Camberwell

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Azenby Square.

2-storey and 2-storey with basement houses. A great mixture, mechanics and labouring class. Gone down. (Booth)

Basing Court

Basing Manor House. Demolished in 1883. It included beautiful specimens of oak panelling and antique carving. The manor existed in the fourteenth century.  The Manor House School began using the quaint old Basing Manor House. Attached to the school were acres of land used as a recreation ground by the pupils. After the school was demolished, a horse tram depot was built on the site, and later used for electric trams.

Red Cow, rebuilt 1962

2-storey houses. "Rather poor class." (Booth)

Bellenden Road

Rye Lane Depot, in what today is Bellenden Road, had been over by the military authorities during the First World War returned to the London County Council in 1919. It was used subsequently by London Transport as a garage for motor vehicles and the bus garage was built on the site in 1952. In the 1960s the Department of Employment took over the garage for use as a repair workshop for buses until 1986. The garage was later used as a as a factory producing Comply plasterboard products. Site of Basing Manor House.

Bull Yard?

Thomas Tilling HQ

Bushey Hill Road,

Matthew Dean of St Paul's, born

Nearly all the detached houses shown on the map have given way to smaller dwellings. Occasional servants. (Booth)

Camberwell Grove

28a Camberwell Bookshop

59 Stone Trough Books

94 Cottage Orne opposite the chapel destroyed in the last war. 

188 Grove Hill Terrace, J. Chamberlain born, London County Council plaque 188 Joseph Chamberlain was born here in 1836.  plaque which says. 'Statesman, lived here' . He was M.P. for Birmingham and moved back to London in 1876. As an Imperialist his policies helped precipitate the Boer war.

The Hermitage

Built as a private avenue to a mansion of the Cock family in Church Street

Lettsom Estate. The Lettsom family lived in the big house and the estate is built in the grounds. Dr John Coakley Lettsom, a well-known Quaker physician, at the beginning of the 19^thcentury whose income sometimes amounted to as much as £12,000 a year, and who was as philanthropic as he was wealthy. In his large house he entertained some of the most eminent men of his time but adverse circumstances compelled him to part with his delightful mansion some time before his death, and as his town house was not large enough to accommodate them. He also had to dispose of his library and museum.

Camberwell Grove House.  A stream ran through the grounds which were said to be the origin of Camber ‘well’. It flowed into a canal at Fountain cottage' .

Grove Chapel, 1819. Late Georgian chapel, very modest. Stone plaque by Coade.fits perfectly into the late Georgian atmosphere. Pretty, with a five-bay, two-storey front, very modest. Built in 1819 by David Roper.

220 beyond the continuous stucco terraces, some with Greek Doric porches.  The Hermitage, a late C 18 or early c 19 rustic cottage with tree-trunk columns supporting the eaves, but suburbanized by pebbledash.

Mainly detached villas, getting past their best days, but still in single occupancy. Along east side a new row has been built. Inferior, for two families. (Booth)

Camden Estate

Camberwell MB & Southwark LB 1969 both deck systems and car park more cheerful Chepstow Way is quite attractive. Ambitious piece of re- development by Camberwell (later Southwark) council, designed in 1969 and instructive to compare with North Peckham Estate.  Both are built on a deck system with car parking beneath, and are linked by a bridge across Commercial Way.  The earlier scheme, completed in 1972, was considered enlightened for its date in avoiding tall slabs, but the monotonous upper walkways and cramped courtyards surrounded by the five-storey dark brick maisonettes, which are not inviting.  This is built in a more cheerful yellow brick, has more variety and is not so large

Chadwick Gardens

Nature garden

Chadwick Road

155 North View.Victorian Villa with a planning row going on in 2008

Print Village – site of Gordon’s Brewery.

2-storey houses. Decent, trees, quiet. Generally one family to a house. two families in some. Others keep a servant. Comfortable. Gordon Brewery and open ground on north side. (Booth)

Chepstow Way

Busy broad central walk of Camden Estate is quite attractive.  At one end it widens; into a little square overlooked by a taller block of flats with shops below, and with a health centre opposite.

Choumert Road

Very modest Girdler's Almshouse

43 Montpelier

79 Wishing Well . decorative Irish drum

2-storey houses, most with bay window. Houses vary much in style but a gradual improvement toward Copleston Road. Working class. Building trades etc near Bellenden Rd. Clerk, travellers at upper. (Booth)

Crofton Road.

