Barnehurst

Barnehurst Road
The Red Barn. This red brick pub of 1936 is the home of British jazz. It provided the inspiration for the British postwar revival of New Orleans jazz.  This was largely due to the enthusiasm of pianist George Webb considered by many as the father of the traditional jazz movement in Britain. Aided by Owen Bryce, George Webb's Dixielanders, played regularly here from the early 1940s. Among the musicians who played with them were Humphrey Lyttelton and Wally Fawkes the clarinettist and cartoonist. This is commemorated by a plaque unveiled in 1985 which is on an outside balcony overlooking the garden.

Bexley Road
322 The Duke. This was once called the Duke of Northumberland.

Colyers Lane
Woodside School. This is a special needs school set up in 2012 on what had been the site of Colyers Primary School.
Colyers’ Lane Clay Pit. Small pit worked by Furner.

Hornbeam Lane
Car Park. This is on the old station goods area. The goods yard had been extended in 1932. siding. There was a single siding with an end loading dock which was on a gradient and closed in 1964.

Merewood Road
Denehole. This was found at the rear of a property in the road which had been used to take surface water from the road. It was a basic double trefoil denehole which had been extended and probably dated from the 18th.

Northall Road
Denehole. This was identified because the owner of the house had built a soak away and heavy rains had caused a dene hole to collapse. The chamber went under the next-door garden and there had been a collapse some 50 years earlier following which the whole house had been underpinned.

Old Manor Way
This road was once a path leading from May Place up into woods and fields.

Station Approach
When the station was built the road was called ‘Hills and Holes’.
Barnehurst Station. This opened in 1895 and lies between Dartford and Bexleyheath on South Eastern Trains. It was built on the Bexleyheath Railway Line between Dartford and London Bridge at the point at which line starts its descent to a marshy area, the Cray, the Darent and Dartford. The site of the station was a wood called Court Lees Bottom which was owned by Colonel Frederick Barne, Chairman of the Bexleyheath Railway and he had insisted it was built. He was a local landowner with family links over 150 years to the May Place Estate to the south.  When the station was built there were only 15 people lived within a half mile radius and it was thirty years before the numerous housing estates were built. It was ten years before a first class ticket was sold here. The station is in a cutting and at first there were wooden buildings at right angles to the tracks and some parts of these remain in ancilliary buildings. There is an original iron footbridge but the main booking office area and frontage have been rebuilt.
Signal box, This was east of the station and closed in 1970.
Railway Electricity Sub Station. This is east of the station on the south side of the line. It is a tall brick building with three arched windows on each side wall. It was built to house two rotary converters driven by 3,300V ac power from Deptford Power Station supplying 660V dc power to the conductor rail. It was built here by the Southern Railway when the line was electrified in 1926.

Three Corners
Close named after a a local wood. This was developed in 1933

Sources
Barr-Hamilton & Reilly. From Country to Suburb
Carr. The spot that is called Crayford
Chelsea Speleological Society. Newsletter
Dover Kent. Web site
Field. London Place Names,  
Spurgeon. Discover Erith and Crayford

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