Blackheath:
The Story of a Suburb
by Neil Rhind

Page 4

Cator Estate

The sale in 1783 of Sir Gregory Page’s grand mansion of Wricklemarsh and its attached 250 acre parkland, on the south east corner of the Heath, to timber-merchant John Cator for a miserable £22,250, helped prepare the ground for the next big change to the Blackheath suburb – but it was a process which took over 40 years. Cator (1728 - 1806) offered a chance in the early 1790s to architect Michael Searles, to develop the Heath frontage of the old Page estate. Cator arranged for the unwanted mansion to be demolished for the value of its materials, but he did not wish to build himself a house here – he enjoyed a perfectly good one at Beckenham.

Searles (1751 - 1813) obtained consent from Cator to design and build a housing scheme. It consisted of a 14-house four-storey crescent called The Paragon, and six more detached or semi-detached houses on what became South Row. The crescent, erected to provide high-class dwellings to rich gentlemen, was completed over the years 1794 - 1805, despite Searles' business failure. It was restored in the years 1945 - 1953 after bad war damage, and survives today as one of London’s finest architectural compositions.

The Eliot Developments

There followed an enthusiasm by suburban landowners and builders to meet the huge demand for affordable middle class housing that was truly amazing, not just in Blackheath but in all the newly burgeoning suburbs on London’s fringe, particularly to the north and east. In Blackheath the Lord Eliot (his family were later the Earls of St Germans) adopted a “me too” policy, and encouraged by the Searles promotion on the neighbouring Cator Estate granted development leases to one of principal local contactors of the Searles scheme: Alexander Doull. This was to develop the long south fringe of the Heath in Eliot ownership – the Heath roads now designated Eliot Place, Eliot Vale and Eliot Hill and stretching west past Granville Park to Lewisham Hill.

Doull’s enterprise, like that of Searles, was seriously under-funded and his scheme of things failed to meet his expectations. There were a number of major detached dwellings – which mostly stand today: Nos 1 and 6 Eliot Place, Eliot Vale House and The Knoll and Old Knoll (one structure, split in 1903). But the careful composition of pairs of semi detached houses in London stock brick was not completed and the Eliot Place lots were developed in a haphazard fashion although the result in time acquired a patina of interest and, by today, provides architectural delight.

The ending of the French wars saw a diminution of activity although St Germans did approve the exploitation of the Heath frontage of the great Kidbrooke farmlands – over 1,000 acres and hugely profitable as mixed agricultural and horticultural land so close to London. Initially, Doull was the favoured party but he failed to proceed before his death in 1821 and another local land agent, William Dyer, took up the opportunity and found a sufficient number of professional men eager to buy substantial dwellings with space for carriage houses, a horse and servants’ rooms. The initial scheme was relatively low key but it set a precedent on the Shooters Hill Road and this great highway was fully developed on both sides by the 1860s.

Flourishing Blackheath

By this time the residents of Blackheath were enjoying a busy Village that held the commercial, professional and light industrial providers needed to keep the inhabitants of a middle class suburb in food and raiment and other necessities. It is of interest to note that the railway did not encourage the core growth of Blackheath – it came in 1849 after the little town had been flourishing for some years. Such was the tenacity for the rural quality of the local environment that the residents and landowners forced the railway engineers to place their metals in the least obtrusive manner possible. It is of interest today (2002) to note that the railway does not split the community and that many cross it daily without realising they have done so - despite very little of it being in a tunnel.

By the early decades of the 19th century the inhabitants had cried: "enough!" They did not wish the manor holders to grant any further encroachments on Blackheath, either for building plots or for turf cutting, gravel digging, lime burning or rubbish dumping. The Heath was by then an important part of the social fabric of the residents. Organised sport had been largely codified and arranged by Blackheath teams; the golf club was not only the first ever in England but remained supreme and almost alone in the country until the later decades of the 19th century. Cricket saw a dozen tables laid down by the early 1820s; football (of various rulebooks - or none) was played by boys attending the numerous private schools that had opened in the district. Schools made a substantial impact on Blackheath. They occupied many of the larger mansions that had fallen out of fashion or were in poor repair: Dicken’s Creakle Academy (David Copperfield) was set on Blackheath, probably West Grove.

The football enthusiasm was to reach its apotheosis with the foundation of the mighty Blackheath Football Club in 1862 – still playing, perhaps the oldest open football club playing the Rugby Union rulebook. On a lesser social plane there were regular athletic meetings, racing, pedestrianism and other mass spectator sports that attracted drink booths and betting on a large scale.

One curiosity of the time came in 1801 when John Julius Angerstein enclosed a large section of Blackheath on its north east side: the ground facing Shooters Hill Road from the corner of Vanbrugh Terrace to Sun Lane and bounded on the north by the Old Dover Road and Vanbrugh Park. Angerstein (1735 - 1823) claimed that he had no knowledge that he was doing anything wrong and offered to compensate the parishioners of Greenwich for his trespass for the sum of £10 a year. The Parish (foolishly) agreed and the ground was lost forever, although the actual developments were not to rise until 1839 - 1840. The first buildings were Nos 7 - 29 Shooters Hill Road, a fine group of seven blocks of 14 semi-detached houses.

The land gave space eventually for St John’s Park and its attendant feeder roads. In 1871 the Heath was taken into public care to be protected for the benefit of the people of London in perpetuity, the freeholders retaining only rights of soil. By 1880 the last great estate, Westcombe Park, on the northeast side of the Heath - was being carved into countless building plots and the development of the Blackheath suburb was complete.

Images of Blackheath
1 & 2 Paragon Place, Blackheath, c. 1938		Collins Square, Blackheath, 1945		Eastnor House, Lloyd's Place, Blackheath, 1989