Blackheath

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About Blackheath

Blackheath is an area in southeast London, centred around a section of open public grassland ('the Heath') and straddling the boundary of the London Borough of Lewisham and the London Borough of Greenwich. The focal point of Blackheath is its centre which is known as the Village, and the heath itself Blackheath

A pretty village and common, separated from Greenwich Park by Shooters Hill Road and originally focused on the junction of roads to Greenwich, Woolwich and Lee. Most of the heath, which got its name either from the colour of the soil or from its bleakness, was in the hands of the earls (originally barons) of Dartmouth from 1673. In addition to its use as pasture, Blackheath was extensively quarried for gravel, particularly in the eighteenth century. This left a terrain of craters and ravines, a few of which survived to be used as landfill sites for bomb rubble after the last war, (a subsidence in April 2002 caused serious disruption for months afterwards). The first street to be completed was the prosperous Dartmouth Row in the 1690s, but with that exception the Dartmouths were slow to grant leases on their freehold and the heath in 1780 had just a few roadside cottages on its southern edge

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