My previous post about this walk on 5th February 1989 was Peckham Rye to Goose Green – 1989
Lordship Lane is a longish road that goes vaguely south from Goose Green around a mile and a half to the Horniman Museum at Forest Hill, but I only walked a fairly short section at its north end on this walk. Much of the first section was covered by shops in which I found little of interest.
The Dulwich Club, a members only drinking establishment at 110 Lordship Lane was affiliated to the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union, CIU, which was set up in 1862 to promote education and temperance among the working classes, who soon took over what had been a philanthropic middle-class gesture and began also to provide cheap beer as well as other cheap products and services.
Most early clubs were set up as either Liberal or Labour clubs (Conservative Clubs didn’t join, having higher class aspirations) and but the movement as a whole was non-political. This one – as the notice-board shows was assisting its members in council housing to take advantage of the ‘right to buy’ introduced by Thatcher.
If you were a member of any CIU club you could go into any of the other CIU clubs around the country and take advantage of the facilities – particularly the bar.
This building was demolished around 2000 and the site is now housing. The house at left it still there.
Bassano St, Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, Southwark, 1989 89-2c-56
Just a few yards down Bassano Street from Lordship Lane is this religious building, with a cross in the brickwork above the doorway. It was the Epiphany Mission, built in 1908 by architects Nixon, Horsfield & Sons and used as an Anglican church from then until 1927 and then later from 1941-51 as a replacement for St John’s which had been bombed and then as a parish hall until sold in 1994 to finance the Goose Green Centre at St John’s.
My picture is not quite sharp enough to read the name on the notice clearly but I think it says ‘The Epiphany Hall’. At right there is obviously a later extension, perhaps from the 1950s.
The building is now still in religious use as the Church of God (7th Day) Sabbath Keeping Temple.
One of the more interesting late-Victorian buildings peppered around the area this decorated frontage is at the end of a rather dull terrace with ground floor shops.
I’m unclear as to the intertwined initials at the top of the building , hardly visible in my photograph, but even looking at them more clearly, I’m unsure if they are just D and G or are intended also to include an E.
The shop no longer has the profusion of signs which appealed to me, including two Michelin men, and the billboard higher up has also gone. No longer tyres, the shop is now Franklin’s Farm Shop, a good indication of the extent of gentrification in the area.
North Cross Road, running east from Lordship Lane, had (and still has) a long row of small shops I found of more interest, including this hairdresser’s window with a poster showing various hair styles from a company in Lagos.
The poster could have been on the window of this hairdresser, though there were several to chose between on the street. This is Ena’s and has a poster advertising a Jamaican Easter Shipping Sale.
Molly, another hairdresser on the street appears to cater for a more traditional white clientèle. The stained glass window at left with the word SHAMPOOING has a distinctly 1930 feel – and presumably there was once a similar panel on the other side of the doorway. The FOR phone number was for the FORest Hill exchange and went out of date in 1996 when we moved to all figure numbering.
I think this yard with its Fresh Fish and Shellfish stall stored there was at the rear of shops on Lordship Lane, one of which was, from the trays, presumably a bakery. Perhaps the stall was wheeled out for use beside the pub on the corner, a historic pub, The Lord Palmerston built in 1862 (though it has since last ‘The Lord’.)
This was the end of my walk and I got on a bus, but got off my bus to take another picture on Camberwell Road in Walworth.
Rather to my surprise, there was a newsagents in the same shop here until around 2014. The larger house in this picture is now a hotel with a two storey street entrance.
My account of this walk from 5th February 1989 began with http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=14180 A Pub, Ghost Sign, Shops And The Sally Ann. I’ll post shortly about my next walk, a week later.
