Conduits in Greenwich Park

 

In two earlier articles I looked at early water supply systems in Greenwich which relied on conduits- lines of pipe work conveying fresh water from springs. They were, and are, mostly on the hillside sloping down from Blackheath and other similar sources and taking it to where it would be used. The first article looked at the conduit head in Eltham which was built for Eltham palace and also looked at fresh water sources generally. The second article looked in detail at one of the earliest conduits in Greenwich – the Arundel Conduit which goes down the outside of the Park ending up in the area now known as Ballast Quay. It has long been established that a whole system once existed and that Greenwich Park was where some of these water sources originated.

There has been a considerable amount of investigation of conduits in Greenwich Park over the years.  There are two buildings there which relate to the conduits as well as various stories of mysterious caverns and so on - most of which have proved to be totally unsubstantiated.  There is however a great deal of interest and in recent years numerous bloggers have written about the conduit remains in Greenwich Park and there are also indications of old water supply structures in the areas surrounding the Park.

The earliest map we have of Greenwich is the one drawn up for Samuel Travers’ survey in the late 17^th century.  It marks numerous conduit heads. Travers had apparently been tasked with identifying some of these. Along with the map he also produced a report which details what his team of researchers had found on the ground.

In the late 17^th century the Royal Hospital was established on the site of the Royal Palace and involved a great deal of work on new buildings and much else. initially Samuel Travers was asked to identify what property in Greenwich was actually owned by the Crown. However some buildings relating to military applications remained – for for example the gunpowder testing facility on the site which is now Enderby’s Wharf.   Travers was a career politician - if such a desciption is relevant in the late seventeenth century. He had been a Member of Parliament for a variety of constituencies in what were later known as ‘rotten boroughs’. The constituency for which he is best known is Bossiney which at one stage had only one voter.  He came from a family of Puritans based in Cornwall but left there and as a clever young man followed the traditional route of Oxford University and the Middle Temple becoming a lawyer. I am charmed that in later years he returned to Cornwall, living at Tintagel with its associations to King Arthur and Guinevere.

In 1693 he was appointed by William III as Surveyor General of Crown Lands - which of course included the Royal Hospital. A commission was appointed:- “to enquire what conduit heads, aqueducts or drains there are within this Manor for conveying water to His Majesty's Palaces or mansion houses in Greenwich, and how the same are now kept and preserved, and at whose charge; .......  and if any of them are obstructed, or otherwise damnified, to enquire by whose, occasion or neglect the same happened and what the charge of repairing the same will be."

The report, published in 1695 was entitled 'An account of the King’s Lordship or Manor of East Greenwich with its Rights, Members, and Appurtenances, in the County of Kent.”  The accompanying text is the best information we have of Greenwich as a whole and, along with the report, are models of clarity and competence. His map of Greenwich mark’s five conduits in the Park all helpfully numbered and seem to be in the places where remains of structures are found today.

 

Today the Greenwich Park website gives photographs and some information about the two brick built structures which remain both of which are on the sites of the conduits marked by Travers. They  have been extensively covered in numerous websites in recent years.  I should also add that while I’m aware of recent archaeological projects in the Park I am not aware of what they may have found and identified and what research may have been done on these structures. The Park website does not mention Travers but does note work on these structures by the architect Hawksmoor although they generally give a much bigger picture of Sir Christopher Wren. 

Hawkesmoor was on site in Greenwich 1715 as Wren’s clerk and that same year became clerk to the Fabrik Committee. He had been working on St Alphege’s Church since 1712. He failed to be appointed Surveyor at the Royal Hospital but was later Surveyor to the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches - which of course included St Alfege’s along with others like his astounding Christ Church Spitalfields.  Had I been writing this 40 years ago the narrative on Hawksmoor would have been led by the Ackroyd novel, with Iain Sinclair somewhere in the background.  I can’t find my copy so I can’t check if the conduit heads get a mention – so we’ve missed them being cast as entrances to some satanic ritualism or other.

However just because Hawksmoor worked on the site as clerk doesn’t mean to say that he designed the structures which are in the park today. I note that the Historic England entry on those sites  says information on this can be found in Pevsner’s volume on South London - if you look at that volume it mentions it briefly in an unattributed footnote with no additional information.

There has been considerable interest in these conduits over the last 100 years or so.  A Council survey was carried out in 1961 and there have been individual researchers of some persistence.  When the tunnel system was explored it was found to be of a much greater extent than originally thought.  Most coherant is the study drawn up by Harry Pearman in the 1960s done while he was working for Greenwich Council and published by the Chelsea Speliological Society. Harry managed to be clear and understandable.

 Since then there have been a number of other studies and not only of the two brick structures which remain in the Park. The subject  is very popular – for example the most well attended talk The Greenwich Industrial History Society has ever put on was about these structures - I remember so many people turning up that we ran out of seats and the men had to sit on boxes of books.

So what does Historic England have to say about the two structures remaining in Greenwich Park?           The larger of the two is on the west side of the Park just adjacent to Crooms Hill and probably about halfway up the side of the Park fence. It says:-

“Conduit house. Situated within an enclosure of iron railings. it is late 17^th  or early 18^th, attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor, who was Clerk of Works at Greenwich 1698-1735 and restored in the later 20^th Century.  On the north front is an arch with a panel above it inscribed "Greenwich Hospital Standard Reservoir. It is built of brown brick with a vaulted and a once lead lined reservoir below from which pipework is said to run down hill to what were the Royal Hospital buildings.  This reservoir is said to be fed by pipes further up the hill And there is no passageway exit from the building.

Its brick walls are heavily covered with graffiti of varying dates and styles spanning two hundred years, from the late 18^th Century. In at least two places, dates from the 1700s can just be made out, plus initials. N and ‘R.E.’ were there in ‘1784’ and from 1791 are the remains of some looping letters – perhaps ‘F. E.’

