Long and Lazy Lewisham – part 11: 2 and 4 High Street
Top image: The junction of Loampit Vale and the High Street, c1890s – showing Shepherd’s Place, the Duke of Cambridge and the High Street up to the Plough
In this post, we return to the northern end of the High Street, to start the journey down the west (even-numbered) side. After a few recent instalments with historic buildings that are still present and date back over 100 years, we’ve also returned to an area that has been completely rebuilt over the last few decades. This is the first of a series of posts, starting at the old Plough Inn next to the railway bridge taking us down to Duke of Cambridge on the junction with Loampit Vale, round the corner and up to Lewisham Bridge, taking in the whole of what used to be Plough Green. This post describes the history of the Plough and its immediate neighbours
This side of the High Street has played a longer part in Lewisham’s history than the land on other side of the road. While that land on the east side was private property (and indeed in Lee parish, not Lewisham), Plough Green was one of the common lands in the old village of Lewisham, like Watch-house Green. Both were enclosed in 1810, when the common lands were divided up among existing land-owners, and soon built on.
Plough Green was the land between Plough Bridge (over the Quaggy) and Lewisham Bridge (over the Ravensbourne), with what became Loampit Vale marking its southern side and the High Street its eastern side:
The most frequently-related story of Plough Green is about – in the words of eminent local historian Leland Duncan – “a species of fair was held there on St. Thomas’s Day, 21 December”. Other, earlier, sources elaborate further. An 1882 History of Lee and its Neighbourhood, tells us that at these fairs “were held the cruel sports of bull-baiting and cock-fighting”. A Kentish Mercury article of the same year tells us that similar activities marked Shrove Tuesday fifty years earlier (i.e. in the 1830s), when “the cruel practice of shying sticks at live cocks embedded up to the neck was… a favourite pastime.” (KM, 3/11/1882).
Something of the character of the green – and the rural nature of Lewisham before the railways – can be seen in these two paintings:
After being enclosed in 1810 and parcelled out to landowners, the two sides of the green facing the roads were quickly built up.
While the Plough and its neighbours north of the Quaggy were not actually on Plough Green, they did become part of the continuous row of business properties from the railway arches down to Loampit Vale, meaning that it is worth considering them as part of the wider Plough Green area.
In this post we will look at the pub and the properties either side of it. In the following posts, we will look at the two rows of buildings that appeared along the edges of the green after 1810:
- Ivy Place, on what’s now the High Street, and
- Shepherd’s place, along Loampit Vale, out of which the Duke of Cambridge pub on the junction with the High Street
We will also take a look at the mysteriously-named Obelisk area around that junction, before moving south of Loampit Vale.
First it is worth taking a quick run through the general history of the buildings that came to cover the green. The initial spread of houses along the east and south side saw most of the land taken into the gardens of Ivy Place (on the High Street), while Shepherd’s Place (along Loampit Vale) had shorter gardens and faced out into a spur off the Ravensbourne that allowed horses to be led down and watered. The houses on Ivy Place gradually became shops, with additional frontages added over the former front gardens in the 1870s and 1880s. The first house on Shepherd’s Place sprouted a beer house that became the Duke of Cambridge pub, rebuilt to form the corner building at the junction of Loampit Vale. A drinking fountain and toilets were built at the junction, which became known as Lewisham Obelisk
On the High Street, new shops linked the Duke of Cambridge and Ivy Place to form a continuous row. The gardens of Ivy Place disappeared, giving way to a timber yard, and more shops were built between the Plough and the north end of Ivy Place – including one that spanned the Quaggy River.
In the 1920s, Shepherd’s Place was largely demolished and rebuilt. Reversing the normal trend, this saw the replacement of properties numbered on Loampit Vale with a separately-numbered row: Obelisk Parade. This aerial photos shows the area immediately after the Second World War:
The area retained this shape for half a century, albeit with the rebuilding of the Duke of Cambridge in the late 1930s removing a few of the neighbouring shops. It escaped significant wartime bomb damage but did not thrive in the way that other shopping areas further down the High Street did. In 1961, when considering car parking arrangements (a major preoccupation of post-war planning), the local chamber of commerce noted “this part of Lewisham High-street was not heavily used” (LBN 13/6/1961). Soon, the area was to change markedly.
First the “Obelisk” disappeared. Then, in the late 1970s, a bus station opened roughly on the land of the former timber yard, but with some demolition on the High Street and Obelisk Parade to provide entrance and exit points. The new roundabout at the Loampit Vale-High Street junction saw most of the rest of the buildings swept away, with only the Plough and its near-neighbours surviving.
These last survivors were demolished in 2008 as the next round of development saw the bus station leave and the current round of building, with a series of tower blocks and – sometime soon – work space and a cinema due to open. The area around the confluence of the Quaggy and the Ravensbourne has been reopened to the public, although it is a private space and the confluence itself has been moved to the south to accommodate its much larger neighbour in the Brick Kiln 1 tower block.
