Shooter's Hill
| Shooter's Hill | |
| Kent | |
|---|---|
 The water tower on Shooter's Hill | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ435765 |
| Location: | 51°28’9"N, -0°4’1"E |
| Data | |
| Population: | 13,433 (2011) |
| Post town: | London |
| Postcode: | SE18, SE3 |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Greenwich / Bexley |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Eltham |
Shooter's Hill is a hill and an urban village district in the north-west of Kent. It is to the north of Eltham and south of Woolwich. With a height of 433 feet, this is one of the highest points of the smothering conurbation.
Shooter's Hill also gives its name to the road which passes through east to west, part of the A207 road, the A2 road and Watling Street.
Geography
The name Shooters Hill is thought to takes its name from the practice of archery there during the Middle Ages. The area had a reputation as a haunt for highwaymen and was infamous as a site of gibbets of executed criminals.
On 1 May 1515, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon rode from Greenwich Palace to have breakfast in an arbour constructed in a wood at Shooter's Hill. Catherine and her ladies were dressed in Spanish-style riding gear, Henry was dressed in green velvet. Twelve men of the royal guard were disguised as Robin Hood and his men. There was a pageant and a masque or dance.[1]
In the Second First World Wart was the site of an array of anti-aircraft guns which protected London. As part of 'London Stop Line Central' it was a last line of defence from a German land invasion, that was assumed would follow Watling Street from Dover. A number of devices were under the control of the Home Guard including a fougasse and a flame thrower.[2] Adjacent to an anti-aircraft battery was built a prisoner-of-war camp on what is today part of a golf course on the north-eastern slopes.[3][4] North of the golf course is Shrewsbury Park, the site for a barrage balloon, part of the Air Ministry's Field Scheme Nosecap for the defence of London; during the Battle of Britain it was manned by 901 County of London Barrage Balloon Squadron.[5]
Eltham Common was the site of Shooter's Hill police station (now closed). Eltham was allegedly the only town in England with two fully functional police stations (the other in Well Hall Road), having been placed there owing to the lawlessness associated with the town.
Celia Fiennes, who in 1697 proceeded out of London along the Dover Road, wrote in her diary of stopping at:
Shuttershill, on top of which hill you see a vast prospect ...some lands clothed with trees, others with grass and flowers, gardens, orchards, with all sorts of herbage and tillage, with severall little towns all by the river, Erith, Leigh, Woolwich etc., quite up to London, Greenwich, Deptford, Black Wall, the Thames twisting and turning it self up and down bearing severall vessells and men of warre on it...
The hill reaches 433 feet above sea level, offering good views over the River Thames to the north, with central London clearly visible to the west. Oxleas Wood remains a public open space close to the top of the hill; on the north side of Shooter's Hill Road is Eaglesfield Park, Shrewsbury Park, a golf-course, and one of the last remaining areas of farmland in inner London, Woodlands Farm (now an educational charity).[6]
Shooter's Hill Road stretches eastwards from the heath at Blackheath up and over the hill, initially as part of the A2 road as far as the Sun in the Sands, and then the A207. The road follows the route of Watling Street, a Roman road running from London to the north of Kent and Channel ports. This was used as a route for horse-drawn mail-coaches linking London with Dover.
Literary associations
Byron's Don Juan is waylaid while romantically musing on Shooter's Hill when he first arrives in London (Canto XI). As the narrative of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities opens, Mr Jarvis Lorry is a passenger in the Dover mail coach, "lumbering up Shooter's Hill"; and Dickens refers to a public house there in The Pickwick Papers. The name Shooter's Hill is also mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula although referring to the Hampstead area, some distance away, and also in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and by Thomas Carlyle.
On 11 April 1661, diarist Samuel Pepys mentions passing under "the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones." (presumably a highwayman hanged and left to rot as a warning to other criminals – at 'Gibbet Field', now part of the local golf course). In the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the character Evey Hammond describes her childhood, spent on Shooter's Hill.
About the village
The distinctive Gothic revival water tower at the top of Shooter's Hill is a landmark built in 1910 and can be seen from far around. Other local landmarks include Severndroog Castle, a folly designed by the architect Richard Jupp in 1784 and built to commemorate Commodore Sir William James, who on 2 April 1755 attacked and destroyed a pirate fortress at Suvarnadurg along the western coast of India.
Another water tower (of 130 feet) stands further west down Shooter's Hill. This was originally built in the 1890s to designs by Thomas W. Aldwinckle to supply water to the 'Brook Fever hospital', which was demolished in the 1990s, to be replaced by a housing development. The tower consists of a plain brick pillar ornamented simply with bands of terracotta tiles and windows like arrowslits. It is not listed, but it was cleaned, repointed and underpinned for conversion into a family home. It is the centrepiece of the housing estate.[7]
Immediately to the east of the housing estate is the Grade II listed former Royal Herbert Hospital, today the Royal Herbert Pavilions. Further up the hill is the still-functioning Memorial Hospital.
In 1749, 'The Bull' public house opened just west of the summit of the hill, and was used as a refreshment stop by the coaches, although not by the Royal Mail, which had an interchange of mail bags at the Post Office by the Red Lion on the London side of the hill.
An 18th-century grade II listed milestone in the grounds of Christ Church on Shooter's Hill has 19th-century plates giving the distances "Dartford 7 miles", "London Bridge 8 miles" and a later addition: "130 miles to Ypres: in defending the salient our casualties were 90,000 killed, 70,500 missing, 450,000 wounded", commemorating the Battle of Ypres.[8]
Shrewsbury Barrow is a Bronze Age burial mound which is located on the corners of Brinklow Crescent and Plum Lane, and is a scheduled monument. It is approximately 25m wide and 1.5m high. It is the last surviving burial mound out of a group of six.[9]
Road alterations
During the 1950s the road gradient was lowered in the west where low-powered motor vehicles of the era frequently struggled to get to the top. As a remedy, a small section of the road west of the summit was removed and the road resurfaced from scratch to extend the slope horizontally. This alteration is evident where the road (opposite Craigholm) runs through the cutting and the pavement (following the original gradient of the hill) rises about three to six feet above.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Shooter's Hill) |
References
- ↑ Rawdon Brown (1854). Four years at the court of Henry VIII. Smith, Elder, & Co. pp. 90–93.
- ↑ The Archaeology of the Second World War – Uncovering Britain's Wartime Heritage pp26-8
- ↑ "Shooters Hill Local History Group – Prisoners of War and the Local Community". 17 September 2013. http://e-shootershill.co.uk/shlhg/.
- ↑ "History". http://www.shgc.uk.com/history.php.
- ↑ "Shrewsbury Park, including Shrewsbury Tumulus (Greenwich)". https://londongardenstrust.org/conservation/inventory/site-record/?ID=GRN061.
- ↑ "Woodlands Farm Trust". http://www.thewoodlandsfarmtrust.org/.
- ↑ Partridge, Chris (25 July 2004). "Tall order to save romantic tower". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2004/jul/25/observercashsection.theobserver1.
- ↑ National Heritage List 1211875: Milestone to North of Christ Church (Grade II listing)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1430983: Shrewsbury Barrow (Scheduled ancient monument entry)