The other remaining structure is on the other side of the park, roughly parallel to the Standard but is at One Tree Hill’, it is a semi-circular shaped brick and stone wall set in sloping ground originally  the entrance to a conduit. It was the central block, constructed of yellow brick and flanked by curving arms which slope downwards to ground level.  There is a central arch with a stone keystone and a stone plaque above it with an inscription which is now illegible. 

These two visible brick structures are only the most obvious parts of a whole network of pipes and of conduit runs in the Park. I have a huge pack of notes which I ought to return to in a future article. It is also clear that there were also major pipe runs and systems to the west of the Park. One major one which has been interpreted many times was the Hyde Vale conduit. Along with physical indications and notes in pre 19^th century documents there are numerous interpretations by all sorts of researchers. Hopefully I will return to them.

ADA

 

 

I thought this week I ought to do something about Councillors in Greenwich as we’ve just had the Council elections. So perhaps looking at someone in the past in that role is very relevant. It’s often quite difficult to find out much about individual councillors - they tend not to get reported in the local papers nor mentioned in council minutes. Ada Kennedy was a very popular Greenwich councillor 1932-68 and I thought she might be interesting – researching her has taught me how little we can know about somebody who was a leading counsellor for around 30 years

I also ought to explain what I mean by “Councillor in Greenwich”. I said some months ago that I would do one of these articles on the political structure of Greenwich before the Second World War and the changes in the 1960s - and I’m sorry that I’ve  never got round to that. Ada was elected in 1931 to the  Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich which was much, much smaller that it is now and certainly not including Woolwich or Eltham. The Town Hall was what is now West Greenwich House in Greenwich High Road.  The political control changed regularly and it was not until 1934 that it stabilised with a Labour majority. 

 Ada Kennedy was a Greenwich Councillor for thirty years  and known for her empathy and her huge over all majorities at elections.  She was born Ada Dorothy Alice Bassett in Lambeth, the daughter of Walter and Alice Basset Her father, Walter, is listed as a decorator who, like my grandfather, did ‘graining’.  That was a highly skilled process to make painted wood look like ‘wood’ – fashionable and hideous.

She described herself at the age of 16 as an ‘active suffragette’ who failed to throw a brick through the window of 10 Downing Street - ‘ I tossed the brick into the Thames’. She went ‘on hunger marches’ -  probably local demonstrations  against poverty. But at that stage she was still living with her parents.

At the age of 23 she married John Kennedy They actually got married in central London at a church in Charlotte Street, just off  Tottenham Court Road. She gave her address as 1 Goodge Street and  John gave his as Tottenham Street, nearby.  Were they just a young couple coming up to the excitements of London before settling down suitably in the suburbs?

John was actually an engineer from Manchester. With three children – Joan, John and Mavis – in the 1920s they lived in Marlton Street, now an unimpressive turning off Woolwich Road, opposite Greenwich Labour Party’s office. I assume they may have moved to Greenwich because of John’s job as an engineer but strangely his place of work is listed as the Stationary Office Print Works in Harrow.  Harrow is a very difficult place to get to from Greenwich - there are no reasonable public transport routes and it’s a bit too far to use a bicycle on a daily basis.  It makes no sense, however the Stationary Office Print Works would provide a very good job in a government establishment with secure employment, with a pension and much else.

She joined the Labour Party in 1920. We know nothing about her political activity, if any, in the ten years between joining the party and becoming a Councillor. There are many newspaper reports n Greenwich during that 10 years of an Ada Kennedy who sung at charity events. These were usually a dinner or similar function to raise money for some good cause or another where amateur musicians were brought in to provide entertainment. Was this the future Councillor or someone completely different?  It would be a good way to learn about and make contacts in, the all important voluntary sector.

Ada first stood for Greenwich Council ‘s West Ward in 1931 but failed to be elected.   The council was  then under no overall control, with Municipal Reform and Labour splitting seats equally.  In 1934 she was successful and won in North West Ward and thus began a career in local politics  which was the last over the next 30 years. She always represented a Greenwich riverside ward, mainly  Marsh Ward, now known as Peninsula, where there were streets great of small housing built for workers in nearby industry. We know very little about her time in the Council and have to rely on a few scattered newspaper reports and if we are lucky some reminiscences. In 1940 she served as mayor and thins we have a few newspaper stories about what she was doing.

In November 1940 we learn that she is chairing a conference on giving opportunities to young people. You wouldn’t have known from the report that there was a major war going on! I have read so many reports of such conferences over the years – wartime or not!  Young people are always a cause of worry.  Within a few weeks of that conference she was at a big service in the Naval College Chapel packed out with defence workers and celebrating  bravery and efficiency.  It’s all about the courage of ordinary people and she spoke about when  bells would ring for peace.

Next she’s getting a portrait of a past mayor framed and hung in the Town Hall. I know there was a gallery of these portraits when Greenwich Town Hall was closed down. They were put in the basement of Woolwich Town Hall and I tried to track them down to see if I could get a picture for this article.  No one remembered them but an envelope full of portrait photographs is with Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust. So perhaps that’s where they went - and thank you to the Trust for being so helpful about this.

Every Christmas every Mayor in every local authority has to go to endless Christmas dinners. I have spoken to some ex-mayors who have said that they’ve had to eat 30 or so in the week before Christmas. 1940 was the same, despite the war! First Ada visited the Miller Hospital, at the end of Greenwich High Road, where Christmas dinner ‘was a Turkey and a plum pudding, which was all made in the hospital and said to be made to pre-war standards, except there weren’t any currents’.   They were entertained by a nurses’ concert party.

