A controversial film with decidedly mixed critical reviews is currently showing in UK cinemas. It is called The Uprising and it is a very loose dramatic account of the 1381 Peasants Revolt. The historical revolt started and mainly took place in and around the local area, principally Dartford, Greenhithe, Abbey Wood and Crayford, before moving into London. Some years ago I wrote at length about this important historical event, which I reprint below with updates and additions. The events portrayed in the current film The Uprising have been regarded as controversial, as the film conflates the real historical events with the advent of the literary and mythical character of Robin Hood, when in reality there was no such connection. My research indicates that this was due to the influence of the films US distributor without the permission of the British film company, or the director. The film has a mostly British cast, but principal photography took place in Germany. The film portrays both historically accurate characters, and a number who were completely fictional. As a result of this, the film has had some very negative reviews, and a few positive ones. Unfortunately, while some parts of it have some historical veracity, much of the film is no more than a historically set action movie with little in common with what actually happened back in 1381. I will now recount what historians understand actually happened during the real Peasants Revolt, and not what an action film would have you believe. The photos above show the exterior of one of the oldest buildings still standing in Dartford town centre. The pub is called the Wat Tyler, but its actual connection to the Peasants Uprising is somewhat tenuous, to say the least, despite what popular myth might have you believe. The pub is one of the oldest buildings still in daily use in Dartford. The statement on the sign on the outside wall of the pub stating that Wat Tyler and members of his band drank at the pub before going to London to air their grievances to King Richard II is actually fanciful, tourist serving rubbish. The pub was actually known as the Crown and Anchor until 1966. The pub in any case, whilst very old, was not built until around 100 years after the Peasants Revolt. What is also interesting is that Wat Tyler gets all of the credit and fame for the Peasants Revolt, but in reality he was not even the leader of the group when it started. Here is some background to the Peasants Revolt, and what sparked it. By 1380, medieval Europe was in a shambles. There was plague and famine: The Black Death in 1348 had killed as much as one-half of the entire continent. The Hundred Years War between England and France, meanwhile, was dragging on and on. Religious law held sway, and people lived in ignorance and superstition. There was a rigidly hierarchical social structure that had existed for centuries, which fixed forever one’s place in society—one inherited the job of one’s father, whether it was a farm labourer or pig-keeper, an artisan like a blacksmith or carpenter, or a nobleman. It was a horrible time to be alive. In an odd irony, the devastation wrought by war and plague actually made things better in some ways for the peasantry. With so many people gone, there was now both a large amount of unoccupied land and a severe shortage of peasant labour to work it. The balance of economic power had unexpectedly swung to the favour of the peasantry, and they tried to take full advantage: demands were made for higher pay, better living conditions, and more land. The nobility fought back using pure repression: royal decrees were sent which limited the amount of pay and land a peasant could get and which restricted his movements, forcing him to stay on the manor estate on which he was born and preventing him from leaving to find work elsewhere. As social tensions became ever greater, an explosion was inevitable. In 1381, the English King was Richard II, only 14 years old. The real power lay with the advisors who ruled in his stead—especially with the King’s uncle, John of Gaunt. It was John who decided that the royal treasury needed more money to pay for the interminable war with France, so he created a new “poll tax”. This had nothing to do with an electoral poll: it was a simple head tax, to be paid by every adult male and married female in the country—and the same amount was to be paid by everyone regardless of how wealthy or poor they were. Today, we would consider this to be blatantly unfair—and so did the medieval peasantry. But while modern citizens can protest unfair taxes by voting and petitions, medieval people had no political or social rights at all—they were little better than slaves. Some of England’s peasantry found a way to avoid paying the new poll tax. England’s government depended upon local church records of marriages, births and deaths to keep track of each area’s census, and this record was often incomplete. Sometimes by bribery or favour, but mostly just by oversight and