Thames Tributary Earl Sluice - River Peck - Peckham

Thames Tributary Earl Sluice
The River Peck flows north through this area between Peckham Rye and the area of Meeting House Lane.

Post to the north Peckham Park Road
Post to the south Peckham Rye
Post to the east Telegraph Hill

Alpha Street.
Thomas Calton Centre. Old Board school

Blackpool Road
Bus depot for LT on site of ex-council depot. 1994.
Buildbase and HIR Base

Blenheim Grove
All Saints church 1870/2. A humble building By H. E. Coe. Ragstone.
Tara Reclamation Yard
213 Bar Story. Pub in a railway arch

Bournemouth Road
CP House - Bussey building. An early 20th reinforced concrete industrial building. It was used by Bussey and Co, sporting goods manufacturers. The factory made cricket bats from its own willow farm in Suffolk.

Brayards Road
39 Oxford Farm Dairy. George Austin 1844-1925 was born in the Oxfordshire village of Blackthorn. He moved to London and opened the dairy. When the milk round was finished he used the milk cart for small household removals He later moved to Peckham Rye.
St.Mary Magdalene CofE Primary School
Greenhive Care Home

Burchell Road
College Hall. This was attached to Peckham Collegiate School. When it closed the hall was used by the brethren. It is now used by the Gospel Light Evangelical Ministry

Canal Head
Laid out new 1985
Grand Surrey Canal. The Peckham branch opened in 1826 was used for bulky goods such as road metal, coal, timber and other building materials. It ran through the grounds of Peckham manor demolished in 1797 A Boat House did a good trade in hired boats used by the young people
Whitten Timber Ltd. Mr W.H. Whitten moved his business in 1921 to Canal Head. He had started trading two years selling second-hand timber, doors, windows etc. from London County Council schools. He then began trading in imported softwoods. They moved from here to Eagle Wharf
Peckham Pulse Peckham Library. A striking building best imagined as an inverted capital letter 'L', with the upper part supported by steel pillars set at apparently random angles. By Will Alsop and Stirling prize winner. Opened in March 2000
Blocks of stone from the basin set up as seats

Carlton Grove
61 Tulsi House – was the Clarkson Arms. Now a hostel.
A range of four-storey flats by Higgins & Ney, 1970-6- demonstrates to return to favour of the street terrace

Choumert Grove
Peckham Islamic Centre. Built 2005 the mosque was founded by Mr Umer Elahi. The congregation includes African, Asian and European Muslims.

Choumert Road
43 Montpelier Pub
Girdlers' Almshouses. By M Woodthorpe, architect, 1852. Very modest. Now called Girdlers' Cottages, opened in 1852.

Choumert Square
Gated pedestrian cul de sac reached through wrought iron gates off Choumert Grove. Noted for its open days and gardens. There are forty-six houses and most front gardens are cultivated.

Cicely Road
Back of multi storey car park

Clayton Road
1 Clayton Arms

Consort Road
Was Cow Lane and then Albert Road. Features in films 'Blow Up’.
3 Unity Labour Club then bingo
15½ opening roof and sliding bath. Unique response on an unusable brownfield site.
75 Barmur Plant Co. Was the Golddiggers Arms,
111 Christ Miracle Gospel Ministries International119 Frog on the Green Deli. Previously a pub called Shergar
Consort Road Housing. Affordable housing, which is sustainable, CHP and Eco elements.

Copeland Road
Features in films 'Blow Up’.
Copeland Rough. Large wasteland site. Gardens of demolished houses. Meadow, flowers and birds
Copeland Industrial Park

Elm Grove
48-54 a curiosity, built in Bath stone cut and laid to look like stock brick.