Later in the day Ada went to the Dreadnought  Hospital – now Greenwich University Library - where there were seamen patients from all over the world.  She said it looked ‘more like the League of Nations’.  They also had  Plum Pudding and the patients all got ‘woollen comforts’ for Christmas presents -  and carols sung by the Sea Rangers and later by the Brownies and later still by St Alfege’s choir.

Finally Ada  went to St Alfege’s Hospital – where the Greenwich Centre is now - for more turkey and plum pudding.  Guests were the Brockley Heavy Rescue Team; Carol’s were sung by Greenwich Central Team  and the nurses produced a pantomime called ‘Babes in the Wood’.

In complete contrast to Christmas Ada chaired a major conference in the Borough Hall with Arthur Greenwood - then a member of Churchill’s War Cabinet but in charge of post war reconstruction.  He is the politician who appointed Beveridge to report on future social services and, after the war, was a major architect of the National Health Service. The conference was to discuss the implementation of the Beveridge report and was clearly an important event, supported by many local politicians, in showing how a new society could emerge after the war was over.

Ada’s next event was to celebrate and raise consciousness about the work of the Royal Air Force . This was in the Granada Cinema which was where the Plaza is now .... and so it went on throughout her year as Mayor of Greenwich. Of course she was not alone in this and we can imagine how every local authority throughout the country the Mayor would have had a similar role. I am very impressed by the events organised to support the forces by local people but also the sort of serious discussions about the future of the country once we were at peace again. We hear so much about various heroic military and other events during the Second World War but very little - in fact nothing - about this work going on constantly with the civilian population building morale and fixing thoughts on a better future for everyone;

There is no space here to discuss more about Ada’s career, except to say that she supported many progressive issues. She  was active in the Co-op Womens Guild, which, among much else,  promoted the involvement of women in public life. She was a governor of the Roan School and on the board of five other schools. After the Second World War the family moved to Annandale Road - the small houses in Marlton Street were demolished and I wonder if Ada may have been bombed out

Ada’s great strength as a councillor was her close relationship with the people in the area which she  represented. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. It was said people looked on her as a friend and someone always there for them and not just in times of crisis in their lives – and that she would know them well enough to help without needing to be asked. This was reflected in her enormous popular vote – over 80% of the poll in most elections.

In 1957, and by then in her sixties, she was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough. The ceremony  was attended by ‘five of her grandsons’ and many of her family must still be living locally. She stood finally in the 1964 election by which time municipal Greenwich was no more, its councillors a minority to those representing Woolwich.  She eventually died in 1974 and I have been unable to find an obituary.

The Arundel conduit

 

 

The conduit system in Greenwich is relatively well known to those interested in the detail of the park history. Basically there are a number of quite grand structures in the Park which were connected to a system of underground pipe work.  A number of people have written descriptions of them –   many Southeast London bloggers have had a go at them in the last couple of years -band there is a whole back history of past researchers.

The above ground buildings we can see today in the Park seem to date from the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. I thought however that before I get onto these I should look at what we know about one which may be older and outside of Greenwich Park itself.

The earliest proper map we have of Greenwich is that drawn up on behalf of Samuel Travers in 1695 as part of his survey of the Greenwich conduits. A scatter of features marked as conduits are shown in most of the uphill areas of Greenwich parish. Of course, these may not refer to actual structures but indicate some feature which relate to a relevant underground structure. In collecting up what notes I can about these I’m aware that for most of them there seems to be no information at all.

It appears that running east of the Park was the ‘Arundel’ conduit ran a number of features appear in descriptions of it – some, or all, might be genuine The origin of its name ’Arundel’ could refer to William Fitzalan,  11^th Earl of Arundel  who served as Lord Chamberlain under Henry VIII and thus had ultimate responsibility for infrastructure works on royal properties. However this conduit probably predates the Tudors, is not on Crown land, and can be linked to the Ghent administration of Greenwich which means it pre-dates 1414.

Samuel Travers 17^th century report says that the Arundel Conduit took water from the ‘Primrose Hill area’.  Primrose Hill itself is unidentified but the Travers map shows conduits on either side of the present Maze Hill, near today’s Ulundi Road and another  inside the Park. The report says that the investigating party left the Park, presumably by the ‘wicket gate’ which is now opposite the end of Westcombe Park Road. This is probably the area close to Vanbrugh Castle and the mini roundabout  on Maze Hill by the Park gate. In the 18th century this area was ‘Maze Hill Green and featured a well and a pub called the Duke of Ormond’s Head.

‘Duke of Ormond’s Head’. was a popular pub name in the 17^th century  but  some were changed in 1715 following the Duke’s impeachment for high treason.  A plan of 1735 which accompanies documentation for this Pub mentions the ‘common conduit’ in Maze Hill as being close by and also shows a nearby pond. This pub is not to be confused with the later hostelry on a nearby site in Maze Hill, The George, where a well was also to be found. In 1749 occupants of new cottages in Maze Hill were entitled to use the conduit, which indicates its use as a source of domestic water rather than moving water for use elsewhere.

We should also note that it is often said that some part of a conduit remains in a Maze Hill back garden. By some amazing coincidence when I was doing the final corrections on this article I was copied into an email about a current planning application for changes which could affect gardens in Maze Hill.  I have been told that ‘the conduit had an exit point which was used by schoolchildren in the early 19th century. In those days there was a marble basin, but sadly that has gone. However, you can still see where the water exited.’

There are also a number of reports of structures and various workings in land now covered by the gardens of the houses on the north side of Westcombe Park Road. These include a saga of burglars tunnelling down underground and lighting a fire to keep themselves warm and cook their supper without realising they are under the floor of one of the houses. Most recognisable features will have been cleared years ago.

