INDEX

3.1 THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

Consideration of the appearance of the local landscape in the prehistoric period depends on three main factors:

- The mean high water level of the River Thames (which after a long period of dramatic oscillation), has been rising gradually since c.7,000BP, evidenced in the geological record by alluvial clays and silts with a few periods of regression indicated by layers of peat. The overall effect has been for the Thames to inundate land on its banks which were formerly capable of supporting human habitation. This effect has now largely been masked by embankments made in recent centuries which have constricted the river channel allowing former marshlands and riverbank to be reclaimed as habitable land. (Note that sea level figures quoted throughout relate solely to the Lower Thames and are derived from Devoy, 1979, and Milne, 1985.

- The relative state of the climate.

- The extent of human intervention (including flood barriers and artificial drainage).

Each of these factors can best be assessed by geotechnical investigations and which have not yet been carried out in the Study Area. From Thainesmead and eastwards such work has been carried out and published by Devoy (Devoy 1979) and his research is now being supplemented by archaeological evaluations being undertaken on development sites at the requirement of local planning authorities - in furtherance of DoE's Planning Policy Guidance 16.

In general terms, the Lower Palaeolithic (before 450,000BP - c.38,000BP) landscape was vastly different to that today, although the Thames was diverted south into its present valley during this period. The major oscillations of sea level and glacial action which have subsequentty occurred means that whatever survives of this ancient landscape in the Study Area is either fairly high above OD and/or deeply buried by subsequent deposits.

By the Upper Palaeolithic (c.38,000BP - 10,000BP, although the period 23,000BP - 13,000BP was the Devensian glaciation and Britain was apparently abandoned by humans), some of the recognisable features of the present landscape are in place, such as the general line of the Thames, but the Devensian glaciation and subsequent sea level oscillations combine to make it difficult to locate surviving fragments of this landscape today.

Recent and continuing studies by Bridgland (1994), and co-workers such as Gibbard (1988) are beginning to resolve many of the stratigraphic difficulties of the Palaecrlithic and this could lead to the identification of potential sites in the Study Area.

The first half of the Mesolithic period (c.10,000BP-c.6,000BP) was a time of rapidly rising sea levels, as glacial ice caps melted. This means that earlier sites of this period are now likely to be buried deep beneath alluvial deposits laid down by the Thames although sites of the second half of the period may be accessible in the intertidal zone. Material of this period has been found in the intertidal zone of the Essex coast (Wilkinson & Murphy 1986), and we should, therefore, expect to find similar material on the south side of the Thames as well as in the marshes (where it will probably be deeply buried below alluvium). Thus a late Mesolithic landscape may exist in the Study Area.

With the Neolithic period (C.6,000BP-3,500BP) we can begin to see the broad outline of the modern landscape as the rate of sea level change settled down to the steady rise (apart from brief regressions) which continues today. Again, the intertidal zone is the most easily accessible area for the location of land surfaces of this period, but there is the additional potential of field monuments (such as barrows and ritual monuments) on higher ground. During this period settled agriculture begins with the concomitant clearance of woodland from favoured soils, and the beginnings of a 'modern' landscape start to show through.

The Bronze Age (c.2,000BC-c.65OBC) sees the continuing expansion of agriculture and the first'potentially retrievable elements of an organised landscape with field boundaries and trackways, which have been found elsewhere in Greater London. Well preserved trackways constructed of brush wood have been found at various sites in east and south-east London in the last five years. There are also ritual monuments and burial places generally on higher ground, and occupation sites.

These trends continue in the pre-Roman Iron Age (c.650BC-43AD). lt has been suggested that after c. 100BC that the need for land came to be a force for change (Cunliffe, 1982), with poorer soils being brought into use in Kent. lt can, therefore, be expected that occupation sites and field boundaries await discovery in Kent which were wooded-or scrub covered in the preceding period.

Material culture:

The majority of the finds from the periods down to and including the Bronze Age in the vicinity of the Study Area have been dredged up from the Tharnes "off Woolwich" and it is difficult, particularly in the case of lithics, to be sure how far they have moved from their place of original deposition. However, recent survey and excavation work on the Thames and other littorals in Essex (Wilkinson & Murphy 1986) has demonstrated convincingly that we should expect prehistoric usage of the riverside areas from the Mesolithic period onwards, wherever and whenever conditions allowed.

There are, however, two land discoveries of flint tools which Wymer, (1968), considers to belong to the Lower Palaeolithic. One (SMR 070562) is almost certainly redeposited (at a height of c. 12m OD, but the other, (SMR 070407) from Robin Hood's Cave on the edge of Bostall Woods at a height of c.40m OD may be close to an undisturbed site.

A Mesolithic bone awl (SMR 070514) found at Crossness "sandwiched between two layers of peat" may also have been found close to its point of deposition.

The lithic finds from the Thames at Woolwich range in date from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, and some at least may be taken as the results of erosion from an as yet unidentified intertidal zone in the Woolwich area. The late Bronze Age shield (SMR 110004) and sword (SMR 110038) from the river could be 'votive' offerings rather than erosion products.

The late Bronze Age sword (SMR 070216) found "six feet down" during the excavation of a canal at the Arsenal in the summer of 1778 may also be votive in nature, since the tree trunk found close by suggests that the workmen were digging through a peat layer and that the area was water covered at the time of deposition.

There is a middle Bronze Age palstave (SMR 070210) in the Museum of London collections but as the only provenance is "from Woolwich" it adds little to our knowledge of the area.

Two occupation sites are known from the late Iron Age in the Woolwich area. The defended enclosure at Hanging Shaw Wood, Charlton (SMR 070229) originally covering some 7ha, but then quarried away initially for ballast and subsequently used for casting lime so that only a stretch of the western ramparts and ditches remains. Salvage excavations at various times this century produced pottery from the 1st-3rd centuries as well as some Belgic sherds, whose dating is the subject of some dispute, one school of thought seeing them as pre-Roman Iron Age and the other as belonging to the Roman period. Pottery may have been manufactured at the site (a circular masonry structure has been interpreted as a kiln) and iron founding/smithing may also have taken place.

The Woolwich Power Station site (SMR 070992) immediately west of the Arsenal has revealed evidence of a site which is quite defmitely pre-Roman late Iron Age. lt appears to have been a defended site with an inner V-shaped ditch 7.6m wide at the surface and some 3.5m deep. Outside this was a second ditch with the same profile, 4.5m wide and 2.4m deep. Any evidence for ramparts has been truncated by later activity at the site. West of the ditches were found pits and hut circles. Dating evidence from the base of the ditches and from the pits indicates that this settlement commenced in the pre-Roman late Iron Age. The dating evidence comprised pottery and coins. We understand that work on the publication of this site, which was excavated in 1986-7, has not yet begun and is the subject of negotiations on funding. A summary report appeared in the Woolwich & District Archaeological Society Transactions Vol 39, 1988, 14-15). The importance of this site is difficult to over-emphasise. A heavily defended late Iron Age site on elevated ground at this point on the Thames is likely to have had a regional rather than local contemporary significance.

Cunliffe (1982), has suggested a possible quadripartite division of North Kent in this period, based on economic evidence (mainly distribution of coin and pottery types) and has related this to the "four kings of Kent" with whom Caesar carried out negotiations in 55 and 54BC. One of his territories includes Woolwich and lacks an 'oppidum'. There are grounds for at least considering the Power Station site as a potential candidate for the missing oppidum. This would be a remarkable find. In connection with this a Gaulish Type A2 uninscribed gold stater (SMR 070227) was found somewhere in the Plumstead area before 1890. The Power Station late Iron Age site provides a contemporary settlement site from which such a valuable coin may have originated.

The two major features of the Roman period landscape in the area are the River Thames and Watling Street (much of the course of which underlies the modern A2 London-Dover road) which runs WNW/ESE across Shooters Hill some 2.5km to the south of the site. There are indications that it may have met the river at Greenwich, passing close by the possible temple in Greenwich Park. There are also indications of substantial buildings on the riverside at Greenwich.

The main local east-west road or trackway in the area in this period probably ran along the line of present-day Plumstead Road and Plumstead High Street (where scatters of Roman coins have been found) and perhaps along Woolwich Church Street and Woolwich Road, passing close to the Roman site at Hanging Shaw Wood, Charlton. The line of Wickham Lane seems also to have been used in this period, as a north-south link between the chief local road and the main road of Watling Street, which it probably met at the important Roman roadside settlement at Welling.

To the east is the major concentration of villas or farmhouses along the Cray and Darenth valleys, 9km from the Arsenal. The foundations of buildings, pottery and burials were reported in the late nineteenth century as coming from Plumstead and Erith Marshes. These finds have supplemented by recent discoveries at Crossness golf course.

The landscape setting of the Arsenal area in the Roman period was probably fairly crowded, probably not too dissimilar to a pre-War rural landscape in Kent, with settlements or farms every 1.5km or thereabouts alongside the by-roads. In the present state of knowledge, with virtually no scientific archaeological excavation having taken place in the area, it is difficult to specify how the intervening land was used. However, given,that the Roman period level of Mean High Water Spring Tide in the area was just above OD (Milne 1985 fig 50, Devoy 1979 fig 29), it is likely that much of the marsh area could have been, at least in part, permanent dry land and perhaps used for arable or pasture. lt should also be noted that plum-type prunus stones have been found in Roman contexts in London, so perhaps market gardening may have played a part in the local economy. Further east along the Thames and Medway Roman industrial activity is known, in particular salt and pottery production. This demonstrates the importance of the tidal floodplain both for the local economy and as a supplier to the Roman city at London.

The Arsenal is well known for the large collection of Roman cremation pottery found in the south-west sector in the Dial Square area in the mid nineteenth century, and now mostly preserved in the collections of the British Museum and Greenwich Borough Museum.

The published reports of These finds are confusing and this Study has examined them carefully together with unpublished Arsenal records in order to clarify the present-state of knowledge. Only further excavation will produce new information.

The cremation pottery indicates the existence of a Roman cemetery apparently centred on the south-west corner of the Arsenal site, with outlying cremations at Beresford Square (SMR 070260) and Dawson's Brickfield (east of Burrage Road, SMR 070225); a 'funerary jar' recorded said to be found in Woolwich Dockyard in 1852 (SMR 070292), was reported by Elliston Erwood (WDAST 24, 1926,39) to be a Greek import.

The finds within the Arsenal caine up in 1841 during excavations for a pipeline at the west end of the site (SMR 070218); in 1853 under no 29 store at Dial Square (SMR 070228) at depths of loft and 15ft below the surface and thus in the River Terrace Gravel; in 1856 (SMR 071183) during excavations for the foundations of a boring mill in Dial Square; in addition, Montmorency (GLAST 1, no 3, 1910, 129) claimed that there was a 'third century small urn found in the Arsenal in 1896' in the British Museum (SMR 071184).

The contemporary reports of the 1853 discoveries seem at first to be confused, with the Board of Ordnance letters (PRO WO 44/297) referring to a site 'under no 29 store at Dial Square while the Kentish Independent (9th April 1853) locates the discovery at 'ground at the rear of the buildings of the boring department in the Dial Square, and in a part which was formerly used as a storehouse'.The Illustrated London News (9th April 1853) reports the finds being made "in digging a drain in the carriage departinent". The first two sources are quite clearly describing the same discovery, but the ILN reference is less clear. However, two of the three pots which it illustrates are also depicted in the Board of Ordnance letters, and the carriage department is immediately adjacent to the side of Dial Square referred to in the first two sources, and it seems probable, therefore that the ILN reporter either made a mistake in describing the findspot or his informant also referred to the 1841 discovery which was made in pipe trench digging.

By the early third century inhumation had displaced cremation as the dominant Roman burial rite. Given the clear evidence for third and fourth century occupation immediately west of the Arsenal (see below) it is odd that no Roman inhumations have been found at the Arsenal cemetery. lt is possible that some inhumations of this period have been assumed in the past to be convict burials but without further excavation the apparent absence of inhumations will remain unexplained.

Occupation sites:

The upper fill of the ditches of the Late Iron Age enclosure on the Power Station site (SMR 070992) was largely composed of late Roman rubbish with substantial quantities of pottery and large numbers of coins. There seems to have been relatively little Roman material found to the west of the ditches, possibly but not necessarily because of truncation by modern cellaring. There seems to have been little if any pre-third century material found, in marked contrast to the pots of this era from the Arsenal cemetery.

Included in the later Roman pottery from the Power Station site we understand was one sherd with a chi-rho inscribed on it, a motif associated with Christianity. One should be cautious of drawing conclusions regarding the religion of the occupants of this site from a single potsherd but the potential of this site is again highlighted.

The only other major Roman occupation site identified in the area is the probable defended enclosure at Hanging Shaw Wood, Charlton, some 1700m WSW of the Arsenal (SMR 070229) the extent of which seems to have been about 7 hectares. Use of the site, which may have included pottery manufacture and iron working/founding, appears to have ceased in the third century.

On the site of the Soldier's Home on Wellington Street "considerable fragments of Roman pottery were found in 1900" (SMR 070226); there is also a scatter of coin finds along the line of Plumstead High Street, including a small Trajanic hoard in a pot (SMR 070224) which may have come from Dawson's Brickfield (as did the cremation described above).

