal complaint which proved to be caused by an ulcer.

  Mr. Phillips, when a boy, was brought into contact with telegraphy, his father being at that time engaged with Dr. Whitehouse in carrying out experimental work in connection with the first Atlantic cable. He subsequently accompanied his father in the first Malta and Alexandria cable expedition, and in 1863 he became a member of the staff which Colonel Patrick Stewart formed to go out with the Persian Gulf cable, remaining at Bushire as a junior clerk. At the end of three years’ service he returned to England, and obtained an appointment on the electrical staff of Messrs. Latimer Clark, Forde, and Co., leaving these gentlemen to become electrician to Mr. W. T. Henley, in whose service he remained for 10 years. At Mr. Henley’s works he was appointed manager of the cable department, and occasionally he accompanied cable expeditions as head of the electrical department. In 1875 he joined Mr. W. Claude Johnson in partnership, and a small works was established at Charlton. This formed the nucleus of the present extensive range of factories which are so well known to all connected with the electrical industry throughout the world.

  As an inventor Mr. Phillips has given us the oil insulator, which has not only been largely adopted for telegraph lines in India, Egypt, and other countries, but has proved of immense value for overhead lines for electric lighting and the transmission of power in all quarters of the globe.

  Mr. Phillips took the keenest interest in scientific matters generally, and to his good judgment and sound common sense may be attributed in a great measure the success of his undertakings. His genial manner and generous nature made him a universal favourite, and his loss will be deplored by a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances. It is not customary even in deploring the loss of an old and valued friend to abstain from the impersonal, yet we cannot help saying that the late Mr. Phillips was one of those quiet, unobtrusive men to whom England owes so much. He, in common with his surviving partner, was imbued with the view that it is necessary for a firm’s success to have a reputation for thoroughness, and together they built up a reputation for the firm’s work that gives it a foremost place among our manufacturers.

  

  Postcard of Memorial Fountain from 1930s

  Samuel’s memorial has an eventful history. Originally a drinking fountain given in 1893, it was allowed to fall into disrepair, and was restored in 1957. Then in 1985, according to David Lloyd Bathe’s history of Shooters Hill, “Steeped In History”, it was reduced to a pile of rubble by a heavy vehicle, but was restored by the local council. The line “Write me as one that loves his fellow men” on the memorial comes from the poem Abou Ben Adhem by the poet and writer James Henry Leigh Hunt:

  Abou Ben Adhem

  Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
  Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
  And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
  Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
  An angel writing in a book of gold:—
  Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
  And to the Presence in the room he said
  “What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,
  And with a look made of all sweet accord,
  Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”
  “And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
  Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
  But cheerly still, and said “I pray thee, then,
  Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

  The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
  It came again with a great wakening light,
  And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
  And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

  The Johnson & Phillips company that Samuel founded with Walter Claude Johnson was based at the Victoria Works in Victoria Way, Charlton, which was hit by one of the last V2 rockets to fall in Greenwich on 9th March 1945.

  

  Castle House, home of Samuel Edmund Phillips

  The Phillips family lived in Castle House, which is shown on the 1866 ordnance survey map as being located just off to the east of the track that leads from Shooters Hill to Severndroog Castle.  Major Charles Phillips later sold the Telegraph Field, where the old semaphore had stood, to the War Memorial Hospital Committee for £3500 to form part of the site for the new hospital, along with the crown property Hazelwood and an adjacent strip of land.  He later donated the sum he had received for the Telegraph Field to the fund for building the new hospital. The place where Castle House once stood now appears to be a car park in the Memorial Hospital grounds.

  What an interesting shelter!

  As a technical aside: I had been trying, unsuccessfully, for some time to take the “panoramic” view of the memorial at the top of this post using the free Nokia Panorama software on my N8 mobile phone. It didn’t seem to be able to match up adjacent sections, despite the, to my eyes, abundant clues. Then I upgraded my phone to the Symbian Belle release, which included a free copy of Scalado’s Camera Lover Pack, saving myself a whole one pound and 50p. Scalado‘s software worked first time; I should have known those clever Swedes wouldn’t let me down!

  It’s a great shame to see the end of the Symbian software that still drives the majority of the world’s smartphones despite its rapid decline over the last year following Nokia’s adoption of Windows Phone, but great that the Nokia Symbian engineers are going out with a bang with their 41MP camera phone the 808 PureView.

  

  Samuel Edmund Phillips Memorial Shelter