Ashburnham Triangle Association

Neil Sinclair, Greenwich tour guide and volunteer at Royal Museums Greenwich, kicks off our 2024 history talk programme with a detailed look at the Queens House - the first palladian style building constructed in Britain. Conceived following a royal row over a hunting accident in 1613, the Queens House has been a museum and art gallery since 1937. But over its approximately 400 years of history it has served as a royal love nest for King Charles II, a temporary home for the first astronomer royal, a studio for Dutch marine painters Willem van de Velde and son, a refuge for Huguenots escaping religious persecution in France, a school for sons and daughters of Royal Navy seafarers, and laterly a film set for block-buster period dramas The Crown, Bridgerton, and Oscar-winner The Favourite. Queen Henrietta Maria, for whom it was completed around 1638, called it her house of delights and together with her husband King Charles I filled it with exquisite artworks from the most gifted painters...

The next ATA history group talk will be   on  Thursday 17 August at 7.30  in West Greenwich Library . Please come along and find out about Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who in 1931 exposed the famine in Ukraine and was murdered in 1935 aged 29.   Our speaker is Triangle resident Matt Ginn.     There are two connections with Greenwich. Jones’s aunt and biographer Margaret Siriol Colley worked at the Greenwich Seamen’s hospital during her career as a doctor and as a child our speaker, Matt Ginn, met the very elderly sister of Gareth Jones. She spoke to him about her mother’s time in the Ukrainian town of Hugheskova.  

A reminder that the next ATA history group talk is on Nikolay Ogarev (1813 - 1877), a Russian poet, historian and political activist who spent the last years of his life living in Ashburnham Place. Our speaker Joe Fean will be sharing his fascinating research on Ogarev’s life with us.  The title of the talk is The Tragedy of My Life: a comedy in five acts .  It will take place in West Greenwich Library on Thursday 18 May at 7.30pm

House History Workshop Saturday 25th March - 1:45 to 4:30pm at the Trafalgar Road Forum, Greenwich Interested in researching the history of your house? When was it built? Who has lived there and what were their lives like? Bring your laptop perhaps and any information you may already have found. The Greenwich Society hopse to be able to learn and share stories together with the help and advice from some expert researchers. * Julian Watson, retired Local History Librarian for Greenwich has a wealth of knowledge about how the town developed. * Ellen Lesley is a heritage consultant and historian and * Angie Birkett, who lived for many years in Greenwich, now works as a professional genealogist. Book early to secure your place as numbers will be limited. You can book through the Greenwich Society at https://greenwichsociety.org.uk/Events/ £15 for members, £20 for non members.

There is another of the highly popular free guided walks along Deptford Creek next weekend. Led by Mick Delap and Neil Sinclair, the walk is part of the Revealing The Creek programme, and explores the industrial heritage of Deptford Creek, uncovering and discussing its 19th century industrial activity and where it all happened on the Creek. The walk will take place from 11am to approx 2pm on Saturday, September 3rd. The walk will start and finish at The Old Joinery, Ravensbourne Wharf, Norman Road near the junction with Creek Road and Deptford Creek road bridge. To guarantee a place, customers must book via Eventbrite . There may be places on the day but this cannot be guaranteed as previous walks have proven very popular.

All Ashburnham Triangle Association members, their relatives and friends are cordially invited to join a free guided walk on Saturday 30th April to explore Deptford Creek's rich industrial heritage. The walk will be led by long-term Greenwich residents Mick Delap and Neil Sinclair, and is part of the Revealing The Creek programme, aimed at uncovering and discussing it's 19th century industrial activity and where it happened along the Creek. Revealing The Creek is a community heritage and performance project based on different stories from Deptford Creek's past, present and future. Its main partners are Raybel Charters, National Maritime Museum, Arthouse Ventures and is supported by The Heritage Lottery Fund. You can find the meeting spot for the tour - The Old Joinery - next to the Euromix concrete and aggregate site at the corner of Norman Road and Creek Road, and on the eastern side of Deptford Creek just up Creek from the Deptford Creek/Creek Road bridge. For public tran...

