The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Originally a small fishing-village, the site of which is supposed to have been once occupied by a Roman camp, Woolwich, now one of the most important eastern suburbs of London, owes its prosperity chiefly to its having been chosen by Henry VIII. as his chief naval station. In its dockyard was built the famous ship called the Henrye Grace à Dieu, as proved by entries in an account-book, now in the Record Office, of the payments made to 'shippe-wrights and other officers working upon the Kinges great shippe at Wolwiche' from 1512 to 1515, when it was launched in the presence of Henry and Katharine of Aragon, who with their court and many invited guests dined on board at the royal expense. The career of the great Henrye Grace à Dieu was short, for it was destroyed by fire at Woolwich in 1553; but many other famous ships were built in the same dockyard, including some of those that went forth to meet the Spanish Armada, others that took part in the voyages of exploration of Hawkins and Frobisher, and the Royal Sovereign, nicknamed the 'Golden Devil' by the Dutch on account of its terrible powers, that was built in the reign of Charles I. In his famous Diary the gossipy Secretary of the Admiralty, Mr. Pepys, often alludes to Woolwich, which he constantly visited to inspect the dockyard, the ships, and the stores, making the journey from Greenwich sometimes by boat, sometimes on foot. He describes how he looked into the details of every department, examining the charges made for work done, and he strikes a melancholy and prophetic note when he says: 'I see it is impossible for the King to have things done so cheap as other men.' A somewhat later entry in the same journal calls up a picture of a very different kind of place to the crowded, busy, and somewhat squalid town of to-day, for on May 28, 1669, the writer says: 'My wife away down with Jane ... to Woolwich in order to [get] a little ayre, and to lie there to-night and so to gather May dew in the morning ... to wash her face with.' To quote Pepys again, he laments at the time of the scare about the Dutch, the sinking of so many good ships in the Thames off Woolwich, shrewdly remarking that these ships 'would have been good works to command the river below' had the enemy attempted to pass them, and adding, 'it is a sad sight while we would be thought masters of the sea.'

The gallant Prince Rupert was for some time in command at Woolwich, and greatly strengthened its defences, adding to them a battery of sixty guns. According to tradition, he lived in the house near the arsenal, now converted into a museum close to which was a lofty observatory named after him, comanding a fine view, which was unfortunately taken down in 1786. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, when wars and rumours of wars kept up a constant demand for new battleships, additions continued to be made to the great dockyard of Woolwich, which reached the zenith of its prosperity under the gifted engineers, Sir John Rennie and his son, who created a large reservoir, built a strong river wall, and proved themselves equal to meeting every emergency that arose. The dockyard soon became as celebrated for the iron vessels launched from it as for their wooden predecessors, but ere long even it failed to be able to produce the huge iron-clad men-of-war required for modern scientific warfare. On September 17, 1869, the fiat went forth that Woolwich dockyard should be closed, and soon after part of it was sold, whilst the remainder was converted into a Government storehouse for munitions of war.

The fame of the ancient dockyard was soon to be equalled, if not surpassed, by that of the Royal Arsenal that occupies the site of what was long known as the Warren, which was closely associated with the memory of the convicts who used to work in it and in the dockyard, living in the ancient vessels called the hulks that were moored in the river. The present arsenal is the successor of a very much more ancient military depot, for even if there be no real foundation for the popular tradition that Queen Elizabeth founded the latter, there are many references to it in early ordnance accounts, notably in one bearing date July 9, 1664, in which, in an estimate for repairs, occurs the item: 'for floaring a storehouse att Woolwich to keepe shipp carriages dry.' Sixteen years later an order was issued from the Admiralty that 'all ye sheds at Woolwich along ye proofe house, and ye shedds for carriages there, be forthwith repaired,' supplemented in 1682 by directions for building 'a new shedd at Woolwich, with all convenient speed, with artificers at ye reasonablest rates,' and in 1688 by instructions for the removal of all guns, carriages, and stores, then at Deptford, to Woolwich.

