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:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)