Looking at the parish church from the south in 1903

Now I like this picture of the parish church.  

It dates from around 1903 and comes from Some Records of Eltham 1060-1903 which is a marvellous little book written by Rev. Elphinstone Rivers who was the vicar of St John’s from 1895.*

I have written about our parish church before but what fascinates me about this photograph is that at first glance it looks just as it does today, but then there are the tiny details which I leave you to spot.

For me the added complication is that I was pass by in the summer when the mature trees pretty much obscure the view of the church so this 1903 picture does much to show the place off as it would have looked when brand new.

Picture; the parish church from the south , 1903, from Some Records of Eltham

*Some Records of Eltham 1060-1903, Rev. Elphinstone Rivers, 1903

Cutting the grass in Mottingham …. in them olden days

I like this picture for several reasons, not least because it is one I have never seen before.

It comes from a delightful slim volume entitled Eltham Village and was published in 1984.

Happily, the authors have given me permission to use the images with of course a credit to Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson who collected the 43 images of Eltham and the surrounding villages.

And so back to number 6, Horse drawn mower, Mottingham Playing Fields, circa 1914.  

The picture carried the caption "Mr. Groves and young helper tending the pitches of the London Playing Fields Ground Court Farm Lane.  The land was presented by the Goldsmith Company to the London Playing Fields Association in 1905 to provide ‘sports facilities for Londoners’”.

If you are of a certain age you will remember those lawn mowers which didn’t rely on electricity or diesel and instead were worked with muscle power, be it a man in shirtsleeves or men in shirt sleeves with horse.

Apparently, they are making a coming back with manual lawn mowers costing  anything from £44 and heading up towards a hundred.

And for those like me who didn't know, "The London Playing Fields Foundation was formed in 1890 by visionary Victorian philanthropists concerned about the loss of green space in London and the need to provide sport and recreation for current and future generations".**

So, there you are.

Location; Mottingham

Picture; Horse drawn mower, Mottingham Playing Fields, 1914, courtesy of Eltham Village

*Eltham Village,  Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson in 1984 and published by G & Pi Publications Eltham

****The London Playing Fields Foundation, https://www.lpff.org.uk/about/history/

Of Waterloo sunsets, Peckham Rye and the Pleasuance at Well Hall

Now it is just one of those things that you miss where you grew up.

Coming home, 2013

It is such an obvious statement but is none the less true.

I left south east London in 1969 for Manchester unsure what was ahead of me but convinced that I would be back, but like most plans it never happened.

Manchester is where I ended up, got married bought a house and brought up four kids.

In my twenties I can’t say I missed London and I guess it wasn’t until quite recently, long after I qualified for a concessionary bus pass and reached an age to be rewarded with the being offered a seat on the tram that I began to think of home.

Well Hall, 2011

And home really only begins when the ferry docks or the  train pulls across the river into Waterloo and then I know I am back.

Another 20 or so minutes later and after the train has taken that curve I have arrived home in Eltham.

But then because we moved around, the train could quite easily have taken me to Queens Road or New Cross and because for a long time our Elizabeth lived in Plumstead and Woolwich there was that other set of railway stations.

My kids always know which special song to play for me and ever since I first heard Waterloo Sunset it has been my tune, with a special meaning given that Kay and I would meet every Friday night under that clock.

Ten years earlier Waterloo Station would be one of the destinations along with London Bridge which would be the start of an adventure.

Woolwich, 2015

For with 2/6d pocket money and aged just ten there were lots of places you could go for a modest return fare and still have change for a variety of sweets.

Sometimes you struck gold and on other occasions you ended up in a dreary back street beside a canal with grim tall buildings all around you.

But that didn’t matter because the fun was in the expectation of where you might go and once there roaming across the city in search of anything that looked interesting.

And there were the bombsites which were still pretty much in evidence all around us.  Most of the time there wasn’t much to discover, but once we found a gas mask still in its box with the green paint and black rubber looking brand new.

Woolwich, circa 1940s

And then there was the old bombed church of St Mary’s which was a place where with a shared candle  a group of you could wander through the crypt anticipating all sorts of horrors and finding only a damp and smelly mattress.

Some adventures turned out not so well, like the time me, Jimmy O’Donnel and John Cox having walked from Lausanne Road to Greenwich, took the wrong turning by the entrance to the foot tunnel and instead of standing on the sand in front of the Naval College we turned left walked amongst the barges and sank up to our ankles in oily Thames mud.

To this day I remain ashamed that I blamed the other two when mother interrogated me on arriving home.

