HILARY PETERS
Click on the arrow below to hear Hilary's audio track
Recorded with the assistance of Julian May
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Ballast Quay in 1937 
Photograph by A R Martin
Courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre
Feeding time for Hilary's goat herd ca.1976
Press cutting courtesy of The Telegraph
Hilary on board her partner Ken's Dutch barge Res Nova moored at St.Katherine's Dock ca.1976.  The barge was a floating showroom for their stone gardens and a retail outlet for goat's milk produce, eggs, fruit, vegetables and honey.
Press cutting courtesy of The Telegraph
The wharf in 1958  (above) as Hilary found it a few years later 
Photograph courtesy of Larry Bonds
and (below) after the garden was established ca. 1976 
Press cutting courtesy of The Telegraph
The garden ca.1985 when it was a tea garden and a destination on the Thames Footpath
Photograph courtesy of Larry Bonds
The Cutty Sark Tavern in the 1960s
Courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre
Hilary Peters recalls taking out a lease on the derelict wharf and a house on Ballast Quay in 1963.  She describes the activity on the busy river and the docks and reminisces about the dockers, the local industry and the Cutty Sark Tavern, which was the local social centre.  She kept chickens on the wharf and goats in Blackheath.  From the emerging riverside garden, which she created out of the derelict wharf, she established a landscape business which encompassed gardening projects at St. Katherine's Wharf and also saw the founding of the Surrey Docks Farm.  She talks about the period in the wharf's life when it became a tea garden, still remembered fondly today by locals. She is glad to have known the area when it was a bustling, noisy industrial place, as now it has changed, and will continue to change, beyond all recognition.
The former keeper's cottage at the entrance to Surrey Docks which became Hilary's farmhouse when she founded the Surrey Docks Farm
Press cutting courtesy of The Telegraph
Lovell's Wharf at the height of its activity.
Union Wharf and Ballast Quay can be seen in the background.
Ballast Quay and Wharf in the late 1960s.
The house Hilary found is in the centre to the right of the balcony house
Courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre