Thames Tributary Effra - West Dulwich

Thames Tributary Effra
It is conjectured by some that streams from Dulwich Park flow west to reach the Effra in the Herne Hill area, via Belair Park and surrounding fields.

Post to the west Tulse Hill
Post to the north Herne Hill
Post to the east Dulwich
Post to the south West Dulwich


Burbage Road
A tributary to the Effra flows to Burbage Road from Belair Park

Croxted Road
Was originally known as Croxted Lane and follows the line of the Effra

Gallery Road
Belair. Built around 1785 for John Willes, a Whitechapel corn merchant, it was originally known as 'College Place'. In 1806 he undertook 'to drain the land between Dulwich Road and 'the Sheet of Water'. After he died, the name was changed to Belair. Later residents were Charles Ranken, a solicitor from 1829, and Charles William Cookworthy Hutton, a 'Berlin Wool Manufacturer and Wholesaler'. During this time over ten acres of land was sold to the railway by Dulwich College. The last owner was Sir Evan Spicer, paper manufacturer and Chairman of London County Council and when he died in 1938 it was sold by auction. During the Second World War it was used as a store by Evan & Co and the military occupied it for a time. In 1946 the Borough of Southwark leased it as a park - there is a plaque on the wall about this. Grade II listed. The house is now a restaurant.
Lake is a branch of the Effra. Ducks - or – the lake not the Effra. Part of the remains of stream system which drains the ridge. There was also a millpond in this area.
A tributary to the Effra flows to Burbage Road from Belair Park.
The playing fields in this area were marshy meadows where small streams, some underground, ran towards the Effra. They were joined by streams from both the area now Dulwich park and by others from what is now Crystal Palace. The name of Dulwich relates to these meadows- fields where the dill flower grows.
Stable block 18th and lodge 19th.
A 10-acre park laid out as a suitably grand setting for Belair House. Informal sloping lawns in the English landscape tradition, with ancient trees, shrubberies and some rose beds, sweeping down to a long serpentine lake. Cork tree, alder and a Bald Cypress in the grounds.
Lloyds Register Athletic Ground
Old College Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club and Cricket Club

Glazebrook Close
Named after members of the Glazebrook family who were pupils at Dulwich College. One of them was the first man to clear six feet in the high jump and, became High Master at Manchester Grammar School and Headmaster at Clifton. Hugh Glazebrook who was a painter. And R.T. Glazebrook was Foreign Secretary in 1924.
Council housing on the site of Milne’s small holding, the last farm in Dulwich from which he was evicted in 1954.

Guernsey Grove
New Testament Church of God St.John’s Church Hall. Built as St. John the Evangelist. In 1912 as a mission church for the parish of Holy Trinity, Tulse Hill. A simple red brick building. Still in use by Anglicans in 1962. As of 2006 it is also used by the New Tidings Community Outreach Group and the African-Caribbean Mental Health Association.

Knights Hill
Name relates to a family who owned land in the area in the 16th. The hill itself is to the east of Tulse Hill. Now Thurlow Hill.

Lovelace Road
All Saints Church. Badly damaged by fire and since refurbished. Gothic revival church on a steep slope. By George Fellowes Prynne 1891. It had an outside staircase. The land was given by Dulwich College but there was never enough money to finish it so a tower was never built. It was badly damaged in the Second World War, and restored in 1952-1 by J. B. S. Camper who rebuilt where the big tower should have been.

Peabody Hill
Views of Brockwell Park, and beyond. Woodland and grassland, and rail side habitats. Oak woodland.
Peabody Estate 4 blocks of five floor flats, two streets of houses, 1901/8 and community hall of 1910. It is on the hill top because of research into building on clay.

Pymers Mead
The name was supposed to be Pinners Mead but was spelt wrong. This is new housing on bomb sites.

Rosendale Road
63 Rosendale
Railway Bridge on the Tulse Hill branch, 1869. Three-arches with red and cream brickwork. Designed like this for landowners Dulwich College.
Rosendale Playing Fields119/129 bombed in the Second World War 3 killed.
Express Dairy1899. Footpath to 1970s estate up the hill.
Knights Hill Tunnel. On the L.B.S.C.R. line of 1866-8 by R. J. Hood. Elaborate portals
Knights Hill coal depot
Above the railway tunnel is a cinder heap. This was a temporary brick works?
War memorial on the Peabody Estate. Small half-timbered structure which commemorates Peabody tenants who died in the Great War. The resident estate manager was killed during an air raid in the Second World War
Rosendale Primary School. Bailey. 1899

Thurlow Park Road
One of the main streams of the Effra meanders under Clive Road. It joins the other branch near where Thurlow Park Road and Croxted Road meet.
From Thurlow Park Road one stream ran meandering alongside what now the railway is following the east side of a hill. Croxted Lane followed the line of it.

Lord Thurlow, Lord Chancellor in 1778, lived in this area. He commissioned a Mansion House from Holland in an area which has since been built on. He is said to have been outraged at the builder’s charge and in fact lived there but lived in a farmhouse in the same area.
Police Station 1889
West Dulwich Station October 1863 London Chatham and Dover Railway. Opened as ‘Dulwich’ or ‘Lower Knights Hill’ 1926 renamed ‘West Dulwich’.
The Hare and Hounds. Pub mention in 1707 on The Woodlands
125 home of J.H.Thomas presented to him by the National Union of Railwaymen. Chancellor in Ramsay Macdonald’s national government but resigned over budget leaks. Now part of Oakfield School.
Oakfield School. Mepsilus and Cotoneaster Frigida in the grounds

Turney Road
Bridge over the road for the railway. On the main line of the London Brighton & South Coast 1864/8. This was designed by Charles Barry Jun., for, the governors of Dulwich College. It has a three-span ornamental cast-iron facade, with monogram AC and date 1863. The facade is largely independent of the wrought-iron girder structure behind
Dulwich Tennis and Cricket Ground
Football Ground
Westminster School Playing Ground
London South Bank University Sports Ground

Comments

Jim Hewitt said…
Dear "Edith",

A couple of corrections.

All Saints, Rosendale Road, had a "fibre-glass fleche" (a quasi-spire) between 1969 and 1976, when it was removed because of "rainwater leakage into church". I'm quoting from "Completing the Dream", a booklet produced by the church after it's post-fire reconstruction, but I lived in Croxted Road during this time and remember it well.

Pymers Mead runs parallel to and behind the west side of Croxted Road, and stands on the footprint of a row of about 30 Victorian semi-detached, double-fronted houses that were demolished in 1963 to make way for the smaller (consequently more - about 150) town houses now there. I lived in one of the demolished houses - No 155 - and my family moved only just over the road, to the east side of Croxted Road, from where I could see No 155 and the other houses being pulled down. The point I'd like to make is that if any of these houses suffered bomb damage it was rectified quickly and was not apparent in the 1950s and early 60s (the only reminder of the war being the filled-in Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden of 155). There was substantial bomb damage in the area around All Saints, Rosendale Road, stretching over south-eastwards towards Thurlow Park Road, and this area did, I think have some prefab housing until the mid-60s when the present warren of roads (Walkerscroft Mead, Coney Acre, Cokers Lane, Perifield and Rosedale Road) to the south of Pymers Mead were redeveloped and town houses to Pymers Mead standards were built here.

I have to confess I resented the demolition/re-build then, and still do. The houses pulled down in Croxted Road were well-built and substantial, just as those opposite, on the east side, still are. 155 had "original features" people would kill for today, and was a wonderful house for a kid to grow up in. The Pymers Mead houses are little better than the "ticky-tacky" of the song and I'm surprised they're still standing.

Jim Hewitt

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