Continuing my walk in Peckham in March 1989. The previous post on this walk was London & Brighton, Graffiti, Boys At Colmore Press.
Houses in this row on Queen’s Rd were being renovated and turned into flats. Many of these properties were still in a fairly poor condition in 1989. Although these houses all seem of rather similar quality and are all I think “Early to mid C19”, number 52, just out of my picture on the left has been singled out for listing, despite it and others having had significant rebuilding in the 20th century.
It was only listed in 1998. Perhaps it was then under threat of demolition. Most of these houses were being converted into flats at the time I was photographing them.
There is still a Quantock Laundry, but in Weston-Super-Mare, where the name seems rather more appropriate.
25 and 27 King’s Grove are part of a long terrace on the west side at the Queen’s Road end of the street. The face a rather grander row of joined semidetached villas on the opposite side of the road.
The view across Brimmington Park towards the three tower blocks of the Tustin Estate on the Old Kent Road. The park was created when a number of terraced houses and small factories were demolished in the 1970s. Perhaps the name was a reference to the rather grander Royal York Crescent in Clifton, Bristol.
Clifton Crescent was built in 1847-51. It was saved from demolition by Southwark Council by local campaigners in 1972-4, when the properties were in a poor condition after years of neglect. It was the fight to save this crescent that led after demolition had begun to the formation of the Peckham Society, a Civic Trust affiliated society which continues to argue the case for conserving what remains of Peckham and making new developments acceptable to residents. The society also had a more militant wing.
Clifton Crescent was an unusually large Victorian development for this area and unlike most other large crescents was built in red brick. Grade II listing in 1974 helped to ensure its survival and in 1977 the facade was restored and the houses converted to flats by the London Borough of Southwark.
My next pictures appear to be taken on Rye Lane, and I can no longer remember whether this was on the same walk or on another a week or two later. But since I was still in Peckham I will continue with them here.
On the west side close to the Peckham High Street end of Rye Lane. The shop has been recently refurbished, but the facade above remains much the same, though the long box which I assume once carried the name of a shop has long been removed.
What She Wants at 26 Rye Lane later became Atlantic Clothing, was briefly Solo then around 2014 became FAS Hair & Cosmetics. The upper floor windows have long been bricked up and the first floor of the wall above the shop front graffitied, making the decoration on the frontage difficult to see.
The Halifax is still there at 22-4, its single storey shop, along with that of Vodaphone next door still hiding the considerably more elegant building above it. You can still see the upper floors from the opposite side of the road on the corner with Hanover Park.
Following an evangelical campaign at Peckham Wesleyan Church (Methodist) in 1887 a group of young men began to hold meetings and services in this deprived area of Peckham. They met in the open air, and in various other places including the disused Blue Anchor pub and a cottage in an row know as The Orchard close to here.
In 1893 they moved into Batchelors Hall, but in 1904 the Ragged School Union (later known as the Shaftesbury Society) bought a site in Blue Anchor Lane (now Mission Place) and built this building, which opened in 1906 and is still there, considerably restored.
A couple of the lime trees here have gone, but building work in 2016 has transformed this short row into 44-50 Goldsmith Road, four separate houses, adding three new front doors with steps up to them, more imposing doorways and windows and a fence alongside the pavement – and a price tag around £900,000 each.
This building was a part of The Peckham Settlement, established in 1896 and led by the head mistress of Wycombe Abbey, a girls public school in Buckinghamshire, Miss Frances Dove to alleviate the social problems of the area. It was an innovative project, setting up the first children’s nursery in London and pioneering ‘meals on wheels’ and an unemployment insurance scheme and in 1987 the first government sponsored ‘job club’. It moved to this area in Goldsmith Rd in 1930. A financial crisis in 2012 meant it had to sell the buildings to pay its debts, with a surplus providing investment income to make grants for local charities and community groups.
More of the buildings of the Peckham Settlement in Staffordshire Street.
To be continued…
The first post about this walk was Shops, Removals, Housing and the Pioneer Health Centre