PRESS RELEASE Progress Estate Launches Website

PRESS RELEASE no: 2013/03

James Garner

The Progress Residents Association is delighted to announce the launch of its website and blog, www.progressestate.co.uk.

The site’s page has links enabling people to ‘Like’ the Estate on Facebook, Follow it on Twitter or send it emails.

These facilities have been developed by Progress resident James Garner.   James, who can trace his family’s life back to the creation of the Estate, said ‘I am delighted to have been asked to develop these facilities.   If residents of all ages are to feel part of our community, it is important that we offer 21st century methods of communication and information as well as more traditional printed material’.

Rita Billinghurst, Chair

Rita Billinghurst, Chair of the Association, said ‘Adding these facilities to our plans for celebrating our centenary in 2015 is key to our communicating with all those living on our Estate.   Equally importantly, it allows everyone with an interest in our Estate to follow and be part of our activities.    This group includes both large numbers of people who used to live here but have moved away as well as others who are interested in our history.   Ideas from everyone will enable us to develop the site and its links in the best possible way’.  

Note for Editors:

Originally named the Well Hall Estate, The Progress Estate was built in 1915 to provide housing for the many additional workers the Woolwich Arsenal needed to manufacture the armaments required by the services during the First World War.   Conservation Area status was granted in 1975, in recognition of its unique architectural character. 




For additional information, please contact:

Keith Billinghurst

Progress Residents Association committee member
56 Arsenal Road
Eltham
London  SE9 1JY

tel: 020 8856 5593 or 07962 877389

email: TheProgressEstate@Gmail.com

Twitter:  @ProgressEstate

Bomb damage on the estate - your stories

Did your house suffer bomb damage during the war?

WW2 Bomb Damage to Whinyates Road, July 1944 @Jamesgarner

Do you remember the bomb damage on the Estate?

Want to find out if your house was damaged or bombed? - then this site is a great source

Don't forget, we are after stories and photos of the Estate during war time.  Please contact TheProgressEstate@gmail.com with your photos and stories.

1 Maudslay Road, Well Hall Estate, Eltham, c. 1920

Article reproduced in full from: www.ideal-homes.org.uk

These photographs of Maudslay Road, Well Hall Estate were taken c.1920. Phyllis Boutcher (Kelly), pictured below outside her home, remembers playing on the Green as the Zeppelins were dropping their bombs during World War 1.

On one occasion her father rushed across the Green in his underwear to pick her up and take her home while the Zeppelins were still bombing, much to her embarrassment. She didn’t come out of the house for a week!

Phyllis also remembers the building of the Progress Estate (1915) for the Woolwich Arsenal workers.

Photographs Copyright: Phyllis Boutcher.Contributed by Dennis Keys, Little Thetford, Cambridgeshire

Progress Estate photos

The Ideal Homes website has some fabulous early photos of the Estate here.  Well worth a look.

Do you have any photos of the Estate or houses within the estate.  If so, we would love to hear from you.  All photos and stories will be credited to you.

Please get in touch via TheProgressEstate@gmail.com

Housing the war workers, Woolwich 1915

Article reproduced in full from: greatwarlondon.wordpress.com/

Wars are inherently destructive. At the same, they can bring construction – army camps and airfields being the most obvious examples. Near Woolwich in 1915, though, it was housing for munitions workers that was needed – and the resulting development became known as the Progress Estate.

A street being constructed for the Arsenal Workers (War Illustrated Vol 3)

The Woolwich arsenal grew enormously from the start of the Great War. Housing was needed for thousands of new workers there and the Government set about building it near to Well Hall Station (now Eltham Station). The houses were built, according to the War Illustrated, with the intention that they be good quality housing for the post-war era.

The Hidden London website describes the estate:

Houses being constructed at Well Hall

Following the outbreak of the First World War, the government acquired 96 acres of farmland on either side of Well Hall Road to build an estate for munitions workers at Woolwich. Construction workers were drafted in from all parts of London to build 1,300 homes on ‘garden city’ lines and the project was completed by December 1915. Despite the urgency, the Ministry of Works team, led by Francis Baines, achieved high archi­tectural standards, especially in terms of stylistic variation. Many of the three miles of roads curved with the contours of the land and field boundary trees were retained where possible.

It was renamed the Progress estate in 1925 and the Ideal Homes website has a nice gallery of post-war photos of the area.

Progress Estate, including Lovelace Green and Sandby Green

Article reproduced in from: londongardensonline.org.uk/
Pictures - Greenwich Heritage Centre

The Progress Estate was built by the Government over 10 months in 1915 to provide emergency accommodation for munitions workers at the nearby Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. The estate, originally called Well Hall Estate, was laid out on a hilly site on 'Garden Suburb' principles, with low density cottage-style housing, careful attention to detailing and use of materials. In addition to private gardens, throughout the estate were planted verges, hedged footpaths, and other landscaping, as well as two 'village greens'. Lovelace Green forms the larger of these communal open spaces with Sandby Green the smaller. The integrity of the estate endures, with most of the original housing still surviving, an important example of town planning of that period.

