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

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/

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

The Tudor Barn in 1909, one for the album

The Tudor Barn in 1909

Now here is one for the picture album.

This is the Tudor Barn back in 1909 and that really is about all I want to say.

Although I find it hard to match this image with the building I knew.

It comes from Eltham Through Time.*

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford.

*Eltham Through Time, Amberley, Publishing,  2013

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

Connections ...... Edith Nesbit of Well Hall and William Barefoot Labour politican and councillor for Eltham

Edith Nesbit, circa 1890

Now I like the way that history continues to surprise you, often taking you in directions which you could not have imagined.

Until recently I was not aware that Edith Nesbit had lived at Well Hall and knew only that she had written the Railway Children.

But she was far more than just someone who wrote children’s books.

Her marriage appears to be what we might today describe as an open one and she adopted two children from her husband’s relationship with another woman who was employed as their house keeper.

She was one of the founder members of the Fabian Society, a member of the Social Democratic Federation and wrote and spoke regularly on socialism.

Amongst her friends were H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and the Webb’s, all of whom visited the house in Well Hall.

She was also a member of the local Labour Party and it was here she met Tommy Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry, who she married three years after the death of her husband Hubert.

All of which fits nicely as like Edith, Hubert and Tommy I was also a member of the same local Labour Party.

Woolwich Labour Party was formed in 1903.  At that time the Woolwich constiuency took in Woolwich and Eltham, and even when it was split between Woolwich East and Woolwich West for the 1918 General Election the Labour Party took the decision to stay as one party.

So when I joined in 1966 aged just 16 I was walking with Edith, Hubert and Tommy.

William Barefoot, date unknown

And also William Barefoot who will have known Edith and may well have been a guest at her home in Well Hall.

He was one of the leading forces in the Woolwich Labour Party having been its secretary from 1903 till 1941.*

He had become secretary of the Woolwich Trades Council in 1899 a post he held until 1921, was editor of The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer a weekly paper.**

Now if I were prone to idle speculation I might well go ‘off on one’ pondering on how well Ms Nebit and

Mr Barefoot knew each other and whether she contributed to either The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer.

Now the Greenwich Heritage Centre holds both the Journal and the Pioneer but the collection only cover the years 1919-1926, and I am not sure when she left Well Hall.

I know she married Mr Tucker in 1917 and later moved to Friston in East Sussex, and later to East Kent, and died in 1924.

That said I shall go digging elsewhere for both journals and the first port of call will be the archives of the People’s Museum.

Now it would really be nice to discover some of her political writing which in turn will have crossed William Barefoot’s desk and so I shall go looking.

Pictures; Edith Nesbit courtesy of The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and William Brefoot, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/william-barefoot-and-day-in-archives-of.html

** ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABOUR PARTY AT LOCAL LEVEL, The Woolwich Labour Party, 1903-53, Dr Roger Eatwell, 1982,  http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97253.pdf

A will ……. the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War

There are always stories, and some are more unexpected than others.

Well Hall Road and the hutments circa 1920

This one concerns a will, the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War.

Now as someone who had grown up in the Progress Estate I was well aware of its connection with the Royal Arsenal and the Great War, but didn’t know that there had been a whole set of “Hutments” constructed at the same time.

They were more temporary and all had gone before we settled in 294 Well Hall, so it was a revelation when I firs came across them and more so when I discovered a connection between them and George Davison, from Manchester who served in the Royal Artillery and was stationed in Woolwich.**

The Will, 1918

In the March of 1918 he made his will shortly before embarking for the Western Front.

It was witnessed by H M Drinkhall and V L Dade, and was hand written in a single sheet of note paper and is simple and the point. “This is the last will and testament of me George Gurnel Davison of Birch Vale Cottage, Romily, Cheshire.

I give devise and bequeath to my dear wife Mary Ellen all my property whatsoever and wheresoever and I appoint her sole Executor of this my will.”

By the time he made the will he had served with the Royal Artillery for four years and spent time in London and Ireland but now with the German offensive in full swing he was about to go to France, and as we know would be killed just three months later.