Travers’ investigating team crossed Maze Hill, and proceeded to ‘Green Lane, commonly called Conduit Lane ‘.  This is probably today’s  Vanburgh Hill – and it is of considerable interest that  ‘Conduit Lane  or Conduit Hill was to persist as a name for Vanburgh Hill for many years, despite several  other names – ‘Love Lane’ is another name used. It must reflect the conduits as a visible and useful local feature much later than we might expect.

At Conduit Lane on the brow of the hill Travers’ team noted a spring in a field ‘apparently owned by Morden College – Sir John Morden had indeed bought Gravel Pit Field in the late 17^th century. They noted that this spring produced a considerable quantity of water, and appears to have been conducted in earthen pipes. Sir John is likely to have bought this property for its commercial potential as there was extensive removal of gravel from this area to be used as ballast in ships whose cargo had been discharged in London. In describing this field, Neil Rhind commented that there must be heaps of London gravel in many ports around the country.  I remember being at talk at Seaham in County Durham where the speaker described the approaches to the port as being contaminated with heaps of discharged ‘London rubbish’.

The area now covered by Ulundi Road was apparently owned by Lady Biddulph and described as a ‘ferdy field’. In the late 17^th century this was Lady Susann Biddulph, widow of Theobold Bidduph who had bought the Westcombe estate in the 1650. There was a drain from a ditch in the ’ low fields’ found in this estate.  There was also land in this area owned by Lady Boreman which was ‘three roods from the receiver in Merrick’s fields’.  Both of these emptied by distinct drains, and water from the conduits ran via a ‘master-pipe’, to a cistern at the upper end of East Lane.

However, we need to continue northwards down to Conduit Lane, now Vanbrugh Hill. Do the residents of 103- 127 Vanbrugh Hill have any record of their houses being called ‘Conduit Terrace’?   In 1851 they were advertised as having “two good bedrooms, two  parlours,  kitchen, small flower gardens in front, enclosed with ornamental iron palisading, and good garden in the rear”. How did these names come to be remembered in this area some hundreds of years after the structures they record are gone?

Travers report does, most importantly, show ‘Conduit 9’ - north of Woolwich Road and West of the future Vanbrugh Hill.  This marks an above ground structure of some sort, indicating the route of the conduit and also probably providing access to the water. The report explains that ‘Conduit 9’ was the remains of the Arundel Conduit which brought water down the hillside from Blackheath to Crown properties on Ballast Quay ‘in earthen pipes now destroyed’.

The conduit itself is now forgotten.  Was it a source of fresh water to be use by local people or was it just a derelict structure?. When was it removed and who by?  Did it remain as a heap of unidentified stones for many years?  Is it possible some of those stones remained in somebody’s back garden?

At the crossroads at the junction with Woolwich Road the conduit pipes passed on the south west corner.  Things here were changing and houses were built here in 1830 - Conduit House and Vale Cottage on the site which is now The Plaza.  The cottage was the home of local engineer Joshua Taylor Beale and later his son, John. Conduit House later became a clinic for the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich and ended its days as Conduit House Club for the Rechabite Order.

From the ‘conduit’ marked on the Travers plan the line of the conduit continued to the river side and is known to have supplied water to the site which is now covered by Anchor Iron Wharf flats with water. It is shown on the Travers plan as the ‘hobby stables’ and was subject to an archaeological dig in 2001-3. These stables belonged to the Crown and had been in Royal use. Clearly by 1695 when Travers surveyed the site Royal ownership was changing and within two years the site was sold to Morden College, in whose ownership it apparently remains.

 

Travers’ survey of the site of the stables notes that the water supply ran from a spring known as ‘Arundel Conduit  ... towards the King’s House, by the Ballast quay, or Hobby Stables’. A further survey of 1780 for the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital recorded that the “Hobby Stables belonging to the Crown’ was with water supplied by ‘earthen pipes’ from the same conduit, by then redundant

Finally the conduit had reached the riverside. The Hobby Stables were adjacent to ‘Old Court.’ In the riverside area now including Crawley Wharf and Ballast Quay stood Old Court House, described in the Ghent Archives of 1286 AD, as ‘The Old House’ and used by them as a guest house. It was an important building  which had a water supply from the Arundel Conduit.  In 1532 Henry VIII had it refurbished as a home for Anne Boleyn. It was demolished after 1695.

THE UPPER KID BROOK - BLACKHEATH TO THE QUAGGY

 

A couple of months ago I said that I would start to write a history of Kidbrook -  a very neglected area ` west to provide the northern boundary of Morden College’s gardens.

Before I begin I must apologise to the late Neil Rhind, or possibly his executors, because almost everything in this article is taken from his various works on Blackheath. I wish it were not so and I would certainly normally use a variety of source material But his work is so intense on the Upper Kid Brook area that I have very little room to look elsewhere.

The last article I did on this ended at the actual entrance to Morden College –  their lodge at the corner of Morden Road. The line of the stream was followed by the Greenwich Parish boundary in the section which runs along the southern edge of what was the gardens at the rear of the Paragon. It was therefore included the series of articles I did here about the 1853 civic procession around the Parish boundary.

I felt that I should now continue to follow the Upper Kid Brook on its route to the Ravensbourne although its flow continues almost entirely in Lewisham Parish.

Following the Upper Kid Brook from the Morden College Lodge can be very difficult.  There is no sign of the stream on the ground although the direction of slopes and dips in the road can reveal much. Map based evidence is often conflicting or non existent.  The North Kent railway’s line which has run from Lewisham station to Charlton since 1849 defines the area we are looking at.  Neil Rhind said that the railway company bought the land along the length of the stream as a convenient place to lay the line. If this is so it gives us a way of following the waterway which has been underground for almost 200 years.

