The London church of All Hallows, Barking, standing at the eastern end of Tower Street, quite close to Mark Lane Station, bears witness to the privileges and great power of the nunnery in ancient days, for the church was probably founded by the Abbey, and certainly the patronage of the living was in the hands of the Abbess from the end of the fourteenth century to the time of the suppression of the monasteries.
Just to the west of the Creek mouth is the outfall of the northern drainage system of London. Vast quantities of sewage are brought daily, by means of a gigantic concrete outfall sewer, which passes across the flats from Old Ford and West Ham to Barking; and there they are deposited in huge reservoirs covering ten acres of ground. The sewage passes through four great compartments which together hold thirty-nine million gallons; and, having been rendered more or less innocuous, is discharged into the Thames at high tide. This arrangement was one of the chief objections urged against the great barrage at Gravesend.
CHAPTER SIX
Woolwich
For many years there was a local saying to the effect that “more wealth passes through Woolwich than through any other town in the world,” and, though at first sight this may seem a gross exaggeration, yet when we remember that Woolwich is in two parts, one on each side of the River, we can see at once the justice of that claim, for it simply meant that all the vast traffic to and from the Pool of London went along the Thames as it flowed between the two divisions of the town.
To-day as we look at the drab, uninteresting place which occupies the sloping ground extending up Shooter’s Hill and the riverside extent from Charlton to Plumstead, we find it difficult to believe that this was ever a place of such great charm that London folk found in it a favourite summer-time resort. Yet we have only to turn up the “Diary” of good old Pepys to read (May 28, 1667): “My wife away down with Jane and Mr. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre, and to lie there to-night, and so to gather may-dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Yarner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with; and I am contented with it.”
Of course, in those days Woolwich was in the country, surrounded by fields and woods, in the latter of which lurked footpads ever ready to relieve the unwary traveller of his purse. Thus we have Pepys writing in 1662: “To Deptford and Woolwich Yard. At night, I walked by brave moonlight with three or four armed men to guard me, to Rotherhithe, it being a joy to my heart to think of the condition that I was now in, that people should of themselves provide this for me, unspoke to. I hear this walk is dangerous to walk by night, and much robbery committed there”; and again in 1664: “By water to Woolwich, and walked back from Woolwich to Greenwich all alone; saw a man that had a cudgel, and though he told me he laboured in the King’s yard, yet, God forgive me! I did doubt he might knock me on the head behind with his club.”
Woolwich