Site: General Gordon's birth place - lost plaque, blue (1 memorial)
SE18, Woolwich Common, 29
Before its demolition in 1972, this house had boasted, at different times, two plaques commemorating Gordon's birth. See General Gordon's birth place - lost plaque, oblong for the other one. The house was built as 1 Kempt's Terrace and later became 29 The Common, Woolwich. We originally thought it was a little further south.
2022: Michiel Hegener wrote to correct our assessment of the location of this house. He attached a 1893-4 map taken from p.436, "Chapter 10, Woolwich Common and Royal Military Academy Areas” published by UCL's Bartlett but we don't know any further details. This shows a row of 9 houses on the east side of Woolwich Common between Jackson Street and (what is now) Kempt Street both of which used to connect with The Common. The northern-most of these is marked no 29 (Woolwich Common), and is on the corner of the junction with Jackson Street. This 1914 map also shows the 9 houses.
The book also contains a 1962 photograph (copied here) of the 9 houses, with the one on the northern corner, Gordon’s birthplace, closest to the camera, and with a round plaque (presumably this blue one) between the two first floor windows. The two northernmost houses were completed by 1833. “The first occupants of the corner house (later No. 29) were Maj. Gen. Henry William Gordon, RA, and his wife, Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Samuel Enderby, the eminent Greenwich-based whale-oil merchant. Here their fourth son, Charles George Gordon, was born in January 1833.” The rest of Kempt’s Terrace (another 5 houses) was not completed until c.1850. (The 2 houses at the southern end are in a totally different style and were part of a later development.)
Both maps show a footpath continuing the line of Jackson Street across the Common. Today this footpath no longer exists (and why would it, with Jackson Street no longer accessible?) but the dropped kerb access to it does.
The oblong plaque was on the house at the time of that photograph, c.1920, whereas the blue one was on the house when it was photographed and still there when it was demolished, 1962-72.