error, many people—as much as one-third of the population in some areas—did not actually appear on the tax rolls and therefore never paid the tax. When the King’s treasurers added up the money, they found that they were short. And so, they made the near-fatal decision to send in “commissioners” to find all the ones who had avoided the tax and make them pay up. The heavy-handed methods used by these commissioners provoked widespread resentment; many people were forced to pay another tax even though they had already paid the first time. On the 2nd June 1381, Lesnes Abbey in what is now known as Abbey Wood, was attacked by a mob of peasants armed with farm tools, led by a man named Abel Kerr, who was from Erith, and thought to have been a fisherman by trade. The Abbey quickly surrendered, and the tax records kept inside were burned. At the same time, other rebel leaders had gathered in the village of Bocking, in Essex, to draw up a manifesto. This was no disorganised mob of bandits and malcontents: it was an extraordinarily well-disciplined group of social rebels who knew exactly what they wanted to achieve, and now formed a comprehensive plan for how to get it. At Bocking they declared that while they had no quarrel with the young King Richard, they sought the removal of many of his advisors, including John of Gaunt. But they also put out a radical new demand: “to have no laws of England, only which they themselves had moved to be ordained”. It was the first time in European history that anyone had demanded that common people have the right to make their own laws. In a series of coded messages, word of the rebellion and its aims was sent to most of southern England. Within a week, the rebels had gathered an army of peasantry led by Abel Kerr - untrained and not well-armed, but large enough to pose a serious threat. Some of its officers were English Army troops who had been ordered to France but had deserted instead. The first target was the castle at Rochester, where a local serf was being held on charges of running away from his manor lord. The rebels took the castle without a fight—the serfs inside had opened the gates and let them in. Other strongholds soon followed. At around this time - records are somewhat imprecise (very few of the people involved in the Peasants Revolt were literate, and history tends to be written by the victors), a new leader of the revolt emerged; a man called Walter "Wat" whose profession was a house roof tiler - and thus got the name Wat Tyler. At this point, the Peasants Revolt took its most amazing turn of all - Wat Tyler and his men, numbering at least 60,000, decided to march on London, capture the Archbishop, and present their demands for reform to King Richard II himself. At the same time, other peasant armies from Cambridge and Essex converged on London (stopping along the way long enough to behead the chief royal tax collector in Essex and burn all the tax rolls). They began to arrive on the evening of June the 12th . As more and more groups of peasants approached, the young King and his councillors fled to the safety of the royal fortress at The Tower of London, the most secure place in the city and impossible for any but the most powerful and well-equipped army to take by force. But once in the Tower, the royal government was itself effectively trapped: the entire population of London at the time was only 40,000 people, and with most of the English Army away fighting in France there was only a small garrison of a few hundred in the city, enough to protect the King inside the fortress, but not enough to go out and drive away the much large peasant army in combat. There then occurred one of the most extraordinary events in English history: the young King Richard II and some of his advisors boarded a river barge and sailed to the place where the peasant army was encamped. Remaining on the boat, safe from possible capture, the King of England began talks with the rebellious peasantry. Unsure of how large the rebellion was, or even what the rebels wanted, Richard II at first simply demanded that the insurgent army should disperse and go home. Instead, the rebels submitted a list of names—high-ranking advisors to the King, many of whom were right there on the boat with him—which they wanted handed over to them for “justice”. Richard refused, and the barge returned to the Tower. The rebels decided to follow him. The demands the peasants wanted were divided into two groups; the first group were:- "End to serfdom (bonded labour). Free market (i.e. serfs could sell produce wherever they liked). Land rent to be reduced to 4d per acre. Free pardon for anyone involved in the uprising". The second group of demands were:- "Abolition of the aristocracy (except for the King). Abolition of the senior clergy (except for John Ball, as the next Archbishop of Canterbury). Local courts. Local police forces". These demands made, Pouring towards London, the peasants were joined by city residents who sympathised with