About the Royal Arsenal History Website (RAH)
My name is Steven Peterson, and as the founder and author of this website, I am passionate about uncovering and sharing the hidden stories of this historic area.
Uncovering the Secret City, exploring Royal Arsenal History
Growing up in Thamesmead in the late 1980s and early 90s, I explored the east end of the Royal Arsenal. During the summer holidays, I participated in a camping adventure scheme run by the metropolitan police called Thamesmead Adventure, located in the Royal Arsenal proof butt area near the danger building remains.
I was fascinated by the Royal Arsenal's ruins and would spend my free time digging up bullets, empty shells, grenade shrapnel and cannonballs. I wanted to know the ins and outs of the Royal Arsenal and spent my time exploring and mapping each area, from bomb shelters to railway tracks to the blast mounds of the danger buildings. It was the ultimate adventure, exploration and excavation, looking for the next building with no answer to what it was, buried under decades of wilderness. I can only describe it as a lost city, later to be confirmed one of the world's largest and most dangerous secret factories.
Here are some photos I took in the early 1990s:
Uncovering the Secret City, exploring Royal Arsenal History
Growing up in Thamesmead in the late 1980s and early 90s, I explored the east end of the Royal Arsenal. During the summer holidays, I participated in a camping adventure scheme run by the metropolitan police called Thamesmead Adventure, located in the Royal Arsenal proof butt area near the danger building remains.
I was fascinated by the Royal Arsenal's ruins and would spend my free time digging up bullets, empty shells, grenade shrapnel and cannonballs. I wanted to know the ins and outs of the Royal Arsenal and spent my time exploring and mapping each area, from bomb shelters to railway tracks to the blast mounds of the danger buildings. It was the ultimate adventure, exploration and excavation, looking for the next building with no answer to what it was, buried under decades of wilderness. I can only describe it as a lost city, later to be confirmed one of the world's largest and most dangerous secret factories.
Here are some photos I took in the early 1990s:
From Ruins to Reveal, Unearthing the secret Past of Thamesmead
In 1995, I attended the Woolwich walk when the closed off Royal Arsenal area was an open day to the public for the first time on the western side of the Royal Arsenal. I soon disappeared into the derelict buildings and it was there I first met an elderly man called Ray Fordham who has a bunch of old large keys who helped show me around some of the very old buildings. I had always had interest in the history of the area, there were so many features from the Royal Arsenal left in Thamesmead, such as Tump 53 and the firing range walls near butts wood. Most of the Royal Arsenal ruins were located behind Twin Tumps Way in the Royal Arsenal wasteland towards Woolwich. No one could tell me the answers I needed about the royal arsenal's connection with Thamesmead, there was no mention of it in schools or local libraries.
In 1995, I attended the Woolwich walk when the closed off Royal Arsenal area was an open day to the public for the first time on the western side of the Royal Arsenal. I soon disappeared into the derelict buildings and it was there I first met an elderly man called Ray Fordham who has a bunch of old large keys who helped show me around some of the very old buildings. I had always had interest in the history of the area, there were so many features from the Royal Arsenal left in Thamesmead, such as Tump 53 and the firing range walls near butts wood. Most of the Royal Arsenal ruins were located behind Twin Tumps Way in the Royal Arsenal wasteland towards Woolwich. No one could tell me the answers I needed about the royal arsenal's connection with Thamesmead, there was no mention of it in schools or local libraries.
Preserving the Past, Royal Arsenal Woolwich Historical Society
Concerned employees, including Ray Fordham, formed the Royal Arsenal Woolwich Historical Society (RAWHS) and set about ensuring the preservation of some two shipping container loads of artefacts and records. It's not widely known that the Royal Arsenal has a historical Society that amongst many other things and events for 40 years, sadly it wound down in 2017 and is no more.
This website is now the last hope of recording Royal Arsenal History before its forgotten. RAH has been up and running since 2008. I have added snippets of information collected for over decade, so it can be passed on to future generations.
I must add a special mention and thanks to Ian Bull, who has been a huge help in answering many questions on my research, especially in the Royal Arsenal Railway areas. Ian has provided excellent video presentations and vector redrawn maps. Ian was also a member of RAWHS and works with me to help save and promote RAH. Along the research journey, myself, Ian and Ray produced a number of RAH events for Peabody and places like the Dial Arch.
Myself and Ian Bull have been running Royal Arsenal History Tours to the public to help cover the costs of this website, storage archive costs and share RAH knowledge to as many people as we can.
