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The hamlet of Lesnes came to notice in 1191 when a young knight, called Richard de Lucy, was ordered to build an abbey in the area as a pennance for the infamous murder of Thomas Beckett in Canterbury Cathederal.

De Lucy was one of the four knights who took his king's lament - "Will no-one rid me of this troublesome priest?" - literally and rode from the court at Eltham Palace to carry out his king's supposed wishes.

In the aftermath, the four knights were each set a task, de Lucy's was to build the monestary.

The problem was that the site selected was close to a marsh, which was prone to frequent flooding from the nearby River Thames and the monks were expected to not only fend for themselves, but also to take responsibility for the river wall to prevent the floods.

The abbey struggled for only a few decades before it fell into disuse with the dissolution of the monestaries under Henry VIII, then ruin and eventually legend.

Meanwhile, the local community had made the most of the having an abbey so close by and a small village had grown up less than 500 yards from the grounds.

Abbey Wood struggled for a another few centuries with little development until 1848 when the North Kent Railway drove through the area on its way from Woolwich to Dartford.