Worse than the interrogation was the bath that followed which seemed to take hours and involved much scrubbing to remove the dried mud from me and even longer to make my shoes half decent.

Today those trips are less perilous but no less fun and often involve a brief visit to an old haunt like the Pleasaunce at Well Hall which is only a few minute’s walk from our old house.

Cambden Church, 1904

Of course I am well aware that the places of my youth have changed and as in the case of Woolwich pretty dramatically but I don’t subscribe to that throw away judgement that places I knew are “now rubbish”, they are just different and no doubt there would be those catapulted into the 21st century from 1900 who would mourn the passing of the “smoke hole” at Woolwich and wish there were two lanes of traffic forcing their way down Powis Street.

I suppose for those of us who leave it is always a bit odd to be confronted with the disappearance of all our childhood memories.

That said I never tire of Waterloo Sunset or arriving south over the river.

Location; south of the river

Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Scott MacDonald and Elizabeth and Collin Fitzpatrick and Steve Bardrick, Camden Church Peckham Road, circa 1904, Albert Flint Photographer and Publisher, 68 Church Street, Camberwell in the series Camberwell, marked by Tuck and Sons, and reproduced courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

A bit of the “other side” of London life in 1851 ................. stories from Henry Mayhew

"Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute  the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered – two distinct and broadly marked races  viz., the wanders and the settlers-the vagabonds and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilized tribes.”*

Detail of a Costermonger

And with that Henry Mayhew plunges you in to the London of 1851.

The original accounts appeared first as articles in the London daily press, were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.

And just over a century later my edition of Mayhew’s London was issued, bought by mum and long ago passed to me.

Here are descriptions of what he called the “Street Folk” ranging from the “life of a Coster-lad," "the Dredgers or “River Finders” and the “Bird Catchers.”

Along the way there are detailed descriptions of the area like the London Street Markets, the language of the Coster mongers and much else.

So armed with Mr Mayhew’s guide I would happily have been able to know that “Flatch” was a halfpenny “Cool the esclop” meant “Look at the police” and if I was told the beer house was “Kenneteeno” it would have been stinking while the chap in the corner who was “Flach Kanurd” would have been drunk.

The Kitchen Fox Court Gray's Inn-Lane

What makes the book just that bit more fascinating is that it came out in the year 1851 which means that it is possible to crawl over the detailed census records matching his descriptions with the streets, courts and “dark places” that made up this bit of London.

If I am honest I have neglected Mr Mayhew over the years, spending my time on the equally unforgiving streets of Little Ireland, Deansgate and Angel Meadow in Manchester.

But with long summer days ahead, I rather think I shall leave the computer and sit in the garden with this slice of mid 19th century life form the city where I was born.

That said my edition according to the editors “has been designed for the convenience of the general reading public [and much] interesting material including all the longer passages has been sacrificed.”  
And that has meant the “contents of the entire fourth volume on prostitutes, thieves, swindlers and beggars have been omitted in entirety.”

Ah well you can’t have everything. Although just last week that has been sorted as our Saul has got me the full edition.

Location, London 1851

Pictures; the Kitchen Fox Court Gray’s-Inn- Lane and the London Costermonger, from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851,

Looking at the Well Hall we have lost, Nell Gwynne's Cottages, 1908

Now I never tire of writing about Well Hall and in particular during the mid 19th century.

This will always be one of those fascinating times for me when many of our small rural communities were about to be transformed by the Industrial Revolution.

In the township of Chorlton where I live the economy had depended on supplying food for the growing giant of Manchester just four miles away but by the end of the 19th century the city had all but claimed the place.

From the 1880s much of the farm land to the north of the village was turned into houses and in 1904 we voted to join the city.

Well Hall held out longer but not by much, and so this photograph of the cottages just north of the Pleasaunce is a reminder of what we have lost.

I have written about them in the past and today want to do no more than feature this image of them.*

It has been taken from Eltham Through Time by Kristina Bedford.**

I have seen other images of the cottages but never one on colour which makes it a fascinating one.
Of course they never were Nell Gywnne's but there will be those who still like to think so.

Picture; Nell Gywnne’s Cottages, Well Hall 1908, from Eltham Through Time

*From New York to Well Hall, the story of the Cooper family in the 1850s http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/from-new-york-to-well-hall-story-of.html

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford from her new book Eltham Through Time, Amberley Publishing, 2013,

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

Photographs from the Royal Herbert during the Great War ............ a unique album of pictures

The Royal Herbert, date unknown

Now the story of the Royal Herbert has just got a lot more exciting and that has a lot to do with a fascinating photograph album from the Great War.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who has a unique collection of memorabilia covering both world wars as well as the history of the Post Office.

