Classical Notes in Arsenal

A couple of weeks ago I went to Woolwich for the afternoon. Yes - that Woolwich, in south-east London, where the Woolwich Arsenal used to be. I went there very quickly and very smoothly on the Elizabeth line, which has a very smart station in the midst of the original factory site. The design of the Elizabeth line station is simple but beautiful: a smart concourse of metallic columns at platform level, subtly decorated with the colours of the Royal Regiment of Artillery (red, blue and gold) and the Royal Engineers (blue and red), gives onto a pleasing dark brick-lined escalator shaft and ticket hall with an undulating ceiling of alternate smooth white plaster and more, slightly-lighter brick. This seems to be a nod to the Georgian brick buildings outside. The entrance is framed in bronze (with a rifling design) and by the upmarket Gail’s coffee shop to the left, and the upmarket M&S Food Hall (definitely not a supermarket) to the right. One wonders what special incentives are being offered by the developers Berkley Homes to encourage businesses like these to set up middle class shop in what closely borders an otherwise working-class district of London.

Assembly, by Peter Burke - closeup

The site has been impressively restored. The last time I went to Woolwich was around 40 years ago and it felt like a place way beyond the feel of the central London that I knew from my student time. It was a deprived area notable for the free car ferry across the Thames (considered at that time to be too wide for a bridge, though there now exists one further downstream at Dartford). The ferry still exists. There’s a foot tunnel alongside, rather like the one at Greenwich. 40 years ago the Arsenal site itself was pretty much derelict, like much of south London’s Thames riverside. I didn’t linger. There were lots of semi derelict parts of London in the 1980s and though they were fascinating after their own fashion, they were also slightly forbidding. It's much improved now, but a little soulless.

The Thames at Woolwich, with the two Woolwich ferry boats at rest on either side

But here, now, gentrification has set in and alongside the swanky coffee shop and supermarket (shh!) rise blocks of apartments up to 30 floors high and a great number of rather fine brick buildings have been restored and repurposed from their munitions factory phase into shops, offices, a theatre and block after block of flats.

There has been a settlement at Woolwich from around 250BC, but it really took off when Henry VIII decided to found a naval dockyard here in 1512, close enough to Greenwich Palace, a little further upstream, from where he could go to observe the latest ships being built for the various wars being fought in his reign. The munitions factory which had originally been based near the Tower of London made its way to the same site for convenience and safety. A Tudor mansion known as Tower House, built in 1545, was located at Gun Wharf, along with a warren for breeding rabbits for meat and fur. By 1670 the site was already too small and the Navy bought more land, creating a whole new range of buildings for developing armaments. The Royal Laboratory was built in 1696 for the development of gunpowder and fireworks, which came in handy for when the Royal Artillery band played Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks here in 1762. In the 1710s the ‘Great Pile’ buildings were constructed, of which the Dial Arch is a survivor.

In the 1800s a huge wall, built by convict labour, was built around the site, necessitating gatehouses and guard buildings. It’s outside the Main Guardhouse that there’s a modern statue called Nike by Pavlos Angelos Kougioumtzis, a gift from Olympia in Greece for London’s staging of the Olympic Games in 2012. It was meant to stand on the Meridien line in Greenwich Park, with one wing in one hemisphere of the World, and the other in the other. Perhaps it might fly over there one day. There's a 'Winged Victory of Samothrace' vibe going on with it, not unpleasant. It looks a bit like two sycamore seed pods.

Nike, by Pavlos Angelos Kougioumtzis

The Arsenal 'Gunners' football team was formed in Dial Square in 1886. It has since moved out to Highbury and the Emirates Stadium, as you know, taking the name Arsenal with it. That's why Arsenal Station on the Piccadilly Line is there rather than here.

Many of the buildings are listed, including some Grade 1. Wandering about one finds all sorts of interesting reminders of the past – and another object among the usual porticos and colonnades actually of the classical era: a genuine statue of the Roman god Deus Lunus, apparently unearthed by British soldiers in Alexandria in 1801 and brought to London and set up in the Arsenal. Details seem somewhat sketchy. I don't think they kept records back then.

The statue of Deus Lunus

Down by the waterfront, a parade of bronze sculptures called Assembly seem engaged in earnest talk. To my mind, as a group they looked a bit creepy, but close up they resembled statue moulds for bronzes, but made of bronze themselves – a gaggle of Gormleys (though actually by artist Peter Burke). Interesting casts of light and shade in full sun, so the eye is deceived into thinking something is hollow or not. Why they are there? Who knows – but they do fill a gap between two pepper-pot guard houses and reflect the industrial past of the area with their rusting bodies.

So if you find yourself at a loose end (or a loose cannon) one afternoon down Woolwich way, you might find a wander round the Arsenal worth a bit of your time.