Well I thought this week I should get back to the civic procession around the Greenwich boundary in 1853. I've been rather putting off this next section because I found it very difficult to follow on the map. I’ve now found – thanks to help from Julian Watson – that some of the street names given in the report are spelt wrongly or differently and so I’m wondering if the newspaper reporter or the editor wrote it from memory or without checking it up. And – as Julian said – “the churchwardens who organised that perambulation probably exploded with rage when they read that sloppy account.
The last article on this was four or five weeks ago and I left the procession at the entrance to what was Loat’s Pit in Lewisham Road. The current Greenwich and Lewisham boundary this is calibrated from y goes straight up Lewisham Road till it gets towards the end near Sparta Street where it goes off to the right. The boundary in the 19th century did very much the same except that the section immediately before reaching Blackheath Hill seems to have been simplified a bit now, as we will see.
So we begin at the entrance to Loat’s Pit in Lewisham Road and as I explained in the previous article it’s very unclear exactly where the entrance was - so I’m making my first guess here. The report says that they then went along Lewisham Road to where there was a stone and also in the past an ‘Elm Pollard’ –well clearly we can’t look for trees which died 150 years or so ago! They then went on to the ‘first abutting house on the left’ and then all proceeded to go round to the rear. It is not really clear which house they mean because turning left gets them somewhere different if they faced the entrance to Loat’s Pit than if they were faced forward to walk down the road. Whatever, it seems they had ‘to take the best line ... by going through the ‘boys at the back of the houses’ – do they mean ‘bays’ or is there some old meaning of ‘boys’ which I don’t understand? It’s very unclear ro me how they did this – do they mean the procession with all the Civic officers, the choir boys and the schoolchildren were all traipsing along in people’s homes and back gardens? The Ordinance Survey map from the 1860s shows the boundary going along the Lewisham Road and nowhere near it back gardens. However I guess it went far as the corner of what is now Sparta Street - but in those days it was called ‘King’ Street. The report doesn't actually say it went there, but there is nowhere else it could go.
The procession then ‘crossed over Birling Street’ – this completely threw me because I couldn’t find a ‘Birling Street’ anywhere on any map or any reference to it at all. It's thanks to Julian who said it’s spelt ‘Burling Street’ and he had found it marked a map – but a map I had never seen. Burling Street was a small side road that ran from Blackheath Hill down to Sparta Street and it would have been somewhere near the area which is now called Robinscroft Mews. The Mews is on the footprint of the old Greenwich Park Railway line – so a railway has come and gone near to where Burling Street once ran.
Next, the report says that the procession went into the back premises of a house in ‘Morden Street’. This threw me even more because Morden Street is some distance away to the west of Lewisham Road and I couldn’t see how you could get there from the corner of Sparta Street. However, following the boundary on the Ordnance Map shows that the road adjacent to Burling Street was ‘Merton’ Street. So I guess that’s another mistake in the report!
All of these little side roads between Blackheath Hill and Lewisham Road have long since been rebuilt with blocks of flats some of which are very recent and I can’t imagine there are any remains left there now from the 1850s.
The report then says that the procession got into ‘Morden Street’ from ‘Birling Street’ by ‘passing through No.1’. Do they seriously mean that the entire procession - school children, choir boys and all walked right the way through this unfortunate person’s house from the back door to the front door to get into the next street? It says that this house was opposite ‘a stone marked L&GP’ and they also passed ‘through the house on which this stone stands’. So that's another house which has the dubious honour of the whole procession walking through it.
Once through the house they got to a brick wall which also had a stone which was ‘marked on each side GP’. What happened to all these stones? Are they still embedded in somebody's wall and need to be recorded? Or, more likely, did some contractor throw them all into their skip? Someone has emailed me and told me about one up in Blackheath, which I will get to in a couple of episodes time. There must be more and so please can I encourage people who know about them to tell me and I can include them in these stories.
