Chapel House, Blackfen

I and a friend from the LGMG caught the bus from North Greenwich to visit Red House, William Morris's Arthurian fantasy-home in Bexleyheath. On the way we spotted this extraordinary little folly, weirdly marooned next to a roundabout on Blackfen Road. My photograph of it was pretty hopeless, so here's one lifted from Google Earth:

Why, we pondered, take what seemed to be an ordinary small house and fit it with toy Gothic details to make it look like a chapel?

The great Bible of British folly-hunting, by Headley & Meulenkamp, doesn't help us in this instance as the house doesn't get a mention. However Professor Google comes to our rescue. It was once in the grounds of Danson House and was constructed in the 1760s as an eyecatcher or, according to some sources, was an even older building that was adapted for the purpose. An old postcard showing the house was popped onto Flickr some time ago, and here is what one viewer commented, rather movingly:

My grandfather puchased this house sometime in the 1920s and I lived there as a boy during the 1960s - The Powers that Be destroyed the vista of the house when they decided to force us to sell the front garden where the yew tree and well was in order that the new widened road has a "nice wide grass verge" onto the newly built roundabout. The well had a tomb stone (covering it) upon which was engraved lurid threats of what would happen to anyone who drank the water from the well. Notwithstanding the threats of death, there was a pump in the house that took water from the well. The tombstone is still there having been dismantled and re-erected in front of the chapel's battlements - the tombstone's writing (and scull and crossed scythes) is no longer visible. After the roadworks my father decided enough was enough and sold the house and land to the timber merchants next door who used the land and neglected the house. Very very sad and completely incomprehensible as to why the planners took the front garden - I remember crying when they chopped the tree down - my father kept the trunk which may still be there in the side building.

            My father used to tell me of the times when the steam traction engines would stop outside to fill their water tanks.  

            The house is older than one might think - Wooden beams set into the inner facing battlement wall in the loft indicate that it was already an old cottage when it was converted to a folly chapel in the 1760-70s.

In this map from the original series of the Ordnance Survey in the 1880s you can see Chapel House and the accompanying well marked:

An unexpected addition to the day!