Deciding that the eight miles between Greenwich and Forest Hill was probably a bit much for the younger kids in tow today, we thought it wise to split things in half and attempt the first stretch to Ladywell today, a walk which takes us through an area I spent a lot of time knocking around in back in the late 80s and early 90s, when I lived in various flats and houses in Lewisham, Catford and indeed Ladywell.
As we entered Manor House tube station to begin our journey to our starting point, we saw this, with the truth-telling weirdly scrawled near the area of London we were headed for. I took it as a positive omen.
We got to the Greenwich DLR, came out and turned left, stopping off near the Cutty Sark for provisions, and then cut along leftwards again past the entrance to what’s left of Greenwich Market. To anyone who remembers the wonderful sprawling market of the past, this may seem like a shadow of its former self, with much of the old rag trade and record dealing and the like all now online, but it was still buzzing and busy, which is good to see.
As we rounded the corner and passed by one of the gateways into the Old Royal Navy College, we encountered the first of several weird families dressed up in some kind of Alice in Wonderland garb. I never did establish why or what was going on, but it was most peculiar.
Crossing over the busy A206, we came to King William Walk, and on the left, there’s Davenport House, now a rather grand student hall of residence. Outside is a 2004 piece called The Throne of Earthly Kings by a French sculptor called Francois Hameury.
Rather disturbingly, we’re also now a stone’s throw away from the homes of both Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, infamous for their brief nation-wrecking stint in Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street respectively. We pass the Greenwich Tavern, which features as a gay bar in the wonderful 1996 Channel 4 film Beautiful Thing.
As we enter Greenwich Park, we come to another statue, this one slightly more traditional and grandiose. It’s of William IV, the last of the Hanoverian kings. He is all-but forgotten today, succeeded as he was by his niece Victoria (whose name is virtually a synonym for the entire 19th century), and preceded by his brother – the rakish, obscenely extravagant George IV (who gave us the Regency).
In 1830 on the death of George III, George the Fourth became king at the grand old age of 64, ruling for just seven years. He died in 1837 and is buried in St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
This statue – 20 tonnes of granite, and over 4 ½ metres tall – was commissioned to commemorate him and was originally erected in 1844 in the City, on the junction of King William Street and Cannon Street, looking down onto Rennie’s London Bridge. It was well-received at the time, with Gentleman’s Magazine calling it “a striking and imposing object… a masterpiece” and claiming it was “admired by all who are capable of appreciating artistic genius”. However, 90 years later, changes to the roads on the approach to the bridge meant the poor chap had to be moved.
He was despatched to Greenwich, at the entrance to the park, on the site of the newly created National Maritime Museum, and a stone’s throw from the Old Royal Naval College. There was a certain appropriateness to this. William had been known as the ‘Sailor King’, he was a serving admiral during the battle of Cape St Vincent, and in 1827 had been created Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy. Perhaps then William’s statue had found a site where it, and its subject, could be appreciated.
On entering the park, we took the right-hand path of the two forking off to the left, before bearing right again and continuing uphill towards the prominent Observatory buildings.
When the Duke of Gloucester built Bella Court by the riverside in 1427, he also obtained a royal licence to enclose 200 acres of Blackheath for hunting. This area of rough pasture, woodland and heath formed the basis of what is now Greenwich Park, but not without a major transformation in its appearance. While in exile in France, Charles had become familiar with the work of the great landscape artist Le Notre, which he would have seen at Versailles and elsewhere. In 1661, shortly after the restoration, he decided on a similar grand geometric design for the grounds of the palace at Greenwich.
Although his exact involvement is uncertain, Le Notre was certainly consulted on the plans. The particular problem for the designers was the split nature of the site, the sudden drop in levels constituted by the Thames river terraces. It was solved by the layout of a system of avenues and vistas culminating at the highest point.
Below this a series of earthworks known as the giant steps, led down the steep slope to the river level. These steps remain in only a degraded form and the slope has become a favourite site for tobogganing in winter, and for dizzy children to roll down in summer.
This was the first place in England where a complex network of avenues was used as the main feature in park design, and it was a direct forerunner of the development of landscape gardens during the 18th century.
In 1675, Charles II commissioned Wren to design a building ‘for the Observators’ habitation . . . and a little for pompe’. Charles, however, wanted his pomp on the cheap; he cut the budget for the building and decreed that it be paid for from the sale of old gunpowder. In Flamsteed House, Wren nevertheless produced a beautiful building – an octagonal red-brick tower rising directly from the top of the hill. Closer examination reveals one of the economies forced upon the builder; some of the ‘stone’ facings are actually made of wood.
The Reverend John Flamsteed, after whom the building is named, lived and worked here as the first Astronomer Royal. He continued to experience problems with the King’s stinginess. He received ‘an incompetent allowance of £100 a year’ for himself and his staff, and was obliged to take up private tutoring to make ends meet.
The king failed even in his commitment to provide instruments for his royal observatory. Flamsteed’s main work was in the detailed plotting of stars, from which he was attempting to make a perfect computation of longitude. Isaac Newton, one of the people who depended on these observations for his own work, seems to have abused his relationship with Flamsteed by publishing, under the title of Historia Celestis, a pirated version of Flamsteed’s work.
Flamsteed was understandably bitter; ‘how unworthily, nay treacherously, I am dealt with by Sir Isaac Newton’ he wrote and three years later he managed to obtain all 300 copies of the book and burned them as a sacrifice ‘to heavenly truth’.
