THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
239 
covers 333 acres, in addition to the areas occupied by its two detached 
magazine establishments. And, whereas a local pamphlet entitled “ Reasons 
for rebuilding Woolwich Church, 1718,” sets forth that “ There is near 
1000 Families belonging to the Navy Dock Yard and Dope Yard, 200 
Families belonging to the Ordnance Service, and about 100 Independant of 
either, which after the rate of 5 to each Family is 6500, and the said old 
small church cannot (at most) contain above 600 People. 
And the Parish is very Populus and dayly increasing,” the populations of 
Woolwich and Plumstead parishes are now 42,000 and 33,000 respectively. 
Mr Lysons* narrates that, in 1796, the number of artificers and labourers 
(exclusive of convicts) employed in the various departments of the Woolwich 
Warren was about 1500, including 300 boys; and that the making of 
canvas bags for the use of the Warren furnished employment for a great 
number of poor women in the town. 
I propose now to glean together a few known particulars concerning the 
very earliest history of the Royal Arsenal's site. 
Traces of a Roman occupation were here discovered in 1853, when some 
Roman pottery was dug up, and presented by the Board of Ordnance to 
the museum of the Royal Artillery Institution. Again, in 1856, some 
excavations for the foundation of a boring mill in the Dial Square brought 
to light a very graceful funeral urn and some more fragments of pottery, 
which are now deposited in the same museum at Woolwich. It will 
be remembered that the great Roman road, known as “ Watling Street,” 
passes (between London and Rochester) over Shooters' Hill, barely 1J miles 
distant from the Royal Arsenal. Dr Stukeley in his “ Itinerarium Curio sum, 
1724,” speaks of “on Black-heath a vast tumulus, now us'd as a butt for 
archers, hereabouts in great request till H. viii th . time, and hence the 
name of Shooters ' hill ” 
To the Romans has been assigned the credit of having reclaimed the 
great river marshes by the embankments of the Thames between Gravesend 
and London, for whose maintenance—so far as the Arsenal is concerned— 
the Government still pays annual “ wallscot ” dues. Walker's Thames 
Report of 1841 states, “The probability is that they are the work of the 
ancient Britons, under Roman superintendence. That they are the result 
of skill and bold enterprise, not unworthy of any period, is certain.” Sir 
William Dugdale, Sir Christopher Wren, and many others, considered these 
great works to be of Roman origin; whilst some have supposed that they 
were constructed by the abbots of Stratford in Essex and Lesnes near 
Erith, whose abbeys were founded in the twelfth century. In the year 
a.d. 1236 a sudden rise of the tide caused the river to overflow the marshes, 
and Henry III. appointed a commission “ for the overseeing and repairing 
the breeches, walls, ditches, &c., in diverse places between Greenwiche and 
Wulwiche.” 
Woolwich was called by the Saxons Ilulviz (a settlement on a creek) by 
which name it was designated in Domesday Book a.d. 1086, and shown 
near “Plumestede in Client.” The name of the place has been since 
% “ Environs of London.” 1796* 
[VOL. YI.] 
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