Well, I thought it was about time that I got back on the walk going right round the Greenwich Parish boundary. I can’t believe the amount of episodes that this is taking to do! When I started it I thought it would be two or three episodes but now we’re on Episode 9 and I feel that there are lots of things which I’ve missed.
What this is about - I have been following a newspaper report of a civic procession going right round the Greenwich Parish boundary in 1851. In the 19th century these parish boundary walks were fairly common occurrences taking place every couple of years . In those days, although things were changing, the parish was still the civic centre of the local area but increasingly it was becoming a much more professional organisation.
Every few years they would walk round the parish boundary – the vicar, churchwardens, some parish officers, a lot of choir boys and groups of school children from all the local schools
They had started off early morning from the top of Garden Stairs which are just by Greenwich pier and had proceeded up Deptford Creek, through the back streets up onto Blackheath and done a strange loop down to the Paragon and back. Where we left them last time was in the street outside number 122 Shooters Hill Road where there is a small boundary stone up against the wall.
I suspect that this next section as we go north down the border with Charlton is it going to be fairly complicated . There are several boundary stones there but many of them are hidden and in places difficult to see. So I am very reliant on what other people have recorded - in particular in the report on a walk which was done in 1980. I am also omitting from this article the house numbers where there is a stone in somebody’s garden because I'm sure they don't want people poking about looking for them.
From 123 Shooters Hill Road we need to cross over to what in 1851 was known as ‘Trout Common’, This is the triangular area between Old Dover Road and Shooters Hill Road on which some new houses have just been built - replacing a garage and outdoor car showroom. It was once part of an area owned by the Trout family who had their farmhouse on the site which is now the M&S Foodhall in Old Dover Road.
The Trout family must have been there a long, long time because it is shown as this on the 1695 Travers’ Plan. On that the boundary is shown at the easternmost end of Trout’s Common with the farm house right at the other end of what is now the Old Dover Road. I’m a little confused as to how it can be called a ‘common’ and thus public, when it also appears to be privately owned. In the 1850s the area appears to be occupied by ‘Farmer Floyd’ although I am not sure whether ‘Farmer’ is his first name or his occupation. It later became a part of a timber yard but most of us will remember the area for the sales of old cars. Neil Rhind commented that this was ‘an undistinguished end to what was once the entrance to one of the finest roadscapes in London ... leading the traveller out of the country and onto the open plain of Blackheath’.
To be fair it does appear that the builders of the new houses on the site have made an effort here with big windows on the house at the point of the triangle which now face down Shooters Hill Road and look up to Shooters Hill itself.
In 1851 the procession crossed Shooters Hill Road from 122 and then went down a passage which crossed Trout Common into what the newspaper report calls ’the road to Myrtle Place’ - although we would know it as ‘Old Dover Road’. ‘Myrtle Place’ itself refers to some houses then newly built on the corner of Vanburgh Park.
The boundary therefore emerges from Trout Common to cross Old Dover Road and then immediately turn left- westwards. We are now also following the Charlton boundary as well as the Greenwich one and some of the boundary stones will have been laid by Charlton Parish as much as by Greenwich. It appears that there was at one time a boundary stone on both sides of Old Dover Road here as we emerge from the Common.
Having turned left the newspaper reporting the 1851 walk says that they go a short way down the road - that’s Old Dover Road - and ‘turn into the garden of the first house on the right hand where there is a Charlton Stone’. A little further on is a road junction and we will need to turn down this as part of the walk. This road today is Reynold's Place but it was originally Russel Place after a then well known local firm of builders. The boundary line itself goes down the back of these houses running between them and the boundary of the school.
In 1851 when the walk took place this was St John’s National Schools, and marked as such on the 1860s Ordnance Survey map. Now, one of my problems with writing about this area is that it is very much divided by that boundary line between two parishes - and some historians write just about Blackheath and others just about Charlton. St John’s Church is very firmly in Blackheath in Stratheden Road - and unfortunately some of its facilities, like the school, are technically in Charlton! The original school buildings are still in Reynold’s Place as the first two or three houses on the east side - and I have to admit that I had no idea they were there until I looked at the road for this article. The school appears to have had a fairly unstable existence, never doing very well and only recently it has been reconfigured as The Leigh Academy and rebuilt.
So, back to the newspaper report about the procession in 1851. They went down Old Dover Road to ‘The first house on the right’ said to have a boundary stone in its front garden. That will be of course the first house just past the tyre sales building - and very properly that is level with the footpath that goes down alongside the school grounds and the Reynolds Place back gardens. Clearly there is no garden there now either and the fate of the boundary stone is clearly unknown. I sometimes wonder if these stones get themselves built into walls in the area near where they were originally placed. If I had known one needed to be looked for I could have done that instead of sitting cursing while I waited for a tyre to be replaced, on several occasions.
The procession continued down Reynold’s Place to Lizban Street – that name ‘Lizban’ is very strange and I can find nothing to explain what it means. The spell checker just keeps changing it to ‘Lisbon’ of course . The road was originally called Bowater Place and the Bowater family were big land owners in the Charlton area so that’s understandable = but ‘Lizban’?? There are said to be boundary stones at the junction between Lizban and Reynolds Place and the account of the 1980s walks give considerable details about where they are. They also say that there is a boundary marker way out of line at the other end of Lizban Street where a footpath goes down an alley way through bollards.
The walk turns right at the junction with Lizban Street and Reynolds Place and went right along to a gateway which goes into the grounds of Rectory Field and the school. A boundary stone is marked on the map just as you turn from Lizban Street into the Rectory Field Grounds. There is an awful lot of undergrowth in that area which could be hiding it.
There is a path which goes right the way down the side of Rectory Field between here and Charlton Road and along which the boundary goes. This same path was there in the 1850s. Clearly Rectory Field is now a well used and very diverse sports ground. I really don’t have the space here to even begin to list out the various famous clubs who have been part of this complex of sports organisations and the various famous victories which have been part of that. Perhaps another time. Although it is probably worth noting that this remains a private sports ground available to the Clubs and their members who occupy it.
When the walk took place in the 1860s the rectory itself was just to the west of the Rectory Field in the middle of what is now the Cherry Garden Estate. The field was then just a field attached to the rectory and with nothing more than a couple of trees marked in the middle of it.
Various accounts of the boundary say that at the point at which the Rectory Field foot path emerges in Charlton Road there was once a boundary stone but that this is now in the garden of Poplar Cottage = which is on the of the left as you come out of the sports ground. This ‘traditional’ weatherboarded cottage was restored in the 1970s and was apparently previously known as ‘Asses Milk House.
On reaching Charlton Road the boundary as shown on the map, goes straight over. But I think I will have to leave that for next time. In the 1850s when this walk was originally undertaken across the road was an area full of very posh houses in their own grounds and it will be a bit of a puzzle to work out exactly where the route went.
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