this post has not been edited, checked or finished
Barnes Cray
On the site of the medieval manor of Ellam. Named for the
Barne family who owned the marsh area.
Marked thus on the Ordnance Survey map of 1876, earlier Barns Cray on
the 1805 map, that is 'estate on the River Cray belonging to the Borne family'.
This family owned land here in the late 18th century.
Laid out for the workers in the Vickers Ammunition Works,
1919. 1915-16 as Barnes Cray Garden Village. This 'garden suburb' with over 600
houses. Mostly concrete, was designed by Gordon Allen and built by Vickers
1915-16 to house munitions workers. It extends in a long rectangle between Iron
Mill Lane, Crayford Way, stretching from Crayford town centre to Thames Road.
Many houses have survived without major alterations, and despite later infill
the estate retains a village atmosphere which is lacking in the other Vickers
estates. The houses are in pairs and
terraces, and common themes include prominent gables, recessed open porches,
and roofs sweeping down . Homes all have at least three bedrooms and half are
built of rough cast concrete blocks.
All Saints iron church 1917 closed in 1960
Barnes Road
Groups of houses built as part of Barnes Cray
Craymill Square
Housing development of 1983 in an attractive vernacular style,
with nice closes and pedestrian walks. Particularly attractive is the area in centre
around Craymill Square, where terraces with swooping slate roofs punctuated, by
rows of dormers face other terraces with slate facing between each storey.
Green Walk,
Iron Mill Lane
Named after the mill which made
plate for armour.
7/13 Pims Almshouses, attractive composition. 19 consisting
of a long one-storey building attached to a more substantial two-storey building
to the west. Mr Pim lived at Martens Grove
8a, built as a public wash-house, but then became the
rooms of the Young Men’s Friendly Society.
8a/20 a rather sombre Gothic group. 865. The centre of the
group forms a sort of square.
12/16, Mrs. Stable’s Almshouses, forming two sides of the
square. Mrs. Stable was the niece of
Charles Swaisland.
214/226 & 238/256 Two terraces of cottages with
round-headed doorways, probably c1860, built to house workers at The Saw Mills
10, the Clergy House originally built by the Swaisland family
as a cottage hospital
18/20
St Paulinus School. The section to the left is of 1974,
the section to the right of 1983. The earlier part includes a strange building
with roofs sweeping down almost to ground level; the hall has a narrow
elongated stained glass window. Crayford Junior School. Tom Thumb House bombed,
Deneholes, near Eardmont,
Eardmont big house, called after Earde who founded
Crayford
Barnes Cray Primary School. Modern Schools. When the
foundations were dug Roman pottery found,
Iron Mill Place
Concrete retaining wall to hold subsidence,
Mayplace Avenue
Perry Street Farm.
Anti-Aircraft Battery Encampment.
Group of 7 brick buildings with asbestos roofs. Standard military hutments from the beginning
of World War II. Verandah to the Battery Office and Guardroom. Used as a house with huts used for farming
uses.
Palace Cinema.
Later The Astoria. Opened as
Bexleyheath Public Hall in 1870. Then a cinema from the early 1920s. Fire and rebuilt 1934. Bingo in 1974.
May Place Road East
Golf Course
Crayford Manor House. This was part of the Place Estate
and is used as a community centre This manor covering the
western part of Crayford was known by the name of Newbery, in contrast to that
of Howbery on the eastern side. For many years Newbery and nearby May Place
have remained in the same ownership. It is linked to Barnehurst Golf Course.
The earliest record of the Manor House is in the 14th century. May Place was
built c1480 and usurped the position of the Manor House, which became a
farmhouse but was still called the Manor House. It was rebuilt c1768 and
in c1816 with an elegant iron verandah
and balcony for the Barne family, who moved away after 1847.The author Algernon
Blackwood lived there as a child and the house is featured in his book 'A Prisoner
in Fairyland' and described some of his boyhood memories and adventures in his
book " Episodes Before Thirty part of the 1768 building remain at the east
end. an elegant white mansion in the Italian style, erected early in the 19th
century. ". . Crayford UDC bought
it in 1938 The and is now run as a very popular and successful adult education
centre.
Observatory, constructed in 1960 from an old house; and a
e prominent dome added in 1982.
Stable Block accessible through an archway . early 19th
century though its appearance has been altered by modern doors.
From the rear of the stables a footpath bears left and
leads to the tree avenue to May Place
Garden of Remembrance, In the grounds in memory of local
men, women and children who lost their lives in the two World Wars.
