A very helpful comment to my last past on the history of Floyd Road has confirmed that their used to be a railway, or a tramway as a number of documents refer to it as, running from the sandpits under where the football stadium is down to the river. The footpath under the railway on Ransom Road with it's arches is indeed the course it followed. I'm tempted to nip down there with a tape measure at some point to check it's width out, I'm not at all sure it's big enough for a standard gauge track.
The tramway was built by Lewis Glenton who got permission for it in 1840, it was certainly there in 1852 as it's referred to when giving the location for a garden in another document. That reference also confirms that the pub on the corner of Church Lane and Woolwich Road was known as the Antigallican (or Anti-Gallican, making it's anti French meaning very apparent) at that time too.
There appears to have been some legal problems building the tramway, there was a court case between Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson (whose family owned much of the land around here) and the Reverand of the parish Church and Lewis Glenton in 1840 or 1841. The Reverand might have been involved because the case refers to the tramway being built over "Glebe land", which is Church owned land that is rented out. So maybe the Church owned the land, Lewis Glenton rented it and built the tramway along it. I wonder what Sir Thomas' problem was?
Anyway thanks very much to the anonymous poster, if anyone does know anymore about the tramway please pass it on.
Here's some information that I've managed to find with a quick bit of googling....
Greenwich Industrial History Society
The National Archives
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I have certainly learnt a lot these last few days and I love the bit about the Antigallican.
Another very quick bit of searching turns up this page:
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LONDON/2003-07/1057690580
So it sounds like the pub that's there now isn't the pub that's on the map in 1867. That was demolished but the name was kept. I'll have to go and check out the pub looking for any date markers on it.
There did use to be a fair number of pubs called the "Antigallican", or some derivation of it, but I read somewhere that the one in Charlton is the last one left in London. There was a closed and boarded up one somewhere near London Bridge that you could certainly see until recently.
One very nice story that I did hear was that a lot of them were bought, named and run by veterans of the Napoleonic wars who invested their pensions into them after they left military service.
It's a lovely story but is it true?
Don't know about the Napoleonic wars, but my dad and his friend Dan ran a Loan Club in the Antigallican all through the 1950s and 60s.
And my mum, me and my sister were all born (actually born) in houses in Floyd Road. One day I'll get a blue plaque put up.
Post a Comment