Better and larger houses north of the bend and servants frequently kept here. South of the bend 2-storey, 6- or 8-roomed houses with bow windows, ornate. High waged and low salaried classes. Apartments often let. Servants not kept. (Booth)

Dagmar Road

Like Wilson Road, even to having its better-to-do detached house. (Booth)

Elm Grove

48-52 stone made to look like brick

Grace's Road

Mainly 2-storey houses. (Booth)

Grove Crescent

Stuccoed houses built on part of the Lettsom Estate in the earlier c 19:  development begun by the railway engineer and speculator William Chadwick

169-183 spatial development. Alternate pairs with large pediments

94 Fountain Cottage

Grove Park

For the most part new semi-detached and detached redbrick villas. A few of the old houses still left. On the site of one four new ones have been built, all good, as the ground available was large. Most of the new dwellings, however, cover ground previously clear.  Inglewood House the only really large one left. "City People,” generally fairly well to do.  A smart lady who passed us with nurse and children was pointed out as the wife of a highly salaried man at some brewery and as a quondam bare-backed rider at Sangers! (Booth)

Development begun by the railway engineer and speculator William Chadwick

Tiny stuccoed lodge at the corner

?  Older detached three-bay house, much altered, built by Lettsom's friend Henry Smith c. 1776-80.

Day Nursery in grounds of no?  Long low by Neyland & Ungless, 1971-3

113Camberwell Tape Laboratory.  Bugging embassies in London has a history now 75 years long. The original monitoring base was here run by the Metropolitan Police. It is still the Met's main centre for special bugging and monitoring.

Grove Park Cuttings:

Vacant rail side land. Woodland with steep slopes.

M15 monitoring of embassies

Havil Street

Originally called Workhouse Lane but changed to Havil Street when Mr. Havil lived there in Havil House.

Bethel Asylum., plain for aged women, built by William Peacock in 1837

St Giles Hospital. This began as an institution founded under the Poor Law of 1601. In 1726 the Vestry of St Giles', builtg a a workhouse for lodging and employing the poor. This was on the west side side of the road at the  junction with Peckham Road. In 1815, this was demolished and another workhouse was buil,t at the back of the old site, In 1873 by the Camberwell Board of Guardians added an infirmary and a  circular blockwas added in 1888-1889, It was transferred to the London County Council in 1930. A new operating theatre and reception were provided four years later. Camberwell Health Authority voted in 1983 to close most of the facilities.

Vestry hall

5 Orange Tree

Highshore Road

Royal Mail Delivery Office - Society of Friends Meeting House 1826. Used as a postman’s office. Simple, yet distinguished. Enlarged in 1843. Built of stock brick

Yard at the rear was a small burial ground.. 1832-61 but cremated remains buried there until 1959. 

Lalfourd Road.

Good middle-class, with garden fronts- small and high waged class. No servants. Three new houses built at end. All red-brick, bow windows (Booth)

Lettsom Estate

The most elaborate house was that built by Dr John Coakley Lettsom in 1779-80 (demolished in the 1890s).  It stood in its own grounds to the East of Camberwell Grove.  Riches & Biythin's estate 1970 stands in part of the grounds.

Lettsom Street

 2-storey and 2-storey houses. (Booth)

Linnell Road

2-storey and 5-storey houses, shops. Working class occupants mainly. (Booth)

Lyndhurst Grove

43 Cadleigh Arms,

Dolby considered that exactly the same class of people lived here as in the southern end of Crofton Road. The houses are 2-storey, much the same as those in Crofton Rd, although less ornate. (Booth)

Lyndhurst Square

Lyndhurst Squareis one of Peckham's most modern flat developments

1 80ft x 40ft walled garden. Formal layout with lawn, flower beds, mosaic, gravel and flagstones. Sunken terrace with herb garden in retaining wall. Plants in terracotta containers. Evergreen, slightly tropical looking structure to planting, with perennials planted through and around. More foliage than flowers. Many unusual plants. Sitting areas in sun or shade.

3 Sophisticated cottage garden approx 80ft x 50ft. Old roses, herbaceous borders, many climbers on house and in garden, sunken garden with fountain and container  planting, surrounded by mature trees.

Lyndhurst Way,

Another residential thoroughfare.

53 Lord Lyndhurst pub

Peckham School, a vast new building for girls with playing fields and tennis courts all around.