Old Road
170 The One Bell
172-6
174 - 176 Listed
Grade II, Conservation Area but once considered to be 'at risk'. Probably a C17 timber-framed house, now
hidden by later rendered and roughcast walls. Severely damaged after fire
St.Mary of the Crays. A modern red brick Roman Catholic church 1972
with a small campanile; it replaced a church built by August Applegarth in
1842. Altar, font, lectern and tabernacle, of Cornish granite c1985.
St Joseph’s School, mostly modern, but incorporating small
Gothic building, which was the original school building of 1866.
Perry Street
Hamlet increasingly
industrialised through the 19th.
St. Paulinus’ church occupies an elevated site with
tremendous views to the south. Paulinus was a Bishop of Rochester.There was an
earlier church in Crayford, probably on this site, in Saxon times. The church
is a puzzle - lot of odd bits on the outside. It is parish church of Crayford
and is extraordinary in that it has twin
naves, with the chancel midway between them. It was rebuilt 1100, and the original
Norman church forms todays’ north nave. It
was Enlarged in the 14th. There are Norman windows but some have been moved so
it is difficult to find out where the Norman bit is and Much of the flint walling has been re-laid
and in it are many blocks of tufa, with a characteristically pitted surface.
Tufa is a readily quarried chalk deposit which the Normans used as a building
stone. traces of the lower part of aNorman doorway can be seen below a window. Traces of Norman windows c1200, rather high up,
can be made out.. The Tower was built in 1406 but some of it looks earlier.. Most
of the windows were replaced in the 15th century, and these are the
square-headed ones we see today – although some were destroyed in a powder
explosion. A restoration in 1862, did not substantially alter the appearance of
the church although the chapels were extended. The interior is of great
interest and has many fascinating features, in particular monuments to the
Draper family and to Elizabeth Shovel.
note the conjectural drawings of dates in the church's history on the
wall of the porch. The font is 15th century. The dominant feature of the
interior is the arcade which is 15th centur.. The handsome pulpit is 1630, as
is the open timber roof. There is a 16th century parish chest. In the middle of
the chancel is a painted altar-table, designed by James 1895; behind is the
painted triptych of an earlier reredos. in the south wall is a stained glass
figure of St Paulinus 1899; this, and another window ijs the only stained glass
to have survived the war – but there are
Several windows of colourful modern stained glass by Hugh Easton 1955. Note the Howbury Chapel and May Place Chapel.
The most outstanding monument is the Draper Monument - large of black and white
marble, with figures of the wife lying above and behind the husband, two
children and right at the bottom, a still-born child in swaddling clothes. Also outstanding is the large monument to
Elizabeth Shovel, widow of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1732 - it has much elegant
detail - canopy, the putti, the sarcophagus. Others include: Blaunche Marlar
cl600, with a knee figure; Margaret Collins 1732, a cartouche with inscription
ending with an interesting verse,; Ro Mansel 1723, of grey-veined marble; Henry
Tucker 1851; Elizabeth Barne 1747, with classical details; Robert Mansel
1723, Large plain standing monument of
grey-veined marble; Margaret Collins f
1732. Leathery cartouche with two putto
heads; Henry Tucker 1851. Several more
tablets in the nave.
Churchyard . athe entreance is through fine Gothic
lychgate of 1873, it is extensive picturesque and crammed with tombs; lying
high above the road behind a brick stone retaining wall. tombstone to Peter
Isnell, parish clerk for 30 eears with a now illegible verse inscription of 13
lines, 6 ending with 'Amen' and the other seven rhyming 'Amen'. table tomb of David Evans, the local
textile printer, and his family. memorial stone to General Thomas Desaguliers,
superintendent of Woolwich Arsenal for 32 years.
Iron Age settlement, west of the church. The settlement
was discovered during building operations and appeared to consist of a series
of storage pits and gulleys (possibly hut foundations) containing Iron Age A,
B, and C pottery. Crayford was probably
the Roman Noviomagus, situated on the Roman road to Kent.
Manor House. The original manor house was north west of
the church.
Shenstone, Applegarth's home, site of Iron Age settlement,
owned by the council in 1947. Iron Age settlement, to the west of the church
Roman tiles. All roads converge here.
Victoria Scott Court
Orchard House of Russell Stonham Hospital. The focal point
of new housing development of c1980 is a
substantial and attractive Victorian Gothic building of 1868 (extended the
left, probably in the 1890s). It was formerly the Russell Stoneham Hospital and
was originally known as Orchard House.
Stonham's Pit. Old Stone Age finds. Possible flint mine
and chalk mine. Just to the north at the end of Burgate Close Stone Age flint
implements discovered 1880s under the brick earth. Chalk was extracted on an outcrop west of
the clay working and at the same time.
Also filled in at the same time.
Village Green Road
Dell open space near the junction of Maiden Lane and
Crayford Way
Groups of houses built as part of Barnes Cray
Comments