Wood Cottage and the Maller Nurseries of Lee

There is a postcard that appears from time to time on Lewisham Facebook reminiscence groups and for sale on eBay of a small house set back from the road with the label Burnt Ash Hill.  In the former locations, it often causes consternation as there are no obvious current or even recent landmarks.  The house was Wood Cottage and this post seeks to tell at least some of its story, and more particularly the nurseries that it was linked to.

The cottage probably dates from the 1870s and was broadly where the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes now stands (pictured below) – midway between Lee Station and what is now the South Circular of St Mildred’s Road and Westhorne Avenue. 

The origin of the name is unclear, although the most likley scenario is after one of the Wood family who farmed the neighbouring Horn Park Farm who may have farmed the land for a brief period in the 1860s.

The firm running the nursery for much of its life was Maller and Sons.  It was set up by Benjamin Maller, a gardener who hailed from Surrey (Sussex in some censuses).  Born in 1823, he was living with wife Mary and daughter Mary at Belmont Lodge in 1851 – which was attached to Belmont a large house  on what is now Belmont Hill, where he was the gardener. 

In the 1861 census, Maller had moved just down the hill and was listed at 5 Granville Terrace, later it was to have the address 61 Lewisham High Street.  It is now part of the Lewisham police station site, but before that, became part of the Chiesmans empire.  Maller was listed as a ‘Nurseryman employing two boys’ in the census. Long and Lazy Lewisham which is covering the history of the High Street, notes that he had been there, trading initially with Robert Miller for around 5 years.

The partnership with Miller was short lived as was another with George Fry which ended in 1860. The next decade saw a rapid expansion, the 1871 census suggests he was employing 31 men and 6 boys. 

By 1881 they were listed in the census as being in Leyland Road – the numbering isn’t totally clear as the road was being developed and the house is just described as ‘The Nursery.’  This is pictured above (back middle), it was later numbered 72 and puts it now at the corner of Leyland Road and Alanthus Close. The nursery shown on an 1890s Ordnance Survey map. below, along with several other areas cultivated.

This would have been land leased from the Crown, part of the former Lee Green Farm (pictured below) which ceased operating in the1860s.  While the exact geography of the farm isn’t completely clear – it seems to have been a narrow farm covering land to the east of what is now Burnt Ash Road and Hill from Lee Green to around Winn Road.  Just a few hundred metres wide, it shrank rapidly as homes and shops were developed by John Pound following the arrival of the railway in Lee in 1866.  Land was also temporarily lost to clay pits and brickworks just south of Lee Station and north of The Crown.

In 1881 Maller was listed as a nursery man with 30 acres employing 4 men 8 boys.  The family included grown-up children Mary, Benjamin and Herbert – in the 1881 census at ‘the Nursery, Leyland Road’.

There had been  of significant reduction in labour since 1871 – 31 men to just 4 over 10 years.  This probably relates to the land they cultivated being rapidly lost to Victorian suburbanisation as streets like Dorville, Osberton and Leyland Roads were developed. 

Benjamin died in 1884 but the business continued as B Maller and Son afterwards, with Benjamin Boden Maller in charge – living variously at 107 and 111 Burnt Ash Road (there was access to the site from Burnt Ash Road too) and 72 Leyland Road. Benjamin Boden Maller died in 1913 although his son, also Benjamin, continued for a while.  However, in the 1939 Register he was listed as a Civil Servant living in Reigate.

So what did they grow? In 1879 an advert in the Kentish Mecury suggested the land cultivated from Wood Cottage (Burnt Ash Hill site) was for roses. The site around Leyland Road (listed as Burnt Ash Lane) was used for trees and and shrubs as well as having greenhouse plants and other plants that needed warmth – stove plants. While they cultivated Brockely Nursery they had moved from there as the Billinghursts (see below) were there by 1880 (1),

It seems that before the end of the century there was a change in focus with a lot of plants being grown for seed – they were regualrly advertising their illustrated seed catalogue to the gardeners of south east London and beyond (2).

In the early 20th century, they would also have auctions of surplus stock in September each year. The 1910 sale included 20,000 winter blooming heaths, gorse, winter aconites, ferns and palms (3).

