Last Updated 25th March 2012
For a long time, the high ground of Erith, which was also commonly known as North Heath, was mostly open farmland, with a old Post Windmill (hence Mill Road) with extensive growing varied fruit orchards.However, the area of Erith managed to develop with the times, helping it to thrive on the new changes made in Britain by the Industrial Revolution. Erith became an industrial town and a booming area for such industries as the flour mills and oil works.The fact that much of Erith then was based around the River Thames helped thus enable extensive opportunities by the widely open waterfront, through timber imports for example. Because of this new growing prosperity and the prospects of the suburb, Erith and Northumberland Heath became hubs for the middle-classes.
One part of Northumberland Heath's history which stands out most is the workhouse built on the estate land at Sussex Road. This workhouse or "spike" as it was known in 19th century slang, became then such an integral part of Northumberland Heath area that this part of Erith came to be known as "Spike Island"
"Spike Island" was a term familiar to many a vast majority of residents in the area. Mill Road inherited it's name from the post mill situated in St Paul's Road in the alley way to the right at the rear of shop premises on the corner, of which today only the remains of it's old brick base can be seen today, after a fire destroyed the upper lower roof.
The name Northumberland has Anglo-Saxon and Viking origins, the names of Hengist and Horsa Roads come from the ancient Viking kings. Northumberland means "the land north of the stream or river" but, seeing as Northumberland Heath is south of the River Thames, it is thought there either was a river south of Northumberland Heath at the time, or that the old Vikings did not have a compass. Much confusion has been developed around the name of Northumberland Heath and its possible links with Northumberland County and the Duke of Northumberland. No evidence has as yet been discovered or found.
Despite the influx of the middle-classes, initially in the Erith and Northumberland Heath area, the working classes lived in a very large proportion of these areas, most likely attracted to or by the growing industrial opportunities, as well as the greater land available for housing, thanks to the Enclosure Act. The Enclosure Act was an act of parliament which led to large sections of land, previously farmland for animals and crops, being made into land for residential or commercial uses.
An interesting point, particularly for those attending Belmont School, is the site the school is built on was previously a sanatorium for sufferers of scarlet fever and of diphtheria. A pivotal part of the Northumberland Heath and Erith communities was the Church and has continued to the present day.The Catholic and Methodist churches flourished in the area, and remains even today. Although the local St Paul's Church was consecrated in the year 1901, many of the local people, particularly from the working classes, preferred the Family Church in Mill Road, which was previously known then as the City Mission.Links with the Friary have been strong in Erith and Northumberland Heath since the 1960's, with the actual Friary being built in 1903 and the church in 1962.
The local Erith and District Hospital was built in 1928, providing several facilities, such as the small outpatients department and a radiography department. The hospital grounds were extended to also then include an underground bunker, introduced in order to provide a safe haven for the inpatients, staff and local community should there be any bomb or gas threat. This underground hospital remains to this day, as in fact one of the only two on the British mainland.
*with regards to Mark Shead with additions.
More recent views of "the village"