Fuller information:
Lovelace Green and Sandby Green are areas of communal garden within the Progress Estate, which was built in 1915 and originally known as Well Hall Estate. It was built for the Government in some 10 months during World War I to provide 1,000 houses and 200 flats for munitions workers at the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. The land identified for the new estate was predominantly farmland used for market gardening, containing no houses, and covered the wooded slopes either side of Well Hall Road and was probably part of the Page Estate that owned Well Hall and Well Hall Farm. Well Hall Road had long existed, connecting the village of Eltham and the town of Woolwich, and by 1915 had a tram line; a bus route was added in 1916 enabling people on the estate to get to work in Woolwich. The estate was immediately to the north of Well Hall, which dated from medieval times; by 1915, an C18th house set in grounds, it was the home of the children's author Edith Nesbit who lived here until her death in 1924. The house and grounds were purchased by Woolwich Council in 1929, the house was demolished in the 1930s and the site later became the public park of Well Hall Pleasaunce (q.v.).

Due to the urgency of the need to accommodate munitions workers at Woolwich, the decision was taken to build the new estate within a 6-month timescale. A scheme of 1,200 houses was agreed by the Ministry of Munitions, the Office of Works and the Local Government Board on 8 January 1915, adhering to the highest town planning standards. The design was undertaken by the Office of Works Architects Department under its Chief Architect (Sir) Frank Baines, who was a pupil of Charles Robert Ashbee, an influential exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement. The plan prepared by architect Mr Phillips was chosen and detailed design for the layout of the first 40 houses was completed within 2 weeks. In order to achieve the tight timescale it proved necessary to build on a 'prime cost' basis and in all over 5,000 men worked on building the estate. Work proceeded rapidly with 800 houses completed by 20 July. Agreement was reached with the LCC to manage the scheme, and the first 273 houses were occupied by August; by 15 September 1,000 houses were built and in December the whole estate was complete and all the houses handed over to the LCC, who by then were already providing temporary classrooms for 680 estate children. The LCC continued to manage the estate until 1920 when it passed to the Office of Works, who managed it until 1925. It was then sold to Progress Estates Ltd, a company in which the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society had a large interest. Founded in 1868 by Arsenal workers, the RACS was responsible for building houses on the fringes of Woolwich. By the time the Progress Estates took over the estate, 64 of the houses had been sold by the Office of Works, and another 400 were sold by 1950. In 1980 Hyde Housing Association purchased 500 houses from the RACS.

The estate was laid out on 'Garden Suburb' principles and was intended as 'a showpiece solution to emergency housing problems created by the war'. Nikolaus Pevsner described it as 'a tour de force of picturesque design . . . A virtuoso recreation of the 'old English village'.' The estate as built comprised 1,200 low density housing units and proved influential in local authority housing schemes developed following the end of the war. The estate layout comprised well-planned, picturesquely aligned streets that were connected by hedged footpaths, and the houses resembled cottages found in traditional English villages; materials used included natural Westmoreland slate, with attention paid to detailing of roofs, porches, front doors and windows, which were wooden frame casements. The houses were provided with private front, back and side gardens with oak fences and gates to the front gardens. Throughout the estate there were also public grassed and planted areas and green verges, with two public open spaces designed to resemble traditional village greens. The larger of the two is Lovelace Green, and the smaller is Sandby Green. Existing trees were retained when the estate was laid out, and if necessary houses were set back from the road to avoid tree felling. Lovelace Green is on slightly undulating ground with paths running across it and hedged on its boundaries. In the grass are shrub beds and trees, with two areas of paving.

Sources consulted:
Bridget Cherry & Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London 2: South (Penguin) 1999 p472 p305/6; Ben Weinreb & Christopher Hibbert, 'The London Encyclopaedia' (Macmillan, revised ed. 1993); Andrew Saint (introduction), 'London Suburbs', Merrell Holberton Publishers 1999; LB Greenwich, 'Progress Estate Character Appraisal', 2007

Hidden London, Well Hall

Article reproduced in full from: hidden-london.com/gazetteer/well-hall/

A wartime housing estate in North Eltham, containing the grounds of the former Tudor building of that name

Well Hall was recorded as early as the 13th century and its great house was built for the landowner Sir William Roper and his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas More, after their marriage in 1521. Sir Gregory Page bought the property in the 1730s and demolished the house but its inner moat and barn have survived, the latter (shown above) as a restaurant and function venue.

In 1905 Woolwich council created Well Hall Road (now the A205) from the country track that had been Woolwich Lane, and it became a tram route in 1910. Following the outbreak of the First World War, the government acquired 96 acres of farmland on either side of Well Hall Road to build an estate for munitions workers at Woolwich. Construction workers were drafted in from all parts of London to build 1,300 homes on ‘garden city’ lines and the project was completed by December 1915. Despite the urgency, the Ministry of Works team, led by Francis Baines, achieved high archi­tectural standards, especially in terms of stylistic variation. Many of the three miles of roads curved with the contours of the land and field boundary trees were retained where possible.