Goldsmith Road
Nature garden. London Wildlife Trust

Gordon Road
Site of a watch maker’s shop which belonging to the Fat Boy of Peckham, 33 stones. Johnnie Trunley was the heaviest man in England
Camberwell Work House. The former 'Spike' which opened as a workhouse in 1879 has been converted into flats in the 1990s by a housing association. It was built in the grounds of Nazareth House because the parish of Camberwell had many poor people and a new workhouse was needed. This became known as The Spike. In return for a night's lodging, a tramp had to break a certain amount of stone into pieces small enough to go through a grille. One grille was preserved at the Livesey Museum in Old Kent Road. There were times when it housed over 1,000 men. It closed in 1985. Features in films 'Blow Up’.
Cross Close. Site of Nazareth House, which was built as a convent and had a large cross on top. The nuns moved out when the railway was built because it destroyed their privacy. In the early 1870s it was home to 110 aged male paupers who had pigs and poultry as well growing produce.
26 Star of India. Closed, site is now housing
Park commemorates Jamaican born Dr Harold Moody, founder of the influential League of Coloured Peoples in 1931

Hanover Park
Southwark Law Centre

Harders Road
Cossall Park

Highshore Road
Was previously Hanover Street and before that called South Street
Hanover Chapel. This stood on the corner with Peckham High Street. It was founded by John Maynard, a Puritan who became vicar of Camberwell. He Resigned and started the Meeting House in Meeting House Lane.
Former Friends' Meeting House - now part of the Royal Mail site. A substantial meeting house, with vestry-rooms adjoining. It is enclosed by a wall and gates. Built in 1825; It closed in 1961.

Holly Grove
Built 1815-1822. Originally called George Street and later South Grove.
Holly Grove Shrubbery was South Grove Shrubbery preserved in 1897 as a park

King's Grove
Was King's Road
11 first black doctor in Peckham, Moody, there

Kirkwood Road
Kirkwood Training Centre, civil defence training, on the corner with Brayards Road. Housing is now on the site. It was opened by Home Secretary Chuter Ede, in 1954. It had administration and equipment rooms, a kitchen and a hall was equipped for lectures - and a 20ft square floor map of Camberwell. There were Gas and fire training huts in the grounds.
177 hosepipe factory 1935 -1950. W. Greenwood & Sons and Co. Ltd. made flex hoses in 1950, and in 1980 listed as “oil resisting hose pipe manufacturers.”
Kirkwood Road Nature Garden

Marmont Road
74 Marlborough Head. Demolished and gone

Meeting House Lane
Acorn Place Estate. Experiments with low rise high density. Camberwell Borough Council's, 1957-63 by F. Hayes, an attempt at low-rise housing. One seven-storey slab on stilts with houses behind round pedestrian courtyards
122 The Beehive. Closed
Nell Gwyn Nursery

Mission place
Orchard Mission. Don White sang there and then became a pastor

Montpelier Road
76-78 housing, infill, should be visited a discreet piece in an older street, by Peter Moro & Partners, 1969-73

Nazereth Gardens
On the site of the Workhouse

Peckham High Street
The last remaining survivors of the village disappeared in the war although a few old houses can still be glimpsed above and behind shop fronts
14 Cap Sud previously Kellies Free House. Once called the Adam and Eve. Closed and derelict.
32 A.E. Wilson's cycle firm. started in Hill Street around 1870 and The present shop was opened in 1882. The firm's founder was Harold Wilson. They used to make 'Courier' cycles and a 'Courier' motor bicycle, which cost £40.
45 King John pub. Gone
71-79 The Kentish Drovers Wetherspoons
96 Bun House
109 Greyhound. open
116 Red Bull. Redeveloped as housing
119 Reed Employment Agency was Sally O’Brien’s and before that the Crown
153 Gaumont House. Site of the Crown Theatre. It was built Ernest Runtz and opened in 1898. The Theatre was later renamed the Peckham Hippodrome, and in 1912 was a Cinema and renamed the Hippodrome Picture Palace. It was demolished completely in 1932, and replaced by a new Cinema, called the Gaumont. This closed in 1961 and the building was then converted for use as a Bingo Hall. Eventually the building was demolished for flats
190 Red Cow
Bus Garage. Tillings occupied the premises in 1876, which was then called Bull Yard. In 1905 it was adapted by them as a garage for 35 buses and 4 petrol tanks - be the first example of bulk storage for a bus company. From 1911 it was Tillings’ engineering headquarters and bus bodies were built there. The first double deckers in the West End ran out of here in the 1850s. In 1934 when LT took over, Tillings were using it only for storage and LT re-turned into a bus garage. In 1940 the site was bombed and 48 buses were lost. It was rebuilt in 1951 for 150 buses plus LT’s South East Divisional Medical Centre by Wallis Gilbert and Partners working with LT architect Thomas Billbow. Construction was by Costain and J.Jarvis & Co. It closed in 1994 because of roof problems and demolished in 1995-96 for an extension to the Safeway store in the Aylesham Centre.
Kisses Nightclub was Central Hall of the Congregationalists or Church of the Strangers, founded by Rev. George Thorn - who preached in a suit of armour on the theme 'put on the whole armour of god'. Demolished.
Police station. Peckham Police Station was reopened by Princess Alexandra in 1988 after it had been extended. The current building is 1893 but an earlier one had been demolished and was part of a fine mansion belonging to the Dalton family and later a nunnery. Considerable garage accommodation to the rear.
Post office built to replace one, which was bombed in the Second World War, but later repaired. Behind it stood the SE District Sorting Office.
Wood Dene estate, Demolished

