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

Home thoughts from abroad nu 1 ................. Well Hall Road on a warm spring day in 1965

An occasional series on what I miss about the place where I grew up.

Now I don’t do nostalgia.  It’s over rated and too often offers up a view of the past which at best is deceptive and at worse downright wrong.

But having been away from Eltham for over forty years I have bit by bit been drawn back.

It’s partly those bouts of reflection that come from someone in his seventies but also because it was one of the places I was happiest.

That said for most of that last forty years it is somewhere I only came back to on flying visits.

In the early 70s Well Hall was home between term time, and then a place to catch up with family and friends and later still where we brought the children for short holidays.

During those early visits I have to confess to a mix of feelings.  It was always nice to be back amongst familiar places but when you are 19 it is easy to be over judgemental.  After all I was living in the heart of Manchester which was vibrant and new, offering up a wealth of experiences and Eltham seemed small beer.

But I never entirely lost the pull of Eltham and in the last few years have begun digging deep into its history and remembering so much from my childhood.

So this is the first of those memories and it is nothing more than that walk I took from our house up to the High street.

We lived just beyond the roundabout and so on a warmish spring day it was no hardship to stroll down past the Odeon and the parade of shops taking a detour into the Pleasaunce before going under the railway bridge up past Spencer Gardens and that second parade of shops before reaching Willcox’s and the parish church.

More often than not there was no real purpose behind the trip which meant you could take your time, be delayed by looking in the window of the electrical shop near Wells the Chemist, gaze at one of the guitars in Norman’s before  deciding on a book from Willcox’s.

And then with the whole High Street ahead of you an hour or two could pass just looking at the shops and visiting the library.

Like others I have very fond memories of the library which offered up plenty to do, from digging out those obscure old volumes from the reference section to choosing an LP and a couple of books.

Of course Well Hall Road offered up more than just a route to the library and on other days when the sun shone it was the way up to the woods and on to Woolwich.

Now I know others will have their own favourite road and I have to concede that Court Yard and Colepits Lane had their attractions but sitting here just 4 miles from the centre of Manchester I will go for Well Hall Road.

Location; Well Hall Road, Eltham

Pictures; Well Hall Road, & Eltham Library, 2014 from the collection of Chrissy Rose

Walking down Passey Place in 1911 and asking for a pint at the Park Tavern

Now I have been a wee bit harsh about Passey Place in the past.

You turn off into it from the High Street and once you have passed the old post office you are flanked by drab modern buildings with the side of the Market Place to your right and that long block of shops and flats opposite.

But there are those two fine looking houses a little further along and then the Park Tavern which as Chrissy’s picture shows was being redecorated back in 2015.

So with that as an incentive I thought I would revisit Passey Place but with the twist that we are back in the April of 1911 when it was called Park Place and it counted amongst its residents, a doctor, a retired Professor a rate collector, and an omnibus conductor.

And I shall be even more specific and point out that those two fine houses I admire were the homes of Mr Murphy the rate collector and Mr Hutchinson the omnibus conductor and by 1914 the first had become the Blackheath Conservatoire of Music and perhaps because of that the Hutchinson’s next door had moved out and a Mr Morris had moved in.*

But there was one constant and that was William Smith the publican of the Park Tavern who was pulling pints by 1911 and perhaps earlier.

He was 50 years old in the year we wandered down the road, had been born in Scotland and had married Mrs Smith in 1883.

And they shared the pub with young Beatrice Serres and Alfred Osborn.  Beatrice was just 19 came from Kent and was employed as a domestic servant and Alfred at 79 was still working as a carpenter.

On the opposite side of the road along with the Post Office and Methodist Chapel were a number of residents including Madame Cecilia Ronsard who described herself as a dressmaker.

So an interesting and mixed bag of people in what I suspect was a more gentle and interesting street.

Picture; the Park Tavern © Chrissy Rose, June 2015

*The Post Office London Directory, 1914 & the 1911 census return fo Park Tavern Enu 06 Eltham London

When social media comes good ……… my friend Chrissy

Now I share the concerns of many about social media ….its ability to be used as a platform to troll people, to advance the daft , dangerous and malicious ideas which wouldn’t even get houseroom once upon a time, and the way it can be used to trivialize serious events.

But and I maintain this most strongly it is also a place where those of us who do not have access to publishers, or galleries can offer up historical research, share stories and show case some excellent photographs.

And here I am thinking of my friends Alan, Tony and Chrissy, all of who in their own way have made social media much more interesting.

Alan writes a regular blog about his parish church in Prestwich which explores the history of the building, and those buried in its grounds, as well as a journal of a week of walking the walks around his bit of Greater Manchester.

Tony turns in some fascinating stories for the blog, which range from the Boer War to the history of his beloved football team and pretty much what ever catches his interest.

And finally there is my friend Chrissy who I have known for over eight years, like me comes from Eltham in south east London and like me is a keen and accomplished photographer.

Today she has set up her own Facebook site, The Photographic Gazette, which is a “A place to post your photographs, of special places of interest, landmarks , or animals , anything”.

And of course, “No photos should be copied from others. Every photo should be your own work , with or without filters .Black and white photos welcome. All photos will be previewed before posting. No adult explicit photos will be accepted”.

So there it is …. A positive slant on social media.

Location; Everywhere

Pictures; Gates, and An empty street covid lockdown July 2021, from the collection of Chrissy Rose.

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