Walking along Court Yard in the June of 1841, looking for John Martin and Hannah Simmons

Court Yard, 1858-73

“If you take up a position upon the spot where what we now call the Court-yard meets the High Street, you will be standing at the centre of village activity and trade in olden times.”*

Now I am not quite sure when our local historian R.R.C. Gregory means by olden times, but I guess it will be sometime from the Middle Ages onwards.

Because it was here that the weekly market and annual fair were held from 1299 when John de Vesci the lord of the manor obtained a charter for a weekly fair on Tuesdays, and an annual  fair on the eve of Holy Trinity and the following two days.

It continued throughout the Middle Ages and even after it was discontinued there were four annual fairs until 1778.

Mr Gregory also records that the parish stocks “are said to have existed on the left hand side of the way, not many yards from the High-street,” along with a number of  pumps one close to the corner of the High Street, another a little further along Court Yard, with a third near the lower gateway leading to the churchyard.

Now in an age before mains water supplied, pumps ponds and water courses were very important, particularly given the concentration of properties along the Court Yard.

The 1843 tithe map shows seventeen properties along the east side of the road with a few more on the opposite side but this is a little deceptive because according the census return for two years earlier there were no less than thirty-two households which comprised 195 people.

I have yet to look at the Rate Books but it rather looks as if some properties were sub let.

Old buildings on Court Yard, Christmas 1980

Either way our picturesque ancient road was a populous place with the church at one end, the Crown in the middle and another publican at the end, serving both the spiritual and temporal needs of the community.

It was a mixed group of people with plenty of agricultural labourers a sprinkling of skilled artisans and a few who described themselves of independent means.

And as ever it is the people themselves who draw you in, like 25 years old Hannah Simmons, living wither her three children and what I take to be her sister in law and two children plus a fifteen year old girl who could be a lodger of sister.

It is easy to be judgemental and I did wonder whether Hannah was a single parent. Not that the period was as harsh on women who had children outside marriage as we have been led to believe..  There is plenty of evidence here in the parish records of single women baptizing their children in front of the congregation.

But in the case of Hannah the records show she stood beside her husband at the baptising of Elizabeth in 1839, Joseph in 1840 and Sarah in 1843.children.  The record also that a Joseph Simmons was staying on the night of the 1841 census at Middle Park House on the night of the 1841 census, and a decade later they have moved to Shooters Hill.**

Equally revealing is the story of the Crown. In 1840 it was being run by John Blundell who was still there the following year, but seems to have retired by 1843 when the place was in the hands of John Martin who seems very much a young man with a dtermination to go places.

At the age of 19 he is there in the 1837 land tax records renting a stable from a James Wright and land from a Mrs Dobson, and by 1843 is in the Crown renting the building and the yard.

Court Yard in 1843, showing the Crown

And as he began his long partnership with the Crown I wonder what its former landlord did with his retirement, which sadly was not long for John Martin died at the age of 51 in 1844.

 Not so John Martin who was to serve pints for another three decades.

So I shall end by leaving him in the Crown in the spring of 1871 with his clientele from Court Road who were still the same mix of agricultural labourers and related trades with a few posh people thrown in.

But with one exception who in his way pointed to the future.

For living in Queen Alley off Court Road was the young Edward Norton who was the son of the postmaster and who at the age of 14 described himself as a telegraph messenger, and that more than anything points to the future for Court Road and Eltham.

*R.R.C.Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909

**Enu 21 6 Plumstead Kent 1851

Pictures; Court Yard from detail of OS map 1858-73, old buildings on Court Yard,1908,   from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on
The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm detail of Eltham High Street,  1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

Back on Court Yard in 1910

Court Yard in 1910

Now you can never have enough of a good picture so I make no apologies for returning to this one of Court Yard which dates from around 1910 and is from the collection of Kristina Bedford.*

Most of what you see has long past out of living memory.

The Congregational Church away in the distance had been opened in 1868 and was demolished in 1936 and the site was redeveloped by Burton’s where I bought my first suit and later still my first grown up overcoat.

The house next to the church was swept away in 1905, demolished when the southern end of Well Hall Road was cut thereby making the route north towards Well Hall and Shooters Hill a tad quicker and more direct.

But the consequence was that the peace of the church was invaded by the noise of trams, carts and later motor vehicles all of which led to the relocation of the church and in its place the still very impressive building which has now become a McDonald’s.

And on the rare occasions I have ventured in there I still miss the wooden cabinets full of shirts and ties, the racks of ready made jackets  and trousers and the catalogues offering all manner of fashionable made to measure suits.

Still someone will mutter such is progress and I guess that also sums up the developments to the left of our picture, which saw the properties pulled down for the Grove Market.

I wish I could remember these for they would still have been standing when we first came to Eltham but they have passed from my memory and I guess in time I will be hard pressed even to remember the site as it was from the mid 60s until recently.

Annie Morris, early 20th century

So I will fall back on the historical record and stories of that row to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.

And it was here that Annie Morris lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.

In her time she had lived at numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

Hers is a fascinating story which takes us back to an Eltham that even more than our picture has vanished.

And yes that is a trailer for more rural Eltham stories along with a few more about Annie.

Picture; Court Yard in 1910 courtesy of Kristina Bedford, from Eltham Through Time,  and  of Annie Morris outside her house in Court Yard from the collection of Jean Gammons.

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013,

On Court Yard with Annie Morris

I never tire of looking at this picture which takes me back to an Eltham I never knew.

