Upton
Upton, Bexley
The south-western part of Bexleyheath, lying east of Danson Park
Indications of Bronze Age habitation have been discovered in Upton. A 17th-century farm building, once known as Wye Lodge, survives in much-altered form on Lion Road.
Upton was an isolated heathland hamlet with a handful of pretty cottages and a couple of public houses when Philip Webb and William Morris came here to build the idealistic Red House. The pair had conceived the notion while rowing down the River Seine in the summer of 1858.
With its informal, asymmetric design, Red House represents one of the earliest expressions of Arts and Crafts principles. The German scholar Herman Muthesius later described it as “the first private house of the new artistic culture, the first house to be conceived as a whole inside and out, the very first example in the history of the modern house.” Morris lived here from 1860 to 1865.
Bexley cottage hospital (now the Upton Centre, a mental health unit) opened at 14 Upton Road in 1884. Towards the end of the 19th century, Bexleyheath began to spread towards Upton with the building of the Oaklands estate south of the Broadway. Ribbon development along Upton Road in the late 1920s and early 1930s marked the absorption of the hamlet into the suburbs.
The architect Edward Hollamby bought Red House in 1952 and restored it, living there until his death in 1999. The National Trust subsequently acquired the property for around £2 million. To protect Red House and some nearby cottages, much of Upton is designated a conservation area and the house itself has grade I listed status.