A visit to Well Hall

A trip to the doctor was a good excuse to spend some time in Well Hall Pleasuance, a park in what was the grounds of an old Tudor Manor House. Only the oldest part of the house remains ‘The Tudor Barn’. It dates from 1525 and was built by William Roper, whose family occupied the nearby moated manor house, of which now only the moat remains. William was married to the daughter of Thomas More, advisor to Henry VII and Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532. A new manor house was built in the park in the 18th century to replace the moated Tudor one, which was demolished.

Edith ‘EE’ Nesbitt, author of The Railway Children, lived in the house on the site from 1899 until 1921. The whole property, by now derelict, passed to Woolwich Borough Council in the 1930s and they developed the site as a park, retaining the Tudor Barn as an art gallery, library and museum. Although the Art gallery opened and continued post-second World War, the library and museum were never opened and instead the barn was developed as a restaurant and an event venue. It also housed a pub for some years.