Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... Nu 4 our house on Well Hall Road

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

Now there had to come a time when I decided my bit of Well Hall Road should be recorded.

It came out of a conversation with Peter about the house two doors down which had been bombed in the Great War.

Tricia Lesley discovered the original war time photograph, Daniel Murphy tracked down its location to the same block where I grew up and with Tricia’s help we uncovered the full story.

All of which I have written about* and with that all done I asked Peter to paint the house knowing that in doing so our house would  get a look in.

But modest as I am I was content that part of it would be obscured behind that small tree.

Back in the 1960s when we moved in to 294 the spot was dominated by a tall oak tree which I guess had been planted when the estate was built.

It pretty much hid our house completely and in the fullness of time will do so again, but for now that's my old bedroom very much as I remember it and that will do for me.

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping 

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

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

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

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 12 ........... the bomb that dropped next door

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

That bombed house, 2015

Now I never knew that a bomb had totally demolished the house two doors down from us.

But then why should I?  The event occurred in 1916 and there was no one around to recount the tale.

Nor would I have ever known about it had a picture of the destroyed house not surfaced recently.

It was discovered by Tricia Leslie and was taken from the back of the house showing just part of the front wall and beyond it the houses on the opposite side of Well Hall Road.

When I first saw the image I was interested but it wasn’t till Daniel Murphy did some detective work that I made the connection with our house.

Looking at the original and comparing it with that stretch of Well Hall today, the unmistakable block of houses opposite gives the location perfectly.

The houses opposite which offered up the clues

In 1918 it was the home of Mr Frederick John Ward but I have yet not be able to discover if he was there when the bomb fell, nor have I found a newspaper record of the event but the Greenwich Heritage Centre I bet will be able to help.

All of which makes it a nice bit of detective work on the part of Tricia and Daniel and leaves me only to comment that the fire place shown in the ruined house was identical to the one in our front room, but then that was only to be expected, given that to keep costs down the Ministry had quite rightly bought interior fittings in bulk.

Still it’s odd seeing it there and even more so because I in the past I have stood in that very front room where the bomb fell.

But just as I finished the story Tricia discovered it had been a Zeppelin raid on August 25 1916 resulting in all three members of the Allen family being killed.  All were buried in St John's churchyard.

Which was a result but not what I had wanted.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall Road, 2015, courtesy of Daniel Murphy

*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

On the 161 heading for Well Hall and home

Some of the best photographs are the ones that leave you thinking.

Here as this 161 enters Well Hall Road on its way to Chislehurst, I am drawn by the two passengers that Jean has caught in the picture.

Now that journey from Woolwich on the 161 or 122 was a trip I must have made countless times.

For me by the time we had passed the old police station I was just minutes away from the stop just past 294 which was our house.

And like as not  I was like the woman on the lower deck, dog tired from a long shift at Glenville’s Food Factory by the Thames at Greenwich and pretty much ready for bed.

On the other hand sitting at the front on the top deck you were just alive to

all there was to see.

It started with that climb up from Woolwich with the common on the right and the military buildings to the left and once over Shooters Hill as the bus fell down towards the roundabout there were the woods, the Welcome Inn and of course in the distance the Odeon.

So little chance of dozing off with all of that to look at which pretty much is why I reckon that lady is wide awake.

Well it’s a thought anyway.

My memories of that 161 stretch on to a girl friend who lived in Chislehurst but that is another story and one for a long dark night when I reminisce with my kids about growing up in Well Hall.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; from the collection of Jean Low

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall .... part 8.........making way for the new .... and losing so much

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

Now with age has come a degree of respect for the house I now live in, which was built in the same year as the family house in Well Hall.

Both were built in 1915, and both have been much knocked about in the century and a bit since their first residents moved in.

We did little in the way of alterations to the Eltham house during out 30 year stay, partly because much of the ripping out, and adding “new” had already been done. 

Not so the house I now live in, which the previous owner and then me did much to change.  He ripped out fireplaces, and picture rails, and I bits to the bathroom.  Then in a fit of remorse I started to put back what had been taken away, and I have to say not always accurately or sympathetically.  

What I have come to learn is that a house should always be transformed slowly and keep an eye on the original design and the vision of the architect.

So, I was pleased that my friend Carol who still lives in Well Hall has retained more of the original features of her house on the estate than did previous owners of 294.

And yesterday shared some of those features including the fireplaces, which are an exact copy of the one that survived in our house.

They will have been standard design and I know from reading reports of the construction of the estate in 1915 that the architects ordered in large numbers of the same features and fitted them out in each house, which is just as you would expect.

