History

A THOUSAND YEARS OF HISTORY

The busy main road, now called Dulwich Village, was, and still is, the High Street of the village of Dulwich. If you stand outside the Old College and look up the street you can see that Dulwich is still more like a village than most places so near to London. Beautiful trees and green grass line the road. There are small shops and an old signpost and milestone. Not far away are fields and woods. You can imagine the scene, not so many years ago, when, instead of fast cars, sheep and cows ambled along the peaceful village street.

Dulwich is, in fact, one of the oldest recorded villages in London. Now that it is a built-up area it is difficult to picture the lie of the land which might have attracted its first residents. Dulwich and East Dulwich cover a fertile valley between hills, Denmark Hill and Dog Kennel Hill to the north, Sydenham Hill and One Tree Hill, Honor Oak, to the south. If you explore on foot rather than by car or bus you will soon know where the rising ground begins! The name of Dulwich may be a clue to what the neighbourhood was like in the distant past. It has been spelt in various ways, Dilwihs, Dylways, Dullag, and may come from two old English words, Dill, a white flower, and wihs, meaning a damp meadow. Dulwich was 'the meadow where dill grows'.

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FIELDS AND WOODS

What was life like in Dulwich, hundreds of years ago? It was a quiet place then, just a few houses, in the midst of fields. People worked in the fields growing corn that was ground into flour at the mill. One Dulwich mill, set up by Edward Alleyn, was where Dulwich College now stands. The pond across the road is still called the M ill Pond. It was a post-mill; the sails were mounted on a post which could be turned according to the wind.

Dulwich Common is now only the name of a busy main road, part of the South Circular, but, until it was enclosed in 1805, the common was a wide open space; land where sheep and cows could graze.

Court Lane led to Dulwich Court. The Lord of the Manor, or his steward, held court to settle disputes or try people who had done something wrong. From 1333 the steward kept notes, in Latin, on rolls of parchment. These Court Rolls are preserved at Dulwich College and give some idea of life on the manor many centuries ago. For example, in 1333 William Colyn was fined three pence because his pigs got into the lord's field. In 1440 Julian Fahrher was brought to court because she did not come at harvest time to help gather the lord's oats. Sometimes a real crime was reported. In 1334 Richard Rolf said that William Hosewood 'at Dylwysh had carried off Edith, his wife, together with one cow worth ten shillings, clothes, jewels and other goods.

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OLD ROADS AND ROAD SIGNS

'The hamlet of Dulwich, formerly spelt Dilwysshe is near two miles from Camberwell - The situation is pleasant and very retired, no public road passing through it except to the neighbouring hamlet of Sydenham'.
Daniel Lysons - Environs of London, Cadell, 1792

In the past just a few very old roads or tracks linked Dulwich Village and East Dulwich with other places. Dog Kennel Lane, now Dog Kennel Hill, and Lordship Lane were part of a main north-south highway, marked on Rocque's Map of 1745. You can see by the way it curves that this is no modern motor route. Croxted Lane, now Croxted Road, was Crokestrete in a document of 1334. It is said to have been part of a route taken by some of the pilgrims to Canterbury.

Travellers coming to Dulwich from London came via Dulwich Hill, now Denmark Hill, and down Aspole Hill, now Red Post Hill. Leading south from Dulwich there was a path through the woods, Penge Lane, now College Road. The only other main route was 'the road from Bristoe Causey' (Brixton Causeway), now Half Moon Lane, leading past Island Green at the foot of Herne Hill.

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EDWARD ALLEYN, DULWICH COLLEGE AND THE ALLEYN FOUNDATION

The most important man in Dulwich history was certainly Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College. Who then was Alleyn? He was one of the greatest actors of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a time of great actors and playwrights, including Shakespeare himself. Born in 1566, the son of an innkeeper in Bishopsgate, at 17 he joined a company of actors. His wife, Joan Woodwarde, was the step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theatre on Bankside, Southwark; the foundations of which were uncovered by archaeologists in 1989. It was as an actor at the Rose that Alleyn achieved fame. Later he owned the Fortune Theatre in Finsbury and also became Master of the King's Bears. The cruel sport of bear-baiting, putting dogs to fight against bears, with bets on which animal won, was popular, and not considered wrong, in Alleyn's day. Edward Alleyn's portrait and that of his wife are in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Loving letters which he sent her when on tour with the actors are preserved at Dulwich College, together with his diary, and that of Philip Henslowe.

