The previous post on this walk on Sunday 5th February 1989 was The Groves of Camberwell.
Grove Park changes to Chadwick Road on a bridge across the railway which separates Camberwell from Peckham and continues on, with a considerably less wealthy vibe, one side with long terraces of two-storey two bed working-class houses which now sell for around £900,000.
The north side was more varied, with an industrial estate but nothing attracted my photographic interest until this printers and its multiple signs on the corner with Bellenden Road. The sign on the wall is still there but the rest have gone and the ground floor frontage on Bellenden Road looks very different.
The building is now home to MOCA London, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Londonfounded in 1994 as a project based museum which opened a project space here in the Bellenden Renewal Area in 2004.
I turned south down Bellenden Road, made a couple of pictures on Maxtead Road and then went down Oglander Road and into Adys Road where I found this front garden. I couldn’t resist the two donkeys and the gnome in a small car in front of those net curtains. You can see the decorations by the windows of these late Victorian houses which also have fairly impressive rusticated doorways paired together down the street.
Back on Oglander Road a little south of Adys Road was Padwick’s Crash Repairs at the end of a terrace of small houses. Those beyond the garage further down the street are larger and semi-detached. I particularly liked the faces on the two archways and the truncation of both archways, the decorage element at each end of the shopfront suggesting it might have been originally built like this rather than a later addition.
Coach entrances like this were common to many businesses in the days of horse-drawn vehicles – and this certainly predates the era of motor transport. This was once a diary and had large associated buildings in a yard behind. The ‘Old Diary’ was demolished in 2020 and I think is being rebuilt as a new gateway to a mews development behind.
The junction of Oglander Road with Maxtted Road, with Wingfield Street more or less opposite, and shops on the street corners. There is still a shop on the other corner of Oglander Road but this Auto Electrics and the ‘Bottle & Cork’ are now residential.
I went up Maxted Rd to Bellenden Rd where I photographed this chapel on the corner of Danby St. Previously this was Hanover Chapel, but was bought by the Pentecostal Faith Chapel in 1978 in a “grossly dilapidated condition, which took nearly a year to renovate.”
The church was built as a United Methodist Free Church and opened in 1885, eight years after its memorial stones had been laid. It had been planned with a spire which was never built. It was sold in 1920 to Hanover Chapel, the oldest non-conformist worshipping community in Peckham, Congregationalists with a history going back to 1657 when the dispossessed Vicar of St Giles, Camberwell the Rev. John Maynard founded a chapel or meeting House in Meeting House Lane.
I continue up Bellenden Road to Blenheim Grove, walking down this almost to Rye Lane where I photographed the rather fine building at 133 housing Murrays Meat Market and Ralph Haeems & Co Solicitors. Considerable renovation of this building, the entrance to Copeland Park, took place around 2018-9 and it is now ‘MARKET PECKHAM’, whose developer responded to public pressure to drop plans to turn it into luxury flats.
In earlier years from 1908 to 1915 this was the Electric Theatre – and after I took this picture the first floor became home to The Redeemed Christian Church of God-House of Praise.
I walked back down Blrenheim Grove, and made this picture of another building of Ralph Haeems & Co Solicitors at No 9. This early 19th century villa was Grade II listed in 1998 and was acquired by Southwark Council for use as offices in 2002. They ceased to use it in 2010 after the council acquired its new offices in Tooley St in 2007 and the council decided to sell it in 2011.
The building is now two residential properties, 9 and 91/2 Blenheim Grove.
My account of the walk in Peckham in 1989 will continue in a later post.
My account of this walk from 5th February 1989 began with A Pub, Ghost Sign, Shops And The Sally Ann.
