Shooter's Hill

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For other uses, see Shooter's Hill (disambiguation).
Shooter's Hill
Shooter's Hill is located in Greater London
Shooter's Hill
Shooter's Hill
 Shooter's Hill shown within Greater London
OS grid reference TQ435765
London borough Greenwich
Ceremonial county Greater London
Region London
Country England
Sovereign state United Kingdom
Post town LONDON
Postcode district SE18
Post town WELLING
Postcode district DA16
Dialling code 020
Police Metropolitan
Fire London
Ambulance London
EU Parliament London
UK Parliament Greenwich and Woolwich
London Assembly Greenwich and Lewisham
List of places
UK
England
London

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Shooter's Hill ward (green) within the Royal Borough of Greenwich (light grey)

Shooter's Hill (or Shooters Hill) is a district in South East London within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It borders the London Borough of Bexley. It lies north of Eltham and south of Woolwich. With a height of 132 metres (433 ft), it is one of the highest points in London. Shooter's Hill also gives its name to the A road which passes through east to west and is part of the A207 road, the A2 road, and also Watling Street.

Geography

It reputedly takes its name from the practice of archery there during the Middle Ages, although the name is also commonly linked to its reputation as a haunt for highwaymen and was infamous for its gibbets of executed felons, mentioned Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1661. The name is also linked to the Second World War, where it was the site of an array of anti-aircraft guns which protected London. As part of 'London Stop Line Central' it was a last line of defence from a German land invasion, that was assumed would follow Watling street from Dover. A number of devices were under the control of the Home Guard including a fougasse and a flame thrower.[1]

Eltham Common was the site of Shooter's Hill police station (now closed). Eltham was allegedly the only town in England with two fully functional police stations (the other in Well Hall Road), having been placed there due to the lawlessness associated with that area.

Celia Fiennes, who in 1697 proceeded out of London along the Dover Road, wrote in her diary of stopping at:

"Shuttershill, on top of which hill you see a vast prospect ...some lands clothed with trees, others with grass and flowers, gardens, orchards, with all sorts of herbage and tillage, with severall little towns all by the river, Erith, Leigh, Woolwich etc., quite up to London, Greenwich, Deptford, Black Wall, the Thames twisting and turning it self up and down bearing severall vessells and men of warre on it".

As the name also implies, the district is centred upon a hill - one of the highest points in London 132 metres (433 ft) [2] - offering good views over the River Thames to the north, with central London clearly visible to the west. Oxleas Wood remains a public open space close to the top of the hill; there is also a golf-course and one of the last remaining areas of farmland in inner London, Woodlands Farm (now an educational charity).

Shooter's Hill Road stretches eastwards from the heath at Blackheath up and over the hill, initially as part of the A2 road as far as the Sun in the Sands, and then the A207. The road follows the route of Watling Street, a Roman Road linking London with Roman settlements in north Kent. This was used as a route for horse-drawn mail-coaches linking London with Dover.

Literary associations

Severndroog Castle

Byron's Don Juan is waylaid while romantically musing on Shooter's Hill when he first arrives in London (Canto XI). As the narrative of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities opens, Mr. Jarvis Lorry is a passenger in the Dover mail coach, "lumbering up Shooter's Hill"; and Dickens refers to a public house there in The Pickwick Papers. The name Shooter's Hill is also mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula although referring to the Hampstead area, some distance away, and also in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and by Thomas Carlyle. On 11 April 1661, diarist Samuel Pepys mentions passing under "the man that hangs upon Shooters Hill" (probably a highwayman hanged and left to rot as a warning to other criminals - at 'Gibbet Field', now part of the local golf-course). In the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the character Evey Hammond describes her childhood, spent on Shooter's Hill.

Landmarks

The water tower on Shooter's Hill is a local landmark

The distinctive Victorian Gothic water tower at the top of Shooter's Hill is a landmark that can be seen from far around. Other local landmarks include Severndroog Castle, a folly designed by the architect Richard Jupp in 1784 and built to commemorate Commodore Sir William James, who on 2 April 1755 attacked and destroyed a pirate fortress at Suvarnadurg along the western coast of India.

Another water tower (of 130 ft) is further west down Shooter's Hill. This was originally built in the 1890s to designs by Thomas W. Aldwinckle to supply water to the 'Brook Fever hospital', which was demolished in the 1990s, to be replaced by a housing development. The tower consists of a plain brick pillar ornamented simply with bands of terracotta tiles and windows like arrowslits. It is not listed, but it was cleaned, repointed and underpinned for conversion into a family home. It is the centrepiece of the housing estate.[3]

Immediately to the east of the housing estate is the Grade II listed former Royal Herbert Hospital, today the Royal Herbert Pavilions. Further up the hill is the still-functioning Memorial Hospital.

In 1749, 'The Bull' public house opened just west of the summit of the hill, and was used as a refreshment stop by the coaches, although not by the Royal Mail, which had an interchange of mail bags at the Post Office by the Red Lion on the London side of the hill.

An 18th-century grade II listed milestone in the grounds of Christ Church on Shooter's Hill has 19th-century plates giving the distances "Dartford 7 miles", "London Bridge 8 miles" and a later addition: "130 miles to Ypres: in defending the salient our casualties were 90,000 killed, 70,500 missing, 450,000 wounded", commemorating the Battle of Ypres.[4][5]

Road alterations

During the 1950s alterations were made to the road surface to make the incline less steep. Low-powered motor vehicles of the era frequently struggled to get to the top. As a remedy, a small section of the road surface west of the summit was excavated and removed to slightly decrease the gradient. This alteration is evident today where the road surface (opposite Craigholm) runs through a cutting and the pavement (following the original gradient of the hill) can be seen to rise about 1–2 metres above the present-day road surface.

Schools

Notable former residents

Education

For education in Shooter's Hill see the main Royal Borough of Greenwich article

Nearest places

Transport

Shooter's Hill is served by many Transport for London bus services connecting it with areas including Woolwich, Eltham, Greenwich, Bexleyheath, Thamesmead, Lewisham and Crystal Palace.The closest rail link to the area is Welling railway station.

References

  1. ↑ The Archaeology of the Second World War - Uncovering Britain's Wartime Heritage pp26-8
  2. ↑ Greenwich Council ward structure
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ http://www.Steve-Took.co.uk
  7. ↑ Howerd, Frankie (1976) On the Way I Lost It, W.H. Allen, ISBN 0-491-01807-X

Further reading

  • Wikisource-logo.svg Shooter's Hill in Views in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Northamptonshire (1818).

External links

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