It was in 1605 that Alleyn's association with Dulwich began. He was now a wealthy man and, for £5,000, a large sum in those days, was able to buy the Manor of Dulwich from the Calton family, who had owned it since the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII. In 1612 Alleyn and his wife moved from Bankside to live in Dulwich.

Wanting to do good with the fortune he had made, he decided to build 'in Dulwich a college which would help both old people and children, a home, as he said, for 'six poor brothers and six poor sisters', and a school for 'twelve poor scholars'. All were to come from four parishes, St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, where he was born, St. Giles', Cripplegate, where his Fortune Theatre was built, St. Saviour's, now Southwark Cathedral, near which he had acted at the Rose and had his Bear Gardens, and St. Giles', Camberwell, which then included Dulwich. His plans were based on similar schemes elsewhere, which he had studied; Winchester College, the Charterhouse foundation in London, and even an old people's home in Amsterdam. On 21st June, 1619, King James I granted Alleyn a royal charter for his College. It is preserved at Dulwich College and 21st June is celebrated each year as Founder's Day.

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THE OLD VILLAGE

'The merchants and rich traders of the City of London availing themselves of the beautiful situations which are found here have built a great many good houses'.
Owen Manning and William Bray - History of Surrey, White, 1804

Dulwich Village is a Conservation Area. Many of its buildings take you back in time at least 200 years. At the centre is, of course, the Old College of Edward Alleyn. Elegant Georgian houses line part of the street leading to it. They were built at a time when better roads and transport had made it possible for professional and business men to live away from their work in central London. No. 57 next to the Old Burial Ground, still has a big brick coach house, built no doubt for the owner's private horse-drawn coach, but now converted into garages. Other genuine eighteenth-century houses include, Nos. 59, 97 and 101 - 105, Nos. 60- 62 and also Nos. 13 and 15 College Road.

These large houses, with their fine entrances, have obviously always been the homes of well-to-do people. More ordinary Dulwich residents might have lived in cottages, such as Nos. 70-78 Dulwich Village, all built between 1765 and 1837. Homes of the very poorest have gone, though records show there were some of these, even in Dulwich. The Dulwich Local Charities Annual Report, 1859- 60, mentions the distribution of flannel and coals to the poor because of the 'peculiar severity of last winter'.

The shops of Dulwich Village are fairly small, not like the self-service supermarkets of a modern shopping centre. Except for the goods on sale, many are comparatively little changed since Dulwich really was a village. Some of the cottages just mentioned have long been small shops and others once were, as you can see by the boards above the ground-floor windows which used to carry the shopkeeper's name. Across the road, what is now the Post Office, used to be the villager baker's. There has been a grocer's at No.91 since at least 1812. If you look above the modern shop-fronts you can see that Nos. 77-89 are all old buildings. Nos. 25-49 Dulwich Village are not quite so old. This is a Victorian shopping centre, known as Commerce Place. In the days before tap-water, there was a long pond on this site, a reservoir for the village and a place for cattle and horses to drink. It was probably constructed when James Allen was Master of the College. The shops were built after 1860 when the pond was filled in.

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INNS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS

Everyone knows the Crown and Greyhound, the popular pub and meeting-place in Dulwich Village. Its curious sign takes you back in history to two of the oldest inns of Dulwich. One was the Crown, on this same site, a small weather-boarded building, where farm labourers could call in for a drink after their work in the fields. The Plough, Lordship Lane, was once very similar. Its sign reminds you of those days.

The gentlemen who lived in the elegant houses of Dulwich preferred the Greyhound which was across the road from the Crown, and the largest inn in the village. Balls were held here and the Dulwich Club, founded in 1772, used to meet here for grand dinners. Items on the menu for 21st December 1782, included 'hunting pudding', 'turtle supe' and 'mins pys'. Charles Dickens and other famous people came to the Dulwich Club dinners. The Greyhound probably got its name from the hounds used in hunting. Another old inn was the Fox under the Hill, described as 'an ancient public house' in 1789.

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GREAT HOUSES AND WHO LIVED IN THEM

Belair in Gallery Road, is a good place to spend a summer's afternoon. The 18th century mansion, the peaceful grounds, and well-kept lawns sloping down to the long lake, make it easy to imagine you are far from London, or back in the days when this was the private country estate of a wealthy family.

