Crayford

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Arthur Street

Baptist missionary hall built by the Queen Street Baptist Church in 1919.

Housing development of the early 1960s with 265 homes in a mix of maisonettes and tower blocks.

Birling Road

Housing built by Crayford Council after the Second World War. 170 semi detached houses using prefabricated units on the Easiform system with concrete panelled cavity walls. Quick, cheap but with modern fittings.

Craymill Estate,

Eversley Avenue

30 Denehole recorded 1951

28 another denehole

Larner Road

Mine. during work in 1985 by London Borough of Bexley for additional tower blocks mines were found.. The site was in the 19th part of a major brick-making industry supplying London Stock Facings and it is possible to trace the depressions and quarry edges left by brick makers.  it was often the  practice to dig extensive mines for chalk, which was  added  to  the  brick  slurry  to  produce the characteristic yellow colour. Test bores found 24 holes to cavities in the sand and gravel overlying the chalk.  17 more test bores near a block of 5, entered cavities either in the chalk or the overlying gravel.  A television camera was lowered and pictures showed that the block was being built on top of an old chalk mine. The 1897 O.S. map of the area shows an active clay pit on the site and an engine house with a rail track which branches and terminates at the base of a quarry, the westernmost of these lines led into a drift entrance into the mine.

North End.

Name first noted in 1760.

Northend Trading Estate

Dominated by the building trades.

Pearswood Road

56 Chalk well in the garden

Perry Street

Stonham Brickworks. Flint-knapping floor. One of these caves had passages.   Some have fallen in and others have been excavated away.   These caves formed part of a series, the sites of some of which can be detected in some of the orchards near, and one has been worked for chalk up to within the last fifty years, presenting a very interesting labyrinth of modern galleries, which have united several old shafts at once.

The great chalk pit was originally a denehole in my recollection.   The modern works are for brick-making purposes. It is depicted as a circular excavation some 100 ft. in diameter and 49 ft. deep to the west of Maiden Lane.   A single track railway is shown running from the adjoining brick-yard, under the road and into the pit.   It goes right up to the wall of the pit and therefore might have continued into the entrance of a mine.  The brickfield and quarry are gone; instead there is a steep chalk scarp about a quarter of a mile long.   Much of the surrounding land has been worked for gravel also by Stonehams.   It does appear however that the piece of land containing the shaft has been left as a raised knoll above the gravel workings.

Denehole. A beautifully preserved Sarnian ware bowl from this hole. There were two pits consisting of shafts leading to beehive-shaped chambers.   Dimensions given for one pit are: 25 ft. 6ins. deep with the last 17 ft. 6 ins. in chalk, the pit containing a 6 ft. pile of sandy soil which yielded a quantity of Roman pottery, including the bowl.   The holes have since been quarried away.

Slade Green Road

North end crossing. To the west of the church is the old crossing, is now closed.

Corner Pin pub. Tacky attempt to bring glamour to the area.

South Road

1 Britannia Pub

Sports stadium stages athletic meetings up to county standard.

Water-head Close,

The Caves. A radio bulletin on 7.3.1972 said "the hillside is riddled with hundreds of yards of passages and was used as an air raid shelter during the war."   Local children knew it as "The Caves".


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