north

MERIDIAN LINE

North West © Madeleine Adams Studio Ltd The White Macartney Blackheath House This panel is one of a series of House

St Ursula’s Park Walk storyboards about the Heath. Convent School

The Heath was originally about 304 hectares (500 acres) but Rangers 11 House encroachments or trespasses over Rose PARK the centuries have reduced this Garden View of the skyline during the great storm of 1846 Bowling green 9 CHESTERFIELD WALK considerably.

GENERAL WOLFE ROAD

ROAD

The first major change was in 1432 10 CADE Point House WEST GROVE Chocolate7 Row 6 VALE Tennis Hamilton Courts when Duke Humphrey of Gloucester House POINT HILL 8 HYDE (1391-1447), brother of Henry V (1387- THE POINT 1 WEST GROVE Gang Lane 5 1422), fenced off 74 hectares (183 acres) HILL View point 2 for what became . SHOOTERS HILL ROAD (A2) * MAIDENSTONE 3 * 4 The area known as Blackheath Hill and you are here Storyboard panel locations ROAD *

DARTMOUTH HILL Maidenstone Hill, was bought from the TYLER Wildflowers and grasses Crown in 1699, by John Morden (1623- WAT * 1708) a city merchant who founded V2 bomb site Morden College.

During the mid-18th century, the 1 The Point 3 Site of Green Man Public 7 Site of Chocolate House 9 Chesterfield Walk 11 Rangers House Agincourt trustees of the College authorised A chalk plateau at the edge of the House A place of ‘fashionable assembly’ A formal avenue of Lime trees re- One of Blackheath’s outstanding London Clay Basin offers one of the planted in 1977 for HM Queen Grade I mansions built for Captain On 23 November 1415, the Lord Mayor, A well known staging post and opened by Thomas and Grace houses to be built on the edge of the best views of the London skyline. Take Tozier in 1702, who claimed to be Elizabeth’s 25th Anniversary of (later Vice-Admiral) Francis Hosier in a short walk via Point Hill to visit the meeting place for 350 years, until it Accession. 1699. Aldermen and citizens of London packed ‘highway waste’ facing Blackheath Hill was demolished in 1970. chocolate makers to the King. This Viewpoint and also see the plaque building supposedly inspired Charles In 1748 the house passed to Philip Blackheath to welcome Henry V home to commemorate Flight Lieutenant Dickens’ Creakle’s Academy in 10 Local Wildlife and Maidenstone Hill. This left clear a Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield. Richard ‘Dickie’ Reynell who was killed ‘David Copperfield”,1850. It was The grassland and scrub of Hyde Vale’s from his victory at Agincourt. Henry 4 Former Bowling Green In 1815 the Crown took the property central plain of open space, providing near there in September 1940 during demolished in 1886. “butterfly bank” and adjacent meadow the Battle of Britain. Built over in 1854. areas are home to a rich variety of as a residence for the Royal Office of returned to a hero’s welcome, with the wonderful prospects of London, known wildlife such as mining bees, digger the Ranger of Greenwich Park until Londoners riding out to receive him 8 Former Chocolate Pond wasps, grasshoppers and butterflies. the 1890s. In 1974 the gallery was as The Point. restored by English Heritage. 5 Horse trough An important droving pond on formally at Blackheath and escorting 2 Underground caverns Here you may see a Green Woodpecker Trough and drinking fountain installed Shooters Hill Road at the corner of Beneath The Point deposits of chalk hunting for ants on the ground, the Since 2002 Rangers House has been him for five hours to London Bridge. In were dug as early as the 10th century, 1877. Hyde Vale and West Grove. Once the home of the Wernher Collection; The Point and the Heath to the north the largest on the Heath, known as chequered pattern of the Marbled London, Henry was treated to a lavish but mostly in the 17th and 18th White butterfly, the impressive Bee valuables acquired by diamond of the A2 are owned by the Crown as centuries, creating large underground Real (or Royal) Pond and eventually merchant Sir Julius Charles Wernher pageant which celebrated the city itself, 6 Conduit head Chocolate Pond. The pond was foul Wolf (a solitary wasp) or the scarlet caverns. Myths surrounding these and green Six-Spot Burnet moth (1850-1912). Erected about 1710 on the corner and in 1878 the local Board of Works 15th century Miniature, Enguerrand de Monstrelet as well as his own triumph. manorial waste, but held in trust by the caves include that they were known as (photograph). Dene-holes where residents hid when of West Grove and Hyde Vale, this drained it having replaced it with a This drawing shows cricket being Royal Borough of Greenwich for the brick structure was an entrance to a horse trough and drinking fountain in the Danes invaded. The entrance on played in front of the Rangers House The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory in the Henry V people of London in perpetuity. Maidenstone Hill was closed in the series of brick tunnels which led from 1877. This painting by George Sidney c.1840. (Reigned 1413-22) 1850s for safety reasons. Blackheath down to Greenwich to Shepherd shows the Chocolate Pond Hundred Years War. The battle took place on 25 October 1415 channel clean water draining from the in the foreground c.1815. near modern day Azincourt in northern France. Heath to the Royal Seamen’s Hospital.

Image Joe Beale 2016 The victory against a larger French army encouraged Henry V to invade again. Conquering Normandy, he exploited French disarray to negotiate a treaty in May 1420, in which King Charles Henry’s brother, VI recognised him as heir to the French crown. He also married Humphrey Duke of Charles’s daughter, Princess Catherine. Gloucester

Images: Blackheath Society Archive www.blackheath.org © Blackheath Society 2017 Registered charity 259843 “Cry ‘God for Harry! England and Saint George!” Research: Neil Rhind MBE Design: Madeleine Adams Studio Quote from Henry V, Act III (1598) by William Shakespeare