them. On June 13th, the mass of people made their way to the only place where they could cross the River Thames - London Bridge. After entering the city, they killed a number of lawyers at the Courts of Justice and burned the estate house of the King’s uncle John of Gaunt (Gaunt himself was away in Scotland). Gathering up the stores of silver, gold and jewellery there, the rebels neither stole it nor redistributed it: instead, they dumped it all into the Thames. This was not an act of mere theft or looting: it was a conscious and deliberate political protest. By nightfall, the peasants controlled almost all of London. Richard II was now a virtual prisoner inside The Tower of London. Nearly half of the entire country was in revolt. The English peasantry—viewed by the nobility as savages who were barely above an animal level of ability—had organised a nationwide uprising, formed a powerful military force, planned and carried out a targeted campaign of political violence, and now had the royal government itself on its knees. At this point, though, the rebels were still rather naively convinced that the King was not their enemy—was perhaps even a supporter—but was being misled by bad advisors, and could be won to respect the rights of common Englishmen if only they could talk to him. Through a messenger, King Richard, having really no choice, sent word to the rebel leaders: he would ride out and meet them the following day. Then the rebels casually mentioned that they also wanted the heads of several of the King’s advisors. Richard left, promising only that the councillors would “receive justice”. The crowd followed, all the way to the Tower. In 300 years, The Tower of London had never fallen in battle, but when the peasants arrived, they found the gates open, probably by sympathisers. Swarming inside, they quickly found the Archbishop of Canterbury—who they held responsible for the poll tax—and beheaded him in the Tower’s chapel. The treasury minister soon followed. By the end of the day, convinced they had won all their demands, most of the peasant army left London and began the long walk home to the countryside. One small group of rebels remained behind. Led by Wat Tyler, they wanted more, and confronted King Richard the next day. It is not clear how much of what happened on June 15, 1381, was planned and how much was accidental. With the rebel force now reduced to about 300 men and the hardcore leadership of the revolt in front of him, Richard II, though just a boy of 14, may have seen an opportunity to save his kingdom with his own force of about 200 men, and may have set up the meeting as a trap for the rebel leader, willing to risk everything in a final fight. Wat Tyler and King Richard met on horseback in the centre of the field, with their retinues behind them. As Tyler began to list his demands, a scuffle broke out involving one of the King’s squires. Tyler was attacked by the Mayor of London and stabbed, falling wounded off his horse. And then, just as it seemed that open combat would break out, the young Richard II boldly rode up to the peasant forces and shouted, “You shall have no other King but me—follow me!” He led them off to another nearby field. The wounded Tyler was taken inside a nearby chapel. And then, whether pre-planned or not, the final blow fell. As the peasant force gathered behind the King, every available royal force in London was quickly moved to surround them. Tyler, meanwhile, was dragged out into the street by royal troops and beheaded. The severed head was delivered to the King just as the royal troops surrounded them. The rebels all dropped their weapons and surrendered. With their leader dead, the bulk of their army disbanded, and the belief that the King was on their side shattered, the Peasant Revolt died almost as quickly as it had arisen. King Richard’s retribution was swift. Determined that such a revolt could never happen again, he hunted down and killed every rebel leader he could find — hundreds were executed by “hanging, drawing and quartering”, others were beheaded or hung. Thousands more were unofficially executed by local authorities, without even a trial. Of the rebel leaders, all but one were killed by the authorities. The only survivor was Abel Kerr, who mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again. Whether he assumed a new identity, or was smuggled out of the country, we may never know. Whilst the story of the Peasants Revolt and the failed coup by Wat Tyler is well known, the leading role of Erith resident Abel Kerr is almost unknown. Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