When Airey’s Meridian was finally accepted as longitude zero for the world in 1884, it was only sixteen yards from the location fixed for it by Flamsteed 200 years earlier. In the same year, an international conference in Washington accepted Greenwich Mean Time as the basis of the world’s time-keeping system.
The atmospheric pollution around London, especially the output from Greenwich and Deptford power stations, eventually made the area unsuitable for astronomic observation, and the Observatory actually moved from here in 1948,
Greenwich Park itself was first opened to the public in the 18th century and became a firm favourite on the London tourist itinerary. It now receives over 2 million visitors a year.
The animals most closely connected with the history of the park are deer. They were first introduced here in 1510 and for many years, they ranged freely. Now they are enclosed in what’s known as ‘the wilderness’, a fenced area adjacent to the formal gardens. Here no longer ‘the monarchs of the glen’ or the prey of kings, they doze in the shade of trees or try to beg food from visitors, despite the signs forbidding it. They have become, said Henry James, describing a visit to the park, ‘as tame as sleepy children’.
From the crest of the hill, you get one of my very favourite views of London, looking down across the park and past the Royal Naval College, the 02 Arena and the chimneys of the old power station off to the right – and then, over the water, the huddle of glossy glass towers that make up Docklands.
From the top of the hill, we follow the main park avenue alongside the Observatory buildings.
We cast one final glance back down towards the river, with the Grade II listed looming statue of General James Wolfe gazing off in the same direction. A gift from the Canadians back in 1930, the statue commemorates Wolfe’s 1759 victory against the French at Quebec which secured Canada for the British. Wolfe, whose parents lived in Macartney House on the edge of the park, died in the battle.
The monument was unveiled by the Marquis de Montcalm, a descendant of the Commander-in-Chief of French forces who also died at the Battle of Quebec.
Wolfe lived in Greenwich and is buried in a local church.
As we stroll towards the southern gate of the park, we pass more beautiful buildings connected to the Observatory.
Off to our right is open parkland. Back when I was at Goldsmith’s in the early 90s, I’d often come up here on spare afternoons and sit and read on the benches, assisted by the occasional spliff. Walking by again makes me feel quite nostalgic for a moment when I had all the time in the world and options seemed endless.
As we exit the park, we pass Macartney House, where General Wolfe’s parents lived, and we’re now onto the big open skies and rolling expanses of Blackheath.
There’s a seasonal funfair in full swing at this end of the heath, which we manage to drag the kids away from.
Blackheath has a long and remarkable history, and features quite largely in several key moments in English history. For years, I’d assumed the name derived from plague pits – huge mass graves, often outside the city, where victims of first the Black Death and then later the Plague were buried.
The Black Death ravaged the country in 1348 and 1349. However, by that time, this area was already known as Blachehedfeld, a name derived from the Old English spoken words of ‘blæc’ and ‘hǣth,’ which mean a ‘dark or black heath field.’
So, as much as it might be morbidly interesting or gruesomely quirky to suggest there is a Black Death connection, it’s a myth that Blackheath is called so due to plague victims lurking beneath.
However, as this fascinating blog post reveals, 300 years after the Black Death, the area was later home to pest houses – isolation hospitals for plague victims, many of whom did end up being buried up here.
On leaving the gate of Greenwich Park, we crossed the road – Crooms Hill – and walked off to the right across a grassy triangle towards a gravel path that leads down the slope to the right. This basically means walking near to Charlton Hill, parallel to the wall round the park towards Hyde Vale.
Off to our right, we soon pass Ranger’s House, a beautiful Georgian villa that houses The Wernher Collection, a world-class art collection amassed by the 19th-century businessman, Sir Julius Wernher.
We then come to Cade Road, named in memory of the remarkable peasant leader, Jack Cade. In 1450, the country was on the brink of bankruptcy after years of wasteful war, and so the government of Henry VI attempted to make good its deficit by imposing higher taxes on a country already simmering with discontent.
Jack Cade led 20,000 Kent and Essex yeoman up onto Blackheath, where they set up camp. They laid ‘the Blackheath Petition’ before the Royal Council, calling on the king ‘to punish evil ministers and procure a redress of grievances’. The state pretended to consider the demands whilst sending Sir Humphrey Stafford with a force to crush the rebels. But it was Stafford who was defeated and killed, and the rebels entered London in triumph.
After occupying the capital for three days, the rebels received an offer from the government to consider their demands and began to disperse to their homes. Promises, however, were not enough for Jack Cade who continued to demand real concessions. By now, though, his support had melted away. He was forced to flee into hiding in Sussex, where the king’s forces eventually caught up with him and murdered him.
There’s a lovely old LCC block looking out across the Heath
and a rather beautiful old drinking trough now repurposed as a flower bed.
and then the street sign in memory of Jack Cade.
Interestingly, just over Blackheath Hill is another small road named after the leader of another rebellion. In 1381, the peasantry of south-east England occupied London. It was the culmination of the Peasants’ Revolt, which saw uprisings in 28 different counties. After years in which landless labourers had struggled against subsistence wages, and half-freed villeins against manorial oppression, had come the final provocation – the first attempt in this country to impose a poll tax of.
In order to pay for its French wars, the government of the boy-king Richard II had levied a charge of three groats per person on everyone over the age of 15. From Kent and Essex, huge contingents of peasants marched on the capital. They were inspired by the popular Christianity of hedge preachers and itinerant friars such as John Ball, who preached the revolutionary doctrine of the equality of all in the eyes of God.