The house was built about 1785 for John Willes, cornfactor of Whitechapel, and was known in his time as College Place. The lake was mentioned by Willes when first leasing the land from Dulwich College. It used to be thought that it was a branch of the River Effra, but recent research has tended to disprove this. The next long-term resident of the house was Charles Ranken, solicitor, who renamed it Belair. Additions to the building were necessary when Charles Hutton, wool merchant, and Sheriff for London and Middlesex, lived here with his wife, eleven of their children, and ten living-in servants! Eventually Belair had forty-seven rooms - very much bigger than it is today.

It remained a private house until 1938, the last resident being Sir Evan Spicer of Spicer's, the paper merchants. In his time Belair still had a farm with cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and horses, including a grey carthorse called Dobbin. It had vegetable gardens and fruit trees and what is now a football ground was a hayfield, with a hay-stack. In the coach-house, by the Gallery Road entrance, there was a coach and horses to take Sir Evan and his family, on Sundays, across Dulwich Park to Emmanuel Church, Barry Road. The coach-house has now been made into flats but there is still an old pump outside which might have given the horses a drink.

Southwark Council leased Belair in 1946 for recreation and the grounds are always open to the public. The house was in a poor state after the war and had to be practically rebuilt. The Victorian additions were removed and it now looks, from the outside, almost as when it was new. The inside is modernised, as rooms are used for meetings, but through the glass of the front door you can see the elegant 18th-century staircase still going right up through the centre of the house.

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DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY

Dulwich is famous, firstly for its College and secondly for its Picture Gallery, the oldest purpose-built public art gallery in England.

How is it that there is such a Gallery, set here amidst green lawns, instead of, like most public galleries, in a city centre? It is a strange story, concerning three people, Noel Desenfans, a picture dealer of French origin, his wife Margaret, and his friend Sir Francis Bourgeois, an artist. Their portraits are in the entrance to the Gallery. Desenfans had got together a large collection of pictures for Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, but the king was forced to abdicate and Desenfans was left with the pictures on his hands. He offered them to the British government but they were not interested, perhaps because the country was then in the midst of wars with Napoleon. When he died, Desenfans left the paintings to Bourgeois and he, having friends at Dulwich College, bequeathed them to the College, on condition that they would be on show to the public. Margaret Desenfans, who was very wealthy, gave money to build the Picture Gallery. It was opened in 1817, twenty-one years before the National Gallery.

Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by Sir John Soane, the outstanding architect of his day. It is the admiration of present-day architects working on similar projects. In Soane's day there was no electric light so he made sure the Gallery got as much light as possible from the sky-lights and design of the ceiling. Even now it does not normally have to use artificial light. After damage in World War II the Gallery was reconstructed using Soane's original plans, except for the entrance porch and extensions on the east side, which had been added in 1910. The Gallery has been redecorated in what are thought to have been Soane's original colours.

The tombs of the three founders are in the mausoleum at the centre of the Gallery. This may seem a strange idea to us, but not to an 18th-century gentleman, who liked to be buried in a mausoleum similar to those of ancient Rome. From Gallery Road, you can see the stone funerary urns and sarcophagi (coffins) on the roof of this part of the Gallery.

There are over six hundred paintings in the collection, about three hundred on display. Though most come from Desenfans and Bourgeois, a few hung in the Old College, long before their time. Portraits of Alleyn and his wife are from his own collection. The picture of Richard Burbage, famous actor of Alleyn's day, is one of those left to the College in 1686 by William Cartwright, another actor. Some pictures were given after the Gallery was opened, for example, portraits of the Linley family. The beautiful Linley Sisters and their father Thomas Linley are both by Gainsborough. One of their brothers, Ozias, was organist at the Old College. The quaint portrait of the future Queen Victoria, aged four, is by Stephen Denning who was then Keeper of the Gallery.

There are paintings by most of the great masters of the 17th and 18th centuries, notably the French and Dutch artists. Everyone has their own favourites. For many it is A girl at a window and two other portraits by Rembrandt. These fairly small pictures have been popular with thieves but are now all safely back on show in the Gallery. There is a lively painting by the Spanish artist, Murillo, of Two Spanish peasant boys, a portrait of Charles I by Van Dyck, Venice by Canaletto, and an unusual view of Westminster and the Thames in 1660 by a Flemish artist, Cornelius Bol. Some of the elegant furniture was once in the Desenfans' own home in Charlotte Street, Marylebone.