Many of you will have enjoyed Mick Delap’s excellent talks on the history of Deptford Creek. We are now very pleased to have a Feasibility Study for a proposed Creek heritage trail (CreekLink). This has been produced with the help of landscape designer and architect Madeleine Adams (Studioma). Funding for the Feasibility Study came from The Ashburnham Triangle Association, The Greenwich Society and the Greenwich Industrial History Society.   Here’s a link to the proposal. Please take a look. We welcome your feedback. Comments to mick@delap.plus.com or barbara.jreid@icloud.com  

Our next talk will also be in West Greenwich Library on Thursday 25 November at 7.30pm  Title: Huguenots, silk and the Greenwich connection. It was described as the biggest brain drain in history when some 250,000 Huguenots (French Calvinists) fled religious persecution in France at the end of the 17th century. About 50,000 sought refuge in England, with about 20,000 of them settling in or near London. Many of these self- described refugees settled in Spitalfields. Here an established silk weaving industry serving rich customers in Westminster and the City of London provided work for the extravagant silk weaving and dyeing skills of the Huguenots. Some, however, settled in Greenwich where the royal palace and wealthy residents in surrounding streets also offered business opportunities for the hard-working and largely very abstemious Huguenots. Our Speaker: Greenwich, City of London and Westminster guide Neil Sinclair will explore the connections between the Huguenots of Spitalfield...

The next ATA History group meeting is this Thursday from 7.30pm. Barbara writes: It seems a long time since our last meeting on zoom back in March. I have been waiting to see how things would develop over the summer and to see if we could meet up in person rather than on zoom. Our usual venue, the back room at the Ashburnham Arms is a great location and I hope we can be back there before too long but it’s a smallish space and I'm aware that at the present time this might prevent some people from coming to a meeting so with that in mind I have booked a larger venue:  West Greenwich Library for Thursday 12 August 7.30pm.  The main item is a talk by historian Ann Dingsdale on a remarkable woman, Marie Celeste de Casteras Sinibaldi, who in the 1860s lived at 1 South Villas, Greenwich South Street. She signed the 1866 women's suffrage petition and took out several very interesting engineering patents in the early 1860s including one for improvements in the manufacture of armour pla...

The next ATA history group meeting will be via Zoom on Wednesday 24 March at 7.30pm.  The meeting will last about an hour.  Margaret Luce will be giving a talk on The Charles Booth Notebooks: Ashburnham Triangle. Booth is famous for his London Poverty Maps and Notebooks. Margaret will look at what he said about some of the Triangle’s buildings, the people who lived in them and why some of the older buildings were demolished. She will take questions at the end of the talk. We will have time for a round up of local history programmes or websites you have found interesting and useful during lockdown, and finish with a look to future meetings. We may even be back at The Ash this summer. Let’s hope.  If you would like to join this or future meetings, please register your interest with Barbara Reid .

Barbara Reid writes:  It has been a long time since we have been able to meet at the Ash and it’s likely to be some time before we can gather again so I am organising a Zoom meeting on Wednesday 20 January at 7.30. The meeting will last approximately one hour. A link to the meeting will be sent nearer the time.  I will be giving a short talk on the history of the Roan Schools in Greenwich and Mick Delap will give an update on the Creek.  Some of our ideas/plans have had to be put on hold but we can discuss where we are at. 

From Barbara Reid: It’s a long time since our last History Hub meeting and it’s likely to be some time before we can meet again (one day we will!) at The Ash. Until then I’m hoping that we can meet via Zoom this winter. I’d like the meeting to include a talk and am in touch with a couple of possible speakers. I’ll email again when I have something organised.  In the meantime you might be interested in catching the next two sessions of Greenwich in 50 objects, developed by professional storyteller Richard Sylvester in partnership with Royal Museums Greenwich. It’s on Tuesday evenings 7.00 - 8.00pm and here’s a link for more information: https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/exhibitions-events/greenwich-50-objects Richard is working on a wider History of Greenwich in 100 object project (independent of Royal Museums Greenwich) and has set up a website: https://www.hogblog.org If you are stuck for something to watch I can recommend the Layers of London webinars. They are all available on YouTub...