Next the procession ‘crossed the garden of what were formerly Mr.Latham’s premises but now said to be the Rev.Mr.Russell’s’. Both Mr Latham and Rev. Joshua Russell were associated with what was known as the Bunyan Chapel - a Baptist Chapel in Lewisham Road, on the corner with Orchard Hill. I am not sure what this Blackheath Road or Morden/Merton Street premises was and wonder if it was perhaps the clergy house or maybe just the home of ministers working at the chapel. Next they went ‘in front of a new infant school’ – actually Blackheath Hill Ragged School – and then to a blacksmiths; and then to ‘a loft ..with ‘GP’ on the wall ... over which some of the boys are passed.’ All of these buildings were in Blackheath Hill.
From there they went up the rear of the houses in Blackheath
Hill and ‘boys were passed over the garden fence into Mr Hatch's garden’. This
was William H. Hatch at 3 Blackheath Hill. I do not know Mr Hatch's occupation
but this was a substantial house plus a shop but over the years it does seem to
have had a fairly brisk turnover of residents. Mr. Hatch had not been there
long and a year after the procession went through the garden the house and shop
were up for auction.
They then took ‘a corner of Mr Oliver's house diagonally to the
centre of the steps at the front entrance’. This appears to be William Oliver
who was to die, aged 37, only four months later - to be followed by his 84 year
old father, George Oliver, within a year.
They appear to have been ironmongers described (by Professor Crossick)
as ‘residents of wealth and standing’ and they certainly appear to be so from the
large number of charitable donations for which both Olivers are listed.
They then proceeded up the ‘centre of Blackheath Hill to opposite the
Green Man Tavern’ from where everything becomes much more straightforward.
The Green Man was one of the most important public houses in
Greenwich but it has sadly been out of all our lives since it was demolished in
the early 1970s - it had existed since at least 1629 and probably
unrecorded for years before that. It was an important stop for coach traffic where
horses could be changed before taking on, or having survived, the highwaymen
and the ascent of Shooters Hill. It was
also used as a postal collection point.
Equally importantly the Green Man seems to have
been used as a public meeting place where semi official bodies and others held
their meetings. For instance it was used for many, many years for the meetings
of the Walscott Committee which ran the Greenwich Peninsula before 1889. It was
sometimes used by the justices and for many Vestry meetings. As such it was more than just a local pub but
a centre for many activities - for example the Royal Blackheath Golf Club had
their headquarters there, Later on in the 20th century it was a
centre for many sports and there was a boxing club there;it was also used by
Blackheath Harriers and a School of Ballroom Dancing. It was often used as a
centre for large scale activities on the Heath.
In 1854, the bowling green at the rear of the pub
was developed into what is now Dartmouth Terrace. In 1868 the pub was
demolished and rebuilt with a large function room which was used as a meeting
place and also for entertainments. It continued to be used by quasi official
bodies and entities like the Round Table and Rotary. It had the capacity for
bodies to host large dinners and similar events.
In the early 1960s the Jazzhouse Club
met here. Artists who played there included ... Graham Bond ... Tubby
Hayes ... Tony Coe ... Ronnie Scott ... Manfred Mann ... Sam
Kidd ... Jon Hiseman ... John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers ... Kenny Ball
... the young Rolling Stones. Paul Simon himself played an early solo concert there and a sixteen-year-old David
Bowie (billed as David Jones) played his first
professional gig there.
A popular attraction was an Olde Time
Music Hall – started to raise money to open Greenwich Theatre. This was packed
out and used to feature a lady singer who in her final song apparently and,
unfortunately, every week, lost control of the buttons at the front of the
blouse revealing missing underwear. I can’t imagine that happening now
All now gone. In 1970, the pub was
demolished and replaced by Allison Close, a block of flats. It still seems
amazing to me this very important and well used pub was closed down and not
replaced. In any case it was it was
obviously just the place for the 1850s procession to get to. The report doesn’t say if they stopped at all
but it would have been a good place for a breather before the long and really
rather boring stretch across Blackheath.
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