It seems most likely that the stream crossed Morden Road slightly to the south of the Morden College lodge and north of the present day Fullthorpe Road. In this area and slightly to the north on the west side of the road, was once Cator Lodge built for the Cator Estate. This and the gate across Morden Road indicate one of the entrances to the Cator Estate which is still privately owned and managed. The lodge was destroyed by bombing in 1940.

From Morden Road the stream apparently continued to the rear of The Paragon on land used as gardens. There was at least one pond. Its route is followed by the Borough boundary and the account of the civic procession in 1853 describes the house nearest to Morden Road with a ‘garden ... in which there is a water course or brook’. We must assume the procession followed it ‘through some asparagus beds to another stone, and from there over Mr Hobart’s stabling -  on each side of which is placed a stone in the wall.’ It went from there to a junction of three parishes.

This area, at the rear of the Paragon is now the site of council housing built in 1954. I am very, very confused by this estate.  Half of it is in Greenwich Borough and half in Lewisham, on either side of Pond Road. It was designed  by architect Albert Richardson, commissioned by the  London County Council. Such estates were passed from the Greater London Council to the Boroughs in 1974 and this makes sense because the estate would have been split and added to the relevant Boroughs housing stock in each case - something similar happened in Deptford with the Pepys Estate. However Neil Rhind, writing about the estate in two separate books says that it was a Lewisham Housing estate and that Richardson was commissioned by the London County Council on behalf of Lewisham. Now this doesn’t make a lot of sense  - because if that is so how is it that half of it now is in Greenwich Borough and managed by their housing department? However, to complicate things further the Running Past blog says that the land was purchased by Greenwich Council from the Cator Estate, with no mention of Mr Richardson. I would welcome some enlightenment on this.

The next feature on the route of the Upper Kid Brook is the pond which once stood in Pond Road. Its site is very easily recognised as a large circular area to the left as you travel south down Pond Road and now called Pond Close Green. One of the most important features of this area was  the huge and very grand Wricklemarsh House which stood slightly to the south near to the site of St Michael’s church in Blackheath Park. The pond appears to have been an ornamental water for the house. It is said to have survived as an overflow tank for the Kid Brook. It was eventually filled in and there are apparently some willow trees remaining.

From the late 18^th century a nursery stood in Blackheath Village on the site which is now Blackheath Grove. It became extremely prosperous in the early 19^th century and in 1831 was taken over by John Halley who built staff housing on the site which is now that of the Post Office. The nursery was watered by a canal - an overflow basin for the Upper Kid Brook. John Halley cleaned it up and turning it into a swimming pool. ’Tastefully laid out with gardens and nursery ground’. He built greenhouses and did many exotic plantings with gardens on either side of the main road and a little wooden bridge. The gardens were open on a regular basis and were a big attraction in Blackheath Village

Problems began when the railway was built in 1848. It took land from both sides of the road and also the swimming pool had to go. The Upper Kid Brook went into a conduit and the ground between Blackheath Village and Pond Road was cleared for building The new site was called Blackheath Grove developed with houses and public buildings at the post office

The Upper Kid Brooke continued to flow along the path of the railway although severely constrained by the work of the railway engineers. And also in various houses alongside the railway but largely on the north side with a series of lagoons and ponds most of all of which have now gone and most of which were used as ornamental water. Neil Rhind commented that the ‘former route of the Brook is almost certainly hidden beneath the 1970s Lewisham council housing of Hurren Close, and then crossing Heath Lane (formerly Lovers Lane) to St Joseph’s Vale.”

There may have been a small tributary joining the Brook. There is a small valley clearly shown  on OS maps.ThIs ran from The Orchard up on the Heath, with an obvious dip in Eliot Vale. Its course following Baizdon Road to the stream.

A major site in Belmont Hill is The Cedars where a big house with extensive grounds has been converted to other uses and much new housing.  The railway split its grounds. The northern part of grounds had been laid out by architect George Gwilt in the late 18th century. The then owner was  Samuel Brandram, a paint and chemicals manufacturer whose business was based in Rotherhithe.  The  Upper Kid Brook was dammed to form a pair of ornamental lakes, big enough for boating. A bridge connecting it the area to the house in Belmont Grove, was built at the same time as the railway. The estate later became the home of local engineer, John Penn. The lakes were filled in by a future owner, Penfold, who probably rented land here in the Great War and bought it along with the stables in the 1920s. Their carting business led them to fill the lakes with rubbish before selling the site on for housing development in the 1980s,- it is now called  St Joseph’s Vale.

Another small lake existed in 1893, where the brook had been dammed - the site of new housing. It was at the end of the grounds of a house called Belmont, built for the architect George Ledwell Taylor around 1830.

The Upper Kid Brook joins the river Quaggy near St Stephen’s church in Lewisham

 

 

 

 

 

                            

early conduits

 

this article started off as an idea I had at the beginning of last week - that I ought to write something about water supply in Greenwich before any waterworks were set up.  First, I _­thought I should write ­about the Greenwich Park conduits  - just like everybody else who writes about the Park!  But then I got a bit distracted as I realised those  Greenwich Park brick structures old – but  are actually rather late in the history of water supply conduits. The late 17^th century may seem like a long time ago  but people have been drinking water a lot longer than that   So how, if anything, did they collect and use water in Greenwich before the conduits.

Of course people relied for much of the time on the network of little streams and one wells. Greenwich had a ’town well’ – the ‘stock well’  which everyone could use. This would, obviously, have been in Stockwell Street in the town centre. A description of the conduits written in the  1960s quotes documents from 1431 which give the Duke of Gloucester permission to lay pipework between his house and a ‘certain fount called Stockwell’.  This was given ‘in perpetuity’ – if so we might ask why it isn’t there now? A search using A1 tells me that in Stockwell Street there is a wall plaque about the ‘stock well’.  I can't see anything like  that there and information would be gratefully received. I suppose it’s not possible AI is making things up?

