272 
MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS OF 
OLD WOOLWICH. 
BY J. HEWITT, Esq. 
Woolwich may be regarded as the Alma Mater of “ the Boyal Regiment," 
and many a time, on the burning plains of India or amid the snows of 
Canada must the remembrance of the pleasant walks of Shooters' Hill, the 
breezy banks of the Thames, and the green slopes of Eltharn and Erith 
have stolen-in to break the weary monotony of camp or barrack life. And 
to how many of those who, now grown men, have passed their early years 
in this neighbourhood, would the Woolwich of‘to-day be a puzzle and a 
mystery! The street upon street, the extension of dockyard and arsenal, 
the old roads stopped, the new opened, churches, hospitals, piers erected, 
railways piercing the hills, steamboats crowding the river; these and a 
hundred other changes would meet their gaze on every side, and almost 
lead to the belief that they had been realizing the sleep of Sleepy Hollow. 
No place in England perhaps has more rapidly changed than Woolwich. 
The converse of what one sees at the Christie Museum, one sees here. 
There, we wonder to find men's works of 100,000 years old so like what 
we still see before us; here, we marvel to observe how completely a poor 
hundred years has changed everything around. Woolwich in 1770-80 has 
scarcely a feature of the Woolwich of to-day. Let us look at the Maps of 
that time. Eirst the Survey of 1773. This is very curious, for it shows 
us that the road to London in that day was very different from our modern 
notions of Londonwards. The traveller proceeded from the Arsenal Gate 
up what is now Mill Lane (see the mill itself in map of 1778), at the top 
of which we find a convenient baiting-house (after such a long journey), the 
“Jolly Shipwright." Mill Lane was then, we see, called Cholick Lane. 
This seems to be the old Anglo-Saxon name, from Ceol , a ship, and wic, 
locus; the Ship-place or Ship-houses. Chelsea derives its name in a 
similar way : see Bosworth's Ang. Sax. Dictionary, in voce. Erom the 
tavern the London Load turns to the right, having the Common on the 
south, and the open fields (now the Barrack Eield) on the north. I ought 
before to have mentioned that this Survey of 1773 was made for the Board 
of Ordnance, and comprised lands belonging to .Mr Bowater, who resided at 
Mount Pleasant, a mansion with park, occupying the site of the present 
Boyal Marine Hospital.—See Map of 1778. In that map also we find the 
“Jolly Shipwright" (over-against the windmill), and further trace the 
London road. It ran westerly, by the Duke of York's Cottages (the old 
roadside oaks yet in being), then along the Charlton Park wall to the lodge 
gate, through that gate (though no gate there at that time), then turning 
to the right, along the lane (still existing in picturesque ruin) almost to the 
