To-day as we look at the drab, uninteresting place which occupies the sloping ground extending up Shooter’s Hill and the riverside extent from Charlton to Plumstead, we find it difficult to believe that this was ever a place of such great charm that London folk found in it a favourite summer-time resort. Yet we have only to turn up the “Diary” of good old Pepys to read (May 28, 1667): “My wife away down with Jane and Mr. Hewer to Woolwich, in order to a little ayre, and to lie there to-night, and so to gather may-dew to-morrow morning, which Mrs. Yarner hath taught her is the only thing in the world to wash her face with; and I am contented with it.” Of course, in those days Woolwich was in the country, surrounded by fields and woods, in the latter of which lurked footpads ever ready to relieve the unwary traveller of his purse. Thus we have Pepys writing in 1662: “To Deptford and Woolwich Yard. At night, I walked by brave moonlight with three or four armed men to guard me, to Rotherhithe, it being a joy to my heart to think of the condition that I was now in, that people should of themselves provide this for me, unspoke to. I hear this walk is dangerous to walk by night, and much robbery committed there”; and again in 1664: “By water to Woolwich, and walked back from Woolwich to Greenwich all alone; saw a man that had a cudgel, and though he told me he laboured in the King’s yard, yet, God forgive me! I did doubt he might knock me on the head behind with his club.” [Illustration: Woolwich] Even a hundred years ago Woolwich was a comparatively small place, consisting largely of the one main street, the High Street, with smaller ways running down to the riverside. Shooter’s Hill was then merely wild heathland, ill-reputed as the haunt of highwaymen. Yet, for all that, Woolwich has been an important place through long years, for here have existed for centuries various Government factories and storehouses—at first the dockyards, and afterwards the Arsenal.