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the area and there was great hardship among the workers. In this
respect, the people in the neighbourhood of Woolwich were a little
more fortunate in that some compensation was provided by the
increasing demand for labour at the government's armaments depot
at Woolwich and the expansion of electrical engineering at a riverside
factory.
During the 1914-18 war, a number of industries returned to the
area although the post-war period saw the closing of the Foreign
Animals' wharf (locally known as the Deptford Cattle Market), the
site being acquired by the Government for a Supply Reserve Depot.
(Much of this region is now zoned for housing development.)
Still later, a further compensating movement began and some of
the larger buildings and dwellings were utilised as new factories
and commercial undertakings.
Areas in close proximity to the River Thames are, generally
speaking, industrial but, as the result of a pattern of living inherited
from the Industrial Revolution era, these districts tend to be more
densely populated than other parts of the Borough. However, the
scene has been changing and, in recent years, there has been a
movement of people away from the riverside to Eltham and Kidbrooke
regions which earlier in the century had been considered
"rural". These areas are now almost entirely built over.
Prior to 1919, housing was considered hardly a local government
responsibility and, in 1915, 1,000 houses and a large number of
timber bungalows were erected in the Borough by the Government
for its munitions and other workers. Subsequent to this, however,
housing has always been given a high degree of priority, a policy
which started with the conversion into flats of a number of large
houses in Blackheath acquired under the Housing and Town
Planning Act in 1919. This was followed by the purchase for
housing of Page's Estate (previously known as Eltham Estate) and
an area in Charlton known as "Hanging Wood Lane". Gradually
other sites such as Charlton Park, Middle Park, Horn Park, Cherry
Orchard, Victoria Way, Timbercroft Lane and Woodlands Estate,
etc., were acquired and development proceeded until halted by the
second World War in 1939. By this time, 14,474 dwellings had
been erected in the Borough since the year 1919, 9,648 in the
Woolwich area and 4,826 in Greenwich and, of this total, the local
authority had been responsible for 5,891. Of the remainder, the
majority were built in accordance with private enterprise plans
although from 1934 the London County Council had also been
operating housing schemes within the Borough boundaries.
During the second World War, when new building had necessarily
ceased, the Borough suffered heavily from bomb damage and