History
The area was once known as Spike Island after the workhouse that was situated there. The area is mainly residential although there is a large industrial bakery in Belmont Road. Much of the housing stock is Victorian with some 1940's council developments and a Cottage estate built for local Vickers armaments workers in 1916. Nearest Railway stations are Erith and Barnehurst. There is a large Catholic church in Bexley Road (Our Lady of the Angels) with a friary attached, and a Church of England (St Paul's) in Mill Road. A conservation area on Brook Street safeguards some terraces that represent early examples of municipal housing.
Read more about this topic: Northumberland Heath
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“In all history no class has been enfranchised without some selfish motive underlying. If to-day we could prove to Republicans or Democrats that every woman would vote for their party, we should be enfranchised.”
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)