And today I am looking through it with the hope that some at least of the men and the nurses in the pictures can be traced and their stories uncovered.

Christmas Day, 1915

In time I might even be able to discover the nurse responsible for the album.

A few of the nurses are named and tantalizingly two pictures are captioned “myself” so the search is on which may be made easier as the Red Cross continues to add to its online data base of those who served during the Great War.

And then there are the large number of photographs of soldiers in their “hospital blues” recovering on the wards, a few party scenes and handful from soldiers who had recovered and left the hospital.

Summer, 1916

Together they help reveal a little bit of life in the Royal Herbert during 1915 and 1916.

Given the quality of the cameras and the age of the pictures some images have not fared so well but even the poorest have a story to tell.

One of my favourites is of Sister Thomson and a group of men on a ward on Christmas Day in 1915 along with a much faded image of the garden in the summer of 1916.

Now these albums were quite common but I suspect not that many have survived.

Album cover

David has two more which contain comments, poems and drawings of men recovering from wounds and illnesses.

One remains a mystery but the other comes from a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and it has been possible to track  some of the men who made a contribution.

Their stories are as varied as I am sure will be the ones from the Herbert and include a young Canadian who survived the war and went home to live a successful and productive life and another who is buried in the military hospital outside Cairo.

And like all good stories led my friend Susan who lives in Canada to tell the story of that young Canadian and in so doing brought his drawing and his words  off the pages of the Cheltenham book and back from the past.

Now that I have to say was both exciting and moving.

The Royal Herbert album is different in that it only has photographs but in looking through it I have made a link with a hospital I knew well and which at one point in the 1970s treated our mother.

All of which makes it that bit special.

David's permanent exhibition can be seen in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and currently features a collection of material commemorating the Manchester Blitz.

Pictures; from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

On a wet Thursday night in Plumstead ………………

Plumstead cinemas, 1928

Now I am on a roll, and having explored the cinemas of Eltham and Woolwich, I thought it was only fair to branch out into Plumstead.

Despite our Elizabeth and Jillian living in Plumstead, I rarely visited the place.

My friend Tricia has over the years spoken fondly of going to the Pictures in Plumstead.

So, for her and lots of others, here in the list of which you could go to in 1928, and 1947.

All along time before Tricia was born.

Plumstead cinemas, 1947

Nothing more complicated than that.

Of course some might want to compare and contrast the cinema's, offer up pictures or memories.

All of which would add to the story.

And no sooner had the story gone line than Frances Green posted this, "When the Globe in Plumstead Common Road closed down, my dad bought the cinematograph and lots of reels of silent film. 

We had the best birthday parties when we were little as dad would put on film shows for our friends. The one I remember most was Charlie Chaplin, I think it was called The Little Prospector. 

In the 60s it was on the news that these reels of films could catch fire and mum told dad they had to go. Dad sold them to the BBC and I still remember 2 people coming to collect them. We lived in Macoma Road".

Now that I like.

Location; Plumstead






Pictures; from the Kinematograph Year Books, 1928 & 1947

A bit more of the “other side” of London life in 1851

"The first rats I caught was when I was about nine years of age. I ketched them an Mr Strickland’s a large cow keeper, in Little Albany –street, in Regent’s park.”  

Now if you wanted a pretty colourful way of being invited into the life of a nine year old on the streets of London this is as good as you can get.

It comes from observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

And the rat catcher Jack Black was just one of hundreds Mr Mayhew interviewed.

Just over a century later my edition of Mayhew’s London was issued, bought by mum and long ago passed to me, and for Christmas our Saul bought me a new edition.

All of which I like because of that sense of continuity.

And like so many books which reported on the conditions of the working classes in the 19th century it has a direct relevance to BHC because although the scheme began almost a full twenty years after Mayhew began publishing his accounts, many of those who walked across his pages will have had children and some of those might have been migrated.

Now that is not to suggest for one minute that most of the people he wrote about were feckless or bad parents merely that his stories show those Londoners on the very margin and by extension could represent the urban poor in any one of a dozen British towns.

And that makes his book compelling reading because there is no doubt that a full two or three decades after its publication a lot of the descriptions in London life could be replicated.

I have no idea what happened to Jack Black who went on to tell Henry Mayhew “at that time Little Albany –street, in Regent’s park was all fields and meaders in them parts  and I recollect there was a big orchard on one side of the sheds I was only doing it for a game ........... When a rat bite touches the bone, it makes you faint .... in a minute and it bleeds dreadful.”

