On Shooters Hill remembering the Great War at Christ Church

I am back on Shooters Hill in the company of Darrel Spurgeon's guide book.*

It is a book I keep returning to because it contains some fascinating history of Eltham and the surrounding areas and a set of first class walks.

So today I have lifted a little bit more of his walk along Shooters Hill and in particular Christ Church which is number two on the map and can be found by walking east up past the old police station as far as Red Lion Lane.

The church is opposte.

“Christ Church. A small Victorian Gothic church of 1856, the east end added in 1869.  

The exterior in unexceptional, but the interior is interesting with the atmosphere of a village church.  Note the fine east end and stained glass window of 1869 and a series of unusual roofshields.  

In 1900 Temple Moore added a coloured chancel screen, two large figures of winged angels in the chancel and decorated cornices.

In the churchyard is a graceful Great War Memorial cross of granite and in front of this the Ypres milestone, an 18th century milestone converted to a First World War memorial.  It reads: ‘130 miles to Ypres, in defending the salient our casualties were 90,000 killed, 70,500 missing, and 410,000 wounded.’ 

Note the modern milestone on the opposite side of the road, with replicas of 19th century iron plates reading ‘8 miles to London Bridge and 7 miles to Dartford’, which used to be on the Ypres milestone.

To the east is Christ Church School.  The small central building is the old village school of 1857; the extension on either side is post war.”

*Discover Eltham, Darrell Spurgeon, 2000

Pictures; map and photograph courtesy of Darrell Spurgeon

On Shooters Hill with Mrs Craven and George Field in the June of 1841

I have decided to head north of Well Hall to Shooters Hill in search of a story. 

Back in the 1830s and 40s, it was a mixed bunch of those deriving an income from the land and the well off.

So of our forty two people in gainful employment in the June of 1841 the largest group were those who described themselves as agricultural labourers, farm servants or gardeners.

These were followed by those of “Independent means” along with one solicitor, a governess, a tea broker and a publican.

They lived fairly close together on the southern side of Shooters Hill on a stretch facing the Bull Inn.

And I guess quite a few of our band of workers would have spent time in the company of George Field who along with his wife Mary ran the Bull Inn.

Not that I would expect the Bull was ever frequented by Louisa Crewe who rented 21 acres  from the Crown and lived in Hazelwood House which was a big enough pile for it to be marked and named on the tithe map of 1844.

She had not long become a widow.

But of her, her employees and the others in Shooters Hill more next time.
Location, Shooters Hill , London

Picture; detail from the tithe map of Eltham, courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

Eltham from the pen of Llwyd Roberts ....... nu 1 the old parish church circa 1840

Now I am a great fan of the work of Mr Llwyd Roberts.

He was born in Borth in Cardiganshire in 1875 and was articled to a Derby architect later spending  seven years as a draughtsman in Burton Upon Trent before working for a series of Welsh newspapers.

After war service and a period in the British army of occupation he settled in Eltham at Bloxham-gardens working as a topographical artist and concentrating on drawings of the ancient buildings of Kent.

And it will be during this time that he produced the drawings in the book.

Now I have to say that they fascinate me.  Some are quite clearly drawn from his direct observation of the buildings while others may be from earlier pictures and a few are a careful attempt to reconstruct a scene from an earlier period.

All of which may mean that some at least may not be an entirely accurate depiction of the past, but that said I suspect they are as close as we going to get.

Many were published in the Kentish Times in 1930 and as you do I went looking for copyright permission but given that the Kentish Times has now ceased to publish and the pictures are over 85 years old I think I should be OK.

I featured some of my favourite deawings earlier in the year and over the next few days I shall show so more.

According to Mt Roberts this "was the old parish Church.and the Kings' Arms as they might have loked between 1840-1860."

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Parish Church; drawn circa 1930, Llwyd Roberts

Posters from the Past ........... no 17 ......... Woolwich .......Walking The River

Now the project is simple, take an image of a building we all love and turn it into the style of poster which was popular in the middle decades of the last century.*

And because so many of us have fond memories of the foot tunnels under the Thames, here is our take on how Woolwich Borough Council might have marketed the trip.

Location;Woolwich

Painting; Woolwich Foot Tunnel, © 2018 Peter Topping,  Paintings from Pictures, from a photograph by Neil Simpson, 2016

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 

*Posters from the Past, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Posters%20from%20the%20Past

The Tale at Eltham …….

