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Eltham developed along part of the road from London to Maidstone and lies 3 miles (4.8 km) almost due south of Woolwich. Mottingham, to the south, became part of the parish on the abolition of all extra-parochial areas, which were rare anomalies in the parish system. Eltham College and other parts of Mottingham were even before the 1860s therefore not considered within Eltham's boundaries.

From the 6th century Eltham was in the ancient Lathe of Sutton at Hone. In the 1086 Domesday Book its hundred was named Greenwich, which by the 1166 was renamed Blachehedfeld (Blackheath) because it had become the location of the annual or more frequent hundred gathering.

Eltham lies in the hundred of Blackheath, at the distance of eight miles from London, on the road to Maidstone. The parish is bounded by Woolwich, Plumsted, and the extraparochial hamlet of Kidbrook, on the north; by Bexley on the east and south east; by Chislehurst on the south; by the extraparochial hamlet of Mottingham, on the south-west, and by Lee on the west. It contains about 2,880 acres: of which about 360 are woodland; about 60 waste; about three fifths of the cultivated land are arable. This place had formerly a market on Tuesdays, and two fairs; one at the festival of the Holy Trinity, and the other at that of St. Peter and St. Paul; both of which have been long discontinued.

By the 1880s the lathes and hundreds of Kent had become obsolete, with the civil parishes and other districts assuming modern governmental functions.

Eltham was a civil parish of Kent until 1889 when it became part of the County of London and from 1900 formed part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich. The metropolitan borough was abolished in 1965 and Eltham then became part of the then London Borough of Greenwich.

Eltham today is one of the largest suburban developments in the borough with a population of almost 88,000 people.

Eltham lies on a high, sandy plateau which gave it a strategic significance. That, and the fact of its position close to the main route to the English Channel ports in Kent, led to the creation of the moated Plantagenet Eltham Palace, still its most notable landmark. Daniel Lysons described its origins.

The Kings of England had a palace at Eltham at a very early period ... Henry the Third, in the year 1270, kept a public Christmas at his palace of Eltham, being accompanied by the Queen, and all the great men of the realm . Anthony Bec, Bishop of Durham, and Patriarch of Jerusalem, bestowed great cost, we are told, on the buildings at this place, and died there on the 28th of March 1311, having, as it is said, some time before given Eltham-house to Edward the Second, or, as some say, to Queen Isabel.... Edward frequently resided here. In 1315, his Queen was brought to bed of a son in this palace, called, from that circumstance, John of Eltham. Edward the Third held a Parliament at Eltham in 1329, and again in 1375.