What is interesting is that amongst all the gruesome details of rat catching Mr Black revealed that at the age of 15 he had got interested in birds and during his conversation he gave a series of renditions  of different bird songs.

On one level we shouldn’t be surprised but it does challenge that picture that many have of the urban poor in the middle of the 19th century.

And that is all I am going to say, other than that it is a fascinating read.

And one I shall return to ... again and again.**

Location; London

Picture; the Boys Crossing-sweepers,  from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

**A bit of the “other side” of London life in 1851 ................. stories from Henry Mayhew, 
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-bit-of-other-side-of-london-life-in.html

All you ever wanted to know about how we got our power across Greenwich and Woolwich

 I am a great admirer of Mary Mills and her work which over the years has revealed the industrial archaeology of where I grew up.

Entitled “Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich”* it is her most recent book and explores all aspects of how power was supplied across the borough and beyond.

Here can be found descriptions of the many and varied sources of power from wind, water and tidal mills along with coal, gas and electrical power.

And includes “'Woolwich's 'Secret City' - the Royal Arsenal - along with the oldest power station, as we would understand it, in the world, the largest installation for town gas storage ever and one of the first to generate power from domestic waste. 

This is a non-technical work aimed at the general reader and all those interested in how our world today developed”.

Starting in the Middle Ages the book moves through to the 21st century with the Optic Cloak at the Greenwich Energy Centre on the Peninsula and the innovative South East London Community Energy which “is a non-for-profit social enterprise. Formed by residents of Greenwich and Lewisham who want to play an active role in shaping the energy future of South East London …. taking action to combat climate change through generating renewable energy and tackle fuel poverty”.

It is one of those books which you can walk, with the locations of each site clearly outlined and speculation on those that have long gone as to what they might have looked like.  To this she has added plenty of old and contemporary images of the sites, supported by maps, and is fully referenced.

Amongst the images are the iconic Woolwich Tramshed fondly remembered by generations as the go to place for entertainment and the stunning cover to the story of Deptford Power Station.

And as an Eltham lad I couldn’t miss out our own Gas Works on a corner of Eltham Green and the failed attempt to build an earlier works behind Eltham High Street.

Added to which there is the intriguing suggestion of mills at Mottingham Lane, and at Horn Park Farm and “a mill or a series of mills at Lee in the Kidbrooke Parish area”.

All of which is fascinating and come with heaps of pictures of gasholders which I have to confess are another of those objects that fascinate me but are now very much an endangered “species”.

“Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich” is priced at £15 and is available from Amazon and is the sixth publication by the author.**

Location Greenwich & Woolwich

Pictures; cover & illustration of Deptford Power Station from the book,and memories of a different use for the Tramshed, the badge circa 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Power Generation Sites in Greenwich and Woolwich by Dr MARY, 2026,  2026ISBN 979-81992-4195-3

**Greenwich Peninsula Greenwich Marsh A History of a Heartland, The Greenwich Riverside Upper Watergate to Angerstein, The Industries of Deptford Creek, The Early East London Gas Industry and George Livesey, A Biography

The skip ……. a man with a van …… and tales of recycling ….. with a nod to the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters

 There is a lot to be said for the recycling man with his van.

I say man, but there is more than one, and as like as not it will be a woman.

Some come quietly in the early morning while others will announce their presence with a loudspeaker alternating between bursts of music and the cry, “fridges, old boilers, pipes and assorted scrap”.

For those like me who were born in the first half of the last century, it brings back memories of the Rag and Bone Man who travelled the streets with a horse and cart and called for “any old iron” or whatever took his fancy.

Then like now it was a one-way trade in which you disposed of the goods, which he accepted and later would sort out and sell on.

As a form of recycling, it worked and does so again.

So early yesterday morning the man with the van stopped outside Sidney the skip, rooted round, picking out a sink and a couple of kitchen cupboards.

Being a discerning sort of chap, there were items he discarded having first pulled them out, inspected them before throwing them back.

Nor will he have been alone.  One skip close to us was visited three times one morning, with a different team calling the following day, when the skip was again almost full.

Now none of this is new, and a quick flick through the past will reveal the extent to which people of the mid-19th century made an even more precarious living from other people’s rubbish.

They were on the margins of poverty and garnered an income from sifting through the left behinds.

So, my Mayhew* written in the first half of the 19th century picked over occupations like the dustman, shore man and sewer hunters, all of whom found value in the valueless.

