Thames Tributary River Peck - Honor Oak

Thames Tributary River Peck - Honor Oak
The Peck rises from three springs in the Honor Oak area and flows south towards Peckham Rye

Post to the west East Dulwich
Post to the west Crofton Park
Post to the south Forest Hill

Ackroyd Street
Developed by the Leathersellers ‘Company.

Athelney Road,
built by Gates, a South London millionaire also active ubn Walworth and Kennington as well.

Borland Road
Previously Marylebone Road
2 Gandolfi family moved into a hat pin factory here in 1928. They made very posh wooden cameras but moved to Andover in the early 1980s. Cameras supplied to the Tutenkamun expedition, to David Bailey etc.

Brenchley Gardens
Brenchley Gardens Linear Park. Created on land previously occupied by allotments it was opened on 6 October 1928 it must have been ideal for observing the trains. It was named after Cllr William Brenchley, Mayor of Camberwell. The London County Council wouldn't agree the name so Camberwell claimed it was called after Brenchley in Kent. Originally opened 1928, it now includes the track-bed area of the Crystal Palace High Level Railway, which closed during the last years of the Second World War, and closed completely in 1954. . The rockery at the southern end shows where the track-bed was added and continuing in it makes a glad alongside the old line. There are still remnants of the line side trees - hybrid black poplars, ashes, aspen and sycamores.
Honor Oak station. 1st December 1865. Built by London Chatham and Dover Railway this station was on the south west of Forest Hill Road between Wood Vale and Canobie Road. There was a subway under the line to a wooden booking office, but later tickets were sold on the platform - which was very wonky through subsidence. Between 1917and 1919 it was closed  by which time it was the only stationn on the line with a goods yard.  And in 1954 finally closed. The site is now obliterated
Signal box was in use until 1954
Coal yard on the up side of the station. It was timber built with sidings 1865-1954 Could accommodate 25 wagons with three sidings.
Camberwell New Cemetery. Built on the site of the former Honor Oak and Forest Hill Golf Course in 1927 on a damp slope with nature interest. The brick chapel was designed in 1930 by Sir Aston Webb and has a central tower over an archway, with chapels on either side. There are acres of rosebeds. It contains 198 Second World War burials most in a war graves plot. Graves include that of the boxer, Freddie Mills.
Honor Oak Crematorium. A brick building from 1939. Brick by W. Bell and Maurice Webb. Opened by the physician Lord Horder in 1939. Camberwell Vestry had considered providing a crematorium in the late 19th. However it was not until the 1920s and following a public inquiry that they got consent to do so.

Brockley Way
Line of ancient path called Nunhead Lane or Brockley Jack Path. It crossed the Croydon canal at lock 22. The railway bridge is probably on the same site.
Abutments of a railway bridge which mark the line of and are the remains of the 1865 Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway, the line of which is now inside Brenchley Gardens.
Cemetery and crematorium gates
Fire hydrant iron pavement cover. Made by Blakeborough of Brighouse

Cheltenham Road
Honor Oak Reservoir - Beechcroft Reservoir. Called after the Metropolitan Board of Works’ first Chairman. It was planned and designed by James Restler. For the Kent Water Company and opened under the Metropolitan Water Board by the Lord Mayor of London in 1909. It was the largest ever brick-lined underground reservoir and remained the largest in Europe holding 56 1/2m gallons. It is in 4 separate sections, which can all be filled or emptied independently, in a rectangular grid made up of brick piers and vaulted ceilings. Built on natural clay its outer walls are of concrete lined with brickwork. At the bottom is a 300' well. It took 16m bricks which were all made on site from clay from the excavated clay. There was also 95,000 cu ft concrete and took 400 Men 3 years. The Reservoir takes water from Walton and was intended to provide a low pressure reservoir for south east London but its water can go north if necessary. It is connected to a 42 inch main bringing filtered water from Hampton - 17 miles away. It contains Halls cement and the contractor was J.Moran and Son
Honor Oak Pumping Station. Building of 1901, inscribed 'Southwark & Vauxhall Water Company', with a tower topped by a French chateau roof. It was built over the original well which is 100 metres deep and still in use.
Valve House. A classical red brick structure of 1909
Aquarius Golf Course. Aquarius Golf Course built on top of the reservoir. Owned by the Metropolitan Water Board, and named from the zodiac sign meaning 'the water carrier'. Lots of short turf with waterworks bits sticking out.

Fernholme Road
built by Gates

Holmesley Road
built by Gates

Homestall Road
Harris Girls Academy - opened in September 2006 and is part of the Harris Federation of South London Schools sponsored by Lord Harris of Peckham. This was previously the Waverley School. Taking Teen-age girls from six London Boroughs.

Honor Oak Estate
Development of the late 1920s by the London County Council. 27 blocks in brown brick over 25 acres.