At the east end of Plumstead High Street, just south of St Nicholas' Church, there appears to be another cremation find, together with a second century coin (SMR 071062), and on Wickham Lane two inhumations were found, one in a lead coffin (SMR 070217); some 100m east of these inhumations, a small group of second century pottery along with a base sherd of a Belgic flat-bottomed dish were found (SMR 070300).

The Roman period foundations, pottery and burials recorded as being found in the later nineteenth century in the marshes during the construction of the waterworks at Crossness and associated pipelaying, as well as work on the river walls (SMR 071063), have now been confirined as a result of work at the new golf course and driving range at Crassness (SMR 071185).

Apart from a sherd of Middle Saxon pottery from Wricklemarsh, near Greenwich, and more significantly, an early Anglo-Saxon coin from the Power Station excavations, the nearest recognised material finds of this period are the inhumation cemetery at Romney Road, Greenwich and the secondary interments in the barrows in Greenwich Park excavated by James Douglas in 1784. The only other evidence available for this period is derived from place-name study and documents.

The place-name evidence presents difficulties of interpretation. For example, the name Woolwich in the past has been considered to mean 'a town where wool is exported'. However, it might as easily and perhaps more appropriately mean 'a farm where wool is produced'. Taken with Plumstead ('place /farm where plumtrees grow') there is some evidence to believe these names indicate a specialised agricultural basis for the local economy in the pre-Norman period.

The documentary record is equally open to interpretation. King Edgar's AD964 grant of land at Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich, Mottingham and Coombe to the Abbey of St Peter at Ghent appears to mean that Woolwich was a significant settlement at the time, but subject to Lewisham [Lewisham with all its appurtenances, namely........] This can be interpreted on the basis of comparative material from elsewhere in the country as representing a large 'estate' centred on Lewisham, which in turn is likely to be a subdivision of an original land bloc centred, perhaps, on the early site at Rochester. lt dates were to be applied to these, the Rochester 'shire' would probably be in existence by the beginning of the 7th century, with the sub-divisions being split off by the late 9th or early loth centuries.

Jones (1976) argues convincingly for early (possibly back to Iron Age) settlement agglomerations to have been based on the concept of 'multiple estates' and sets out a model which combines in one 'exploitation unit' an upland and a lowland element, thus encompassing arable, pasture and woodland, in one grouping. There are suggestions in the documentary record that Woolwich and Eltham were closely connected in earlier periods, (see below for discussion of the manor of Southall), and, using Jones' model, it would be possible to see 'Woolwich' as a lowland element (including the useful marshes, possibly with fisheries, to the north of the main road - approximately on the line of Woolwich Road and Woolwich Church Street) and 'Eitham' as an upland element, as a kind of multiple estate in miniature and hence a basic building block for the larger estates discussed above.

The church at Woolwich is recorded in the Rochester Chrism List, which appears to reflect the situation in the late 1lth century, and it would not be remarkable if the churches in that list were in existence fifty to a hundred years previously. The church at Woolwich would presumably be St Lawrence, whose foundations lie some 35 metres north of the present church.

There, is therefore, suffizient evidence for it to be inferred that there was a settlement, of unknown extent, at Woolwich in the late Saxon period, probably centred on the site of St Lawrence's church. Whether that settlement was still primarily concerned with the production of wool is, however, unknown.

The site of the Arsenal straddles the parish boundary between Woolwich and Plumstead, the boundary lying along the stream which descends from Shooter's Hill to the Thames. Vincent (1890, 316, 337) stated that 32.5 acres of the Arsenal lay in Woolwich parish, but the figure is in reality somewhat less. The precise boundary may always have been blurred where the stream wended its way through the boggy marshes to the river. This part of Woolwich may have been included in Plumstead manor (see below), and in the seventeenth century pieces of marsh land in the area were described as being "in Woolwich and Plumstead or one of them" (e.g. GLARE E/MW/C/202). In the period of the Arsenal the boundary was rationalised into straight lines as the stream disappeared under increasingly dense clusters of buildings (e.g. PRO WORK43/1494 in 1920).

In the medieval period the site also lay across a hundredal boundary, Woolwich lying in the hundred of Blackheath (called Greenwich at the time of Domesday Book) and Plumstead in the hundred of Little or Lesnes. A detached part of Woolwich lay in the marshes on the north bank of the Thames. This suggests that each parish had a distinct tenurial history in the early medieval centuries. Both parishes contained several manors in the medieval period and later. There are various secondary accounts of the descents of these manors but all are confused and none satisfactory. The tenurial history of the area is a tangled web, and it is difficult to identify the strands which constitute the two parts of the Arsenal site.

In the Domesday Book survey of 1086 Woolwich was not mentioned, except for an estate of 63 acres "which belong to Hulviz" held by Hamo the Sheriff. This has recently been identified as North Woolwich (Watson 1987, 111). lt was previously assumed to represent the later manor of Southall (Lysons 1796, 559; Drake 1886, 146; Hogg 1963, 123). The main part of Woolwich was probably included in Ghent Abbey's entry for the manor of Lewisham, or possibly in the entry for Eltham, where Hamo held an estate from the bishop of Rochester (Watson 1987, 111, 114-5). The abbey's ownership was confirmed by William I in 1081 (Drake 1886,144; Norman 1900,32), but appears to have lost its claims in the early 12th century. The main Woolwich manor of Southall was later dependant on the royal manor of Eltham (see below). These connections may imply that Eltham and North Woolwich were originally part of the Lewisham estate in the ninth century.

Part of the Lewisham estate lying in Woolwich and Mottingham was granted by Henry II in the 1150s to another monastery overseas, the Abbey of St Jean d'Angeley in Saintonge, France. This house also had difficulties retaining its English lands. The holding passed through a number of other hands, including those of Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, who also held Eltham manor, before reverting to the Crown in 1310 (Drake 1886, 144-5; Rot Lit Claus 73; CIPM v pp150-1 no274).

The manor of Southall covered most of Woolwich parish and was often known as the manor of Woolwich. lt is first identifiable in the thirteenth century. At this time it was held by a farnily called de Marisco or de le Mareys by the military service of half a knight's fee (Book of Fees ii 669, 679; AC xii 235). The family name demonstrates the manor's association with marsh land. The Mareys' direct overlords in the estate were the Monchesi and Mandeville families, as part of their manor of Eltham (PQW 343). Southall was not a manor in the full sense of the term as it did not have its own court, but owed suit of court to the manorial court of Eltham. This dependence of Woolwich on Eltham persisted in later years and was the subject of a court case in Exchequer in the 1690s (Vincent 1890, 18).

By 1346 the estate, or part of it, had been acquired by Sir John de Pulteney (Drake 1886, 146-7; CCR 1364-9 236-7; 1360-4 414-5, 419; 1374-7 107-9, 201; CIPM x p169 not 83; PRO E328/50/2). It was first called Southall at this time, the "north hall" of the parish perhaps lying in North Woolwich. Pulteney answered for only a quarter of a knight's fee (AC x 153), suggesting that the estate had been divided into two halves. The other half may have been represented by the lands of the Northwood family, which were called a manor in 1341 (Drake 1886, 145), though described as tenements held from the manor of Eltham in 1364 (CIPM xi p430 no566). Pulteney's lands in Woolwich descended by the early fifteenth century to Margaret Sarnfield, who also purchased the Northwood holdings (PRO E211/405; Drake 1886, 169). The whole of Southall passed by a series of sales to John Tattershall, and after his death was divided between his widow Agnes Chichele and their daughter Margery. The two parts of the estate were bought from these two ladies by Nicholas Boughton in 1495 and 1503 (Drake 1886, 148; Nonnan 1900, 36-7).

This estate remained dominant in Woolwich landholding throughout most of the town's history, even into the nineteenth century. The earliest definition of its boundaries was in response to a commission of enquiry appointed in 1696, in connection with the court case concerning the relationship with Eltham manor. The main body of the estate was found to lie to the south of Woolwich High Street. lt extended to the bank of the Thames in the west part of the parish, on the site of the Royal Dockyard, and in the centre of the town between Hog Lane and Bell Water Lane. It also owned some tenements on the north side of the High Street, including two on the west side of Warren Lane, just to the west of the Arsenal site (PRO El78/6795; cf Barker's map of Woolwich 1749). However, it did not include the site of the Arsenal at this time, nor is there any evidence that it had previously.

It has been asserted that the westem part of the Arsenal site, which formed the Tower Place property by the early sixteenth century, belonged at the end of the medieval period to the Priory of St Mary Overy in Southwark. Tower Place has been identified with a tenement with a garden and two acres of land, purchased from the Crown by Sir Martin Bowes in 1540, and formerly belonging to the dissolved Priory (PRO E318/51146). Unfortunately, the descriptions of this property do not accord with the location of Tower Place (see below in Tudor and Stuart section).

However, the Priory did own other property in the Woolwich and Plumstead area. In the twelfth century it was granted a hermitage with three acres of marsh land in Plumstead parish by the Ros family, for the good of their souls. This was confirmed about 1184 by William de Ros, who added all the land his father had given Roger Prat, and all the land between this and the hermitage, stretching from a stream on the east side to the strode (variously translatable as "sands" or "marshy thickets") on the west side (BL Harley Charter 55.E. 18, translated at Vincent 1908, 68-9). Shortly afterwards Herbert the Monk paid rent to the manor of Plumstead for an acre of land in the marsh called Mealtot (Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 29).

Despite its inclusion in the parish of Plumstead, this description corresponds to the location of Tower Place, or perhaps to the land immediately to its east, which was later to be attached to it. The Ros and Prat families probably held land nearby in the marshes to the north-east of the site. The isolated location of this hermitage in the marshes is analogous to the chapel of St Mary at the south end of the Isle of Dogs, and the hermitage to the east of St Katherine's Hospital, which became the property of the Abbey of St Mary Graces. Local historians of Woolwich have preferred to see it as the origin of the church of East Wickham (Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 22, 44).

In 1442 the Priory purchased from Robert Mirfyn two messuages, a garden, a croft with a curtilage and a wharf called Hayeshawe in Woolwich town. This land was found to be held directly from the manor of Eltham, and was therefore outside the Southall estate (PRO C143/449/14). The description of the premises could accord with Tower Place.

The Tower Place property is not definitely identifiable before 1480, when it was described as a messuage, a garden, six acres of land and two acres of meadow in Woolwich and Plumstead. Henry Floos and his wife Johanna (from whose family it descended) sold it to Sir Thomas Bulkeley. They agreed to warrant it against Westminster Abbey, which therefore had some claim on the property (PRO CP25/1/117/340 no259).

The main manor of Plumstead derived from King Edgar's grant of the land for four ploughs called Plumstead to the Abbey of St Augustine's at Canterbury in 960. This probably represented all the arable land of the parish at that time. The grant was made in free alms, but after the Norman conquest the manor was held by the military service of one knight's fee. In the difficult political conditions of the eleventh century the abbey found it difficult to retain possession of its land. The manor was seized by Earl Godwin, who gave it to his son Tostig. In Edward.the Confessor's reign (1042-1066) the manor was restored to the abbey and equally divided between two tenants, Serag and Brixi Cilt. After the conquest it was taken by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who claimed the lands of Godwin as his predecessor in Kent. William 1 restored half of the manor to the abbey in 1070, Odo renouncing all his claims to it. Odo restored the other half in 1074 . At the tirne of the Domesday Book survey, the Abbey still held Brixi's half of the manor from the bishop, but held Serag's half directly from the king (BL Cotton MSS Claudius Dx; Julius Dii f93 no200); Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 13-19, 56; Thome 1934, 37, 50, 52). Later it was held entirely from the king (AC x 154; xii 235; BL Arundel MS 310 f135; PRO C143/314/15). The abbey continued to hold the whole manor until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s.

In the late twelfth century the rents and services of the manorial tenants were detailed in the Custumal of Plumstead (BL Cotton MS Faustina Ai; Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 22-9). In the thirteenth century the abbey was involved in various transactions in Plumstead, building up the size of its demesne holdings (Thome 1934, 166, 291, 301; Churchill et al 1956, 46, 307).

The manor extended over the entire parish of Plumstead and part of East Wickham. In 1270 Henry III granted the abbey various privileges in Plumstead, including a weekly market, a yearly fair and free warren (the right to hunt small gaine) on its demesne lands (CCHR 1257-1300 138). However, this was not the origin of the later Warren. The abbey claimed these rights had been granted by Edward the Confessor and confirmed by King John, and derived rights to set up gallows and hold assizes of bread and ale from King Cnut. They were accepted by Kent Assizes in 1279 and confirmed by Henry's successors (Thorne 1934, 404-7, 580; Elliston- Erwood and Mandy 1937, 16, 57-8).

Amongst their other privileges in Plumstead, the abbots claimed the right to take whales stranded on the Thames shore, and were occasionally able to benefit from it, as in 1313 (BL Cotton MS Julius Dii f228v). Whales have continued to stray this far up the Thames in more recent tirnes. In 1552 two were killed at Woolwich after a two-day hunt, and drawn up-river to Whitehall Palace to show the young king, Edward Vl. In 1627 a 30 foot "grampus" was shot with muskets and captured near Woolwich (Vincent 1890, 31, 806). A 40 foot whale was stranded off the Arsenal in 1899, and subsequently gave birth to two posthumous calves (The People 8 Dec 1899).