Peckham Hill Street
Peckham Hill Street Library. The library was opened in 1954 and it was built because its predecessor in in Peckham Road had been bombed. It was Camberwell's tenth public library and was nicknamed 'The Rainbow Library' by the mayor. A mural was painted on the outside of the library in 1996 by East Dulwich artist Stan Foskett.

Peckham
Means the 'village by the hill's watercourse'. ‘Peckham’ 1241 from Old English, probably referring to the hill now known as Telegraph Hill and the River Peck. The same name is found as East & West Peckham. It was a small village and given by Henry I to his illegitimate son Robert, Earl of Gloucester. King John granted an annual fair, which lasted into the 19th.

Queen's Road,
Was originally Deptford Lane going to New Cross? It was renamed in 1866 in honour of Queen Victoria. However it continues the Camberwell to New Cross main route...
2 Marbella Hotel
4 -10 c. 1700.
30-54 Georgian terrace
80 site of Peckham Collegiate School. This was known as Peckham School and founded in 1788. It moved here in the late 19th
91 The Children’s Society
99 Montpelier pub. Now flats
139 London and Brighton. Closed and boarded up
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Wesley preached here several times allegedly in the open air at the Woods Road corner. Queens Road chapel opened in 1865 and was a local landmark. It was destroyed by arson in 1972 and replaced by flats, with a new church on the site of the' hall...

Railway Arches
George Batty Pickle Factory, a manufacturer of condiments, had 19 railway arches in Peckham. Covering some 75,000 sq ft, in the 1800's and early 1900's. Pickle and Fish Sauce Manufacturers, Original Inventors of Calves' Feet Jelly in Bottles and Proprietors of Dr Kitchener's Sauce and Salad Cream. Nabob Sauce and Pickle.

Reedham Street
Bellenden Primary School, 1980-1 by Linda Suggate. Good example of later school by the I.L.E.A. Architect's Department.

