Brookmill

 

This series of articles, which are about what lay on the banks of Deptford Creek and the River Ravensbourne, has followed the Greenwich bank and, having got within sight of Lewisham town,  has started going down the Lewisham bank towards the Thames.  Last week I covered the Century Works, home of the big electronics and instrumentation company, Elliott’s, and I am now about to go down a longish stretch which is now mainly through Brookmill Park.  However this article is also a continuation of the piece I did about the DLR and the Greenwich Park Line in Greenwich Weekender on 27^th October (https://issuu.com/southwark.news/docs/glw232). This described the Greenwich Park Railway line – a railway which ran from Greenwich to Nunhead and which closed over a hundred years ago.  The railway line crossed the Ravensbourne at what it’s now Elverson Road Docklands Light Railway Station and, as I said in the last article, there was a mysterious church nearby.

 

Today a footbridge crosses the river and goes from Bliss Crescent and Ravensbourne Place. It connects to a series of walkways and bridges between the station and the Lewisham bank.  This particular bridge crosses the river and arrives at an entrance into Brookmill Park and then follows a series of footpaths on a gradually rising piece of land.  This area of the park is known ‘The Hill’ and is the remains of the embankment which carried the Greenwich Park Railway line from its bridge across the Ravensbourne.

 

The paths from ‘The Hill’ eventually lead down to Brookmill Road but there is something else of interest before we get there– that’s another park and a church. Maps from the late 19^th century show the Greenwich Park Railway line and the area to the north of it, now Brookmill Park, but then still part of the waterworks. Close up against the railway embankment, between the railway and the works, there was a recreation ground and a church.  The river here was extensively realigned when the Docklands Light Railway was built and it is probable that much of this area is now under the river on its new course.

 

So what was this recreation ground?  Press reports from 1886 tell us that on June 24^th the Ravensbourne Recreation Ground was opened by H.R.H. Princess Mary of  Teck  - who, completely incidentally, I saw in Hamley’s Toy Shop when I was about seven and she was known as ‘Old Queen Mary’.  The report says that ‘through the kindness of the Rev.G.F.Widborne and the South Eastern Railway Company’ the ground had been let to The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association – a body which saved old churchyards and similar smallish spaces from developers.  It was later passed to the Greenwich Board of Works.  It was planted with trees and flower beds and there are newspaper stories of work done or not done and sacked gardeners.  We can learn a bit about this little park from these newspaper reports - in 1893 the United Temperance Brass Band played there on alternate Thursday evenings and nearly thirty years later Deptford Council wanted to destroy ‘the captured German Gun’ which was kept there (there has to be a story about that!).  The entrance to the Recreation Ground was probably the Brookmill Park gate at the Lewisham end near the derelict toilet block in the road. I would also note that there are a number of very substantial trees, some of them conifers, at that end of the park and I wonder if they are survivors from the recreation ground and the church

 

In 1888 there is a report of a new church built in the recreation ground and opened by the Bishop of Rochester. This, it turns out, was called Emmanuel Church. It has not proved easy to find out very much about this church and I am aware from comments on various websites that I am not the only person to be frustrated about this. It appears to have been some sort of mission or daughter church of Trinity Church which was the on the corner of Blackheath Hill and Maidenstone Hill where there is now a block of flats. Emmanuel Church seems to have had seats for 250 worshippers but was lost in Second World War bombing. In the few newspaper references I have found there are sometimes mentions of events held in the ‘Bennett Street Hall’. In what is now Bennett Grove there is a building which describes itself as The ‘Holy Trinity Centre’ and looks much like a church built in the 1890s. However its web site insists it had nothing to do with the Trinity Church which was in Blackheath Hill – so I remain confused.   

 

From Brookmill Park go across Brookmill Road roughly where the railway crossed the road on a bridge. On the other side of the road is another embankment and an area which has been a nature reserve for many years. When the railway closed the land used for the line to Lewisham Road Station was abandoned and lay derelict for 50 or so years. In 1979 Lewisham Council bought the freehold and created the Council’s first Nature Reserve here working with local groups.  The Lewisham Wildlife Trust prepared a management plan and regular working parties began to clear the sycamore trees and allow them to be replaced with hornbeam and hazel, but leaving a large plum tree with lots of fruit as well as a North American staghorn sumac with a dense stand.  Undergrowth was encouraged with native plants - for instance cow parsley, archangel and birds foot trefoil and like everywhere there are foxes and birds.  The site includes three ponds where there are frogs, newts and dragonflies. This little nature reserve is not open to the public except via bookings through Lewisham Council and is mainly used by school groups.

