Two Coats of Arms from Kent in London by F. C. Elliston-Erwood, F.S.A. - Archaeologia Cantiana

of call for coaches or a popular resort for the gentlemen of the Woolwich Garrison and their permanent or transitory ladies, he took over the greater part of the buildings, including its famous Assembly Rooms, as a School for Young Gentlemen, and then, in 1850, the Assembly Room was fitted up as a Chapel, where services were held till the present parish church was built in 1856. There does not seem to be, however, any description or picture of this temporary church that might show its fittings though much of the decoration was removed as unsuitable, but there does seem to be a remote possibility that, among the things collected or

given to make this room more ecclesiastical in appearance, this old coat of arms may have been among them.
This does not answer any of the questions propounded above, nor does it even affirm that these arms were so used, but it does offer a better explanation for Royal Arms being found where they are not normal, than the local legends. But of the making of guesses there is no end, and much speculation is a weariness to the flesh. All I can claim to have done is to place on record an interesting example of a familiar class.

II. A COAT OF ARMS AT WELL HALL, ELTHAM.

Travellers by train on the Bexley Heath branch of the Southern Railway cannot help but notice the beautiful garden, intersected here and there with fine old red brick walls, all clearly visible from Well Hall Station. These grounds and the well-restored buildings beyond give their name to the district and station and they preserve all there was to preserve of the home of William Roper, a member of a famous Kent family and his even more famous wife and daughter of Sir Thomas More, Margaret Roper. It is not the purpose of this note to dwell on the history of these buildings and their site, for that has already been done by the present writer (Well Hall, the story of its House and Grounds, published by the Woolwich Borough Council, 1936). Rather it is to draw attention to a rather unusual feature and the erroneous conclusions drawn from it.

On the north side of the only remaining building, high up on the wall is a very weathered coat of arms, carved in stone (or rather on two stones) and bearing the date 1568. A photograph of these arms is given (Plate III), but as it is very difficult to get a good picture I have added a measured drawing made some years ago (Fig. 1). By the aid of these two illustrations the heraldry of the stone is clear.
Hitherto the significance of these arms has been overlooked. They were taken (both by the present writer in his ignorance and others in the plenitude of their knowledge) to be the arms of the Roper family, and the date was accepted as the date of the erection of the building: see for instance R.C.H.M. England, London Vol. V (East London), p. 108ff, and a letter in The Times, November 16th, 1931, from the late

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