There were several other estates and "manors" in medieval Plumstead, all derived ultimately from the abbots' main manor. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the most significant of these other holdings was the estate of the Ros fainily. The Ros held land in the East Wickham and also in the marshes, where they founded the hermitage meritioned above, at least as early as the reign of Henry 1 (1 100- 1 135). They laid claims to the right to present rectors to East Wickham chapel and to half of the manor, probably the half descending from Brixi Cilt, and the abbot was not able to eliminate this latter claim until 1287 (BL Cotton MS Julius Dii f93 nos 201 and 202; Harley Charter 55.E. 18; Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 29, 43, 46).

Some of the Ros lands probably passed to the Lambyn family in the thirteenth century including those in the marshes to the north- east of the Arsenal site (PRO E326/10044; Mandy 1915, 51). In 1341 Lambyn land in Plumstead and East Wickham was sold to Sir John Pulteney, under whom it was called a manor (CCR1341-3 338; 1346-9 236-7; CIPM ix p169 no183). Other Lainbyn land, descending through the Erith family, was purchased in 1461 by the Hospital of St Thomas of Acre in London (Lysons 1796, 541; Mandy 1912, 54). The hospital's manor comprised woodlands in the south-east part of the parish, and "upland" and marsh land in the north-west of the parish (the North Marsh of Plumstead), including the promontory to the north-east of the Arsenal site, then called Sandhopeness and later Margaretness, and Tripcock Point (BL Cotton MS Tiberius Cv ff166-7; PRO E318/5/146). This was probably equivalent to the later Old Commarsh Level (Bowler 1968, map XIII).

Another estate in Plumstead was assembled in the mid-fourteenth century by Sir Bartholomew de Burghersh, by purchase from Robert de Erith and exchange with the abbot of St Augustine's (PRO C143/314/15; CP25/1/104/159 no1030). His son, the younger Bartholomew, inherited it in 1355 (CIPM x p219 no253), and it then passed through the families of Vaux and Greene (CAD i p286 noB768). In the reign of Henry VIII it was sold by Thomas Greene to Sir Edward Boughton, son of Nicholas Boughton of Southall (PRO E326/11159; Lysons 1796, 539). The estate was later known as Burgh Ashe, Burwash or Burrage, and stretched from the south side of the Arsenal site to Plumstead Common. The marsh lands forming the eastem part of the Arsenal site belonged to it in the late medieval period. They were later called Woolwich Marsh (Bowler 1968, map XIII).

The fundamental feature of the history of all the parishes along the banks of the Thames below London in the medieval and early modern period was the struggle to reclaim or "inn" the marshes from the river. Earthen banks or "walls" were constructed along the riverside, and the land behind was drained by ditches. This was enclosed and drained in a series of "parcels" divided by cross-walls or "counter walls" which ran perpendicularly to the river, advancing the river front over a period of time. These counter walls and the roads into the marshes called "manorways", which probably also marked the limits of parcels, remained visible until this century (Bowler 1968, 152 and map Xlll; Spurrell 1885, map). The level of each parcel related to the date at which it was first inned; the lower the level the earlier the inning (Evans 1953, 120, 122-4, figs 2 and 3).This reclaimed land was then utilised for meadow and pasture, and also for sowing corn (Dugdale 1772, 60, 63). In the thirteenth century land at Sandhopeness was used for pasture (BL Cotton MS Tiberius Cv f166 and 166v). The name itself indicates the nature of the ground; "hope" refers to the enclosed marsh. Most of the Erith and Plumstead marshes were used arable farming at this tirne, and livestock was of only secondary impor4mce here (Bowler 1968, 137). The unenclosed marshes were used for fishing and fowling. In about 1480 two tenants of the Master of the Hospital of Acre were fined for hunting on his ground with ferrets (Mandy 1915, 54). In a letter to Thomas Cromwell written at Lesnes in 1532 William Brereton complained that his fowler was ill and could take little for him (Vincent 1899, 61).

lt is not known from what period these arrangements date. Dugdale and Hasted ascribed the construction of the river walls to the Romans on the grounds that only they could have been sufficiently organised to do it, and because Roman coins had been found embedded in the embankments (Dugdale 1772, 65; Drake 1886, 160). Mandy more reasonably attributed them to the two abbots of Lesnes and St Augustine's, but argued that there was no need for the river walls before 1200 as the land was high and dry (Elliston-Erwood and Mandy 1937, 39). Evans argued that flooding began in the late tenth century and that the first inning was taking place by about 1300 (1953, 116-7, 120, 140). Bowler detailed flooding beginning in the late eleventh century and severe throughout most of the thirteenth, and reclamation work beginning in the late twelfth century in response (1968, 9, 31-2, 129-32, 145-7).

However, the river walls probably dated from well before the extant written evidence for them. Henry 11 ordered Emeline de Ros to pay the abbot of St Augustine's for the works and expenses for her part of the lands of Plumstead, as she and her ancestors had done in the time of Henry 1 (BL Cotton MS Julius Dii f93). This almost certainly referred to the maintenance of the river-walls near Sandhopeness, and suggests they date from at least the early twelfth century.

The reclaination work continued through the thirteenth century, though this may have been the last stages of an endeavour which had already lasted several centuries. In the Plumstead Custumal of the late twelfth century there were references to the Old Marsh and the New Marsh. A grant of land to the Priory of Holy Trinity, London in the west marsh of Lesnes in 1223-48, obliged the Priory to maintain six perches of river wall (BL Campbell Charter xiv 23). In about 1245 the abbot of St Augustine's and one of his tenants were disturbed by the ditching works of the abbot of Lesnes at the east end of Plumstead parish; he agreed to make a "gutter or aqueduct" to remedy the problem. In the same year the two abbots made an agreement with Richard de Dover about a new embankment. In 1250 there were both enclosed and unenclosed lands in the marsh of Hayflete on the east side of the parish. In 1281 the two abbots made an agreement about the inning of lands to the east of the marsh between the Borstall drain and the new river wall in Hayflete. In 1283 the abbot of St Augustine (acting through the agency of the abbot of Lesnes) inned eight acres in Plumstead, and withheld the land from the tenant until he had paid the costs of the work. In 1309 money was given to St Augustine's to make an "entrance" (sluice?) in the Plumstead marsh (Thorne 1934,273,31 1; Mandy 1912, 45,48; Elliston-Erwood & Mandy 1937,26,40).

The method of construction used for the river banks is not known. The abbot of St Augustine's provided the abbot of Lesnes with 1500 hurdles for the 1281 works, probably to form the foundations of the earthen banks (Thorne 1934, 273; cf Evans 1953, 108). Their repair and maintenance was governed by local marsh law and by the customs of Plumstead. All landowners in the marshes were obliged to provide their share of the costs and the tenants owed work services on the "walls and waterways". Responsibility for maintaining the river-walls and marsh ditches was attached to lands in Plumstead and Lesnes in the 13th century (Vincent 1908, 70-1; Mandy 1915, 53; Churchill et al 1956, 285), and lands acquired by Pulteney in Woolwich in 1338 and 1349 (PRO E210/5634; Drake 1885, 147 n2). In the 1281 agreement the abbot of Lesnes was to build the river wall and maintain it for the first month; thereafter the two abbots and their tenants would maintain it in proportion to their holdings, (Thome 1934, 273). The tenants' payments for the maintenance were formalised into a local tax called "wall-scot".

The maintenance of the flood defences along the Thames was also of concern to the Crown. Royal commissions to oversee the banks and ditches dated from at least 1316 and continued into the 1520s (Dugdale 1772, 59-62; CPR 1313-17 428; 1321-4 56; LPH iv(2) p1231 no2738). The abbots of St Augustine's and Lesnes and other local landowners often served on these commissions. Occasionally the river broke through the banks at high tides with disastrous results for the farmland behind. A flood of 1236 killed both human inhabitants and cattle in Woolwich, and swept away boats (Stow 1908, ii 114). In 1270 there was widespread flooding in Kent (Elliston-Erwood & Mandy 1937, 40). In 1321 the bank was breached between Greenwich and Woolwich (CPR 1321-4 56). There may have been further floods in Plumstead marshes in 1450 (Vincent 1899, 45); this was perhaps connected with the floods of March 1448 which drowned a thousand acres of the Isle of Dogs (McDonnell 1978, 66).

There are traces of old breaches in the river walls. The grant of land to Holy Trinity Priory in Lesnes west marsh in 1223-48 was in Breche Flet (BL Campbell Charter xiv 23). There was a breach there before 1293 (Mandy 1913, 45).

The eastem three-quarters of the Arsenal is on reclaimed land that formed the western end of Plumstead marshes. Vincent argued that there was no river embankment along the front of the site and that it was adequately protected from the tides by the gravel knoll to the west of the streain until the construction of the wharf in the early 19th century (1890, 309, 342). However, a 17th century deed refers to the long sea wall and bank, reed ground and marsh extending from the Tower Place stables to the east end of Prince Rupert's fort (see below) (GLRO E/MW/C/229), and this is likely to have been medieval in origin.

In the borehole data, the surface of the reclaimed areas behind the river walls probably corresponds to the upper part of the clay overlying the peat and gravel layers. Data from the proposed raising of the ground level in 1811 suggests that the surface level of the reclaimed marshes rose from south to north, indicating successive stages of reclamation (PRO MPHH576). This is borne out by the borehole data of the levels of the upper surface of the clay layer (see Fig 3.6).

In the late medieval period some of this land may have been lost to the river and then reclaimed for a second time. In 1482 Thomas Grene paid Thomas Kyngson for recovering the marsh of the manor of Burgh Ashe and leased the manor to him. The maintenance of the marsh was to remain Grene's responsibility, whilst Kyngson was to repair the hedges and ditches of the arable land (PRO E326/11159; CAD i p286 noB768). This probably formed the part of the Arsenal site to the east of the stream. The banks and ditches of some of these parcels of marsh can still be seen on the eighteenth- century maps of the Warren (e.g. Borgard 1701, Barker 1749; PRO MPH236; MPH463).

Woolwich was probably a less populous and important settlement than Plumstead in the medieval period. In c1420 its church was valued at 10 marks for tax purposes, while Plumstead church was valued at 44 marks (Mandy 1914, 44). lt has been suggested that the original village of Woolwich lay north of the High St along the lanes stretching down to the river stairs (Elliston-Erwood 1947, 21). lt is more likely that the houses of the village lay along the south side of the street, which formed the earliest river-bank, expanding east from an initial nucleus around the church of St Lawrence (SMR 70379 at TQ 4306 7917). towards the Arsenal.The land to the north side of the street probably consisted originally of a gravel beach, and later by wharves. The church had a west tower added in 1401.

The inhabitants of mediaeval Woolwich apparently earned much of their living from fishing in the Thames. They were suppliers of fish to London and the country around. Sometimes their monopoly of this stretch of the river was broken by fishermen coming down the river from London, and in the 1380s and 1390s they petitioned the royal council to remedy the situation (PRO SC8/22/1061; SC8/148/7368). There were frequent arguments in the 14th century about the sizes of the mesh of the nets used in this part of the river. Too fine a mesh was regarded as damaging to the stocks of small fish (Riley 1868, 107, 135, 220).

Woolwich was more than just a fishing village. There is evidence for the ferry as early as 1308 (Hogg 1963, 13 1; Watson 1987, 111), and the importance of the town as a river crossing point probably began much earlier and accounts for the detached portion of Woolwich on the north bank of the Thames. The town also had facilities for water-bome trade. There was a quay belonging to Holy Trinity Priory in Woolwich in c1260 (PRO E40/15757). St Mary Overy Priory acquired a wharf called Hayeshawe there in 1442 (PRO C143/449/14); this may have related to the Tower Place property. Another wharf was bequeadied by the will of Richard Chamberleyn in 1510 (Vincent 1890, 168). A salt house and wharf was sold to Henry VIII in 1518 (CAD iii p127 noA4981).

By the late medieval period there was also some industry at Woolwich. Deeds of the 1440s and 1450s mention tile-kilns near the Thames bank (CAD iii p 1 18 nos A4893 and 4894, p 1 19 nos A4904, A4908, A491 1, A4916, p 1 28 nos A4987, A4989, A4996). By the end of the 15th century there was also pottery production there. Wasters from this period have been found in a clay settling pit at TQ 43367925 (SMR 7030601; Pryor & Blockley 1978, 52, 84).

During the process of the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s the lands of ecclesiastical owners in Woolwich and Plumstead were confiscated by the Crown and sold to wealthy individuals who already had an interest in the area. The two most prominent recipients of this property were Sir Edward Boughton and Sir Martin Bowes.

Sir Edward Boughton inherited the manor of Southall from his father Nicholas, purchased the manor of Burwash from Thomas Grene, and acquired the manor of Plumstead in 1539. In the 1520s and 1530s he was living at Burwash Court, and acted as an agent in the district for Henry VIII and his ministers Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell (Howell 1897-8, 56; Vincent 1899, 44-5, 61). He lent money to the Crown in 1522 (LPH iii(2) p 1049 no2483).

Boughton passed his inheritance, of Southall manor on to his son Nicolas, who sold it to Richard Heywood in 1554. The Heywoods sold it to Williain Gilboume in 1573, and his descendants sold it to Richard Bowater senior and Richard Bowater junior in 1692. lt was the Bowaters who disputed the dependency of Southall on the manor of Eltham a few years later, but they lost the case (PRO EI78/6795; Drake 1886, 149-50; Lysons 1796, 560-1, 660; Norman 1900, 41-2). The Bowater family retained the estate until 1820 and gave their name to it.