Now I really wish I knew just what the “Tale at Eltham" was, but alas it is lost.

Nor I suspect did anyone know just what had gone on in Eltham in the October of 1917 when this picture postcard was sent to Miss Goddard of Sussex.

I can tell you that it was sent at 2.30 in the afternoon, but can’t make out from where it was posted.

Nor can I really be sure that the sender or Miss Goddard had any connection with Eltham, which leave me wondering if it had been the two “young things” that caught the attention of Eliza who sent it.

But then these picture postcards were standard fare, with the company merely over printing different destinations to attract local audiences.

Some where in the collection I have another with a different place name.

The message on the back is difficult to read but hints a at a boat trip and an admonishment that Miss Goddard hadn’t written recently.

So that is it, a little bit of 1917 which might or might not have a connection with Eltham.

Location; Suffolk and maybe Eltham

Picture; The Tale at Eltham, 1917, from the collection of David Harrop

Walking Well Hall Lane in 1843, all fields and not a lot else

I am back in Well Hall, or to be more accurate just north of what was Well Hall House and heading north through what is now the Progress Estate.

What is now Well Hall Pleasaunce is down at the bottom of the map, and our journey up along Well Hall Lane to Shooters Hill would have been a pleasant enough stroll past open fields.

Now what makes this such a fascinating stroll is that courtesy of this tithe map and the accompanying notes, we know who owned this land, who rented it and what it was used for.

All of which makes such a stroll a journey deep into the Eltham of the 1840s.  We can even find out who lived in the cottages in that year and comparing these with census returns, and rate books get an idea of just how long people stayed put in one place.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London













Picture; detail of the land to the north of 1843 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

An invitation to the church do and the story of Peter Wakeman

The invitation 

Until a few days ago I had no idea that Peter Wakenham ever existed, but he did and he has left an interesting paper trail for a man who described himself as a labourer.

We know where he lived in the middle decades of the 19^th century, the names of his wife, two children and when he died.

To this we can also add his birth year and the fact that on September 5th 1833 he was invited to the slap up meal in honour of the Rev. J.K. Shaw Brooke who had completed fifty years as the vicar of Eltham

Now none of this is unusual but men like Peter have tended to be forgotten by history.  It is not that they have been written out but rather no one thought them significant enough to be written in.

Peter in Court Yard from the 1841 census 

All of which is a shame because Peter lived in Eltham for 74 years, worked the land as an agricultural labourer and unlike some of his contemporaries could write his own name.

Now this we know because at the wedding of his daughter in 1840 he signed his name as a witness while both his son in law and his father left their mark. 

His signature in 1840

Illiteracy was still a real problem and to get some idea of the number of people who couldn’t read and write in 1851 the authors of  the census on Education fell back on the simple test of how many were able to sign their marriage certificate as against those who put a cross or mark. 

The “test of marriage marks” was not in itself an over accurate form of assessment as the report pointed out “the art of writing is with great facility forgotten by the poor who find no application for it, while for various causes some who can write nevertheless decline to sign the register.”*

It did however show that the number of people signing with a mark had progressively been dropping from 1839. In that year it was 41.6%, in 1840, 42%, and down to 40.8% in 1841 and by 1851 was 38%.

Wedding record for Ann Wakeham in 1840

And while there was a 4% fall in the numbers of men and women who used their mark this hid a disparity between the sexes. Men using their mark dropped from 33.7% in 1839 to 30.8% in 1851 while in women it fell from 49.5% to 45.3%,

But both his children could write.  Ann signed her name at her wedding and his son was to rise to become a farm bailiff.

What is more remarkable is the way that Peter came to my attention.  There were plenty of agricultural labourers in Eltham all of whom have been remembered in some official records but by sheer chance Peter’s invitation to the Jubilee dinner for Shaw Brooke survived and was recorded by the historian R.R.C. Gregory.

The invitation

One side was printed “1833. Eltham Jubilee, in commemoration of the 50th year the Rev. J.K. Shaw Brooke has resided within the parish as Vicar, universally beloved and respected” and invited “Peter Wakemean ... to partake on Thursday , the 5th day of September, of a dinner provided by public subscription in token of the respect and regard entertained the Vicar of the Parish Of Eltham, 1833

N.B. You are quested to wear this card with the other side in front, in a conspicuous manner, to attend on the day in the Court Yard and to bring with you a knife and fork.”