In one of his letters to his wife he had mentioned the Drinkhall family and how they were looking forward to her coming back to stay.

And that set me off looking for them, and in that I was helped by my friend Tricia, who located them to one of the hutments on what is now the site of the old Well Hall Odeon, which is just a few minutes walk from our old house.

That hutment will be one of those near the top of our picture, and takes me off on a number of different directions.

Detail of the hutments, circa 1920

In time Tricia and I will go looking for more on the Drinkhall’s, but for now I like the idea that someone I was writing about in connection with a book should have spent time just yards from where I lived.***

But it also points to an interesting aspect of the war, which was that Mrs. Davison visited her husband while he was stationed around the country.

As well as staying with the Drinkhall’s, she spent time in Ireland, where the one surviving photograph of the couple and their son was taken in 1916.

I have no idea if this was a common practice but given the restrictions of train travel and the cost of such journey’s it should be a fascinating area of study.

The Davison family, 1916

For now, I shall just gaze on Tricia’s picture with renewed interest.

Location; Eltham, London


Pictures, Will, 1918, of George Davison and the Davison family, 1916, from the collection of David Harrop, and picture postcard of Well Hall Road, date unknown courtesy of Tricia Leslie

* The Eltham Hutments by John Kennett, 1985 The Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/

**George Davison, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/George%20Davison

***A new book on Manchester and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 5 living through the Great War

Our house in 2014

The centenary of the Progress Estate has long passed.

Now we can lay claim to about thirty of those 100 years having moved in to 294 Well Hall Road in the middle of 1964 but I gave seldom thought to the history of the house or to the people who occupied it before us.

But now I am drawn to that past and have begun to explore something of what our home would have been like a century ago.*

And because I am deep into researching for a new book on the Great War the events of that year when the Arsenal workers and their families began new lives in Well Hall has special signifigance.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at a meeting in Manchester was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

The aims of the committee, 1915

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.

And in response to the rising cost of living the Labour movement set up local emergency war committees and food vigilance committees, which reported to the War Emergency Workers National Committee in London which had come into being on the day war broke out.

The idea of a food vigilance committee seems oddly old fashioned but back in 1915 it was seen by many as an essential way of preventing the  growing practice of adulterating food and the rise in the cost of living.

The London Food Vigilance Committee was a joint body made of the London Joint Committee of Co-operative Societies, the London Trades Council and the London Labour Party.

And cooperating with the Royal Arsenal Co-op in our part of London was Councillor William Barefoot of the Woolwich Labour Party.

These committees set out clear policies on how to manage shortages by insisting that “the Government purchase all essential imported food stuffs, commandeer or control all home grown food products and make effective use of ships and the control of transport facilities” thereby securing both a fair share of what was available and at a controlled price.”****

And a key part of this would be local authorities who should be “power to deal with the distribution of food stuffs and coal, and to establish Municipal Kitchens.”

There will be some who see in this a creeping form of state control but the reality was that war time legislation had already given the authorities sweeping powers but there was a woeful lack of action over the rise in rents, coal and food prices and the lowering of the quality of what was on offer to eat.

The Committees were fully aware that at some point rationing would have to be introduced and it followed therefore that the Co-op and Labour movements should be represented on official committees given that they "had an understanding of the food requirements of the workers.”

All of which brings me back to the Arsenal workers who were beginning to take up residence in their new homes and some of whom will have been actively involved in that committee.

Pictures; our house on Well Hall Road, 2014, courtesy of Chrissie Rose, extracts from documents from The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester,http://www.phm.org.uk/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall   

**Manchester Guardian February 19 1915

*** Free Trade Hall, Manchester February 14, 1915

**** The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 4, a bit of idle speculation on what might have been

Gas fitting 1911

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

Now I pretty much took the place for granted and only recently began to wonder on what t would have been like when it was brand new back in 1915.

Sadly none of the original features had survived by the time we arrived in the house most of the records of the Estate were destroyed in the last war.