Boughton's family retained the manor of Burwash until the mid-seventeenth century, when it was sold to Rowland Wilson. lt then descended to the Maxeys and the Pattisons in the eighteenth century (Lysons 1796, 539-40). A plan was made of this estate in 1800 (Vincent 1890, 545).

The abbot of St Augustine's leased his manor of Plumstead to Roger Pynchester for 25 years in 1528 (PRO SC6/Hen8/1755 mm23- 24d). After the monastery was dissolved, Boughton bought the manor from the Crown in January 1539, in part exchange for some lands near Canterbury (PRO E305/1/A18; LPH xiv(1) p255 no651(34) ). In the 1540s he was exacting the abbot's old quit-rents and other dues in Plumstead which were not included in the sale; this was brought to the attention of the Court of Augmentations which required hirn to pay the amount overcharged into the Court (PRO E321/23/40). Boughton's descendants sold the manor to John Mitchel of Richmond, who bequeathed it in his will in 1736 to Queen's College, Oxford, for the support of poor scholars (Howell 1897-8, 56-7; Vincent 1899, 45). Mitchel had a plan of the manor drawn up in about 1720 (Vincent 1890, 520-1).

Sir Martin Bowes bought an estate in the east of Plumstead from Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk in December 1535 (PRO C142/146/118; Vincent 1899, 47). In March 1538 he bought the property in Woolwich which was later to be called Tower Place and land in Woolwich and Plumstead from Thomas Smith. This was Smith's share of the estate of his great-grandfather Thomas Bulkeley and included the house bought from Floos in 1480 PRO C54/417 no23 . In Ap ril 1540 Bowes bought the tenement, garden and two acres of land of St Mary Overy and the estate of St Thomas of Acre. His son Thomas purchased the manor of Borstall in Plumstead, formerly the property of Westminster Abbey, in July 1546 (LPH xx(1) p671 no1335(5), PRO E318/5/148). In a quarrel over a water supply in the 1540s, Robert Cocks feared to take action under the common law against Bowes, he "beyng a man of greate possessyens & ryches & myche fearyd in the seyd countye of Kent" (PRO REQ2/27/14).

At the dissolution of the Hospital of St Thomas of Acre its lands in Plumstead were all leased out (PRO SC6/Hen8/2396 m8). Bowes bought the estate from the Crown in-April 1540 (PRO E318/5/146; LPH xv p287 no61l(25) ). His son Thomas sold it to the brothers George and John Barne in 1568, along with the Suffolk Place and Borstall lands. They partitioned all these lands in 1577 (Vincent 1899, 48-50). John's share of the estate descended to the Altham family and was eventually acquired by the Clothworkers' Company. The Company held land to the south of Plumstead Common in the eighteenth century (Vincent 1890, 52In; 1899, 51-5; Lysons 1795, 540; CPR 1575-8 p426 no2835).

The tenement with a garden and two acres of land of St Mary Overy which Bowes purchased in April 1540 has been identified with Tower Place, and therefore with the core of the Arsenal site (LPH xv p287 no61l(25) ). However, it was described as lying in the royal field between the Thames and the road from Woolwich to Greenwich, with land of the rector of Woolwich to its west (PRO C66/764 m25; E318/5/146; CPR 1547-8 358; 1557-8 333). These abutments indicate that the property was in the west part of the town, near the Dockyard, and not on the site of the Arsenal. lt was already leased to Boughton. Bowes sold it to Boughton in November 1541, and it then passed through a succession of owners before returning to Bowes in 1560. The occupier throughout this tirne was George Trappys, merchant, Boughton's son-in-Iaw (PRO C66/764 m25; LPH xvi p605 no13O8(42); CPR 1547-8 358; 1557-8 333; 1560-3 52). The house should perhaps be identified with the Brickhouse in Woolwich owned by George Barne in 1577 (Vincent 1899, 49).

Bowes and Boughton twice rationalised their holdings by exchanging pieces of land along the river front. In April 1538 Bowes sold Boughton a total of 15 acres in several fields in Plumstead (derived from Thomas Smith) (PRO C54/417 no38). Boughton sold Bowes a "hope or shore" called the Thames Bank in Plumstead parish with six acres of marsh land, two acres of upland ground adjoining Bowes' mansion and garden in Woolwich and abutting the footpaths leading to the mill and from Woolwich to Plumstead, and another half acre of upland between the mill pond and Burwage field (PRO C54/417 no33; C146/7223). All of these pieces of land must have derived from the Burwash estate, Boughton's only property in Plumstead at this time.

In November 1541 Bowes sold to Boughton 35 acres of land, nine acres of heath and eighteen acres of wood in Woolwich and Plumstead (parts of the manor of St Thomas of Acre), and the tenement and land of St Mary Overy. Boughton sold to Bowes 120 acres of drowned marsh, with the right of free warren, in Plumstead, and other lands, woods and rents in Plumstead, East Wickham and Woolwich (parts of the manor of Plumstead) (PRO C66/707 m4; C146/10868 and 10969. There are some differences between the licences to alienate on 29th October and the final concords in November). The net effect was to consolidate Boughton's holdings on the upper arable parts of Woolwich and Plumstead, and to concentrate Bowes' interests in the marshlands stretching east of Tower Place.

Sir Martin Bowes' holding of Tower Place therefore consisted of the house he bought from Thomas Smith in March 1538, and the adjoining two pieces of upland and Thames Bank marsh purchased from Boughton in the following month. These pieces totalled about twenty acres. The uplands were probably the sites of the Royal Laboratory and the Brass Foundry.

There was therefore a house on the site when Bowes bought it in 1538, though it is not certain if this can be identified with the St Mary Overy properties of the hermitage or the Hayeshawe. Bowes may have been responsible for the structure of the house as reconstructed by Hogg (SMR 70284 at TQ 4370 7928). The generally accepted date of construction is 1545 (PRO WORK43/1321). Bowes presumably required a residence of a standard consonant with his status, which was within easy travelling distance of the royal court at Greenwich Palace. lt is not known to have been called by the name of Tower Place until Bowes' death in 1566, and the turret at the south end therefore formed part of its structure by this time. In 1663 Jeremy Blackman paid tax on fifteen hearths in the house, the largest dwelling in the parish at the time (Vincent 1914, 53).

The land between the house and the riverside was apparently drained by a series of bricklined drains, such as those found in the 1880s excavations in the Percussion Cap Factory, part of the Paper Cartridge Factory (Vincent 1890, 310 and n).

By April 1538 Bowes had already enclosed part of the garden and had mill-houses and a mill pond to its east, presumably by the stream (PRO C146/7223). However, there are no mentions of the mill later than 1541 (PRO C66/707 m4).

Bowes laid a water supply into his new house before 1546, running through lead pipes from a conduit head at'the spring in Hawkyn's field on the east side of Collick Lane in Burwash manor. The supply was shared with a brewhouse in which Bowes had a half share, perhaps on the west side of Warren Lane (PRO REQ2/27/14). The conduit field and the supply were regarded as part of the property in the seventeenth century (GLRO E/MW/C/229). In 1750 the owner of the Burwash estate tried to challenge the Board of Ordnance's ownership of the conduit field (Hogg 1963, 395-6).

Bowes also enclosed six acres of the Tower Place grounds with paled fences to form a rabbit warren, and dug ponds and moats which he stocked with fish. This angered the inhabitants of Woolwich because the fences blocked a "common highway" at both ends, presumably the footpath from Woolwich to Plumstead mentioned in 1538. They conspired to destroy the fences and Bowes' servants threatened to drive them off with bows and arrows if they came in the day-time. A group of them, including some servants of Boughton, therefore came by night, cut down the fence and took rabbits and fish (PRO STAC2/32/103).

Bowes seems to have won the day, the road to Plumstead henceforward looping around his warren to the south. Vincent suggested that the road formerly ran across the Arsenal site, continuing the line of Woolwich High Street, and taking a more northerly route through Plumstead than at present (1890, 492-3). This road appeared clearty on Dury and Herbert's Topographical Map of the county of Kent, running through Plumstead parish along the south edge of the marshes. Near the Arsenal it had fallen out of use and was represented by a hedge line.

Bowes' warren survived to give its name to the forerunner of the Arsenal. lt was mentioned as part of the property in 1577 (Vincent 1899, 49), 1654 (GLRO E/MW/C/224), 1666 (E/MW/C/188), and 1676 (E/MW/C/229). In 1688-90 Alice Wells sold coneys and rabbits from 30 acres called the Warren in Woolwich, and was sued by the rector for the tithes (Vincent 1890, 316).

By the time of Bowes' death in 1566 areas of marshland deriving from the estate of St Thomas of Acre were attached to the property. There were also orchards and fifteen tenements or cottages. Bowes still owned a half share in the brewhouse, with a wharf attached (PRO C142/146/118). There was a wharf at Tower Place itself by 1577. Thomas Bowes sold the estate to John Peers in 1568, and soon afterwards it passed to the brothers George and John Barne (Drake 1886, 156 n19). Thomas Bowes quitclaimed it to them in 1573 (GLRO E/MW/C/375). When the brothers partitioned their lands in 1577, Tower Place was part of George's share (Vincent 1899, 47). He passed it on to his son William and grandson Sir Williain. Sir William leased it to his brother Robert and sold it to Edward Rolt in 1638, but this was as a form of trust, Sir Williarn continuing to live there.

During the Civil War a force of Parliamentarian volunteers under the command of Captain Willoughby came to Woolwich in August 1642 to seize guns stored in the Dockyard, to prevent them being shipped to Newcastle for use in King Charles' cause. No one opposed them except Sir Williain Barne, who remonstrated with them. Willoughby therefore arrested him and had his house searched. When Barne was asked if he had concealed any money or plate, he replied "Darn him and sink him, no". Nevertheless, when the soldiers dug underneath the wooden floor of the stable (at the west end of the wharf adjacent to Warren Lane?), they found not only a leather trunk full of plate worth £1000, but on digging deeper, another trunk containing priests' robes, Catholic books and rosaries. All of this they seized and brought with Bame to the Tower (A true and perfect relation ... ).

Edward Rolt the younger sold Tower Place and the remainder of Robert Barne's lease to John Robinson in August 1654, who shortly sold them on to William Ryder, who sold them in February 1655 to Jeremy Blackman. He left the property to his son Jeremy in his will in 1656. The younger Blackman conveyed it to John Bennet to hold in trust in 1666, and in 1669 sold it to William Pritchard. Pritchard sold it to the Crown for use as an ordnance store in 1671, the sale being completed in 1676 (see below) (GLRO E/MW/C/183, 184, 186, 188, 224, 225, 229).

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century the grounds of the mansion house contained a number of other buildings and dwellings. In 1577 there were a house and barn (perhaps to be identified with the firework barn shown on Borgard's map in 1701), and a tenement with five acres of land on the Shore or Hope. By 1638 there were a house called the Falcon, a tenement and yard by the south gate, and two other tenements. By 1676 there was a tenement in the middle of the warren (probably on the site of the Royal Laboratory), and the tenement by the south gate was still there. To the east of it stretched a house , garden and orchard; two houses and gardens together, and a further house and garden.

Elsewhere there were another house and garden, and a house and orchard. These houses were probably those labelled as Pritton's house, Kettel house, Hawthorn Tree house, Packman's house and other unnamed houses on Borgard's map of 1701.

A sugar house or factory was built in the grounds in about 1655 (GLRO E/MW/C/186). lt probably used the sugar cones (moulds to pour sugar into) manufactured at the pottery kilns in Woolwich town (Prior and Blockley 1978, 65). lt still existed in 1666 and 1676 (GLRO E/MW/C/188 and 229). lt is almost certainly to be identified with the rectangular bullding with the irregulär quadrangle of covered sheds to its south shown on Borgard's plan as the Old Carriage Yard. A similar formation appears on Rocque's map of 1746 at Butcher Row, Ratcliffe, marked as Sugar House Yard. There was a late sixteenth-century sugar house here, part of which was excavated in 1975 (Schwab and Nurse 1977, 229, 232).

In 1666 Tower Place also included a rope walk or manufactory, and sand-pits in the warren. In 1676 there were tilehouses and a dove-house, which appears on Borgard's map as the small hexagonal powder house. Most of the buildings in the Warren in 1701 therefore pre-dated its sale to the Crown in 1671. The property was not only a substantial residence but included an element of light industry on the waterfront.

In 1666 the property included the old orchard surrounded by the moat (GLRO E/MW/C/188). This was the triangular moated orchard shown on Borgard's plan, which therefore pre-dated Prince Rupert's fortifications in 1667 (see below) (GLRO E/MW/C/202 and 229).

There were difficulties in defending the river embankments of Woolwich, Plumstead and Erith against the high tides throughout the sixteenth century. Flooding was recorded at Erith in 1516 (LPH ii(2) p1406 no4606). The reclaimed marshes of Plumstead behind the river banks were overflowed by the Thames in 1527 (Drake 1886, 160; Vincent 1899, 59). The landward bulge of the river wall appearing on maps just south of Margaretness (labelled the Maggot on some plans), probably indicated the location of one of the breaches (BL Map Library, Crace Collection XVIII 22; PRO MPHH72/3; WORK43/1316). In 1529 there were new breaches at Lesnes (Vincent 1899, 56). The Annada defences map of 1588 shows a Great Breach at Crossness and a Little Breach at Tripcock.

