A brief history of Woodlands Farm
 

Woodlands Farm is an 89-acre livestock farm located between Eltham, Woolwich, Plumstead and Welling. It is made up of farm buildings (including an ex-abattoir site), extensive fields, hedgerows and wetlands. In the north of the site is Clothworkers Wood.

Woodlands Farm is a very young farm: younger than you might think. Like most places in England, Woodlands Farm was originally covered in dense woodland similar to that seen in Oxleas, Lesness Abbey or Bostall Woods. This woodland was cleared for farming, villages or settlements, and to provide a supply of timber for fuel and construction, e.g. for houses and ships. This clearance of the woodland began a long time ago, as far back as the Stone and Iron Ages, but it was most rapid during the last 2000 years.
                                               
However, old records and maps suggest the site of Woodlands Farm was only cleared of its original woodland from the 1790s onwards, which is late in history. In other words, Woodlands Farm has only been used for farming and cleared of its woodland for about 200 years.

The Baldock Family
ran the Farm
from 1901-1904

Records of the management of Woodlands Farm begin at about the end of the 19th Century, when the Farm was run by the Baldock family. From about 1904 through to 1919 Woodlands Farm was run as a mixed livestock/arable farm, with cattle, horses, hay, cereals, root vegetables and fruit being the main produce.

Hay-making
early 1950s

Although information is scarce, it was clear that other features were being managed as well as the farming side. Woodland, hedgerows and wetlands were being created, managed, updated or removed, according to the needs of farming or to maintain security.

Workers at Woodlands Farm - early 1950s

Woodlands Farm
for sale - 1920

Woodlands Farm was taken over in 1920 by the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society (RACS), who developed the site as a ‘model’ pig farm, with piggeries, barns, paths and fields to grow food for the pigs. At the same time the RACS built a modern abattoir at the north of the site. Pigs were reared at Woodlands Farm and these, along with animals from other farms, were slaughtered in the abattoir to supply local shops and butchers with pork and bacon.

Mr Beck
RACS Farm Manager
early 1950s

In 1983 the Farm was threatened with extinction by a Department of Transport plan to build a motorway, the infamous East London River Crossing, across the Farm and through neighbouring Oxleas Wood. The road would have involved destroying two-thirds of the Farm. After a record-breaking public enquiry and massive opposition to the road spearheaded by People Against the River Crossing, (PARC). the government eventually dropped the scheme in 1993.

The threat of the East London River Crossing finished the neglected Farm as a working entity. It lay semi-derelict until 1995 when the Co-Operative Wholesale Society (CWS) applied for planning permission to build houses on part of the land. This was rigorously opposed by a community group, the Woodlands Farm Alliance.

In 1997 the Woodlands Farm Alliance came to an amicable agreement with the CWS to buy the Farm on a 999-year lease with the help of a very generous grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund with matching funding from Bridge House Estate Trust.

The Woodlands Farm Trust was founded in 1997 to keep access to the Farm for community use on the principles of sustainability, conservation, organic farming, education and community involvement.

If you feel you could contribute to the historical records of Woodlands Farm, we would like to hear from you.

Much of our historical information has come in the form of anecdotes from local people who used to work at Woodlands Farm or the Abattoir or knew somebody who did, as well as a family history by Mrs. Weekes (neé Baldock) who lived at the Farm in the early 1900s until she was married in the 1920s.