Founded in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the modern Arsenal of Woolwich is one of the most extensive and interesting institutions of the kind in the world. Exclusive of the outlying powder magazines in the marshes, the present buildings cover considerably more than three hundred acres, the ordinary staff of workpeople numbers some ten thousand, that is increased to forty thousand or fifty thousand in time of war. In the various departments the whole science of modern war material may be studied, whilst in the Royal Artillery Museum the history of the past is illustrated by a remarkably complete collection of weapons and models. On the wharf and pier in connection with the Arsenal the landing and embarkation of troops and the shipping of stores are constantly going on, troops are daily exercised and reviews are often held on the common outside the town, so that there is always something interesting to be seen at Woolwich, which in addition to its fine Dockyard and Arsenal, owns the Royal Military Academy that was founded by George II. in 1741, and is associated with the memory of many great soldiers.

Outside Woolwich is the lofty Shooters Hill, commanding a fine view of the Thames valley and London, that was in olden times a noted haunt of highwaymen, a fact to which it is supposed to owe its name. It is often alluded to by old chroniclers, notably by Phillpott, who declares that it was so called for the 'thievery there practised where travellers in elder times were so much infested with depredations and bloody mischief, that order was taken in the 6th year of Richard II. for the enlarging the highway'; but the evil was not remedied, for as late as 1682 Oldham wrote that 'Padders came from Shooters Hill in flocks.' In Hall's Chronicle there is a noteworthy description of a meeting on Shooters Hill between Henry VIII. and his queen and Robin Hood, which deserves quotation at length: 'And as they passed by the way,' he says, 'they espied a company of tall yeomen, clothed all in grene with grene whodes and bowes and arrowes to the number of ii C. Then one of them, which called himselfe Robyn Hood, came to the kyng desyring him to se his men shoote, and the kyng was content. Then he whistled, and al the ii C archers shot and losed at once, and then he whisteled agayne and they likewise shot agayne, their arrows whisteled by crafte of the head so that the noyes was strange and great and much pleased the kynge and quene and all the company.' So delighted, indeed, was Henry with the prowess displayed, that when the bold Robin 'desyred them to come into the grene wood and see how the outlaws lyve,' they readily consented. 'Then,' adds the chronicler, 'the hornes blew till they came to the wood under Shoters Hil, and there was an arbor made of boughs, with a hal and a great chamber very well made and covered with floures and swete herbes, which the kyng much praysed.' Encouraged by this success, the outlaw chief made a yet bolder venture, for though he must have known that he was risking the lives of all his merry men as well as his own, he said to the king, 'Outlawes brekefastes is venyson, and therefore you must be content with such fare as we use.' Even this bold confession of guilt, however, did not rouse the ire of the usually hasty monarch; he and his queen, says Hall, 'sate doune and were served with venyson and wyne by Robin Hood and his men to their contentacion.'

Writing more than a century after this notable meeting so typical of the time at which it occurred, the ubiquitous Pepys, who seems to have been here, there, and everywhere, tells how in a journey from Stratford to London he and his wife's maid rode under a dead body hanging on Shooters Hill, and that the reputation of the famous height was not much improved in Byron's time is proved by the fact that the poet makes his Don Juan shoot a man on it who had accosted him with the trite demand, 'your money or your life.' Now, however, all is changed: no longer is the Bull Inn—where, according to local tradition, Dick Turpin nearly roasted the landlady on her own kitchen fire, to make her confess where she kept her savings—the stopping-place of coaches; the ancient woods are replaced by the Military Hospital, the largest in Great Britain, named after Lord Herbert of Lea, who was Secretary of State for War when it was erected; trim villas and a modern church, that is already too small for its congregation. The one remaining relic of days gone by is the ugly Severndoorg Castle, a massive three-storied tower on the top of the hill, built by the wife of Sir William Jones, to commemorate his taking of the stronghold, after which it is named, on the coast of Malabar.

Plumstead

Less than a century ago, Plumstead, which with Burrage Town now forms the eastern suburb of Woolwich, was a mere isolated hamlet of the marshes, a dependency of the manor given in 960 by King Edgar to the abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, which after changing hands many times became the property of Queen's College, Oxford. The ancient manor-house, now a farm, still stands near the parish church—which is dedicated to St. Nicolas, the patron saint of fishermen—that, though greatly modernised, retains some few traces of the original building. Of the seat of the noble De Burghesh family, who once owned the site of Burrage Town, nothing now remains, though its memory is preserved in the name of Burrage Place, a row of uninteresting modern houses.