And that was what Peter Wakeman did for according to Mr Gregory “around the card are the needle marks to shew that it had been carefully sewn upon some conspicuous part of his attire.”**

The day went well and the invitation card was kept, eventually being attached to the back of an engraving of the vicar where it stayed for nearly 75 years.

Court Yard in 1844

Peter died in 1852 and for part of his later years he had lived with his son and family.  Before that we have him on Court Yard which was a densely packed row of 17 houses on the east side and another smaller group facing them.

I can’t place him exactly along the row but this was where he was in 1833 and where he was still living eight years later.

But there is still more to do.  Sadly the parish records are incomplete for the period that his children would have been baptised, but the entry for 1815 gives us the name of his daughter Ann and his wife Sarah. 

Now the hunt is on for both Ann and Sarah.  At present I know Sarah married in Woolwich in 1840 and that Sarah had died before the June of 1841, but there will be more.

It is all just a matter of patient research and perhaps another lucky break like the invitation card, which is how I like my history, a bit messy and always full of surprises.

Next; A walk down Court Yard in the June of 1841

Baptismal record of Ann Wakeman 1815

Pictures; of Peter’s invitation card 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, 1843 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

*1851 Census of Great Britain on Education

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

Baptismal records and census extracts from ancestry.co.uk courtesy of The National Archives

With John Fry, builder, sawyer, land agent and appraiser in Eltham circa 1837

Fry's Buildings numbered as 264-275 in 1844

John Fry is another of those people that has faded pretty much from history.

He appears only once in The Story of Royal Eltham* and yet the more I looked into the contemporary records the more there was about the man.

He is there of course in the census returns but also the land tax records, the tithe schedule and the parish records.

Not bad for a man who up until recently I knew only as a name for a block of cottages tucked behind the High Street.

All of which remains an instructive lesson in how even the forgotten of history can be rediscovered.

Which begs the question of why John Fry?

The answer is partly because the paper trail is there and also that such people were important to the community and so deserve to be recorded as such.

He was born in 1792 in Kent, possibly at Tunbridge and may have been in Eltham by 1818 for although I can find no record of his marriage to Henrietta she was from Eltham and their first daughter was baptized in the parish church in October 1819.

The Smithy just a little east of their home, 1909

He described himself variously as a builder, carpenter, sawyer, land agent and appraiser and in 1833 he built Fry’s Buildings which were just north of the High Street.

They were twelve wooden cottages** which faced east across the fields with longish gardens at the rear.

The buildings were only demolished in 1957 to make way for an extension to Hinds Store and an additional playground to the old village school on Roper Street.

As cottages go they were a decent size consisting of three rooms upstairs and two down.***  And in 1837 were assessed for the land tax at £3 12shillings.

It was these properties which allowed him to qualify to vote in Parliamentary elections and in the election of 1837 he voted for the two Tory candidates.

Fry's Buildings and their home shown in in yellow, 1858-73

His standing in the community was high enough for him to be one of the assessors for the land tax in 1837 and he was active as a church warden.

All of which does bring him out of the shadows.

We know also that his three daughters were all baptized in the parish church, and that he his eldest was still living with him in 1871.****

There is still much to uncover but as  a start I am pretty pleased with how much we know about John and Harriet and so we will leave them in their house set back from the High Street in a long garden a little west of his twelve cottages.

This house, the workshop and his garden he rented from a Francis Kirkpatrick of which
more later.

Location; Eltham, London

*R.R.C.Gregory, the Story of Royal Eltham, 1909
**Ibid Gregory
***1911 census
**** Harriet, 1819, Lydia, 1823,and Sarah 1825

Pictures, 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
and Fry's Buildings from the the OS map of Kent 1858-73, the Smithy 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

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

Sherard House and Church Row in Eltham in 1841 and Richard White census enumerator

Sherard House from the garden, 1909

This is Sherard House and once again I set out to describe the place and once again I have got side tracked.

But I shall start with a little of what I know.