Rye Lane
Rye Lane leads south from Peckham High Street towards Peckham Rye. One of South London's major shopping centres in the early 20th It was known as the Golden Mile. It was badly damaged in 1944 by rockets.
1-41 Jones and Higgins, Dramatic store built in the 1930s on the corner with the High Street. Jones and Higgins, had Started at No. 3 in 1867 and closed in 1980. The Aylesham Centre now occupies most of the site though the tower is still there. The store was founded by Edwin Jones and George Randell Higgins as apprentices with money they had saved. The shop expanded rapidly, and in 1896 it was converted into a limited liability company and by 1923 employed 1,000 people. In 1954 it was taken over by Great Universal Stores.
41 Rye Lane Market
51-57 Holdron's store closed 1949. Part of the firm's chimney, with ‘RONS’ on it, was in the Copeland Industrial Park. The shop opened in 1882 as a ‘Market. Holdron's was acquired by the John Lewis Partnership in 1940; it was sold in 1949. In 2001 the building caught fire and the Agora indoor market and Allied Carpets shop were destroyed.
Holdrons Store built in the 1930s by the Southern Railway. It later became C&A
56-58 Cinema House of South-Eastern Pictures 1911. It later became the Imperial Playhouse
61-63 Clarks shoe shop. This was Sainsbury’s last counter store, closed in 1982.
66 Hope Pub
95a Peckham Plex cinema. Opened in 1994 in ex Sainsburys building
116 Tower Cinema. A South London landmark with its name on top on three sides. The South London sister of the Angel Islington. Became Peckham. Gaumont.In 1932 a 10 Rank Crompton organ was installed. Closed 1956.
133 Electric Cinema. 1908-1915. Owned by Biograph Theatres.
135-137 Sky Shopping City was Bray Shopping Centre opened by Lorraine Chase in 5/84
140 Kennedys’. The original shop of the sausage makers. Kennedy was a Scottish family who moved to Kent in the 1830s. They started a sausage shop in Peckham in 1877. Eventually the family split the business up and closed in 2007.
213 American Bisocope Cinema 1909
231 Nags Head /Morning Star
249 Heaton Arms. Demolished
256-267 Co-operative House. RACS store, converted into flats 2008. Historical aspects of the facade were incorporated in the new building on the site. The Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society, opened a store here in 1913. This was remodelled and opened as Co-operative House on 12 October 1932. The architect was Mr. T.W. Ackroyd, FRIBA. When it opened delegates numbering nearly 1,000 came from Co-operative organisations from all over south London. It closed in 1980, and had nearly 1,800 electric lamps and ten miles of cables. Development by Tower Homes.
Aylesham Centre. Shopping mall built on the site of the old Jones and Higgins store. Opened in 1984 and named by Southwark Council after the Kent coal-mining village.
Museum Works. The Museum of Firearms was built in 1867. In 1870 George Gibson Bussey moved set up a "Firearms, Ammunition & Shooting” gallery with a rifle range at the rear alongside of the railway embankment.
Peckham Rye Station. 1864 Between Nunhead and Denmark Hill on South Eastern Trains. Between Queens Road Peckham and East Dulwich and also Denmark Hill on Southern Trains. 1862 on the Line to Crystal Palace 1st December. 1864 It was designed by Charles Henry Driver (1832-1900), the architect of Abbey Mills and Crossness pumping stations. In an ornamental Italian Renaissance characteristic of the South London line. 1866 Tall, booking office between viaducts, opened on the line from Brixton. 1868 Line to Sutton built. 1880 to 1900s service to Shoreditch, 1911 Shoreditch service was withdrawn 1954 The Chatham Co. never did do very well and line from Nunhead was abandoned in the railway arches, Lorraine Chase was discovered. Goods. LNNR/Midland Railway Joint, 1891. Site of Hydraulic Pumping Station. In an ornamental Italian Renaissance characteristic of the South London line
Shops built in 1935 on the old Station Forecourt built by the Southern Railway
Rye Lane Chapel. Mid Victorian Baptist chapel sited here after a number of other sites had been changed. Opened 1863.

Woods Road
Was Harders Road
2 MR Scaffording, site of Carty's, made vats and wooden tanks from at least 1766 occupied one of the oldest premises in Peckham. Closed in 1989. They originated in Borough High Street where in 1761 a lease was granted to Benjamin Powell and Edward Layton for building on a site of the King's Bench Prison. The firm became Layton & Young in 1790 and Charles Carty took them over and the firm became Carty, Son & Wingrove in 1845. The firm moved here, in 1921.
38 & 47 were both garages for private bus cos. in the 1920s.
39 was a house, garage and petrol station. House at the front and the rest at the back. 1977 still there. Owner called Hawking. Taxi business too. 1935 LPTB took it over and owner went back to greyhound racing. Another bus company there called Carswell, now demolished. One bus only. The same bus from the 1920s to the 1930s. When LPTB took it over, solid wheels all the time and the only spare part was a magneto.
Kennedy’s sausage factory run by one branch of the family. 1931-1974.
Peckham Methodist Church 1972 with a half-gable and clerestory along one side. By Gordon Bawyer and Partners, 1972-4. With the housing near by, it replaces the chapel in Queen's Road.
Tuke School, for students aged 11 years - 19 years with severe and complex learning disabilities.
John Donne Primary School. Board school building.

Sources
London Railway Record

Comments

Anonymous said…
Just wanted to let you know that the Marlborough Head pub in Marmont Road is still standing, but it is no longer a pub.

Deb (researching a family who lived in Marmont Road in the early 1900s)
Anonymous said…
Just wanted to add a "thank-you" for all of the info on your blog - it has been really helpful to me in my research on Peckham, which is an area that I'm not very familiar with.

Deb
Unknown said…
Would love to know about Commercial Way, especially the Old Kent Road end.

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