I am hoping that others who read this will send over more pictures of their homes with the bits that first adorned the properties.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; fire places Well Hall, 2022 from the collection of Carol Maddalena

*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

Posters from the Past ........... no 20 ......... coming home

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

Peter and I have been creating such advertising pieces of art for a while.

I source the original image and offer the caption and Peter does the rest.

So here is our take on a series of posters which could have been commissioned by the Eltham Tourist Board celebrating where we live.

Follow the link Posters from the Past, and you can find others from the Friends of Woolwich, the Thames Foot Tunnels Appreciation Society, and Retired Eltham Librarians.

And a thank you to Jean and Richard Low who one day back in 2012 drove around Eltham taking pictures for the blog, one of which Peter used for our poster.

Location: Eltham

Painting; The 161, © 2020 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures, from a photograph by Jean Low, 2012

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 

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

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 23 ........... looking out from my bedroom

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

Now, never underestimate the power of a picture to unlock a lifetime of memories.

This was last night, looking out as the snow fell on Well Hall Road from what had been my bedroom, and was taken by Em Dearsley.

It is a full forty-six years since I regularly looked out from that bedroom window, and twenty-five since we sold the house but in an instant I was back.

It started with memories of late summer evenings, listening to the happy and slightly drunk groups making their way back down Well Hall Road from the Welcome.  I would have been in my teens, old enough to know that I wanted to be part of that “crowd” but too young to have legally walked over the threshold of the door.

Even then the road was a busy one, with early morning tailbacks from the roundabout, and the 161’s and 122’s backing up, to the frustration of those on board.

And like so many memories they tumble out, each more vivid than the one before.

Of course, with the passage of time some get distorted, and other misplaced, and when you are 14 you do not appreciate the history of the house and its place in the story of Eltham, Well Hall and the Royal Arsenal, all of which will be well known to people on the estate today.

I suppose it was that wish to know more which started me on researching our house.

In the process I now know almost all the residents of the place stretching back to 1915, with just a short break after we sold the house in the 1990s.

And that research has allowed me to maintain that contact with the house I grew up in and was very happy.

So that is it, leaving me just to thank Em for the pictures, and include the second picture she sent up, which is of the garden, from the back bedroom window.

It too, sets off a shed load of memories, but those as they say are for another time.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Well Hall Road, and the back of our old house, 2019, from the collection of Em Dearsley

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

No one told me they were knocking down the Welcome Inn

True I was living in Manchester at the time and it was June 2006, but even so this place was part of my childhood, along with many others from Well Hall.

It is a pub I have written about already, particularly in a story exploring its history.*

And it was the first pub you spotted on the 161 coming in from Woolwich and after a long walk in the woods might well be the place to slack your thirst.

I first went in aged 17, pretending to be 18, and I guess because it was a quiet Wednesday afternoon we got away with it.

Today I shudder at the consequence for the landlord if we had been discovered by the police.

It was also where I first saw colour TV, in BBC 2, in the summer of 1968 when Wimbledon was being shown as a preview of what was to come.

But above all it will be of sitting in my bedroom late on a Sunday evening listening to the crowds walking back down Well Hall from the Welcome.

With the windows open on a warm summer’s night and the thought of school in the morning there was something very attractive about the happy groups making their noisy way home past our house at 294.

So I was pleased when John King posted these of the pub from June 2 2006.

His collection of images of south east London from the 1960s till now, continue to fascinate me and as ever I am indebted to him for granting permission to use them.

Location; Well Hall Road


Pictures; demolishing the Welcome Inn, June 2, 2006 from the collection of John King

*The Welcome Inn ................... the early days, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Welcome+Inn

The magic of Well Hall half a century on

Now I have been thinking about what made Well Hall and the Progress estate such a magical place when I was growing up in the 1960s.

It started with the roads that led off in all sorts of directions taking you along raised pavements, into a narrow alley which was almost a tunnel and then out on to an open green which could have been transported from some village deep in Kent countryside.

And along with these were the houses which were so different from those tall, narrow and forbidding terraced properties in Peckham where we had lived.

I never tired of the different designs and still today delight in coming across them.

This was matched by the interior which was in direct contrast to our old house which stretched out over three floors and stood on cellars which were dark cold and uninviting.

Never underestimate the loneliness of being seven and sleeping at the top of the house having first had to traverse endless flights of stairs in the semi darkness.

All very different from 294 Well Hall where every bedroom was close to dad and mum downstairs listening to the wireless.

But that was not the biggest attraction of the estate that came from discovering the Tudor Barn and the vast expanse of the woods.