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WRITERS AND ARTISTS

,... the crowning glory of Herne Hill was that, after walking along its ridge southward from London, through a mile of chestnut, lilac and apple trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side ... suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of a field sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley ... open field animate with cow and buttercup and below the beautiful meadows and high avenues of Dulwich, and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills'.
John Ruskin - Praeterita, Allen, 1890

John Ruskin, the great Victorian writer, thinker, artist and art critic, lived most of his long life on Herne Hill and Denmark Hill. A plaque in the front garden of the present No. 26 Herne Hill marks the site of his childhood home. Later the family lived at 163 Denmark Hill, a site now covered by council flats.

He loved the Dulwich neighbourhood, as it was in his boyhood, and wrote much about it in his later years. He remembered, for example, Croxted Lane, which was a green by-road ... separated by blackberry hedges from the better cared for meadows on each side of it ... a slender rivulet ... trickled ... through the long grass beneath the hedges, and expanded itself, into ... pools in which sundry curious little skipping shrimps, and any quantity of tadpoles ... offered themselves to my boyhood's pleased ... observation.' Ruskin said the first sketch in which he showed his talent for drawing was of the bridge over the Effra, at the foot of Herne Hill, before the little river was bricked over.

He learnt much from studying the great paintings in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Later, when he was lecturing at the Working Men's College, Camden Town, he used to bring his students sketching in Dulwich Woods. No doubt he would have been pleased that Ruskin Park, the green open space opposite his old home, has been named after him. Simpson's Alley, a path which took him into Dulwich, has been renamed Ruskin Walk. In St. Giles' Church, Camberwell, you can see the magnificent stained glass east window which Ruskin helped to design.

Robert Browning, the poet, also loved Dulwich, especially the Picture Gallery where he was taken, as a small boy, by his father. It was then, as he wrote later,
'a green half hour's walk' from his home in north Camberwell. It is said that some of his earliest poems were inspired by walks in Dulwich Woods.

Charles Dickens was another who knew Dulwich well, from his visits to the Dulwich Club. He liked it so much that he pictured his hero, Mr Pickwick, retiring to live here where, 'somewhat infirm now', he 'may still frequently be seen, contemplating the pictures in the Dulwich Gallery, or enjoying a walk about the pleasant neighbourhood'. People say Dickens had in mind the pretty little house in College Road, now called Pickwick Cottage, as Mr Pickwick's Dulwich home.

P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and other comic characters was one of the many famous old boys of Dulwich College. He enjoyed his school days there, describing them as 'just six years of unbroken bliss'. Part of the College Library has been set up as a Wodehouse Memorial, with his typewriter, desk, pipe, books and manuscripts. Dulwich appears in his books as 'Valley Fields'. C. S. Forester, author of the Homblower stories, went to Alleyn's and later to Dulwich College, and probably took his hero's name from that of an Alleyn old boy commemorated on the school's War Memorial.

Another author, Richard Church, who moved to Dulwich as a boy, described the move as 'being transplanted into Paradise'. In his autobiography, Over the Bridge, he wrote, 'I had come to the Land of Peace, and quiet purposes.' He particularly remembered his school days at Dulwich Hamlet where, 'I was to find an almost impossible happiness and to be set on the road to the only education which is of any value, self-education'. He lived at 2, Warmington Road.

Artists have also made their home in Dulwich. David Cox, the watercolourist, lived on Dulwich Common for about six years from 1808, probably at Pond Cottages, and painted local scenes. No. 10 Pond Cottages was the home of James Fitton R.A. for fifty years until his death in 1982. The French impressionist artist, Camille Pissarro, lived at Westow Hill, Upper Norwood, 1870-71, and painted several interesting views of Dulwich. One is of Dulwich College, College Road, newly built, another of Lordship Lane railway station, now demolished, and a third of College Road, with St. Stephen's Church among the trees, looking almost as it does today.

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THE LAST OF THE FARMS; DULWICH & EAST DULWICH

In the past Dulwich Village was surrounded by farms. Some survived even into the 20th-century. The largest farm near the centre of the village was Dulwich Court, records of which go back at least to 1573. The rent for part of it in 1724 included a good fat goose 'at Michaelmas for the Master of Dulwich College! It was known in the 19th-century as Constable's Farm as it was owned for many years by Colonel Constable and then his son William Constable. Fortunately the land has never been built on. In Dulwich Park you are walking over what used to be the farmer's fields. Lines of old oak trees mark their boundaries. The farm house was in Court Lane, just south of the park gates.

