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!
Henry VIII Maying at Shooters Hill from W.T. Vincent’s Records of the Woolwich District
Although the widely-held belief that Shooters Hill derives its name from its medieval use as a site for archery practice is probably erroneous, it still seems appropriate that the Paralympics Archery competition was held nearby. There is a record of a medieval archery competition on Shooters Hill, in 1516 as part of Henry VIII’s May Day trip to Shooters Hill where he met Robin Hood:
The King and Queen [Henry VIII and Queen Katherine] accompanied with many lords and ladies rode to the high ground of Shooters Hill to take the open air; and as they passed by the way, they espied a company of tall yeoman, clothed all in green with green hoods and bows and arrows, to the number of two hundred. Then one of them, which called himself Robyn hood, came to the King, desiring him to see his men shoot, and the king was content. Then he whistled and all the two hundred archers shot and loosed at once, and then he whistled again, and they likewise shot again; their arrows whistled by craft of the head, so that the noise was strange and great, and much pleased the King and Queen and all the company. All of these archers were of the King’s guard and had thus appareled themselves to make solace to the King.
The archery at the paralympic stadium on Woolwich Common was, of course, very different. There are probably more than 200 archers at the paralympics, they shot their arrows individually and in silence rather than all at once and the only strange and great noise was the audience applauding the archers who hit the gold area of the target and (especially loudly) any British competitors. I must admit that I visited the stadium as much out of curiosity about the strange structures transforming Woolwich Commmon as out of any great interest in archery and shooting, but once there I found the competition completely compelling. It was very easy to get infected with the loud and enthusiastic audience atmosphere, whether clapping and stamping along to We Will Rock You or silently willing the British competitor’s arrow into gold.
It will be quite sad when the paralympics is over and London life returns to its usual routine, but I won’t be sad to see the stadium complex disappear from the Common – I don’t find it an attractive development – and I’m looking forward to the reinstatement of the Common back to its previous state or better. Apparently they will be replacing each tree that was cut down to make way for the stadium with one and a half new trees, which could be interesting. Some of the structures will be dismantled and taken to Glasgow, as one of the many volunteer Gamesmakers reports:
After the Games the 10/50m and 25m ranges and shot net will go to Glasgow for the 2014 Commonwealth Games; the large final hall is likely to remain in Greenwich. The dramatic temporary halls have been nick named ‘Teletubby Land’ and the site will be returned to Woolwich Common once the Games are finished.
But it’s not all gloom; a memorial of Woolwich Common’s role in the Olympics is planned by the Olympics Development Authority. They propose to place three brightly coloured teletubby window at the side of Ha-Ha Road. And no, it’s not April 1st, I checked.
Britain’s Sharon Vennard in Women’s Individual Recurve – StandingBritain’s Sharon Vennard in Women’s Individual Recurve – Standing
The sign describing the tumulus on Shrewsbury Lane is, I think, disappointingly lacking in detail. When was the barrow built? The sign identifies it as “Bronze Age, approximately 2600-700 BC” – a range of 1900 years, how approximate can you get? It also mentions that the mound has been opened “at some stage” but that “if anything had been found in side it is not recorded”. There must be more information somewhere, I thought….
A web search quickly found the Wessex Archaeology report on Shooters Hill. This mentions the barrow and said that it “suggests that there may have been a Bronze Age occupation or ritual centre in the area of Eaglesfield Park”, but focusses more on the second world war archaeology that fed into Digging Dad’s Army and the Time Team programme Blitzkreig on Shooters Hill. The barrow is mentioned on various websites, such as the Megalithic Portal, the Modern Antiquarian and Archeology Data Service, but with no additional information. Unexpectedly a document submitted as part of the planning application for the Equestrian Centre included a Cultural Heritage Gazeteer which listed a possible 6 barrows in a barrow cemetery, with only one still remaining, but no more details.
So it seemed a trip to the library was needed, and as usual Colonel A.H. Bagnold didn’t let me down, providing a description of all the tumuli:
No. 1 Mound, about 75ft in diameter, formerly in Tower House garden, now in the angle between Plum Lane and Mayplace Lane. Opened recently; contents unknown.
No. 2 Mound, about 36ft in diameter on a site formerly in the grounds of Shrewsbury House, now on the west side of Ashridge Crescent. Destroyed 1934-35.
No. 3 Mound, about 60ft in diameter on a site on the north side of Ashridge Cresent. Destroyed 1934-35.
No. 4. A similar mound on the same side of Ashridge Crescent. Destroyed 1934-35.
