THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
277 
approaches to Woolwich and the Eoyal Arsenal, is now proceeding rapidly; 
but it is feared that the mercenary demands of the patriotic land-holders will 
compel the Board of Ordnance to alter the whole plan of the contemplated 
fortifications.”—(N.P. fol. 28vo.) 
The building called Severndroog Castle, which is triangular in plan, was 
erected in commemoration of the capture in 1755 of an Indian fortress of 
the same name. It has been very handsomely furnished and decorated, and 
the view of its old painted doors, walls, and cabinets, now perishing with 
damp and mildew, the tattered Indian armour and weapons covered with 
rust and cobwebs, affords a melancholy subject of reflection as we mount 
from stage to stage of this dilapidated belvedere, through stair-cases where 
the window-sills are covered with thousands of generations of deceased 
flies and no mean amount of defunct and moribund wasps and bees. But 
fresh is the view from the summit: all the fresher perhaps from the pre¬ 
liminary decay; and glorious the picture of hill and stream, meadow and 
woodland, bowery village and gleaming corn-fields. A few years ago, the 
prospect was for a time still more beautiful, for the Ordnance triangulators 
had fixed their “crows-nest” on the summit, which gave a wonderful 
increase of extent to the panorama. On the N.W. side of Shooters' Hill, 
a little above the Eoyal Military Academy, is a Mineral Well, celebrated 
for its curative properties. Queen Anne is said to have used it; and 
Evelyn, under 1699 writes :—“August: I drank the Shooters Hill waters.” 
The well is now in charge of a Sapper, and still frequently visited by invalids 
of the neighbourhood. 
Of Plumstead Common we have not much to say; but we would point 
out that the little mound seen about a furlong to the north of the road 
before it descends to the Woolwich Cemetery gate, and having much the 
appearance of a disturbed Anglo-Saxon tumulus, was the old practice-butt 
of the Eoyal Artillery; when the battery was placed on the west side of the 
ravine which runs between the old windmill and the “ Slade School.” Of 
Plumstead Church we have as little to note, except that it is about the 
ugliest in England, always of course excluding Woolwich Church and 
Weedon in Northamptonshire. Woolwich Church, while we are on this 
unpleasant subject, was built in the reign of George 2nd, under Queen 
Anne's Act; but it is to be noted that it does not occupy the site of the 
old church, its predecessor. That building stood on the north side of the 
present iron-paled way through the churchyard, this footway not being 
then in existence. 
West of Plumstead on our map is “ Bramble Briers,” a park-surrounded 
mansion existing not many years ago on the bank overlooking the Thames 
and the hills of Essex. The name, not being considered euphonical, was 
changed to “ Bramblebury House,” and a pleasant place it was; but street- 
builders and eligible-situation merchants fixed their sordid eyes upon the 
locality, and even euphony could not save it. The mansion itself was con¬ 
verted into the vicarage-house of a new church, the park laid out in streets 
and terraces; and this will explain how we come to have a row of houses 
bearing the odd name of “Vicarage Park.” The old windmill seen to the 
west was standing in the memory of many living inhabitants. Its place 
was on the east side of the road still called Mill Lane, a little above the 
Garrison Church. A second windmill, named in surveys “ the New Mill,” 
stood in the field behind the residence of the Commandant, 
