Bostall Farm

Bostall Farm had a history dating back to 1800 at the latest.

At its quarterly general meeting in 1886, the committee of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society was given the go-ahead to purchase the 52 acre Bostall Farm and bought it for £6200, the following year. The neighbouring 122½ acre Suffolk (Place) Farm followed in 1899.

Three old cottages were pulled down at Bostall Farm, a new cottage was erected and the existing cowsheds were converted into piggeries. Two greenhouses were built for the production of cucumbers and tomatoes, The farm started to provide vegetables for the Co-op shops.

By 1899 Plumstead was expanding and development was moving in the direction of Bostall Heath. Land values rose sharply.

By late 1900, the building of the Bostall Estate had begun.

The part of Bostall Farm which lay over the future Bostall Gardens was left as unused farmland with farm buildings and a thatched tithe barn. In 1938 the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich bought the barn and the ground surrounding it to turn it into a park but the Second World War intervened.

Bostall Gardens was finally built over the location of Bostall Farm in 1952.





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