All of which led me recently to ponder on what might have been and also to make an appeal for anyone who could supply me with pictures of fireplaces, light fittings and anything else that might still be in their house on the Estate.

And Chrissie has been the first to come forward with a picture of a fireplace similar to one she remembered in her house.

It is not unlike the bedroom fireplaces in our house which date to just five years after the Progress was built and I guess were pretty standard.

According to one history “all the timber and supplied Baths, fireplaces and many other fittings were kept in a large store on the site.”**

Bedroom fireplace, 1915

And this would have included the light fittings which I thought may have been gas.

Ours had long ago disappeared but upstairs there were still the circular wooden blocks in one of the bedroom.

I suspect they were not unlike the one above which was fitted in a house built just four years before 294.

That said I know already I will have fallen into a trap and featured a type of gas fitting which was not used in the south east.  It will be one of those errors that someone will pick up on and quote the exact specification and date.

To which all I can do is invite both the correction and ask for a picture.

But they did have gas lighting which has been confirmed by Chrissie who told me, “we even still have the old gas light pipe up stairs in the bedrooms, where it had been cut off which made a good hook.”

Now in the great sweep of history this is very small beer, but it helps recreate something of that lost house and takes me closer to what it would have been like when the key was handed over to its first resident, just 49 years before we crossed the doorstep.

Picture; of the gas fitting courtesy of Lawrence Beedle and the fire place from Chrissie Rose

*One 100 years of one house in Well Hall,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-on-well_30.html

** Well Hall Estate, Eltham, S.L.G. Beaufoy, The Town Planning Review Vol. 23, No , July 1952, Liverpool University Press

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 2 losing your job on the Well Hall estate

Now I wonder how the individual stories of people living on the Progress Estate played out after the Great War*.

The estate as most people are aware was built for Arsenal workers.

The first to move into our house on Well Hall Road were Mr and Mrs Nunn from Ipswich.

He was a blacksmith by trade and in 1911 had been employed in an engineering works.

And it is perhaps easy to see the attractions of their new home over number 56 Rosebery Road in Ipswich which while it had a garden was one of these older mid terraced properties surrounding by similar drab streets.

But in the end it may have just been the work and the Arsenal, because in 1918 with the end of the war and only three years after they settled in Well Hall they left for Ipswich.

Now that isn’t surprising because there were 50,000 men and 25,000 women and girls employed at the Arsenal which was to be slimmed down to just 10,000 men with the Armistice.

Many like Mr Nunn returned to their pre war occupations and some efforts were made to help others including the large workforce of women and girls.

According to one source Miss Lilian Barker who had acted as Lady Superintendant of Ordinance Factories found work for some women and girls “in domestic service, nursing, shirt making and factory work .......Evening classes were opened in conjunction with the L.C.C., concerts, dances sports and entertainments organised by the Borough Council and even holidays at the seaside for both single women and mothers with children.”**

But despite such efforts unemployment rose and men and women who a few months earlier had been in high paid gainful employment were now looking to relief.

The concern and determination to do something was reflected in a variety of ways.  In March 1919 “some of the men discharged from the Arsenal but had not yet moved out of the hutments demanded rent reductions and prevailed on others to join them in a rent strike.”*

While women munitions workers demonstrated at only being given a week’s notice.

All of which begs the question of what happened to all those on the estate?

Unfortunately the census return for the years after the Great War are still closed but the 1939 register offers up some interesting insights into the occupation of those living in Well Hall.

At our house were Mr and Mrs Jarvis who had moved in 1929.  He gave his job as a “Technical chemist, Food and Chemical” which would suggest he was not employed at the Arsenal.

Likewise their near neighbours from 288 Well Hall Road up to 310 were engaged in a whole variety of occupations from clerical and sales work to printing, engineering, carpentry and hairdressing.

With more research it should be possible to get a full profile of the whole estate but that it’s a snap shot a full decade after the war.


Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose and inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.markfynn.com/ 

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

*** The Woolwich Story, 1970, E. F. E. Jefferson.

Mrs Nellie Davison at Well Hall .......... stories behind the book nu 27 making the connection

An occasional series on the stories behind the book on Manchester and the Great War*

Places Nellie would have visited, the parish church, 1915

By now I shouldn’t be surprised at how what seem random bits of history have a habit of becoming entangled and by degree draw me into the story.

Of course I know that theory that you are only seven handshakes away from  the great and the famous but I was not prepared for just how close I came to a couple who lived in Manchester during the Great War.

They were George and Nellie Davison who were married in 1908 and settled in Romiley after living here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and in Hulme.

George Davison enlisted in 1914, spent time in Woolwich and Ireland and died on the Western Front in 1918.

Duncan and Nellie Davison circa 1916

Over the last three years I have slowly worked my way through the letters he sent and a collection of his photographs, papers and medals.

Nellie spent time with him both in Woolwich and in Ireland which I thought must have been unusual but perhaps not.

And then yesterday I came across a comment from George that a Mrs Drinkal missed Nellie commenting that “she was lost" without the presence of his wife.  Now that letter was sent from Woolwich which offered up a tantalizing clue as to where Mrs Davison stayed and perhaps where George was billited.

Well Hall Road, 1915

And with the help of my friend Tricia from Bexleyheath we think we know where that house was.

Having found one link to a Mr Drinkal I passed the task over to Tricia who came up with the goods

He was she told me “living at 7a Elmbrook Street which appears to be hutments on the site of where the Well Hall Odeon later stood.

William Henry Drinkal and Hilda May Garrod were married in 1916 at Dunmow in Essex and had their first child in 1917.”

All of which fits because a W H Drinkhall witnessed George’s will in March 1918.

Now I know the spelling is different but the coincidences are too close and so I can now place our Nellie in Eltham in 1916 on Well Hall Road.

And the real prize for me is that the Drinkal home was just minutes from 294 Well Hall where our family lived from 1964.

294 Well Hall Road, 2015

So there you have it.......  half a century may separate me from George and Nellie but there is the link.

It would be easy get a bit silly about the connection but for someone who has spent the last few years getting to know Mr and Mrs Davison, sharing their ups and downs and his final fate there is something powerful in knowing that we share the same place.

All of which just leaves me to thank Tricia, and remind  those who live in Manchester that the George Davison collection will be part of the exhibition in July to commemorate the Battle of the Somme in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

Research by Tricia Leslie

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collections of David Harrop and Andrew Simpson

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

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

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

A little bit of Eltham in the stories of Edith Nesbit, writer, socialist and resident at Well Hall House

The old Woolwich Road, 1909

Now I have set myself the task of reading the stories of Edith Nesbit and looking for Eltham.

She lived in Well Hall House from the late 19th century into the 20th and those in the know reckon they can spot the references.

I never read her books when I was growing up and have to confess that I only came to know of the Railway Children which is one of her most famous books when the film came out.

So to rectify this omission and to see if the descriptions of the house the children lived in and the countryside they played around matches the Eltham of the late 19th century I shall trawl her books.

And before someone mutters “he clearly needs to get out more,” I reckon it will fulfil a couple of goals.

Well Hall House, date unknown

First it will involve reading  some children’s classics and it will allow me to wander the lanes of Well Hall, and the fields stretching north to the woods and south to the Palace sometime between the 1890s and the 1920s.

And in all of this I shall be aided by the wonderful pictures and descriptions of Eltham from R.R.C.Gregory’s history of Eltham, published in 1909 and still a must for anyone wanting to know the history of the area.*

I doubt that there will always be an exact match and not all of the books will contain any references but perhaps enough to add to what I already know about both her home and the area over a century ago.

And  she was far more than just a little old lady who wrote children’s books.

Her marriage appears to be what we might today describe as an open one and she adopted two children from her husband’s relationship with another woman who was employed as their house keeper.

She was one of the founder members of the Fabian Society, a member of the Social Democratic Federation and wrote and spoke regularly on socialism.

Amongst her friends were H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and the Webb’s, all of whom visited the house in Well Hall.

