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Post to the west Shooters Hill
Clothworkers wood
Site of Falconhurst. Built by Lord Penzance’s uncle. Then called
Falconwood. Lord Truro lived there could have been illegitimate son of George
IV; Falconwood used as a hotel and then London County Council and park. The wood is now part of Woodlands Farm.
The wood consists of oak,
ash, silver birch and sycamore.
Oxleas Wood
Oxleas Wood. A large area of surviving ancient woodland;
it is among the oldest tracts of woodland in the London area. The woods are
dense but interspersed with glades. The London County Council acquired it in
1934; and previously it has formed part of the grounds of Falconwood House,
built in the 1860s, and now demolished.
The glades date from the 1860s as does a stone-lined drinking pool for pheasants
in the south-east comer of the woods. There is a good network of footpaths and
bridleways. The woods were coppiced until the Second World War.
On the woodland floor are bluebell, yellow pimpernel, wood sage, hedge
woundwort, wood anemone, wood violet, yellow archangel, common cow wheat and
butchers broom, penduculate oak, wild cherry, wild service, funghi including
fly agaric. Also found is the rare green hunting spider. It is on the Kent
boundary, and there are two boundary markers one in cast iron and upright. As
also it is the London County Council boundary there is a flat plate for the
Woolwich boundary. It is edged by the Roman road between London and Dover and
various modern alternatives. From the 12th to the 14th the
woods were managed as coppice for the royal manor of Eltham. Crown ownership ended in 1679 when they were
granted to Sir John Shaw and for the next 200 years they were managed under
leaseholds. The War Office took them
over in 1871 and the LCC in 1930, which opened the woods to the public in 1934
and reintroduced coppicing in 1983. The
woods were under threat from proposals to build the East London River
Crossing. They are protected by being
designated as an SSSI. The damp
environment feeds ditches and streams—one of which crosses Oxleas Wood and
supports rushes, sedges and tall brome.
A wide range of plants is
associated with a wet flush in the edge of Oxleas with numerous fungi and
lichens. Birds include the rare wood warbler, nuthatches, tree creepers,
woodcock and woodpeckers. Woodmice, bank
voles and short-tailed vole as well as foxes have been recorded. The name "Oxleas" derives from the Saxon, meaning a
pasture for Oxen.
Cafe near the entrance from Crown
Woods Lane. Excellent views
Shepherdleas Wood,
LCC bought it with Oxleas.
Shooters Hill
Made of London clay. Why it
there? Many flints to be seen about the place. All water works. White quartz
pebbles. All the Welling side is sandstone and a very large heavy flints. On
the North is gravel and shallow pits. All of this is a drift from the Weald,
which had prevented the hill from being washed away. Does it mean Shaw as a
hill. New Cross turnpike tried to clean it up. Greenwich/Bexley boundary is
granite strip across the pavement on the north side of the road. Roman Road,
Watling Street, highwaymen and a gibbet. Scheme to turn it into a cemetery. Shooters Hill follows the route of the ancient Watling Street and
forms the northern boundary of Oxleas Wood. It has been an important road into
London for over 2,000 years and was once a notorious haunt for highwaymen. The
fact that the highwaymen would have carried pistols lies behind the most
popular explanation as to how the hill got its name. The robbers would hide in
Oxleas Wood waiting for their prey, and the bodies of captured highwaymen were
left hanging in gibbets as a deterrent to others. The famous diarist Samuel
Pepys recorded a journey he made in 1661: "Mrs Anne and I rode under the
man that hangs upon Shooters Hill and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh
is shrunk to the bones". Shooters Hill was still hazardous well into the
nineteenth century, and it was there that Charles Dickens set the opening
chapter of his novel 'A Tale of Two Cities', in which the Dover mail coach gets
stuck in the mud on Shooters Hill. This scene dramatically captures the fear
and dread travellers would have felt when passing Oxleas Woods in the days of
the highwaymen.
Anchor in
Hope, there since at
least 1837. An attractive mid 19th
century brick pub, with a steeply pitched roof, looking more like a villa in
its somewhat isolated location.
