I have been to ... Charlton Village

I have lived in South East London for forty-five years, but there are still parts of the local area that I know very little about. When I worked in Greenwich and Brockley, I drove through Charlton Village at least three or four times each week, and yet it was only very recently that I have actually stopped there and had a walk around. On Saturday, Sue and I drove to Charlton Village, and parked in the car park outside Charlton House.

This building is one of the best examples of Jacobean architecture in London and was build between 1607 and 1612 to provide a home for Sir Adam Newton and the eldest son of James I, Prince Henry. Newton was Dean of Durham and tutor to the prince. Unfortunately, Prince Henry died very soon after he moved into Charlton House, and thereafter Sir Adam Newton occupied it as King James's Receiver-General.

The Newton family remained as tenants of the house until 1658, when the house and its surrounding land was sold to Sir William Ducie. It changed hands again in 1680, when it was bought by Sir William Langhorne. It then passed to Sir John Conyers (Sir William Langhorne's nephew) in 1715 and was eventually inherited in 1777 by Jane (née Weller), the wife of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson.

During the First World War, the Wilson family loaned the house to the Red Cross, who used it as their district headquarters before converting it into a 70-bed hospital. It was sold the Metropolitan Borough of Greenwich in 1925 (now the Royal Borough of Greenwich), who subsequently used the house as a museum and library, and - more recently - as a community centre, and who turned its surrounding parkland and gardens into a public park. Although the main building is currently shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, part of the building is being used as a COVID-19 vaccination centre.

Sue and I walked past the recently restored Summer House ...

... and out onto Charlton Road (the B210). We turned right toward St Luke's Church, ...

... crossing Charlton Church Lane and walking past the local war memorial in the process.

Sue and I had particularly wanted to visit St Luke's because it houses the graves of two men who were the victims of politically motivated murder during the first half of the nineteenth century. The first of these is that of the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated, Spencer Perceval. He was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons by John Bellingham, who was a merchant who thought that he was entitled to compensation from the government after being unjustly imprisoned in Russia.

The second is that of Edward Drummond - who was personal secretary to several Prime Ministers, including George Canning, Lord Goderich, the 1st Duke of Wellington, and Sir Robert Peel - and who was assassinated by Daniel McNaughton in 1843 whilst walking down Whitehall towards Downing St. Drummond was shot in error, as McNaughton - who was later judged to be mad - thought that Drummond was the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.

The church also has the almost unique honour of being allowed to fly the ensign used prior to the 1800 Acts of Union on its Saint's Day and St George's Day. This honour was bestowed on the church because of its historic role as a landmark used by ships navigating the River Thames.

Due to the pandemic, the church was not open to the public, but Sue and I were able to wander around the graveyard and memorial garden, and to have a very interesting chat with one of the volunteer gardeners.

By the time we had left the church, it was time for lunch, and Sue and I went to the nearby 'The Baguette Café' to eat.

It has an outdoor seating area and serves basic but well-cooked (and generously sized) lunches, sandwiches, and drinks. Sue ate scampi, salad, and chips, and I had their burger breakfast (two beef burger steaks, a fried egg, fried onions, baked beans, and chips), and we each drank a café latte.

We then returned to Charlton House to collect our car, pausing en route to look at the oldest mulberry tree in England!

It was planted in 1608 and was intended to be the first of many such trees in the area, and to become the basis of a domestic silk industry. (A large plantation of mulberry trees was also created in the grounds of former Greenwich Palace.) The arrival of cheap silk thread from China and Huguenot silk weavers from France brought an end to the project, and this tree is the last reminder of this failed attempt to create a new English silk producing industry.

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Spencer Perceval

Spencer Perceval was the seventh son of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, being the second son of the Earl's second marriage to Catherine Compton, Baroness Arden.

Spencer Perceval's links to Charlton are interesting. As a boy, he lived in Charlton House whilst his father was First Lord of the Admiralty. The house was close to Woolwich Dockyard, which was the Royal Navy's main shipyard at the time.

Perceval returned to live in the Charlton area in the late 1780s when he and his brother - Charles, the Lord Arden - rented a house not far from Charlton House. The two brothers fell in love with two of the daughters of Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson. Sir Thomas had no objections to Lord Arden marrying his oldest daughter Margaretta but did object to the marriage of the then impecunious young lawyer Spencer Perceval to his youngest daughter, Jane. When she was 21, Spencer and Jane eloped, and were married in East Grinstead. They seem to have enjoyed a happy marriage and had thirteen children.

He was buried in the Egmont family vault in St Luke's Church on 16th May 1812, the day after his assassin was found guilty and sentenced to death.

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Edward Drummond

Edward Drummond was a member of the Drummond banking family. He was buried at St Luke's by his youngest brother - the Reverend Arthur Drummond - who was the church's Rector in 1843. Drummond was distantly related by marriage to Spencer Perceval, whose sister - Mary - had married Drummond's uncle, Andrew Berkeley Drummond. The families were further linked when Andrew and Mary's daughter Catherine married one of Spencer Perceval's sons - the Reverend Henry Perceval - on 27th March 1826.