Lyndhurst Way,

Was called Lyndhurst Road

88 childhood home of Ken Farmington, Billy Walker in Coronation Street

Warwick House School on house on site was animal painter Harrison Weir, early ILN artist

53 Lord Lyndhurst

2-storey, bow windows. Bad building. Rents as in McNeil Rd. Rents, character of building and occupants like much of the neighbourhood. (Booth)

Maude Road

5-storey houses.  (Booth)

McNeil Road

2-storey houses, bow windows, some broken. Bad building. West side the poorer.  The street is quiet, both on the poorer west and east side. East side let at 7/6 the floor (three rooms and scullery).  (Booth)

Peckham Road

Village common on the hills, belonged to the Gloucesters. Connecting the old villages of Peckham and Camberwell is mostly an accumulation of public buildings and L.C.C. flats.  The exception is the late Georgian group around the town hall (all now municipal offices).  On the South side, set back, a group of three houses, two identical ones of five bays, linked up later, and one of three bays, with good doorways with fanlights.  Opposite are some more late Georgian houses, altered.

102 Walmer Castle

Acrow Mill, cogs and workers

Arlington Music Hall

Blenheim House

Borough Architect's Department, housed in a range of 18th century houses

Camberwell and Southwark Technical College

Camberwell House the building dates from 1777 and was formerly known as the East Terrace. This range of houses is of some architectural interest. Henry Roberts was born here at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was the architect of the Fishmongers' Hall and an early employer of George Gilbert Scott. A later resident of the houses was Robert Alexander Gray, chairman of the Camberwell Vestry which ran the civic affairs before the Camberwell Borough Council was formed in 1900. He was known as 'Father of the Parish'. The houses were taken over as an extension of Camberwell House Lunatic Asylum which was on the north side of Peckham Road. This building still exists and is an extension to Southwark Town Hall; it dates from around 1780. The building was originally King Alfred School, or Alfred House Academy, founded by Dr Nicolas Wanostrocht. It was the lost famous school for the boys in the parish in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Some of those educated there included: Robert Browning, father of the poet; mathematician George Parker Bidder; Alfred Dommett, first Prime Minister of New Zealand, and Sir Joseph Arnold, Chief Justice of India. In 1832 the school moved to Blackheath and the Royal Naval School took over the premises. In 1846 the building became a lunatic asylum.

Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and Passmore Edwards South London Art Gallery,  1896-8, with baroque caryatids at the portal and baroque window pediments. By Maurice Adams. F.W.Rossiter had a surplus stock in his shop 1868. Bought a house in Peckham Road and built a gallery on the back. It was there so long as it was open on a Sunday. Gallery built by Adams financed by Passmore Edwards. One of the foremost centres of its kind in the capital. In 1868 an art exhibition took place in William Rossitter's shop window in Camberwell Road and from this sprang the germ—nourished by pre-Raphaelite painters—of the South London Art Gallery. The present Gallery was opened in 1891 and is of the florid 19th century type of architecture used also for the nearby Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. It has a fine permanent collection of paintings mainly of the 19^th and 20th centuries with one valuable earlier work, "The study for the masked ball at the Wanstead Assembly" by Hogarth. The Southwark Reference Collection of 20th century Original Prints, started in 1960, includes examples of many media, aquatints, etchings, lithographs, lino-cuts, wood-engravings etc., and covers work by both British and foreign artists. South London Fine Art Gallery, Camberwell, early twentieth century.  Over a century ago South London Gallery in Peckham Road was built to house a collection of paintings of the eminent artists of the day. The paintings were largely donated by wealthy benefactors. One aim of the gallery was to give people the opportunity to see the best art being produced at the time.  The Founder was William Rossiter; in 1868 he set up a South London Working at 91 Blackfriars Road. Ten years later it moved to larger premises at No. 143 Lane The College was extended to include a free library, the first in South London. In October 1878 and a few months later Rossiter added to it by borrowing during the summer months - so the Gallery was born. The institution shifted firmly in the direction of the visual arts and this change was recognised. As Rossiter explained, 'so many friends lent pictures, and so many were that the exhibition intended for a few weeks has now been in existence for fourteen years, and has become so important that the name of Free Library has been replaced  by that of South London Fine Art Gallery. 'The Gallery moved to Battersea and then to Camberwell in 1887 to a warehouse in Camberwell Road. The South London Fine Art Gallery was built in and opened to the public in May 1891.

Camberwell's Civil Defence headquarters and control centre  at the corner of Vestry Road. This was an underground building which was the best of its kind in London.

Camden Church. Rebuilt in 1874. Until eighteenth century in Camberwell.  Built in 1795 for the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, much enlarged 1814. Chancel 1854 by Scott in a Byzantine style said to be the outcome of consultation with Ruskin. Since demolished

Extension, totally unsympathetic large concrete extension by Murray, Word & Partners, c. 1960.  Two long bands of windows with others of irregular shape in between.

