What we did in October when we were still a farming community

Cows on the meadows, 2003

An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community.

Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned to The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.*

It was written in 1844, and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer.

Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”

He calculated that that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

Nor should we forget that these animals were destined for the table and so the slaughter of pigs was best done around Martinmas in early November because “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured” and doing so in early November had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

But today and over the next few weeks I want to drop in to another farming book which is H Rider Haggard’s A Farmer’s Year, written in 1898 and published the following year.

Now he was farming in Norfolk a full half century later than Mr Stephens and of course Norfolk isn’t rural Chorlton or Eltham or anywhere in south east London..

Harrowing in Mustard on stubble

That said this is what he wrote for the beginning of October.

“Since harvest about 250 loads of manure have been carted from the yards direct to the various fields where they are to spread, and sundry dykes on the marshland have been drawn.  

Also a little thrashing has been done and we sold some barley at sixteen shillings and fifteen shillings according to its quality.

Today October 5th we are ploughing on the bean stubble but with the soil in its present condition it is dreadfully hard work for the horses.”


*Stephens Henry, The Book of the Farm, 1844

** Haggard, H Rider, A Farmer’s Year,  1899

Pictures; the Meadows, courtesy of David Bishop 2003, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899

Outside the Rising Sun with a bit of old Eltham circa 1890

The old Rising Sun Inn circa 1890

Now I am drawn to this picture of the old Rising Sun.

I have fond memories of spending evenings in the place when I was much younger and it was also a favourite of my late brother in law.

But of course this was the old Rising Sun which stood on the site of the present library and is the start of that little series which aims to reflect on what Eltham was like at the beginning of the 20th century just before the great changes transformed it from rural outpost to a suburb.

It dated back something like two hundred years and went with the development of the area by the Borough Council shortly after the turn of the last century.

The Smithy with the Rising Sun and Sun Yard, 1858-73

Along with the pub went Sun Yard, a coach building workshop, the smithy and “a number of quaint wooden buildings, including the coffee shop at the corner.”*

Of all of these I have become intrigued by Sun Yard which housed a collection of wooden cottages which were situated behind the inn and were approached by an archway formed by part of the inn buildings.

There were twenty of them in 1841 and perhaps another five a decade later.  We know who lived there what they did and the degree to which they were overcrowded and by the turn of the last century they were judged unfit and were demolished I guess at the same time as the Rising Sun.

And like the occupants of Sun Yard we can track the publicans from John Davison in 1841 to the widow Elizabeth Robinson ten years later and through the rest of that century.

Outside the Rising Sun

All of which will make a fascinating study in revealing just how often the occupants of Sun Yard like that of the inn keepers moved on or stayed put.  But that is for another time.

So we shall return briefly to our picture with the landlord standing outside, along with assorted carts whose drivers may well have been inside and the two boys drawn no doubt by the camera.

I don’t know the name of the landlord but I shall endeavour to find out, but I do know that the last blacksmith was a Mr Metcalfe and the smithy was in a dilapidated condition.

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

Picture; 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 detail from the OS map of Kent 1858-73

Back with the Rising Sun, a new picture and a little bit about Harry & Vincent Nicholl and their Albion Brewery in Lewisham

The Rising Sun circa 1890

The old Rising Sun stood on the site of the present library.

It dated back something like two hundred years and was swept away with the development of the area by the Borough Council shortly after the turn of the last century.

When I wrote the story I fully attended to follow up on finding out more about the landlord who stares back at us in this old photograph, but of course never did, but I shall do so later in the year.

The Rising Sun in 2014

In the meantime here is the new Rising Sun taken by Chrissie a few days ago.

I say the new Rising Sun but that is stretching it a bit for what you see went up in 1904 replacing our old pub which  in the words of our historian R.R.C. Gregory, “was a fair specimen of a village inn.”*

Now as most of you will know I do have a romantic side which is expressed in a feeling of sadness that some of our old buildings have vanished.

I would love to have sat inside and drank a pint of Nicholl’s best bitter.

It would have been made by Harry and Vincent Nicholl who opened the Anchor Brewery on Lewisham Road, and continued to brew under their name till the company was taken over by Whitbread in 1891 when brewing ceased and “the premises were converted into Whitbread’s first branch bottling and distribution centre.**

The landlord of the Rising Sun around 1890 and a promise to find out more

All of which confirms a date for our picture to sometime in or before 1890.

So with that fairly definite date, I see no excuse for not hunting down our landlord and writing something about him.

But in the meantime I shall return to the "new" Rising Sun which is just a century and a bit old today.

I do have a sneaking admiration for the present one.

It is a striking piece of architecture and I have to say I think Chrissie caught it at its best I the fading light of a February day.

Location; Eltham High Street, London

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

**H & V Nicholl’s Brewery co Ltd, Anchor Brewery, from  The Brewery Industry: A Guide to Historical Records, P249, L. Richmond & Alison Turton, 1990, Manchester University Press, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NB8NAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA250&lpg=PA250&dq=nicholls+brewery&source=bl&ots=Ek0o2INM5m&sig=HcMrTP4FMhZuu2cV2J98SGaMYrg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Upb8UuHdIOew7Aac14CIAw&ved=0CGwQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=nicholls%20brewery&f=false

Pictures; 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 Chrissie Rose February 2014

Unlocking a little of the story behind that picture of the Kings Arms in Eltham

I am back on Eltham Hill at the Kings Arms, sometime at the beginning of the last century.

Now I have written about the pub and one of its landlords already so today I want to focus on what is going on.

We are still early enough in the history of photography for people to stop what they are doing and stare back with curiosity at the camera.

I have no way of knowing who these two men are, but the second with the striped apron is clearly a local shopkeeper personally delivering something to the saddlers.

Hand carts like these and the bigger delivery vans were a common sight and most who could afford expected tradesmen to deliver to the door.

In the same way builders, painters and other craftsmen who could afford it also had their hand carts or horse drawn carts.

I think judging from the shadows it is a summer’s afternoon and not a lot is stirring.

With a little more effort I should be able track down W Collins, along with saddler, and already the Dartford Brewery Company Ltd, date the picture to after July 1897 and 1924 which narrows the search to for W. Collins and Racknall the Sadler.

Location; Eltham












Picture; from the collection of Jean Gammons.

A little bit of the history of our cottage hospital

Now it’s one of those odd little bits of personal history but I can’t ever remember going to the Eltham Cottage Hospital and nor did any of my sisters.

But during the time the building was being demolished and the new community health centre was going up plenty of people shared stories of the minor opps and a bit more that they received at the place.

And I was reminded of this when Sue Simpson sent me a picture of the new building in response to yesterday’s story about Passey Place.

All of which got me thinking about its history, which was longer and more chequered than I had thought.

I knew that back in 1914 it was the Eltham and Mottingham Cottage Hospital but had little idea of the rest until I stumbled on Lost Hospitals of London.*

The original hospital dated from 1880 when it was opened at no 9 on the High Street “founded mainly by wealthy local residents and was staffed by a nurse, a cook and an unpaid Superintendent” and relocated to Passey Place in 1898."

It is a fascinating story and the site offers up a shedful of information on the hospital over the rest of its 82 years.

It closed in 1980 and went through a number of different uses including a nursing home from 1989 till 2010.

But as someone else has done the research and presented it better than I could I will just point you to the link leaving me only to reflect that it was only in 1948 with the establishment of the National Health Service that we moved away from a health care system which relied on wealthy benefactors and fund raising activities.

Picture; the health Centre on Passey Place, June 2015, from the collection of Sue Simpson

*Eltham nad Mottingham Cottage Hospital, http://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/elthamandm.html