Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
The Mayor of the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Lady Mayoress will open the Tarts & Crafts fête at Shrewsbury House at 11 O’Clock on Sunday 1st April. The last Tarts & Crafts in November was very successful – some 800 people attended, visiting 34 stalls spread over both floors of Shrewsbury House selling a wide range of arts, crafts and foodstuffs. They will be adopting the same, successful format this time.
The Mayor will also be presenting Shrewsbury House with a Commemorative Certificate representing the Royal Warrant recently issued to the Royal Borough.
Shrewsbury House Community Centre is in Bushmoor Crescent, Shooters Hill SE18 3EG. The entry fee to the fête is 50p which includes a raffle ticket. The fête runs from 11.00am to 4.00pm.
Contact the Shrewsbury House Community Centre for more information or stall bookings, telephone: 0208 854 3895
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.
If you think the the Woolwich Free Ferry should continue, or you think a Gallions Reach ferry would lead to unacceptable traffic problems, or if you object to a new tunnel at Silvertown, or if you want to make any other comments about Transport for London’s river crossing proposals then you have until midnight of the 5th March to complete the consultation questionnaire. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Ferry could be gone by 2017 if TfL’s latest proposals on Thames crossings are implemented.
There seems be be strong affection for the Free Ferry; in the 2003 consultation about the Thames Gateway Bridge 76% of respondents thought the ferry should be kept open. As the TfL consultation key findings brochure says:
“ If the bridge would lead to the closure of the Woolwich Ferry, I would be strongly opposed to the bridge.”
Over three-quarters of respondents to this question (5,086 in total) said that the Woolwich Ferry should be kept open in some form.
3,537 people added comments to this question.
Many respondents said that they would oppose the bridge if it simply replaced the ferry.
The market research confirmed this finding, with 69% of respondents wanting the Ferry to be kept open.
The consultation on the new proposals is open until midnight on Monday. It only takes 5 minutes to complete – just 17 questions including the age, ethnicity etc. questions – and allows you to say whether you support the new Gallions Reach ferry and Silvertown Tunnel.
Stained glass window in Memorial Hospital: Presentation of a golden ball by William Fisher Lord of the Manor Plumstead to Queen Elizabeth
One of the delights of the Memorial Hospital is the stained glass that decorates some of its corridors and stairways, and the St Nicholas Chapel. I was lucky recently to have the opportunity to take some photographs of the windows, which I have put on the flickr site. Most of the topics depicted in the windows need no explanation; a view of Eltham Palace, Henry VIII’s Great Harry ship which was built at Woolwich and the religious subjects in the chapel. However I found one window, shown above, puzzling. Who was William Fisher, I pondered, and what was his connection with the area?
Google wasn’t my friend on this occasion, and couldn’t answer my questions. So I headed down to the local history section of the Woolwich library and the trusty W.T. Vincent’s “The Records of the Woolwich District”. Vincent talks about the visit of Queen Bess to Plumstead in July 1573, but names her host as Thomas Fisher rather than William. He describes Thomas Fisher as having been a clerk or bailiff who was employed by Sir Edward Boughton in the management of the king’s estates, Sir Edward having been granted “the manor and parsonage, tythes &c., within the parishes of and villages of Plumstead, Bostall, Wickham, Welling, Woolwich, Bexley, Lessness, Erith and Yard, alias Crayford” by Henry VIII after the dissolution of the monasteries. Vincent goes on to say of Thomas Fisher:
The old historian, Dugdale, represents Fisher as being:
“As greedy of church lands as other courtiers were,”: observing that “he swallowed divers large morsels, whereof Bishop’s Itchington was one; he made an absolute depopulation of that part called Nether Itchington, where the church stood (which he also pulled down for the building of a manor house in its room); and to perpetuate his memory changed the name of it to Fisher’s Itchington”
He also had a manor house in Plumstead , and much of the land in the parish which had been seized by the late King Henry had apparently come to his share. He was pretty well to do, and on the occasion of the royal visit he presented her Majesty with a ball of gold, with a cover, having a lion standing on the top, crowned and holding the Queen’s arms.
Vincent thought that Fisher’s home was the Old Manor House in Wickham Lane, also known as the Pilgrim’s House or Wolsey’s House.
A Google search for “Fisher’s Itchington” threw up Thomas Fisher MP, who according to wikipedia was MP for Warwickshire and was the person who depopulated Nether Itchington, but no connection with Plumstead or Woolwich is mentioned. So a partial solution to the mystery ….
