Nunhead and Peckham Rye in History

The Nunhead and Peckham Rye area has a long history. The area was mentioned in the Domesday Book.

18th century Nunhead and Peckham Rye

By the 1700s it was still mainly green fields. In 1767, as a child, William Blake the poet and engraver said he saw a vision of angels in a tree on Peckham Rye. Transport to the City consisted of a stagecoach.

19th century Nunhead and Peckham Rye

The Victorian era saw the laying out of Nunhead cemetery, one of the most impressive in London. The reservoirs at Nunhead with a total capacity of 18 million gallons were also built. In the 1860s Brocks Fireworks had a factory in Nunhead. Charles Dickens had a mistress in Linden Grove until his death in 1870.

The area, until 1889 in the county of Surrey, now became part of the City. Peckham Rye Park was established in 1890. Transport links really took off too, with railway stations at Peckham Rye, Nunhead and Queens Road. There was now a daily bus to Hyde Park as well.

20th century Nunhead and Peckham Rye

In the 1900s the area experienced mixed fortunes. It was Beanz Meanz Nunhead as the Heinz food company's first factory in the UK opened in Brayards Road in 1905.

Nunhead FC were champions of the Isthmian league in 1929 and 1930. The club's most famous player was Denis Compton, who went on to play football for Arsenal and cricket for England.

There was radical new thinking and building. In the 1930s the Sassoon flats, an early example of social housing, and the Pioneer Health Centre, which became famous worldwide as the Peckham Experiment, were built in St Mary's Road.

In the 1950s and 1960s Peckham was a major shopping centre. Rye Lane was known as the Golden Mile and the famous department store Jones and Higgins drew shoppers, including celebrities, from miles around.

But by the 1980s, along with inner city areas all over Britain, the area had gone into decline. By the early 1990s Southwark as a whole was the second most deprived borough in England and Nunhead and Peckham Rye displayed many of the indicators of deprivation.

Contact us

Peckham Programme
Tel: 020 7525 1021
getinvolvedinpeckham@southwark.gov.uk
Sumner House
Sumner Road
Peckham
London
SE15 5QS