 

So – the idea is to get to Deptford Bridge and so we need to continue down Brookmill Road. The western side if the road is nearly all housing  and is part of what is called Deptford New Town.This has been studied in a number of articles – for example an article by Len Reilly in Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian  Society Transactions (Vol,X vi 1990).  It is also now a conservation area.   This area was once farmland and the Ravensbourne Farm buildings are still shown on maps in the mid-19^th century and remained while houses were built all around them. They were near the corner with Strickland Street – about opposite where the pavement widens on the edge of Brookmill Park.

 

Since the building of the Docklands Light Railway Brookmill Park covers most of the east side of the road taking in land which was once part of the water works - and we need to look hard to find relics of the works there. Today the Park has an active ‘friends’ group which produces information via a face book page and a web site. They also put on talks and social events.  https://brookmillpark.deptfordcreek.net/

 

Brookmill Park was originally a small recreation ground opened in the 1880s, enlarged and improved in the 1930s. Following bomb damage in the Second World War it was reopened in 1953 to celebrate the coronation and renamed Ravensbourne Park. When the London Borough of Lewisham took it over in the 1970s it was re-renamed Brookmill Park to stop it being confused with Ravensbourne Park Gardens further south past Catford. So when the Docklands Light Railway extension was built in the 1990s and the Ravensbourne was partly re-routed some of the park was used for the track and the new river channel became a boundary for the park. It was then landscaped by Atkins and some parts of the water works were included. The park was re-re-reopened in 1998

 

The old main entrance to the park is roughly opposite the bottom of Bolden Street. Confusingly there is a metal arch over the original entrance announcing that this is ‘Ravensbourne Park’. This was erected in 1953 and there is a flagpole alongside proudly flying a flag to announce the park’s Green Flag status.  There is perimeter road just inside the park parallel to Brookmill Road which is a cycle track with a meadow strip. Flower beds along here have been used for attempts to grow the Deptford Pink – a famous, and obviously local, flower which is now rare and found mainly in Devon. The perimeter road also represents the line of the back gardens of the 19th-century houses which once stood along the stretch and which were destroyed by a V1 in July 1944. The rocket fell opposite the end of Lind Street and 8 houses were demolished along with two other buildings. Twenty houses suffered severe damage and another 60 were slightly damaged along with buildings in surrounding streets,

 

Some features from the water works remain although most have gone. Maps show that at the Lewisham end of the park was a waterworks engine house and an Artesian well. This was near to where Emmanuel Church stood but divided from it by a wall – and probably also underneath the re-aligned river. In the park is a pond on part of the site of a much larger reservoir - a residents group prevented it from being completely destroyed when the park was remodelled. The plane trees which surround it remain from the water works.  Near the northern end of the park is a formal garden which belonged to the waterworks and it includes a copper beech tree which is at least 150 years old.  There are also formal flowerbeds with a fountain and pergolas.

 

The park stretched towards Deptford Bridge until the bend in Brookmill Road and the first building is the new Stephen Lawrence Centre. This seems to be roughly on the site of the original entrance to the waterworks – and is at the same angle as the waterworks offices which preceded it here. Brookmill Road was originally Mill Lane and ran from Deptford Bridge to the waterworks entrance. This was the oldest part of the water works and also the site of the mill which stood here before it. Here there was a lodge, a bridge crossed the stream and the path led to an entrance set back from the road.

 

The Stephen Lawrence Centre was designed and built by David Adjaye, architects, and replaced a two story office building used by Thames Water with a basement which was full of pipes and pumps. These gave numerous problems to the builders of the Centre but this underlying chamber could not be altered and the building had to be designed specially to accommodate them and see that no weight was resting on them,

 

The Stephen Lawrence building itself is a memorial to Stephen Lawrence, the school student who wanted to be an architect, but who in 1990 was murdered in Eltham.  It offers a memorial and a place of inspiration to the general population of Lewisham and aims to add to the life chances of young black people from Africa and the Caribbean. It works to tackle underachievement and to increase motivation in young people.

 

Finally, there is another small piece of recreational ground between the Centre and the site of the Deptford distillery. This is Broadway Fields, a relatively small space which includes a ball court. It also provides access bridges across the river and links to foot paths the buses at Deals Gateway. Earlier the area was an area of market gardening known as Broadway Fields which became Deptford Municipal Playing Fields in 1932.  Deptford Broadway is of course the road which extends westward away from Deptford Bridge

 

From Broadway Fields you can pick up the Water Link Way.  This is a walking and cycle route which runs from the Thames through the area alongside Deptford Creek - which will be the future route of these articles. Water Link Way goes on through all the parks and open spaces until it eventually gets to Lower Sydenham.

 

This piece has been a bit short on industries along the river and I am sorry about that– but as a final note, in the early 19^th century there was a rope walk on the edge of Broadway fields on Mill Lane – perhaps the start of maritime Deptford.