Now we move on to those properties at the top of the High Street:
The Plough – 2 High Street
The Plough Inn stood at the north-eastern corner of the green by Plough Bridge over the Quaggy. Although as an institution the Plough was the oldest thing in the area covered by this series of posts at the time of the enclosure, it was rebuilt around 1850 meaning that the pub that stood until the early 2000s was of a similar vintage to its neighbours on both sides of the High Street. Running Past has an excellent post about the Plough, so I will keep this account brief. That post and this one made use of the excellent Public Houses of Lee and Lewisham books by Ken White that are held by Lewisham Heritage in their reading room.
That blog post sketches out the early history of the pub:
When Rocque surveyed the area in the 1740s [link added], the pub seems to have been in its second incarnation. It was a weather boarded house which sold ‘Marsden’s Entire and Fine Ale’ – sadly this is a brewery whose history seems to be lost, it certainly isn’t related to Marston’s who were 20 years off being founded. When sketched in 1814. It was owned by one of the area’s larger landowners – the Earl of Dartmouth
Running Past blog post: The Plough – A Former Lewisham Pub [see blog for references]
The pub had many landlords over its centuries of business. Of particular interest for this blog series is one William Miller who was in charge from 1819 until May 1834, presumably the same William Miller who became the landlord of the nearby Roebuck from around the same time (we will reach that pub in good time – until then another good post from Running Past gives its history). Around Miller’s time, an extension was apparently built at the northern end of the pub, as shown by these two images.
The reason for the final rebuilding of the pub into the modern version was the arrival of the railway and the original Lewisham railway station at the top of the High Street – which we found out about in the first blog post in this series. In November 1849, the material of the old pub and its outbuildings was sold by auction “in lots to be taken down by the buyers”.
This wording implies that the building was still standing at that point, which was some months after the railway line was opened. Unless I’m over-reading the advert, it sounds as though the Plough survived the building of the railway line right next to it, but was then demolished and rebuilt closer to the river (and further from the railway line). As Running Past notes, it was owned by the South Eastern Railway by the 1850s – presumably purchased from Lord Dartmouth as part of the land purchase for the railway line – and was later renamed the Plough Railway Tavern for a few decades before the First World War.
The new pub was brick-built and square, with large windows on the ground floor, sash-windows above that and a half-floor at the top. In style it is was reminiscent of the now-disused building on the London-side platform at Catford Bridge (which opened a few years later) in its general bulk and the detail of the eaves.
The pub retained something of its old garden on the north bank of the Quaggy, running down to the Ravensbourne, albeit now with the railway line along its northern side. Around the 1880s, the male workers from the Silk Mill further up the Ravensbourne had an annual outing up river. According to an account quoted in Macartney and West’s A History of the Lewisham Silk Mills they:
“… made an excursion by punt and boat up the pond to the back of the Plough Hotel where some refreshments were taken. The return journey was rather lively, accompanied as it was by pistol firing and singing. The employers and women workers waited to receive the men at the landing and afterwards everybody returned to their employment in excellent humour”
Macartney and West’s A History of the Lewisham Silk Mills
As well as being a place of refreshment, the Plough was an important meeting place for official and civic business. After the 1857 railway crash (also covered in the post on the first railway station), bodies were brought to the Plough and the inquest held there. Ten years later, a ‘court’ was held to revise the voter lists for Eltham, Kidbrooke, Lee, Lewisham, Mottingham; this was repeated in 1871 and 1879. (Maidstone Journal & Kentish Advertiser, 14/9/1867; Woolwich Gaz, 11/10/79) In the 1880s, auctions were held there, as were meetings of the inundation committee that met in 1881 to discuss the (perennial) problems of flooding of the Quaggy. (Greenwich & Deptford Observer, 17/12/1881)
While there seems to have been less official business conducted at the Plough by the end of the century, the landlord wanted to ensure that businesses and clubs still made use of it. In February 1899, George Leale placed an advert in the Kentish Mercury telling “auctioneers, secretaries of cycling and other athletic clubs” and others that a building behind the Plough was a now “a Club or Sale Room”, kitted out with all they would need for concerts, dinners, sales and other meetings:
And these meetings did indeed continue, including regular meetings and exhibitions of the South Suburban Photographic Society, whom we met near Lee Bridge. They were even listed in the local directory as being based at number 2 Lewisham High Street in 1941, not long before displays and meetings were interrupted by wartime bomb-damage until a much-heralded return in 1949. Two years later they put on the first display of Dutch photos in England. (LBN, 4/10/49 & 9/10/51) That year, the Plough also hosted the AGM of the Lewisham Village branch of the British Legion. (Sydenham Gazette, 16/11/51)
The pub’s garden remained for a long time, in the mid-1960s becoming home to a donkey belonging to Jeffrey Harley, the son of the landlord Bob Harley:
The Running Past blog describes how, after the Harleys’ time, the pub became first an underage-drinking establishment and later a rather unappealing-sounding sports bar under the name of Pitchers. Along with its neighbour at number 4 (see below) it was the last survivor of the buildings on this stretch of the High Street between the railway and Loampit Vale. It closed around 2007/8 and was demolished soon afterwards.