 It stood on the High Street roughly on the site of the Nat West Bank, was built in 1634 and retained many of the original features including “the handsome mantelpieces of carved oak, oak panelling which surrounded the library and the quaint old open fire places.*

By the 1840s the front had been changed considerably but the rear remained unaltered although it would have been difficult to see the features given that it was covered in ivy.

And I would  have loved to walk through its 20 rooms and sat in the garden which extended north to the footpath known as the Slip.

Church Row numbered 316-320 and Sherard House 311 and garden 309, 1844

I can’t be sure at present but I think in the June of 1841 it was occupied by a Jane Edwards who was attended to by six servants but had moved on by 1843 when Sherard House was home to Samuel and his wife Frances and their children.

The Jeffreys were well off, farming 256 acres of land north of the High Street around Well Hall.

Not that they or any of our people of property can be said to have lived a life excluded from those of the less well off.

At the bottom of their garden were the five gardens of Church Row, in which lived the families of a shoemaker, carpenter, plumber and three agricultural labourers.

And these people fascinate me.  There was John and Dorothy Fiske, Anne Wakeman, John and Susanna Francis who shared with Joseph and Jane Arnold, while further down the row lived the Russell and Blundell families.

What is all the more remarkable is that these ordinary families show up in a range of official documents from the tithe schedule to the parish records.

The opening page of the census Enu 4 Eltham Kent , 1841 with Richard's signature

All would have been known to Richard White schoolmaster and the enumerator who in the June of 1841 was responsible for delivery the census forms to the 126 households on the north side of the High Street from the church down to South End.

His was the job of making sense of what had been written and in some cases of filling in the forms of those who were illiterate.

These enumerators were not slow to amend and correct the entries, sometimes even altering the occupations listed by a householder.

Now Richard White is an interesting chap and I only wish I knew more about him.  He would have been paid for his work, and may have been selected from a number of people who applied for the job.

Baptismal record of Catherine White, 1838

He lived with his wife in Pound Yard close to the National School, and baptised his two children at the parish church, and then he falls out of history.

I can’t find him or his wife Mary, although there is one official reference to their son later in the century.  Neither of them was from Eltham so perhaps they moved on.

I suspect the rate books may give me a clue, and I have yet to pursue the school records, but in the meantime I shall leave them, but secure in the knowledge that I will return to both them and the occupants of Church Row.

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

Pictures; Sherard House 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

Baptismal records and census extracts from ancestry.co.uk courtesy of The National Archives

Heating and hammering at the smithy on Eltham High Street in the June of 1840

The smithy close to the present library, 1909

I like the way that Eltham is revealing more of its past.

Now I say Eltham as if it was a person which it isn’t but in the last few months I rediscovered my love of the place and in so doing have dug deep into its history.

As ever my starting point has been the book written by Richard Robert Castell Gregory in 1909. His The Story of Royal Eltham is a scholarly treasure trove of stories made all the more rich because he could draw on the memories of people born in the first few decades of the 19th century when Eltham was a rural community.

And of course at the heart of all such communities was the black smith.

When he was hammering and heating at his forge he acted as a magnate for people.  Some coming to collect a repaired tool or bringing a horse which was in need of a new shoe would stop and pass the time of day.

And there were always requests to personalise a farm tool. This might mean making a left handed scythe or widening or narrowing hoe blades used to chop out weeds.  Then there would be the endless procession of labourers needing tools sharpened from bill hooks and scythes to axes and all the other types of edged tools.

Mr Metcalf

In the process he  might well replace the broken or split staves.

And all the time, gangs of children attracted to the smithy by the red hot metal and frequent shower of sparks would stand and stare rooted to the spot.

“The farrier’s shop which stood to the west of Sun Yard nearer to the lane was one of the features of the High-street.  It was very old, and just before its destruction was in a dilapidated condition.  It was at one time worked by Mr Foster and his two sons Richard and William.

The last tenant was Mr Metcalfe.

An interesting adventure of old Mr. Foster is told in connection with this shoeing forge.  He had been shoeing a horse which was afterwards taken down to the Court.  

So he got astride the animal and proceeded to take it home himself.  On crossing the Moat bridge, however, the horse was frightened by a boy with a hoop, and bearing his rider with him jumped over the parapet.  Horse and man lighted upon s tack of bricks, and both of the miraculously escaped injury.  Fate however was not always kind to Mr. Foster.  Not long after he had escaped the perils of that terrible leap, he chanced to be getting over the stile at the end of the lane near to the smithy, slipped, and broke his leg.”

