The previous post on this walk was Houses, Station, General Booth and more Houses.
I walked up Champion Hill to Denmark Hill and Ruskin Park, pausing briefly to take a photograph – not online – of what I later found to be a Grade II listed shelter before going further north towards the two hospitals further north.
Donations of £40,000 from psychiatrist Dr Henry Maudsley (1835-1918) went towards the establishment of a specialist hospital for the early treatment of recoverable mental disease, which was completed in 1915 when it was requisitioned for use as a military hospital, finally opening for civilian patients in 1923. Architects were William Charles Clifford-Smith, EP Wheeler and G Weald.
Although I’ve visited several of my family over the years in various mental hospitals, none has been in the Maudsley, which is the leading mental health training school in the UK. This was perhaps fortunate as it’s treatments have often been controversial over the years.
Surgeon Robert Bentley Todd (1809-60) became a Professor at King’s College London in 1836 and took the lead in setting up King’s College Hospital in 1840 in Portugal St. The hospital moved to this new building designed by William Pite on Denmark Hill in 1909. The statue of Todd, financed by donations from his colleagues and friends was placed in the lobby of the Portugal St hospital in 1861, the year after his death, and moved here in 1913. The statue was not made to be displayed in the open air and has eroded.
Kings College Hosptial seems a rather random collection of buildings, few of any architectural interest. The photograph shows the statue in front of the Guthrie Wing, an Art Deco building dating from 1937 which is a private patients wing inside the main hospital, but was moved elsewhere on the campus when a new ambulance entrance and A&E department opened in 1997.
I walked back to Ruskin Park and made a second picture of the Grade II listed shelter from the Rose Garden, which was looking a little sad, with no blooms but just the pruned growths with the odd leaf remaining. The shelter and its flanking walls was Grade II listed as long ago as 1951 and was built in the late 18th century as a part of the house which once stood here.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) moved to Herne Hill when he was five and the family moved to 163 Denmark Hill in 1842. The following year the first volume of his influential Modern Painters was publishing, promoting the work of JMW Turner. In 1871 he sold the house on Denmark Hill and it was demolished in 1949. Ruskin Park opened in 1907.
One of the few volumes I saved from my father’s books after his death was his copy of ‘WORK; FROM THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE’ by John Ruskin, a miniscule volume designed to fit the waistcoat pocket of a working man and published I think in the 1920s when my father was just such a young working man in his 20s. This roughly 3″ by 4″ book is the text of a lecture he delivered to the Working Men’s Institute in Camberwell in 1865.
I walked on southwards on Denmark Hill and then turned down Sunray Avenue to go down Red Post Hill. Early street direction signs were often painted red and one on the crossroads at the top of this road giving distance and directs to nearby villages was here by the mid-eighteenth century. It became a well-known local landmark by the 1800s, and the street it was at the top of was renamed from Ashpole Road (possibly also a reference to the post which could have been made from ash, a strong and durable wood) to Red Post Hill soon after. The post disappeared probably in the mid-nineteenth century, but in 2010 a new red post, the only one in London, was placed on the corner.
St Faith’s Church, North Dulwich began as an attractive Arts & Crafts church hall in 1908 which is now the neighbouring St Faith’s Centre. The church a large and rather plain brick box was only built and consecrated in 1957. On its west end is the sculpture at the right of my picture of Christ on the Cross with St John the Evangelist and St Mary Magdalene by Ivor Livi. The church no longer has what appears to be an excessively large flagpole.
The road has a number of large suburban houses, including a row of similar semi-detached houses to this detached property and its neighbour close to North Dulwich Station.
I don’t think Italian bistros were common – certainly not in the areas of London which I knew well, but I think this one stood out for the crudeness of its lettering and strange letter-spacing.
Like many hospitals, Dulwich Hospital began life as a workhouse infirmary, built for the Guardians of the Poor of the parish of Southwark St Saviour and opened in 1887, though the building has the date 1886 at left. It became a military hospital in the First World War and in 1921 was renamed Southwark Hospital, becoming Dulwich Hospital ten years later.
The ward buildings in this picture were demolished around 18 months ago.
The land for building the infirmary was sold with the stipulation that the public building erected “should be of an ornamental character” and local architects Henry Jarvis & Son did their damndest, though not entirely to my taste, receiving praise in the local press at the time. The hospital was built with a central adminstration building and long pavilions of ‘Nightingale Wards’, long narrow rooms with large windows for light and ventilation with beds along both sides. I spent around ten days in a similar ward in St George’s Tooting shortly before it was closed twenty years ago.
Until fairly recently this was still Dulwich Community Hospital, though most medical services had ceased in 2005. Part of the hospital has been demolished to build a school and health centre, but the buildings in this picture are still there.
To be continued. My account of this walk from 5th February 1989 began with A Pub, Ghost Sign, Shops And The Sally Ann.
