My previous post about this walk on 5th February 1989 was Denmark Hill, Ruskin and on to Dulwich.
Nothing much caught my attention on the walk from the hospital and then up Melbourne Grove until I came to this hosrt row of shops just before reaching Grove Vale. I think all of these buildings are still there but the bus stop has gone and all of the buildings have changed use and there is no longer a Grove Vale Library opposite the top of the road, it having moved into a new building around the corner on Railway Rise, behind M&S.
I walked up Grove Vale under the railway bridge where it becomes Dog Kennel Hill and up there to turn into Grove Hill Road which led me to the southern end of Camberwell Grove – this picture was taken at their junction. When Hermitage at 220 Camberwell Grove was built the road was known as 220 Camberwell Grove. Its Grade II listing describes it as an early 19th century cottage. It was built as a rustic cottage with these timber posts supporting the deeply overhanging roof to form this verandah.
The cottage was one of the properties built for John Coakley Lettsom (1744 – 1815) a doctor who founded the Medical Society of London and had a considerably grander villa a little to the south at Grove Hill, demolished in the early 1800s. is now rather more covered by greenery, making photography more difficult.
Immediately north of the cottage is this impressive row of houses. Nos 200-218 are Grade II listed and were built as a block from around 1845.
This unusual verandah and window was at the side of one of the houses on Camberwell Grove, at No 195.
Many if not most properties in Camberwell Grove and nearby are Grade II listed, and 195 seems to be the only one unlisted on this section of the road, all fine Regency properties, though this part of the house appears to be a later addition. Perhaps 195 is unlisted because unlike the other properties it it built up to the pavement edge and some may feel it spoils the long vista of houses well back from the pavement.
On the corner with Grove Park is this rather odd conglomerate with what appears to have been a classical entrance lodge welded unhappily into a later mansarded house.
Perhaps the gem of Camberwell Grove, this is Grove Crescent, a Grade II listed terrace of 4 linked pairs of houses dating from around 1830 at 169-183 Camberwell Grove.
Grove Park has a few large villas from the 1830s and 40s, but is mainly a late Victorian speculative development of large houses probably from the 1890s, with a few variations on three versions of large semi-detached houses. It is made up of several roads, all confusingly called Grove Park. This detail shows the entrance at the west of 125 Grove Park, just a few yards from Camberwell Grove.
This is White Lodge at 55 Grove Park, which stands out in this short leg of the road in a row of late-Victorian red-brick houses, which it presumably pre-dates.
This grandly Italianate mansion, Pelham House, 14 Grove Park, is on the corner with Pelham Grove, and is now flats with a considerably more recent block of flats at The Birches on the opposite corner.
This house, one of three similar houses at 17-19 Grove Park was in a derelict state back in 1989 but looks very smart now.
There were many other buildings in Grove Park which I might have photographed and a couple I did but haven’t digitised, but I felt it was time to move on, and walked to the east along Grove Park to where my next post will begin in Chadwick Road in Peckham.
My account of this walk from 5th February 1989 began with A Pub, Ghost Sign, Shops And The Sally Ann.
Tags: 1989, Camberwell Grove, cottage, Derelict House, East Dulwich, Grove Crescent, house, lodge, London, London Photos, Melbourne Grove, Pelham House, peter Marshall, Regency, rustic cottage, shops, Southwark, veranda, verandah, Victorian, White Lodge
[…] The previous post on this walk on Sunday 5th February 1989 was The Groves of Camberwell. […]