And why is Woolwich station called Woolwich Arsenal? Because the nearby Royal Arsenal at Woolwich used to be UK's most important munitions factory, that's why. If you were once a subjugated citizen of the British Empire, it's quite likely you were subjugated using ammmunition from here.
King Henry VIII kicked things off in Woolwich nearly 500 years ago by establishing a royal dockyard. The isolated conditions alongside the Thames estuary were later thought perfect for the storage of gunpowder, so the Board of Ordnance moved in and snapped up 31 acres of Woolwich Warren. Facilities grew, the site expanded, and more and more factories were built (that Napoleon bloke, he took a lot of beating). The Royal Arsenal reached its peak during World War I, employing more than a hundred thousand workers and stretching more then four miles downriver to Crossness. Munitions aplenty were churned out during World War II, but then a steady decline set in. In the 1950s Woolwich was home to a top secret outpost of the Government's Atomic Weapons Establishment (but don't worry, people of SE18, because they only made the detonators here not the nuclear bits). Finally in 1967 virtually the whole site was shut down and sold to the GLC, who promptly nipped in and built Thamesmead instead.
A couple of Royal Arsenal sites lingered on in MoD use until the 1990s, one of which is at the heart of the latest redevelopment activity close to Woolwich Town Centre. It's so close to the town centre that the original Royal Arsenal Gatehouse now stands cut off in the middle of Beresford Square market, severed from its historic hinterland by an arterial road. Cross the A206 and you'll find what's left of Royal Arsenal West - several preserved military buildings and a lot of very new flats. At the moment the old outnumbers the new, and the old is mostly rather lovely. The Royal Brass Foundry and the Military Academy boast bold Georgian frontage bedecked with with painted coats of arms and gleaming clockfaces. The Paper Cartridge Factory and the Carpenters' Shop have been occupied by the Firepower Museum and the Greenwich Heritage Centre respectively. Walk down No 1 Street to the pierhead and you can still (almost) imagine this as unspoilt history.
Several of the old riverside munitions buildings have been converted to apartments, and highly desirable they look too. But also very exclusive, as you can tell by the series of metal entrance gates around the perimeter that swing automatically open and closed as residents come and go. This is fenced-off heritage, a residential fortress, with all the personalised numberplates on the inside and all the riffraff kept firmly out. Priorities for residents include their own first-floor parkland, their own deli (no mere corner shops here) and a gymnasium housed inside a marvellously ornate 18th century Shell Foundry (I've never seen anywhere quite so appropriate for pumping iron). If you've bought a flat in this part of the Royal Arsenal development, you'll rightly be rather smug about it.
But not all the flats are so appealing. Some rather more contemporary blocks have been erected as infill, of the kind that would look pleasant enough anywhere else, but whose architectural ordinariness here appears particularly out of place. Alas they're only the start. A whole new swathe of construction is underway between the river and the town, and this is going to be anything but historic. 1700 properties are promised, most of them apartments, courtesy of developers Berkeley Homes. They coughed up a small fortune to get Crossrail to stop in their half of Woolwich, and for that they get to create their own small town worth a rather larger fortune. The Armouries development will have eco-heating, brown-roof technology and a central lagoon - all fine and dandy I'm sure, but the sole link to the past will be its name. Even DialSquare, home to the founding fathers of Arsenal Football Club, is destined to be reborn as apartments. Precisely the same fate as the old Highbury Stadium, in fact.
If you can get yourself a mortgage and you fancy living somewhere relatively cheap yet swanky, maybe the new Royal Arsenal will suit you fine. There's a convenient DLR station, as well as a Thames Clippers pier on your very doorstep. But if it's history you want, I'm afraid your new flat may be partly responsible for wiping that out.
King Henry VIII kicked things off in Woolwich nearly 500 years ago by establishing a royal dockyard. The isolated conditions alongside the Thames estuary were later thought perfect for the storage of gunpowder, so the Board of Ordnance moved in and snapped up 31 acres of Woolwich Warren. Facilities grew, the site expanded, and more and more factories were built (that Napoleon bloke, he took a lot of beating). The Royal Arsenal reached its peak during World War I, employing more than a hundred thousand workers and stretching more then four miles downriver to Crossness. Munitions aplenty were churned out during World War II, but then a steady decline set in. In the 1950s Woolwich was home to a top secret outpost of the Government's Atomic Weapons Establishment (but don't worry, people of SE18, because they only made the detonators here not the nuclear bits). Finally in 1967 virtually the whole site was shut down and sold to the GLC, who promptly nipped in and built Thamesmead instead.
Several of the old riverside munitions buildings have been converted to apartments, and highly desirable they look too. But also very exclusive, as you can tell by the series of metal entrance gates around the perimeter that swing automatically open and closed as residents come and go. This is fenced-off heritage, a residential fortress, with all the personalised numberplates on the inside and all the riffraff kept firmly out. Priorities for residents include their own first-floor parkland, their own deli (no mere corner shops here) and a gymnasium housed inside a marvellously ornate 18th century Shell Foundry (I've never seen anywhere quite so appropriate for pumping iron). If you've bought a flat in this part of the Royal Arsenal development, you'll rightly be rather smug about it.
