From a travellers' account of 1862.

"Half an hour's journey along the North Kent Railway, past the rising meadows near Blackheath, and the bright toy villas, planted in the centre of the greenest conceivable lawns, which make the neighbourhood of Charlton - then through a long dark tunnel - will deposit the traveller within five minutes' walk of the Dockyard gates of Woolwich.

The sign of the public-house, the "Warrior," which shows a gaudy front close to the station, suggests at once the proximity of the hulks. The lazy men, in cotton-velvet-fronted waistcoats, leaning against the door-posts; strong musters of very dingy children; remarkably low shops, exhibiting all kinds of goods at wonderfully cheap prices; and street after street of little houses, where the wives of the regularly employed dock labourers advertise the nature of their industry in their parlour windows-indicate the neighbourhood of a great industrial establishment.

Turning from the entrance of the Dockyard - opposite which is a flourishing public-house, rejoicing in the suggestive sign of the "Old Sheer Hulk," which probably reminds some of its customers of peculiarly "good old times" - and keeping the high, dark walls of the yard on the left, the way lies past little shops and beer establishments on the right, towards the arsenal."