Their largest contingent marched from Kent on to Blackheath. Led by Wat Tyler, a blacksmith from Dartford, they arrived here 10,000 strong on June the 12th. Using the heath as their camp, they sortied into London, where they found the gates opened before them by the London poor, and a sympathetic party amongst the aldermen.
As they streamed through London, the ‘impregnable’ Tower was surrendered, the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons opened, the monastery of St. John of Jerusalem burnt and the Temple library destroyed, together with all the hated lawyers’ rolls.
King Richard, still only 14 years old, went to meet the rebel force as Smithfield. During this meeting, William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, pulled Tyler from his horse and stabbed him to death. The rebels dispersed, most of them returning to their lands, where they were met with revengeful punishment by their ‘lords’.
The leaders of the revolt were executed and the uprising seems to have been defeated. But it was to leave an indelible mark on history. In the short term, the hated poll tax was abolished. In the longer term, the peasantry had shown what a potent force it could be when roused; and it was 600 years before anyone attempted to levy a poll tax again – and you probably don’t need me to tell you how that particular effort went!
We crossed back over the road and over Hyde Vale, heading for the left-hand corner, where the strange beauty of Westgrove Lane begins.
Behind the gorgeous 19th century houses, you see the slope down to the river and the towers of Docklands on the other side.
The road soon becomes just a track and well-monitored properties line the right-hand side of the lane as we descend towards Point Hill.
Point Hill is in fact a hollow hill. In 1780, a local builder chanced across a vertical shaft which led down into three caverns, the largest of which was 58 feet long, 30 foot wide and 12 foot high. The origin of the caverns is unknown, but it is likely they were chalk excavations of some kind, for here layers of chalk are nearer to the surface than anywhere else around Blackheath.
The entrepreneurial Victorians subsequently put the caverns too used, the public was admitted for viewings at 4d a time, and once a bar had been fitted they became a regular venue for drinking parties, balls and dances.
No doubt the local residents were continually disturbed by the revellers attracted to their neighbourhood and in 1853 came the final outrage: a practical ‘joker’ doused all the lights in the course of a masked ball; panic ensued and there was a stampede for the exits. The outcry about this led to the closure of the caverns and the entrance passage was filled in so effectively that it became impossible to re-locate.
At the end of Westgrove Lane, we cross Point Hill and follow a path that runs along the Point, a small westwards extension of the Blackheath plateau.
From here, there’s a great view of London, taking in Greenwich, Deptford and the City beyond.
In 1938, when the local authorities commissioned a report on the possible use of the caverns as air raid shelters, they were unable to find the entrance, and were forced to sink a new shaft down. Their conclusions were that the caverns were unsuitable for shelters, but a passage in their report describes the main chamber, still with half-burnt candles standing on the abandoned bar. The site has become a kind of sealed time capsule, remaining just as it was left late one night by the revellers of 1853.
We follow the path round, passing a small set of steps off to the left until we come to a junction of paths. Here, we turned off to the right, hanging a right onto the road and hitting Maidenstone Hill.
We followed Maidenstone Hill downwards, and found this wonderful building at the end, on the corner of Dutton Street, where we turned right.
We then turned left onto the incredible time capsule that is Trinity Grove. This little street had a very special feel to it, like a lost chunk of 1930s London kept intact and with a real community vibe. All the houses had little benches and flower pots and the like outside, lovely street lights were strung across the road, and peeking through the windows, we saw rooms full of books and pianos and old knick-knacks. A real find.
At the bottom of Trinity Grove, we hit Dabin Crescent, where we turned left, passing a rather grubby old block with Halloween remnants slowly mouldering away outside.
From here, we turned left to rejoin Maidenstone Hill, then right to emerge into the main road, Blackheath Hill.We crossed this larger main road, and started walking up it to the left, as if heading back uo to Blackheath. However, we then turned right onto Dartmouth Hill and then almost immediately turned right along Morden Lane, a path running beside Montague House.
The smart houses of Dartmouth Hill and its surrounding streets actually began as an illegal encroachment on common land. Building on the Heath began in 1690, and continued in a sporadic and fairly piecemeal way until the 1860s, when those already living there decided to prevent anyone else from doing what they had already done by founding a preservation society.
Within a year, they’d managed to get an Act through parliament stopping any further development on Blackheath. It was part of the first national legislations giving protection to common land.
We follow Morden Path as it slowly broadens out, past some lovely old houses that always feel like they should’ve appeared in Antonioni’s Blow Up or some other mid-60’s period piece flick.
There’s more graffiti that seems to both fit in with the opening photo of this section, and also capture some of the tensions of a city where the grandeur we’re passing through soon gives way to a far less salubrious set of streets.
Whether or not this really was an old coach house I don’t know, but it’s a pretty great mailbox to have!
At the end of Morden Lane, we turn right down Morden Hill, which was named after one of the major landowners in this area. As we descend the hill, we are also, in a sense, moving down socially, leaving behind us the beautiful old houses that fringe Blackheath and now heading past social housing and old estates as we trudge on to Lewisham.
Morden Hill soon hits Lewisham Road, which we cross before continuing over onto the next stretch, past the remains of what was once a lovely old tile-fronted pub. We’re entering what could be thought of as the flood plains of the River Ravensbourne.
