The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

It was at Eltham in 1396 that the marriage was arranged between Richard II. and the eight-year-old Isabella, daughter of Charles VI. of France, and it was from the palace that the newly married pair went forth in great state for the coronation of the bride in Westminster Abbey. Isabella was but eleven years old when three years later her husband was deposed, and they were never again at Eltham; but Henry IV. often held his court in the palace, spending Christmas there no less than four times. It was in it that he was first seized with the illness that terminated fatally in Westminster Abbey in March 1413, and there that his son and successor Henry V. spent much of the short time he lived in England. From Eltham Palace he hastened up to London in January 1414 to deal with the Lollards. Henry VI., after his long minority, and before he realised how insecure was his tenure of the throne, went to Eltham to superintend the restoration of the palace for the reception of his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and her infant son, the ill-fated Prince Edward, but so far as the royal family was concerned his labour was all in vain. The queen never saw the home prepared for her, and it was her bitter enemy Edward IV. who reaped the benefit of her husband's improvements. The new king became greatly attached to his palace at Eltham, and some authorities attribute the building of the banqueting-hall to him, though the probability is that he only enlarged and beautified it. In 1480 his third daughter Bridget was born in the palace, and baptized in the private chapel, and in 1482, three months before his sudden death, the king kept Christmas there with great pomp, daily entertaining more than two thousand guests. The founder of the Tudor dynasty too, Henry VII., whose marriage with one of Edward IV.'s daughters united the red and white roses, kept up the traditions of Eltham hospitality, and did much to embellish the palace, building, according to Hasted, a handsome front towards the moat. The sixteenth-century chronicler Lambarde gives a vivid description of the fair residence at Eltham, but he also strikes the note of the waning of its glory, for he remarks that the court was beginning to prefer Greenwich to it. Henry VIII., it is true, was sometimes at Eltham, keeping Christmas there in 1515, when a mock tournament was held in the banqueting-hall, and again in 1526 when he took refuge there from the plague then raging in London, but he never really cared for the palace as a residence. In 1527 Cardinal Wolsey, who was still in high favour, spent a fortnight at Eltham, drawing up there what are known as the Statutes of Eltham, and are still honoured at the English court for regulating the affairs of the royal household. This was perhaps the last time that any important gatherings assembled in the once popular residence, for though Queen Elizabeth and James I. were sometimes there, their visits were but brief. Charles I. never lived in the palace, but his favourite painter Sir Antony van Dyck was once the guest of the king's physician Sir Theodore de Mayerne in what was then Park Lodge, and Horace Walpole in his chatty Anecdotes of Painting refers to sketches made by the great master in the neighbourhood.

After the death on the scaffold of Charles I., Eltham Palace was taken possession of by parliament, and a report was drawn up of its condition, in which it is stated that it consisted of a fair chapel, a great hall, and several suites of apartments covering an acre of ground, all very much out of repair. A little later the entire building was sold for the modest sum of £2753, the chapel and all the rooms were pulled down, and the grand banqueting-hall was converted into a barn. Several centuries elapsed before any effort was made to rescue it from this degraded position, but in 1828, at the instance of the Princess Sophia, who was then living at Greenwich, it was carefully restored, and it now remains, with the picturesque ivy-clad bridge spanning the moat, a notable witness to what must have been the beauty and grandeur of the group of buildings of which it was once the most remarkable feature. The hammer-beam roof, in spite of the loss of most of its pendants, ranks with that of Westminster Hall as a fine example of combined lightness and strength of construction, and the effect of the vast and lofty hall, with its grand bays at the upper end, must indeed have been impressive before the windows by which it was lighted from both sides were blocked up.

When Eltham Palace was pulled down, the three parks that had belonged to it were also practically destroyed, all the venerable trees in them having been cut down, so that, as remarked by a seventeenth-century writer of somewhat gruesome tastes, there was scarcely one left to make a gibbet, the deer were killed off, and what had long been one of the most beautiful neighbourhoods near London was transformed into a scene of desolation.

In spite of its many interesting associations there is now little that is distinctive about modern Eltham. Its church, however, retains the quaint wooden tower and shingle spire of an earlier building, and there are a few fine old mansions in the neighbourhood, notably the Elizabethan Well Hall, now a farmhouse, in which Sir Thomas More's favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, lived for some time.

