V
How many, or how few, of Lewisham’s myriads ever idly speculate whence came the name of the place? According to authorities who are now, in these more scientific times, largely discredited, it comes from Anglo-Saxon words meaning “the dwelling among the meadows,” or the leas—the “leas home”—and was anciently spelled Levesham and Lewesham. Just a few vestiges of this ancient rurality remain, in the strips of meadows—now converted into what are shaping as beautiful parks—that fringe the course of the Ravensbourne on either bank, from Catford Bridge to Ladywell; but we are now bidden disregard those meadows in any relationship with the name of Lewisham. The place is first mentioned in a charter of Ethelbert of Wessex, dated A.D. 862, in which it is called “Liofshema”; and fifty-six years later, in a charter granted by Ethelswitha, daughter of Alfred the Great, it assumes the form of “Lieuesham,” which gives us exactly the modern pronunciation. This, it has been remarked, has nothing to do with meadows, leas, or pastures, but means literally “dear son’s home.” But, having reached that point, we come to a full stop, for no one can tell us who was that “dear son”; and the theory that the name of Leveson similarly derives from Liof-or Leof-suna, seems to have little bearing upon the history of the place.
Ladywell, just mentioned, is itself the name of a great crowded district, and it is thus curious to reflect that the name was utterly unknown until modern times. It arose from one of two closely neighbouring wells—one reputed to be medicinal—situated in what is now the road turning off the highway, past Lewisham old vicarage, to Ladywell railway-station and Brockley, which name itself—meaning, as it does, the “badger’s meadow”—enshrines the former rustic appearance of these parts. Ancient records and county histories may be searched in vain for mention of the “Lady Well,” which, oddly enough, seems to have acquired its name about the end of the eighteenth century. It was, about 1820, the subject of a published plate, showing it with a circular stone kerb, placed by the wayside of a pretty rustic road, embowered in trees. Thus it remained, amid ever deteriorating surroundings, until 1866, when it was destroyed in the course of sewer-making operations for the newly risen suburb that had grown around the South-Eastern railway-station of “Ladywell,” opened in January, 1857.
The well had long become a thing of the past, and its very site was merely a matter of vague tradition, when, in 1881, its stones were discovered in the course of repairs to the bridge over the railway. A signalman rescued them from being again covered over, and removed them to a position beside his cabin, where they remained until 1896, when the following notice appeared in a local paper: “It has now been decided by the Lewisham Baths Commissioners to re-erect the stones by the side of the public baths, where they will be used to surround a public fountain to which the youths and maidens of to-day may once more resort, and there whisper their hearts’ desire.” Accordingly, they may be seen to this day in the Ladywell Road.
It seems likely, under the circumstances thus recounted, that the well was given its name about a century ago by some forgotten fanciful local antiquary who, bethinking himself that the parish church of St. Mary, Lewisham, was but a hundred yards or so distant, dignified the hitherto unnamed spring by the name of Our Lady.
That parish church is a singular, and in general an unbeautiful, structure, built in 1777 on the site of an older, and enlarged at the east end, in the same hybrid “classic” style, in 1881. It has a great south porch, unmistakably Corinthian, though it would puzzle an architect to put a name to the rest. But the tower has a character all its own. Equally nondescript, it yet owns an engaging quaintness which one would with sorrow see improved away for the sake of something more pure in style. The lower stages of this tower are obviously the remains of the old Gothic building, for the buttresses, some of the windows, and a good deal of the old facing are left, while the upper part has either been rebuilt or re-cased in a style resembling the practice of the brothers Adam. Sculptured garlands in the famous manner of those architects give a daintily decorative effect, and, together with the four stone balls which occupy the places usually given to pinnacles, render Lewisham church-tower memorable and unmistakable among its fellows.
It is now, in short, with the neighbouring Colfe Almshouses, the most characteristic and distinctive thing left to Lewisham. The surrounding churchyard is very large, and the approach is made beautiful by a long arched yew walk, still charmingly rustic in appearance.
The almshouses, it seems, are doomed to destruction. They are relics of the times when it could yet be said with truth of Lewisham that “its convenient distance from the metropolis and its beautiful situation have rendered it a favourite place of residence, and the neighbourhood is thickly studded with gentlemen’s seats, many of which are splendid mansions, and with numerous handsome villas, the country residences of opulent merchants.”
Abraham Colfe, who founded these quaint old almshouses, was vicar of Lewisham about the middle of the seventeenth century. He died in 1657, and left property in trust for the purpose to the Leathersellers’ Company, who accordingly built them, as a tablet over the main entrance informs the passer-by, in 1664.
LEWISHAM.
Another survival is the handsome old late seventeenth-century vicarage, already mentioned, standing a little out of its element, as it were, beside the high road. It was built in 1692-3 by Dr. Stanhope, the then vicar, and, as his surviving accounts tell us, it cost him £739 13s. to build. Dr. Stanhope, if we may accept the estimate of his character given by his monument in the church, was one of the best, for (inter alia) his “piety was real and rational, his charity great and universal.... His learning was elegant and comprehensive, his conversation polite and delicate, Grave without Preciseness, Facetious without Levity. The good Christian and solid Divine and the fine gentleman in him were happily united.”
That, I think, is the ne plus ultra, the last word, in monumental eulogy. You cannot get better than the best, unless indeed you visit modern Lewisham and do your shopping at its popular “stores,” where a searching glance may discover “best fresh eggs” at one shilling and sixpence a dozen, and “superior” at two shillings.
For the rest, a few strips of garden here and there border the high road through modern urban Lewisham, sometimes owning elms that in the old days were tall wayside trees. Here a giant workhouse, neighbouring the Colfe Almshouses, serves by its presence to underline and emphasise the social distance travelled—whether it be upwards or downwards let those decide who will—between the seventeenth century and the twentieth, and a few scattered weather-boarded cottages are left, showing what manner of buildings were those that fringed the road in days for ever gone. Midway between the date of those humble old dwellings and the modern shops is one old-fashioned shop where they sell hay, corn, straw, beans, and sweet-smelling seeds of all kinds. The name over the fascia is “Shove,” singularly inapplicable to this quiet, unassuming frontage.[1] To gaze upon its small-paned windows, to see and scent the hay and the fragrant contents of its bins of beans, peas, and varied seeds, must surely, with the coming of every spring, set the prisoned wage-earners of Lewisham longing keenly for the banished country whose breath comes fragrant from within.
[1] Alas! since writing the above, the shop is closed, and the house to be demolished.
THE COLFE ALMSHOUSES.