After passing the last block of an estate on our right, we turn right onto Silk Mills Passage, which is a pedestrian alleyway lined with lamp posts. As with many areas bisected by rivers, there used to be a series of mills operating along the Ravensbourne. The names of local streets bear testament to these long-gone places – Brookmill Road, Cornmeal Road and this.
Interestingly, what ended up as a silk mill here started out as a cornmill, but in 1371 was converted to grind steel. When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, England was still importing most of its armour from Germany or Flanders, and the new king decided it would be strategic to set up his own armoury at his palace in Greenwich. He recruited armourers from across Europe to aid and assist him, and the old Ravensbourne corn mill now became the much grander Royal Armoury Mill, grinding the steel for the palace workshops. So it was that this little corner of London became involved in the production of the armour to be worn by the king and his team of champions.
The last royal suit of armour to be produced here was for Charles II, by which time the nature of warfare had changed significantly. The mills struggled on and by 1807 had become a small arms factory. That was not, however, their final incarnation for in 1824, they were converted to the production of silk thread and forty years later started specialising in god and silver trimmings – and produced the first-ever tinsel!
The mill buildings were finally demolished in 1937 and this historic site is today covered by a Tesco’s car park.
The alleyway today has a couple of spectacular doorways that could compete in a Portals to Hell contest . . .
. . . . as well as a lovely collision of modern high-end designer apartments in front of a rather battered-looking 60s or 70s block.
As we leave Silk Mills Passage, there’s the shell of another old pub which has ceased to be. We go straight ahead along a short stretch of road to reach the junction with Elverson Road and Nectarine Way, where we turn left and cross the splendidly-named Coldbath Street.
We reach Elverson Road DLR station ands cross the footbridge over the tracks. On the far side, we turned left to join a footpath running alongside the river.
It’s hard to imagine it now, but not so long ago, the Ravensbourne made headlines in quite a dramatic manner.
In September 1968, after a week of heavy rain, the river burst its banks from Loampit Vale through Lewisham and all the way upstream to Beckenham. The tributaries of the river were overflowing too, the Poole River up as far as Bell Green, while the Quaggy inundated Kidbrooke. The normally insignificant Quaggy rose in a few hours from 6 inches to 14 foot in depth.
There was another 14 foot of water filling the Odeon Cinema in Lewisham. The High Street became a river four foot deep, whilst basement flats in the area were inundated almost to their ceilings. Hundreds of people were evacuated to emergency centres, 40,000 phones were cut off, firemen took the boats and the mayor toured the area not in his mayoral limousine, but in a dinghy.
Walking this stretch of the river today, you can see both the old-fashioned concrete defences, but also the new and more enlightened approach to river management – the recreation of natural riverbanks and softer margins that are ecologically richer, more pleasant to walk along and more effective at flood containment.
Incidentally, legend has it that Julius Caesar was campaigning in southern England when his forces ran out of water. They were forced to encamp while sending out detachments in search of a supply. They were unsuccessful, but Caesar himself had noted ravens regularly flying to and from a spot not far from the camp. He sent out more men to investigate and they came upon the small spring on Keston Heath, which is still known as Caesar’s or Raven’s Well. Legend does not relate how everyone else had missed so obvious a source. From this spring arises this river, the Ravens Bourne, flowing eleven miles to reach the Thames at Deptford.
We crossed a small footbridge on our right and then turned immediately left to continue along Armoury Road and then through a small estate, with the river immediately to our left the whole time.
A few hundred yards along, we found a paved path coming off to the right and running between a housing block and a hedge. This led us to a grey metal fence topped with barded wire . . .
. . . and then to a bright-coloured tunnel under the railway track running into Lewisham. On leaving the tunnel, we emerged onto Thurston Road (opposite Jerrard Street), where we turned left.
This brought us to a junction with the main road, Loampit Vale. I lived round here in the 80s and the area has changed almost beyond recognition, especially this main drag, which is now full of high-rise blocks of flats and feels more like Croydon than the area I used to know.
We cross the main road and turn left. Just before the railway arches, we joined a path open the right that runs alongside the arches and then joins the riverside again.
It was strangely heartening to see that Lewisham retains its distrust of the Metropolitan Police Force. Anyone who knows their local history will be aware of the Battle of Lewisham back in 1977, where coppers allowed the far-right National Front to attempt a march through the multicultural streets of the area . . . streets the locals that day decided to defend, as explained in this great little documentary.
Off to the right are the weirdly anonymous modern builds . . .
. . . . while ahead lies Cornmill Gardens, beyond which the gardens continue ahead on Waterway Avenue.
It’s great to see signs that the area is more geared up for cyclists and walkers than it ever used to be.
At the end of Waterway Avenue, we turn right onto Smead Waty and then left, under the railway arch onto Ellerdale Street. We are, as the street art makes very clear, leaving Lewisham and entering Ladywell, an area named after a well dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
We walk up to the top of Ellerdale Road and then turn left into Vicar’s Hill.
We then take the first gate on the right and enter Hilly Fields, a strange area that many music heads will associate with the legendary Nick Nicely 80s psych classic of the same name.
The fact we can still enjoy this glorious stretch of greenery owes much to an amazing woman called Octavia Hill. Born in 1838, she originally trained as an artist and became a protégé, and later a close friend, of John Ruskin. In early adult hood, she developed a passionate interest in the housing conditions of the London working classes; Her idea was to buy up areas of housing herself and then to improve them for the tenants. She made her first purchases through Ruskin in 1865, and by 1874 had the plan on a firm business footing, raising funds through friends and devoting her time to housing reform.