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THE AGE OF THE TRAIN

Many Dulwich residents travel daily into town by train. No one is far from a station; East Dulwich, North Dulwich, West Dulwich, Sydenham Hill, Crystal Palace, Herne Hill. Amazingly, all these stations and the railway lines which serve them were built in the short space of fourteen years. Between 1854 and 1868, long before the days of British Rail, various railway companies cut through the quiet woods and fields, bridged the roads, and totally transformed the appearance and life of Dulwich. How did it all begin? Well, in 1854 the Crystal Palace was moved from Hyde Parkland re-erected on Sydenham Hill.The very first railway in Dulwich was built not to take people into London to work but to bring them for a day's outing to all the attractions of the Palace. The London Brighton and South Coast Railway Company opened Crystal Palace Station in 1856. Trains from London Bridge and later Victoria brought to it some of the two million people who in its heyday visited Crystal Palace each year. The station is still in use though Crystal Palace burnt down in a great fire in 1936.

There is also a lost railway which once went to the Crystal Palace. It was built, in 1865, by a rival railway company, the London Chatham and Dover. This line closed nearly forty years ago and its station, the Crystal Palace High Level Station has been demolished, but you can still follow where the trains once ran. Part of the line is a nature trail in Horniman's Gardens. The railway bridge by which it crossed Lordship Lane, and Lordship Lane Station, have both gone but a continuation of the line ran through the deep cutting, now completely overgrown, near the top of Cox's Walk. Standing on the footbridge from which Pissarro painted the station, you can hardly imagine the smoke and noise of steam engines which once disturbed this quiet wood.

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VICTORIAN DULWICH - THE COLLEGE ESTATES

Much of Dulwich as we know it today was laid out or built in the reign of Queen Victoria. During this period first Sir Charles Barry, and then his son, known as Charles Barry junior, held the post of Architect and Surveyor to Dulwich College. The two Barrys left their mark everywhere in Dulwich but especially on the old and new College buildings. Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, designed the charming Old Grammar School, in a style rather like a Tudor building. The Old College looks as it does today thanks to Charles Barry junior, who added the cloisters and steeple. But Charles Barry's most famous achievement, the grandest of all Dulwich's Victorian buildings, is, of course, Dulwich College, College Road.

The College Estates had gained a large amount of money from the sale of land to the railways, when they constructed their lines through Dulwich. Barry was therefore able to make the new College as magnificent as he wished. He put into it ideas from various places. The general style, the campanile or bell-tower, and the terra-cotta decorations on the exterior, are modelled on North Italian palaces and cathedrals he had visited. The Great Hall resembles the mediaeval Westminster Hall which he had helped his father to restore.

As Dulwich spread out beyond the old village, following the arrival of the railways, it was Charles Barry who was responsible for planning the development. Blanch, the Camberwell historian, wrote in 1875,'either from his designs or under his supervision have been erected those numerous mansions and villas which (much to the advantage of college revenues) have in a few years, converted the quiet woodlands of Dulwich into a busy, though still pretty, and even rural, suburb of the great metropolis'.

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EAST DULWICH TAKES SHAPE

East Dulwich never had a village High Street like Dulwich Village. It grew from a collection of farms. Some 'town-houses' began to appear along its few roads in the early 19th century. The oldest are probably those facing Peckham Rye. Over Nos. 152-158 you can still read the old name Prospect Place. This terrace is marked on a map of 1842. People who lived in houses such as these, when they were new, could have kept their own horse and carriage. Several, for example, No. 162, have low buildings at the side which were once stables. Early residents could also have gone to town by horse-bus. In 1835, Mr Prince, who had earlier been a coach-driver, started running horse-buses from the King's Arms. 'Rosedale', Nos. 112-114 Lordship Lane, Nos. 31-33 East Dulwich Grove, and Nos. 15-27 Crystal Palace Road are other houses, built when all around was still fields. There was plenty of room then for long gardens. Several houses, and the school in Adys Road, have been built in what was once the grounds of Walnut Tree Villa, the house which is now St. John's Vicarage.

It was the coming of the railway that completely changed East Dulwich. This was when it was really built up and took shape. As you can see, just by comparing old maps, nearly all its streets were laid out between about 1865 and 1885. The same streets are there today and the streets are mostly lined with the same houses, unlike many parts of London where streets like these have been swept away to build big housing estates. East Dulwich is an almost perfect example of a 'Victorian suburb'.