Now I thought I had identified the blacksmith who hammered and heated by the High Street.  In 1841 this was George Smith who was in Eltham by 1823 and still active at his forge in 1841.

All of which made Mr Foster a mystery and I assumed a later black smith.  But no he was there in 1840 working alongside George Smith and Thomas Doderell.  All three are listed in the tithe schedule as working the smithy, although by 1841 Thomas Foster was 70 years old and a decade later had retired and was in one of the Alms houses, leaving the business to his son Robert aged 35.

The smithy

George Smith snr was by then in hospital and his son appears with no trade, all of which makes a tad still confusing.

All of which leaves me to track down Thomas Doderell and Mr Foster’s other son.

But at least the Fosters have come out of the shadows and I pretty much know exactly where the stile was which Mr Foster fell off and broke his leg.

Picture; the Smithy 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

Walking Well Hall in the April of 1844

Well Hall in 1746

Walk along Well Hall Road which runs from the High Street north to Shooters Hill  on a sunny day and  it is a pleasant enough trip which starts with the church takes in the Tudor Barn and the Progress Estate before finishing with the common and the woods.

Had you done the same journey in the spring of 1844 it would of course have been very different. Back then it consisted of some farms, a posh house and a collection of cottages with the odd pond and lots of open land.

These were a mix of arable, meadow and pasture land with the woods stretching off north and east bordering Shooters Hill.

Here were agricultural labourers, a blacksmith, some “middling families” and an assortment of others who made their living from teaching to tailoring.

And it is these people’s lives in this small hamlet north of Eltham High Street that I want to explore.

Well Hall House, 1909

1844 is a good point to start because in that year the tithe map and schedule had been published which detailed who owned the land, who rented it and the use it was put to along with its value.

So just north east of the Pleasaunce was Andrews Meadow which was a six acre plot of meadowland farmed by Samuel Jeffryes and owned by Sir Gregory Page Turner and a little further north and on the land that would become the Well Hall Estate was Bridge Field and Eleven Acres which confusingly was actually 26 acres of arable land.

Now there is no reason for me choosing these two fields over others except that I am drawn to any piece of land with my name and to the field where our old house now stands. All of which is a bit self indulgent and so back to the inhabitants of Well Hall.

Baptismal record of Charlotte, daughter of Samuel and Frances Jeffryes, 1837

As ever it is the people of property that we know most about and two of these were Samuel and Frances Jeffryes.

We know their children, where the family lived, something of how they made a living and even how Samuel voted in the key Parliamentary elections of 1837 and 1847.

Now the picture is not complete and there is much research still to be done but there is enough for a story.

Samuel was born in 1803 and came from Shropshire.  Frances was five years younger and had been born in Wales. Their early married life was spent in Shropshire in the village of Sutton where they had five children but by 1837 they were in Eltham and it was here that Frances gave birth to another eight who were all baptized in the parish church.

Burial record of Samuel Jeffyres, 1867

At one point in the late 1830s they lived in Well Hall House which was that large eighteenth century house beside the Tudor Barn but were on what is now Eltham High Street quite close to the church by 1844.

He variously described himself as a “farmer” and a “gentleman” and in the 1840s farmed over 250 acres north of the High Street much of which boarded Well Hall Lane.  And despite moving to Westminster both were buried back in the parish church.

It would have been a short walk from their home on Eltham Street to the church but a slightly longer one from there down to Well Hall for their route would have taken them west past the church to what is now Sherrard Road down past the big pond in Homefield and then on by twists and turns to Well Hall House the home of the Reverend Charles Gulliver Freyer and a short walk on to the six houses a little beyond Kidbrook Lane occupied by John Evans and six other families.

And beyond this just open fields up to the common and Shooters Hill, which is all to the good given that this is fast becoming just a travelogue.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; map of Well Hall in 1746, Engraved by Richard Parr, surveyed and published by John Rocque, 1746 IDEAL HOMES: A History of South East London, the Universiyuy of Greenwich, http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/resources  Well Hall House 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, remaining images from the parish records of St John the Baptist

So were you in the Eltham Hill Gaumont on Sunday September 12 1965?

Now you pretty much know it’s time to get a life when you go looking for the date for a film listing for the Eltham Hill Gaumont.