The land that is now part of Alanthus Close seems to have remained with the Mallers until around the mid 1920s. On Burnt Ash Hill they will have added the land of the former brickworks less the frontage onto Burnt Ash Hill and a development next to The Crown centring on Corona Road.  This will have been an extension of the land cultivated from Wood Cottage.

It seems that the land was split three n the mid to late 1920s when the Mallers left.  There were different names at 107 Burnt Ash Road (May Scotland), 111 Burnt Ash Road (George Friend Billinghurst) and Norris Buttle at Wood Cottage.

May Clark Scotland was appropriately Scottish, born in Perth, she was running a florists at 111 Lewisham High Street by 1911, the name over the door was Alexander Scotland.

George Billinghurst was born around 1871 and seems to have spent his early years in Eliot Place in Blackheath, his father Friend Billinghurst was also a gardener.  There is no obvious link to the more well known Blackheath Billinghurst family, which included disabled suffragette (Rosa) May. They seem to have cultivated Brockley Nursery for a while (4), after the Mallers moved out, but family moved on to Croydon. By 1891 George was listed as a gardener, a decade later a florist and by 1911 a nurseryman living in Annerley Road.

Norris Buttle was living at 172 Ennersdale Road in 1901 and at 31 Leahurst Road in 1911 (these were probably the same house as the Ennersdale originally dog-legged around) – he was listed as a gardener then nursery gardener. 

With all three of them, details beyond 1911 proved difficult to work out.  Certainly none of them were at 72 Leyland Road – it was empty in 1939 as were 8 out of 10 the houses of that end side of the street going southwards.  It was a different picture going northwards.

Time was running out for the nurseries too, the land cultivated from Wood Cottage was lost in the 1930s as leases ran out and the Crown sold the land for development.  The land behind Wood Cottage was lost to the Woodstock Estate of Woodyates and Pitfold Roads.  Further south, the new South Circular and the developments around Horncastle and Kingshurst Roads, pictured above, further depleted the land.  The Cottage itself was lost to the new Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes – the church had acquired the land in 1936.

The land sandwiched between Leyland and Burnt Ash gradually was encroached upon with development at the southern end of Leyland Road although there were memories of roses being grown until the early 1960s when many Crown Estate leases ended. 

And finally, while no longer cultivated, there is a small piece of undeveloped land where the nursery was – the green space to the south of Alanthus Close. On some satellite images of the area in drought conditions show rectangles, probably the ghosts of greenhouses past – a little less clear than the prefabs around Hilly Fields.

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Notes

1. Kentish Mercury 16 August 1879
2. Kentish Mercury 09 February 1894
3. Kentish Mercury 02 September 1910
4. Croydon Guardian and Surrey County Gazette 3 July 1880

 Credits

• Census and related data come from Find My Past (subscription required)
• Kelly’s Directories were accessed via a combination of Southwark and Lewisham Archives, with the reference to Lewisham High Street via the on-line collection of the University of Leicester
• The postcard of Wood Cottage is via eBay in January 2021
• The drawing of Lee Green Farm is from the information board at Lee Green
• The photograph of the land between Burnt Ash Road and Leyland Road is part of the collection of Lewisham Archives, it remains their copyright and is used with their permission.
• The Ordnance Survey map is part of the collections of the National Library of Scotland – it is used here on a non-commercial licence
• The satellite image of Alanthus Close is via Apple Maps

The Woodstock Estate – The 1930s Homes of Woodyates & Pitfold Roads in Lee

The area to the west of Lee station had been developed in the decades following the arrival of the railway – Lee station opened in 1866.   The Lee Manor Conservation Area started ti be built soon after and the area beyond it filled over the next few decades – much of it by the local builders John Pound and later W. J. Scudamore. The maps below from 1863, 1898 and 1914 show the gradual development clearly (1). This post looks at some of the later development – Woodyates and Pitfold Roads, originally referred to as the Woodstock Estate. But first a bit of context …

Other than along Burnt Ash Road and Hill, the area to the south and east of the station remained cultivated though. This was partly by farms such as Burnt Ash and Horn Park which survived until the 1920s and 1930s respectively; but also nurseries run by the Maller family.  These were the days before the arrival of the South Circular with St Mildred’s Road ending as a T junction at Burnt Ash Hill.

