page_title: Old Woolwich
section_title: 16th-18th century: expansion
hierarchical_section_title: Old Woolwich / History / 16th-18th century: expansion
caption_attribution_description: English: The north prospect of Woolwich, in the county of Kent. Detail of a view of Old Woolwich and Woolwich Dockyard. The bell tower to the left belonged to the Royal Ropeyard. To the right a rare view of the Medieval and Georgian parish church, which only existed together for 2 or 3 years. Engraving by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck (1739). Collection of the London Metropolitan Archives.
context_page_description: Old Woolwich or Woolwich Central Riverside is an area along the Thames in Woolwich, South East London. It is the oldest inhabited part of Woolwich, going back to an Anglo-Saxon riverside settlement. When the demographic centre of Woolwich shifted south in the 1800s, the area became a Victorian slum. Most of Old Woolwich was cleared in the 20th and early 21st centuries to make way for industrial, infrastructural and other large-scale developments. Although most of the earlier buildings have been demolishied, the area has retained some interesting architecture, including the Georgian parish church, the Edwardian foot tunnel rotunda and two cinemas of the 1930s.
context_section_description: In 1512 a naval shipyard was established at Gun Yard, east of Bell Water Gate (now a car park next to the Waterfront Leisure Centre). Gun Yard or Gun Wharf may have been formed from two existing yards, Crane's Wharf and Daniel's Wharf, using about 80 meters of river frontage between Bell Water Gate and Globe Lane. In 1515 the Henry Grace à Dieu was built here, at the time probably the largest warship in Europe. Not long after this, in the 1540s, the naval yard moved to an area further west and became known as The King's Yard or Woolwich Dockyard. Gun Wharf continued to be used for naval storage. In 1573 the royal ropeyard was established, more or less where Beresford Street is situated now. The warehouse at Gun Yard may have been rebuilt in brick around the same time. A new crane and thatch-roofed workshop were added in 1586. Apart from naval storage, the wharf was used for bringing in raw materials for the ropeyard as well as shipping out finished rope. The north-west section of the yard was named Ropeyard Wharf. Hemp, tar and rope were carried or carted some 180 meters between this area and the ropeyard via Bell Water Gate and the High Street. At the intersection of these two streets stood the parish cage and stocks. Later this area was named Market Hill, after the market moved here around 1670 from its earlier location near the ropeyard.
  Further east stood Tower Place, a Tudor mansion with an octagonal tower and a warren around it. The house was built in the 1540s for Martin Bowes, a wealthy goldsmith and merchant, later a Lord Mayor of London. Bowes had bought riverside holdings in Woolwich and Plumstead in the 1530s, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After his death, the estate came into the possession of George Barne, also a Lord Mayor of London. His great-grandchildren Richard and Francis Lovelace may have been born here in the early 17th century. In the mid-17th century weapons testing began at the Warren, near Tower Place. The warehouse at Gun Yard was rebuilt in 1663 as a large U-shaped building. After 1671 gun storage moved away from here to the area around Tower Place, which had been acquired by William Pritchard, an ordnance contractor from Eltham. In exchange for the 31-acre Warren or Tower Place estate, Pritchard acquired Gun Yard plus a large payment in cash. He continued using the Gun Yard for shipping and storage of military and non-military provisions, as well as adding a repair shop for gun carriages and a saltpetre refinery. Around the same time the north-west part of the yard was fenced off for the exclusive use of the ropeyard. West of Bell Water Gate, around present-day Glass Yard, there was some glass industry in the 17th century, while pottery production seems to have continued here at the same time.
  By the end of the 17th century, the Warren, later the Royal Arsenal, had grown to rival the Tower of London as the country's main ordnance depot. The ropeyard was rebuilt in 1695-97 by the surveyor and naval engineer Edmund Dummer, adding a double ropewalk to the existing one. The yard was extended to 324 m, stretching all the way to Green's End. At its north end stood a brick warehouse with a clock tower. It employed as many as 400 men. This, and the shipbuilding at Woolwich Dockyard, attracted ever more workers to Woolwich, which due to the malarial marshland was not a popular posting. However, the town's population grew rapidly, to about 6,500 in 1720. The entire area between the Dockyard and the Warren was filled in with houses. The south part of Gun Yard (facing the High Street) was developed in the 1720s as a market surrounded by houses on three sides and with a central market office. The northern part of the plot remained in use as a riverside wharf throughout the 18th century, partly for stacking timber. The parish church of St Mary Magdalene was rebuilt in the 1730s through aid from the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches. The new church was bigger and stood slightly further back from the river. John Rocque's Map of London of 1746 shows very few buildings south of the mai
caption: View of Woolwich (S. & N. Buck, 1739). To the left: the bell tower of the ropeyard. To the right: the old and new parish church
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