In 1884, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, one of the largest property owners in London, began to put her in charge of some of their own areas of housing, and it was in this way that she assumed responsibility for 133 homes in Deptford, and began her connexion with the area. “Poor Deptford, our black sheep”, she called it, finding it an area particularly resistant to her brand of reforms. In a poorly furnished room in one of the Deptford houses, she one day noticed a vase of freshly picked wild flowers. She was told that they had been picked on Hilly Fields and set off the same day to locate the place
Octavia was not only concerned with the housing conditions of the London poor, but with the quality of the environment in which they had to live. In 1875, she had campaigned unsuccessfully to save her beloved Swiss Cottage Fields from development, and thereafter became an executive member of the Commons Preservation Society.
Time and time again, she found herself campaigning against the building developments that were devouring the open spaces enjoyed by Londoners, especially those for whom the opportunity to walk across common or field was one of the few reliefs from their atrocious living conditions. ‘The thousands of rich people’, she said in 1883, ‘who owe their wealth to London, or who availed themselves of its advantages, have not, as far as I know, given one single acre of ground, that could have been sold for building over to Londoners for recreation ground or park, if we except Leicester Square’.
The Hilly Fields discovered by Octavia Hill was a London clay outcrop above the Thanet sands, a beautiful hilly prominence rising to 175 feet, with extensive views over London. Somehow it had so far escaped the development which was swallowing up Brockley all around it.
The area then was mostly farmland, with an area of game shooting common to the south. The latter part had already been leased to developers for building, and Octavia realised that none of the site would be spared for long. She helped establish a committee to save the fields and set about raising funds for its purchase.
The recently formed London County Council soon lent its support, but it was not without a difficult and protracted campaign that the fields were finally secured for the public they were ‘opened’ on 16 May1896, by which time Octavia hill had moved on to other campaigns, among them that abiding monument to her work, the National Trust, which she co-founded in 1885.
We followed the path as it curved to the left and ran across the top of the Fields. We continue ahead across cross paths, stopping at the stone circle for a bite to eat.
These stones are 400 million years old and were taken from Mount Struie in Scotland. The stone circle is thought to be the only one of its kind in the city and a pilgrimage site for London pagans.
The twelve granite boulders were introduced to Hilly Fields in 2000 to mark the millennium with the help of the Brockley Society.
We stopped at the lovely little cafe for a quick coffee and then followed the same path we’d been on, heading past the tennis courts on our left.
Just beyond the tennis courts, we turned left between the courts and a kids’ playground on the right. The drinking fountain here was a nice touch and much appreciated.
Just beyond the playground, we took the second path and followed it as it meandered downhill beside the meadow, reaching the apex of two roads, with Adelaide Avenue running straight ahead.
On Adelaide Avenue, we hit our second All Coppers Are Bastards of the day . . . .
We then ended up slightly lost, as we wandered down a little pedestrian passage alongside Prendergast School onto Ivy Vale, With the wall of Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery on our left, we headed back towards its entrance on the corner with Brockley Road.
I stopped to admire a few of the rather battered-looking lock-ups along the way.
The cemetery is open between 10am and 3.30pm from November to February and 10am till 4.30pm the rest of the year, so we were just about in time for a quick mooch through its faded wonder. On entering the cemetery, we took the path immediately to the left, following it as it runs parallel to the perimeter wall.
After a short walk, the path curved sharply away to the right, at which point we carried on straight ahead, following the trodden short cut over the grass to join another tarmac path. We turned left along this path, continuing to walk with the wall to our left.
When this path also started to bear to the right, we followed it . . . .
. . . . passing a small green roundabout of sorts and continuing on the tarmac path running ahead. We then turned to the left, passing a walled war memorial on our left and a chapel off to the right.
I’m guessing this was the grave of a local mason.
And there were some excellent old Celtic crosses on display as well.
The whole cemetery occupies 37 acres and was, in fact, once two separate entities – Brockley Cemetery, where we entered, and Ladywell Cemetery, where we leave from.
Under the original names of Lewisham and Deptford cemeteries, they opened in 1858, within a few months of each other. They were part of the first wave of Victorian cemeteries enabled by an 1854 Act of Parliament, which allowed for the building of burial grounds that were no longer attached to churches, a response to the unhealthy overcrowding afflicting church graveyards.
The ‘short cut’ across the grass that we took a minute ago marks the grassy ridge that once separated them and there are still few direct routes running from one side to the other.
The 131,000 people buried here include a number of interesting figures – among them Sir George Grove, author of the famous musical dictionary, Fernando Tarrida del Murmol, a Cuban anarchist, and the poet and painter David Jones.
Jones is not the only poet to be buried here for the cemetery also contains the grave of Ernest Dowson. His was a short and unhappy life. His father died of consumption, his mother committed suicide, he was unsuccessful in love and the two collaborative novels he worked on were a failure.
He died of alcoholism at the age of only 32. Few can even claim to have read his poetry, yet he left us with some memorable additions to the English language. The phrase ‘days of wine and roses’ comes from one of his poems, while Margaret Mitchell took the title of Gone With the Wind from another. Even Cole Porter used one of his lines in a song title.
Most surprisingly, he was the first person to use the word soccer in written language, though he spelt it socca. It’s good to report, therefore, that his derelict and badly vandalised grave was restored and commemorated by a memorial service in August 2010 – some 110 years after his untimely death.
