When Mr. Bradshaw ignored All Saints Church on Blackheath

You would have to be pretty mean spirited to ignore that church on the heath.

It stands on the southern edge of Blackheath, was described by Pevsner as looking like a model, surrounded on all sides by grass* and has links to Sir Arthur Sullivan and Gustav Holst.

Not that Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building. **

For those who don’t know, Mr. Bradshaw compiled railway timetables and guides to Britain and beyond, the first of which came out just eight years after the first passenger railway company had started conveying people and goods from Manchester to Liverpool.  And before that he had published his “Maps of Inland Navigation” which described the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

And despite dying in 1852 Bradshaw’s Guides continued to be an essential part of many traveller’s possessions well into the 20th century.

I have dug out my London Guide book for 1862 and as you do turned to the five chapters devoted to south of the river, and in particular that one on Greenwich.**

Many of my childhood haunts are here, from Eltham where I grew up to Greenwich, Woolwich and Shooter’s Hill, including a reference to the Sun in the Sands.

But Blackheath is relegated to one sentence which leaves out the fine buildings, the church on the heath or the railway station which in 1861 was just eleven years old.  

Instead, the reader is taken out of Greenwich Park and presented with just “we pass on to Blackheath, where Wat Tyler assembled the Kentish rebels in the reign of Richard II, where Jack Cade and his fellow insurgents are said to have held their midnight meetings in a cavern which still remains, though so chocked up as to be considered nearly in accessible”. 

Perhaps Bradshaw’s researchers reckoned that All Saints Church was still too new to be worthy of a mention.  After all it had been opened just four years before the London guidebook became available, and construction work continued until 1867.

Still these pictures by Chrissy go a long way to correct Bradshaw’s omission.  They were posted last week on her excellent Facebook site devoted to photography. ****.

Location; Blackheath

Pictures; All Saints Church, Blackheath, London, 2023, from the collection of Chrissy Rose.

 *"Puginian … already old fashioned, ........ Remarkable for the way in which it is placed right into the heath. Surrounded on all sides by grass, it stands as if it were a model." Pevsner, Nikolaus 1983. The Buildings of England: London 2: South. pp. 412–413.

** Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building, 1862

***Bradshaw’s Guides, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Bradshaw%27s%20Guides

**** The Photographic Gazette, https://www.facebook.com/groups/973270840174059