On 3^rd February 1434 King Henry VI granted “to his dear uncle the Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and Eleanor his wife” permission to construct a subterranean aqueduct between the house he was building and ‘a certain fount in Greenwich called Stockwell, outside the King's Highway’. Apparently this went from the Duke's garden to the Park.

It’s very, very difficult to track down wells and I’m not going to try – but there was water.  There must have been lots of  little streams  trickling down the hillsides from Blackheath and Shooters Hill, soaking into the marshlands  and into the River - and I guess many are still there. When new places are built down in Trafalgar Road sooner or later the builders will be complaining about unexpected flooding.  A few years ago I went to visit a site which was to have new housing on it.  Some locals were saying that there was underground water there – but ‘no no’ said the Planners - it  had been cleared by Thames Water who had said there was no such water in that area. While we were standing talking on site someone started kicking the ground, removing a few millimetres of top soil. Under it was a stream of clear water running down the hillside.

The one actual minor river we have is down on the Lewisham border and is, of course, the Ravensbourne.  The only other identified stream is east, in and out of the Bexley boundary, and is sometimes called ‘Plumstead River’ but has a very detailed Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wogebourne.

Old maps show other small streams. There was, until the start of the 20^th century, a stream which ran down what was then Nightingale Vale  before it all changed and the council houses were built .  In Westcombe Park on some of the estate plans  a stream appears to be running down parallel with Westcombe Hill.  Also I’m told by neighbours that there was until the 1960s a visible stream on a site in Westcombe Park, later used for council houses in the 1970s.

One of the problems in our area is that we had some very large and important institutions; which will have needed a lot of water - the main one, of course, was the Tudor Royal Palace at Greenwich, the site of which later became the Royal Hospital – and the story of that is the conduit system in Greenwich Park.  

In the meantime there are some older systems which I need to write about.  Greenwich wasn’t the only palace we had in the area now covered by the Royal Borough. One of the oldest of the conduit systems was built for the older palace out at Eltham. This is the listed conduit head which is just off Southend Crescent.

To find it =  if you go down Southend Crescent away from Eltham High Street, stop just before you get to Holy Trinity Church where there is a footpath going off to your left. There is a signpost saying that the footpath will take you to exotic locations like Avery Hill Park and that it is part of the route of a number of footpaths like the Capital Ring and the Green Chain Walk. I think its called “Butterfly Lane” – or is that just the name of the path nearer to Avery Hill?  But you’re not going to go as far as that and although the footpath can look intimidatingly overgrown,  it soon widens out to a space behind the church where there’s a little field and the conduit head is there. It is said to be ‘permanently closed’ but I think that just means you can’t walk up to it, you can certainly look at it from the footpath.

In older photographs it is an incoherent lump of bits of flint and broken down this and since it’s been done up quite nicely and it looks quite good now -  although historically the brickwork has been patched and buttressed in places. What we see above ground and the only evidence of the conduit itself  is in effect a ‘settling tank’ which filtered out sand and gravel.  It was conserved by English Heritage in 2011 and what we see is the ‘head’ of the conduit. This is a red-brick structure with an arched opening within which is the entrance to a chamber with a pointed barrel vault.  Inside this main chamber are five arched openings.  One of these goes along another passage to a square chamber with a low brick dividing wall which makes it into a tank. This was to control the flow of water from springs going to Eltham Palace via a pipe under the moat. It’s said to have been built under Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII.

Wooden pipes brought water to this ‘head’  from a spring in the Eltham Warren higher up the hill. This spring is still said to be visible on Eltham Warren Golf Course and takes its water away through a wooden pipe and continued via an underground network. Recently a Tudor pipeline – actually the conduit itself =-has been an issue in a planning application involving  a school which is west of the conduit head. They cited maps  from1838 showing  the pipe travelling from the school by way of North Park and the Royal Blackheath Golf Club and then to the conduit head. Strangely, this pipeline is in a completely different direction to the one  coming from Eltham Warren.

This conduit is one of the oldest and longest in the country, ranked by English Heritage alongside constructions at Hampton Court and Greenwich in their importance. The remains of it are listed at Grade II.

 I mentioned above the conduit system for Hampton Court Palace which is much bigger and much more comprehensible then the remains we have Eltham -and even those in Greenwich. The main and most accessible of the Hampton Court ones  in the ownership of English Heritage. But there are others which you can read about and maybe visit. No doubt if you keep an eye on the relevant websites it will be possible to find out when they are open.

These are quite substantial buildings and in relatively good condition. I seem to remember when I went there  - many many years ago -that you could actually see water running through the relevant bits of the system. They were built either by Henry VIII or by Cardinal Wolsey both of whom owned Hampton Court.  The strange thing about them is that they are on the south side of the river whereas Hampton Court is on the north so the water has to be taken across the river in lead pipes.  There are several websites which cover parts of this system and I understand there is at least one book. They really are quite spectacular.

John Day 5 and Pattern making

 

 

Well I think it’s about time I got back to John Day and his reminiscences of his 1930s apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal. If you have been following this you will see that his apprenticeship consists of working for a department within the Arsenal for a few weeks or months to see what they do and learn some of the necessary skills. They would then move on to another department. John was a premium apprentice and working at the same time for a degree at prestigious Woolwich Polytechnic. He, and his fellows, were destined to move into some sort of directorship - maybe a major management position.  Therefore it was vital that they were able to understand how the complex fabric of a major industrial environment, like the Royal Arsenal, was cordinated.

 

In my last article I described how he was working at the Land’s End electrical substation which was out in the very secret area at the far east of the Arsenal site. The next site he was allocated to was what he describes as the ‘Pattern Shop’.  What and where was this?