We were approached by a well known publisher for a book about the Royal Arsenal, due to Covid-19 this did not happen. If any publishers are reading this, please contact [email protected]
Saving and Promoting History with Social Media and Archives
2012 - From researching Thamesmead's hidden history, I realised that there was a need for a larger audience and a platform to share the history with the public. I decided to create the Thamesmead SE28 All Stages. Facebook group, this is still active today and can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThamesmeadSE28
This Facebook group was an opportunity to bring the Thamesmead community spirit to life as it seemed to have rapidly lost its spark and became very disconnected in the 2000s. This group was a great success and provided a place for people to share their memories, experiences and photos of the area, as well as learn more about its history and bring the community together.
Today, the Thamesmead Facebook group has thousands members and has amassed many photos. The Facebook group's search tool is also a great resource for researching Thamesmead's history and serves as a local research archive.
2015 - The launch of the Royal Arsenal History (RAH) Facebook group, which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/royal.arsenal.history.
This group is dedicated to capturing history before it is lost and provides a valuable resource for family research, rare videos, photos, and documents covering 500 years of history from Woolwich Arsenal to Thamesmead and local areas. Today, this group has thousands of members to help out with any research and has more information than this website.
2019 - Thamesmead Archive for a short period and helped Peabody gain approved funding for expensive scanning equipment and resource using Royal Arsenal History archive as the main case with ties with Thamesmead's local history. Although a scanner was purchased, unfortunately not much happened on the Royal Arsenal side of things as only Thamesmead content was a priority, I was happy to help with Thamesmead related only content due to my passion for Thamesmead.
As Funds ran dry from on the Thamesmead archive, I started scanning RAH negatives myself and have thousands left to scan with 20 year old scanners. As the costs of archiving and webhosting is so expensive I have setup a donation page to help fund for new archival equipment and storage with hope to add all the photos from the RAH archive on a searchable platform in the future. Please see the donation button at the bottom of this page.
2022 - The launch of the RAH YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@royal-arsenal-history to share rare Woolwich Arsenal history and Thamesmead-related content with a wider audience. This RAH channel unfortunately does not get monetised.
Please help support RAH here
A New Book, The Town of Tomorrow; 50 Years of Thamesmead
A Labour of Love in 2019, working tirelessly for months with Peter Chadwick, Ben Weaver to create the 50th Anniversary book I wanted to see, incorporating the experience from Thamesmead All Stage Facebook group, personal experiences growing up and including as much Royal Arsenal History I could. Sourcing rare photos and proof reading captions. From researching the Royal Arsenal and Thamesmead, I had enough information for more than one book. The book was a success and a very special thanks was added in the credits. I have many photos for future Thamesmead projects.
The future, Unearthing the Secret City
The ultimate goal of the RAH Facebook group is to collect enough information and photos of the Royal Arsenal to unearth the Secret City and map each photo to each area, assigning map overlays on streets in order to bring forgotten history to Woolwich and Thamesmead. The group aims to help identify and preserve remaining Royal Arsenal features and buildings, cataloguing the Royal Arsenal's history and bringing to public attention the importance of the Royal Arsenal.
It would be an idea to one day walk around the Royal Arsenal in virtual reality or a video game.
The story of the Royal Arsenal is one of endeavour, ingenuity, innovation, and human industry through the experiences of the ordinary women and men, the military, the craft-masters, and the innovators, who together made the Royal Arsenal known across the globe.
From this history, a new town called Thamesmead was created from the remaining Royal Arsenal wilderness and we aim to document how this town has evolved over time.
Thank you
Thank you for visiting our website and I hope you find the information provided here interesting and informative.
I encourage you to join our Facebook group and YouTube channel for more updates and to contribute to the preservation and promotion of the Royal Arsenal's history.
Please contact [email protected] for any projected related Royal Arsenal history queries.
Concerned employees, including Ray Fordham, formed the Royal Arsenal Woolwich Historical Society (RAWHS) and set about ensuring the preservation of some two shipping container loads of artefacts and records. It's not widely known that the Royal Arsenal has a historical Society that amongst many other things and events for 40 years, sadly it wound down in 2017 and is no more.
This website is now the last hope of recording Royal Arsenal History before its forgotten. RAH has been up and running since 2008. I have added snippets of information collected for over decade, so it can be passed on to future generations.