Sir Edward Boughton complained to Thomas Cromwell in 1529 that his "substance" was drowned (LPH iv(3) p2730 no6117). lt was necessary to take action against the rising tides. In 1530 Henry VIII paid £7 to a French friar who undertook to close the breach at Woolwich (LPH v 750). Assiduous efforts were made in the 1530s to regain the lost ground, Boughton acting as the Crown's agent in this work, frequently running into difficulties over supplies of wages and victuals to the labourers (LPH iv(3) p3042 no6748; PRO E321/27/19; E321/34/1; STAC2/18/2; Vincent 1899, 57-63). In 1531 an act of Parliainent laid down the terms for collecting local taxes to pay for regaining Plumstead marsh with a new cross-wall from the Thames to the uplands near Woolwich (Dugdale 1772, 62-3).

These endeavours were far from universally successful. Grants of land in Plumstead in the 1530s and 1540s often noted the marsh lands as inundated by the Thames (LPH xv p287 no61l(25); PRO C146/10969; E318/5/146; SC6/Hen8/2396 m8). Most of the land previously inned had been lost to the river by 1570 (Bowler 1968, 34, 66-7).

Further reclarnation work was carried under acts of Parliament passed in 1563, 1566, 1572, 1581 and 1607. There were gains and losses throughout this period (Dugdale 1772, 63-5; Lysons 1796, 537, 558 n2). In 1568 Thomas Bowes sold the Barne brothers both reclaimed "new marsh", and still-flooded "green marsh" in Plumstead. Amongst the lands the brothers partitioned in 1577 were 19 acres recently 'gotten and won" out of the Thames (Vincent 1899, 48, 49). The Thames overflowed 290 acres of land in Plumstead in 1585 (PRO El78/3972). Much of the land was regained by 1591 (CAD vi pp545-6 noC7953; PRO El78/840).

The sixteenth-century floods obliterated much of the earlier reclamation works. The present positions of the river walls were mostly established in the early seventeenth century (Bowler 1968, 2). Submerged land was still being reclaimed at Plumstead in about 1623. In 1803 the marshes to the east of the convict Wharf in front of the river walt were still overflowed at the Spring tides ( PRO MPHH180).

In the 1530s the method of recovering the flooded marshes was to construct a timber groyne across the breach, then cap it with an earthen wall (Vincent 1899, 58, 60, 61). In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the method was to use a combination of earth and reeds taken from the reed ground in front of the walls to construct the river embankment (Dugdale 1772, 64). In 1622 on the opposite bank of the river in North Woolwich, John and Lady Maynard were using a great deal of timber in the construction of their banks, including stakes and tarred boards (BL Cotton Charter xxvii(2) ff 19, 20).

In drawings made in 1778 for proposed boring houses to be powered by tide mills (never built), the marsh immediately to the east of the triangular fort was seven feet below high water mark. In front of the river wall, gravel was at a depth of 32 feet below high water mark (PRO MPHH703). A cross-section of the river bank further to the east of the Warren drawn in 1787 shows the level of the top of the bank as one and a half feet above high water mark at Spring tides. The total width of the bank was 43 feet, with six-foot ditches to the front and rear. The level of the marsh behind was six feet lower than that of the reed ground in front, and 11 feet lower than high water mark (PRO MPHH72/2). In the middle of these later river banks was an impervious barrier of puddled clay three feet wide, rising from the low water mark to the top (Jackson 1931, 46).

When William Pritchard sold Tower Place to the Crown, the king's responsibility for maintaining the river walls was specified (GLRO E/MW/C/229). In 1694 Pritchard quitclaimed any residual rights this gave him over the land (GLRO E/MW/C/230; abstract at PRO W055/1783). The owners of land in the marshes continued to pay wall-scot in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (PRO MPHH72/1; Grover 1870, 239).

From 1531 onwards the maintenance of the river walls was overseen by a permanent Commission of Sewers which covered the river bank from Lombard's Wall in Charlton to Gravesend Bridge (the Dartford Level Commission). The Commission attempted to increase the protection of the saltings in front of the river walls by planting reeds on the mud banks outside the Great Breach in Erith marshes in 1591, and in the seventeenth century by prohibiting both the cutting of reeds on the saltings until after the spring storms had passed, and the digging of earth and gravel by men operating from boats (Jackson 1931, 48; Bowler 1968, 48-9). During the life of the Arsenal, the Commissioners sometimes asked the Board of Ordnance for access to attend to the sluices and river walls, as in 1819 and 1838 (Hogg 1963, 607-8, 658). The responsibility for maintenance was transferred locally to the Plumstead Board of Works in 1877 (Jackson 1931, 44-8).

The expansion of the town in the post-medieval period was intimately connected with the establishment and growth of government facilities there. This began with the foundation of the Dockyard in 1513 to build the great royal ship Henri Grace a Dieu. The Dockyard was in operation in 1513 and 1517; in the latter year ships were ballasted at Woolwich, probably with the gravel quarried there (LPH ii(2) p 1 10 1 no3459, p 1407 no4606, p 1462). In 1553 the Henri Grace a Dieu or Great Harry was burned at its birthplace, as a result of negligence (Machyn 1848, 43).

The Dockyard (SMR 223548 and 70213) grew from a nucleus at its east end (TQ 4295 7925) to occupy much of the waterfront in the West part of the parish. Henry VIII was buying land and wharves at Woolwich, in 1518 (LPH ii(2) p1479; CAD iii p127 noA4981). He first rented, then in 1546 purchased, two docks belonging to Edward Boughton (PRO SC 1 1/37 1). Excavation has suggested that the Tudor waterfront may have lain as much as 200 feet south of the present line (Jones 1976, 9). A double dock was built in the early years of the seventeenth century and in 1625 new wharves extended the river frontage to the north and a building slip at the east end of the yard was infilled. The yard was extended westward in 1639, 1658 and 1663 by successive intakes of land from the manor of Southall (VCH Kent ii 345-6, 359; Courtney 1974, 4-11). Shipbuilding structures were excavated here in 1972- 3 (SMR 70293) and a domestic range in 1973-4. This was built c1650 and demolished about a century later (Jones 1976, 1).

Queen Elizabeth 1 visited Woolwich in July 1559 on the occasion of the launch of her ship the Elizabeth Jonas from the Dockyard. She was treated to a banquet and a display of shooting of cannons and fireworks (Machyn 1848, 203). By this time the town was growing beyond its medieval core along the river bank. Sir Martin Bowes left a legacy to build almshouses for five poor widows at the east end of town in Warren Lane, and entrusted them to the care of the Goldsmiths' Company (Lysons 1796, 563; Hogg 1963, 138). In the early seventeenth century a market house was founded nearby, at the northwest end of the Ropeyard (Hogg 1963, 139).

A sketch plan of the Gun Wharf in 1671 shows continuous rows of houses along the south side of the High Street west of the Ropeyard and on the southem part of the west side of Bell Water Gate, more sporadic housing on the north side of the High Street, and the town cage and stocks in a triangular space at the junction of these two streets (PRO SP29/296 no150). Traces of backyards of seventeenth-century houses were found in the excavations of the 1980s between Warren Lane and Bell Water Gate (Smith 1988, 13-15; SMR 70993 at TQ 435 793). The population of the town was growing rapidly to meet the demand for a workforce and by the Hearth Tax of 1664 stood at c.2,500 (Coleman 1953, 141).

Pottery production continued at kilns near the waterfront between Bell Water gate and Surgeon Street (SMR 70306 at TQ 43367925) until about 1680. In its last twenty years one kiln produced an experimental stoneware, perhaps for the first time in England. This included Bellarmine jugs for sale to public houses in the locality and in London. Another made industrial wares, including sugar-cones used as moulds in the manufacture of sugar; perhaps these were used in the sugar-house at Tower Place. Red and white earthenwares were also produced for public houses and domestic use (Prior and Blockley 1978, 30-43, 63, 84). Clay settling pits were found here and on the next site to the west in 1977. Evidence for pottery production was also found near Warren Lane in 1986 (Smith 1988, 10, 15; SMR 70994).

A glass factory was started at Woolwich in 1639 by Sir Robert Mansell and it continued working into the 1650s (Prior and Blockley 1978, 38 n21). This was in Glass Yard which featured in the Hearth Tax lists of 1684 as Glasshouse Yard (Vincent 1914, 54). Waste from glass manufacture was found at Bell Water Gate in 1984 (Smith 1988, 14).

There was a tile kiln operating in the Dockyard after 1550, but before 1640 (Jones 1976, 2). In 1671 brick and tile manufacturers were active in Woolwich and loading their lighters at the Gun Wharf. This was causing dainage to the surface of the wharf and sherds of tile were being dropped in front of it, reducing the depth of water available (PRO SP29/296 no149).

A sixteenth-century seal for sealing bales was found on the beach before the Dockyard at TQ 430 793 (SMR 110019).

A Ropeyard was built at Woolwich to supply royal ships in 1573-6 by Thomas Allen, the Queen's Purveyor (CSPD 1547-80 455; Drake 1886, 155). The buildings of the Ropeyard were close to the south-west side of Tower Place and aligned from north-west to southeast. They abutted the boundary of Southall manor to the south-west. The rope-making buildings were 600 feet long, consisting of one double and one single ropewalk with ancillary buildings. There was also a storehouse on the wharf side, on the site of the Gun Wharf (see below) (Vincent 1890, 301-2). The Ropeyard supplied cables to Deptford and other royal naval yards. Production initially only lasted a few years, but resumed again in 1610 as a goverrument operation. The Ropeyard was enlarged in 1614 (VCH Kent ii 342-3).

In 1633 the premises were leased by the navy to the East India Company for three years. Part of the terms of the lease required the Company to build a brick wall around the Ropeyard. The buildings were in a dilapidated state at the time (CSPD 1633-4 69, 95, 101, 108). The Company built the wall in 1634, but returned the Ropeyard to the Crown in 1635 (Vincent 1890, 304). In 1665 alterations to the buildings involved raising the height of one of the sheds and building a gallery for hoisting goods from the street (CSPD 1664-5 345, 382)

The storage of royal guns and ammunition may have begun at the same time as the Dockyard was established (Hogg 1963, xiii). Ordnance stores were moved from Erith and Hampton Water to Deptford Strand in 1518 (LPH ii(2) p1406 no4606). However, there is no evidence for storage at Woolwich until 1586 when the storehouses were ordered to be repaired. They comprised a storehouse, a workhouse (which was to be thatched), a crane and wharves, enclosed with a paled fence. Weapons and armour are known to have been kept here in 1587, 1599, 1603 and 1608 (CSPD 1581-90 303, 391; Drake 1886, 156; Vincent 1890, 310-11; Grover 1870, 231). Armour and ordnance stores were being kept at Woolwich in 1649, 1661 and 1667 (CSPD 1666-7 565; BL Additional MS 6176 f24). Guns were increasingly brought to Woolwich for proof, particularly after it ceased at the Old Artillery Garden at Spitalfields in 1658 (Hogg 1963, 171).

These buildings were on the Gun Wharf, although 75 pieces of ordnance were stored in the Dockyard in 1642 (A true and perfect relation...). The Wharf stretched from the High Street to the Thames between Toddy Tree Water Gate to the east and Bell Water Gate to the west. A sketch plan amongst the State Papers shows it in 1671 (PRO SP29/296 no150; Elliston-Erwood 1949, 25-8).

The remains of a large ship were found buried in the river mud in this area in 1911 during the construction of the Power Station (SMR 70305 at TQ 4342 7930). It was aligned northsouth and bedded onto the gravel, implying it had lain in a dock (Vincent 1913, 74-6). The subject of much speculation, this has been tentatively identified as the Sovereign, built in 1488, rebuilt in 1509, and abandoned in dock in 1621. Excavations in 1983 determined that the remainder of the ship had been destroyed when the turbine house was rebuilt in 1956 (Smith 1988, 14). The presence of a ship in a dock on this site suggests that sixteenth-century shipbuilding preceded the Gun Wharf on this site.

In 1614 there were repairs made to the wharf and storehouse (Elliston-Erwood 1949, 26), a new brick storehouse was built in 1616 and a new crane in 1646 (Hogg 1963, 164, 167). The map of 1671 shows a crane in the centre of the wharf-side and another at the northwest corner, which was used for loading an d unloading by the workers of the Ropeyard. A storehouse for saltpetre was mentioned in 1662. In 1664 a new one-storey storehouse was built and a storehouse for ships' gun-carriages was floored (Grover 1870, 233). In 1665 a length of 38 feet of the wharf was repaired (CSPD 1664-5 345, 382, 490). In 1671 it was darnaged by the weight of the guns kept upon it and needed repair again (PRO SP29/296 no 149).

In 1668 guns, carriages and stores were transferred from Deptford to Woolwich, and it was -ordered that all new ordnance and carriages were to be laid down there in the future (Grover 1870, 233). This move appears to have been a preparation for the transfer of activities from the Gun Wharf to Tower Place in 1671.

In this year the Gun Wharf was granted to Williain Pritchard in part payment for Tower Place. At this time it already had two tenements built on its High Street frontage (PRO SP29/296 no150; GLRO E/MW/C/200 and 229).

In 1588 a temporary gun battery was built in Woolwich as part of the defences of the Thames against the Spanish Armada (SMR 71010). lt has been suggested that this was on Market Hill, behind the Gun Wharf (Jackson 1904-5, 42). However, the map of these defences appears to show a site further to the east, on the wharf in front of Tower Place.

