modest houses stood along the east side of the common (in 1763 there were about thirty, of which seven stood empty); but from the 1780s on, large houses for military officers began to replace these cottages. One of the largest, Cube House, was built by Charles Hutton, professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, in 1792; he had bought a parcel of land at the southern end as a speculative venture, and went on to build a number of large houses on the site. In 1804–5, the new Royal Military Academy having been built just across the road, the Crown purchased Hutton's land; Cube House was converted into a hospital for the cadets (it was later rebuilt to house the Governor of the RMA), and several other houses were adapted for use by other senior officers of the Academy. Other grand developments on this side of the common included the villas Belmont Place (1840), Clarence Place (rebuilt after a fire in 1840), Adelaide Place and Belle Vue, as well as Queen's Terrace (1830) and Kempt Terrace (1832/1850). General Gordon was born at Kempt Terrace, 29 Woolwich Common, in 1833. Between 1972 and 1975 all of this was demolished after a long and bitter conservation battle to make room for social housing (Woolwich Common Estate). Housing of a rather different sort was to be found on the western side of the common, where in the early 19th century long rows of 'mud huts' had been built by married soldiers for their families; these were interfering with the artillery exercises, so in 1812 the Board replaced them with new married quarters south of the road to Charlton: they were single rooms, built back-to-back in fifty pairs. Later named the Duke of York's Cottages (but still referred to disparagingly by contemporaries as 'the Huts'), they were demolished in the late 1870s after an outbreak of diphtheria. The Remount Depot was built on the site. In the 19th and 20th centuries a series of military and civilian hospitals and related institutions were built on the south side of the common, on either side of Shooters Hill Road, including the groundbreaking Royal Herbert Hospital in 1865, Brook Fever Hospital in 1896, Victoria House (providing facilities for the Royal Army Medical Corps) in 1909, and the Woolwich and District War Memorial Hospital in 1927. In 1977 the Royal Herbert Hospital was replaced by the Queen