On leaving the cemetery gates, we cross the end of Ivy Road into Ladywell Road, which we crossed and continued along for around half a mile. Along the way, we passed this plaque marking the spot of another mineral water spring that once blessed the area.
We pass the junction with Adelaide Avenue and reach the railway bridge, where we decide to break for the day. Strangely, as we head into Ladywell Station, there’s an Arsenal sticker, heralding our return to the red-and-white streets of north London!
What with one thing and another , we didn’t get round to doing the second half of the week until a few months later. Once eventually ready, we got the train from London Bridge down to Ladywell, came out and took the steps up to the top end of the bridge. After maybe a minute of walking along the road towards Lewisham, we took the second footpath on the right into Ladywell Fields.
holy We took a short detour straight ahead to read the Anglican parish church of St. Mar the Virgin, a classical, aristocratic structure that harks back to a time when this area was slightly grander and wealthier. Parts of the tower date right back to the 15th. century, but most of the church was built in the 18th. and 19th. centuries. Apparently the cemetery’s main claim to fame is that it’s home to the grave of the Irish poet Thomas Dermody.
From here, we swung off to the right at the first junction, crossing a little footbridge over the River Ravensbourne.
We then turned left into Ladywell Park and then followed the path along the side of the river. In the 19th. century, this land was all rich watery meadows attached to the church, but in 1889, they were bought up by London County Council and the Lewisham Board of Works. The meadows were drained and landscaped , and the river straightened, with its bends cut off to form little islands. It was then opened as the new Ladywell Recreation Grounds.
Today, it’s clearly well used and well loved by locals, but also home to the predictable abandoned hire bikes as well!
We passed this wonderful wooden climbing frame that resembles a Chinese pictogram.
After following the path, we crossed another footbridge over the river and then went over the footbridge to the right that crosses the railway tracks. From the steps, we got a view over the athletics track seen here.
And off in the distance there, looking northwards down the tracks, is Ladywell station again.
In the early 1990s, I spent a brief spell living in Catford, and one of the more surreal moments of my time there involved seeing the very distinctive-looking Harvey Stephens, the man who played Damien in The Omen as a child, queuing in the local supermarket one day.
I mention this simply because this sign on the bottom of the bridge served as a timely reminder that Satan is everywhere. 🙂
From the bridge, we carried on along the side of the river through the next section of the Fields until we reached a footbridge. After crossing that, we turned left along the opposite side of the river, with these new-builds off to our left.
We resisted the temptation to cross this next bridge and explore a lovely-looking corner of the park and instead walked onwards . . . .
. . . . . passing on our right this magnificent tree known as the ‘Lewisham Dutch Elm’. As you can see, it’s one of the Great Trees of London. Set up after the Great Storm on 1987, which brought down thousands of trees across the country, this lists 61 rare, ancient and just plain remarkable trees all over the capital.
Continuing on, we passed under a railway bridge . . .
. . . and took the second of the paths leading off to the right.
We were nearing the end of this rather lovely stretch . . .
. . . and headed uphill to meet the road, Ravensbourne Park. There seems to be no escaping the river on this particular part of the trek.
We crossed the road, turned left along Ravensbourne Park and then almost immediately right onto Ravensbourne Park Crescent. There was a little scrap of park off to our right, all watched over by the loving eyes of CCTV.
Smile.
We turned right and then left onto Montacute Road, an innocuous-looking street with a fascinating history behind the name. Edward II came to the throne of England in 1307. He was not a man who would enjoy or excel at martial activities like war or tournaments, and so failed to win the respect of the troublesome barons of the land. This was exacerbated by his string of gay lovers.
He was defeated at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and this seriously weakened his already shaky standing. He married Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair of France, but their relationship soon collapsed and she spent more and more time back in France.
The story goes that there she met Roger Mortimer, a lord who was in exile after an unsuccessful revolt. The two soon became lovers and hatched a plot to take over the English throne. They landed in 1326 and Edward was usurped with hardly a hand raised in his defence. He was eventually imprisoned in Berkeley Castle, where legend has it that on the night of September 21st 1327, they sent murderers into his cell, who killed him by pushing a red hot poker into his bowels.
The new king Edward III, son of Isabella and Edward II, was still a boy. For four years, Roger and Isabella were able to rule in his place. However, when Edward III reached adulthood, he sent a group of close associates to Nottingham Castle, where they seized Roger Mortimer, who was subsequently hung at Tyburn, next to what’s now Marble Arch.
The leader of the band who took Mortimer into custody was William Montague – also known as Montacute. As a reward, he was given the Manor of Catford, and this very road here marked the boundary.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, Edward III’s mother Isabella was placed under house arrest at Castle Rising in Norfolk, and remained there – in isolation – for the rest of her life.
At the top of Montacute Road is a T-junction and immediately opposite is this passageway that leads up onto Blythe Hill Fields.
Blythe Hill is another one of the raised green spaces that the Green London Way follows across South London. In fact, from its 200-foot high point, you get a great view back up to Hilly Fields in Ladywell and beyond, to the east and the Isle of Dogs over the water.
This lovely green space was once at risk from rapacious developers, but was saved through concerted public protest and in 1935, the hill was ‘opened’ as a park.