Long before I trawled the history of the Pleasaunce, the Ropers and the fine old house inhabited by Edith Nesbitt there were the gardens, the moat with its wooden bridge and the old leaning walls leading to the gardens but which were nothing set against the woods which were places to wander, letting the imagination roam from stories of Roman legionaries to highwaymen and much more and always finished off by the castle.

Later of course came the attractions of the Odeon, the High Street and later still the challenge of Woolwich which in turn gave way to the pubs of which the Kings Head and the Rising Sun were my favourites.

That said the call of the Welcome on a Sunday night and the place above Burton’s somehow missed me by.

I have tried sharing these pleasures of the estate with my own lads on visits back to Well Hall, but they were all born in Manchester and they walk to different adventures framed by the open land to the south of us bordering the Mersey and city centre attractions.

And of course now as I reflect that I have lived here in the North longer than I ever did in London the magic of Well Hall is but a memory but none the less pretty good for all that.

It will I think call us back for the centenary celebrations.

Nostalgia  is never that good but I rather think a walk around the estate will live up to those memories.

Well we shall see.

Pictures; of Well Hall 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose

Ghost signs in Well Hall

Now you can wait all year for a Ghost sign and then two turn up at the same time.

And for these I have Chrissie to thank who as ever on her way to work went hunting for these signs which start the story of long forgotten shops and businesses.

For that is what a ghost sign, the often last reminder of a firm which once flourished and has now gone.

They were painted in the sides of buildings and a few can still be seen.  But most are fading fast, weathered by years of rain sun and neglect.

Some have even been painted over but stubbornly the lettering still forces its way through reminding us of a grocery shop or painting business.

The first of Chrissie pictures is from the corner of Well Hall and Dunvegan Road and you know, I must have passed it lots of times and never given it a glance.

Such are ghost signs.

The second is by the Tiger’s Head in Lee, and before someone mutters that this isn’t Well Hall, all I will say is that you have to take your ghost signs where you find them.

In time I shall go digging into these two signs.

In the meantime thank you Chrissie and for all of you who have passed a sign it is time to record it.

Most will not be with us for much longer, and when they have gone the record of the people who had them made along with their stories will vanish.

And that I think is a shame.

Not least because many of the signs were themselves works of art, carefully planned, beautifully executed and a comment on what what we bought and who we employed.

Today the same publicity will appear on facebook sites, pop up in freebie newspapers and community magazines.

Most were for local consumption, becoming house hold names for a few generations.

So they were and are a little bit of our history.

Pictures © Chrissie Rose 2014

Home Thoughts of Well Hall from a distance .........nu 3

Now I am not one to get over homesick but this is the time of year I left Well Hall for Manchester.

In the intervening 45 years I haven’t been back as many times as I would wish and so for all those like me that miss the place and in particular the Tudor Barn here over the next few days courtesy of Chrissie Rose is what we are missing.

Picture; Well Hall Pleasuance, from the collection of Chrissie Rose, 2013

By the moat at Well Hall ............ one of two

There is something quite magical about the reflection of light on water especially as the light is failing.

And Chrissie has captured that magic in a series of pictures she took earlier in the month.

And that is all I want to say.

Picture; by the moat at Well Hall, 2015 © Chrissie Rose

As others see us ......in Eltham with the Ilford and District CHA walking club Janine Sittig

Now I always like other people's pictures, and so I fell on Janine Sittig's record of a trip she took with friends to Eltham and Woolwich.

Janine was with Ilford and District CHA walking club who ventured on to our patch on June 3 and she wrote, "22 turned out today for this lovely walk from Mottingham to Woolwich. 

We visited the Tarn, Eltham Palace and had lunch at Well Hall Pleasaunce, were there was a funday going on. It was great to sit and listen to the Mottingham Village Concert Band whilst eating our packed lunch. 

Then on to St George's Garrison Church which unfortunately wasn't open today but we could just see the marvellous mosaic of St George slaying the Dragon over the hoardings."

So more another day.


Pictures; Eltham, 2018 from the collection of Janine Sittig, Ilford and District CHA walking club

Snow over the Tudor Barn, one winter's day in 2013

© Chrissie Rose

One of an occasional series which feature contemporary photographs of places with a history.

We are of course in Well Hall looking at the Tudor Barn.

The pictures were taken by Chrissie last year when the snow fell across the south.

And I have to say despite growing up in Eltham I cannot ever remember seeing the Barn like this.

So here are just two of the ones she took.  The rest can be seen on her site Just Looking, along with plenty of other pictures.

Now as you do I asked permission to reproduce them and decided that I would choose my favourite and ask Chrissie to choose hers which she promptly did.

© Chrissie Rose

Reading the forecast I see that there is cold weather to come and certainly up here in the North that might translate into snow.

