Shooter's Hill


Shooter's Hill is a district in South East London within the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It borders the London Borough of Bexley. It lies north of Eltham and south of Woolwich. With a height of, it is the highest point in the Borough of Greenwich and one of the highest points in London. Shooter's Hill also gives its name to the A road which passes through east to west and is part of the A207 road, the A2 road, and also Watling Street.

Geography

It reputedly takes its name from the practice of archery there during the Middle Ages, although the name is also commonly linked to its reputation as a haunt for highwaymen and was infamous for its gibbets of executed criminals. In the Second World War it was the site of an array of anti-aircraft guns which protected London. As part of 'London Stop Line Central' it was a last line of defence from a German land invasion, that was assumed would follow Watling Street from Dover. A number of devices were under the control of the Home Guard including a fougasse and a flame thrower. Adjacent to an anti-aircraft battery was built a prisoner-of-war camp on what is today part of a golf course on the north-eastern slopes.
Eltham Common was the site of Shooter's Hill police station. Eltham was allegedly the only town in England with two fully functional police stations, having been placed there owing to the lawlessness associated with the town.
Celia Fiennes, who in 1697 proceeded out of London along the Dover Road, wrote in her diary of stopping at:
The hill is one of the highest points in London - offering good views over the River Thames to the north, with central London clearly visible to the west. Oxleas Wood remains a public open space close to the top of the hill; there is also a golf-course and one of the last remaining areas of farmland in inner London, .
Shooter's Hill Road stretches eastwards from the heath at Blackheath up and over the hill, initially as part of the A2 road as far as the Sun in the Sands, and then the A207. The road follows the route of Watling Street, a Roman Road linking London with Roman settlements in north Kent. This was used as a route for horse-drawn mail-coaches linking London with Dover.

Literary associations

's Don Juan is waylaid while romantically musing on Shooter's Hill when he first arrives in London. As the narrative of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities opens, Mr. Jarvis Lorry is a passenger in the Dover mail coach, "lumbering up Shooter's Hill"; and Dickens refers to a public house there in The Pickwick Papers. The name Shooter's Hill is also mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula although referring to the Hampstead area, some distance away, and also in H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and by Thomas Carlyle. On 11 April 1661, diarist Samuel Pepys mentions passing under "the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones.". In the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the character Evey Hammond describes her childhood, spent on Shooter's Hill.

Landmarks

The distinctive gothic revival water tower at the top of Shooter's Hill is a landmark built in 1910 and can be seen from far around. Other local landmarks include Severndroog Castle, a folly designed by the architect Richard Jupp in 1784 and built to commemorate Commodore Sir William James, who on 2 April 1755 attacked and destroyed a pirate fortress at Suvarnadurg along the western coast of India.
Another water tower is further west down Shooter's Hill. This was originally built in the 1890s to designs by Thomas W. Aldwinckle to supply water to the 'Brook Fever hospital', which was demolished in the 1990s, to be replaced by a housing development. The tower consists of a plain brick pillar ornamented simply with bands of terracotta tiles and windows like arrowslits. It is not listed, but it was cleaned, repointed and underpinned for conversion into a family home. It is the centrepiece of the housing estate.
Immediately to the east of the housing estate is the Grade II listed former Royal Herbert Hospital, today the Royal Herbert Pavilions. Further up the hill is the still-functioning Memorial Hospital.
In 1749, 'The Bull' public house opened just west of the summit of the hill, and was used as a refreshment stop by the coaches, although not by the Royal Mail, which had an interchange of mail bags at the Post Office by the Red Lion on the London side of the hill.
An 18th-century grade II listed milestone in the grounds of Christ Church on Shooter's Hill has 19th-century plates giving the distances "Dartford 7 miles", "London Bridge 8 miles" and a later addition: "130 miles to Ypres: in defending the salient our casualties were 90,000 killed, 70,500 missing, 450,000 wounded", commemorating the Battle of Ypres.

Road alterations

During the 1950s the road gradient was lowered in the west where low-powered motor vehicles of the era frequently struggled to get to the top. As a remedy, a small section of the road west of the summit was removed and the road resurfaced from scratch to extend the slope horizontally. This alteration is evident where the road runs through the cutting and the pavement rises about 1–2 metres above.

Housing estates

Nearest places

Shooter's Hill is served by many Transport for London bus services connecting it with areas including Woolwich, Eltham, Greenwich, Bexleyheath, Thamesmead, Lewisham and Crystal Palace. The closest rail links to the area are Welling and Falconwood railway stations.