She was also a member of the local Labour Party and it was here she met Tommy Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry., who she married three years after the death of her husband Hubert.

Edith Nesbit

All of which fits nicely as like Edith, Hubert and Tommy I was also a member of the same local Labour Party.

Woolwich Labour Party was formed in 1903.  At that time the Woolwich constiuency took in Woolwich and Eltham, and even when it was split between Woolwich East and Woolwich West for the 1918 General Election the Labour Party took the decision to stay as one party.

So when I joined in 1966 aged just 16 I was walking with Edith, Hubert and Tommy.

And one of her books has already begun to reveal that old Eltham.

This is the Red House published in 1902, and named I guess after the home of William Morris.  But as the story unfolds it is clear that the house is Well Hall House.

It was demolished in 1928 after a fire, but the opening chapters recreate the property down to the ivy which covered part of the back,  the gardens and the interior.

Now there may be some images of the inside of the place, along with plans and descriptions but at present all I have is the Red House.

But that is an exciting start.

Pictures; The old Woolwich Road, circa 1909,  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers,http://gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm
Well Hall House, from The Edith Nesbit Society,http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and Edith Nesbit from Wikipedia Common

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 11 ........... from the first residents to when we moved in

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

The estate in 1950

Now the great and the good are able to track their family back through the centuries and can pretty much show which of their relatives lived in the ancestral pile right the way back to when the place was built.

Few of us can do the same but just sometimes with a bit of luck and lot of research it is possible to uncover both the residents and the stories of those who occupied a house from its beginning.

Ours was built in 1915 as part of the estate laid out for workers at the Arsenal in Woolwich and while I knew the names of the first two families to live there the rest were unknown.

But using the directories and the electoral rolls it has been possible to discover the identities of all six families who occupied the house from 1915 through till we moved in during the spring of 1964.

And the importance of such a discovery is that it helps tell the story of Well Hall and of Eltham during the Great War and over the next half century.

The first to move into 294 Well Hall were Mr and Mrs Nunn from Ipswich.  He was a blacksmith by trade and in 1911 had been employed in an engineering works.

And it is perhaps easy to see the attractions of their new home over number 56 Rosebery Road in Ipswich which while it had a garden was one of these older mid terraced properties surrounding by similar drab streets.

But in the end it may have just been the work and the Arsenal, because in 1918 with the end of the war and only three years after they settled in Well Hall they left for Ipswich.

With more research it should be possible to determine how many others of those who moved on to the brand new estate stayed to make Eltham their permanent home or like the Nunn’s left.

And that is where the electoral roll comes into its own for unlike the directories which list just the named house holder the rolls provide the names of all those eligible to vote.

So Mrs Brewer two doors down who I knew only as an old lady  living on her own had been in number 290 since the early 1930s, had lost her husband some time during the war, and shared her home with lodgers, having also lived briefly down at Avery Hill.

What is revealing is that some of the families including those in our house moved out and back in during the course of the 1930s and 50s.  I can’t as yet explain why but of course given that most were still rented it would have been easy enough to do.

Looking north up Well Hall Road, 1950

In time it should be possible to discover more about the six families who inhabited the house, including how they made their living and maybe even what they did with themselves.

And that would have been the end of the story but just as I was finishing I came across what I think is a picture of Mrs Nunn and three of her children.

It dates from a little later than 1918 but there staring back at me is the woman who will have cleaned the windows, looked after the garden and walked up the same flight of stairs as me and that I reckon makes for a powerful continuity.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall Road in 1950, from Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy*

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

**Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy, The Town 

“The Moat, Well Hall”.......... sometime around 1903

The caption just says the “The Moat, Well Hall” and I just love this picture.

It comes from Some Records of Eltham which was published in 1903 and written by Rev. Elphinstone Rivers who was vicar of the parish church from 1895.*

In time I will go digging for more on the author but at present I am marvelling in this old book which my sister Jill found.

The chapters cover the early history of Eltham, include a heap of old documents and some fine pictures which brings me back to this one of Well Hall.