Shore workers worked the sewers, in “gangs of three and four for the sake of company, and in order to better defend themselves from the rats …… [finding] great quantities of money – of copper money especially; sometimes they dive their arm down to the elbow in the mud and filth and bring up shillings, sixpences, half crowns and sovereigns. **

Even more central to London life were the dustmen who carted away the dust and ash from the capital’s homes.  

Mayhew estimated that the consumption of coal in the metropolis was, 3,500,000 tons per annum which in turn created a vast mountain of ash and cinders, and as ever where there was muck there was money. 

Like everywhere that money was made by a handful of contractors while the dirty work fell to those they employed.

These men carried the ash to the dust yards where an army of labourer’s sifted through the rubbish which threw up oyster shells, old bricks, old boots and shoes, old ten kettles, as well as old rags and bones.  None of which could be recycled into brick making but ended up as hard core for new buildings or new roads.

While old shoes were sold to London shoemakers who used them to stuff between the in-sole and the outer one, leaving the rags and bones to be disposed of at the marine-store shops. ***

It is a story which is worth a deeper study, but for now I think I will just reflect that the passage of 170 or so years has left our man with his van marginally better off.

We shall see.

Location; London 1851, Chorlton, 2021

Pictures; The London Dustman, and View of a Dust Yard, London, 1851, and skips I have known giving up their treasures, Chorlton, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Henry Mayhew, London Labour & the London Poor 1851London Labour & the London Poor 1851

** Mayhew page 330

*** ibid Mayhew page 350

Of the street sellers of Ices and Ice Cream .... and the day in 1851 when Mr. Mayhew got it very wrong

Now when I want to fall back into the London of the 1850s, there is no better source than the observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

They are a fascinating insight into how the poor lived and worked, and chief amongst these were the street sellers, and these I have already written about.**

And so as I have become interested again in the manufacture and sale of ice cream in the 19th century I turned to Mr. Mayhew, who for once didn’t quite get it right. 

"I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice creams.

A quick-witted street seller – but, not in the provision’ line- conversing with me upon this subject, and said: ‘Ices in the streets! Aye, and there will be jellies next and then mock turtle, and the real ticket, sir.  I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue.

You’ll keep your eyes open sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it.  Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.

Not withstanding the sanguine anticipation of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a preservation of the traffic”.

Alas Mr. Mayhew didn’t include pictures of the ice cream sellers, so I have fallen back on The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall.

Location; London in 1851

Pictures; The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall, 1851 from  London Labour & the London Poor 

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*London Labour and the London Poor, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/London%20Labour%20and%20the%20the%20London%20Poor

On being 10 in the summer of 1961 with a Red Rover and a city to explore

Now if you are of a certain age this Red Rover will be your passport to many happy memories.

Andy's ticket to roam, 1965

It offered unlimited travel for a day across London and  I can think of no better thing to do than travel anywhere those old red double deckers would take you.

In 1960 we were still living on Lausanne Road and I think we would have collected the ticket from the New Cross Garage, which begs the question of where I might have picked one up in Eltham.

I am pretty sure you couldn’t buy them on the bus but I guess someone with put me right on that.

Andy sent me this one just a few minutes ago adding, “as a bus spotting nerd I used to use these lot. This one was purchased 2 days after I was 12 3/4 years old. 

I would plan my journey taking in various bus garages, leave about 7 in the morning armed with salad cream sandwiches and arrive home about 10 hours later, all on my lonesome!”

Sadly I never had the forethought to plan in advance, going off on the spur of the moment when the sun shone and the pocket money was burning a hole in my pocket.

Needless to say some at least of my adventures ended in the most disappointing places.

The White Tower in the Tower of London, 2014

It remains one of those cast iron certainties that just because a place sounds interesting and the bus goes there it doesn’t always mean that the destination will prove memorable.

Even now I shudder at the thought of the run down canal beside some sad looking buildings which proved not to be the highlight of one trip.

But then the beauty of the Red Rover was that you could just wait for the next bus and travel on to pastures new.

And all the time there were things to see from out of the window.

 So even if the front seats on the top deck were taken there was always that seat behind the driver which not only offered up the same view that he could see, but with a bit of imagination allowed to imagine you were driving the 161 down to Woolwich or the 36b across town.

In my case it would start and sometimes end at the Tower of London, but that as they is another story.

Instead I shall just reflect that having reached that magic age which qualifies me for a concessionary bus pass I can and do roam across the city making full use of both the trams and the trains.

So there you have it, one Red Rover a shed load of memories and not once did I throw in that title of a Beatles song.