Gold connections continue in some of the other stained glass windows at the hospital.
The Henry Grace à Dieu, also known as the Great Harry, was the first ship built at Woolwich Dockyard, and the reason the dockyard was founded by Henry VIII in 1512. It was the largest ship of its time, with many innovations such as having two fully armed gun decks, gun ports and 21 of the new heavy bronze cannon. As the window says: she conveyed Henry to the summit with King Francis I of France at the Field of the Cloth of Gold and ended her life at the start of Mary’s reign in 1553, when she caught fire and sank at her mooring at Woolwich… “by neckclygens and for lake of over-syth,” according to Henry Machyn.
Stained glass window in Memorial Hospital: The Great Harry
The peaceful St Nicholas chapel at the Memorial Hospital opened in 1986 after the closure of the St Nicholas Hospital that was situated in Tewson Road, Plumstead. One of the windows in the chapel is known as the Golden Window, and illustrates the text “Suffer little children to come unto me”. According to the Lost Hospitals of London web site:
The ‘Golden Window’ was originally installed in 1956 in the Hospital chapel at Goldie Leigh Hospital. It was moved to the Memorial Hospital chapel and rededicated in December 1986.
That was all I could find out about this window, but I’ll add it to my list for the next time I’m in the library at the Heritage Centre.
What a range of interesting local history was encapsulated in just three windows!
Stained glass window in Memorial Hospital Chapel: The Golden Window
A new planning application for 2 houses in Nithdale Road set me musing about Nimbyism. The acronym NIMBY (Not In My Back-Yard) is often used pejoratively, or as wikipedia says: “The term is usually applied to opponents of a development, implying that they have narrow, selfish, or myopic views.”
I have in the past opposed developments similar to the one proposed in Nithdale Road that were literally almost in my back yard, and I’ve felt slightly guilty about being a NIMBY. After all there is a housing crisis in the UK, with according to Shelter, 1.7 million people on local authority waiting lists, 7.4 million homes failing to meet the government decent homes standard and 654000 households overcrowded. Also, with the population rising, not enough new houses are being built each year; it has been estimated that 240000 new homes are needed each year and only about half that number are being built. So it’s pretty selfish to deny other people the opportunity to have a home of their own, isn’t it?
But … there do seem to be a lot of new houses and flats built in the area. The Love Lane development will apparently yield more than 900 new homes, then there is the ongoing development of the Royal Military Academy and the Royal Arsenal sites yielding hundreds more. Not to mention the 16 story residential block to be built on the DLR site, according to the new Woolwich Masterplan, and many smaller developments such as the former Cottage Hospital. Do we need to build on every small plot of land, irrespective of the impact on the neighbourhood?
Also it appears that proposed developments try to fit in as as many homes as possible. I guess more separate “units” equals more money. I’ve noticed a pattern on several proposals where there are a series of planning applications that successively reduce the number of proposed units in order to get planning approval. One went from a 4 storey block of flats to a 3½ storey block to a pair of three storey semis over the course of three or four years. Another, similar to that proposed in Nithdale Road, started with two small semis which was rejected, then changed to a single dwelling (also rejected). If I were cynical I’d call it the “see what you can get away with” tactic. Some of these homes seem very small; in fact new homes in the UK are the smallest in Europe.
Hoardings round plot in Eaglesfield Road
The planning history for the plot of land at the end of Eaglesfield Road also demonstrates the trend of successive applications for a reducing number of units. In this case from 12 flats to 8 ending in an application for 6 flats which was turned down by the council and then allowed on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. As consent was granted over 3 years ago it should now have lapsed, but the land has been left unattractively hoarded up for several years. Sometimes such plots of land tend to turn into rubbish dumps if the people who live near them aren’t vigilant. The land owners, many of whom don’t live locally, don’t suffer from the impact to the local environment of neglecting a plot, or the long term impact on the built environment of building something that doesn’t fit in. It’s very rarely that I read a planning application and I think “that person really cares about the area”.
Recently applications to build on land that used to be back gardens have been turned down because it was seen as “garden grabbing” which Councils were allowed to use as a reason for rejection. It isn’t clear whether this will still have any force when the planning laws change. It’s also not clear to me how the proposed “presumption in favour of development” will balance against localism’s “new rights and powers for communities”. However that plays out, land owners may decide to just need to hang on to their holdings until some future government relaxes the rules sufficiently to allow them to build what they want.
As a result of my musings I feel a little bit less guilty about being a Nimby, and I will keep sending in my objection letters anyway.
