45 Squared 4)MORTGRAMIT SQUARE, SE18
Borough of Greenwich, 130m
To Woolwich to a Square that isn't, and may not be for long.
Though much of central Woolwich has been redeveloped, a lot of the west end of the town centre remains relatively unloved. The far end of Powis Road is particularly desolate, including an outdoor car park, a row of deserted shops and a former Art Deco Co-op with boarded-up retail frontage. It's here we find the unpromising entrance to Mortgramit Square, a street descending beneath some flats, headroom 4.0m, guarded on my visit by a discarded Tesco trolley. The walls look modern but glance underfoot and half the width of the street is a stripe of cobbles, or as a tedious pedant would say "I think you'll find they're setts". Things don't get any more normal down the bottom.
The street bends, not for the last time, to round a four-storey redbrick building with curvaceous corners. Looks workshoppy. On the opposite side is the gated entrance to a service yard, then a garage door with Please Do Not Use This Drive As A Toilet! written in red marker pen. I guess this isn't a great place to come after the pubs shut, or even before. Tucked back a bit is an electricity substation with 1932 inscribed above the door, from an era when municipal utilities took a bit more pride, and up above is a fantastic little enclosed bridge allowing free passage from one building to the next at top floor level. And all the time still cobbled underfoot, and still nothing looking in the least bit square, so what on earth is going on?
Back in the 18th century when Woolwich was all about artillery and armaments this was the site of the Dog Yard Brewery, purveyors of ale to a willing military clientele. The owners in 1782 were the Powis brothers William, Richard and Thomas, three brewers from Greenwich, after whom Woolwich's main shopping street is still named. The western part of the site was repurposed as housing in 1807, a dense cluster of three barrack-like buildings known as Mortgramit Buildings and occupied mainly by low-paid labourers. The peculiar name came from the three co-founders of the site...
John Mortis, a paintmaker based on the High Street
George Graham, a builder based locally
Thomas Mitchell, a corset-maker based on Powis Street
...and I cannot tell you how long it took me to find that out. Despite the development plainly having three sides it became known as Mortgramit Square, and despite being demolished in 1883 it gave its name to the whole dogleg cut-through that was formerly Dog Yard. The new occupants were carters who needed sheds and stables, themselves replaced in 1938 by John Furlong who built a four-storey garage. The first floor was a car park (accessed via internal ramp) intended to accommodate customers of the two large cinemas recently opened a short walk to the west (both of which survive as hives of fervent evangelicalism on the Lord's Day). The remaining floors were mostly for maintenance and the caretaker lived on the other side of the road above a separate workshop, hence the bridge across the street.
Furlongs expanded onto the High Street with a forecourt selling petrol, and their retrofrontage seemingly still offers MOTs, auto repairs and a car wash service. Meanwhile Mortgramit Square duly doglegs on, still cobbled, acting mainly as a service road for the rear of the surrounding businesses. Chief amongst these is Rose's Free House, a proper corner pub, where I doubt the clientele often order the Fine Old Bottled Sherry etched into the back window. Rather larger is the First Choice Cafe, recently revamped from overfussy yellow to a more palatable black. But for the most evocative ye olde Woolwich experience try the narrow pigeon-splattered alley down the side of Plaisted'sWineHouse, now a Nigerian takeaway, squeezing beneath extractor fans and an old glass lantern for a grimy glimpse into when dockers ruled Dog Yard.
And come soon because Mortgramit Square is heavily pencilled-in for redevelopment. Of course it is, it's a rundown backalley at the western gateway to an expanding town centre replete with highrise towers, indeed it should have succumbed years ago. The first plan in 2004 (named Woolwich Triangle) proposed a hotel, department store and 82 homes but succumbed to the financial crisis a few years later. A 2018 proposal stepped things up somewhat by adding a 23 storey residential tower, but fell foul of affordability criteria and the intended demolition of a locally-listed building. Now there's a fresh scheme which retains the lovely brick garage and also the grain of the old backlane, but would erase the rest of Furlongs, the overbridge and a row of decanted properties on Powis Street. The tower stays.
This latest plan has passed a public consultation stage, whose documentation was rife with meaningless bolx about "a destination people are proud to call home" and "creating a sense of place and unique identities". If you're the minion who wrote "The unique and dynamic setting will greet people from the town centre welcoming all to the new sustainable community" I hope you sleep uneasily at night. But if all goes to plan there'll be 269 rentable properties on site, new retail frontage and a concierge's lobby where mechanics once greased axles. Woolwich would also get a new 23-storey landmark building in layered brick looming above the leisure centre and the ferry terminal, somewhat tantalisingly with an 8-sided cross-section. Although called Mortgramit Square it will thus be Mortgramit Octagon built on the site of Mortgramit Triangle, but then they never did name things obviously round here.
