Westcombe Park

Westcombe Park is a largely residential area in Blackheath in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, South East London, England. It is bounded by the main London-Dartford railway line to the north, the Blackwall Tunnel southern approach to the east, Blackheath to the south and a road, Vanbrugh Hill, to the west (named after the architect and playwright Sir John Vanbrugh who built his house Vanbrugh Castle nearby in Maze Hill).

Westcombe Park largely comprises the northern half of the Blackheath Westcombe ward of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which in 2011 had a population of 12,875.

Westcombe is a topographical place name, derived from Combe, a common old English word for 'valley', often formed into a compound name - in this case with the adjective 'West'.

Sites of interest

Much of Westcombe Park lies within the Westcombe Park Conservation Area, designated in 2002. Broadly, this covers an area bounded to the north by the stretch of railway line between Vanbrugh Hill and Westcombe Hill, to the east by the A102 Blackwall Tunnel southern approach, to the south by Westcombe Park Road, and to the west by Ulundi Road.

Woodlands House

Its most notable existing landmark, and only Listed building (grade II), is Woodlands House, in Mycenae Road. This four-storey Georgian villa (architect: George Gibson) still lies in its own grounds and was built between 1774 and 1776 for John Julius Angerstein, a Lloyd's underwriter and merchant whose collection of old master paintings was bought for the nation in 1824, following his death, to form the nucleus of the National Gallery, London.

The Angerstein family continued to live in Woodlands House until about 1870. It was later acquired by Sir Alfred Yarrow, a shipbuilder, in 1896.