Place Name
Like many of the roads around this area it is a reference to the sand pits, chalk pits and brick works that were once worked out of Loampit Hill. When the area was built up, the developers took their inspiration from the locality and so were given “more or less appropriate names of Shell Road, Undercliff Road, etc”, according to Leland Duncan in his History of the Borough of Lewisham, published in 1908. Adding: “Loampit Vale is marked on [Rocques’s] map of 1745 by the more undignified title of Loampit Hole. It was then a well-known locality for a rich loam which seems to have been worked for a considerable period. In the early part of the 18th century, Messrs. John and Henry Lee held the ground on either side of Loampit Vale, and the slopes of Loampit Hill up to the parish boundary were converted into brick fields, until the available material was exhausted. As Loampit Hill is approached there is an outcrop of chalk, and on the rising ground.” In the second half of the 19thCentury Lewisham’s first geological survey was carried out by W Whitaker and others. Of particular interest were the clay beds with leaf impressions recorded from the ‘Striped loams’ at Loam Pit Hill. Whitaker followed up his work with a wide-ranging survey of the district Geology of the London Basin in which he wrote of the wealth of local detail on exposures in the area in 1872.
