I think it’s probably about time I got back to the boundary walk around the Greenwich parish boundary in 1851. It was weeks ago since I did the last – the 10th - - episode of this and I really need to get on with it. This one will be the last one and it will take the procession back to the start point of their walk.
For those of you who haven’t been following this over the last year - it’s about a procession round the Greenwich parish boundaries in 1851. This was quite a common thing to do towards the end of the 19h century: the vicar and churchwardens would arrange for one of these walks every few years and it was quite a big thing. The procession would be some of the parish officials, various local bigwigs, the choir boys and children from all the local schools - including the workhouse school. They would start in the morning from Garden Stairs, near Greenwich Pier, and walk right round the boundary - and have all sorts of adventures on the way - and it took all day. Clearly the area was very different to what it is now – but perhaps not as different as we like to think.
I’ve been using the 1851 newspaper report of the walk that year. I’ve also used a report from 1980 of a replica walk which was done that year as a sort of memorial and to see what was still there and what wasn’t. A report of this walk was published only in 2022 by Greenwich Historical Society. In 1851 the boundary was still marked with stones and posts and very few of them have survived and most of the ones that were noted in 1980 have now gone.
So, I left the last episode which I did of the walk somewhere down near Woolwich Road. That episode had been particularly difficult because it had followed a section of the walk which started at the gates of Rectory Field in Charlton Road and gone downhill through what in 1850 was an area of big houses and fields. Now it is all early 20th century housing built with little regard for what the area was like in the 1850s. The walk seemed to follow what may have been a footpath going from what is now the Catholic Church in Charlton Road and ending up in Dupree Road and then into Woolwich Road. In 1980 the walkers simply gave up trying to work it out and just went down Victoria Way. I suspect they were probably pretty tired by then anyway.
One problem as reported in the local paper Is that it fails to mention that you need to cross the railway. The walk as reported in the local paper took place in 1851 - Charlton Station is a very short distance from where the boundary line crosses the railway and dates from 1849 – just two years earlier. This was the North Kent Line: remember that it was the 1870s before the link through to Greenwich Station to Charlton was put in. So in 1851 the railway they crossed was the North Kent Line coming from Blackheath through the Blackheath tunnel. It seems very strange that the report in the Kentish Mercury doesn’t mention it. I wonder if perhaps the reporter had abandoned the walk before they did that stretch - surely they would remember crossing the new railway.
If you look at the map you can see the line of the boundary coming down from Charlton Road. It may follow a footpath but, whatever, it’s going through fields and past trees and boundary stones and that’s quite straightforward at first. But then it begins to get more complicated and it stops being a straight line and curves round onto a bridge to cross the railway. Then on the other side there’s a sawmill and a number of other buildings and eventually we get to a yard and some buildings and on into Woolwich Road. I’m tempted to think that the building and yard are the now closed pub – originally The Roupell Arms, but more recently The Pickwick.
Today that walk would mean crossing the railway from the back of Bernard Ashley Drive, and then down between blocks of flats, to reach Dupree Road and from there to Woolwich Road. How is it that the report misses this whole quite complicated area? Nor is it mentioned in the report of the 1980 walk which seems to give up completely by that point -just going down Victoria way and looking over the railway bridge .
Having reached Woolwich Road the Boundary line and the walk turns eastward towards Woolwich: goes a couple of blocks along the road to the corner of what had been Lombard, or Lambard, Wall. wrote quite about this feature in an article a few years ago about the boundaries of Charlton.
'Lombard Wall' was an important boundary feature – a bank or an earthwork of some sort which is still the boundary between the Parishes. It was used as a pathway – but there is no sign of it now. It was called a ‘wall’ because that is the old name for marshland features like this – a ‘wall’ is a bank designed to keep something – like river water - out. I have seen a recent archaeological ‘desk top’ report for the area which gives no mention of this ‘wall’ and where it is (or was). It seems most probable that it was built at sometime in the Tudor period and it is sometimes said that it was built by William Lambarde. However it is mentioned in a conveyance of a neighbouring estate in 1555. William had inherited the land only in 1554 and was still a minor so its not very likely it was built by him. So if it was built before 1555 it could have been built by his father John Lambarde or – well, someone else.
There are other explanations: in the mid-19 Century a civil engineer speaking to the Institution of Civil Engineers called it ”a cross embankment” and“one rather stronger than the others”. He also said that it was called “Lombard’s Wall” and said he was sure it was built some people from Lombardy. I am aware that most of the engineers who worked on flood relief schemes in the Thames marshes in the 16th Century were Italians so it’s very possible that one of them was a ‘Lombard’. Whatever the real name and whatever the reason for it neither the wall nor the road on the wall, now runs from Woolwich Road – only going from Bugsby’s Way to the River. The space between Woolwich Road and Bugsby Way is covered by major retail and other developments
The report of the 1980 walk ends abruptly at the corner of Lombard Wall. But the 2022 printed report of this includes a photograph from the 1980s walk which shows historian Michael Egan looking at a large and ‘important’ boundary stone which in 1980 was still on the corner. There has been massive regeneration in this area and that stone has completely disappeared . Julian Watson has commented that this was an extremely important boundary marker. Sadly neither includes details of what the actual inscription on it was.
I have mentioned two or three times during the course of these articles about the boundary about how the many boundary stones which are on maps and which people remember have vanished They apparently are not recorded as heritage assets by the Council and they are so small that a contractor it's not even going to notice to bring it to the council's attention should this be thrown out or not. I notice that currently the Greenwich Council has a consultation on the future Borough and there is planned seminar and a consultation which includes heritage issues.
The walk then continues down what used to be Lombard Wall until we get to Bugsby’s Way. This area has now been massively developed and this stretch of Lombard Wall has vanished and is now a gap at the back of some of the supermarkets. We then cross Bugsbys Way into a road called Lombard Wall. This is now an exit road from the many Riverside wharves and is infested with some of the nastier lorries along with a lot of dust and dirt and general dreadfulness. There is no sign of anything which identifies it as an ancient flood barrier and I wonder if anybody has ever looked for it
Before we get to the Riverside we would have passed the end of Ayles rope walk down near the River. I also think it quite likely that we have crossed another railway line in one of lines coming off the Angerstein line to local industries served by that system. At the Riverside they met a boat and a waterman and some of the party went with him on his boat - once again the boundary line itself is the middle of a waterway and so the boat has to go because to go up the middle of the River Thames in order to exactly on the boundary line on. This is possibly quite dangerous seeing how busy the River would have been at that time.
The rest of the party will have had to carry on going back along the riverfront from Charlton to Garden Stairs where they were to finish. This will have meant initially picking their way across all the railway lines at Angerstein Wharf and I am sure all sorts of other hazards along the riverfront which have long since been removed. It wasn't by any means the reasonably progressive Riverside path we have now. I wonder how many of them were left at this of the procession at this late stage - everyone must have been very tired and I suspect that a lot of the children will have left some time ago. Even without stopping and looking at things it's a considerable distance along the riverfront there right round the Peninsula.
Having got back to Garden Stairs they went back to the church where they gave three cheers and everybody went home. They do say they got there very late –usually they expected to be back about 5:30 and they don’t say exactly what time they arrived back this time. They said its all the fault of the Kent Water Company who kept them waiting down at their new reservoir – I wrote up that months and months ago.
and off to a nice sit down
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