The surrounding area is the pleasant suburb of Brockley, which gets its name from two Anglo-Saxon words: broc meaning brook and leah meaning a clearing or a glade. Until the 18th century, Brockley was a village set in a clearing in the huge expanse of the Great North Wood, which stretched for miles over much of what is now South London.
The wood survives in many place names down here – Norwood, Forest Hill, Forest Wood, Westwood and Honor Oak, which is where we’d headed to next.
We crossed Blythe Hill Fields, ignoring the paths running downhill to the right and left. Instead, we continued ahead to reach the exit onto a road called Brockley View
We turned right down Brockley View and then left into Codrington Hill, which we followed to its end. Along the way, we passed this rather splendidly named street!
We hit the main road – Stondon Park – where we came across this rather desperate piece of urging. We crossed the main road, turned right past a couple of shops and continued more or less straight ahead into Gabriel Street
Just off Gabriel Street was this plaque, marking the house that Anglo-Irish writer Leslie Paul once lived in. As a young man, his political views were shaped by H.G. Wells, William Morris and Edward Carpenter, while his ideas about children’s education were influenced by Rousseau.
After World War I, he became deeply involved with scouting and related youth movements. He left the Scouts to join the Kibbo Kift Kindred, which you can learn more about in this excellent podcast here.
After a dispute with the Kibbo Kift leader, John Hargrave, Paul and some other members broke away to form a new group, the Woodcraft Folk, which is still active today.
At the end of Gabriel Street, we turned right into Grierson Road and followed that down till we met Honor Oak Park, almost opposite the station. Here, we crossed the road and turned left up the hill.
We pass this unintentionally comic entrance to a local cemetery.
And get a glimpse of some local allotments.
On the other side of the road is this slightly wonky little wonder.
And then we go through a gate on our right and up some steps that lead into woodland. We’re now entering One Tree Hill.
The ‘one tree’ in question is also the ‘honour oak’ that gives its name to the local neighbourhood. Legend has it that its name derives from Elizabeth I, who once picnicked here in 1662 while she was out ‘a-maying’ with Sir Richard Buckley. However, the true origin is probably much older. A large oak tree at the top of a hill has a pre-Christian religious significance. This importance actually continued until fairly recently, and the beating of the Parish bounds, which took place once every three years, always ended under the branches of the honour oak. Traditionally, this ceremony would finish with the singing of a psalm. It’s fairly telling that the last time this ceremony took place in 1899, the assembled dignitaries couldn’t remember the words to the traditional psalm and were forced to sing a shorter thing instead.
Off to our right, we can now see St. Augustine’s church, which was built in the 1870s to meet local demand as more and more people followed the railways out in the expanding suburbs.
It’s now a Grade II listed building and still seems to play a very active role in the life of the local community.
We carried on up the next flights of stairs towards the summit.
For generations, the residents of Honor Oak regarded One Tree Hill as common land. Then, one morning in 1896, they awoke to find the hill surrounded by a six-foot fence that had been erected by the local golf club, which now claimed to have a legitimate lease on the land.
Within a few days, an ‘Enclosure of Honor Oak Hill Protest Committee’ was holding its first meeting in a nearby tavern. With the support of the Commons Preservation Society, it began the long and painstaking business of researching the legal status of the land.
This constitutional mode of procedure was too slow for most local people and public anger boiled over when two local boys faced criminal proceedings from the golf club for alleged damage to the fence.
On the next Sunday, 15,000 people gathered on the slopes of the hill, directing their attacks from Honor Oak Park and Honor Oak Rise, they tore down the fence and swarmed across the hill in what the authorities described as ‘a disorderly multitude’. The groundkeeper’s cottage was attacked and seriously damaged and the crowds only dispersed when police reinforcements arrived.
The following Saturday, three disaffected members of the Protest Committee, which had disassociated itself from the demonstration, cut down a section of the fence and, having notified the press, the police and the golf club in advance, invited the authorities to arrest them.
The next day, crowds estimated at between 50,000 to 100,000 again massed around the hill. This time they were met by large contingents of foot and mounted police. As the crowd stormed the fences, the police made a mounted charge. Missiles were thrown, bushes set ablaze and a police inspector injured. Nine people were arrested, of whom five were sent to prison for their part in the battle to liberate the hill.
In spite of these activities, it was not until 1902 and the establishment of the London County Council that the land was saved for the public. Using its new compulsory purchase powers, it took the golf club to court and completed its acquisition two years later. In 1905, in the presence of 30,000 spectators One Tree Hill was officially reopened to the public.
Just off to the left of the summit was this strange structure, which turned out to have once been a gun emplacement. It was built in 1916 to mount a Royal Naval gun to defend London against bombing from German Zeppelins and Gotha bi-planes.
Two watches of ten men were stationed here to man the gun and if eye-witness reports from the time are accurate, then they may not have been successful in shooting down a Zeppelin, but did damage tramlines in nearby Peckham Rye Common with a missed shot!
A hundred metres or so off to the right stands the Honor Oak. Despite the legend about Elizabeth I stopping here for a picnic, this actual tree wasn’t planted until 1905. Its lack of ancient credentials hasn’t stoped people coming here to lay strange pagan offerings at its base, though.
From the summit, we carried on straight ahead to descend several flights of stairs into even deeper woodland.
We passed these grand houses in One Tree Close off to our left – buildings as impressive and imposing as anything we’d seen on Blackheath or in Greenwich.
The downwards path veered off to the right a little . . . . .
. . . . past a tastefully decorated rubbish bin, and onto the road – Brenchley Gardens.