Eltham Hill Gaumont, 1998

The listing was posted recently by Kath May and advertised the four films showing for the week beginning September 12.

For those with time on their hands on that Sunday the cinema was showing for just the one day The Unknown with Dean Jagger and Teenage Frankenstein with Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway.

With titles like that they were of course X rated under the old Board of Censorship classification and if there was anyone still unsure the listing carried the warning Adults only.

Now I have never really given it much thought but I suppose Sunday in the cinema in the 1950s and 60s would be a slow day.

The cinema , circa 1938

Most people would have gone on a Friday or Saturday night and the week would be given over to a more discerning audience, leaving Sunday for those just over 18 with money left in their pockets and with a taste for the macabre.

For the rest of the week starting on the Monday and running for a full six days there was Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn in Last Train from Gun Hill which was an A and Yul Brynner in Escape from Zahrain.

I went looking for the plots of the four films and wish I hadn’t bothered.  Suffice to say that today I doubt that even the most desperate of TV executives would look to showing them on even the graveyard slot.

So as a reward and in answer to Kath’s musings of when this week was I went off and roamed the records.  

Film poster, 1957

Now the films themselves were no clue.  The Unknown dated from 1956, Teenage Frankenstein from the following year and Last Train from 1959 which left Escape from Zahrain which was made in 1962.

But given that you can on the internet find a day if you have the month and the year with just a little bit of fiddling it was possible to place Sunday September 12 in 1965.

Which just leaves me to record that the Gaumont had opened on April 14 1938 showing Queen Victoria with Anna Neagle and closed on June 19 1967 with David Niven in Happy Go Lovely and Dana Andrews in Duel in the Jungle.*

It reopened as a Mecca Bingo Club and the rest as they say is a down to two fat ladies and a joyful shout of Bingo.

But I wouldn't have done the job properly if I didn't also try to date the second picture of the cinema.

It was showing Will Hay's film Oh Mr Porter which was released in 1937 and so I am guessing it will be the late 1930s.

And that's all I am going to say except to thank Kath for finding and posting the film listing leaving me to go off and watch the paint dry on the back door.

Picture; the old cinema November 1998 courtesy of David Simpson and sometime before 1952, cousinadnab taken from Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991 and film poster for Teenage Frankenstein, 1957 which is in the public domain

* Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991

Looking for Mr. Henry Charles Digby of Eltham ……… you go looking for one …. and you find two

I am the first to say that history is messy and just when you think you have got a story from the past just right, the past throws you a wobbler.

And that is what happened today when I decided to follow up a post from yesterday.

I first came across a picture of the Old King’s Head in the catalogue of Greenwich Heritage Centre, wrote a story on the pub and moved on, fully intending to go back and write some more.

Of course, I never did, but after reposting the story  yesterday, I was drawn back by the name of the postcard publisher, who was a C.H. Digby of Eltham.

Finding Henry Charles Digby proved relatively easy.  He was born in Walworth in 1854, and was living in Camberwell in 1891, working as a clerk.

A full ten years later he was married with a daughter and lived in Beckenham where he worked as a “Printer’s manager”

By 1910 he was on Eltham High Street at no. 31 and from at least 1918 was at no. 6 Glenlea Road where he died in 1936.

All text book research, and the connection with printing, made the story of the postcard publisher.

Except that also in Eltham, at the same time was another Henry Charles Digby.  Both appear on the electoral rolls from the 1919 onwards with the second Mr. Digby living at Footscray Road and later Southwood Road.

What distinguishes them is that my first Henry Charles was married to Rachael, while the second was married to Beatrice Deborah, but both were living in Eltham with their respective wives from 1919

At first I missed the glaring fact that there were two wives, and two different addresses, and only spotted that something was not quite right, when one Henry Charles died in 1936 and the other was still alive two years later.

So, there remains a mystery, but it will be one that someone will help solve, perhaps coming up with more picture postcards, marketed by one of our Mr. Digbys, and locating both on the 1911 census which I have failed to do.

Location Eltham

Picture; the Old Kings Head, High Street Eltham, GRW 276, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/
courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Sources; Census records, Enu 11 15 Camberwell, Cambewell, London, Enu 16 51, Beckenham, Kent, Electoral Rolls for Woolwich, 1910-38, Burial Register St John's Eltham, 1936, Directory 1925, Probate, 1936

*At the Kings Arms waiting for Fred Wisdom to pull a pint, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/at-kings-arms-waiting-for-fred-wisdom.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR3GYAPWiZaK8PRGUZ0kbHOnpuKKzx3mmp9r52SxI6-alog4zdsJrZeKzHU

On Eltham High Street ......... looking for Mr Brown

Now, it is so easy to get lost in an old picture of Eltham.

Eltham Village, date unknown

This is one that my friend Tricia found and posted recently.

The caption says Eltham Village and the post mark on the back is 1904.

That said I think the photograph maybe much older, given that the picture has been heavily retouched.

It is a familiar one showing the old brewery and the High Street.

And as you do I went looking for clues, and there on the corner of the wall on the southern side is a shop sign for Thomas Brown.

The shop of Mr Thomas Brown

This usually offers up a way of anchoring the scene in a time, because Mr Brown should show up on a census return and a street directory.

But he doesn’t.

There is a Thomas Brown and this one lives on Eltham High Street but in the 1880s and 90s he was residing in Sun Yard and gave his occupation variously as a road labourer and gardener.

Nor did he appear to have a son called Thomas.

The earliest street directories I can access are from 1914 and no shop keeper called Thomas Brown appears on the list.

That said I did discover that four doors up from the old Chequers pub were the “dining rooms” run by a Mr Charles Wollard who was still there four years later.

His near businesses included a cycle manufacturer, a watch maker, two confectioners, an oilman, a linen draper, and Mrs Alice Brotherton’s refreshment rooms.

Eltham Brewery

I will in due course go looking for Mr Wollard’s dining rooms which may have been a cut above his rival.  Mrs Alice’s premise were a modest affair and no doubt consisted just of the front room of her five roomed house.

She was there from 1911 and it may well have been a way of making an income after her husband who was a parish road builder had died.

They had lived just over the road in Jubilee Cottages and it would be nice to think that some of her neighbours might have dropped in or that she had a small order delivered from the brewery opposite

Of course that is just fanciful tosh and gets me no nearer a date for the picture postcard, which does not even provide the name of the manufacturer of the card.

Still it is a nice picture and I thank Tricia for finding it.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Village, circa 1904 from the collection of Tricia Leslie

Shopping on Well Hall Road in the summer of 1907

Well Hall Parade in 1907

Now I am back with two more from Greenwich’s collection of old photographs.

They are both of Well Hall Road and are separated by just eight years.

Of the two the first offers up much more detail of what this row of shops looked like just over a century ago.

And it is a world away from today.

It starts with those ornate lamps protruding from the shop fronts which may have been lit by oil but I suspect will have been gas.

The chemist,  the fancy draper and the watchmaker, 1907

Then there are the large windows  with their iron frames which have just a hint of ornate decoration, which are topped by the names of the owners some of which will have been painted but others might have been etched on glass.

And finally there are the shop displays some of which adhere to that old Edwardian maxim of pile them high and sell them cheap.

Now I rather think it must either be a Sunday or early one morning as most of the shops have their blinds down, even though some have opened their large canopies.

On balance I would go for a Sunday afternoon sometime in the summer judging by the number of  pedestrians and the way the light is falling.

And for those with an even keener eye for detail there are no tram lines and of course a total absence of traffic bar the solitary horse and cart.

The caption says 1907 and assuming that there hasn’t ben a rapid turn over of shop keepers the shop on the corner with Greenvale Road opposite the Co-op was Mr William’s who was a cycle maker and seems to have left his shop signs propped up outside.

Little change in 1915 on Well Hall Road

And using the same street directory for 1908 it is possible to identify all the shops and their owners up to the chemists run by the London Drug Company.

Nor has much changed in the eight years that takes us up to the second picture taken in 1915.

By then the tram has arrived, there is a little more traffic which might just be explained by the fact that the shops are open and there are a fair few people about.

It is easy to forget that our parade of shops would have been as colourful as those of today and each would have displayed their names on the awnings which on this sunny day were pretty much all down.

Picture; Well Hall Road in 1907, GRW 378, and 1915, GWR380 http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

“Longing to tell you ‘the Tale’ at Eltham” ……. October 12th, 1917

Now sadly I doubt that the “The Tale” in the picture postcard refers to the short story written in 1916 by Joseph Conrad and published the following year.