Not that Manchester gets that much.  We are sheltered by the hills and it has been a while since the snow fell and stayed.

Which for me is a shame because I love the stuff and am grateful that Chrissie caught one of the places which still means a lot to me.

Pictures; the Tudor Barn, © Chrissie Rose, 2013

*Just Looking, http://justlookingtoday.weebly.com/

Hidden and forgotten .......... bits of our not so distant past ............. road signs I like nu 3

Now actually there is nothing hidden or forgotten about the road sign announcing Dunvegan Road.

It is there where I remember it and was recorded by Ryan yesterday.  But it is showing its age a little but it remains a fine example and enters the Hall of Fame of road signs and street furniture.

Thanks Ryan.  There are plenty more I know, Karen from Peckham found one, “just off Camberwell New Road, not too far from Camberwell Green. The same side as the Greek church” and Adam also in Peckham has wandered over to New Cross to find some.

And Neil and Bill ferreted out ones from Warrington and Macclesfield.

And in the interests of recording more for the series Road Signs and Street Furniture lost and found, ......... bring them on down.

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; Dunvegan Road, 2016, from the collection of Ryan Ginn

Home Thoughts of Well Hall from a distance .........nu 2

Now I am not one to get over homesick but this is the time of year I left Well Hall for Manchester.

In the intervening 45 years I haven’t been back as many times as I would wish and so for all those like me that miss the place and in particular the Tudor Barn here over the next few days courtesy of Chrissie Rose is what we are missing.

Picture; Well Hall Pleasuance, from the collection of Chrissie Rose, 2013

Down in Well Hall with another stunning floral display

Now I have never tires of the floral display in the Pleasuance.

In time I will track back and find when the first was laid out which I guess would have been when the gardens were first taken into the hands of Woolwich Borough Council.

And I know they also have given a lot of pleasure to lots of people.

I passed the display each day on the up to the roundabout from the station and were a powerful nod to the fact that I was home.

Now Eltham is not alone in having such impressive floral displays and in their way they are one of the small but important achievements of local government.

My favourite display was that of the coat of arms of Woolwich but I also remember other equally impressive displays.

And as ever Chrissie Rose has come up trumps.  Having posted one of her pictures recently she came up with a second taken today.

So here are both of those pictures.

Pictures; of the Pleasunce 2013, & 2105 © Chrissie Rose

In Well Hall when the sun shone

Now I think you can never get enough pictures of Well Hall and especially photographs by Chrissie Rose, so here is the second of a few more she took earlier this month.







Picture; Well Hall in March 2015, from the collection of Chrissie Rose

My house on Well Hall Road and two more, thank you Chrissie

Another in the series which feature contemporary photographs of places with a history.

This was where we lived from 1964 till 1991.

Back then the front door was painted blue and there was a front porch which was only built after dad had submitted plans to the Progress Estate.

The walls were yet to be painted white and the bins were kept at the back.

My bedroom was the one at the from above the door.

There was still a brick wall separating the wide expanse of green from the street to our front door and the very tall and impressive tree still dominated the spot

And Mrs Gold lived next to us in the end house to your left.

All of which is perhaps a tad too personnel so instead I shall include two more pictures of the Well Hall estate for no other reason than I lived there and they were taken by new friend Chrissie and I like them.

Looking at them again they bring back fond memories.

Of course that odd well worn thought "that you don't miss the place till you've gone" is pretty much how I feel when I see these scenes of Well Hall.

But there will be lots of new people who will be enjoying the place and its history so that is consolation enough.


Pictures; of the Progress Estate, Chrissie Rose, February 2014

More of Well Hall from the camera of Ryan Ginn

Yesterday I was in the Pleasaunce with two of Ryan’s pictures and as you do I have decided to feature two more.

For all of us who long ago left Eltham but remember it with fondness this collection is magic.

As a kid I was fascinated by the moat and the bridge and later delighted in both the art gallery in the Tudor Barn and the occasional folk concerts in the auditorium on warm summer evenings.

Our Jill was captured in a newspaper photograph back in the August of 1964 siting with a other children watching a show put on by the Council and once a long time ago my own three lads also sat in the gardens on one of my short visits home.

So for all those reasons and because I like Ryan's pictures these two will kick off a series of his work over the next few weeks.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham

Pictures; Well Hall, 2015, from the collection of Ryan Ginn

Walking in Well Hall ............. the moat and barn

Now you can never get enough pictures of the Pleasuance and the old Tudor Barn.

So with that in mind here are two from a collection Ryan took yesterday when as he says, "I was just walking around the moat . It's still a rather mesmerising place to come and reflect."

And I have to agree.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London


















Pictures; Well Hall, 2016, from the collection of Ryan Ginn