A short occasional series on Well Hall in the 1920s.
Now I washed up in Eltham in the spring of 1964 and for two and half years made the daily train journey back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys School which continued until I switched to Crown Woods.
I didn’t like Samuel Pepys over much and the trip from Well Hall to New Cross and back was pretty much the best bit of the day.
Even now I have fond memories of seeing the woods above out house come into view ast thetrain took that final bend and came into the station.
The trains were always packed but there was something about knowing you were coming home to Well Hall.
And I suspect Mr Jefferson may have shared that feeling, so here are some of his memories of the same station just 40 or so years before I used the station.
They are taken from the book he published in 1970.
“The railway station was called simply ‘Well Hall’ when we came and the platforms were not so long as they are now.
A workman’s ticket cost 8d return to London and early workers making their way past the tumbledown ‘Well Hall’ which is now the Pleasaunce would frequently be hindered by cows coming up hawthorn-hedged Kidbrooke Lane and turning in at the wide gate in Well Hall Road.”*
Location; Well Hall
Picture; the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose
*The Woolwich Story, E.F.E. Jefferson, 1970 page 202
I didn’t like Samuel Pepys over much and the trip from Well Hall to New Cross and back was pretty much the best bit of the day.
Even now I have fond memories of seeing the woods above out house come into view ast thetrain took that final bend and came into the station.
The trains were always packed but there was something about knowing you were coming home to Well Hall.
And I suspect Mr Jefferson may have shared that feeling, so here are some of his memories of the same station just 40 or so years before I used the station.
They are taken from the book he published in 1970.
“The railway station was called simply ‘Well Hall’ when we came and the platforms were not so long as they are now.
A workman’s ticket cost 8d return to London and early workers making their way past the tumbledown ‘Well Hall’ which is now the Pleasaunce would frequently be hindered by cows coming up hawthorn-hedged Kidbrooke Lane and turning in at the wide gate in Well Hall Road.”*
Location; Well Hall
Picture; the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose
*The Woolwich Story, E.F.E. Jefferson, 1970 page 202
no foot tunnel under the bridge back then
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