No. 5. A very low mound was on a line between two conspicuous trees – a cedar and a Spanish chestnut – which have been allowed to remain in Ashridge Crescent. Destroyed 1934-35.
No. 6. Shrewsbury Park L.C.C. Recreation Ground. Under the trees a few yards west of the drinking fountain is a symmetrical mound 45ft – 50ft in diameter and about 2ft high. It has not been opened.
No. 7. Plumstead Common. On the eastern part (Winn’s Common) is a mound about 60ft in diameter and much worn down. It has obviously been opened, but when and by whom cannot be ascertained, nor is anything known about the fate of any relics this tumulus may have contained.
It is a most regretable fact that six mounds which, perhaps, all contained interesting remains of the people who lived long ago in this district have all been destroyed or plundered and their contents hopelessly lost. The single barrow which has not been opened (No. 6) is fortunately safe from unauthorised relic-hunters. Some day perhaps and with the consent of the London County Council a proper examination of this site may be made.
I think the Colonel’s “most regretable” is a considerable understatement – what a shame that there was no archaeological examination before the barrows were destroyed. Where are the remains of the barrows? Well there is still an old Chestnut tree in Ashridge Crescent, old enough I’d say to have been around in Bagnold’s day so it could be the one used to locate barrow number 5, but the only possible Cedar looks far too small to be the one he recorded. Barrows number 2 to 5, though, are likely to be underneath the houses and gardens in the crescent.
Old Chestnut Tree in Ashridge CresecentCedar Tree in Ashridge Crescent
What of barrow number 6, in Shrewsbury Park to the west of the drinking fountain, which the Colonel thought was safe for future archaeological examination? There isn’t a drinking fountain in the park now, and the only one I’ve heard of was near the gate leading to the car park. The Cultural Heritage Gazeteer says of barrow number 6 that there is “Now no trace – under car park?”
Only slightly deterred I headed for the Heritage Centre, where the helpful librarian found me a wonderful box of Shooters Hill Ephemera, containing lots of fascinating old historical documents, such as those relating to the sale of land on which the houses around Herbert Road were built to the British Land Company, and others about the purchase of the land for Eaglesfield Park at a cost of £4541 3s 4d. In this box I found a computer print-out of an article by Andrew Bullivant and Susan Parker – it looked like a fuller version of their article From Tower House to Brinklow Crescent in Aspects of Shooters Hill Number 2. They described their correspondence with former Labour cabinet minister Douglas Jay, later Baron Jay, who lived at Tower House as a child and remembered playing on the tumulus in their garden. They also mentioned a 1936 booklet by a local geologist, Arthur L. Leach, entitled The Ground Beneath Us, which described the Shooters Hill tumuli. Sounds like it could be useful, I thought, but although the Heritage Center had two boxes of papers by Arthur L. Leach including several about the geology of Shooters Hill, they didn’t have the one about the barrows.
Where could I get a copy of Leach’s booklet? I headed to the British Library, repository of everything published in Britain I believed. It was a good reason to get a reader’s ticket too, something I’d always wanted to do. Formalities completed, including two proofs of identity, I searched their catalogue. No sign of The Ground Beneath Us, but there were many other shiny treasures to grab my attention. As well as books on Bronze Age Barrows in Britain, I found in the map department on the top floor a beautiful, heavy volume of Victorian sales literature for great houses, including Shrewsbury House and Mayfield – Lord Penzance’s mansion which was later renamed Jackwood House. The two houses and their surrounding estates were described in great detail, right down to the number of servants’ closets, and illustrated by pastel coloured lithographs. Next time I go to the British Library I’ll take a pencil (pens strictly not permitted) to make some notes for a future post about these great houses.
My final stop on the quest for information about the Shrewsbury Tumulus was at the Museum of London to check if any artefacts from the barrow had been deposited there – but though there were many elegant bronze articles from across London, nothing from near here.
So my quest to know more about the Shrewsbury Tumulus has failed, for now. However I did learn something about the Beaker Culture in Britain which coincided with the start of the Bronze Age in around 2500 BC. The use of round barrows for funerals was one of the characteristics of the Beaker Folk, often found clustered in family groups. Ritual seems to have been important to them; many of the beautiful bronze swords and spearheads from this time in the Museum of London were found in the River Thames where they had been deposited as part of some kind of ceremony, and they were responsible for one of the major phases in the development of Stonehenge. They seem to have had a strong distinction between the land that they farmed – the land of the living, and the land of the ancestors where their burials took place, so perhaps the summit of Shooters Hill was a sacred place for them.
And as a bonus I found some new and interesting documents about Shooters Hill!
The dragon shown in the Victoria Cross Memorial mosaic in St George’s Garrison Church
I see work has started on the restoration of the grade II listed St George’s Garrison Church, another “Heritage at Risk” building close to the Olympics shooting and archery venue. Hopefully this will result in more people being able to see its marvellous mosaics. The organisation responsible for the restoration, Heritage of London Trust Operations, aims to make the church suitable for use as a small scale venue for appropriate events. It “intends to run occasional events at the chapel that will cater for fifty to a hundred people” as well as to provide access for “formal and informal educational visits”. A local friends group of volunteers will be established to help co-ordinate the running of the venue.
The first step of the work, currently underway, is to convert two rooms near the entrance to the chapel into a kitchen and toilet, but the major change is to construct a new cover for the apse, which is where the memorial mosaics are located together with the marble tablets listing the names of Royal Artillery soldiers who were awarded the VC and the war in which they won it. APEC Architects, who prepared the planning documents, considered various options for the new canopy but the final decision was for a free-standing glulam timber-framed arch with a tensile fabric covering as envisioned in the picture below.
APEC Architects’ vision of the new apse canopy
Restoration work will take place in slower time than the contruction, which is not surprising as it does include specialist restoration of the mosaics themselves. Another of the planning documents contains photographs and details of the proposed internal restoration work:
Remnants of steel framed glazed roof (damaged in high winds)
Proposal: Remove the damaged roof as it is no longer required. Repairs to brickwork at the top of the walls to be carried out as required.
Victoria Cross memorial mosaic
Proposal: Mosaic to be restored by appropriate specialist
Other memorial mosaics/remnants of glazed roof structure
Proposal: Mosaics to be fully restored by appropriate specialist. Remnants of glazed roof structure to be removed and brickwork repaired as appropriate.
Memorial mosaics/damage to brickwork
Proposal: Mosaics to be fully restored by appropriate specialist. Damaged brickwork to be repaired.
Entrance gates
Proposal:All gates to be removed for X-ray inspection. Any defects are to be repaired before the gates are reinstated.
Undercroft access
Proposal:The bricked up access to the undercroft space is to be opened up to provide a space for storage. A timber plank door, within a timber frame, is to be installed within the arch. Steel reinforcement is to be in place on the inside face of the timber door for security reasons.
It doesn’t sound like it will all be done in time for the Olympics, though the initial work may be, but at least the process of preserving the ruin and making it more accessible has started.
The restoration of parts of our urban environment prompted by the prospect of thousands of visitors is one of the positive side-effects of Greenwich being an Olympic borough. Major Robert John Little’s Memorial Obelisk was an obvious candidate for refurbishment; it is located right in front of the shooting/archery stadium on Woolwich Common, and on the recommended route from Woolwich Arsenal station to the Olympic events. Some might say that its location on the English Heritage “Buildings at Risk” list should have been reason enough to restore the memorial, but …. whatever, it has been restored.
The description of the restoration of the memorial says that the new brass plaques installed on each face of the obelisk are “inscribed with details of Robert John Little’s Life.” However when I visited I found that apart from the front plaque they are all blank, so I thought I’d help out by finding out something about the life Major Robert John Little. Plus I was curious about who he was and why he had a memorial on the edge of Woolwich Common.
The English Heritage draft Survey of London on Woolwich gives some background on the creation of the obelisk, as part of an elaborate drinking fountain:
After the formation of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association in 1858, London was peppered with drinking fountains. This one, in the form of a grey-granite obelisk, was given by Anna Victoria Little, in memory of her late husband, Maj. Robert John Little, barrack-master at the Royal Marine Barracks and formerly a resident of Adelaide Place across the road. It was designed by a civil engineer, E. Gregory, and built by William Tongue, who, ironically, was responsible for enclosing part of Plumstead Common at this time. The obelisk survives, without its faucets, basins, twenty-one encircling cannon bollards or a trough for dogs, but restored with new bollards by Greenwich Council in 2011.
Detail of Major Little’s memorial obelisk
However Major Little was much more than the Barrack Master at the Royal Marine Barracks. For a start he had a distinguished and heroic military career, summarised in Major H.G. Hart’s The New Army List 1849:
Capt Little served in the channel fleet and at the blockade of Ferrol and Corunna in 1803-4. Appointed to the Royal Marine Artillery on the formation of that corps in 1804, and was employed in various bomb vessels on the enemy’s coast co-operating with the land forces, or on detached service. In command of the mortars in the Vesuvius bomb at the attack of Boulogne. Defence of Cadiz in 1809; and subsequently at the blockade of Rochfort, where he commanded a storming party in a successful night attack on the coast, on which occasion he received the particular thanks of the Admiralty, and was rewarded by the Patriotic Fund:- at the commencement of this attack he was severely wounded by a musket ball shattering the wrist which rendered amputation of the right hand necessary.