For a few years there was a small garden on the site of the Plough and number 4, before another round of development saw the site replaced by a new road and tower blocks.
Plough stables/garage – 2 High Street
Next to the Plough itself were its stables, which appear in the earliest OS maps so were probably built at the same time as the the inn was rebuilt. Presumably these originally were built for the use of Plough’s owners and visitors. By the 1890s, though, they were being used for vehicle hire. For over 50 years, the Hart family ran the business here, spanning the age of horse-drawn vehicles and the spread of motorcars.
Henry Hart and his wife Ann Susan (nee Parsons) lived at 141 High Street after their marriage in 1879, where he was a corn merchant. Sometime in the 1880s, he took himself in a radically different direction, being listed in the 1891 census as a “jobmaster” and a decade later in a newspaper story as a “well-known cab and fly proprietor” – both titles essentially meaning that he hired out vehicles, at this stage of the horse-drawn kind (like William Hillman senior some years earlier). It’s not clear whether he began this business at the stables at the Plough or moved there once he was up and running, but by 1897 that was the address he gave when selling horses. It soon became the grander-sounded ‘Livery stables’ or ‘Livery Yard’. The family lived nearby at 5 Clarendon Road, now Clarendon Rise, in 1891; then at 10 Lewisham Hill in 1901, and 17 High Street in 1911. By then, however, Henry had died (in August 1910) and Ann was the owner of the business – we met her in passing in the post on St Stephen’s church and Terrace.
Soon after this, of course, the First World War intervened in the lives of the people of Lewisham, including the Hart family. When conscription came in 1916, Henry and Ann’s son Walter Henry Hart applied for exemption from service. In November 1916, he asked for an extension of his four-month exemption on the basis that he “was the only member of the family who had mechanical knowledge, and was able to look after the motors”. That they were still in the transition to motor transport is confirmed by one of his brothers reportedly looking after 20 horses. Their two other brothers were already serving in the armed forces. Their mother Ann owned the company and according to his solicitor in the appeal (future mayor CH Dodd) they were “practically the only jobmasters plying for hire in Lewisham and Lee, had Government work, and the LCC contract to convey the children from the schools for cripples.” The tribunal rejected the appeal, on the basis that the other civilian brother was medically unfit for service but Walter was fit. (LBN, 3/11/1916) Walter ended up serving as a private in the Army Service Corps, his service number indicating that he was in the mechanical transport section of the corps, which seems like a reasonable use of his skills.
The business appears to have flourished into the 1920s, with new addresses listed in Post Office London Directories at Blagdon Road and 126 Eltham High Street. Around this time, Walter appears to have taken over the business entirely. The 1921 census finds him at 17 High Street and listed as an employer, working at the Plough Garage. Two of his brothers were also working in the motor business, apparently from their addresses at 10 Lewisham Hill and 146 Lewisham Road. In 1929, adverts for the original company gave its address as Plough Garage and declared ‘Wedding cars a speciality’.
Ann Hart also lived at 10 Lewisham Hill (with two of her daughters, but in a separate household to her son) until her death in 1927. Her name was added to the monument to Henry in the cemetery:
The company H Hart remained at 2 High Street until at least the Second World War. Walter Henry Hart was listed as a garage proprietor in the 1938 National Register, now living at 43 Lewisham Hill.
By the mid-1950s, however, a company called Borman Lee (or Borman, Lee and Leagas) had taken over the property, possibly when Walter retired. They appear to have remained there until the mid 1980s, when the company was liquidated with their registered address still 2 Lewisham High Street.
By the 1970s, the entrance to the garage faced directly onto the pavement, level with the front of the pub – visible in a London Picture Archive photo of the Plough. The entrance doesn’t appear to have been there in c1950 when the post-war OS map was drawn and the corresponding aerial photo (see above) taken, so may have been an innovation of the Borman Lee era.
Next to the garage was, of course, the railway line that crosses the High Street on its way to Blackheath. This section of railway line was damaged by bombing in 1940, albeit less severely than the later damage over the road by the old Lewisham railway station buildings. The damaged railway structure played a fleeting role in the propaganda films ‘London Can Take It!’, Oscar-nominated when released in the USA (it was released in the UK as ‘Britain Can Take It!’). You can see the Lewisham railway bridge six minutes into the film, with a train passing over it – this clip should start at that point:
The repairs from that wartime damage, and the more extensive changes around the old station and Bridge Place, can be seen in this 1940s aerial photo – which also shows the size of the Plough Garage behind the pub:
4 High Street – buildings over the river Quaggy
The shop at number 4 was built later than its neighbours on either side (the Plough and what was briefly called 7 Ivy Place) and was quite unusual, mainly because it was built across the river Quaggy, blocking the view of it from view from the street. In the 1940s aerial photo above, it can be seen in front of the Plough, snaking along the path of the river off to the right of the image.
