The History of Floyd Road (Part 2 - 1894)

Following on from The History of Floyd Road (Part 1 - 1867) here's part 2 27 years later. This is once again using a map published by Alan Godfrey Maps and as I've said before if you're enjoying this go and buy yourself a copy either from their web site or the Heritage Centre. They're £2.25 each and they really are good. There's just so much to look at, especially if you pick up all the the three vintage maps.

Anyway, here we go, Floyd Road in 1894.

The first thing to notice is that Floyd Road still isn't on the map. There are a few houses there but the street is known as "Cedar Grove". That's now the name for the little road that comes off Floyd Road and lies between it and the railway, well almost, that's Cedar Place. There are buildings marked out along there but those along what is now Cedar Place are obviously far too new. So I wonder what was there?

The garden that was where Floyd Road will be in 1867 has now gone completely and the buildings that were on the NE corner of it now appear to have changed. The one nearest the railway is marked as being a bank which is the logo you can still see faintly painted on it's side. The newsagent on the west side of Charlton Church Lane was the Post Office back then.

The chalk and sand pits now appear to be closed down, off the scanned area of the map they're labelled "Old Sand & Chalk Pits". Note how the tramway has also been removed. However before that all went there had been substantial further excavation. The excavations have gone further south and Charlton Grove, what I imagined to be a large house has been lost. Industry remains in the area though, a disinfectant works has appeared.

Charlton Station has also changed, and not just it's name to Charlton Junction. It's now got a Coal Depot and goods handling facility to the north of the current eastbound platform with what appears to be at least two lines of track. You can see a photo showing the beginning of that area here. Those tracks lasted up to the 1960s and explain why Troughton Road has some newer houses and car parking space there now.

The Railway has also had bigger changes. Back in 1867 there was no train through to Greenwich, the Royal Navy College and/or the Observatory had been refusing permission to tunnel underneath them. However by 1894 that's changed. A new set of track cuts straight west away from the line running off to Blackheath and Westcombe Park Station has appeared.

The biggest change in the area has just got to be the amount of extra housing that has been built. Delafield Road, Sundorne Road, Priolo Road, Invarine Road and Fossdene Road were fields back in 1867, now they're there and lined with houses. Roads that were already there have gained extra housing. The entire east side of Charlton Church Lane is now full of houses right up to the village. Wellington Road used to have some substantially sized buildings on it's south side, they've now been joined by some smaller neighbours on the other side of the road. Around the new Westcombe Park Station a whole new estata with dozens of houses has sprung up.

On a personal level of history a building to the north of the railway has now been named, Lime Villa. You can read all about it here. It was the home of a Thomas Nichols who was a Lime Merchant and he moved in in the mid 1860s. The article linked to mentions the trouble he had getting local chalk/limestone, that ties in nicely with the decline in the quarries between this map and the one from 1867. I wonder if when he moved there the local quarries were already running their production down? The house, and the name he gave it, remained there until the 1960s when it was demolished and Barney Close built over it.

So there's been a lot of change in the few years between 1876 and 1894 and there's a lot more to come in the 20 years between this map and my next one from 1914.