Honor Oak Park
The original part of Forest Hill and laid out with posh houses from the 1780s. It was never the name of a park but a name thought up by developers. Off the road and in the middle of woodland. The Road which had a very tortuous track was built up in 1863 and initially called St. Germans Road
Honor Oak Park Station. 1886. Between Forest Hill and Brockley. Opened on the Croydon Line, which had been laid down through the area in 1839. The railway is still in its deep cutting nearby, continuing to climb to Forest Hill, although original proposals would have had a steeper gradient. It was partly funded by local estate developers. The original building remains, with covered walkways leading down to the platforms in a cutting.
Railway bridge. When it was originally built the road was a narrow track which only served a field path. It was widened in 1886
St.Augustine. Built 1872-3 by William Oakley. A Ragstone church with a tower completed in 1888. Stained Glass windows, one by Heaton, Butler & Bayne.  The entrance to the pastern wearing pole which is a symbol and a model of the church on his shoulder.  Was consecrated on St Augustine's day but everything went wrong and it was not enough money was not concentrated another year 1874  
101a/c site of the Croydon Canal: recent houses have which have filled in the gaps.
103-111 The owners of these late Victorian houses would have had the old canal at the bottom of their gardens, still in water albeit out of use. Four of them put bridges across to recreational land, now under Boveney Road.,
103 the site of lock keepers cottage for the Croydon Canal was in front of this house. The cottage had gone by 1863 lock house had gone, and the site had been used for road widening.
Croydon Canal Lock 28 would have been alongside the cottage and would straddle the road
Croydon Canal- to the north of the road it crossed nursery land going north east towards the line of the current railway.
Open spaces. A large open area of allotments, a derelict nursery and playing fields providing a valuable informal habitat of rough grassland, bramble thickets & ruderal herbs. There are common meadow crickets as well s tawny owl, green woodpecker, goldfinch, dunnock and whitethroat.
Honor Oak Nursery. In the Second World War this was used by the London Meals Service and reserve AFS station. There was a walled reservoir in the playground.


Marmora Road
Named after events in the Crimean War.

One Tree Hill
Could be seen as one of the last remains of the Great North Wood. Paths go steeply up from Honor Oak Park through woodland to the 90 metre high summit of the Hill. It is also known as Honor Oak Hill. It is said to be the site of victory over Boudicca, which is extremely unlikely. The status of the hill was in some doubt in the19th but local people thought it was 'waste' or common land, and when it was enclosed for a large private golf course in 1896 thousands of people gathered and pulled down the fences. Eventually the neighbouring local councils acquired the hill through the LCC's General Powers Act of 1904 and it opened in as a park 1905. There is lots of grass but few trees although new ones have been introduced. Oak and sycamore grow with an under storey of elder and hawthorn. Crab apple, hawthorn and oak are plentiful and London plane trees are here in a woodland habitat. There are many birds and insects.  Also called Telegraph Hill or Semaphore Hill because signals used in the Napoleonic Wars. Iin the Great War there was a gun on a concrete platform here
The Oak of Honour is said to mark the southern boundary of the Honour of Gloucester. You are supposed to sing a psalm under the oak. Elizabeth I picnicked with Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris on May Day in 1602, and it is believed that it was at an oak tree on this summit– but it is not believed that she got drunk and knighted the oak. She is said to have thought the hill the most difficult climb for her courtiers in the area. On the 18th Roque Map it is marked as ‘Oak of Arnon’. Surrounded by railings on the summit is an oak, probably planted in c.1905 and then Replanted because it was struck by lightning. The oak is on the original boundary between the Metropolitan Boroughs of Lewisham and Camberwell. From beneath the oak is said to come one of the three springs in the area which feed the River Peck.
Camberwell Parish boundary marker. Iron
Beacon. On the summit is a gun emplacement from the First World War, and a beacon used in 1988 on the fourth centenary of the defeat of the Armada although there is no evidence of a beacon here then. It was the site of a beacon and telegraph belonging to the East India Company and during the Napoleonic wars as a Beacon Hill for the Admiralty. That was a commercial visual telegraph station, established here in 1842 by B L Watson, and used until the first station near London Bridge was burnt down in 1843. A 'signaling cottage', near the top of the hill seems to have survived into the 1860s.
Horse trough and drinking fountain. Gone.

Reynolds Road
Previously late Pancras Road

Stuart Road
40 The Ivy House
Denne Ltd. Work wear manufacturers. founded in 1895 by Harry Robert Denne in the East End of London to make collars for city gents.

Walter’s Way
A private close with 13 square timber-framed flat-roof houses of 1987. This was a social self-build scheme with designs chosen by the 'self-builders', based on a concept of Walter Segal, a Swiss- architect who pioneered this lightweight self-build system. Lewisham Council took it up in 1978, when the architectural writer Nicholas Taylor, was Chair of Housing. Jon Broome of Archetype was joint architect for the first part and has developed the concept since Segal's death.

Comments

Martin Bailey said…
Beacon on One Tree Hill: this was erected in 1953, to enable a celebratory beacon to flash the good news of the Queen's Coronation to some other spot: Hilly Fields? Anyway, it was a flop, because on the night of June 2nd the fire was swiftly extinguished by a downpour. I know, because I was there with my parents, watching...

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