In 1667 the threat of a Dutch attack up the Thames again necessitated the fortification of the river approaches. In June of this year Charles II instructed Prince Rupert to make a battery at Woolwich and he was provided with funds there (CSPD 1667 129; BL Additional MS 5752 f364). The prince built this fort at the east end of the Tower Place property (GLRO E/MW/C/229). To serve the purpose he adapted the old orchard surrounded by the moat. The orchard was mentioned in deeds of 1676 and 1700, with a small piece of land taken out of Doghouse Marshes to its east, to extend the east bank and ditch in a straight line to the Thames. This presumably represents Rupert's alterations to an originally irregulär plan (E/MW/C/202 and 229). Jeremiah Blackman was subsequently compensated for damage caused by the work to his meadows, dovehouse, warren, orchards and fisheries (Hogg 1963, 183-4). Although the resulting triangular shape resembled the bastions of the period, it probably resulted ultimately from a space left between successive medieval river walls. In the evidence from the borehole data, it corresponds broadly to the area in which clay directly overlay gravel, with no intervening peat layer (see Fig 3.6).It therefore probably represented an area of early reclamation and may have corresponded to the Thaines Bank bought by Bowes from Boughton in 1538 (see above). Pritchard was later planning to make a wet dock immediately to the east, but this never came to fruition.

The battery was completed in the same month, and reportedly supported 60 guns. lt appears on Borgard's map of 1701 as Prince Rupert's Walk, which shows only 40 embrasures however. Timber loaned by the Navy Commissioners was used in the work, and this had to be returned in October, implying that the gun platforms were then dismantled. Soldiers were stationed there during this period (CSPD 1667 197, 202, 215, 422, 510).

The Crown purchased Tower Place from William Pritchard in May 1671 for £2,957, the grant of the gunwharf being included in the price (GLRO E/MW/C/200). The land sold excluded the marshlands to the east of the fort, but the property now totalled 32 acres, suggesting that some land had been taken in from the St Thomas of Acre or Plumstead manor marsh lands. lt took some time for the sale to be completed and the property was not legally paid for and conveyed until 25th March 1677. The final payment also included interest and rent to cover the delay (GLRO E/MW/C/229).

The residue of the Tower Place property and the Gun Wharf were sold by William Pritchard in 1700, and acquired by Sir William Langhorn of Charlton in 1707 (GLRO E/MW/C/202, 203, 214, 215/1, 215/2, 216). This included the marsh lands immediately to the east of the Warren boundary, comprising from south to north Ten Acres, Two acres, and Doghouse marshes, a patch of eight acres recently divided in two by a ditch. The divisions between these fields can be seen on the maps of 1701 and later in the eighteenth century. Langhorn passed his estate on to his nephew Sir John Conyers (Vincent 1890, 521), and from him it descended to Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson (PRO MPHH72/3). Some of Wilson's land was purchased by the Board of Ordnance and taken into the Warren site in 1777 (see below).

Guns were proved at the Warren for some time before the Crown purchased the property, especially after proof ceased at the Old Artillery Garden in Spitalfields in 1658. Butts were built for the purpose in 1651 and Ordnance was being proved there shortly after the purchase in 1672. Further butts were built in 1671, 1675-6, 1680, 1681, 1684, 1687, 1688 and 1704. There was a frequent need to repair the butts or to erect temporary ones for particular experimental firings. A new proofing range, 160 feet long, was made in 1680 (Grover 1870, 233-5; Hogg 1963, 137, 171, 177, 194, 199, 201, 204, 219, 220, 234).

With the Crown purchase, royal guns, their carriages and ammunition began to be stored at the Warren. In 1680 repairs were done to the sheds along the proof-house and the sheds for carriages. In 1682 cannon and demi-cannon shot were brought from the Tower Wharf to store at the Warren. The Shot Yard was established to the north of the mansion house shortly afterwards. The shot was kept in pyrarnidal stacks, the contents of which were detailed in the key of Borgard's plan of 1701. In 1683 the carriage shed was reconstructed 100 feet long and 18 feet wide with a tiled roof. Another new storehouse was built alongside it. This may have been the east side of the Old Carriage Yard quadrangle, probably the former sugar-house. In 1683 redundant gun-carriages were being broken up here to recycle their ironwork (Grover 1870, 233-4; Hogg 1963, 203, 212, 214; Barker 1985, 644). In 1689 a new carriage storehouse was built 141 feet long, 20 feet wide and 1 1 feet high. In 1694 the Carriage Yard was enclosed (Hogg 1963, 221; Barker 1985, 645). In 1697-8 a New Carriage Yard was established in the interior of Prince Rupert's fortification with brickwork sheds and a bridge over the moat for access (Hogg 1963, 227, Barker 1985, 647).

By 1700 the Warren was the largest gun repository in the country, with long lines of guns laid out in the open (Hogg 1963, 233).

The sixteenth-century mansion house of Tower Place was adapted for the use of the Ordnance officers in 1682-3. lt was divided into apartments for the Storekeeper, the Master Gunner of England and the Lieutenant of the Ordnance. The last two officers had lost their residences in London by the sale of the Old Artillery Garden in Spitalfields and the Tower liberty of the Minories. There was also a dining room for the officers of the Ordnance and accommodation was made for twelve gunners from the three rooms of the old smiths' shops to the north of the house (Drake 1886, 156; Hogg 1963, 206). The foundations of these smiths' shops were cleared away in 1716 (Hogg 1963, 243).

There was much refining of saltpetre at the Warren in the 1670s. The store for saltpetre appears to have been at the rear of the mansion house towards Warren Lane. This was repaired in 1680-2. In 1683 the refining house was converted into a powder house (Grover 1870, 233; Hogg 1963, 197, 203, 207, 211; Barker 1985, 643).

Wharves and Groundworks

Following the Crown purchase in 1671 a new wharf was built on the river wall to the west of Prince Rupert's Walk 265 feet long and 80 feet wide, advancing the river-front to the north of the mansion house. This was made up with layers of marsh-clay, earth and gravel. Three cranes and saw-pits were placed on it (Hogg 1963, 194). Further work was done on this wharf and the river wall sluices in 1675-6. Responsibility for maintaining the wharf was passed back to William Pritchard in 1682. In 1694 the wharf was repaired and an additional length of 40 feet was built (Barker 1985, 645). The cranes were entirely rebuilt in 1707 (Barker 1985, 649).

The ground was raised and levelled on the site of the Laboratory in 1695, using 291 floors of gravel (Grover 1870, 233; Hogg 1963, 224).

In 1704 a breach at one end of Prince Rupert's Walk was blocked, using 34 floors of earth (Hogg 1963, 234). The following year a wharf was formed in front of the Walk and New Carriage Yard by tipping clay into the outer ditch and face of the river wall and levelling up the surface with rammed earth (Hogg 1963, 235; Barker 1985, 649). A new wharf was made at Rupert's Walk in 1712 with 305 loads of gravel and 111 tons of clay. In 1714 the level of this wharf and the adjacent ground to the rear was raised with 143 floors of earth (Hogg 1963, 236-7).

The Tilt-yard Barn was removed from Greenwich Palace and re-erected at Tower Place in 1696 (Grover 1870, 232). lt is visible in its original position on the Wyngaerde view of the Palace. At Woolwich it stood by the south gate, adjacent to the Plumstead road. lt is not known what function it served, but it seems to have been a forerunner of the Brass Foundry in some respect.

The removal of the manufacture of ammunition and fireworks from Greenwich to Woolwich was discussed in 1694 (Vincent 1890, 319- 20). The first buildings of the Laboratory were constructed in the Warren in 1696-7, and production of war materials then commenced on the site for the first time (Hogg 1963, 222). Six buildings were grouped on the east and west sides of a rectangular courtyard with a fountain in the centre. They included mealing, driving and iron houses, proof houses, a woodshed and coal houses, watch towers, labourers' workshops and three kitchens (Hogg 1963, 224-, Barker 1985, 646). The two central pavilions still survive (SMR 2232 4309), each with two storeys, but the north and south wings of both sides were demolished in the twentieth century.

A new storehouse for fireworks was built at the Warren in 1672-3 70 feet long and 20 feet broad (Hogg 1963, 196). lt appeared on Borgard's map as the Firework Bam at the south end of the site adjacent to the Plumstead Road. Despite several repairs it is supposed to have collapsed shortly after 1713 (Hogg 1963, 240). However, it appears on several subsequent plans and was converted into an infirmary in 1741. In 1888 foundations were found in construction work which probably related to the Firework Barn. They were eight feet below the surface and consisted of brick walls three feet high to support a wooden superstructure. They were reported to have been traced for 80 feet east-west and 60 feet north-south, which appears too large, but no later building was built on the site (Vincent 1890, 335n).

A perimeter wall was built in brick around the south and west sides of the Warren in 1702. On the east side it was enclosed with stockades and pales (Hogg 1963, 233-4).

The Tower Place dovecote appeared on Borgard ' s plan as a powder house. In 1714 it was converted into a watch-house with a chimney. lt was demolished in 1725 (Hogg 1963, 243, 275, 327).

There was a forge for iron cannon working at the Warren before the construction of the Brass Foundry in 1716-7. lt was demolished in 1722 (Jackson and Beer 1973, 35 and n2)

Prince Rupert's fortification was put back into commission in 1688. A new platforrn was laid 800 feet along the whole length of Prince Rupert's Walk for 44 guns (Hogg 1963, 217, 220; Barker 1985, 645). In October of that year James 11 wrote to his daughter the Princess of Orange that he had inspected batteries that he had ordered to be made below Woolwich for the defence of the river (BL Additional MS 4163 f4d).

New guns were mounted on the battery in 1696. In 1714 they became redundant when the level of the river-front was raised and they were removed. Some time between the maps of c1720 and 1725 two projecting practice batteries were added to the front of Prince Rupert's Walk by General Borgard. The individual plans for these are in the British Library and they can be clearly seen on Barker's plan of the Warren in 1749. Their aim was directed at a small butt built on a strip of reed ground outside the river wall to the east, which belonged to the king (Hogg 1963, 222, 241-2; BL Map Library KTOP XVII 24.2; PRO MP1296/3; MPH236).

By the beginning of the eighteenth century the population of Woolwich town and the area of housing were expanding to meet the demands for labour in the royal establishments of the Dockyard, the Ropeyard and the Warren. Periods of high employment, including the impressment of civilian labour, alternated with depressions depending on the state of peace or war (Coleman 1953, 141- 4).

The Ropeyard was extended in 1688 to a total length of 1061 feet (Vincent 1890, 307). The Dockyard facilities were also expanding in this period. In 1701 the single dock was enlarged so that it could take first-rate ships. In 1705 and 1710 ground was bought from the Bowaters on the south side of the yard, to extend it up to the Greenwich road (VCH Kent ii 366).

The total number of houses on Southall manor land in 1696 was 159 (PRO El78/6795), but this did not include all of the town. By this time houses had also infilled the wharf plots between the High Street and the river. This included the Gun Wharf, where in the years following the grant of 1671 Pritchard built a crescent of new tenements, lining the east, south and west sides of a new market place. The market was moved there and a tavern called the Nag's Head was built. The old storehouse was converted into a foundry for guns (GLRO E/MW/C/202 and 204/1). This was a private foundry which presumably sent its products to the government establishment at the Warren for proof.

In 1974 the foundations of late seventeenth-century houses fronting onto Surgeon Street were excavated. These houses were partly of brick and partly of timber, each with a small ground-floor room. They were cheap designs built for the lower classes. The two-roomed cellar of the Crown and Anchor fronting the High Street was also excavated. The rear room was used as a brewhouse (SMR 70400 at TQ 4336 7925; Pandrich 1976, 18-20).

The ground was levelled in the Warren in advance of elements of the building campaign of 1716-20, at the mansion house and on the sites of the Barracks and the Great Pile of Buildings. This involved both raising and reducing areas of ground. In November 1718 a total of 6302 cubic yards of soil was removed. The ground in front of the south gate was lowered. At the mansion house the front courtyard and the Shot Yard were levelled, and the floors inside the house were sunk. This probably had the effect of removing the Tudor and Stuart floor levels. On the completion of the barrack houses, cellars, drains and wells were dug at their rear. At the Foundry and in the courtyards of the Great Pile the ground level was raised and paved after the completion of the buildings (Hogg 1963, 262-3, 267; Barker 1985, 651, 655). New Carriage Yard was also paved, and the level of the wharf raised and paved in 1716 and 1718 (Hogg 1963, 268; Barker 1985, 661-2).

The stream running through the site had been canalised by about 1720, with a feeder pond to the triangular moat. This may have originally been the sixteenth-century mill-pond. lt had disappeared by 1749. Immediately to the east of the Warren boundary there was in 1725 a quariy opening off Plumstead Road opposite the road to Burwash Court. This probably accounts for the lumpy shapes shown in this area by Rocque's map of 1746. Further to the east, Wither's farm was on the site of the Middle Gate House. The boundary between the marshland and the "upland", and the original footpath to Plumstead which Martin Bowes had blocked, was marked by an east-west hedge-Iine (PRO MPH236).

