One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 26 ……. the advert ….. Sandby Green … and buying a house

 This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family. *

Houses for sale on Sandby Green, date unknown

Yesterday I was thinking about when the estate was no longer primarily the home of Royal Arsenal workers.

In the case of our house on Well Hall Road, it started with the second family to move in, who were the Rendle’s.  

Mr. Rendle was a police sergeant based at Shooters Hill, and from around 1916 they were living in east London before making 294 Well Hall Road their home in 1919.**

294 Well Hall Road, 1974

All of which was much earlier than I had expected and started me off wondering when properties on the estate began to go up for sale.

I know that H.M. Office of Works who built the estate transferred its management to the London County Council in 1915, and after taking it back five years later sold most of houses in 1925  to the Progress Estates Ltd which was owned by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society.***

Sadly, I no longer have access to the deeds of 294 so can’t follow up on when ours first went up for sale, but we bought it in 1964 from Mr. and Mrs. Jackson who had settled there four years earlier.

Now, what prompted my search was the advert which Philip Burkitt shared with me a few days ago.  

It is undated, contains a picture of Sandby Green, and refers interested buyers to the Progress Estate Office at 1, Downham Road.

But there are clues in the advert to a possible date.

So, the reference to 1, Downham Road suggests a time after 1925 and the mention of Eltham Railway Station may push the date two years further on because in 1927 the railway station’s name was changed to Eltham [Well Hall].****

Of course as ever the answer will be in the detail, and in particular the Minutes of the Progress Estates Limited which are held in the National Co-operative Archive, here in Manchester.

And that mean that I am only a tram ride and half an hour away from the said archives.

In the meantime I will reread Keith Billinghurst’s excellent book on the story of the Progress Estate, and may cheat by asking him when houses were put up for sale.

294 in 2014

That said I know that the Office of Works had by 1920 already sold the freehold to the occupiers or were in the process of doing so for sixty-four houses spread across the Estate.*****

So, like transformation of the estate as homes for Royal Arsenal workers, the sale of those houses may have begun much earlier than I thought.

Location; Well Hall in Eltham

Picture; undated advert courtesy of Philip Burkitt, and our house in 1974 from the collection of the Simpson family and in 2014 courtesy of Chrissy Rose.

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

**One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 25 ……. where did all the Royal Arsenal workers go? https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/06/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in-well.html

*** The Origins and Evolution of the Progress Estate, Keith Billinghurst, 2017

****The Bexley Heath Railway at Eltham, 1895-1995, Gus White, The Eltham Society, 1996

*****ibid Billinghurst, page 210