Chiselhurst, for those who don't know it, is a part of south east London full of expensive, opulent housing. In particular Camden Way, off Camden Park Road, where the dramatic V shaped roof of a huge new house swoops down the hillside out of lush woodland. What was I doing in this posh part of the world? I was looking for a mine.
A couple of months ago I went to a lecture by Rod LeGear of the Kent Underground Research. Riveting stuff, particularly about chalk mining in the north Kent area. I was trying to get together information about the Bromley area so I read my way through the numerous informative volumes of the Chelsea Speleological Society Records. I found there many references to chalk mines in Chiselhurst (including Chiselhurst caves, of course). They mentioned another , almost unknown, mine in the Camden Park area [ CSSR 11 p.5, 15 p.21 TQ 42807015]. So off I went.
Lubbock Road doesn't seem the most promising place to find industry of any sort. The houses get posher and posher right up to Christ Church at the end mentioned in Cherry & Pevsner 'The Buildings of England. South London' p. 175). No sign of a mine. Carry on down the road, Pevsner in hand, as far as Willett's stables 'one of Newton's happiest and most relaxed works'. [Willett wa the 'daylight savings' man who owned Camden Park in the 1890s]. On the side of the stables is a sign to a building firm round the back. ..
Go round the back and you are, suddenly, in a different world. The bare chalk face rises up to the woodland above. Huddled up against it is a little row of huts, some built right into the cliff face. I put my head round the door ...'excuse me, I'm looking for the mine'. ... 'sorry love, it's all shut up these days, we only use it for storage.... go and see Mr. Turner on the corner ... he knows all about it'..
So, thank you to Mr. Tony Turner, and his helpful telephone call. He didn't remember when the mine was working, but he had talked to people who did and been in it. He said that Chiselhurst chalk was particularly white and much in demand. It was used to colour mortar and bricks, and that it was so good that Sir Christopher Wren used it for St.Pauls ( where Mr. Turner gets this information from and if it can be checked, I don't know). He also says that somewhere in the mine is running water and that in 1968 there was a flood which filled the valley and the quarry floor to 10', in parts. This led to a landslip which buried some of the mine entrances and led to some subsidence.
The Chelsea Speleolgists saw that undergound water when they surveyed the site in the early 1980s. They made a plan of the workings and recorded what they could. They found graffiti, work benches, electric cables, a drain. In their records they provide a list of references, dating back to 1899 when the Geologists Association visited the site. In 1985 a second survey was made by Per Shreiber, and another underground plan drawn. Both surveys point to further, possibly Roman, workings which cannot now be accessed.
It is important that this sort of lost industry is noted - although the recording of such a dangerous site must be done by specialists. It is only too easy to assume that some of the nicer bits of suburbia were, in the past, just idyllic countryside. This part of Chiselhurst is made up of dramatic woods and valleys with a charming stream flowing through. Take away the houses and the garden flowers and you can see the cliff face, the quarry , the fast flowing stream in a wooded ravine, the cleared area around the mine entrance. Walk up the road to Chiselhurst caves and the whole scenery there suddenly becomes easy to read - a cleared quarry floor area with a mine entrance under the cliff face. Old maps will show you the main roads and tracks all heading towards Greenwich and the river - as well as many 'chalkpit' and 'rock pit' place names. The area today is very beautiful, and expensive - I wonder how much that dramatic new house on the hill is insured for?
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