A few months ago I wrote three articles about the area north of Westcombe Park station which had been the site of Coombe Farm. At the end as I wrote about all the new housing being built there in the late 19th Century I commented on the number of public facilities that were being added. Friends who lived in the area in the 1960s have told me about the community which grew up on the site of what is now the – much disliked - roundabout which carries the motorway standard Blackwall Tunnel approach flyover across the Woolwich Road.
Why don’t you write about that?? They say. Well, ok.
To understand the area properly, I think we need to go back to the building of the Blackwall Tunnel and the resulting changes in East Greenwich over the last hundred years.
The Blackwall Tunnel was opened in 1897, built by the London County Council as one of the free crossings of the Thames. At around the same time TunneI Avenue was built as the approach road to the Tunnel. It ran across land which had previously been an explosives works - Robson and Dyer. An early industrial premises in the road was British Oxygen, which was to last into the early 2000’s. In the Great War the Canadian Army Arms Research and Inspection Depot was in Tunnel Avenue although I do not know exactly where it was. Eventually the road would be lined with housing but the 1914 OS Map shows allotments on either side of the road and photographs show tiny saplings which grew into the current magnificent plane trees.
In 1897 the London County Council was newly founded and letting the contract for the Blackwall Tunnel one of its first acts. The Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich Council was much the same age as the LCC and was based around the old Vestry Hall – now West Greenwich House. In East Greenwich the focus was on the, Council owned, workhouse on the site of the present Greenwich Centre. It’s infirmary was to develop into St.Alfege’s Hospital and later the Council built a large nurse’s home in Vanburgh Hill. There were also Council owned children’s homes and a TB Clinic in Maze Hill – all of which the Council were very proud of.
Returning to the area near today’s big roundabout I have already described how in the 1880s a police station had been built in Coombedale Road and the Angerstein Hotel at around the same time. Halstow Road School was built in the 1890s by the London School Board although, unusually, there seems to be nothing on the exterior to indicate that. At around the same time the Council opened a ‘Relief Station’ - welfare services - in the building which is now the Mind Centre in Ormiston Road. The Mission Hall – now used by a building company – in Westcombe Hill provided religion as did The Cecil Rooms, a ‘mission’ from Christ Church on the site which Is now Marlton Street. What is now The New Life Church was a proper stone building.
In 1902 the Council opened East Greenwich Library, as their central library with a flat for the chief librarian, offices and rooms in the basement for Book Services. It was set on the corner of Tunnel Avenue. On the opposite corner of Tunnel Avenue the London County Council provided a new fire station - equally grandly designed. No doubt the two buildings were intended as a sort of gateway to the Tunnel approach road.
The library was extended in 1911 with a rear extension - and I see there is a now a planning application for that rear extension to be restored by the building’s current owners. In 1926 the Council bought the old Royal Hospital Cemetery in Chevening Road and opened it as East Greenwich Pleasaunce.
There were however some worries. I was surprised to find in the records of Greenwich Labour Party a resolution from 1934 where members ‘deplore the dangerous spot at Tunnel Avenue near the Fire Station where five roads converge into one’ and they urged their Councillors to do something immediately ‘for the future safety of children and pedestrians’.
By the 1930s the Blackwall Tunnel was very busy and needed to increase capacity. In 1938 an Act of Parliament was passed enabling the London County Council to build a second tunnel. This could not be built during the Second World War but the enabling Act was in place and so work went ahead to build a second tunnel in the late 1950s. It meant another approach road would be needed.
Meanwhile, after the Second World War there were major plans to improve London, plans were produced and there was much discussion. One ideas was for a new type of road network and plans emerged for rings of motorways around central London. The only one ever built was the M25 but many other routes closer to central London were suggested, and the Blackwall Tunnel was seen as a crucial river crossing. There was the great deal of discussion about these ringways and on the whole it was not favourable - nobody wanted inner-city motorways. Eventually the ringway plans were quietly put aside although, quite honestly, I think there are still transport planners who would love to see them in place.
It’s often said that the only bit of the motorway box which was built is the road which now runs from the Sun in the Sands to the Blackwall Tunnel –because, I suppose, the second tunnel would need an approach road. That massive roundabout was put in place in although I understand that it was designed for traffic on the Woolwich Road to go straight underneath it. It was opened by Richard Marsh, Minister of Transport and Greenwich MP on 25th April 1969.
At the time a friend of mine was a young woman with a small family of small children living in a new house. They were compulsorily purchased by the London County Council and she fought them for a long time but eventually had to move. The roundabout was built where her house had stood.
I’ve talked a bit about the public buildings in the area – but there were also shops. She told me that on the opposite corner from the Angerstein there was an ironmongers that sold 'everything'…. next door was a greengrocer …. a newsagents opposite the library …. a butchers and then another iron mongers…. on the corner of Halstow Road was a newsagent….. on the opposite side used to be a farm dairy facility. Further on the Woolwich Road you had the Quality Stores and a pharmacist which later became a craft shop selling wool and at one-time ladies underwear. Next you had Ernie Abraham who sold all sorts of household goods. …..and there was a Benmore's which sold toys, baby prams and some bicycles.”
Things began to change. I think the first thing to go must have been the Cecil Rooms – which I don’t remember at all. There were also some petrol stations which came and went. l remember another building which nobody has talked to me about - a sort of 1930s style church hall which by the 1970s was used by an agency which organised mail outs.
Only the Angerstein Pub, Halstow Road school and the Pleasance remain. The Pleasaunce has a popular café and a children’s centre, run by local people.
Gradually the public buildings began to close. The police station closed in 1990 and MIND had taken over the benefits office in Ormiston Road many years ago. The Fire Station was replaced down the road in Charlton. The old one became a hotel - I understand it has numerous rooms inside and that at one time it catered largely for single men. I don’t know what situation is now
In 1999 the back wall of East Greenwich Library collapsed and the library was closed for some time. ‘Book Services’ had long since been taken over by Woolwich and there was constant flooding in the basement. Following a major local campaign it reopened but then a new library was opened at the new Greenwich Centre. It was argued that the new library was nearer to where people were living - the trouble with East Greenwich was it was isolated and ‘there is nothing else round there.’ Quite. In fifty years what had been a small but growing area of public buildings and activity had become just housing and a few downmarket shops – because of a road which passes over above it.
2000 brought the Millennium Dome which led to changes to the roundabout and the addition of Peartree Way. There were always problems with finding a pedestrian route across it with Transport for London insisting on solutions which local campaign groups did not always agree with. I remember hearing about a resident who apparently crept out night to thwart TfL’s plans.
Considerations of space has meant that I have been unable to give as much detail on many of these buildings that I would have liked and, hopefully, I will have time eventually do something specific on the Cecil Rooms, the library, the Pleasance and possibly the Fire Station-and of course the industrial sites. Just give me some time.
Thanks Molly Bartlett, Sue Armstrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment