A new book on Woolwich and its past

Woolwich in the 1940s

I grew up in Eltham but have always had a sneaking fascination for Woolwich which is just that bit more edgy, a bit more run down and lots more fun.

Here were the Dockyard, the Arsenal and the open air market.*

Not that I knew anything about the Dockyard which started in 1512 and closed in 1869, or the Arsenal which I passed most days but whose insides were a mystery known only to those who worked there.

So of the three on my list there was only the open air market which was free for me to roam over in the years I was growing up in Well Hall in the 1960s and 70s.

I remember it as a vibrant, busy place with the stalls crammed into every corner and selling pretty much anything.

But it too seems a pale shadow of what I remember it to be like.

Even the river does not offer up the same excitement or the same sights.

All of which means that any book which contains images of that lost Woolwich is one to grab with both hands.

And there is a new one out.  It is Woolwich Through Time by Kristina Bedford* whose companion book on Eltham was published at the end of last year.

I have ordered up a copy and await it falling through the door.

Like her earlier book it contains 180 images spread over 96 pages and is a mix of that old Woolwich with modern pictures which are designed to show how the place has changed.

And in its way it has changed more dramatically than Eltham so much so that looking at bits of it today I find it hard to remember the Woolwich I knew.**

But that is a price you pay for leaving the place and rarely coming home, which makes Ms Bedford’s book one for the shelf.

*Down amongst the stalls in Beresford Square, Woolwich sometime in the late 1940s, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/down-amongst-stalls-in-beresford-square.html

**Woolwich Through Time, Amberley Publishing, 2014, £14.99, http://www.amberleybooks.com/shop/article_9781445615998/Woolwich-Through-Time%3CBR%3E%3CI%3EKristina-Bedford%3C_I%3E.html?sessid=UC3s7Yjfg9edlbva9eYmDcJvxGTRGKzIaotRju5WpW5IQ4chnpuRO5JYcy87CDEe&shop_param=cid%3D16%26aid%3D9781445615998%26

Ms Bedford also has an interesting web site, Ancestral Deeds, http://www.ancestraldeeds.co.uk/

Picture; courtesy of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm