Travelling by tram round the Well Hall Circus

Now I have no idea when this picture was taken. 

I do know that it will date from after 1931 when the roundabout was built which according to Eltham and Woolwich Tramways was constructed as part of the Westhorne Avenue extension.*

And if I wanted to be more specific I guess it can be no earlier than 1938 a date which cinema buffs will confirm.

The Odeon was opened in 1936 and of the two films showing that week The Dark Horse was made in 1932 and I’ll give a million six years later.

I can’t say either would have got me walking down from our house.

The Dark Horse was a political comedy starring Bette Davies and turned on the efforts of Ms Davies and others to find a candidate for Governor at the Progressive Party convention and ran through a series of improbable plot lines.

Not to be out done its running mate that week centred around Warner Baxter who played a millionaire saving a tramp from suicide, and then taking the tramps clothes and disappearing with a rumour that he would give a million dollars to anyone who is kind to a tramp.

But perhaps I am being unfair.  I can sit through endless episodes of Coronation Street, have bought at least two DVDs of Downton Abbey and can pretty much quote James T Kirk word for word in all his Star Trek films and plenty of the TV shows.

And having demonstrated my unnerving attention to detail I can offer up the names of all those who occupied the shops stretching down from the cinema to the Pleasaunce when Ms Davies was at the Odeon.**

But I am on firmer ground with the second which dates from December 29 1948 and I have to say it doesn’t look so different from when I walked up Well Hall Road in the mid 1960s.

From memory the path across the roundabout had gone, along with the tram poles although I suspect under the tarmac still lurked the tramlines.

And for all I know they may still be there.

Like all good stories I learnt something knew because back in the 1940s our roundabout was, according to the London Transport timetable known as Well Hall Circus.

So that is all I shall say, except to thank Middleton Press for giving me permission to reproduce the pictures from their book Eltham and Woolwich Tramways and promise you more later.

Oh and a thank you to Tricia Leslie who first came across the pictures and posted them and then introduced me to the tram book.

Pictures; Arriving at the Well Odeon,  circa 1938, A J Watkins, and Well hall Circus, 1948, H B Priestley reproduced from Eltham and Woolwich Tramways

* Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, R J Harley Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

** A car, a row of shops and a little bit more is revealed about the history of Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/a-car-row-of-shops-and-liitle-bit-more.html

At the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, May 20th 1936

Now it would be a full 28 years after the Well Odeon was open that I first saw a film there.

And of course I have no idea what the film was or for that matter almost any of the pictures I went on to see at the place.

But it was a regular haunt made more so because I had the job of taking my sisters there on a Saturday morning.

Of all the picture houses I have been in there, was something special about the Odeon.

It started with that unique box office in the centre of the foyer, that thick carpet, the decor and of course the smell.

Put them all together and you felt that this was somewhere special, a place not only to be entertained but a place where for a few hours the daily routines along with the niggles of the day could be forgotten.

And these picture houses were designed for just that purpose.  Plenty of homes back in 1936 were still austere places little in the way of luxury and by comparison drab and dim and cold.

But the Well Hall Odeon radiated style from that tall glass and tiled tower to the sweep of the entrance roof.

And it was big. It dwarfed the houses that surrounded it stretched back and was only really challenged by the church opposite.

So I am really pleased that Chrissie shared the souvenir programme with me.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; souvenir booklet of the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, 1936 courtesy of Chrissie Rose

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

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

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

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

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

A token issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141

Turning back the hands of time ………… the ink pot

I have no idea of the age or origin of the carved bird’s head.

It has just always been part of my life, first as a child growing up in Well Hall, and then as an object which has travelled with me.

For years it sat on a bookshelf, was briefly hidden away in the cellar, and is now back on the desk in the study.

And its final resting place is where my parents intended it to be, when they gave it to me.

Just when that was I can’t remember, and a bit of me wonders if it was actually a present from my Uncle George, who would hunt out “interesting things” at jumble sales, and secondhand shops.

Wherever it came from I have to say it is indeed an “interesting thing”.

I think it is a unique piece of work, possibly owned by the person who carved it.

Nor is it just a decoration, because the head is hinged and when opened reveals a space for an ink pot, which suggests we are at a time beyond the ball point pen or the fountain pen.

And as the first mass produced fountain pens only date from the 1880s, I suspect our bird may predate that event, and come from that time when dip pens were still in use.

Of course, I have no way of knowing, and there lies the fun of it.

It may be that someone will be able to date it, and dispel my assertion that it was hand crafted, offering up the name of a firm or cottage industry which turned them out in their thousands.

We shall see.

Leaving me just to say that I did once use it for what it was intended for.

The ink came from a shop, and the dip pen from school, which would have been Samuel Pepys County Secondary Modern School, which  I attended from 1961 till 1966.

In the early 1960s, dip pens were still widely used in the school, as they had been in the Juniors I attended.

I may even have been one of the ink monitors who every morning and at the start of the afternoon, were tasked with filling the porcelain ink pots which sat in  recessed holes on each desk.

With them came blotting paper, and countless ink stains, from accidental spillages to deliberate acts of vandalism, which sometimes resulted  in inky walls, stained clothes and damaged textbooks.

Looking back, those who railed against the slow intrusion of the ball point pen, were not only attempting to hold back the future, but were condemning thousands of school children to blue fingers, the temptation of ink pellets, and a lot of grief from parents angry at the ink marks on shirts, ties and jumpers.

There was a brief moment when I thought about filling it again with some ink, but it lasted just a few seconds, and sat beside my dream of opening up the coal cellar and is as impossible as turning back the hands of time.*

And I was wrong, my Eagle ink pot is not home made but was indeed made by men of business, and this I know because David Millard told me so, but  not before he also admitted,

"I was a trusted ink monitor. Added water to powder, filled the inkwells and distributed them round the classroom in a special tray that looked as though it was meant for eggs. My god! Thanks for prompting that memory.

As for the inkwell it's Black Forest. They did bears, eagles, and a whole forest of animals. Benches, hat stands and inkwell holders were very popular. Yours is a good quality one from about 1880". 

Location; our house

Picture; the ink pot, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*Jimmy & David Ruffin - Turn Back the Hands of Time, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-knGjxcPms

Chubby Checker, cowboys and Pathe News ........... Saturday morning at Well Odeon with a thank you to Sandra

Now  I am revisiting Saturday morning pictures and in particular the Odeon at Well Hall.

And as ever the memories came flooding back with a fair number of people sharing their stories which got me thinking that so much of our recent history gets lost because we just take it for granted.

But these bits of our collective story are as important as any of the great events and are often just lost.
So here is Sandra Axford Wilcox’s own vivid recollections of the magic that was Saturday morning pictures.

"I remember Saturday morning pictures at We'll Hall Odeon. 

Everyone stamping their feet when the cowboys were chasing the Indians. 

The unmistakable voice of Pathe News. 

And the competitions, my big sister made me go up on the stage for a dance off - doing The Twist to Chubby Checker. 

The manager would walk along the stage holding a much coveted biro over each dancers head and whoever got the most cheers would win the pen.... and no, I didn't win."

All of which just leaves me to hope that a shed full of more memories will tumble out.

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Home thoughts from abroad nu 3 ................. lost in the woods in the summer of 1964

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

Now I say lost but that would not be strictly true but thinking back to that summer of 1964 I might as well have been.

This was the first summer after we had moved to Well Hall from Peckham and it was magic.

After all how could it be other wise?

True there were parks in Peckham and neighbouring New Cross but the woods above Well Hall were something different.

For a start they were big, stretching all the way to that unknown place called Welling, offered great views down across Eltham and Woolwich but above all were just somewhere to wander.

And as the next few years rolled by and I was faced with yet another broken romance, walking alone in the woods got me out and pushed away that feeling of teenage melancholy.  
.
I was too old to see the woods as an adventure playground but they were still a place of fascination.

We went back recently took the old familiar routes up to the Castle looked down towards Eltham Park and then headed across to Shooters Hill Road and the Red Lion.

Of course back in 1964 the pub would not have featured over much on my journeys, but a little over three years later the Welcome Inn would be a fine finishing point to a long wander through the woods.

None of us were 18 but we looked it and that was enough.

And it was here sometime around then that I got to watch one of those first colour transmissions of a tennis game on TV.

It’s hard now to think all we watched was in black and white and I have to say that afternoon in the Welcome was a revelation.

Today of course we take it for granted, the welcome has gone and I seldom walk the woods.

Location; Oxleas Woods, Eltham

Pictures; the Woods, 1976 courtesy of Jean Gammons, and looking down, 2015 from the collection of Ryan Ginn

*Home thoughts from abroad, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Home%20thoughts%20from%20abroad

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... nu 8 ....... magic days and evenings by the Tudor Barn

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

The Barn, 2017

I am guessing we all have our favourite memories of the Tudor Barn and the Pleasaunce.

Mine run from wandering around the gardens on warm sunny days with a girl friend enjoying that heady sense of romance mixed with the memories of the sunlight playing on the moat and the orange coloured brick work of the Barn

And if there is one special memory it will be of a Blues and Folk night sometime in the summer of 1966.

I can’t remember who was on but there was something magical about sitting in the small open air theatre listening to the music with all that history as a backdrop.

Junior Showtime in the Pleasaunce, 1967

For years afterwards I cherished the poster of the event which I bought for a shilling  from the entertainments office of the Council, and as you do I pasted it on the wall of my bedroom.

It featured a guitar and a pair of Chelsea boots in black on a white background and always reminded me of the Pleasaunce.

For my sisters one of their special moments might well be those summer entertainments put on during the holidays and featuring all sorts of kid’s entertainers.

By chance one of those Junior Showtime’s was photographed by the local paper and the clipping with our Jill aged about nine staring back at the camera has survived.

And there hangs a perfect moment in time down at the Tudor Barn.

Painting; The Tudor Barn © 2017 Peter Topping from a photograph by Scott MacDonald circa 2013

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures; https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Picture; Well Hall courtesy of Scott McDonald and Junior Showtime, August 20 1967 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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/

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

A bit of nostalgia for the Eltham of the 1960s

In the garden of 294 Well Hall, June 1964

Today I have descended into bit nostalgia for the Eltham of my youth.

Now this is not something I do often, after all nostalgia is a bit of a false trail.

In my experiences the sun didn’t always shine, ice cream was limited to those blocks of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate and you only ventured upstairs on a bus if you wanted to breathe in clouds of tobacco smoke.

And yet there was something special about growing up in Eltham in the 1960s.

I guess it started with the discovery of the woods just above where we lived on Well Hall Road.

Once in there they just seemed to go on and on.  Never underestimate that sense of adventure and sheer freedom that comes from walking the woods which of course is also matched by the knowledge that you can’t really get lost, for eventually if you walked far enough there was Welling while to the north was Shooters Hill and south Eltham Park.

All of which was pretty exciting to someone whose had grown up around New Cross.

© Scott Macdonald

And then there was the Pleasuance which with its barn and moat had a charm all of its own.  Not that I knew of the depth of its history, or of Well Hall House that 18th century mansion or the connection with Edith Nesbit.

But the place still had a magic with its Tudor walls and garden and summer evening concerts which the ever present railway station and trains did not spoil.

Thinking about I spent a lot of my time at Well Hall Station travelling back to school in New Cross for nearly three years and the crowded homewrd jorney in the afternoon rush hour.  Even now I can picture the scene as the train slowed to take the curve into the station and there in the distance was that impressive view of Shooters Hill, all trees dominating the horizon.

Not that the morning rush hour was the best time to take in the place.  For me that had to be late morning on a hot sunny day with just one other passenger on the platform.

There was stillness about the place and the only distraction was the smell from the warm oil which had soaked into the old wooden sleepers and  left its trail on the ballast stone.

© Scott Macdonald

All of which was shattered with that twanging noise from the wires to the signal box alerting you and the railway staff that the train was on its way.