In 1865 the old Friern Manor Farm was bought by property developers, the British Land Company. The manor house was demolished and the fields divided into two hundred lots and sold for building. All the streets between Wood Vale, Lordship Lane and Barry Road were built on the old farmlands. Barry Road was the boundary between Friern and another old estate which stretched from the Plough to Goose Green. This belonged to Sir William Bowyer-Smyth whose ancestors had been Lords of the Manor of Camberwell from the 16th century. In 1866 this too was sold and on it were built the small streets between Barry Road and Lordship Lane. Before the streets were numbered, houses, or groups of houses, had names. You can see these names high up on the front of some of the houses, together with the dates the houses were built.

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CHURCHES AND OTHER IMPORTANT BUILDINGS OF EAST DULWICH

The first church to be built in the whole Dulwich neighbourhood, after the Old College Chapel, was the East Dulwich Chapel, a small building, long since demolished, in Lordship Lane, opposite Goose Green. It was provided in 1827, on his own land, by Thomas Farmer Baily, farmer and landowner, for the benefit of his tenants and neighbours. As fields turned to streets, the congregation grew and needed a bigger church. They moved, in 1865, to a new church on a new site, St. John the Evangelist, Goose Green. This is now the oldest church in East Dulwich. The architect was Charles Baily, another of the old East Dulwich family. It was partly rebuilt after World War II but still, as Blanch wrote in 1875,
'reminds us, in its style, of antique village churches, - in many a picturesque spot in Surrey, Sussex or Kent'. St. Clement's Friern Road, is a modern church. The old St. Clement's, destroyed in World War II, was built in 1885. At first it was a mission church of St. John's for the new streets south of Goose Green. If you walk up Barry Road, ahead of you all the way is the tall spire of a typical Victorian church. It used to be called Emmanuel but changes have taken place. The church has been converted to a Christian nursing home. The church hall is now the new 'Christ Church United Reformed and Methodist Church Centre'. Dorothy Charrington House, Barry Road, was built on the site of the Methodists' old church.

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DULWICH IN TWO WORLD WARS

In the centre of the Old College courtyard is a stone memorial to the men of the Alleyn Foundation who served and died in the 'Great War', 1914-18. Inside the Old College Chapel, the walls are lined with the names of those who died in two World Wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45.

Many local men belonged to Camberwell's own volunteer regiment, the First Surrey Rifles, or 21st County of London Regiment. On 15th September 1916, with immense courage, they attacked a line of German forts at High Wood in Belgium. Bythe next morning, of the 550 men and 19 officers who had set out, only 60 men and 2 officers returned to camp. The High Wood Barracks in Lordship Lane is named after this battle. Enormous numbers were wounded in the Great War. Dulwich Hospital became 'Southwark Military Hospital,' full of wounded soldiers. Recruits drilled on Goose Green to take their places at 'the Front'. Kingswood House was a convalescent home for Canadian forces.
In World War 11, Dulwich itself was under attack. School children were evacuated to what it was hoped would be safer areas. Dulwich College Preparatory School, for example,went first to Cranbrook, Kent and later to North Wales. Their headmaster, Mr Leakey, wrote a book about their adventures.

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DULWICH TODAY (updated to 1990)

If you enter the Dulwich neighbourhood from almost any direction you pass first, on the outskirts, houses of the 20th century. Court Lane, which had been just a country lane, began to be built up about 1910.'Homes fit for heroes' was the slogan, after World War 1, which inspired the builders of the Sunray Estate, Herne Hill. Its houses are like country cottages built amid grass and trees and it has been designated as 'an area of special architectural character'.

After World War II large numbers of new homes were needed. Many were built by the borough or county council, for example the Bessemer, Denmark Hill, Kingswood, and Sydenham Hill estates of the 1950's and '60's. These all include fairly tall blocks of flats. Recently, however, the tide has turned. The latest council houses, in Darrell Road and Hindman's Road are only one and two storey and you could easily imagine they were built at the same period as their Victorian neighbours. There has also been much building by private developers, especially to the south of Dulwich, penetrating Dulwich Woods with estates such as Wood Hall, College Road. Hambledon Place, Dulwich Common, is a very high-class housing development. The Prime Minster. Margaret Thatcher, bought one of these houses when first built.

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