Location; pretty much anywhere in London

Picture; a Red Rover, 1965 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Tower of London, 2014 from the collection of Ryan Ginn

That food factory ……. the River ……. and a conversation

Just when I spent my dinner times gazing out over the River talking about music, the chance of over time and pretty much everything is lost.

I think it will be the summer of 1970 and the location was Glenville’s the food factory down by the Blackwall Tunnel.

It could have been the year before or the year after.

Glenville’s made a variety of things from custard powder, and sachets of flavoured water you left in the freezer, to their specialty which was turning powdered milk into granules.

Of all the jobs this was the most unpleasant given that I was tasked with filling large bags of the milk granules as they shot out of a pipe.

It didn’t help that the regulating tap didn’t work very well so you used your hand to stem the flow just long enough to get a bag underneath, and that it came out very hot from being blown through a set of stainless-steel tubes.

Added to which the sweet-smelling stuff stuck to your overalls and worse still your face which on very hot days was prone to mix with your perspiration to form rivulets of milky sweat.

Nor was that all because while we were paid a basic wage there was a bonus for the amount that was produced, and there was the flaw, because on wet and damp days the granulated milk clogged the tubes and production ceased.

At other times I worked in the dispatch area on the ground floor at the end of a long conveyor belt which disappeared into the roof and on to another few floors.

Loading the boxes of assorted “stuff” was never the problem only that they came down at a ferocious pace, and if not unloaded quickly enough would cause a long jam, which the pressure of more from on high meant that sometimes the boxes burst open showering us in clouds of custard or blancmange powder.

All of which meant that breaks and dinner times took on a special place in the day.

And it will have been on one of those that I met up with a South African.

He was the first South African I had met, and I was fascinated by him.  He was a few years older than me, and he had already traveled thousands of miles across two continents, while I had just got the bus from Eltham.

Over half a century later I can’t remember what we talked about other than that song America by Simon and Garfunkel, which chronicles the journey across the US by two young lovers.

We shared the magic of their journey and each of us in our different ways conjured the trip from Saginaw, in Michigan via Pittsburgh to New Jersey.

And now all those years later I have no idea what he looked like or our other companions, and our dinner time conversations are lost.

But listening to America brings back my time in Glenville’s from the smell of the various products being made, along with that of the River to that carefree and optimistic take on life which at 20 I shared with Kathy and her lover.

I still have that optimistic take but long ago lost Glenville's, and despite frequent visits to the area its exact location remains elusive.

So I await a photo, an address or a memory from someone who like me passed a batch of his early 20s at the food factory by the River.

Location; Glenville’s, Greenwich

Pictures; by the River, 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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,

When they took my railway station ...........

Now, as a rule I don’t object to change and even I could see the logic of building a new railway station yards from the old one and calling it Eltham.

That old familiar entrance, circa 1960s

In the great scheme of things the coming of the motorway and the loss of the bus terminus beside the station made perfect sense.

But a little of my youth vanished when Well Hall Railway Station was demolished.
More than that, no one told me.

I had left from that wooden platform in the September of 1969 for a new life in Manchester, and while I regularly returned home during the following two decades I was not prepared for the day I alighted from what I thought was the wrong station, with the wrong name, on the wrong side of the road.

The new bridge, 2013

I should of course have been warned by the conversation at the ticket office in Charing Cross when my  request for a single to Eltham Well Hall was met with a stony look and a sarcastic comment about not keeping up with news, which was a tad unfair given that my subscription to Railway News had lapsed the month before.

Only the intervention of the nice lady buying a season ticket for Welling saved the day.

Off on a jolly, 1966

Even now on those occasions I go home I never feel quite right walking through the brick and concrete building and yearn with a bit of silly nostalgia for the wooden railway station of my youth.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Eltham Well Hall Railway Station & the High Street circa 1960s courtesy of Steve Bardrick, the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose and off from Well Hall, 1966, from the collection of Anne Davey

The postcard to Eltham ….. the search for Miss Williams ….. and a house on Arsenal Road

I doubt that Auntie Edith would ever have thought that her picture postcard sent from Looe in Cornwall in July 1933 would be the subject of a search through the historical records 90 years later.

The card was addressed to a Miss Williams of Arsenal Road and that set me off.  For the house was one of those built for the Royal Arsenal workers and is part of the estate that I grew up on.

So, not only Eltham, but Well Hall and the Progress Estate.  

The comment on the back picks up on the message that holiday makers in Looe will not have to spend much money, with “we should come home with all our money.  I don’t think.”

Miss Williams is still lurking in the shadows.  I know that she was there in the house in 1933, but six years later it is vacant.  

