History of the site
The site was the line of the Nunhead to Greenwich Park railway. This was originally opened in 1871 and was extended to Greenwich in 1888. The Greenwich Park station was on the site of what is now the Ibis Hotel on Stockwell Street. The line ran through the allotments and then through what used to be the car park for the police station in Royal Hill. For more pictures of where the line used to go, see
http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Greenwich_Park_line.html
where we found the picture below.
Piecing the story together
After the railway ...
The railway closed in 1917 and we don't know what the site was used for until the 1960's or 70's when it was used as a lorry park and then a garden centre. After the closure of the garden centre we believe the site was used for some form of horticultural training. In around 1980 the London Borough of Greenwich allowed the Burney Street Project to use the site as allotments on an informal basis. This meant that the site did not enjoy the formal protection of the Allotment Act.
This lack of protection came home to roost in 1993 when the Council gave notice that it wanted to close the allotments in order to allow a developer to build 23 houses on the site. This caused local uproar and a vigorous campaign began in order to save the allotments. The campaign was substantially successful in that the Council agreed that only 7 plots should be sold in order to build two large houses on Circus Street with the remaining plots being given the formal Allotment Act protection.
We would very much like to know more about the history of the site. If you have any information please feel free to contact us using the contact form on the homepage or the button below.
​
​
source for much of the above: Edith's Streets - http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2014/12/london-and-greenwich-railway-and.html)