On the night of the 27th of September, the boats of the 120-gun ship Caledonia and 74-gun ship Valiant, lying at anchor in Basque roads, were detached under lieutenant A. P. Hamilton to destroy three brigs lying under the protection of a battery at Pointe du Ché ; and as the enemy had a strong detachment of troops in the adjoining village of Angoulin, a party of 130 marines under captains Thomas Sherman and Archibald McLachlan, lieutenants John Coulter and John Couche, and lieutenant Robert John Little of the marine artillery, were added to the division of seamen from the squadron.
At about 2 h. 30 m. a. m. on the 28th the marines were landed under the Pointe du Ché, and the alarm having been given by the brigs, an ineffectual fire was opened from the enemy’s guns. Lieutenant Little, with his detachment of artillery-men, pushed forward with the bayonet to the assault, supported by captain McLachlan’s division, and by a detachment under lieutenants Coulter and Couche; and having gallantly carried the battery, spiked the guns. Lieutenant Little, in leading his men, on entering the fort received the contents of the french sentry’s musket in his right hand as he was in the act of cutting him down, and the wrist was so much shattered as to render amputation necessary. Whilst the attack was making on the fort, captain Sherman, with his division, took post on the main road by the sea side, having his front to the village, and his right protected by a launch with an eighteen-pounder carronade. A party of the enemy succeeded, under cover of the night, in bringing a field-piece to bear with some effect, but the marines instantly charged, and captured the gun. Two of the brigs were brought off, and the third destroyed ; and the marines were now re-embarked, having sustained no greater loss than lieutenant Little and one private wounded. In the defence of the battery on Pointe du Ché, the enemy had 14 men killed.
Lieutenant Little’s battle injury didn’t end his military career, and the Navy Lists indicate that he was promoted first to Captain and again to Major and that he was awarded the Silver Naval Medal with one clasp. He became Barrack Master on 12th September 1829 on a salary of £183 per annum.
Wikimedia Commons picture of Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition of 1851
In addition to his military career Major Little also seems to have been an inventor, exhibiting his improved watercock at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in the Great Exhibition in 1851. As the Exhibition Catalogue says:
476. LITTLE, Major ROBERT J., 4 Queen’s Terrace, Woolwich Common — Inventor.
An improved watercock, with double plug, for connecting pipes without breaking joints, with sectional drawings of the same. Designed by the exhibitor, and manufactured by Frost, Noakes, and Vincent, 195 Brick Lane, Whitechapel.
Was Major Little a one-hit-wonder with his watercock, or did he have a successful career as an inventor? I’d love to find out.
Interestingly Major Little’s 1851 home in Queen’s Terrace was, according to the draft Survey of London, next to Adelaide Place where he also lived. By my reading of the 1866 OS map both of these addresses faced onto Woolwich Common, roughly between where Jackson Street and Engineer Close are now, just over the road from his memorial fountain.
I suspect that Major Little was also involved in other charitable work for the Royal Marines Artillery – for two reasons. Firstly the Charity Commission website mentions a charity named “Major Robert John Little“. It gives hardly any details, other than it has been amalgamated with the Royal Marines Welfare Fund. But secondly because, after his death in 1865, his widow, Mrs. Anna Victoria Little, donated the income from £100 to Royal Marine Artillery Benevolent Fund for the “distribution of bread and coals among the wives and families of corporals, gunners, and drummers in H.M. corps of Royal Marine Artillery resident at Portsmouth”. I wonder if Major Little was also associated with the Benevolent Fund. Another topic to keep an eye out for when visiting libraries!
“Oct. 6. At his residence, Bloomfield, Old Charlton, aged 74, Robert John Little, esq., late Major and Barrackmaster of the Royal Marines, Woolwich.”
He was buried in a family vault at St Lukes Church, Charlton. According to the Kent Archeological Society the inscription on the monument in 1908 was:
164. LITTLE (26). Caroline, wife of Robert John LITTLE, of the Royal Marines, died January 12, 1832, aged 42 years. Richard Rosdew Little, late Captain of the Madras Horse Artillery and Commissary of Ordnance, there died August 23, 1861, aged 46 years. Robert John Little, died October 6, 1861, aged 74 years. He had served in the Corps of the Royal Marines nearly 55 years, joining the R.M.A. in early life and returning in 1837 as Major and Barrack Master of the Woolwich Division, which appointment he held for 28 years. Anna Victoria, relict of the above-named Major Little and daughter of Capt. Henry INMAN, R.N., and sometime Naval Commander at Madras, died March 5, 1866, aged 72 years.