I was surprised on a trip to Thompsons Garden Centre to find that the Blackheath Donkeys weren’t in their field at the side of the car park. Along with other gardening shoppers I often pause to see how they are doing before heading in to the garden centre. Then I remembered that an article in the Mercury had said that Greenwich Council had agreed with the owner, Lenny Thorne, that the donkeys would have a new field near Eltham Palace. Intrigued, I decided to pay them a visit.
There are a lot of fields near Eltham Palace, I discovered, and most of them seem to have equine inhabitants. The Palace itself was closed for the winter, but the surrounding gardens were beautiful in the crisp, clear winter air with a carpet of snowdrops under the trees. I checked the fields round the edges of the gardens, but there was no sign of the donkeys. I decided to try the other side of the palace.
The meander down King Johns Walk has a very rural feel, which is increased when it meets the fields at the bottom of the hill. This section of the Green Chain Walk is idyllic, with fields of horses and ponies on either side of the path and panoramic views of Central London from Canary Wharf via the Gherkin and Shard to the London Eye. The donkeys were in a field near a sign post telling me I was half a mile away from the Tarn and half a mile from Eltham Palace. They had moved last Wednesday, I was informed, and had settled in quite well and seemed happy in a field that was better drained than their old pasture and had good grazing.
So the field is now clear for the Equestrian Centre to be built between Woodlands Farm and the garden centre. I hope the donkeys get as many visitors as they did in their old home. I will put some more pictures of them in their new home on flickr.
Lewis from The London Orchard Project shows volunteers how to plant a plum tree
I joined Avant-Gardening, The London Orchard Project and other volunteers to plant a plum tree in The Place Where Plums Grow on Thursday. In fact we planted two plum trees, and some apple and pear trees, as part of Avant-Gardening’s The Place Where Plums Grow project, which kicked off in the Nightingale Estate. One of the apple trees was the sweet cooking apple, Howgate Wonder, known for keeping its shape and texture when cooked. It is also known for sometimes producing very large fruit; the world record largest apple was once a Howgate Wonder weighing 3lb 11oz with a 21 inch circumference. It has since been beaten by 4lb 1oz apple grown in Japan.
The London Orchard Project was founded in January 2009 by Carina Millstone and Rowena Ganguli to promote orchards and fruit trees in London. They “are working with Londoners to plant and harvest apple, pear and plum trees all over the city, and help us all to rediscover the pleasure of eating home-grown fruit”. As well as planting new community orchards and training orchard leaders to look after them they rejuvenate and restore neglected orchards. One of these orchards is at the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Monks Orchard Road Beckenham. Last week I joined a a group of volunteers to help plant some 40 or so apple trees there – including interesting and unusual varieties such as Lanes Prince Albert, Laxtons Fortune and, what bliss, Pitmaston Pineapples! There’s a detailed photographic description of the tree planting technique we used in the natural flow blog. One good thing about planting in Nightingale Vale was that the snow had melted and we didn’t have to break through 2 inches of frost-frozen soil to start digging.
Shooters Hill Orchards 1894-7
Another of the London Orchard Project’s activities is mapping orchards, both where they are now and where they were historically. An extract of their map of orchards in London in the 1890s is shown on the right. This was taken from an analysis of Ordnance Survey maps of 1894-1897. There seem to have been even more 30 years earlier, judging from the 1866 Woolwich Ordnance Survey map. If the neat rows of tree symbols indicate an orchard, there was one just south of Nightingale Vale, another in the bend enclosed by Eglinton Road and Herbert Road and many more around Plumstead Common. The 1866 Shooters Hill map shows a large orchard in the grounds of Tower House, which could be the one shown in Brinklow Crescent on the London Orchard Project map, plus another large one just to the North of that, and yet another in the grounds of the old Bull Hotel – the present Eaglesfield Park.
I guess it’ll be a while before we see the fruits of our tree planting labour. But with a young adopter of each tree looking out for them the trees should have a good chance of survival. I’m looking forward to seeing some large Howgate Wonders in Nightingale Vale.
