HISTORIC ELTHAM
The Eltham Hill Gates In
John Kennett investigates the mystery of the former gates at Eltham Hill.
1909 Richard Gregory wrote in The Story of Royal Eltham of ‘Handsome
iron gates which guard the entrance to ‘Todman’s Nursery’ opposite Lyme Farm. The gates are of wrought iron and from the initials woven into the design they are thought by some to be the work of Van Dyck who was given rooms at Eltham Palace by Charles 1 where he painted some of his great pictures, but there is no documentary evidence. The gateway may have formed an entrance to the palace directly from the high road.’
The theories rumbled on for some years and the memories of long-time residents were occasionally aired in Gregory’s Olla Podrida columns in the weekly Eltham Times.
Nursery advertisement of 1885
A snapshot of these memories tells us that fronting Eltham Hill is an old red brick wall with open land beyond, incorporating an enclosed walled area and a corner summer house, which in Victorian times was let by the Crown to members of the Todman family as a market garden, hence the name Todman’s Nurseries. Within the front wall are set the historic gates which appeared to lead to nowhere significantly h o we ve r they had not always been in this position but further along near the summer house. An old resident remembers that in Mr Todman’s time a sewer was being laid in the roadway and some of the old wall was dislodged and
toppled over. Mr Todman had the wall rebuilt with a low brick wall topped with railings (as seen today) and removed the
20 The Eltham Hill gates in 1909
gates to their new position where the old wall was breached. Suitable pillars were built to hold the gates which were greatly admired by the locals.
After Todmans the nursery land was let as part of a small farm run by the Heath family from a cottage that stood on the site of the Mecca bingo hall. The gates obviously had some provenance as they caught the eye of Sir William Nevill Montgomery Geary, Bt. of Oxon Hoath, Tonbridge, Kent.
He had loaned an early English iron gate for display at the Victorian & Albert Museum and in a letter of May 1919 asked for the gate to be returned by winter time. The rub came in the second paragraph where he stated, ‘I had observed a very beautiful iron gate (photo enclosed) at Eltham and on making enquiries relative thereto I
found it belonged to the Crown but was a leased property being the entrance to an old enclosure surrounded by a brick wall.’ He offered to exchange his 18th century gate, on loan to the V & A, for this one and further states, ‘After a year’s delay the Crown decided not to sell. I believe it (the gate) was moved to its present site from elsewhere and it is slowly rusting to ruin.’
The V & A commented that ‘his gate is far finer than the Eltham gate and the only example of an English iron gate we possess.’
They also The gates and old wall in 1914
commented in a letter to the Crown, ‘I know that some of the Eltham treasures belonging to the Crown have found a home elsewhere and I hope that in so good a cause it may
We are proud of Eltham
SEnine
Telephone boxes (now removed), 19 between the pillars which sup
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