We crossed Brenchley Gardens and entered the little strip of park of the same name via a little gate. Opened in 1928, this thin stretch of greenery was built partly on the line of the old Crystal Palace railway and named after the one-time Mayor of Camberwell, William Brenchley.
In a classic instance of bureaucratic fudge, the LCC had a policy that sites shouldn’t be named after people who were still alive and therefore refused to endorse the name. In an imaginative counterstroke, the Borough Council announced it was still calling this Brenchley Gardens – after the village of Brenchley in Kent!
We bore left along Brenchley Gardens and as we neared Forest Hill Road, we got a good look at this lovely old LCC council block.
We emerged onto Forest Hill Road opposite Wood Vale, crossed over and came to the entrance of Camberwell Old Cemetery.
Despite the fact that it was originally designed for ‘the middle, artisan and poorer classes’, Camberwell Old Cemetery was actually laid out in great style, as you can see. Founded in 1856, it covered nearly 30 acres and was equipped with chapels designed by the great George Gilbert Scott. However, following these promising beginnings, it soon fell into a state of disrepair. Today, though, it’s one of the most attractive of the still active cemeteries in London. There’s a kind of semi-maintained element going on here, which means the cemetery avoids that stultifying sterile conformity that so many modern cemeteries seem plagued by.
The cemetery runs alongside a road called Wood Vale, which was once the boundary between Kent and Surrey.
Over 300,000 people are buried here and among the most notable are the 288 Commonwealth service graves from World War I, a group of special memorials to 14 casualties buried during World War II and a memorial dedication to 21 civilians killed in a Zeppelin raid on Camberwell in 1917.
As we walked through the cemetery, we bore left and eventually exited onto Wood Vale through a gate in the far left corner.
We crossed Wood Vale and went up Langton Rise . . .
. . . . . and at the top, we turned right onto Westwood Park, the kind of street that a certain sort of suburban torpor hovers over.
Westwood Park was the site of the first recorded fight of the commoners’ rights in Britain. The Westwood once extended over 500 acres and was part of the Manor of Lewisham. The poorer inhabitants of the area had, for generations, taken their cattle there to graze and regarded it as common land.
In 1605, though, it was granted by the King to Henry Newport, a local member of the gentry. The commoners immediately made a complaint and the case came to trial in 1606. The commissioners attempted the impossible by coming down on both sides and saying it was both ‘the king’s waste’ to dispose of as he pleased, and also a common.
Unsurprisingly, this satisfied nobody and the case went on to the Court of the Exchequer in 1607. The commoners won their case, but Newport and two associates immediately, and despite the ruling, seized possession of 347 acres of the common.
The case was brought back to court a third time, this time with a jury from the county of Kent, who decided in Newport’s favour. He immediately began to make ditches and enclosed the common, driving the commoners off and killing their cattle. The commoners responded by demolishing the fences and filling in the ditches.
As the crisis came to a head, the local vicar led 100 parishioners into London to make a direct appeal to the king, who referred the case to the Lords of Privy Council. A retrial was ordered and on the 16th of October 1615, it came before the Barons of the Exchequer, who ruled in favour of the commoners.
The Westwood then remained common land for the next 200 years. However, in 1810, an act of parliament was passed authorising the enclosure of the whole of the common. The Westwood then disappeared, surviving only as a street name.
The road starts to curve upwards to the left and there we found a little opening between the houses that took us onto a footpath. This led us to another path that led through a wooden area running alongside Horniman Gardens.
Half a century after the Westwood was lost, Frederick Horniman gifted the Horniman Gardens and the Horniman Museum ‘to the people forever’. Frederick was the son of John Horniman, who had founded a tea business and became the first person to sell tea in sealed packets.
Frederick had been a keen collector since childhood and was able to indulge his passion with a vengeance in his work for the tea company. He travelled at least twice around the world, taking in Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, China, Japan, Canada and the USA. From each of these countries, he made a point of bringing back artefacts illustrating either their natural history or their arts and handicrafts.
In 1868, he moved into Surrey House at the top of Forest Hill, where eventually his ‘artefacts’ filled so much space that there was no longer room for both his family and his collection. It was the family that had to move – and they took up residence in the adjacent Surrey Mount, which stood on the highest point of what is now Horniman gardens.
In 1890 Frederick, who was by now both chairman of the tea firm and MP for Falmouth in Cornwall, opened his collection to the public as a free museum.
Within seven years, it was receiving over 90,000 visitors a year, with 3500 people crowding into Surrey House on a single Bank Holiday. It was obvious that a brand new building was necessary.
Frederick Horniman and his architect C. Harrison Townshend have given us one of the most interesting and individual buildings in London. Completed in 1901 in an Art Nouveau style, it cleverly makes use of the steep slope into which it is set.
The arched frontage of the South Hall faces the road, and set slightly apart from it is a tower in beautifully grained and honey-coloured stone with rounded corners from which four little subsidiary towers emerged as naturally as buds.
We stopped off in the museum gardens for tea and cake before trudging the last half-mile to the next station.
Once we hit the main road – the A205, also known as the London Road – we turned left and headed down through Forest Hill to the station and our overground train back to London Bridge.
Before we hit the row of shops on our right, we passed this lovely but slightly run-down building on the opposite side.
Hopefully, you can work out our route from the photos and descriptions, but just in case, here’s the map from Bob Gilbert’s magical The Green London Way.
The Green London Way 