More from my walk in south London on Sunday 5th February 1989. The previous post was Around Rye Lane Peckham 1989.
There is still a doorway here between 56 and 58 Peckham Rye, but the lock above it has gone and it now has a sign for Ezel Court at 56 A and B and 58 A and B. The Antique shop was for some years Delta Tavern, an Arfican Restaurant, then a café called Pedler and most recently a bar and restaurant Good Neighbour. The building building to the right of the doorway is also now a bar.
At top left of my picture who just get a glimpse of the rather finely decorated upper storeys of the two late Victorian buildings at 58 and 60, though for some reason I didn’t bother to cross the road to photograph these.
This window was just a few doors further down at No 64 and I liked the symmetry of its display, though broken by the two identical photographs of a woman looking in the same direction. I don’t think I was at all clear as to what was behind this window – or what the woman in her strongly patterned dress and gloves was meant to represent. And at the centre of the window display is a thick book on a table, a Thesaurus.
The attractive grille above the door is no longer there, and was probably salvaged and sold when the shopfront was updated. In more recent years this has been occupied by an estate agent, a pizza takeaway and beauty salons.
In the reflection you can see the extensive premises of G Austin & Sons Ltd offering secondhand furniture and antiques, now I think replaced by a three-storey block of flats.
I was always happy to photograph people who saw me taking pictures and wanted to have their picture made, though I very seldom took down details so I could give them pictures. So this young man, posing for me in 1989 will not have seen this picture, unless he has visited the page on Flickr only since January 2021 – it has never been published elsewhere.
The Regency Carriage Company has long gone from this site, though the building remains, rather altered. It was for some time an estate agents but has for around ten years been Rye Cars. But the yard in which the cars for sale were neatly aligned is now covered by flats.
St John the Evangelist was built in 1865 to the designs of local architect Charles Bailey, but was badly bombed in 1940. Reconstruction began in 1947, incorporating the remaining apse and tower which dominate my picture and was completed in 1951.
126 East Dulwich Road faces the west end of Goose Green on the corner of Grove Vale and I liked the uncompromising stare of the head above its simple but impressive doorway.
A pair of doorways with heads, with a simiilar design and I think on the same row of houses facing Goose Green as the previous image.
I walked a few yards north up Grove Vale to photograph this fine Grade II listed example of a school built as Grove Vale School for the School Board for London in 1900 to the Baroque Revival designs of T J Bailey
I turned around here and walked down to Lordship Lane where my next post on this walk will begin.
My account of this walk from 5th February 1989 began with A Pub, Ghost Sign, Shops And The Sally Ann.