In 1744-5 the ground at the rear of the wharf was raised and a causeway was made (Hogg 1963, 290). In 1760 ground was levelled in the south-east part of the Warren and at Prince Rupert's Walk (Hogg 1963, 418-9). At this time gravel was being brought onto the site from Woolwich Common and Shooter's Hill to repair roads and paths (Hogg 1963, 424). More levelling and the laying of lead pipes in trenches followed in 1767 (Hogg 1963, 445).

Despite the extent of these works by the beginning of the nineteenth century the ground level of the Warren was still relatively unaltered. An open stream, moats and swamps still occupied much of the site. The buildings were mostly concentrated on the firmer ground at the western end (Hogg 1963, 498).

The main development at the beginning of this period was the great campaign of building in 1716-1720 with which the naine of John Vanbrugh has been associated. This produced the Brass Foundry, the Great Pile of Buildings (Dial Square etc), the rebuilding of the mansion house and the construction of the barracks, all conceived as one plan (BL Map Library KTOP XVII 25d-g; Hogg 1963, 252).

The decision to build the Brass Foundry was taken in June 1716, spurred on by a recent disastrous accident at the Moorgate foundry (Grover 1870, 238). lt was designed to provide a complete artillery service for the Navy and army (Vincent 1890, 323). lt was built during 1716 and 1717. These works necessitated the demolition of the Greenwich Barn in 1716, and the houses and orchards to its east. The design of the Foundry was once attributed to Vanbrugh, but is now thought to be the work of the Board of Ordnance. lt was built entirely of wood, frained in a brick shell, very similar in form to the aisled ba.rn it had replaced. lt had two furnaces, a large and a small (Hogg 1963, 250, 256-8; Barker 1985, 650-3; RCHME 1994, i and ii). The south gate of the Warren was consequently resited further to the east in 1720. A curved section of boundary wall was built between the gate and the south door of the Foundry. Iron gates were hung between a pair of piers and two labourers' houses were built nearby (PRO MP1296/3, MPH236; Hogg 1963, 264-6, 269; Barker 1985, 660-1).

The Foundry was for a long time managed by Andrew Schalch of the Douai factory, who was appointed Master Founder in 1718. He used a vertical boring machine housed in the tower at the north end of the foundry, probably driven by a horse gin. By the 1750s the Foundry was badly maintained and out of date. During the Seven Years' War one of the furnaces set fire to the building (Jackson and Beer 1973, 35-7, 41 n16).

The Great Pile was built in 1717-20. Previously attributed to Vanbrugh it is now thought to have been designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. lt comprised single-storey buildings surrounding two courtyards, Artificers' Court to the south and Basin or Fountain Court to the north, with a gateway towards the Thames. lt was separaten from the Laboratory Square by a tree-Iined avenue, leading directly from the north entrance of the Foundry. The Sea Service Storehouse lay at the north end; the Land Service Storehouse lay between the two courtyards. Basin Court contained the armourers' shops and the Master Founder's house. Artificers Court contained the smithy and carpenters' shops in the west wing, and the turning, washing and engraving houses for gun-making in the south range, including the finishing lathe. A sundial was placed over its south entrance in 1764, and it becaine known as Dial Square. The southern range of the courtyard still survives; the east and west wings were demolished in 1969 (Hogg 1963, 253, 407; Barker 1985, 654-6; RCHME 1994, i).

The Old Barracks (later 1-4 Dial square) were built in 1719 to house officers and men of the Artillery Regiment. They appear to have been rebuilt in the nineteenth century (Hogg 1963, 254; Barker 1985, 659-60; RCHME 1994, i).

In 1718-22 the Mansion House was remodelled. lt was reduced to its foundations and provided with a new facade. The design was once attributed to Vanbrugh but is now also thought to be the work of Hawksmoor. The frontage was shorter than on the original Tudor house, so that the turret became detached to the south. The interior was completely altered. The room to the right of the entrance became the Board Room for Ordnance officers and had a bow window looking north. The room to the left of the entrance was the original Academy which was established in 1720. The Storekeeper occupied rooms at the rear (Hogg 1963, 253-4; Barker 1985, 657-9, 663-5; RCHME 1994, i).

When the present Royal Military Academy was formed in 1741, extensive alterations were made to the rear of the mansion house to provide residences for the first and second masters of the Academy on the site of the sixteenth-century brew-house, each with its own garden. A new house was also provided for the Storekeeper. Some eighteenth-century rear wings of the building were demolished in the twentieth century (Hogg 1963, 286; Barker 1985, 668-9; RCHME 1994, i).

The detached turret is visible in Buck's view of Woolwich in 1739. Shortly afterwards it was in the first master's garden. Its surviving junction with the stub of the old house wall was cut away in 1742. lt housed the drawing master and model maker of the Academy on its fourth and fifth floors. The turret was demolished in 1786 (Hogg 1963, 286-8, 437, 446, 480).

The construction of the new carriage storehouse was undertaken in 1728-9 to replace the Old and New Carriage Yards, where the gun carriages had been laid in the open. The New Carriage Yard in Prince Rupert's fort became the Storekeeper's Orchard-, the Old Carriage Yard (probably the former sugar house) had disappeared completely by 1749. Built parallel to the Great Pile and to its east, the new construction around an open square entailed the removal of Packman's house, possibly the original sixteenth- century mill. lt was equipped with travelling cranes and included a powder magazine (PRO MPH236, MPI296/3; Hogg 1963, 283-4; Barker 1985, 666).

Additions were made to New Carriage Square in 1775-8. Smiths' and carpenters' shops were placed along its west side and the Repository for patterns and models along its east side. The latter burned down in 1802, but it is not clear how much damage there was to the rest of the complex (Hogg 1963, 462, 465-7, 471, 503- 4).

A Sea Storehouse was built in 1717 by the wharf on the site of the smiths' shops. lt was reconstructed in 1783-6 (Hogg 1963, 270, 476).

The fire-barn may have been rebuilt in 1717. In 1741 it was converted into an Infirmary for use by the Royal Artillery. This was replaced in 1757 by a new Infirmary (Hogg 1963, 270, 287, 291, 330).

Stables in or near New Carriage Yard were renewed in 1724. They were to be destroyed by fire in 1760 (Hogg 1963, 275, 420).

The New Barracks (later 7-10 Dial Square) were built in 1739-40 as quarters for Artillery officers and barracks for the men. This range was at right angles to the Old Barracks and to their south- west (Hogg 1963, 285; Barker 1985, 667-8).

In 1750 a new shot yard was made to the north of the Laboratory. In 1754 a magazine was constructed in the north-west corner of the triangular moated area of the former New Carriage Yard. In 1758 a paved Coal Yard was made outside this same corner and four sheds were added within Basin Court for making carriages. The Coal Yard was demolished in about 1805. In 1759 the two blue storehouses were built parallel to the south-west side of the moat. They burned down in 1805. In 1761 stables were built near the Coal Yard and next to a pond formed from part of the old moat, to replace those that had burned down the previous year (Hogg 1963, 315, 394, 405, 408, 414, 415, 416, 420, 442, 521-2).

In the 1770s changes in the manufacture of cannons on site were introduced by Jan and Pieter Verbruggen of the Hague factory, the new Master Founders hired by the Board of Ordnance in 1770 to replace the aged Schalch (Jackson and Beer 1973, 37).

A set of 50 contemporary drawings details the founding work as it was carried on at this time. A few of these show the Verbruggens' innovations in the manufacture of English ordnance. They introduced both solid casting and horizontal boring to the Royal Foundry, following the system of Johann Maritz (Jackson and Beer 1973, 9, 11, 74).

In the Foundry the Verbruggens refurbished the existing two furnaces and built a third. This required the closing of the southem entrance to the building onto Ragged Row and the erection of a brick extension in its place, right up against the site boundary, where a retaining wall was built. The reconstructed main furnace had a smelting chamber about nine feet in diaineter and could melt 17 tons of metal. lt was fed by underground air ducts. In front of it were three conjoined casting pits lined -with brick walls (built 1775). The gunmoulds were placed vertically in these pits and surrounded by an earth fill which was tarnped down very hard. The timbers of the foundry tower were found to be rotten and it was rebuilt in brick. A horizontal boring machine for cannon was installed in a long building along the Ragged Row boundary to the north of the Foundry, and another for mortars in the south-west corner of Dial Square, each driven by a horse mill. This machinery was classified as secret and remained in use until 1842. Gun production restarted in 1773 and the building work was completed in 1774 (Jackson and Beer 1973, 409, 55, 113, 116, 151). In 1776-7 an iron refinery was built in the Foundry to assay iron, and a third boring machine in the west wing of Dial Square (Hogg 1963, 429-31, 434-5, 458; Jackson and Beer 1973, 50 n56, 57; RCHME 1994, i and ii).

A new house was also built as the Verbruggens' residence in 1772- 3, to replace Schalch's house in Basin Court, which they dismissed as too small . This two-storey brick house with basement and attic still survives (Hogg 1963, 429, 432, 435, 439; Jackson and Beer 1973, 38 n2; RCHME 1994, i).There was considerable building in the second half of the 1770s. In 1776-7 the new East Laboratory was constructed in the west part of the old triangular moated area, partly on the site of a fire-bam which had been built in 1742. lt was to be demolished in 1807-9. A new magazine was built to its north-west in 1778. In 1777 a sawpit was made in an isolated position to the east of the stream. In 1779 more stables were built to the south-east of the Blue Storehouses, and in 1780 carpenters' shops and a wharf ,at the east end of Prince Rupert's Walk. This latter group was demolished in 1808 (Hogg 1963, 292, 459, 463, 464, 469, 471).

The Main Guard House was built in 1788 in a classical style on the east side of the gate onto Plumstead Road (Hogg 1963, 482; RCHME 1994, i).

Numbers 5 and 6 Dial Square were built about 1794 in the angle between the Old and New Barracks (Hogg 1963, 514-5).

Following the fire of 1802, the new Carriage Store was constructed in 1802-5. This replaced the New Carriage Square of 1728 and doubled its size. lt consisted of a quadrangle of one and two- storey stores and workshops surrounding three parallel smithies and wheelers' shops. The Royal Carriage Department achieved separate administrative existence in May 1803 (Hogg 1963, 507, 512; RCHME 1994, i and ii).

Barracks were built for the cadets of the Academy on the south side of the Warren alongside Plumstead Road in 1751-2, as two terraces of two-storey buildings. Two wings were added in 1758. To their west an Infirmary or Hospital was built in 1757. Two pavilions were added to this in 1764 and 1768 to house cadets. lt was replaced by a new Hospital on Woolwich Common in 1780. The Academy moved to new buildings on the Common in 1806, but some of the cadets were housed on the Arsenal site until 1852. The former Hospital was converted into accommodation for sixty of them. Many of these moved to the Common as a result of the building changes of 1829. The Cadet Barracks were converted to storage in 1830. These buildings were demolished for the widening of the road in the 1980s (Lysons 1796, 419; 1-logg 1963, 331-4 352, 358, 360, 413, 415-6, 444, 539, 620, 631).

Tower Place mansion was the original headquarters of the Regiment of Artillery, established in 1716. During the course of the century the Old and New Barracks became insuffizient for its accommodation needs. In 1773 land was leased from the Bowater estate on Woolwich Common to build new barracks for the regiment, and it transferred there on their completion in 1778. The barracks was doubled in size in 1806 (Lysons 1796, 417, 569; Drake 1886, 158; Hogg 1963, 338, 343-4).

From 1776 convict hulks were moored off the shores of the Warren and the Dockyard, adapted from redundant naval vessels. They housed prisoners sentenced to hard labour who would otherwise have been sent to the American Colonies, then in rebellion against the Crown. The first hulks were the Justitia of 260 tons, holding 256 men, and the Censor, a former frigate holding 250 men. They were joined in 1779 by a hospital ship, the Reception, and some time later by another hulk, the Ganymede, moored off the Dockyard ,(Rigden 1976, 5-12). In 1803 access to the hulks from the east part of the Warren was by a "convict bridge" (PRO MPHH180).

The hulks and their inmates were managed as a private franchise by Duncan Campbell. Part of their diet in 1777 consisted of the heads of oxen siaughtered in the Victualling Yard at Tower Hill, which were sent down to the hulks daily (Vincent 1890, 361).

In 1777 a brick wall was built around the part of the Warren where the prisoners were working. The convicts built a new wharf here (the Convict Wharf) in 1776-81, superseding a coal wharf, by the practice butt on the king's reed ground. The Justitia was moored at the boathouse just below this (Vincent 1890, 343, 347). On the wharf the convicts screened sand and gravel raised from the river-bed for public use. lt had two cranes on it (PRO MPH497). The convicts also cleared rnud from the river. An engraving of 1779 shows them building the proof butt behind the convict wharf and levelling the ground around square timber piles driven in there. The old proof butt was demolished in 1780. Convicts were working on the wharf and proof-butt in 1783 (Hogg 1963, 455- 6, 461-2). They provided most of the heavy labour on subsequent building projects, although their labour was uneconomic to use. In 1802 an application was made to the Secretary of State for 400 more convicts to work at the Warren (Hogg 1963, 504). In 1803 they had a garden in the triangular space between the proof butt, a ditch and the river wall behind the Convict Wharf. Convict sheds lay along the river wall to the west (PRO MPHH180).

