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 Blackheath:
The Story of a Suburb
by Neil Rhind
Page 3
Towards Suburbanisation
Whether the success of
the late 17th century villa scheme encouraged
others is hard to say but Blackheath’s next
tentative step towards suburbanisation came
in the late 1680s when George Legge, Baron
Dartmouth (1648 - 1691) and his aunt, Susannah
Graham (1617 - 1699) granted development
leases for a number of plots on the far west
side of the Heath, butting the highway of
Blackheath Hill.
Many of the Dartmouth Encroachments houses
survive in part today (Nos 21 & 23, 22,
28, 30, 32, 34, 36 Dartmouth Row, and Dartmouth
House) although alterations and redevelopment
of the plots started as early as the mid 18th
century. This encroachment still defines the
west edge of Blackheath.
It was during the period approximately 1690 to 1740 that there
was a considerable amount of development on the northwest corner
of the Heath. Crooms
Hill had long boasted houses; indeed, some say it was being
built up in the 15th century; but in fact most of it was erected
on the garden ground of larger mansions at a much later date.
Some houses were put up on part of the waste of the highway
or the Heath, such as the Manor House of 1695 (which survives)
and its neighbours (which do not).
Influential Families
On a slightly lesser scale, both in volume and socially, the
two landlords of private property on the west edges of the Heath:
the trustees of Morden College and the Ashburnham family saw
opportunities for investment. The establishment of the Hospital
for Seamen in Greenwich, the Royal Observatory, and increasing
industry along the Thames at neighbouring (but less socially
attractive) settlements encouraged a new population requiring
places to live. London merchant John Morden had founded Morden
College as a refuge for merchants who were also communicants
of the Church of England, and who were down on their luck through
no fault of their own. Morden (1623-1708), a Levant merchant,
lived at Blackheath from 1669 until his death.
 He
had no direct heirs and he and his wife Susan
arranged to establish a Hospital or College
at Blackheath in their lifetimes. It was
built on the south east corner of the Heath
and opened in June 1700. Before that date
Morden (later Sir John) had acquired considerable
land in the area including a number of parcels
collectively known as the Manor of Old Court
or the “Queen’s
Lands”. At least three of these plots faced the Heath. They
were to prove extremely profitable for Morden’s trust that was
established in his lifetime to support the College after his
and Lady Morden’s death. The trust and the
College flourish today.
The principal section of the Morden College estate was land
at the north west end of Blackheath Hill, and part of West Grove.
By the 1740s the College trustees had not only granted develop-ment
leases for the land but retained sufficient equity to support
its investment. Surveyors and, later, architects were appointed
to supervise the repair and management of the buildings, mostly
substantial houses for middle class professional or retired
people, for future generations. As a result the surviving structures
on the College estate at the east end of Blackheath tend to
date from the late 18th century although there may be an even
more antique core within some of them.
 Although
it was not a commercial development in any
sense of the word, mention has to be made
here of Vanbrugh’s Field. When Sir John
Vanbrugh (1664 - 1726) was appointed architect to the Seaman’s
Hospital buildings at Greenwich (later the Royal Naval College
and now the University of Greenwich and Trinity College of Music)
he bought a plot close by on which to build his own house. Along
with his Castle (on the corner of Maze Hill and Westcombe Park
Road) he built a “mediaeval village” to provide
houses for some of his relatives. The Vanbrugh
buildings dominated this part of Blackheath
from the 1720s to the late 19th century when
all but the Castle were demolished for the
Edwardian suburban road which occupies the
land today.
Blackheath Village
Moving down the decades
Morden College turned its attention to another
parcel of its land – a half moon of grass
and fields on the south of the Heath, to
the west of what became Blackheath Village,
- Grotes Buildings, and Grotes Place. By
this time (1770) Blackheath attracted not
only men of business and industrial manufacture
but also a sizeable number in the military
services and the mercantile marine.
The shipbuilding, ordnance and munitions factories at Deptford,
Blackwall, and Woolwich provided employment for men of all classes,
but in this part of England in particular, scientists and designers.
Shipping attracted a number of disciplines: financiers, ship
owners, naval architects, builders, insurers, victuallers, import
and export merchants, and the officers required to take the
fleets to sea and bring them back again.
 Blackheath
seemed to attract Scotsmen: men in shipping
and West India merchants, sometimes plantation
owners. Many were Edinburgh merchants anxious
to demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown in
the 1740s who, to avoid Jacobite taint, came
to London. Curiously, in turn they brought
to Blackheath their own activities, including
those of the masonic lodge and the distinctive
Scottish game of golf – their club was to play
on Blackheath from about 1745 until 1923, when
the Royal Blackheath Golf Club moved to Eltham.
It was these men who were to take the new Morden
College houses, to be called Grotes Buildings
after the leaseholder one Andreas Grote, a
Bremen-born banker living then in some style
in another College property, Point House in
West Grove. Grote, in due course, lent his
name for another street, developed in the 1830s
and now called Grotes Place.
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