Horse
trough - which was outside "We Anchor in Hope"
"There
was a small beer shop at the foot of Shooters Hill
with a notice on the front wall which offered extra horses 'to help you up the hill', from the top of
which the animals were
returned for re-use. Tired animals refreshed themselves here while their drivers, no
doubt, did likewise in the ale
house.” The horse trough is no longer
there, of course, but readers can observe it
by travelling to Eltham Green. There it is and has been since 1932, on the corner of Eltham Green Road, opposite the "Yorkshire
Grey".
176 Derby Villas a multi-gabled, very Gothic building of 1861.
Short
column of cast iron, - at the eastern border of the London
Borough of Greenwich, where Oxleas Wood ends, and the
houses begin. Just inside the woods is
an upright column boundary marker - semi-circular
with a rounded top from the London
County Council. It bears a legend. It has a flat back facing east, so this seems to be the meeting point of two boundaries - east west
and north south.
The modern boundary between Woolwich and the
London Borough of Bexley is a few feet east of this LCC
marker. Eighteen inches high and ten inches wide.
Granite
strip across
the pavement on the north side of the road.
Boundary
marker at
the eastern border of the London Borough of
Greenwich, where Oxleas Wood ends, and the
houses begin. Just inside the woods is a
boundary marker - cast iron
flat plate, half submerged in the
ground It states:
BOROUGH
OF WOOLWICH 1903 THE BOUNDARY IS 36
FEET N. OF THIS PLATE The lettered side of the plate is roughly parallel to the road, no doubt on an east-west plane. The measurement
takes us to the centre of the carriageway, and
Ordnance Survey maps of that time show the boundary between Woolwich and Eltham following the centre line
of the road. This may be a puzzle to
some readers, because it
marks the boundary between Woolwich
and
Eltham, which by 1903 were in the same Borough.
Milestone in Prince of
Wales Drive, 6 miles from London, plates renewed 1977
Shooters Hill
Golf Course.
Claygate beds outgrown, dry
acid grassland, scrub. Foxes. There are fragments of ancient woodland in
the roughs. Ground flora includes yellow
archangel, bluebells and medick.
Club Founded 1903
Lowood Club House. Stuccoed
concrete 1874.
Woodlands
Farm.
Last working farm in
London, which was called Bullock Farm, Baldock Farm,
Clock Farm or Clock House Farm. It became
the RACS pig farm. Records
indicate that it was created out of dense woodland known as Bushy Lees Wood.
There is evidence that some woodland was cleared in the Middle Ages and this
small-scale clearance might account for the complex field shapes. The
boundaries which remained can be seen from the shape of the farm's perimeter
boundary and the oldest hedges have been recorded as being approximately 600
years old. The road through the farm goes
to the abattoir access. The 1720 Plumstead plan shows no buildings here but the Rocque map of 1741 indicates a farm as does the
Ordnance Survey of 1844 and 1869 with a farm and a house called "Woodlands.” By 1897 there was a second house. Use of the
farm for pigs to be sold in RACS Co-op butchers' shops followed the First World War.
Several acres of barley were grown and
the farm became known as the ‘Co-op Farm’. Originally
122 acres, the farm is now about 82 acres. The outbuildings included a large
barn with a clock, stables and cottages. Behind the barn were a cow-house, pig
yard, chaff house and a brick cart lodge.
Local action in 1994 resulted in the formation of the Woodlands Farm
Alliance, which led to the creation of the Woodlands Farm Trust in 1995, which
with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Bridge House Estates Trust. There is wych elm, elder oak, hawthorn, osier,
crack willow, crab apple, white bryony, greenfinches, carrion crow, wood
pigeon. There are hedges with wild
service. A stream runs through an area of willow carr.
The
Abattoir was
built in 1937 by RACS on the northern area of the farm
adjacent to Cloth Workers Wood. Operation ceased around 1985. The CWS applied
twice for planning permission to build housing on the cleared abattoir
site. The 1962 Ordnance
Survey shows a cattle shed near this junction and
in fact beef was at one time produced, although the animals later came from elsewhere
Woodlands house. 1886 over the front porch. There since 1869, rebuilt 1890s. Surrounded by the farm, a large and attractive
house of 1886, with tiled upper floor and gables.
House further west is probably the original
Farm. A
substantial house with farm buildings, which was probably the original, but it
is the 1886 house, which is called ‘Woodlands’
today, with the name on a gate close
by.
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