And back in 1921 the property was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lavin. William Earl  was 57 years old, from Northamptonshire  and described his occupation as a “Collector” for Saye Machine Co Ltd, while May Jane was a year older and was born in Birmingham. 

The closest definition in the Ministry of Labour’s 1921 dictionary for a “Collector salesman” was   a canvasser who also collects weekly or monthly payments for goods sold on installment system.

The firm appears to have employed four others but here it gets tricky because while each suggests that they were related to sewing machines, their listed employer has a different name.

And so far, that is where the trail peters out.  There are other William Lavin’s but none which fit the profile.

But something will turn up it always does, sadly not today.

All of which takes me back to that house on Arsenal Road and what it might tell us about the early history of the estate.  I have always wondered at what point those houses ceased to be homes for Royal Arsenal workers.  The huge run down of employment at the factory in the immediate post wars years will have meant that new tenants were drawn from other occupations.

In time I will go looking for the electoral registers for Arsenal Road to see if we can track the residents of the property, but for now I am left with that picture postcard.

Location’ Arsenal Road, Eltham, London and Looe in Cornwall

Pictures; You Went Get Stung, 1933, from the collection of David Harrop

So ……… who stole Well Hall’s Tudor mansion?

Now I know there will be lots of people who know the story of Well Hall Pleasaunce, and the checkered history of the Tudor Barn which was once part of the estate of the Roper family.

The Barn in 2013

And there will also be those who know that the fine mansion which the Roper’s called home was connected to the high politics of Tudor England, because William Roper was the son in law of Sir Thomas More who fell out with Henry V111 and paid the ultimate price with his head.

The romantic in me wonders whether William Roper composed part of his biography of Sir Thomas in the gardens of the house in Well Hall, and as a kid I too would wander through the Pleasuance trying to  step back to that very turbulent time when Margaret Roper feared for the fate of her father.

The Barn in 1909

Of course, it helps to have a physical “thing” like the Tudor barn which helps anchor that imaginary trip, and just touching the walls adds to that sense of history, which with just a further leap of fancy allows you to conjure up images of Sir Thomas More in happier times visiting his family and perhaps even discussing the merits of the old barn.

But look as you may you won’t find the Roper’s fine home, because although the property stayed in the family till  the early 18th century it was eventually sold in 1733 to “Sir Gregory Page who pulled down the C16 Well Hall, built within a moated area, and replaced it with a new residence also known as Well Hall. This lay to the east of the site, between Well Hall Road and the moat. 

The property, which included the Hall and adjoining farm buildings, continued in the ownership of the Page family, but was largely rented out. Tenants included, from 1899 to 1922, the journalist Hubert Bland (founder of the Fabian Society) and his wife, the children's author Edith Nesbit”. 

All of which I knew but must confess the details of which had faded from my memory.

Well Hall, 1909

So it was Sir Gregory Page who stole our Tudor mansion and built what I still think was an ugly replacement, as the 1909 photograph testifies.

And while it conforms to the design elegance of the 18th century it doesn’t do much for me.

But it too has gone, torn down in the early 20th century, when the Pleasaunce was created pretty much as we know it today.

All of which just leaves me to include pictures of the barn, from now and then with the pile that Sir Gregory Page called home, although I doubt he actually ever lived there.

I have written about https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Well%20Hall%20in%20the%201840s.*

Well Hall from the rear, 1909

And for good measure there is an informative piece on , https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Well%20Hall%20in%20the%201840s.**

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Pictures; the Tudor Barn 1909,  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 and the same scene from the collection of Jean Gammons, September 2013

*Well Hall in the 1840s, and Sir Gregory Page, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Well%20Hall%20in%20the%201840s

**Well Hall, Historic England, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000850

Listening to Leonard Cohen opposite the Yorkshire Grey on a cold December night in 1966

I like the music of Leonard Cohen.

Me in 1966

They are songs I dip into now and then.

And today I want to reflect on the very first time I heard him sing.

It was on an LP featuring the song Suzanne which belonged to the sister of my friend John Coward.*

John was one of those new friends I made when I started at Crown Woods in 1966.

We were just 16 and beginning to see the world in a new way, revelling in every type of music and  poetry and fascinated by the work of Picasso, and the Pre Raphaelites.

I can’t remember the exact night I heard Suzanne, but it must have been sometime in December of 1966.

We were at his house opposite the Yorkshire Grey and with a slight air of conspiracy he said I should listen to the song Suzanne which came from the LP,  The Songs of Leonard Cohen.

