BRANDRAM ROAD, SE13
London Archive Chronicles
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This image -- of houses on Brandram Road in Lee -- was taken around Christmas time in December 2019 during a walk with Milo, my silky-smooth canine companion. For an alert and lively sprollie, Milo is usually very patient when I stop to photograph. He often sits right next to my feet, looking towards the opposite direction to which I have fixed my attention and waits. Sometimes he lets me know that I am taking too long, like he did on this occasion.
I had wanted to photograph the area for some time already, after I had found it by accident. A real Greenwich gem, Halcyon Books, had closed its doors and relocated to Lee High Street. Missing my regular haunt and a source of solace one Saturday afternoon, I counted my pocket money and decided to walk there. Soon however, I deviated from the route on Google Maps because of my bad short-term memory and the fatal confidence in knowing the way, which tends to possess me whenever my feet touch the grey London pavement. It wasn’t the first time I had gotten lost in there: the heath is my Bermuda’s triangle. I seem to be able to come across yet another large patch of grass and a row of grand houses that I think I haven’t seen before until I realise that I indeed have been there before, as perplexed, but walking from another direction, not too long ago. Likewise, I keep seeing the Ranger’s House from surprising angles and distances. Eventually -- and luckily -- the blue dot on my mobile aligned with the given route and so I went along Orchard Lane, Eliot place, turned to Heath Lane, past St Margaret’s Church, down on Brandram Road to Lee High Street and found Halcyon Books. Afterwards I went thereabouts for a stroll several times, looking for the buildings featured on the information boards near St Margaret’s Church. I went to Cator Estate in Blackheath having read about Wricklemarsh House that once stood there, peered through the gate onto the Merchant Taylor’s Almshouses from Brandram Road, found Boone’s Chapel and the Manor House Library. I made a mental note of the Dacre Pub on Dacre Road and tried to find the Firs, not realising that it had long been demolished. I took that photo of the houses on Brandram Road on one of these expeditions. During those walks, and indeed when researching and writing these texts, I once again came across the question of what this project is and isn’t about. I didn’t photograph the sites of those historic buildings I went to find because they, so to speak, didn’t catch my eye. Maybe the light was wrong, maybe there were too many cars in front of them -- or maybe they were, in my mind, too charged with their past, mixed with my imagination, that I couldn’t capture what I saw in them. Unsurprisingly, I took this photograph of the houses because of the light and the harmony of the colours and structure of the building. However, I hesitate to say that this image, or any of my photos, is only about its aesthetic although those qualities are most often the reason I press the shutter. I got into a similar maze online when looking into Lee’s and Blackheath’s history to that I tend to get into Blackheath itself. As well as official (-looking) sites such as Borough of Lewisham, I discovered several local history societies and bloggers, a conservation report for Blackheath from 2004 and a story about a blog about subterranean Greenwich that was taken down, seemingly by the government in the months before the 2012 Olympics. Finding these history blogs felt akin to coming across a local historians’ assembly at a pub and, intrigued, trying to listen in their conversations. The conclusion from this ‘eavesdropping’ is that the volume of research conducted is vast and that there is more to come. Still, as I haven’t wanted to borrow from other people’s work, I have kept the historical information in my essays brief, as a kind of a pin that one puts on a map to find one’s bearings. I have, however, included a few links to their blogs as further reading after each essay. These sources tell me that Lee was already mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1085, to be part of the historic county of Kent, then a historic parish of Blackheath until the parishes of Blackheath and Lewisham merged in 1900 to create The Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham. These rather dull, administrative details nevertheless tell about the population growth in London. Indeed, before Lee was absorbed into London, it was a rural, agricultural, and popular place to live for wealthy merchants who built large country houses in the 17th and 18th centuries some of which are still there today. Much of Lee’s wealth in that period had direct links to slave trade, a heritage that only lately has been excavated. Brandram road was called Church Lane in the OS map in 1860. In the map published in 1897 it had been renamed Brandram road, after an industrial chemist, Thomas Brandram. Brandram lived in the Cedars, one of the country houses still standing today, albeit divided into flats. In 1783 his father, Samuel Brandram, together with his business partners founded an enterprise manufacturing paint pigments as well as white lead, oil of vitriol and saltpetre. Thomas Brandram was the head of the firm for almost 50 years, until his death in 1855. The family had a factory and warehouses in Rotherhithe that was in business until the 1950s, when it was sold and some of the buildings were demolished. The warehouse building still standing, by the river, is Grade II listed and was turned into a housing co-operative, called Brandram Wharf. The houses in this photograph are evidently built after World War 2, perhaps in the 1960’s as the area being trendy at the time was mentioned in one of the blogs. I haven’t, however, been able to find out any substantial information about these flats, for example when were they built, by whom and about the architect team involved. As well as the excitement of having found such a marvellous sight, I often feel a tinge of sadness that the moment of capturing it is over, and that this denouement should be announced by the sound of the shutter and the winding of the film roll, as satisfying as these mechanical sounds also are. That December afternoon, however, Milo interrupted these ruminations with a grunt. Milo might not speak any of our languages but he communicates in his with confident efficiency. When I turned to look at him, he had already changed his tactic. He looked straight into my eyes and waved his tail. I can’t but admire his negotiation skills. While my strongest weapon is a bag treats, he only has to look at me to make me reconsider my position. And so, we moved on. (originally published on 11.03.2021) |
© Carita Silander
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING:
http://lewisham-heritage.wikidot.com/lee
http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2010/03/thames-tributary-ravensbourne_7119.html
http://russiadock.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-brandrams-in-rotherhithe.html
https://maps.nls.uk
Manor House and slavery https://runner500.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/slavery-and-the-manor-house/
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol6/pp236-248
http://lewisham-heritage.wikidot.com/lee
http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2010/03/thames-tributary-ravensbourne_7119.html
http://russiadock.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-brandrams-in-rotherhithe.html
https://maps.nls.uk
Manor House and slavery https://runner500.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/slavery-and-the-manor-house/
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol6/pp236-248
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A photograph of the Manor House, dated 1943. Now used as a library.
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An engraving of St Margaret's Church, dated 1795
Reproduced with the kind permission of the London Picture Archive |