We are standing on Court Road at the beginning of the last century and it comes from the collection published in Eltham Through Time by Kristina Bedford*

To our left in more recent times was the Grove Market, ahead of us the old Congregational Church and to the right a row of houses and shops which were already old by the time our photograph was taken.

Judging by the leaves on the trees we are in spring but never completely trust an postcard because companies were not averse to the odd “touching up” to enhance the image.

That said I have always been drawn to this bit of Eltham and not because of the palace and the posh buildings associated with it but because of that row in to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.**

And it was here that Annie Morris who lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.***

In her time she had lived at  numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

All of which takes me back to Court Yard and that picture from Ms Bedford's book

Location; Eltham

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford from Eltham Through Time

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013, http://www.amberleybooks.com/shop/article_9781445616001/Eltham-Through-Time%3CBR%3E%3CI%3EKristina-Bedford%3C_I%3E.html?sessid=QEZApJq34zSjKNVdmAQp3W3Qy2Osaq7D26IZyhCFhC916IZiIOjjz615AwKjvvXM&shop_param=cid%3D1%26aid%3D9781445616001%26

**Walking along Court Yard in the June of 1841, looking for John Martin and Hannah Simmons, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/walking-along-court-yard-in-june-of.html

***Annie Morris, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annie%20Morris 

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

An unfamiliar view of Court Yard around 1900

Now I have written about Court Yard several times and in particular about Annie Morris who lived there at the turn of the last century.

Court Yard circa 1900

And here is Court Yard from the pen of   Mr Llwyd Roberts who was living in Eltham in the early 1930s.

Many of his drawings appeared in the Kentish Times in 1930 and were reprinted in Old Eltham sixty-six years later.

He was a fine artist and draughtsman and some at least of the pictures will have been drawn from first hand knowledge others like this one were probably drawn from picture postcards and photographs taken at the turn of the last century.

Picture; Court Yard, Llwyd Roberts, circa 1929-30, from Old Eltham, 1966, courtesy of Margaret Copeland Gain

*Court Yard, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/so-what-fate-for-crown-on-court-yard.html

**Annie Morris, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annie%20Morris

***Llwyd Roberts, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Llwyd%20Roberts

Pictures from an Eltham bus ........ nu 16 .......

The top deck of a London bus has to be a pretty neat way of seeing the world below.
And when it is the same bus at about the same time every day then you have got yourself a project.

All you need is a camera and the patience each week to record the same spot and the rest as they say is Larissa Hamment’s “Pictures from an Eltham bus.”*

Yesterday she did us proud with two pictures of that pub on Court Yard and the comment,

“Morning Andrew, waiting to go to Woolwich & thought I'd get a nice shot of the old Crown pub, it's being developed but not sure what for.......”

Now nor do I, and while we could go to the planning portal of the Council to find out I won’t, given that I like surprises.

Added to which someone will know and tell us, along with lots of people who have fond memories of a night in the Crown, from those who called in after getting off the bus, to those celebrating Aunty Enid's going away party.

We shall see.

Location, Court Yard, Eltham, London

Pictures;  The Crown, 2017, from the collection of Larissa Hamment

*Pictures from an Eltham bus, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pictures%20from%20an%20Eltham%20Bus

Watching Eltham change .............. nu 2 down at Court Yard

Now on a steamed up bus on the way to work Larissa still had time to record the developments down at Court Yard.

And for those like me who live along way from where we grew up it's good to keep up with what is going on.

And yet again allows me to bang on about the need to record how Well Hall and Eltham are changing.

After all those old black and white pictures dating back a century or more started out as some one's photographic project or just an excuse to get out on a sunny day with the Box Brownie.

Picture; the Grove Market development, August 2015, from the collection of Larissa Hemment 

Watching Eltham change .............. nu 1 down at Court Yard

Now we all tend to take where we live for granted.

A shop closes, a new building goes up and someone publishes a bold new plan for a redevelopment and very soon it’s hard to remember what had been there.

So it’s always good when those changes are documented.

For those in the Eltham Society there are Mr Kennett’s regular updates under Eltham Notes in the quarterly newsletter which detail everything from new shops to changed bus routes, road signs and much else.

And recently Larissa has begun to record the development at Court Yard.  She passes it on the way to work and has begun photographing the changes which will be a tremendous record of the transformation of this bit of Eltham.

So here is one of the latest pictures, taken a few days ago.

Picture; the Grove Market development, August 2015, from the collection of Larissa Hemment

*The Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/

On passing Grove Market yesterday

Now if like me you no longer live in Eltham it is always nice to receive pictures and stories of the place.

And as I have been following the memories of those who sat in the Wimpy Bar in  the Grove Market and have fond memories of when I opened my first Midland Bank account I am pleased that Larissa has sent me these.

She took them on the way to work and as they say the new development is a work in progress.

I have followed the tortuous tale of the planning applications and both the Council’s concerns along with people who live nearby.

And while I doubt any one is bothered about my comments I have to say I am not convinced that it is an asset to Eltham.

But I left Well Hall in 1969, don’t pay the council tax and live 180 miles north of Grove Market all of which might well mean my opinion “don’t count for hill of beans”.

That said it is not a development that sits well with its surroundings.

Of course there are going to be a few who argue that change has to be embraced but I only think  if it fits and blends in with the surrounding landscape.

Well we shall see.

In the meantime I will go back and look again at the stories of Court Yard and Grove Market which have appeared over the years.

At present I just want to thank Larissa for the images of the development and those she also took of the Orangery.

Pictures, Grove Market development, July 2015, © Larissa Hemment