The new estate’s streets were named after men with historical associ­ations with Woolwich, mostly in munitions production but with one notable exception: Lovelace Green is named after the poet Richard Lovelace, who was born at Woolwich in 1618. He is best known for the lines ‘Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage’, from his poem ‘To Althea, From Prison’.

In 1925 the government sold the Well Hall estate to the Royal Arsenal Co- operative Society, which renamed it the Progress estate. The house that Sir Gregory Page built to replace Well Hall (which was later given the same name) was pulled down in 1931 and the gardens of Well Hall Pleasaunce were laid out in its place. A swathe of land across the estate had been left empty for the planned construction of Rochester Way, which came through in the early 1930s, leading to the creation of the Well Hall roundabout. At the same time Sir Gilbert Scott’s Church of St Barnabas was relocated here from Woolwich Dockyard. Its church hall is named in honour of the comedian Frankie Howerd, who grew up in Arbroath Road. The Well Hall Odeon opened in 1936 and later became the Coronet.
The Well Hall estate gained conser­vation area status in 1975 and the Co- operative Society sold its interest in the estate to the Hyde Housing Association in 1980.

The Coronet closed in 1999 and lay derelict and vandalised for more than a decade. In 2012 the cinema was at last converted and extended to form a devel­opment of 53 flats and a parade of shops, including a Tesco Express. Perhaps the delay was worth it: the art deco corner frontage is once again looking excellent. It’s a shame some of London’s other unwanted cinema buildings couldn’t have been saved in a similar way.

Let's Move to....Eltham, South London...

Adapted from The Guardian Article: www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/nov/22/move-to-eltham-london

What's going for it? It's a mighty long way from Eltham to Hollywood, but one local made it. Bob Hope. Yep, Bob Hope. As in Road To Morocco, charity golf tournaments and plaid trousers. He was born on Craigton Road, just up from the post office. He didn't stay long. I wonder what the Bobster made of the place? Did he long for the wild ancient woods up at Oxleas? Did he pine for the views from the top of Shooter's Hill and Eltham Hill? Was Royal Blackheath golf club (England's oldest, triv fans) where the plaid began? Nah, probably not. But he thought enough of the place to help save the theatre (renamed in his honour) in the 80s. In fact, the burb's seen more than its fair share of celebrity: Frankie Howerd, Boy George, Denis Healey, Jude Law, Louise Redknapp and Kate Bush have all passed through. It's practically London's Beverly Hills.

The case against The shadow of Stephen Lawrence's murder still hangs heavy. Don't come here expecting cosmopolitan London. Watch for chronic rat runs.

Well connected? No tube, but roadwise it's good, with the A2 and A20 - though it's usually gridlock at rush hour - and the south circular. Rail: between four and eight trains an hour to Charing Cross, Cannon Street or Victoria from Eltham, and from Mottingham (both 30-ish minutes).

Schools Eltham CofE, St Mary's Catholic, Gordon, Deansfield,  St Thomas More Catholic and Henwick all soar above the national average for English, maths and science. Secondaries more troubled: St Thomas More RC comprehensive is the star, scoring well above average at GCSE, though independents Eltham College and Colfe's are most popular.

Hang out at... Locals Lynne and Steve Lane recommend "the Tudor Barn, built early 1600, opposite the Co-op. Inside there's a little gem of a Cajun-music-and-dance venue." For eating, the Park Tavern and Electriq Cafe get the nod from residents.

Where to buy Excellent, affordable property, very commutable to central London. Eltham was once a village, famous for its mansions and Eltham Palace. You'll still find the village's older property - pricey - on North Park and Court Roads. Prized suburban gems are the Eltham Park estate or "Corbett" estate. Best is the Progress estate for cottagey, Arts and Craftsy houses.

Article date: 2008

John Sandon to be Patron of the Progress Estate's 2015 Centenary Celebrations

The Progress Estate Residents’ Association is delighted that antiques expert John Sandon has agreed to be its patron.

Image: wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sandon

John is a well-known porcelain expert on the BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow”.  He is also International Director of European Ceramics & Glass at Bonhams, the international auctioneers and valuers.  He is a world authority on European porcelain and has written many books and articles on the subject.  He has been involved in excavations at the Royal Worcester factory site ad has authored and co-authored several books on the factory.

John and his wife Kris lived on the Estate in Lovelace Green from 1982 until 1991.  Their home is less than an hour away, in Kent.

John said “I’m delighted to be Patron for the Progress Estate’s 2015 celebrations.  I have such fond memories of living on Lovelace Green.”

“Despite its proximity to central London, the whole Estate has a village atmosphere and it is important to not let its 100^th birthday slip by un-noticed.”