Bathway Quarter is an area of historic interest in the centre of Woolwich, South East London. Most buildings in the Bathway Quarter are Grade II*, Grade II or locally listed, while the area as a whole is designated a conservation area by Greenwich Council. With the exception of the Old Town Hall, the listed buildings date from the late-19th or early-20th century. Several were designed by local architect Henry Hudson Church, their civic use reflected in their grand elevations formed of red brick with stone detailing.
Location
The area is bounded by the following streets: Wellington Street to the south, Market Street to the west (a section of the west side of the street is included), Calderwood Street to the north, and Thomas Street to the east. Polytechnic Street divides the quarter in two sections; the western part containing mainly (former) public buildings, the eastern part mainly Polytechnic buildings. The latter forms a solid educational block. Bathway runs east-to-west through the municipal precinct, lending its name to the entire quarter. The Bathway Quarter is close to Woolwich Arsenal station.
History
The area which is now Bathway Quarter was mostly virgin land up till the late-18th century. Old Woolwich was then situated further north, near the Thames and the Woolwich Ferry. A small cluster of cottages stood around Green's End. A few houses of the 1760s survive on Thomas Street, facing General Gordon Square. Formally these are not part of the Bathway Quarter. Concerted development of the area did not begin until after 1799, when the Powis brothers, Greenwich brewers, took a 99-year lease of the land from the Bowater estate. In 1812 most of the land was acquired by Robert Ogilby, an Irish linen merchant.
Thomas Street and William Street (now Calderwood Street) were laid out around 1805, taking their names from the Powis brothers. Around the same time, the Board of Ordnance formed Wellington Street to improve road links between the military developments at Woolwich Common and the Royal Arsenal. Wellington Street gradually became an important commercial street, although always secondary to Powis Street. A new market was set up in the area around 1810 but failed to take off and is remembered only in the name of Market Street, where a few houses from this period survive. The Market House had its main entrance on William Street, marked by a turret. On the south side it was bordered by East Street, later renamed Bathway. To either side of the market, Upper and Lower Market Street were laid out (now Market Street and Polytechnic Street).
The first Woolwich Town Hall was built on the corner of William Street and Upper Market Street in 1840 but was sold upon completion to the Metropolitan Police to serve as a court hall, where upon an almost identical building was erected on the corner of William Street and Lower Market Street to serve as a town hall. The first was demolished around 1900; the latter has survived. The current town hall was built after a design by Alfred Brumwell Thomas in 1903–05. New buildings for the Metropolitan Police (1910) and the Magistrates' Court (1912) formed a small administrative quarter. Other public buildings followed: the public baths (1894), the public library (1901) and a community health center (1939).
The most ambitious private development in this area was the Grand Theatre, built after a design by Bertie Crewe and opened by Sir Henry Irving in 1900 . With a capacity of 1680 it was claimed to be the largest suburban theatre in the country. In 1908 it became the Woolwich Hippodrome with variety shows twice nightly, and by 1923 it was a full-time cinema. The building was demolished in 1939 and rebuilding was stopped by the outbreak of war and only completed in 1955, as the Regal Cinema. From 1982 until its demolition in 2015 it had various uses, of which the nightclub N'tyce was perhaps the most notorious.