My posts on this walk on 27th January 1989 began with the previous post at St George’s, Camberwell, Absolutely Board & Alberto where I ended at Camberwell Greeen.
Walking across Camberwell Green I came to the Magistrates Court, built from 1965 and opened in 1971. It was closed in 2019 and has been sold to Criterion Capital for £13.5m – they plan to turn it into around 160 1,2 and 3 bedroom flats “Ideal for young professionals who want to live as well as work in Central London” with leisure and coworking space on the ground floor. So far it still looks fairly similar from the outside although the ground floor has been boarded up and the boards covered with graffiti.
But in front of it on what was previously a community orchard on council land, a new Camberwell Library was opened in November 2015. There had been considerable local opposition to the destruction of the orchard in 2013, but Camberwell had not had a permanent library since a V1 flying bomdb destroyed the Victorian Camberwell Central Library on Peckham Road in 1944.
In front of the Magistrate’s Court is this large ventilation tower, presumably for the two floors of underground parking below, though there may well be other underground facilities.
This Grade II listed early 19th century industrial building was, according to English Heritage a former Perfume Factory, though other sources suggest it was a former bakery. Quite likely both are correct. Jusst a few yards north from the Magistrates Court and is now a business centre with offices and light industry.
Beyond it is the also Grade II listed Bryanston House, an early 19th century large residence in the area, also now I think offices. Together the two buildings are Camberwell Business Centre.
Drayton House, a maisonette block at 30-72 Lomond Grove was the last part of the Elmington Estate when it was built around 1960 and was around the last to be demolished in 2016-7, replaced by ‘Elmington Green’ development of largely market price flats in 2018.
The redevelopment of the estate began in 2002, and under this first phase almost 90% of those displaced from the estate were rehoused in the new flats, though many complained that the new buildings had smaller rooms and thinner walls that gave them little privacy. But in the next phase, “redevelopment became’regeneration'” and Southwark Council began a policy of social cleansing, with only a relatively small proportion of social housing in the new buildings. Things became even worse later, as Southwark Notes detail on their web site.
Faces, ferns, foliage on the capitals and worms – vermiculation – on the keyston of these doorways in Kitson Road, an attractive street parts of which face the south-west tip of Burgess Park, was described by Booth’s associates ten years after his orginal 1889 survey of London poverty in 1899 as “good working class”. These houses possibly date from around the 1880s.
I wrote more about Addington Square in a post about my previous walk. Almost all the houses in this square developed between 1810 and 1850 are Grade II listed. These houses are at the north-west of the square and the road going off between the houses here is also called Addington Square.
This view across the grassed area in the centre of the square shows the same houses in the distance with a few more at the right of picture. The fine trees are still growing.
My posts on this walk on 27th January 1989 began with part of St George’s, Camberwell, Absolutely Board & Alberto. This walk will continue in a later post.
