Up The Arsenal:

The Arsenal Football Club has been in the Highberry & Islington district of North London since 1913 .. but they originated centuries earlier in Woolwich - South of the river (THAMES of course).

Nobody wanted them in North London but there was no affordable space for the team to set up in Battersea or Harringay so there you are .. pushed up north. The football team was founded as DIAL SQUARE in 1886 by munitions workers at Woolwich Royal Arsenal - who'd been there since 1651 when they'd started proving cannon on the Tudor 'Tower Place' land that was used as a domestic rabbit warren.

Raised earthen " Proof Butts" were constructed there and the land was bought and then sold to the Ordnance Board in 1671 by one Sir William Pritchard ..a  thousand cannon and ten thousand cannon balls were moved to the site known as The Warren - saltpetre was refined there for the manufacture of gunpowder up till 1694.

Cannon Balls Stacked At Woolwich Arsenal 1795.

The Brass Cannon Foundry was built 1717 and the completed guns were moved through the DIAL ARCHWAY  into a small courtyard for washing & engraving then shifted to a warehouse for mounting on carriages.

The Royal Brass Foundry Built 1717

After A Previous Foundry At Moorfields Blew Up.

A Woolwich 'One & a Half Pounder' Bronze Cannon.

The Royal Brass Foundry was renamed the Royal Gun Factory in 1865. At it's peak development during the First world War - the arsenal extended over 1,300 acres. 

4.6 inch Bore Woolwich Coehorn Morter

- During WWII the munitions/ordnance factories suffered from extensive blitz bombings. - The Arsenal finally closed as a military establishment in 1994 and has since been massively developed as residential housing & commercial recreational leisure space and museums.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arsenal

Gatehouse.

Marty K.

Nowhere Near The Arsenal - This Is Highbury for Football.