If you have a bit of time this Sunday 31 May you might want to check out or get involved with London History Day hosted by Historic England. This year, in what are very difficult and challenging times for many, we are celebrating London’s resilience on Sunday 31 May. We will come together, virtually, to celebrate London’s resilience and share stories that remind us of the incredible strength, courage and community spirit Londoners have shown, today and throughout history. It’s a day to reflect, create, connect with each other and have fun. Here’s the link: https://historicengland.org. uk/get-involved/visit/london- history-day/?utm_medium=email& utm_source=newsletter&utm_ campaign=lhd

Barbara from our History Hub writes: I can’t say yet when we’ll be able to have another History Hub meeting but in case anyone has a bit of free time on their hands I’m flagging up something that you might want to take part in. Margaret Luce has been helping to trace the Charles Booth's Poverty Maps of London and more volunteers are needed. It’s something you can easily do at home. Booth’s Poverty map has poverty classifications for different buildings, but there has been no way to read the locations as data. You can help trace the colours and label them, so that researchers can use the data in the future. The London School of Economics library developed a website on Charles Booth’s London which includes his maps and notebooks. You can find out more here All the information about the project and a demonstration of how to do the tracing and colouring is on a YouTube webinar produced by Layers of London You can do as little or as much as you like because the maps are divided into sma...

The notes from February’s History Group meeting may be found here .

The next ATA History Group meeting will be on Monday 10 February in the back room of the Ashburnham Arms at 7.30pm. The meeting will feature a talk by Triangle resident Neil Sinclair. Neil is going to kick off the theme of Triangle Lives with a talk on the journalist, author, playwright and film scriptwriter Edgar Wallace. Wallace was born illegitimately into poverty in Ashburnham Grove in 1875. Despite leaving school at 12, he rose to great acclaim and fortune as a novelist and scriptwriter. Wallace’s eventful and colourful life ended far from its beginning in a terraced house in Greenwich. He died in 1932 in Beverley Hills, California while working on the script of Hollywood blockbuster King Kong . Please join us for a drink. There will be an update on our other projects and please bring ideas for future talks.

It’s a story of 19th Century industrial glory, 20th Century decline - and new promise for the 21st Century Creek. On Friday ATA resident Mick Delap will be giving an illustrated talk about the Creek’s story, ending with a discussion of the Creek’s future. Mick will be speaking in West Greenwich Library, Greenwich High Road on Friday 10th January, 7.30 - 9.00pm. Admission is free and all ATA and Creek residents are welcome. More information here .

Next meeting will be on Monday 10 February at the Ashburnham Arms (back room) 7.30 - 9.00pm It will feature a short talk by Neil Sinclair who is going to kick off Triangle Lives with the journalist, author, playwright and film scriptwriter Edgar Wallace. Wallace was born illegitimately into poverty in Ashburnham Grove in 1875. Despite leaving school at 12, he rose to great acclaim and fortune as a novelist and scriptwriter. Wallace's eventful and colourful life ended far from its beginning in a terraced house in Greenwich. He died in 1932 in Beverley Hills, California while working on the script of Hollywood blockbuster King Kong .

When Cutty Sark was launched on 22 November 1869, it was only meant to last 30 years. 150 years on and the ship is still here in Greenwich, open to explore and experience what life was like on board the world's fastest tea clipper. Celebrate this extraordinary survivor over its birthday weekend, between 22-24 November; for the whole birthday weekend anyone living or studying in Greenwich will be able to visit Cutty Sark for free. They will also be offering the 150th visitor each day a year's membership to Royal Museums Greenwich. If that's not enough, anyone who joins as a Member at Cutty Sark over the weekend can also enjoy a special discount! More details:  https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/exhibitions-events/cutty-sark-150-birthday-weekend

The ATA’s Mick Delap is giving a talk to the Mycenae House local history group about the linked histories of the Ashburnham Triangle and the Creek. It’s on Monday 11 November from 10.15am to midday. You are very welcome to attend, there’s a charge of £3 for visitors. The venue is Mycenae House, 90 Mycenae Rd Blackheath SE3 7SE