 

Clearly, things change, and it is not always going to be easy to pin down reminiscences from the 1930s .was allocated in the 1930s. John may use words to describe departments which are different from those used by today’s historians.The Royal Arsenal History website has got maps and directories but the scale and complexity are daunting.

 

Industrial pattern making wa something which was undertaken in special departments and I’m sure this still goes on where traditional industries survive. It is the making of a pattern – a model – of whatever is going to be cast in metal. Usually this would be in wood although other substances could be used and it would probably be kept and stored.

 

John is clear that he was being sent to work in a workshop where patterns were being made. Where was this? After poring over the ridiculously complex map of the Arsenal site I found ‘C81 Pattern makers shop’ . which was south of one of the loops of the Arsenal canal on the site which is now under, or near, the Plumstead  Bus station. I also consulted some people researching the Arsenal. One of them suggested a connection with the Royal Brass Foundry – and I’ll come back to that – but also to a building, C5, which dates from the 1880s and has since been demolished.   It’s shown on the map as a ‘foundry’.

 

John is quite precise in the position of this mysterious building. He describes it having a ‘kind of mezzanine floor’ with a system of mirrors looking down so that the foreman could sit up there and look at what everybody was doing at their workbenches below. He says that the foreman of the Pattern Shop was ‘Clarke’. Another of the Arsenal researchers sent me a photograph which he says is of the pattern workshops – but I’m not sure if fits in with John’s description or not.

 

John says that all the apprentices took the opportunity to make themselves a toolbox but the foreman told the shop labourer to smash them with a sledge hammer. He had made two boxes, one in pine to hold his tea-making equipment and the other in mahogany, which was kept in a drawer and never assembled. He told Clarke that the pine box was to keep the dust from his cup and it was allowed to remain - Clarke never knew about the mahogany one. Although Mr Clark comes over as a nasty bully I’m sure he had good reason given the amount of private work going on all over the place, as well as stealing what was probably Government property. I have read accounts of the same sort of thing going on in the Royal Dockyards and I guess it was so prevalent that none of them thought it was wrong.

 

Near the Pattern Shop was the Pattern Store. This may indeed have been the Brass Foundry building, although it is not particularly near the building marked on the map as ‘pattern shop. John says the ground floor was used for ‘wooden mock-ups of tanks to find out how much could be stowed and still leave space for the crew’. There are photographs of the Royal Brass Foundery being used as garage in this. John says one of the apprentices surreptitiously moved everything several feet forward and ‘opened a little door to drive his Austin Seven into the space. He then fitted it with a beautiful two seater body painted battleship grey’and ‘when we drove it out through the main gate I had a ‘Brooklands’ silencer for my own Austin between the floor boards’. (tut tut)

 

From the Pattern Shop the next step for John was the Brass Foundry.  I have mentioned the Royal Brass Foundary earlier here and I don’t think that this was where John was working. The Royal Brass Foundry itself is one of the most important of listed buildings on the Arsenal site and is one of the few which was not demolished for ‘regeneration’. Historic England describes it as ‘brass cannon foundry,1716-17, possibly by Sir John Vanbrugh, for the Board of Ordnance; extended and altered 1771-1774 by Jan Verbruggen, Master Founder, extensively repaired 1970s;’

As far as I’m aware it is still used as a bookstore for the National Maritime Museum and I can certainly remember being told I could go there to refer to books ...  but I could not ask where we were going because it was secret. I think that the Brass Foundry where John was working could have been one of several buildings marked on the plan but that it was in the oldest area of the Arsenal, where all the listed buildings are today.

Describing his time in the            Brass Foundry John says ‘I spent most of my time moulding skimmer cores and brackets for the wires of overhead cranes .  A great deal of the casting was done in manganese bronze from which the slag was skimmed off from the molten metal with a ‘cubic core’ .   He says.. the “core box” was used ... This was a block of brass with a hole of about an inch and a half square.  I made them by the dozen and they went into the core oven to dry - the oven was ideal for roasting potatoes for a mid - morning snack’.

He also made risers in which steel rods were pumped up and down to make sure the molten metal filled all the space in the mould and  ‘I spent some days casting arming vanes for torpedoes’. The mould was made in steel with six wedge shaped pieces to be pulled out and to release the fan shaped casting. ‘I stood by a crucible of molten aluminium, ladled it into the mould, gave the mould a bash with a mallet, which took the mould apart, took out a vane, put the mould back together and started all over again. It was not a popular job.’
A month or so later he would be off to another department’

He also mentions another premium engineering apprentice in the tool room at the same time – or a year earlier - and originating from Plumstead. This was Arthur Sherwood who became a Professor of Mathematics in Australia. I’m afraid that I was unaware that there was a Newcastle University in Australia and I wasted a lot of my time looking for him in our own Newcastle.  Prof Sherwood is however more famous for building the smallest ever working live steam locomotive in 1:240 scale in 1973. 

Premium apprentices were the very clever young men and perhaps all the private work and scrounging which John describes well were actually part of a training in which they could learn resilience and think their way through problems. Just part of their education as the future leaders of industry.

AT RISK

 

I WAS WONDERING WHAT do for this week’s article and going through new emails  and stuff that was coming I noticed that the Charlton Society have a speaker on the Rotunda in Woolwich which is ‘at risk’ Following that up I find that ythere is a campaign on it, starting with a website - rotundatrust.org.uk

 ‘At risk’ means that Historic England has discovered that it needs urgent attention and will soon not be with us if something isn’t done.   I wrote about the Rotunda here  a couple of years ago. https://maryswritegreenwich.blogspot.com/search?q=rotunda.   It’s a very interesting building, very, very eccentric and it stands in an obscure bit of the Woolwich Barracks site, which means hardly anybody can get to it.   Because of its eccentricities it can’t really be expanded or have  anything added to it and I’m sure it’s very expensive to maintain.  It’s falling to bits because the army now aren’t using = so, yes it is ‘at risk’.

