Greenwich Park Railway Line - letter from 1999

Letter reproduced  from GIHS Newsletter May 1999

From Alan Palfrey

IThe Greenwich Park Railway Line ran from the site of the Ibis Hotel in Greenwich, down to Blackheath Hill and then on to join the line which runs between Lewisham and Nunhead. 

I remember very well the remains of the line in Greenwich, and the tunnel under Blackheath Hill.  There was still evidence of the old railway from Stockwell Street to Royal Hill in the 1960s in the form of brickwork and stone coping at the Burney Street corner with Royal Hill where the Hampshire Farm Dairy was. (Dougie Mullins at the Dairy used a hand cart and then a little red electric vehicle).  There were also remains of the railway on the opposite corner of Royal Hill, the other side of the railway bridge was on the corner of Royal Hill and Peyton Place. The line must have been in a cutting running parallel to Royal Hill, going under Prior Street, where bridge brickwork and coping remained on the junction with Royal Hill and Blissett Street.  This was where Fludyer’s grocers shop was before they  were bombed out and  moved down to Burney Street.

I believe a firm called Cawoods used the space left by the line of the old railway at the junction of Blissett Street and Royal Hill. They had a solid fuel - clinker - business, and later moved down to Blackwall Lane.  They used to park their lorries on the Royal Hill railway site.

At Blissett Street was the beginning of the tunnel which eventually ran through to the other side of Blackheath Hill and the next station.   We sheltered in that tunnel during the war - I remember being there the night that the rocket fell on  Woolworths in Lewisham. At Blackheath Hill, on the site of the station, had been was a small engineering firm called Elliotts - nothing to do with the electronics company in Lewisham.  The site of the station is now a housing estate.

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