It would appear that things have moved on rapidly since I wrote the article in last week's blog update about the Morrison's supermarket chain, and how they had been in unsuccessful negotiations to merge with Sainsbury's, and how they are currently in talks with Asda about merging with them. As I wrote at the time, I think it somewhat unlikely because Asda are also owned by a private equity company, and like Morrisons are saddled with a huge amount of debt. It now transpires that Morrison's may be put up for sale by its current owner, the private equity company Clayton, Dubilier and Rice. The supermarket chain has struggled to regain ground against Tesco, Sainsbury's and the German discount stores Aldi and Lidl, although its recent figures show somewhat of an improvement, albeit over previously terrible financial returns. Many private equity firms purchased UK businesses prior to the global pandemic, when borrowing was cheap and valuations were financially reasonable. Now the private equity firms find themselves having to deal with increasing inflation, higher interest rates and a prolonged squeeze on consumer spending, this has caused them to experience pressure from their investors to return money. This will prove extremely difficult, as retail businesses are facing falling sales, heavy debts, or substantial turnaround costs. The increase in interest rates makes borrowing considerably more expensive than it was when the private equity firms bought the various retailers, Morrisons included. Much of the recent upsurge in financial income that Morrisons has experienced in the past few months is just used to pay monthly instalments on the crippling interest rates of the £7 billion that Clayton, Dubilier and Rice paid for the supermarket, and then transferred the debt from their own books onto those of Morrisons. I am not an economist or an accountant, but I am led to believe that whilst it sounds extremely dodgy, this kind of financial transfer is actually legal under English law.
Many thanks to regular reader and professional journalist Russell for bringing the following story to my attention. As I have previously written, I do rely on readers to inform me of stories that they have come across that relate to the local area and which may be of interest to others. I was quite shocked to discover that starting on Monday the 2nd of November 2026 and running right through until June 2028, many of the roads in and around Shooters Hill will be closed and unavailable to traffic. This is because Thames Water will be running a major programme to replace around 7.3 km of water mains in order to rectify ongoing problems with water main bursts. I am led to understand that since 2017 there have been 737 property hours of interrupted water supplies to residents of Shooters Hill. Unfortunately, a major engineering project of this nature will take at least 20 months to be fully undertaken. This will entail road closures, bus diversions and problems for motorists. It will not just affect Shooters Hill, but would also cause problems for road users in Bexleyheath, Welling, Eltham, Kidbrooke, Woolwich, Charlton and users of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, as ambulances will have to also be diverted. As a result of this planned work, there will be a public meeting for all of those affected and members of the public who may have concerns over this issue which will take place Wednesday the 21st of October, from 4 pm to 7 pm, at Shrewsbury House Community Centre, Bushmoor Crescent, Shooters Hill, SE18 3EG. Residents can speak to Thames Water staff about the programme and its potential impact on their neighbourhood. Thames Water says similar mains replacement projects elsewhere in London, including Camden, have significantly reduced leaks and bursts. The Shooters Hill project is expected to continue until June 2028, with the council hoping the improvements will provide a more reliable water supply and reduce the need for disruptive emergency repairs. You can read more about the forthcoming Shooters Hill road closures by clicking here.
There has been a commercial bakery located in Northumberland Heath for 140 years; the image above shows an advertisement for Grooms bakery from back in 1986, when the bakery celebrated its centenary. The giant bakery located in Belmont Road is still there, although nowadays it is owned and operated by Hovis.
Earlier in this week's Blog update, I wrote about the major roadworks that are shortly to be affecting the area in and around Shooters Hill. The end video this week is the full Time Team episode where they investigate the archaeological World War II history of the area, and how it would have been the site of a massive defensive battle, had there had been a Nazi invasion of Britain in 1940. The video is the full 48 minute long original Time Team episode, which I know many people missed when it was originally transmitted. I have a family connection with this piece of both local and national history. My late Grandfather on my Mother's side was in the Home Guard during World War II, as he was in a reserved occupation. My grandparents lived in Blackfen. In the event of a Nazi invasion, he would have almost certainly been one of the soldiers assigned to man the defences at Shooters Hill. Comments to me as usual at hugh.neal@gmail.com.
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