The plan of the churchyard indicates that Major Little’s family grave was just to the left of the church entrance; was, unfortunately, because it’s no longer there, just some remains of brick foundations showing where the grave used to be. Interesting that there is a difference in dates between the monument inscription and the Naval Lists for when Major Little became Barrack Master.
St Lukes Charlton
So, still lots of unanswered questions about the Major, but hopefully there is now enough to fill the remaining three brass plaques on his memorial.
Shooters Hill Local History Group will be holding a local history walk for their regular monthly meeting tomorrow (21st June), so it will be starting half an hour earlier at 7.30pm, meeting at Shrewsbury House as usual.
I don’t know what route they will be taking, but it’s sure to be interesting – the local historic landscape reaches right back to the Bronze Age Barrow on Shrewsbury Lane/Brinklow Crescent and includes a Second World War gas decontamination centre and other war-related sites, various ancient stones on Shooters Hill, the sites of several historic mansions, not to mention significant historic military buildings such as the Military Academy and the Royal Artillery Barracks.
Should be a fascinating evening.
Bronze Age Barrow at junction of Shrewsbury Lane and Brinklow Crescent
The elixir Gallery run by Verve Arts at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is one of my regular destinations when I’m near the hospital: I’ve seen some impressive photography exhibitions there. The current one is no exception, a selection of 30 of the photographs submitted to the Green Chain Captured 2012 competition. It runs until 2nd September 2012 and is worth a look.
On my way through the hospital I noticed the restored Fever Bell from the former Brook Hospital in an outside courtyard, which, a notice informed me, was “rung to warn local people of epidemics of fever such as measles, scarlet fever and chicken pox”. Intrigued, I had to find out more … and that led me to a fascinating story about the development of health care through the nineteenth century.
Healthcare before public sanitation, clean water supply, an understanding of disease transmission, antibiotics and the NHS was pretty grim, and exacerbated by poverty and poor nutrition. The nineteenth century was blighted by regular epidemics – influenza, cholera, typhoid, scarlet fever, measles and more – killing tens of thousands of people. Life expectancy for the poor and unemployed was as low as 15, and only 35 for the better-off, with as many as 66% of the children of labourers and servants in northern cities dying before the age of 5. For the old, infirm and poor the Work House was the main source of health care, and their carers were often untrained paupers who were themselves living in the Work House.
Former Brook Hospital Administration Block
Following a campaign by, amongst others, Florence Nightingale, the Metropolitan Asylums Board was set up in 1867 to take over some of the responsibilities of the Work Houses for health care. The MAB established hospitals to look after people with smallpox, fever and insanity, and opened the Brook Hospital on 31st August, 1896 as part of its response to a scarlet fever epidemic in 1892/3. The hospital was built on the pavilion principle promoted by Florence Nightingale, like the nearby Royal Herbert Hospital, and included wards dedicated to scarlet fever, enteric fever (typhoid) and diphtheria as well as isolation wards. I couldn’t find out anything about the fever bell, but as there had been public unhappiness about outbreaks of smallpox near MAB smallpox hospitals, maybe it was felt necessary to warn local people about new epidemics.
At the start of the First World War the Brook was taken over by the military and it became the Brook War Hospital in 1915, with twice as many beds crammed in. During WW1 over 30,000 military personnel were treated at the Brook. In the second world war it became a general hospital, treating both military casualties and civilians. It was bombed a number of times during the blitz, according to David Lloyd Bathe’s “Steeped In History”, the most serious being on the 11th November 1944 when a V2 rocket attack destroyed the top deck of a bus and the nearby ambulance station as well as damaging the hospital. An alsatian rescue dog named Thorn assisted in freeing survivors trapped in the hospital. Thorn was a direct descendant of a little puppy rescued in a WW1 trench called Rin Tin Tin and was awarded the “animals’ VC”, the Dickin Medal, for one of his other rescue missions.
The Brook was taken over by the London County Council in 1930 when the MAB was dissolved and then it became part of the NHS in 1948. It was closed in 1995, when the Queen Elizabeth Hospital opened, and redeveloped as housing. The only buildings remaining from the hospital are the water tower, entrance lodge, administration block and steward’s house. The 130ft high water tower, which could hold 20,000 gallons, has been converted into luxury self-catering accommodation which can sleep up to 10 people. It still seems to be available for the Olympics, though it will cost £7,500 for a week.
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
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.
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.
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.