I guess it will have been taken when Edith Nesbit was in the big house which fronted the main road.

This had been built in 1733 and survived until 1930.

I like what the Rev. Elphinstone Rivers wrote about the spot, "seen from the roadway, the present comparatively modern farm house does not strike the beholder as being of great interest.

The old fashioned cottages a little to the north are of a
much more picturesque character.

If one takes the trouble to enter the farmhouse-yard, however, and walk around the back of the stables, he will encounter a fragment of an antique moat and just beyond he will see a picturesque gable end and chimney stack of ancient brickwork which formed a portion of the venerable mansion of the Ropers.

The spot is beautifully quiet one, and should be visited if one wants to see it at its best, when the setting sun is dipping behind the western horizon lighting up the quant old brickwork with a ruddy glow and filling the glass panes with a golden blaze of brilliance.”

Now for that alone I am pretty pleased our Jill found the book, and I rather think there will be more from Rev. Elphinstone Rivers.

Alas the identity of the man sitting by the moat will I fear never be discovered, but then I haven't read through the book so we shall see.

Picture; of the Moat at Well circ 1903, from Some Records of Eltham


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

Discovering more on that bomb that fell on Well Hall Road in 1916

This is one of those stories which are still as they say in the making but with the help of Tricia I think much of the lives of the family who died on Well Hall Road in the August of 1916 will be revealed.

They were the Allen family and they were living at 210 Well Hall Road when the house was almost completely destroyed by a bomb from a Zeppelin.

It was a story that has pretty much been forgotten and surfaces only as a footnote to pictures of the ruined house or in the story of the Zeppelin Raid.

Now I can’t claim much of the story.  It was Tricia who found the picture and Daniel who tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road in a neat bit of detective work.

And it was also Tricia who found the family in Surrey in 1911 and those they were buried in St John’s and she has promised to go into the Heritage Centre today and dig a bit deeper.

They may be some newspaper accounts of the bombing and an indication where they were buried in the church yard.

It may even be that the Centre holds the employment records for the Arsenal for this is where Mr Allen would have been employed.

And that will be useful for in 1911 he described himself as a domestic coachman and seven years earlier they had been in Cape Town in South Africa.

All of which means there is more to the story and in its telling I hope we will discover more about the tragic event and the family who have pretty much fallen out of history.

Picture; the house on Well Hall Road, 2015 from the collection of Daniel Murphy

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 12 ........... the bomb that dropped next door, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2015-08-04T02:30:00%2B01:00&max-results=7

Zeppelins over Well Hall

I have become fascinated by the story of the Allen family who lived just two doors down from us on Well Hall Road and died in a Zeppelin raid on August 25th, 1916.*

Until recently I knew nothing about them or that that their home was destroyed by that air raid.

But Tricia Leslie had uncovered a picture of the war damaged house and Daniel Murphy then tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road.

And from there Tricia went on to reveal something of the family and the night the bomb fell on Well Hall.

The Allen’s were from Surrey but by 1916 had already spent time in South Africa and New Zealand.

This I know because Tricia had uncovered their census entry for 1911 which showed them living in Surrey but also that their daughter Gladys had been born in Cape Town in 1904, and four years later they were bound on the SS Corinthic for Wellington which left London on February 5 1908.

I guess the journey would have been fairly comfortable given that the SS Corinthic was just six years old.  It was one of those work a day ships which carried freight and passengers and had been built for the route to New Zealand.

Now such globetrotting was not so uncommon and given that Mr Allen was an engineer he would have been part of that generation that went out across the world building and maintaining the machines of empire.

But by 1916 the family was back in Britain and Mr Allen was working at the Arsenal and living in of those brand new homes on the Well Hall estate.

Of course for them that was pretty much the end of the story.

According to newspaper reports of the raid and the subsequent coroner’s inquests the Zepplin that dropped the bomb had taken a random and leisurely route dropping its payload across the south east.

By the standards of the air raids of the Second World War this was a small affair, with just eight people being killed.