Nor did the recipient live in Eltham.

She was a Miss Nell Goddard who lived in Wenhaston, which is a small village of 818 people in north west Suffolk.

The Domesday Book records that the village had a mill, a church and woodland sufficient to feed sixteen hogs.

Wenhaston, briefly had a railway station which was part of the Southwold Railway which opened in 1879 and closed in 1929 and today has a “thriving pig farm industry.” *

But it does have a pre-Reformation panel painting depicting the Last Day of Judgement, which Miss Nell would have known, because the panel was discovered during restoration work to the church in 1892.

All of which is a long way from Eltham and leaves me to think that this was one of those picture postcards produced in their thousands which were over printed with the names of different places.

That said I like it.

And given that we have the name of the manufacturer, who was a W & K Lonson along with a serial number, we might in the fullness of time find out more.

I hope so.

Location; 1917

Picture; postcard, courtesy of David Harrop

* Wenhaston, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenhaston

The Eltham we have lost, part 2........ The old lane by the National Schools, 1908

Another of those pictures of Eltham’s past which need no comment

This is the old lane by the National Schools as it was in 1908.  The lane is now Archery Road and 'One acre Allotments' was on the right.









Picture; the old lane,  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

Recreating the lost Well Hall House with Edith Nesbit

Well Hall House from Well Hall Road, 1909

Well Hall House has passed out of living memory.

It was built in 1733, was home to some Eltham notables and was demolished in 1930.

It stood between Well Hall Road and the moat and replaced the Tudor manor house which Sir Gregory Page knocked down to build his fine 18th century house.

But a building which dominated Well Hall, and was known by many seems to have left little trace.  There are a few photographs a handful of maps and the land records of the tithe schedule.

Well Hall, 1874

Together these show a tall building which ran to three floors, had a wing on each side and was set in an estate of about 33 acres including a front garden, a walled garden to the south, the moat , three ponds, a stream and much meadow and pasture land along with the farm buildings which included the present Tudor Barn.

A little to the north were Well Hall Cottages which in the 1840s had been a complex of six properties but by 1911 seem to have become a farm house and one cottage.

But Well Hall house was sufficiently enclosed that I doubt the cottages proved much of an intrusion, and so within its grounds the occupants of the big house got on with their favoured lives wandering the fourteen rooms and looking out east across the fields and west across their gardens.

Judging by the photographs I am not sure it was a place that would have caught my fancy.  It was tall and the design fitted that classical style of balance so that what you saw on one side was replicated on the other.

All of which is not much for a house which stood for just under two hundred years, but as these things work there is one other source of information, and that comes from Edith Nesbit, the novelist who lived in the house from the late 19th century into the twentieth.

Contained in some of her books are references to Eltham, Well Hall and the house itself.  And of these it is The Red House written in 1902 which provides some wonderful insights into the place.

The back of Well Hall House from the Paddock and moat, 1909

The book itself is a light account of the lives of a newly married couple who inherit the Red House and choose to live there.

In the course of the year that follows Ms Nesbit describes in some detail the house, its gardens, the nearby cottages with references to the village the parish church and offers up walk on parts for both Woolwich and Blackheath.

But it is the house which draws you in, with its panelled rooms, great hall, vaulted cellars and kitchen still with the equipment which would have been in use through the 18th and 19th centuries.

Added to this there are observations about the rooms which had been much messed about by changing fashion.

The front of Well Hall House, date unknown

Now like all such descriptions I suspect there will be points when the Red House departs from the actuality of the original, but I am confident that there is more that will have been the same than less.

This in turn stretched to her descriptions of the gardens, including the walled one, the presence of the railway with its station and embankment and the parish church.

Edith and her husband Hubert had taken on the house and 7 acres of the land.

Of course there may be more sources of information sitting in the Greenwich Heritage Centre and in the letters of the people who visited Edith and her husband at Well Hall which included the Webb’s, H.G.Wells and Bernard Shaw but in the meantime the Red House seems to have done the old place proud.

Location; Well Hall, London


Pictures; Well Hall House circa 1909,  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Rob Ayers, http://gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm and Well Hall House, from The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ map of Well Hall from the OS Map of Kent 1858-74