Grant funding was made available in 1933 for the dual carriageway of Westhorne Avenue to link up with the section from Well Hall Road to Eltham Road  that had been completed in 1930.  However, it is clear that preparations for Westhorne Avenue had been on the go for a few years before that, as developments were being drawn up either side which backed onto the new road.  On the northern side was a development originally known as the Woodstock Estate – now referred to as Woodyates and Pitfold Roads.

Woodstock Road was the original name of what is now Woodyates Road; however it was merely a short lane to the Board of Works Depot (above) and to a Post Office Sorting Office (below). These will be covered in specific posts in their own right in early 2023, both are now part of Jasmine Court.

The Woodstock Estate itself was advertised for sale in the 1931 Lewisham Council Handbook (2), and no doubt other places too; prior to development it had been allotments and part of the Maller and Sons nursery as the map below shows (3).  It had originally been part of Lee Green Farm and is likely that it was the location that the parachutist Robert Cocking met his death.

The houses offered much subtle variety in style with the house in the architect’s impression having proved hard to find, the nearest seemed to be the top of the trio pictured.  They have been much altered since they were built with lots of extensions upwards and outwards.  Those that have remained close to the way they were built are now around 1000 times more expensive than when they were initially advertised.  Sales of 3 bedroom houses in late 2020 and early 2021 were £615,000 and £545,000 with a garage in Woodyates and Pitfold Roads respectively.  While the development was next to the about to be built South Circular, unlike the earlier developments along St Mildred’s Road, there was no frontage onto it – the development backed onto it with generally quite large gardens from Pitfold Road.

The was another development from the same year that would have offered strong competition a little way to the west – the Verant Lane Estate, whihc included roads like South Park and Further Green Road.

Some of the original green of the allotments were retained as part of the development (see bottom photograph above) which was certainly grander than the Scudamore developed homes of Holme Lacey Road from a similar era.  A small gated green area remains at the south eastern corner of the development.  In the middle of the estate a limited amount of allotments were retained too, although this too succumbed to development in the end.  It is now home to a church which, on a cursory glance, appears to offer grim consequences for the non-believer (4).

As for the developers, G H Builders, they seem to have been a medium sized builders in the south east, building homes in Carshalton and Banstead in 1930; however an on-line newspaper search gleaned little more information.

The agents W & H Elliotts were based at the same address as the developers.  Again, little was to be found of them in on line newspaper and other searches other than a similar development to the Woodstock Estate in Edgware in 1933 (5).  The company may still be in existence, a private company incorporated in 1931 from the same era still exists.

And finally… Who lived on the Woodstock Estate? The 1939 Register was collected just after the start of the War, and the research for this post included looking at who was there in the low numbers of Woodyates Road (excluding those at the Sorting Office and Council Depot) for the 20 homes on the north side of the street.  All were occupied.

The households were small – the average fractionally over three and none bigger than five.  This may have been a slight understatement of those living there a couple of years before as the children will have been evacuated almost a month before the 1939 Register was taken. There was only one with a couple of redactions – people who are or may still be alive, so a good indicator of children.

The average age of head and partner was almost 48, the median (mid-point) was 49 – about eight years older than their counterparts on Further Green Road – an estate built at the same time.  The average age was a dozen or more years older than the Arts and Crafts flats on Old Road and the Art Deco Lee Court on Lee High Road which were also built in that period.

Very few women worked outside the home – those that did tended to be the grown-up children of the road – there were a trio of shorthand typists, a couple of clerks, a draper’s assistant, and a milliner (perhaps working at Lee Green’s Reeds) and a machinist. 

The men were a mixture of professional, clerical and skilled manual jobs, they included a Stonemason, several Civil Servants, a Brewery Manager; the grown-up children had jobs of less seniority.  Only one was entitled to the Heavy Work supplement which entitled extra rations.

We’ll return to the former Woodstock Road to look at the Parish Offices and Sorting Office.

Notes

1. The maps are on a Creative Commons from the National Library of Scotland from 1863, 1898 and 1914
2. This image was copied from somewhere on social media in mid-2017, I thought that it was the excellent cornucopia of all things London local government – LCC Municipal – mainly to be found on Twitter, but I was mistaken – so if you posted it do tell me so that I can properly credit you!
3. On a Creative Commons from the National Library of Scotland
4. Some cropping happened with this photograph ….. the warning is for an electricity sub station
5. Hendon & Finchley Times 24 March 1933

The 1939 Register data is via Find My Past – subscription required