I must add a special mention and thanks to Ian Bull, who has been a huge help in answering many questions on my research, especially in the Royal Arsenal Railway areas. Ian has provided excellent video presentations and vector redrawn maps. Ian was also a member of RAWHS and works with me to help save and promote RAH. Along the research journey, myself, Ian and Ray produced a number of RAH events for Peabody and places like the Dial Arch.
Myself and Ian Bull have been running Royal Arsenal History Tours to the public to help cover the costs of this website, storage archive costs and share RAH knowledge to as many people as we can.
We were approached by a well known publisher for a book about the Royal Arsenal, due to Covid-19 this did not happen. If any publishers are reading this, please contact [email protected]
Saving and Promoting History with Social Media and Archives
2012 - From researching Thamesmead's hidden history, I realised that there was a need for a larger audience and a platform to share the history with the public. I decided to create the Thamesmead SE28 All Stages. Facebook group, this is still active today and can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThamesmeadSE28
This Facebook group was an opportunity to bring the Thamesmead community spirit to life as it seemed to have rapidly lost its spark and became very disconnected in the 2000s. This group was a great success and provided a place for people to share their memories, experiences and photos of the area, as well as learn more about its history and bring the community together.
Today, the Thamesmead Facebook group has thousands members and has amassed many photos. The Facebook group's search tool is also a great resource for researching Thamesmead's history and serves as a local research archive.
2015 - The launch of the Royal Arsenal History (RAH) Facebook group, which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/royal.arsenal.history.
This group is dedicated to capturing history before it is lost and provides a valuable resource for family research, rare videos, photos, and documents covering 500 years of history from Woolwich Arsenal to Thamesmead and local areas. Today, this group has thousands of members to help out with any research and has more information than this website.
2019 - Thamesmead Archive for a short period and helped Peabody gain approved funding for expensive scanning equipment and resource using Royal Arsenal History archive as the main case with ties with Thamesmead's local history. Although a scanner was purchased, unfortunately not much happened on the Royal Arsenal side of things as only Thamesmead content was a priority, I was happy to help with Thamesmead related only content due to my passion for Thamesmead.
As Funds ran dry from on the Thamesmead archive, I started scanning RAH negatives myself and have thousands left to scan with 20 year old scanners. As the costs of archiving and webhosting is so expensive I have setup a donation page to help fund for new archival equipment and storage with hope to add all the photos from the RAH archive on a searchable platform in the future. Please see the donation button at the bottom of this page.
2022 - The launch of the RAH YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@royal-arsenal-history to share rare Woolwich Arsenal history and Thamesmead-related content with a wider audience. This RAH channel unfortunately does not get monetised.
Please help support RAH here
A New Book, The Town of Tomorrow; 50 Years of Thamesmead
A Labour of Love in 2019, working tirelessly for months with Peter Chadwick, Ben Weaver to create the 50th Anniversary book I wanted to see, incorporating the experience from Thamesmead All Stage Facebook group, personal experiences growing up and including as much Royal Arsenal History I could. Sourcing rare photos and proof reading captions. From researching the Royal Arsenal and Thamesmead, I had enough information for more than one book. The book was a success and a very special thanks was added in the credits. I have many photos for future Thamesmead projects.
The future, Unearthing the Secret City
The ultimate goal of the RAH Facebook group is to collect enough information and photos of the Royal Arsenal to unearth the Secret City and map each photo to each area, assigning map overlays on streets in order to bring forgotten history to Woolwich and Thamesmead. The group aims to help identify and preserve remaining Royal Arsenal features and buildings, cataloguing the Royal Arsenal's history and bringing to public attention the importance of the Royal Arsenal.
It would be an idea to one day walk around the Royal Arsenal in virtual reality or a video game.
The story of the Royal Arsenal is one of endeavour, ingenuity, innovation, and human industry through the experiences of the ordinary women and men, the military, the craft-masters, and the innovators, who together made the Royal Arsenal known across the globe.
From this history, a new town called Thamesmead was created from the remaining Royal Arsenal wilderness and we aim to document how this town has evolved over time.
Thank you
Thank you for visiting our website and I hope you find the information provided here interesting and informative.
I encourage you to join our Facebook group and YouTube channel for more updates and to contribute to the preservation and promotion of the Royal Arsenal's history.
Please contact [email protected] for any projected related Royal Arsenal history queries.
Why create this website?
There was always an interest in the local history, many features from the Royal Arsenal were left. Thamesmead was built around Arsenal features like the magazines and firing range walls. The GLC designed some brick parks where shaped as magazines (tumps).