Two densely populated suburbs, that not long ago were remote and secluded villages, picturesquely built on the Ravensbourne, are Lee and Lewisham, the former connected with Eltham Palace by a subterranean passage which was discovered in 1836, and is supposed to have formed part of a complete system of communication between the latter and the outer world. Its exit from the Eltham end was protected by massive iron gates beneath the moat, near to which a flight of steps led down to a strong-room, probably used as a hiding-place for treasure, though, strange to say, there are no local traditions concerning it.

Chiselhurst

All that is now left at Lee to recall the old days when it was an outlying hamlet of Eltham, is the tower of the ancient parish church; and Lewisham, the name of which means the homestead in the meadow, is even more modernised, though its history can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times, when it seems to have formed part with Greenwich and the two Coombes of one property that was given, as related above, by Ethelruda, a niece of King Alfred to the Abbey of St. Paul's at Ghent, in connection with which a Benedictine priory was founded at Lewisham, the memory of which is preserved in the name of the Priory Farm occupying its site. Another suburb in close touch with Eltham is Mottino-ham that retains more of its rural character than either Lee or Lewisham; and not far away are the still pretty villages of Rushey Green, Catford, and Catford Bridge. More celebrated than any of these, however, is the important settlement of Chislehurst, that, owing chiefly to the exceptional beauty of its situation on a lofty common, defended from encroachment by a natural rampart of woods, seems likely to be able long to defy the levelling influences which have spoiled so many of the districts of outlying London.

Originally but a remote and secluded hamlet scarcely known to the outside world, Chislehurst has of late years become a centre of archæological interest, for in addition to its other attractions it enjoys the unique distinction of being in close touch with one of the most remarkable and extensive systems of subterranean galleries and caves, the ramifications of which are supposed to be many miles in length, that have yet been discovered in England. The existence of this underground world was long known, but it is only recently, thanks to the enterprise of Mr. Ryan, proprietor of the Beckley Arms Hotel, in whose grounds there is an entrance to it, that it has been opened to the public. Mr. Ryan had many of the galleries and chambers cleared of the rubbish—the accumulation of centuries—encumbering them, and lighted them with electricity, so that it is now possible to explore them without fear of being lost or buried alive. The origin and purpose of this wonderful net-work of excavations are alike unknown, some experts claiming that they were used for Druidical worship, two altar tables, probably used for sacrifices, having been found; whilst others are of opinion that they were used as hiding-places in times of war, or as storehouses for grain and treasure. Some few of the smaller chambers, that are mere cells, can only be entered on all fours, and could be defended by a single man, whilst the larger ones are capable of holding as many as fifty people. There were two ways of gaining access to them, one by steps in the sides of the shafts pierced here and there, the other with the aid of a notched pole which could easily be removed, and Mr. Nicholls, Vice-President of the Archæological Society, in a deeply interesting pamphlet on the subject, expresses an opinion that in times of danger the whole population of the district may have lived contentedly underground for weeks at a time. 'The little colony,' he says, 'might be working in the fields or tending their cattle; suddenly a cry of alarm is raised, the lookout man rushes in and reports that the enemy is approaching in force. If,' he adds, 'the incursion were too strong to be resisted, there would be an immediate stampede; the population would swarm down the shafts, and in a few minutes not a sound would be left to guide the invaders. Even if the raiders succeeded in finding a shaft they would be practically helpless, since one or two resolute men at the foot could hold it against a host.' Possibly the caves may have been used in succession by many different tenants, the Britons after their defeat by the Romans may have withdrawn into yet deeper recesses of the forests, and their conquerors may have driven new galleries through the ancient moatings, to be in their turn supplanted by the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, so that could the whole story of the excavations be read, fresh light might be thrown on much of the early history of Southern England. As time goes on, and further explorations are made, new facts may come to light, but at present, in spite of the many theories advanced, the mystery remains unsolved.

Originally a dependency of Dartford, now a thriving manufacturing town, the manor of Chislehurst, the name of which is supposed to signify a wood of pebbles, was given by King John to a Norman noble known as Hugh, Earl of St. Paul, and after many vicissitudes it became the property, in 1584, of the Walsingham family, to whom it was granted on a long lease by Queen Elizabeth. The Walsinghams were already in residence in Chislehurst, and the future minister, Sir Francis, was born in the village in 1536, though exactly where is not known, the so-called manor-house near the church, which is generally spoken of as his birthplace, not having been built until 1584.