Those convicts who died were buried in cemeteries in the east part of the Warren. This was the practice from 1776 to 1817 (PRO W044/290, Thames 1817). The cemeteries were visible as rows of hillocks, but were otherwise unmarked and with no defined boundaries. One of them was on the site of the Royal Gun Factories, where great quantities of human bone were found during building work in 1859. Other skeletons were found at the site of the proof butts in 1912. Some were found buried in rough wooden boxes and others are alleged to have been found still wearing their leg-irons. lt has been suggested that these were cholera victims (Rigden 1976, 18-19).

The Board of Ordnance leased small areas of land adjacent to the Warren from the Reverend Maryon of Charlton in 1758 and 1760 (Hogg 1963, 409-10). In 1777 24 acres of land was leased (and later purchased) from Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson to extend the Warren to the east. This had descended to him from Sir William Langhom through his nephew Sir John Conyers and then the Maryons, and was therefore part of the seventeenthcentury Tower Place estate. lt consisted of a strip of marshland running from Plumstead Road to the Thames immediately to the east of Prince Rupert's Walk, including the former Doghouse Marshes, Two Acre piece and Ten Acre piece. This included the site of the new proof butt built by the convicts in 1779 and a series of waggon sheds built along the new boundary near the road in 1777. A wall was built along this part of the new boundary (GLRO E/MW/C/599, with map; PRO MPH497; Hogg 1963, 460-1, 463-4). lt was in the digging of a new boundary ditch for this land that a bronze age weapon and preserved wood were found at a depth of six feet (Archaeologia vii 412).

Further land was leased from Wilson in 1781 to form the site of a powder magazine and a road leading to it (GLRO E/MW/C/603). Other pieces of marshland were bought to extend the Warren eastwards and rationalise its boundaries in 1802 and 1803 (PRO MPHH180; Hogg 1963, 502-3).

In the 1780s the Board of Ordnance bought up the houses along the east side of Warren Lane adjoining the Royal Laboratory. These were demolished as a precaution against fire hazards, and the boundary wall was extended across their sites (Hogg 1963, 480-1).

In 1720 only about 30 men worked in the Warren. This low intensity of labour inspired Hogg to call it "a workers' paradise, a true setting for rural craftsmen" (1963, 272, 274). By 1749 the figure had risen to about 30 civilians and 30 soldiers (Hogg 1963, 298). Workers were laid off when the Seven Years War ended in 1763 (Hogg 1963, 423).

Armament production at the Warren expanded again with the advent of the Napoleonic wars. In 1796 about 1500 skilled men and labourers worked there, including 300 boys, and the making of canvas bags was. done as outwork by the women of the town (Lysons 1796, 569). At the beginning of the nineteenth century the workforce expanded to 5000, and a seven-day working week was introduced in 1803 (Hogg 1963, 493, 51 1).

The danger of the river had still not been eliminated in the eighteenth century. In 1744 the proof butt required repair after a flood from the Thames had washed part of it away (Hogg 1963, 290).

Animals grazing on the marshes to the east of the Warren were often killed or injured by "friendly fire" from the proof ranges. Plumstead farmers were compensated for this in 1718, 1763 and 1803 (Hogg 1963, 270-1, 423, 513).

Accidents occasionally occurred in the manufacturing buildings. In 1745 an old bomb shell caught fire and exploded in the Foundry. In 1751 a gun bursting at proof dainaged New Carriage Square and the Land Storehouse. In 1760 a fire in the fire-barn of the Laboratory destroyed the adjoining junk-house stores and stables. In 1766 there was a fire in the Laboratory and in 1779 an explosion. A fire of 1802, which may have been caused by arson, badly damaged the Royal Military Repository, and destroyed storehouses and stored timber- A similar fire destroyed the two Blue Storehouses in 1805 (Hogg 1963, 298, 401, 411, 503-4, 521-2; Vincent 1890, 330, 337-8).

George III visited the Warren in 1772 and viewed the Laboratory and a display of cannon and mortar fire. He returned in 1805 and remarked on the inappropriate name of the establishment. This led to its redesignation as the Royal Arsenal (Hogg 1963, 436-7, 522).

Woolwich town went through periods of boom and bust in the eighteenth century, depending on the state of war or peace abroad. Its workforce was still largely dependent on the needs of the Warren and the Dockyard. The population increased by a factor of five during the eighteenth century (Lysons 1796, 563).

At the time of Rocque's map of 1746 and Barker's map in 1749 the core of the town w as still a linear development along Church Street, High Street and Ragged Row, but the wharf plots between the Warren and the Dockyard were now almost filled with alleys and houses.

The area of the Dockyard was expanded westward by further purchases from the Bowater family in 1743, 1779 and 1784. There was further extension northwards by waterfront reclamation. By the 1770s it contained four building slips (VCH Kent ii 369, 379; Courtenay 1974, 21-2).

The Ropeyard continued its role of supplying cables to the naval building yards. lt expanded slightly in 1736 to a length of 1080 feet, but was partly burned down in a fire of 1759. The wall at its east end was taken down in 1813 to provide a clearer entrance way to the Arsenal. The white hemp house was destroyed by fire in the same year. The Ropeyard ceased production, the site was sold and the buildings were demolished in 1835 (Drake 1886, 155 and nn2, 3; Vincent.1890, 307-8; Vincent 1908, 62; VCH Kent ii 368, 386; Hogg 1963, 589).

Until 1804 the boundary wall surrounding the Warren was only eight feet high. lt was raised to 20 feet along Plumstead Road and 12 to 15 feet elsewhere (Drake 1886, 157 nl; Vincent 1890, 348).

A new wharf was built along the whole length of the Arsenal waterfront between 1803 and 1813, a total of 2440 feet. lt was built of timber and stone on a foundation of piles. The ground behind the wharf front was paved and equipped with cranes for loading ordnance into ships. During the early stages of the construction there were temporary wharves made, .and mud and shingle were dredged from in front of the new wharf. The work was continued eastward of the rectangular inlet of the coal dock as the East Wharf. This required the removal of boat houses and landing stages belonging to the Royal Laboratory. This may have been built to keep the convicts occupied, since it was little used after it was finished (Drake 1886, 157-, Vincent 1890, 345; Hogg 1963, 500-2, 506-7, 514). A pair of octagonal guard-rooms was added to the new wharf either side of the west stairs in 1814. They may have been designed by Jwnes or Lewis Wyatt. The stairs between them were filled in 1931 (PRO MPH262/3 and 4; RCHME 1994, i).

The canal was dug in 1812-14 along the eastem side of the Arsenal as a boundary canal and to act as a defence to the east. lt also provided for easy Transport of stores into the Arsenal. Its construction was linked to the renewal of the river wall at its mouth and it was lined with embankments. The project was approved by the Commission of Sewers (PRO MPH136; Hogg 1963, 571-2).

The westem branch adjacent to the saw-rnill was added in 1814-16, for the unloading of timber from barges (PRO MPH262/4).

The canal was filled in from the swing-bridge to its end in 1926- 36 (Hogg 1963, 1015).

Between 1811 and 1820 there was a general levelling up over most of the Arsenal site to deal with the swampy nature of the ground in advance of an extensive building programme. This extended from the established buildings eastward to the canal embankinent. lt involved the re-siting of some of the smaller eastern buildings at a higher level (Hogg 1963, 594, 619). In the area of the eastern quadrangle of the Grand Storehouses (see below) and further to the east, the ground level over the old marshes was raised by 7'6" to 7'9", with a maximum of 9'7" just before the ditch to the east of the quadrangle. In the area south of the Inspector of Artillery's Department, southward towards the boundary canal of 1778, the depth of material required increased from 7'6" to 12'5", with a maximum of 13'6" to the base of the ditch (PRO MPHH576). Some parts were left at their original height, such as the area just inside the main gate to the right and the stable area behind the Old Barracks (Vincent 1890, 334-5).

The principle filling material used in these works was gravel. This was hoisted up from the river-bed at rates of 400-800 tons per day and was also brought from quarries on Plumstead Common. The river-bed alongside the wharf was also dredged for material, which was poured in behind the wharf revetment. The area behind the canal embankment was filled with material brought from the digging of St Katherine's Dock, which was brought to the canal in barges. Cinders and refuse from the furnaces and workshops were also used (Vincent 1890, 345, 346; Hogg 1963, 538, 594). Later in the century, and continuing as late as 1850, mud was brought from the Dockyard for levelling at the east end of the Arsenal (Hogg 1963, 719). Other items known to have been buried last century include redundant small fuzes which were not worth the expense of breaking up for Materials (Hogg 1963, 693).

As part of this process of raising the level of the Arsenal site, a neW system of drains and sewers was laid in 1814 to remove surface water and sewage. The sewers and drains from the east part of the Arsenal and the Barracks flowed into the river through the coal dock (Hogg 1963, 564, 600).

There were causes for concem about the underlying layers of the Arsenal later in the nineteenth century. Boreholes were drilled to investigate them in 1847 and 1855. When the new saw-mill was built in 1855 there were problems over placing its foundations, as the builders encountered quicksand, of an unknown depth (Hogg 1963, 762).

The large-scale manufacturing processes of last century required interventions into this raised level. The shell factory had underground fumaces and the foundations of the 40-ton steam hammer went down 30 feet into the ground. The foundry for iron guns contained ten wrought-iron casting pits measuring 20 by 10 feet, five of which were 15 feet deep, and the other five 20 feet deep (Hogg 1963, 778, 905, 939).

The building developments of this period opened with the construction of the grand range of storehouses in 1805-13. These were planned from 1801 or 1802 onwards (PRO MPHH180). The architecture of these buildings was on a grand scale and designed to be viewed from all sides. The design is thought to have been by James and Lewis Wyatt. lt consisted of a large central quadrangle serving as a shot yard, with a three-storey range along its south side, linked by bridges to east and west wings of two storeys, the fourth side being open to the new wharf. Two smaller quadrangles to the east and west comprised single-storey and two-storey buildings with central sheds. The building programme required the removal of the East Laboratory (1807-9), the Storekeeper's Orchard and the Chief Firemaster's Garden within it, the Royal Laboratory carpenters' shop of 1780 on the wharf, and the coal yard. The pond adjacent to the coal yard and about 100 feet of moat remaining from the triangle of Prince Rupert's fort had to be filled in. Pile-driving started in December 1805. The construction of the buildings started in the centre in 1806 and had moved to the outer quadrangles by 1809-10 (Hogg 1963, 523-8, 536, 551, 559).

The foundations of these buildings were soon sinking and cracking, prompting a series of investigations and remedial action. By 1822 the buildings of the west quadrangle were settling by up to seven inches and those of the east quadrangle by up to eleven and a half inches. There were cracks in most of the buildings of the side quadrangles and in Ihe south central range (PRO MPH190/4).

Walls in a dangerous condition were rebuilt in 1831-3 and a new foundation was made for the east tower. The central buildings of the east and west quadrangles were demolished in 1855-6. The north building of the east quadrangle was demolished in 1829, and the south and east buildings in 1908.

The storage needs of the Arsenal in the Crimean War required the construction of a large building filling in the centre of the east quadrangle in 1855-8, incorporating the original southern range. This was demolished in 1908. A similar building was erected in the west quadrangle in 1855-6, incorporating the north and south ranges. This was rebuilt c1890 and altered in 1970-2, and still stands. The west range of the west quadrangle was not taken down until after 1890. Only the central quadrangle of this grand scheme of storehouses survives largely unaltered (Hogg 1963, 528- 36, 761, 768, 772, 774; RCHME 1994, i and ii).

During the later parts of the Napoleonic Wars the Board of Ordnance acquired several pieces of land in the marshes to the east of the Arsenal to extend its boundaries. Part of this was used as the site for a practice range and butts (Hogg 1963, 561, 564, 574, 575, 579, 595-6, 599, 610, 732).

In 1832 the triangular block of houses called Cole Fields was purchased. These had formed an enclave in the Arsenal lands to the north of Plumstead Road to the east of the Storekeeper's house (see below), and originated in Wither's farm. They were brought within the Arsenal enclosure and demolished (Vincent 1890, 349; Hogg 637).

The wharf immediately to the west of Warren Lane (formerly Sand Wharf) was bought by the Board of Ordnance in 1781-2. In 1788 it was leased out to Mrs Catherine Halifax, a coal merchant, and became known as Halifax Wharf. At this time the Board demolished five old houses on the wharf because of the risk of fire (Hogg 1963, 469, 481). In 1824 the Board sold the property at auction as a coal wharf with a brick frontage 114 feet long, with dwelling-houses, stables, a cart shed and a warehouse (PRO W044/291 Thames 1825).

The buildings of the Engineer Department formed a small quadrangle to the east of the Royal Carriage Department. They were built by 1806, presumably as part of the same building programme as the construction of the RCA in 1802-5 (PRO WOO/2355 map).

The six parallel blue carriage sheds to the east of Engineers' Square were built at the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth. They were made of wood and had slate roofs. After a period of dilapidation they were demolished in the 1850s,and workshops for the RCD were built on their site (Hogg 1963, 597, 649-50, 682, 733).

The long east-west storehouse to the south of the Royal Carriage Department and Engineers' Square was built c1805 with a single storey. lt was raised to two storeys in the late nineteenth century (RCHME 1994, i).

The New Laboratory Square originally consisted of three two- storey blocks around a quadrangle to the north of the main Laboratory. The west block was built in 1805 and the north and east blocks followed in 1810. They took over the functions of the demolished East Laboratory. A south block was built to almost enclose the Square in 1878. There was a bullet factory