The previous post on this walk I made on Sunday 29th January 1989 was Peckham – Pubs, Shops, AEU And A Fire Station.
These two large semi-detached houses are still there on Peckham Hill Street but now restored and in a very different condition. I think they are at Nos 102-108. Built around 1820 they were Grade II listed in 1972 and are part of the Peckham Hill Street Conservation Area designated in 2011. Although that at right seemed still occupied the left-hand pair looked to me as if it had been left empty to decay and I suspect may have once been squatted.
Bonar Road was constructed across the back gardens of some of the houses in Peckham Hill Street and led to a depot for the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell formed in 1901. Although this is now a part of the conservation area, no part of the Bonar Garage has survived. The house with the chimneys at left is I think onf of the listed buildings in the picture above, but whatever building had the square brick chimney on the right side has been demolished.
A number of schemes for canals south of the Thames in London were proposed in the late 18th century and two were approved by Acts of Parliament in 1801. These were the Kent and Surrey Canal (later known as the Grand Surrey Canal) and the Croydon Canal from Rotherhithe. The horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway roughly following the course of the River Wandle from Wandsworth to Croydon was also given approval the same year. A canal scheme for this was turned down as there were too many mills relying on the water from the Wandle.
The Grand Surrey Canal was authorised to go from Rotherhithe to Mitcham, with provision for branches, including to Vauxhall, but the proprietors had ambitions to extend it as far as Portsmouth. They began at the Thames in Rotherhithe and soon became a part of the new Surrey Docks scheme with an expanded basin and ship lock completed in 1807 into what became Stave Dock, with the canal running what became Russia Dock. Plans to join with the Croydon Canal at Deptford rather than that canal having its own line from the Thames provided an incentive to open the canal as far as the Old Kent Road by 1807.
The Croydon Canal, not being involved with the new docks, got on with digging and the stretch from the Surrey Canal at Deptford was opened to West Croydon in 1809. It didn’t last too long never attracting a great deal of traffic and closed in 1836, though many of us will have travelled along parts of it as it was bought by the London & Croydon Railway company for their line from London Bridge to a station on the former canal basin at West Croydon. Parts of its route not needed for the railway are now parks and nature reserves.
The Grand Surrey Canal company had run out of money and needed another Act of Parliament in 1807 to raise money to go further and were able then to extend the canal to Camberwell, opening this section in 1810. Apart from the entrance lock there are no locks on the canal, but they would have been necessary to go further, and the company could not afford the extra expense, and this was the furthest it ever got, despite the original plans and dreams.
Two more Acts of Parliament were needed to enable the company to raise money to cover costs and a short branch to a a large basin at Peckham was added, ocpening in 1826. Other plans put forward for extending the canal to Vauxhall and even Reading failed to attract investors.
But the Surrey Docks were developing and the canal got a new entrance lock in 1860, close to the earlier lock but leading into a new basin, Surrey Basin. There was a new entrance lock into the canal itself at Russia Dock. When Greenland Dock was extended in 1904, a lock from there became the start of the canal, almost a mile from its original entrance from the Thames.
Surrey Docks were mainly used for timber, and this also made up much of the traffic on the canal, but an important customer was George Livesey’s South Metropolitan Gas Company with its Old Kent Road gas works relying on coal being brought to it on the canal on its own fleet of barges. Production of gas stopped on the site in 1953.
Other traffic on the canal also fell off dramatically, with many of the industrial sites which had sprung up beside it at various wharves along its length turned to road transport and new companies moved in which had no need for bulk transport. The canal became disused and most of it was filled in by 1960. The section down to the basin at Peckham now occupied by Peckham Library is a pedestrian and cycle route called both the Surrey Canal Walk and Surrey Canal Linear Path.
London Canals has a good account of the canal with some old photographs along with more recent images of various remaining features.
Close to the canal was the Willowbrook Estate constructed by the London County Council in the early 1960’s and handed over to the London Borough of Southwark in 1980. It became a part of Southwark’s drastic 1995 Five Estates Peckham Masterplan and the large block at the left of this picture, the 112 home Tonbridge House was demolished, along with Tilbury Close while most of the lower maisonettes remain. The regeneration of the estate had begun in 1988 and was completed by 1995, although there has been considerable refurbishment since the estate voted to be taken over by Willowbrook TMC in 1998.
My 1989 walk in Peckham will continue in a later post.
The first post on this walk I made on Sunday 29th January 1989 was Windows, A Doorway, Horse Trough and Winnie Mandela.