Fire station. Peckham s first fire station opened in 1867; the building still exists in Peckham Road. This is a few metres from the present one which was opened on 2 March 1991 by Cllr A.G. King, Chair of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, and Cllr Tony Ritchie who was the Southwark member of the authority. The present fire station occupies the site of one which the London County Council had built. This was opened on 9 July 1925 by Geoffrey Head, chairman of the L.C.C Fire Brigade Committee.  The South London Press reported that it was the first of its kind in London as it was built to meet the requirements of the shift system. The newspaper stated: 'The reason for the change is that the men nowadays live in their own homes and are only at the station during their period of duty. The only residential quarters provided are those for the station officer, although there are a mess room and a recreation room with other accommodation for the shift men. At the rear is a large drill yard with the best drill tower in London'.

First cinema converted to a bingo hall

Flats, 'fine new blocks of workers flats - standing well back from the roadway in gardens', London County Council

Food Office

Gramophone Record and Music Library for the Borough

Peckham house. Charlie Chaplin's mother, Hannah Chaplin, was transferred here in 1912. It was a private lunatic asylum but had previously been a mansion owned by Charles Lewis Spitta and the wealthy Spitta family . It became a lunatic asylum m 1826 and closed in 1951 so Peckham School could be built on the site

Peckham School. Built On the site of  Peckham House which was a private lunatic asylum pre-Second World War. curtain-walled ranges around a hall, pleasantly set back from the road behind trees by Lyons Israelis' Ellis, 1956-8.; Norma, wife of former Prime Minister John Major was a pupil here.  Has become Harris Academy.

Harris Academy.

Kennedy’s Sausage Factory.  Run by one branch of the family in a converted fire station.

Kingfisher House site of Camberwell Central Library between the Pharoah's pub destroyed by fire on 9 July 2004 and Pelican House. It was bombed during the Second World War. The library was opened on 9 October 1893 by HRH the Prince of Wales who became Edward VII after his mother, Queen Victoria, died. The Prince, accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of York, went to the new library after opening the South London Fine Art Gallery a short distance away in the same road. A guard of honour of the First Surrey Rifle Volunteers was posted at the entrance. The royal guests were greeted at the library by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Sir Stuart Knill, who was born in Camberwell. They were taken by the architect and builder through the library and then into the pretty recreation ground at the rear of the building. The Prince made a speech in which he wished, 'the success of this fine new building, so well arranged, so complete, so well built in every respect'. Mr Frederick G. Banbury, MP for Peckham, said that he did not think anyone would deny that education conferred innumerable advantages upon a nation or that public libraries were important in disseminating knowledge among all classes of the community. The library was built in Jacobean Renaissance style. The architect was Robert Whellock who designed three buildings in SE15 that still exist - the   Livesey Museum, Nunhead Library and the former Central Hall in Peckham High Street. The new library replaced a temporary central library in the High Street, Peckham.

Lucas Gardens, a small but tranquil oasis of trees, flowers and grass amid houses and commercial premises. The park has a children's corner, a bandstand, cafe and facilities for municipal summer shows. Pleasant open space. Mature trees. created in the grounds of a former lunatic asylum, Camberwell House.

Peckham Lodge, formerly the headquarters of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, was formed in 1851 and  bought land at the corner of Lyndhurst Road in 1899.  there were originally three buildings along Peckham Road between Lyndhurst Road and Grummant Road. In 1916 they were joined together. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers' symbol, the slogan 'Be United And Industrious', 1851 and 1916 are carved above the doorway on the west side of the building. during the Second World War bombs blew the roof off the building but the premises remained for nearly ninety years the general office of what became the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. A new administrative block was built in 1961 and the Executive Council block ten years later.  In 1912 a small chapel was at the Grummant Road side of what became the union's garden. The union left Peckham in 1996 and is now part ofAmicus. The former front door of the Peckham building is now in the General Secretary's office in King Street, Covent Garden.

Pelican House renamed Winnie Mandela House in 1989, demolished. The pelicans on the building were a reminder of Pelican House School which  occupied the site in the nineteenth century. The pelicans, originally stood on brick pilasters at the entrance gates. The Surrey Association for the General Welfare of the Blind, which was established in 1857, In 1910 it became the London Association for the Blind and is now Action for Blind People. In 1924 power machinery was installed to manufacture knitting needles and bangles. This was the first time a visually impaired person had operated power machinery anywhere. The workshop premises were extended in 1928/29. New offices at Pelican House were completed in 1952/53 but it was sold in 1976..

School of Arts and Crafts 1896. Technical School for Young Craftsmen 1908, with fine arts section built in memory of Lord Leighton. The cost was underwritten by Passmore Edwards

Sculpture, bronze nude, by Kare Vogel.