Passfield Path, brick park in the shape of an explosives magazine (tump)
I wanted to know about the Arsenal remnant features and what they were used for. No one I asked could tell me the answers I needed. No mention of the Royal Arsenal connection with Thamesmead at school or in local library, just a large cannon ball in the teachers office at Hawksmoor Primary school.
Some well known feature examples on Thamesmead are Tump 53 and Tump 39 and the firing range walls at butts wood near Waterfield School/Woolwich Poly. Most of the Royal Arsenal East ruins where behind Twin Tumps way in the Royal Arsenal wasteland towards Woolwich, (back then it was behind Prestos/Safeway's store now Morrisons).
Decades later I decided to find the answer to some my own questions at the Greenwich Heritage centre on the Woolwich Arsenal West site. That's where there I met an elderly man Ray Fordham who answered all my questions with the aid of the Royal Arsenal Map on the wall.
Ray worked in the Arsenal since he was 16 in 1945 until the day the Royal Arsenal closed it's door in 1994.
Some well known feature examples on Thamesmead are Tump 53 and Tump 39 and the firing range walls at butts wood near Waterfield School/Woolwich Poly. Most of the Royal Arsenal East ruins where behind Twin Tumps way in the Royal Arsenal wasteland towards Woolwich, (back then it was behind Prestos/Safeway's store now Morrisons).
Decades later I decided to find the answer to some my own questions at the Greenwich Heritage centre on the Woolwich Arsenal West site. That's where there I met an elderly man Ray Fordham who answered all my questions with the aid of the Royal Arsenal Map on the wall.
Ray worked in the Arsenal since he was 16 in 1945 until the day the Royal Arsenal closed it's door in 1994.
A tribute to Raymond Fordham
My initial research started on the Thamesmead east firing ranges and Tumps (magazines). In 2008 and decided to answer some questions at the Greenwich Heritage Centre where I bumped into Ray Fordham again (since the open day in 1995).
Ray was so helpful with the information I needed, I decided to create this website the next day. Ray worked in the Royal Arsenal from the age of 16 until the day the royal arsenal closed its doors in 1994. Sadly, Ray Fordham passed away in 2021 at the age of 94.
Since 2008 Ray had shared much knowledge and materials with me for this website.
I dedicate this website to Ray Fordham for all his efforts in saving the Royal Arsenal's History.
Ray was so helpful with the information I needed, I decided to create this website the next day. Ray worked in the Royal Arsenal from the age of 16 until the day the royal arsenal closed its doors in 1994. Sadly, Ray Fordham passed away in 2021 at the age of 94.
Since 2008 Ray had shared much knowledge and materials with me for this website.
I dedicate this website to Ray Fordham for all his efforts in saving the Royal Arsenal's History.
Greenwich Heritage Centre 1931 Royal Arsenal Map on the wall
Ray Fordham Voicemail left on my answer machine the day after RAH website creation.
Press play for audio
Ray had continually motivated me to continue the work I was doing to save the history of the Royal Arsenal, if it was not for Ray this website would not exist today. Ray provided the original content to get the website up and running.
From this website
A central social hub for the people of Thamesmead past and present.
The RAH Facebook group has nearly 10,000 members, please click above to join.
Over 100 Royal Arsenal related video content published.
The BBC found RAH, BBC Radio 4 open country show below.
Website recognition 2016
Brigadier Ken Timbers, president of the Royal Arsenal Woolwich Historical Society (RAWHS)
Fly by night 2018
And many other events not listed
I found many of the answers I was looking for.
Example: Location of Thamesmead Adventure scheme during the school summer holidays. This rare 1940s video satisfied my curiosity of what was once at the campsite location mentioned previously https://www.facebook.com/groups/ThamesmeadAdventure/
Video date 1940: The gun tested was in service from 1908 until 1945.
Website goals
Collect as much information about the Royal Arsenal, photos and videos of the Royal Arsenal and create a public archive.
- Strive to promote, preserve and capture the rich history of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, Plumstead and Thamesmead.
- Add descriptions to each photo from the RAH archive collection
- Identify and preserve remaining Royal Arsenal features and buildings.
- To unearth the stories and secrets of the Royal Arsenal
- Bring the to public attention the importance of the Royal Arsenals history and how it shaped the world we live in today.
- Help create a virtual reality walk around of the Royal Arsenal site
- Attract publishers of for a computer game
- Various events to promote the local history.
- Provide tours of the Royal Arsenal.
- Scan many thousand of Royal Arsenal related negatives
- Keep local history alive