Peckham

Peckham Rye railway station entrance off Rye Lane

At the beginning of the 19th century, Peckham was synonymous with Peckham Rye: a "small, quiet, retired village surrounded by fields". Since 1744 stagecoaches had travelled with an armed guard between Peckham and London to give protection from highwaymen. The rough roads constrained traffic so a branch of the Grand Surrey Canal was proposed as a route from the Thames to Portsmouth. The canal was built from Surrey Commercial Docks to Peckham before the builders ran out of funds in 1826. The abbreviated canal was used to ship soft wood for construction and even though the canal was drained and backfilled in 1970 Whitten's timber merchants still stands on the site of the canal head.

In 1851 Thomas Tilling started an innovative omnibus service from Peckham to London. Tilling's buses were the first to use pre-arranged bus stops, which helped them to run to a reliable timetable. His services expanded to cover much of London until his horses were requisitioned for the Army in the First World War.

During the mid-19th century, housing had spread north and west of Peckham Rye. The area in the north, towards Old Kent Road, on land previously owned by the Hill family (from whom the name Peckham Hill Street was derived) was initially known as Peckham New Town, although it would later become synonymous with Peckham in general (and the "New Town" was abandoned). In the area west of Peckham Rye Common and Peckham Rye Park, many large houses were built.

Manze's Eel and Pie House, Peckham.

A map showing the Peckham wards of Camberwell Metropolitan Borough as they appeared in 1916.

Peckham Rye railway station was opened, in 1865. With the arrival of the railway and the introduction of horse-drawn trams about ten years later, Peckham became accessible to artisans and clerical staff working in the city and the docks. Housing for this socio-economic group filled almost all the remaining fields except the Rye. In 1868 the vestry of Camberwell St Giles bought the Rye to keep it as common land. Responding to concerns about the dangerous overcrowding of the common on holidays the vestry bought the adjacent Homestall Farm (the last farm in the area) in 1894 and opened this as Peckham Rye Park.

With the influx of younger residents with money to spend Rye Lane became a major shopping street. Jones & Higgins opened a small shop in 1867 (on the corner of Rye Lane and Peckham High Street) that became the best known department store in south London for many years. It closed in the 1980s. In 1870 George Gibson Bussey moved to Peckham and set up a firm described as "Firearms, Ammunition & Shooting” at the Museum Works, Rye Lane, Peckham. The Museum of Firearms was built in 1867. The Ordnance Survey Map of 1868 shows the museum building with a rifle range at the rear extending along the side of the railway embankment for 150 yards.

The late 19th century also saw the arrival of George Batty, a manufacturer of condiments, whose main business stood at Finsbury Pavement. The company's Peckham premises occupied 19 railway arches. It was acquired by the H. J. Heinz Company in 1905 as their first UK manufacturing base.

The southern end of Peckham was the location for the railway line that once served the Crystal Palace in Sydenham. Though the line was eventually dismantled due to the collapse of the embankment into the gardens of Marmora Road it is still possible to see large sections of it. The flats on Wood Vale and the full length of Brenchley Gardens trace its route.

Close by is the Aquarius Golf Club,[6] which is located over the cavernous Honor Oak Reservoir constructed between 1901 and 1909. When it was completed it was the largest brick built underground reservoir in the world[7] and is still one of the largest in Europe.[8] The reservoir now forms part of the Southern extension of the Thames Water Ring Main.

Camberwell Old Cemetery, on Forest Hill Road, is a later example of the ring of Victorian cemeteries that were built to alleviate the overcrowding of churchyards that was experienced with the rapid expansion of London in the 19th century. The Stone House at its main entrance was used as a film location for Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970), adapted from the Joe Orton play. It was gutted by fire in the mid-1970s and rebuilt some years later. Camberwell Old Cemetery did not have the grandeur of nearby Nunhead Cemetery, which was one of the original London necropoleis, and once nearing capacity it was replaced by Camberwell New Cemetery on Brenchley Gardens.

Brenchley Gardens Park follows the route of the old line to the Crystal Palace culminating at the High Level station. The park runs behind Marmora Road and the remains of the embankment then continues along Wood Vale where flats were built on it. The line was closed in 1954 following a decline in its use after the destruction of the Crystal Palace in 1936 and due to slippage in the structure of the embankment.[9]

London Borough of Southwark Blue Plaque awarded to famous motorbike designer Edward Turner unveiled in 2009 at his former residence, 8 Philip Walk, Peckham. Turner had run a motorbike shop, Chepstow Motors on Peckham High Street.

In the 1930s George Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse opened the Pioneer Health Centre in Queens Road. They planned to conduct a large experiment into the effect of environment on health. 'The Peckham Experiment' recruited 950 families at one shilling (5p) a week. The members joined something like a modern sports club with facilities for physical exercise, games, workshops and socialising with no mandatory programme. The centre moved into a purpose built modernist building by the architect Sir Owen Williams in 1935.

North Peckham Estate, 1984 (Photograph by Russell Newell)

North Peckham was heavily redeveloped in the 1960s, consisting mainly of high-rise flats to rehouse people from dilapidated old houses. It was popular on its completion for offering a high quality and modern standing of living. However, high unemployment and a lack of economic opportunities led to urban decay and a period of decline in the late 1970s. The North Peckham Estate became one of the most deprived residential areas in Western Europe. Vandalism, graffiti, arson attacks, burglaries, robberies and muggings were commonplace, and the area became an archetypal London sink estate. As a result, the area was subjected to a £290 million regeneration programme in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After the beginning of the regeneration, the estate gained nationwide notoriety in the media when 10-year-old Nigerian resident Damilola Taylor was stabbed to death on the estate on 27 November 2000.[10] A gang operating in the area is the Peckham Boys.[11]

In the early 1990s Peckham was a centre of underground music partly due to a large squat known as The Dolehouse in a disused, 2 floor DHSS building near Peckham High Street.[12] The building was already known for having featured in the cover shot of a 1980s pictorial biography of 1960s' mods, featuring them on their customised scooters outside the then Camberwell Labour Exchange. In 1989 the squatters adopted the name Dole House Crew and along with another local group of squatters called the "Green Circus", held regular gigs/parties in the building. They moved on to many other South East London venues after the Peckham Dolehouse was evicted in late October 1990. A squatted social centre called the Spike Surplus Scheme ran from 1998 until being evicted by the council in 2009.

Peckham was one of the areas where riots took place during the 2011 England riots.[13]

• Bermondsey
• New Cross
• Camberwell
• East Dulwich
• Nunhead
• Brockley
• Walworth
• Rotherhithe

Like most of south east London, Peckham has never been served by the London Underground. However, once the Bakerloo line extension is complete, a new tube station will be built on Asylum Road northeast of the centre of Peckham, near the A2 road and Brimmington Park. It will be located between another new station at Burgess Park and the existing railway station at New Cross Gate. Existing railway stations in the district are as follows:

• Peckham Rye railway station
• Queens Road Peckham railway station
• Nunhead railway station

Peckham bus garage is currently operated by London Central and is situated in Blackpool Road. It opened in 1994 and replaced a similar but larger facility in Peckham High Street on part of whose site the present bus station now stands. A viaduct behind it carries the railway east of Peckham Rye railway station.