The New Phoenix Brewery Ltd (North Surrey Brewery) operated  in Peckham Road. It came under the control of Lovibonds of  Greenwich in 1900 and was wound up in 1927.

The Registrar's Office,

Town Hall.  The site was that of  Havil House, owned by Mr. Havil. The first municipal building on this site was Edward Powers’ vestry hall, put up in 1872-3, after a competition said to be ‘a gross piece of jobbery’.  It was designed in a French Renaissance and Italianate mix. Much of it was demolished in 1934 for the the new Camberwell Town Hall, by E. C Culpin & Bowers but largely the work of Bowers, a Dulwich resident.  It is interesting for the speed of it’s construction which took less than a year, and because the Victorian vestry room was included in it between new blocks to the front and back – when opened it was said to be a ‘hall of mirrors’..  the steel frame clad is clad in Portland stone with a mayoral balcony above the main entrance, plus a carving of a ship's prow, including the arms of the Borough of Camberwell.

Vestry Hall. Local government affairs for the parish of St Giles in Camberwell were run by the Vestry in the nineteenth century. The first hall was built in 1827 on the opposite comer of Havil Street from the present Southwark Town Hall. A much larger Vestry Hall was erected in 1872/73. When Camberwell became a Metropolitan Borough in 1900, this became the Town Hall. The Vestry Hall was rebuilt in 1934 but the Council of the London Borough of Southwark meet in the Council Chamber of the former Vestry Hall. 

Pitt Street

Sceaux gardens. A serious example of connected layout landscape not railed in, run over to the kids, living undergrowth. A showpiece of 1955 - tower blocks nature gardens, car parks, not yet fashionable showpiece of developments for Camberwell by F.O.Hayes.  First of a whole series of council estates north of Peckham Road.  This one was Camberwell's showpiece of 1955-9 (Borough Architect F. 0. Hayes).  Two fourteen-storey slabs of cross- over maisonettes, and lower blocks (one and six storeys), pleasantly grouped in mature gardens, not yet complicated by the 1960s rage for massive car parks.

Female figure stone statue of a draped woman.  Right hand on a sword. Early 19^therected here 1960s.

Shenley Road.

No part so good as the north end of Crofton Road. Otherwise the same class. 2-storey houses. Mostly two families to a house. Servants the exception. (Booth)

Sumner Road

107 McCabe Free House

133 Golden Lion. The Golden Lion was the badge of the Lion of Flanders

260 Alliance

Winchester House.  Stood at the corner of Peckham High Street and the east side of Sumner Road, was still in existence in 1953. It had been the headquarters of Thomas Tilling's omnibus firm. Before that it was a grammar school where the founder's son Richard S. Tilling, was educated. During a lesson Richard scratched his initials R.S.T. on a windowpane with a glass-cutter; Thomas Tilling later worked in this old schoolroom, which was known as 'the parlour'. This room became the heart of the business; all the important decisions were made there. When the cellars of this old building were altered in 1915 an underground passage was discovered which had long connected Winchester House with the property across the road Basing Manor House. Winchester House had a front garden, which was destroyed when the road was widened. Thomas Tilling started his four-horse omnibus service from Rye Lane to Oxford Circus in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park. His was the fastest on the route, He was the first proprietor to refuse to pick up passengers from various places and take them to the omnibus starting point, nor would he wait until the omnibus was full before it set off. Murals on the former North Peckham Civic Centre, in the Old Kent Road, and the Nunhead Green Community Centre include a Tilling omnibus. At London's Transport Museum in Covent Garden one of The Times omnibuses used by Thomas Tilling is preserved. Thomas was buried in Nunhead Cemetery where his grave can still be seen

Parallel with the Canal.  Irregularly built street. At the north corner of St George's Rd the All Saints Club.

South side is 2-st houses with fronts. North side is 2-st houses flush with sidewalk. Doors open into rooms. Poorer. (Booth)

Talfourd Road

37a Jeremy Irons actor lived there for a bit

Houses are smaller (Booth)

Victoria Road (not on AZ)

2-storey private houses on west side. Mostly used for some Trade: bootmender, photographer, umbrella mender. Other side is 5-storey shops.  (Booth)

Vestry Road

The boundary of this police section. North of Linnell Road the west side is 2-storey houses. Decent working class. Last side has only one house occupied, a small job-master's. South of Linnell Rd the houses are larger but occupied by people of very much the same class. (Booth)

Wilson Road

Houses with basements. Two and three families the rule. Working class. From, except for the detached house occupied by one of the local clergy.(Booth)