Well Hall

Well Hall is a place to the north of Eltham in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in southeast London, England, with no present formal boundaries and located 13.5 km (8.4 mi) east-southeast of Charing Cross.

[4] The Hall part of the name refers to a Tudor mansion house that previously existed there built in the early sixteenth century.

[7] These manors were recorded as being passed down and sold to numerous people including lawyer and member of parliament, William Roper and his wife, writer and translator, Margaret More, daughter of Thomas More in the sixteenth century.

[8] In the 1730s, art collector, landowner, and baronet, Sir Gregory Page bought the property of Well Hall for £19,000 and had the mansion which was then dilapidated, demolished, but the moat and the Tudor Barn were left and remain to this day.

[5] Author Edith Nesbit, also lived in a house in the grounds of the Tudor Barn from 1899 to 1921 with her husband Hubert Bland[9][10] who died there in 1914.

During the Second World War, on 14 February 1944, Iris Miriam Deeley, a leading aircraftwoman with No 1 Balloon Centre RAF Kidbrooke was murdered near Well Hall railway station as she was returning to the Royal Air Force base.

[11][12][13] As part of the civil parish of Eltham, Well Hall was historically within the Hundred of Blackheath, in the Lathe of Sutton at Hone, in the west division of the county of Kent.

[17][18] In the late nineteenth century, there were several proposals to build a railway line from London to Bexleyheath along different routes by numerous companies.

On 11 June 1972 at approximately 21:35, a train with a diesel locomotive and 10 coaches derailed near Eltham Well Hall station, when the driver took a sharp bend too fast.

[20][21] On the evening 22 April 1993, Stephen Lawrence an 18-year-old Black British man from Plumstead was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus in Well Hall Road.

[22] The case became a cause célèbre and one of the highest profile racial killings in UK history; its fallout included profound cultural changes to attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice, and the partial revocation of double jeopardy laws, before two of the perpetrators were convicted almost 20 years later in 2012.

[2][24] From Well Hall Roundabout the South Circular A205 road continues north toward Woolwich, but no longer a dual carriageway and keeps the name of Well Hall Road; to the southwest Westhorne Avenue goes toward Horn Park, then Hither Green where it also ceases to be a dual carriageway and changes its name.

[2][24] Eltham High Street, part of the A210 road, is to the south of Well Hall, it passes through in an east–west direction, to the west it goes to Lee and Lewisham, and east toward Avery Hill and Bexley.

[25][26][29] route 132 begins at Greenwich then goes to Kidbrooke, Well Hall, Eltham, Avery Hill, Bexley and Bexleyheath.

It was built in 1915 as a wartime measure under the Housing Act, 1914 by HM Office of Works[33] and was visited by Queen Mary in 1916.

[37] In 1933 the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich council opened Well Hall Pleasaunce and the recently refurbished Tudor Barn served as a centrepiece to the new park.

[10] The path that runs along the southern edge of Well Hall Pleasaunce is named Edith Nesbit Walk[2][24] after the author that lived there for over twenty years at the beginning of the twentieth century.

They play National League 1, the third tier of the English rugby union system, in Well Hall, having moved from the famous Rectory Field in Blackheath at the end of the 2015–16 season.

Tram travelling along Well Hall Road, 1912.
Eltham bus and train station on Well Hall Road.
Houses of the Progress Estate .
Tudor Barn, in Well Hall Pleasaunce.
Author Edith Nesbit lived in Well Hall from 1899 to 1921.