THE PARISH CHURCH TO RUSHEY GREEN. 125 
Adjoining the wooden house referred to is a brick house of the 
19th century, and further south come some houses of the 18th 
century, much altered in outward appearance, one the “Jolly 
Farmers,” having been rebuilt in recent times. 
Next to these last is Sion House, a large brick fronted and 
cemented house, with the rear portion weather boarded. This 
house was formerly known as the ‘‘George.”” In 1588 it was the 
property of Mr. Peter Manning, of Downe in Kent, who sold it in 
that year to Mr. Humphrey Streete, citizen and merchant tailor of 
London. Mr. Streete left a rent charge of 20s. a year to the poor 
of Lewisham on this house, which is still paid. The ‘‘ George” 
Inn was removed from hence to its present position at the corner 
of George Lane some time in the 18th century. There formerly 
existed in the parish church a Guild of our Lady and St. George, 
_and this house may have been originally connected therewith. It 
has been purchased by the Unitarians, who intend erecting a church 
on the site of the stables. 
The Lewisham Free Library, which comes next to Sion 
House, was opened in 1900. It stands on the site of a house known 
as Cliffe Villa. 
In his will Mr. Colfe records that out of consideration of the 
great poverty of the parish and the inability of most to relieve the 
poor, he desired that in 1662 three almspeople were to be chosen, 
and subsequently two more, making five in all. They were to be 
threescore years old, past hard bodily labour, and able to say with- 
out book the Lord’s Prayer, the Christian’s Belief, and the Ten 
‘Commandments. They were to have 3d. a day allowed to them, 
and every second year a gown of black or dark-coloured cloth with 
a badge bearing the words ‘‘ Lewisham in Kent” on the breast. 
He further desired that in 1662 £210 should be laid out in building 
three almshouses of flint and well burnt brick, and during the 
succeeding years two more houses for the other almspeople. Every 
house was to have a chimney, one room below of fourteen or 
fifteen feet long and twelve feet broad and a little buttery, and 
_ each of them a good loft or room above with convenient stairs to 
- go up to it. They were to be joined together and built on two 
sides of the yard of a house he had purchased, together with a 
little brick room with a window, where the five almspeople were to 
meet daily for prayer. Little garden plots were to be laid out for 
each, sixteen feet broad. The gate next the street was to havea 
good lock carefully locked every night, and every almsbody was to 
have a key to that lock, but yet not suffered to go out in the night 
without leave of the master of the reading school, who was 
apparently to exercise a general supervision. 
Mr. Colfe died in 1657, and the Leathersellers’ Company, as 
his trustees, proceeded to give effect to his wishes. At a meeting 
of the Court held on 7th July, 1663, it was resolved that as the 
arrangements detailed by the Founder for building the almshouses 
gradually would prove expensive, the whole of the houses: should 