So I thought I would see what else is on Historic England ’at risk’ list for Greenwich and in particular those that could be described as ‘industrial’.   I know that’s a bit problematic as a description for the Rotunda  but it was built to exhibit military apparatus and used for exhibition purposes means it’s not a domestic building.   Anyway I get the ‘at risk’ list – only 17 items on it.   I think I should ignore the  three churches which are on it -  although one is architecturally so bizarre that it could well be an industrial building if you saw it when the light wasn’t too good.

One building on the list we’ve all heard of and it is always saying it’s ‘at risk’ and needs money for this and that, is Charlton House.  Now Charlton House is important and if it was anywhere other than Greenwich it would be a major attraction - but we have so much else!  It is a site of national interest in the way that other sites on the Greenwich ‘at risk register are not  - and that makes it very different to them.  I think that we can be reasonably confident that no one is going to let Charlton House fall down!

There are two other sites on the ‘at risk’ register which are associated with Charlton House. One of these is the stable buildings which front onto Hornfair Road and have been used as offices for many years. Currently they are let to a carers support organisation and  the at risk register describes their state as ‘very bad ’ I’m not sure what this means since clearly if it’s let out it can’t be too terrible but there may be an issue around alterations changing the historic character.  I don’t know.

There’s another building at Charlton which is ‘at risk’. This is the building which is now being described  as a ‘garden house’ and which is on the corner of Charlton House grounds and The Village.  For many years it was used as a public toilet, which ended, I think, in the 1990s.  Traditionally it is said to have been built by 17^th century architect, Inigo Jones – whatever! it’s thought to be contemporary with Charlton House itself. When it was closed as public toilets the then council officer dealing with it, Mike Neill,  made a website on its construction – it was interesting and useful and I’ve no idea what happened to it.  Today the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust website has a page about the work done on the Garden House  by architect Charlie McKeith. It actually says that they’re going to get the  ‘at risk’ status removed. Some years ago Charlie Mckeith came to Greenwich Industrial History Society and gave an amazingly interesting talk about Charlton House and its site in relation to the River and the surrounding countryside. It was all about sightlines and angles and it included the exact way in which the Garden House is located in relation to view down to the River.

So many of these ‘at risk’ buildings   are in the area between Charlton and Woolwich and result from the military presence. The next of these is about the ‘forecourt railings and gates to Red Barracks, and Gate Lodge’  Frances Street.  This is now the entry to a housing estate which apparently dates from the late 1960s and who is responsible for the remains of the barracks isn’t clear.

 

The next site on the ‘at risk’ register is pretty mysterious.  this afternoon, while writing this, I tested  out its mystery level. I had a visitor who – now in her ‘70s – is a life long resident of Woolwich and Charlton. She had no idea about the huge pond -  Mulgrave Pond -which lies just off Artillery Place. You used to be able to see the pond from the top of a 53 or 54 bus – and I did write something here about its past use as a reservoir. It is now in private hands and there is a wall round it and you can’t even really see anything.  The building is ‘Garden House’ and its somewhere  on the edge of the pond – no idea what it looks like except it’s ‘octagonal.  Perhaps someone with a window overlooking the pond can tell us more.

Then the ‘at risk’ register lists ‘Repository Woods’ which is about the same level of mysterious as Mulgrave Pond – and its only just the other side of the road from the pond.  I think we need to get back to the top of a 53 bus. You come out of Charlton, going towards Woolwich  - You go down Little Heath and when you get to the valley bottom  there’s a shop which used to be a pub called  ‘The Woodman’ -helpfully they’ve left the pub sign up.  Don’t look at the pub though, look to the right as the bus climbs up the hill to Woolwich. Over on the right there’s a long brick wall  and behind it It’s all trees and you can’t really see in. It’s all trees because it’s a wood  called ‘Repository Wood’ and there’s another big pond in there too. I started off this article because of the ‘at risk' status of the Rotunda and I think that if you go up to the Rotunda you can get into Repository Wood from round the back - if the army let you!

 

It consists of 7 acres of deciduous woodland created in the early 19th century as a purpose-built training landscape for the Royal Military Repository along with pleasure gardens open to the public.  It is the UK's earliest known purpose-built military training landscape with earthworks, a stream and man-made lake system with a circular island, used by an angling club.  Many of the features including the terraces are scheduled monuments. First created before 1808, during the 1820s an earthwork training fortification was added along the eastern boundary, on which were mounted "all the different sorts of cannon used in the defence of fortified towns. Also featured were two croquet lawns; and a garden building used as a  respirator training room.  Later additions were slit trenches and an assault course and an underground trench shelter.

The ‘at risk’ register defines the problems with Repository Wood as ‘Generally unsatisfactory with major localised problems” but it’s not clear what those problems are.  However I think everyone could be agreed it would be good if the public could have some of that  space.  I mean it could somehow be conserved for the public good.  Let’s see

Back to the at risk ==and a site which is familiar and something which I’ve written about in the past here. This is the Winter Garden of former Avery Hill Training College, Bexley Road, Eltham SE9 - I can certainly remember a time when it was looked after by Greater London Council and when you could go round the very exotic and beautiful gardens; I think it is now open again to the public  but it clearly is ‘at risk’.

 

After that on the there are a couple of street properties and which I won’t look at now but will come back to them. There  are also some general conservation areas.

 

The next one made me really jump when I saw the ‘Thames Barrier. How can the Thames Barrier be to ‘at risk’.  Of course when I read it more carefully it is not the barrier which it’s at risk, it’s the grisly area around it. It was set up originally to be a big tourist attraction with an enormous car park and a cafe and another attraction all of which seem to not be used.  So there’s a project for someone.