It’s not clear when this one-storey shop-front was constructed. The address is listed from the early 1890s but the OS maps don’t show the building over the Quaggy until the 1940s. In the 1920s aerial photo shown on the disused railways website we can see the structure over the river, so it was certainly there by then. Possibly the shop started out beside the river (there was certainly a building next to the river in the 1890s OS maps, which was still there in the 1940s one) and later expanded to reach the road by spanning the river. The river bed was concreted around 1898, which presumably presented the opportunity for the building over the river.
The colour photo of the Plough above shows the building from the front, as do the earliest google streetview shots of the location. Meanwhile a few Transport Library images of the bus station that became its neighbour in the 1970s show the sides (e.g. images from 1996 and 1989).
The first incumbent to appear in the local directories here was ironmonger Noah Ife Backhouse, whose business is listed for liquidation in the London Gazette in 1884 at 4 High Street and 5 Waterloo Terrace. He appears in the 1881 census at the latter address (now 194 Lewisham Road the other side of the railway line), with his wife Eliza and seven children. He later lived at 10 Granville Road (now Granville Grove) from at least 1891 until his death in 1907. From 1892 to 1907, a Nathaniel Ife Backhouse is listed at 4 High Street, variously as an ironmonger, locksmith and plumber (in 1901 as Moore and Backhouse). I haven’t found any people of that name listed, so one must assume that this was Noah operating under a none-to-subtle alias.
Also listed at number 4 in 1907 were two other businesses. One was H.F. Hichisson and Sons, saw mills. This was the first company operating the timber yard that took over the gardens of Ivy Place. We will cover them and their successors there when we look at Shepherd’s Place.
The other name at number 4 was plumber Anthony Oscar Bentley, who coincidentally lived at 196 Lewisham Road, next door to the Backhouses’ former property. By 1925, the business at 4 High Street is listed as as Bentley and Sons, Ltd, presumably with one or more of Anthony’s four sons playing a part. By then, they were listed at 4A High Street, before reverting to number 4 by 1930. In 1925 a Mrs E Dutton worked at number 4 as a milliner.
From the late 1930s until the 60s, the building was shared by scale-makers W&T Avery and boot-repairer Reginald Wick (by 1960 operating as Super Shoe Repairs). These two occupants were quite a contrasting pair. The company that became W&T Avery started in the eighteenth century and expanded throughout the following 150 years, taking on that name in the early nineteenth century.
By 1941, they had four branches in London – ‘Avery House’ in Clerkenwell Green (with five phone-lines), and properties on Farringdon Road and Willesden Lane, as well as this one in Lewisham.
Meanwhile, their neighbour Reginald Wicks was very local; having grown up at his father’s boot repair shop at 26 Loampit Vale, in the 1930s he opened his own business at 5 Junction Approach (the road up from Loampit Vale to Lewisham Station) before extending to 4 High Street in around 1938.
After the war Wicks lived until his death in 1967 at Orchard House, which stood on part of ground now occupied by Claybank Grove but was then accessed via Dunsley Place. This was a small road opposite the southern end of Elswick Road between the last buildings on Loampit Vale and the first on Loampit Hill, where there is now a small patch of land that hasn’t been built on.
In 1941, opticians J&R Fleming were also listed at 4A. Avery remained long enough to appear in the colour photo of the Plough shown above, sharing the building then with “Marten and Dance”. Both were gone by the age of Googlemaps, which finds a cafe and a dry cleaner’s as the final occupants before the building was demolished (see image above)
The Plough and its neighbours
In the end, the Plough outlasted its neighbours on and around the former Plough Green – having also pre-dated their construction on the enclosed common land. Its position at the northern end of the High Street presumably saved it (and the other buildings in this post) from demolition in the 1970s and 90s when the rest of their neighbours were pulled down and the bus station and roundabout built. But the wholesale overhaul of the site since 2008 finally saw the end of this historic pub – one that had lasted through the arrival of the railway and the Lewisham’s change from a village straggling along the road to Bromley into a bustling London borough. By then, the pub itself had suffered rather a decline from the important local institution it had once been in previous centuries into a rather unattractive sports bar, before it was finally boarded up and pulled down.
Next we will turn to some of the first houses built on Plough Green after the enclosure, as we look at Ivy Place…
Long & Lazy Lewisham 
Stuart, thanks so much for all the effort and research you put into these posts.
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