But that is not to diminish the loss of life or the damage done and the coroner’s comments reveal the extent to which this was a new type of warfare.

Summing up he said “the interesting point in these cases was as to the safest place.  In each case the bomb appeared to have exploded in the upper part of the house and it seemed that the ground floor and basements were more or less safe, except from falling debris.”**

A fact which was not lost on those in 1940 faced with no air raid shelters.

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

**District Times September 1916

Research by Tricia Leslie

Picture; the bombed house today courtesy of Daniel Murphy

When Well Hall, Woolwich and Manchester collided........ stories from a book

Now I no longer think it odd that one of the most vivid descriptions of the Royal Artillery’s Barracks at Woolwich should be from letters sent by a young soldier to his wife in Manchester.

George Davison, 1916

Or that his will made in the March of 1918 should have been witnessed by a friend who lived on the site of Well Hall Odeon just minutes away from where I grew up on the Progress Estate.

What links all of these is that they were part of the research I did for a book on Manchester and the Great War which came out last year.*

It told the stories of the people who lived through the conflict, waved loved ones goodbye who were destined for battlefronts around the world, and then got on with the daily demands of earning a living, and bringing up a family against a backdrop of rising prices, and food shortages.

Yesterday I reflected on that “last will and testament" of George Davison who was that soldier and also of his wife Nellie who spent time with the Drinkall family who witnessed the will and who were fond of both George and Nellie.**

In his letter’s home George writes about the conditions in the barracks, the poor quality of the food and the bedding, and the antics of his fellow soldiers.

And more than once I have pondered on the links between me and the Davison’s.

Our house on Well Hall Road would in all probability have been known to them, and I regularly passed the barracks where he was stationed.

Added to which, before he was married he lived just a ten minute walk away from where I live in Chorlton which is a suburb of Manchester.

So while we may have been separated by almost a century I have a strong connection with a soldier from Manchester who lived briefly in Woolwich and Well Hall and became part of my book.

Location; Well Hall, Woolwich and Manchester

Picture; George Davison, 1916, from the collection of David Harrop

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, 2017, the History Press, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/the-great-war-how-we-remember-it.html

** Mrs Nellie Davison at Well Hall .......... stories behind the book nu 27 making the connection, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/mrs-nellie-davison-at-well-hall-stories.html

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 13 ........... breakfast in Manchester with the Garden Town for Munition Workers

Well Hall and Manchester, 1916

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I rather like the fact that our house would have been the subject of conversation over the breakfast tables of Manchester back on January 7 1916, because on that day the Manchester Guardian carried a story on “The Garden Town for Munition Workers.”**

And the paper was full of praise for a development which despite “the exigencies of the war” was a “notable achievement, both as regards speed of creation and artistic merit.”

And reading the account today you can see why their correspondent was impressed. "The site is an extensive one between Blackheath and Eltham, and runs on both sides of the main road.

The estate in 1950

It is an open one, with distant views of tree-crowned hills and undulating landscape, and the houses have been cleverly arranged to encourage the traveller passing along the highway to a belief that they have chanced upon an old-world Kentish village of the Chiddingstone type.

There is no formality in the grouping of the terraces; neither does the scheme lose simplicity of character......... Every house is well planned and solidly built.”

That said the correspondent questioned the lack of facilities, “it is curious that one or two village shops were not included into the scheme, and one cannot quite imagine how the villagers will get on without some cherry place of assembly.

More from the Manchester Guardian, 1916

A well known philanthropist who visited the village a few days later after the first hundred families had moved into their new quarters remarked, ‘Where is the church?’ An architect replied, ‘There is a convenient site on the hill.’ The philanthropist rose to the occasion and promised the church.’”

Of course give the war and the need to build the houses it is possible to see how shops and a church were not seen as an immediate priority but I would like to know the identity of our philanthropist and what happened to the church.

All of which will be for another time.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture;  Well Hall Road in 1950, from Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy  and extracts from the Manchester Guardian, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

**“The Garden Town for Munition Workers,"  Manchester Guardian, January 7 1916