Chiselhurst Yester Road
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Post to the north Chiselhurst Red Hill
Post to the east Chiselhurst Common
Post to the south Chiselhurst Station
Post to the west Elmstead Woods
Beechcroft
2
houses. By Goddard Philips, 1973
Camden Park Road
The Cedars. Willett’s own house 1890s. Good typical garden well. Shows
the sort of thing he was doing in the area with architect Ernest Newton.
Chalk mine. The mine was dug and the
chalk removed for lime burning. It is recorded that a labourer suddenly put his
pickaxe through the wall of the mine into a debris filled cavity. Some
archaeological remains tipped out and subsequently a few gentlemen visited the
site and employed labourers to excavate the cavity from the base. They
uncovered an earth filled chamber with a circular basin-shaped-floor. It was 47
8" in diameter and 11 8" high, cut from the chalk. In the centre of
the floor was a black, oval spot of earth, which was presumed to be the base of
a filled shaft extending to the surface, but not visible far outside. The pit
was thought to be a marl pit and the marks of a large, squared tool were noted
on the walls. Out of the infill came the teeth and jaws of oxen and deer
antlers, teeth of a dog or wolf, the skulls of smaller creatures such as
hedgehogs, the skeleton of a dog and another of a horse or ass. Near to the
ceiling was a piece of Samian ware possibly a salt cellar with a mark of VTC -
fifth century. The general conclusion was that the pit was open in the fifth
century and gradually filled with deposited rubbish and the remains of animals
that fell or were thrown in. Some time after this the mine was abandoned. Originally the quarry was in open country and railway embankment that crosses
the valley, the lime kilns on the quarry floor have gone. until 1968 five entrances were visible at the base of the northernmost part of the
chalk cliff, quite apart from the present known mine. They led to some large
mined passages, which were used by a local builder for storage.
Kyd Brook. The stream which runs down the valley an used to disappear in chalk swallets. These were recorded as a boundary mark in a Saxon Charter of AD 862. This Water has now been culverted so that the natural drainage is obscured. Runs along the backs of houses.
Camden Place
Origins traced to William Camden, the
Elizabethan historian and antiquary, who lived here 1609-1623 in order to
escape the plague, and built a house which may have stood where the garages are
now. The current house was built before 1717 by Robert Weston with a main
block in red and yellow brick, seven bays wide, and three storeys high. Weston called it "Camden
Place" and it later passed to Charles Pratt, who, taking his title from
the house, became the first Earl Camden, Lord Chancellor of England. He
employed George Dance, Jnr. to remodel it beyond what is now the centre
portion. Thomson Borar a Russian
Merchant and later owner - he and his
wife, were murdered here in 1813 by a manservant. . The Empress Eugenie
fled France in 1853 and took up residence here in 1870. Queen Victoria
visited her here and Napoleon III himself died here in 1873. It was from here
that the Prince Imperial took up military training at Woolwich to be
commissioned as an officer in the Royal Horse Artillery. in 1890 William Willett bought part of the park for
building development. The house became the headquarters of a golf club whose
course was opened by A. J. Balfour in 1894 . The earlist parts of the house are the Oval
Room, the Office, the Ladies' Committee Room and the oak panelled entrance hall
with its two secret doors, thought to have come from an earlier building..
Borer adding an Eating Room - now the
Billiard Room - and most of the Kitchen wing.
He turned the Entrance Hall Into an Oval Gallery with Dutch wall
paintings c 1780. there was a Bath House which has gone and a fall to the left of
the lake.
Chiselhurst
First recorded 974 as a
piece of stony woodland. Developed around the Scadbury estate in the mid 13th. ‘Chiselhurste’ 1158,
‘Chesilherst’ c.1762, that is 'gravelly wooded hill', from Old English ‘cisel’
- 'gravel' and ‘hyrst’. The 'gravel' referred to in the name is still evident in the rounded black flints
and pebbles found in fields and gardens here.
Camden Park Estate
developed by Willett in two groups
for high-class medium-sized commuter residences
Common
Village cockpit, old Poor
House 1759 ration of 1 herring and three potatoes, St.Michael's Orphanage since
1855.
Crown Pub etc was common
land for the rent of two potatoes;
Prince Imperial
memorial runic cross.
Killed in Zulu war In 1881 the people of Chiselhurst
the monument
Prick End Pond.
High Street
The centre of Chiselhurst
but until the 19th was called Prick End.
Annunciation Church. 1868/70. Ragstone expanded
inside. tower at side diagonally, effective, chancel. by James Brooks, the ragstone exposed inside as well as out, just as
in his church at Perry Street, Northfleet,
St.Mary Hall. Demolished.
Was also by Brooks
Vicarage
Almshouses
Queen's Head. Pub by the pond
Park Road
47 Gordon Arms. Collection of key rings
Prince Imperial Road
Methodist Church. 1868-70. Ragstone. Early English style cheaply but somewhat baldly
realized
St Mary, Eugene and Prince
Imperial worshipped there
St.Mary's hall by the same
architect as the church timber frame 1878
The Wilderness
West Chiselhurst Park?,
Royal Naval School
Recreation Ground
Whytes Woodland refers to
Robert Whyte who lived here 19th
Kyd Brook stream under the road
The Fo'csle. at the junction of Yester Road and Yester Close. in the 1970s a spectacular collapse of foundations led to massive cracking. The Logs Hill chalk mine is still there.
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