Blackheath has an honourable place in the histories of many sports, with the oldest golf, rugby and hockey clubs in England and perhaps the world founded here. According to legend, Blackheath Golf Club was established by James I in 1608, although the first evidence of what was then known as the Society of Goffers dates from the mid-18th century. The Royal Blackheath Golf Club played on Blackheath until 1923, when it moved to its present home in Eltham. Golf is now banned on the Heath, but the association with the game is commemorated in the name of Goffers Road.
The Blackheath Hockey Club was founded in 1861 and the Rugby Football Club a year later. Both clubs now have their own grounds elsewhere, but still occasionally play on the Heath, while both sports are still played by schools and other groups, along with soccer, cricket, lacrosse, athletics, baseball and American football. The Heath is also well known as the starting point for the London Marathon.
Most of these sports require very short turf on which to play, and the heavy demand for sports pitches has taken its toll on Blackheath's wildlife. Indeed, throughout most of the present century, until the late 1980s, the grass over almost the whole of Blackheath was kept very close-mown for sports and amenity purposes.
The exception to this was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Second World War saw parts of the Heath ploughed to produce food, and the rest occupied by army Nissan huts. After the War, neglect allowed a brief respite for the Heath’s beleaguered wildlife, when for a few years the grass grew long and skylarks were able to nest (Teagle 1997). This did not last long, however, and in 1953 the last of the Nissan huts were finally removed and the Heath was levelled and re-seeded. The only places where the vegetation was left for long enough to allow many wild flowers to produce seeds, or to provide any shelter for animals, were the pits, the fenced-off Whitefield Mount, and the steep banks around the edges of The Point.