I continued to use the station as a way of escaping back to New Cross and my old friends for a few months, before this gawky ill at ease teenager discovered that apart from the woods and the Pleasaunce Eltham had even more to offer.

That started with exploring the High Street and continuing on down along Bexley Road past Avery Hill Park.  And had I known it to the north was Crown Woods which a little over two years after we washed up in

Eltham was where I would go.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Scott MacDonald.

Touching home ……… two buses and heaps of Well Hall memories

Sometimes you need nothing more than a picture to create a flood of warm memories.

So here are two from my friend Chrissy Rose who like me grew up in Well Hall.

Both the 161 and the 122 passed outside our house, and all of us used them.

They were the workhorses of our childhood. 

The 161 took us south to the High Street, while the 122 whizzed us down to the Yorkshire Grey and on to Lewisham.

And both went north to Woolwich, offering up views across the Common and then down into the town.

That said it was always the return trip, passing the old Police Station on Shooters Hill and then the descent to the stop just beyond 294 which we called home for 30 years.

So thank you Chrissy, and I invite all of you to share your memories.

To which Chrissy has added "They were so special those old buses my uncle was a conductor at Catford garage , I bet he had a few stories to tell. Imagine now all that smoke on the top deck. I wonder if it's possible to date them by the registration numbers".

Location: somewhere with the 161 and 122.

Pictures; Two Eltham buses, date unknown, from the collection of Chrissy Rose

Lost scenes of Well Hall

Now this will be the last for a while of pictures of Eltham trams taken from that wonderful book on Eltham and Woolwich Tramways.*

But that said given that there are equally fascinating pictures of Woolwich, Charlton and Lee Green I reckon I will be back.

And one of the reasons is that each of the pictures reveals a lot about how we lived back nearly three quarters of a century ago.

So here is one that will be familiar to many.
We are on the platform of the old Well Hall Station looking down on the parade of shops and taking in the that climb up to the Woods.

It’s a scene I remember very well.

Of course by the time I was making that journey up from the station to 294 Well Hall the trams had long gone but I think the bakery was still there and the scene is not so different today.

That said the last time I looked 24 HOUR MINICABS were now operating from the shop but you can still make out on the side of the building the ghost sign for “Fyson’s Bakery Makers of Daren Bread” which has fared better than the chemist which once occupied the site.**

Or for that matter Daren bread which was a brown loaf popular in the 1930s and 40s which may also have been sold in the old Co-op which is just visible behind the tram.

I missed that Co-op building by a matter of months.  It had opened in 1906 and was demolished in 1964 just as we arrived.

It may still have been there but if so I don’t remember it or its successor being built,

And that is the value of the picture for despite the bits that seem familiar it is a scene which has vanished.

The tram went in the early 50s, the co-op in the 1960s and sadly for me at least the old station two decades later.

Pictures; looking down from Well Hall Station, date unknown, from the collection of E. Course and reproduced from Eltham & Woolwich Tramways, 1996

*Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, Robert J Harley, Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk

**Ghost signs in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/ghost-signs-in-well-hall.html

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... nu 3 Well Hall Cottages

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

I have always been fascinated by Well Hall Cottages which were demolished in 1923 and  date from at least the mid 18th century.*

They consisted of six properties just north of Kidbrook Lane and  formed a rough L shape with three running west from Well Hall Lane, another two pointing north with a sixth at the rear on the western side.

By 1844 one of the six was occupied by John and Mary Evans. They were in their sixties, he had been born in Wiltshire and she was from Dublin.

Tracking down the other five has been less easy, but judging from the people listed on the census returns for 1841 and ’51 the cottages may have been home to agricultural labourers, a blacksmith and a carpenter.

There are plenty of photographs of the cottages but to my knowledge no paintings of the buildings so it was fitting that Peter should paint them using a coloured picture postcard dating from the early 20th century.

Now I am not a fan of taking a monochrome image and adding colour using a software process, but as Peter has used a postcard which had already been colourized, a very long time ago, my objections fly away.

Painting; Well Hall Cottages © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph circa early 19th century.
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Well Hall Cottages, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Well%20Hall%20Cottages