The record belonged to his sister and carried a dedication from a friend "who wished he could have written the lyrics."

It was he said her favourite song and I could see why.

It still has the power to move me, but when you are sixteen and everything is more intense than it will ever be again Suzanne took me over.

We must have played it a few times and on the promise of looking after it and returning it the next day I walked out into the night with the song.

I have to confess it was more than a few days before John got the LP back but it was before his sister Susan came down from university so all was well.

We remained friends sharing music and LPs and then in the fullness of time John took up a place at Queens University in Belfast and I moved up to Manchester.

Even now when I hear that particular song I am still transported back to that moment, when we were young and everything was an adventure.

That said 58 years on I still think it is all an adventure and that is a good enough way to close.
Location; Eltham

Picture; me in 1966, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Suzanne, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6zMPLcXZ8

Greenwich Park, the moment a full 53 years ago .......... nu 1 the walk

It will be a full 55 years ago but the memory of that walk through Greenwich Park on a Saturday in September 1971 has never left me.

I was in my second year at Manchester Poly and the pull of Well Hall and the family were still strong and so I found myself back home with three friends.

Lois was from Weston and Mike and John from Leeds and we travelled down from Manchester in John’s van on the Friday night.

Even now I have to say I haven’t forgotten the kindness of David Hatch who agreed to put Lois, Mike and John up on his floor.

It was a brief stay and most of it is a blur except for the walk from the gates on the Blackheath side through the park to Wolf’s statue, the observatory and that view down to the river.

At any time of the year that short stroll is pretty good but in late autumn it is magic.  The leaves are on the turn and the bright sunlight can still surprise you with its degree of warmth and the way it brings out the colours all around you.

The rest of the day and the weekend is lost to me but that hour and a bit were and remain special, more so because I was showing off my home.

All of which just leaves me to reflect on the postcard which was marketed in the USA and carried the imprint of the American YMCA of which there must be a story, but not for now.

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Greenwich Park, 1905 from the series Greenwich, marketed in 1911-12 by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

When pop music was Saturday Club at home in Well Hall

Saturday Club on the Light Programme still has the power to invoke fond memories.

Now if you are my generation, born in the decade after the last World War who entered their teenage years to the sound of Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Cliff Richard and who can still remember listening to “She Loves You” for the first time, Saturday Club was essential listening.

It had begun in 1955 but I suppose I was not really aware of its existence for another five years.

Back then if you wanted to listen to pop music on the radio it was slim pickings.

There was of course Radio Luxembourg which I listened to on my small transistor radio but the adverts for Horace Batchelor* plus the way the signal would fade and wane irritated me.

And on Saturday nights after the football results there was Juke Box Jury and later Thank Your Lucky Stars which showcased the latest singles and passed judgement on them.  But all too often these were shows watched by the whole family and as much as I loved my parents and young sisters there were times when you wanted to listen alone.

Now Saturday Club just fell into that requirement.

It went out after my sisters were at Saturday Morning Pictures and mum and dad were doing things.

It’s only real rival for me was Pick of the Pops the following afternoon, that rapid whizz through a week’s chart ups and downs.

This after all was the time when I was still too young to go to the dance hall above Burton's on Well Hall Road and those other live music venue like the Welcome Inn and the Yorkshire Grey were out of the question.

But then came Radio Caroline in 1964 followed by its rival radio London and things just were not the same again.

All of which is teetering on nostalgic tosh and so to the point.  Saturday Club was one of those programmes which didn’t just play records but offered up live performances with interviews which always appealed to me.

But the attention span of a teenager is fickle and with the arrival of Ready Steady Go with its visual and slightly edgy feel I was pulled in a totally new direction.

Top of the Pops might be required viewing to be shared with the whole house and discussed the following day at school but RSG had me hooked.

So bit by bit Saturday Club faded but has never quite left me, and as I head towards my 77th year I still have Tony Blackburn offering me something of the same on Radio 2 with “Sounds of the Sixties.”

Now that is perhaps the point to close but not before one last observation, which is that I know I am growing old when the music of my youth is now played on Radio 2.

Pictures; of Brian Matthew & Saturday Club, featured on Saturday Club** and Burtons in the mid 1960s


* Horace Cyril Batchelor was as an advertiser on Radio Luxembourg. He advertised a way to win money by predicting the results of football matches, sponsoring programmes on Radio Luxembourg.

**Saturday Club
This site is non profit making and solely for fans of Saturday Club to trade/swap off - air copies of the programme in whatever format eg reel to reel, cassette, cd etc, http://www.saturdayclub.info/