Monday 20th February; 3pm-8pm (including presentations at 4pm and 6.30pm); Charlton Athletic FC, The Valley, Floyd Road; focusing on Charlton Riverside/ Woolwich Town Centre
Saturday 3rd March; 10am-2pm (including presentation at 11am); Woolwich library, Woolwich Centre; focusing on Woolwich Town Centre/Charlton Riverside
Monday 5th March; 2pm-7pm (including presentation at 3pm); Woolwich library, Woolwich Centre; focusing on Woolwich Town Centre/Charlton Riverside
On a quick read-through, the vision that the plan presents of the future of Woolwich is certainly an attractive and ambitious one. For example it says of the Co-op building:
Site 10 – Art-deco Co-op building
This important historic building should be converted to high specification residential development, with complementary, active uses on the ground floor. Smaller scale retail, cafés and restaurants are appropriate towards this end of the town centre, as the nature of the town centre gradually changes from the retail core, to what is the retail fringe, with a wider range of uses including leisure, community and culture.
Detail of the Polytechnic building in Polytechnic Street
And the “Bathway Quarter” around Polytechnic Street, including the Grand Theatre and the old baths, sounds stunning:
Site 7 – Bathway Quarter
This area has a rich character which should be preserved though sensitive residential-led refurbishment with active uses at ground floor to create a distinct urban quarter. This area has the potential to be a high quality, high-specification, loft-style place with bars, galleries and artists’ studios together with other uses such as a jazz club and creative industries such as architect’s studios.
The Masterplan contains 17 development initiatives, including some that are already underway such as the conversion of the older RACS building into a Travel Lodge hotel, the Love Lane Tescos development and the Woolwich Centre. It also proposes, in the 2018 to 2021 time frame, to improve Woolwich’s connection with the Thames by knocking down the Waterfront Leisure Centre and extending Hare Street to the river. A new leisure centre would be built in “a more central location in the town centre”. In addition the Gala Bingo site would return to being a cinema or entertainment venue. A less sympathetic development, which the plan says already has planning permission, is for the DLR overstation scheme; a seven storey, 96 room hotel and a 16 storey tower containing 53 residential units will be built over the DLR station in Woolwich New Road.
As I said, an ambitious vision, Sir Humphrey would call it courageous, which would totally transform Woolwich; it will be fascinating to see if it successfully comes to pass.
The Woolwich Grand hosts another evening of music next Friday, 17th February. If it’s anything like the last one it will be well worth dropping in to.
Friday’s line-up is Katy Carr, Nigel of Bermondsey, Bromide and Joey Herzfeld & his so-called friends. Katy Carr, who has been described as evoking Kate Bush and P.J. Harvey (and even Edith Piaf), has had three CDs – Screwing Lies, Passion Play and Coquette, with a fourth, Pazsport, in the pipeline. Coquette includes the track Kommandant’s Car which is about the escape of Kazimierz ‘Kazik’ Piechowsk from Auschwitz, where he was interred by the Nazis in1940 for being a boy scout. Katy later met Kazik in Poland and recorded a documentary about the meeting. As she says in this interview, she:
“… has since then through an Arts Council grant been able to bring Kazik to England to elaborate further on his experiences. At one event in March at the Polish Embassy in London he made an official address and the film was screened, and at another at Baden Powell House he was presented with a special letter of honour from the Chief Scout, Bear Grylls.”
Psycho-geographical songs and stories from Bermondsey, South London. Also songs and tales of Wapping, Rotherhithe, Walworth. Now incorporating Covent Garden and Bloomsbury. Soon to be adding The Strand.
One of Nigel’s psycho-geographical interests is the Cross Bones graveyard on Red Cross Way in Southwark, in the shadow of the Shard, which I used to walk past regularly on my way to work. It’s not normally accessible to the public, but the large double gates are festooned with ribbons and messages commemorating the outcasts who were buried there. Perhaps Nigel will talk on Friday about the prositutes, known as the Bishop of Winchester’s Geese whose bones are there.
is london-based, essex-born, capri-owning, cat-worshiping, singer-songwriter simon berridge and anyone he can con into playing with him.
bromide plays mid-fi acoustic/electric folk pop. people have likened his music to elvis costello, american music club, ray davies, the only ones, lloyd cole, robyn hitchcock and kevin ayers. bromide has no idea so will take their word for it.
After 5 years writhing and screaming in cabaret/rock band Hooverville (myspace.com/joeyherzfeldandhooverville) Mr Joey Herzfeld has strapped on an accordion to deliver his mix dark humour and psychosis on mainly acoustic instruments. Formed at the end of 2010, Joey Herzfeld and The Haunted have been gigging regularly and have already recorded most of an album. Storytelling songs of murder, lechery and insanity are interspersed with the odd instrumental – spooky waltzes, toe-tapping blue-grass, and gypsy stomps.
Though I guess that will be confirmed on Friday, and also whether his so-called friends are the Haunted.
