One of eleven large houses built in the 1860s along Sydenham Hill, between Rock Hill (then Reservoir Road) and Crescent Wood Road, Moss Grange’s first lessee was Henry Sterry, an oil and colour merchant. He was a partner, along with his brother Joseph, in a firm called Sterry, Sterry & Co – the business dealt mainly with the supply of the base ingredients for paints and varnishes. Their premises were in Cannon Street, originally at Nos 22-25 but, after renumbering, at Nos 98-106. The firm also had a shop at 156 High Street Southwark – this was the original premises set up by their father, Anthony, who had lived at Cypress House on Dulwich Common in the early 1800s.

The partnership between the two brothers was dissolved in 1866 just after Henry moved to Dulwich. Prior to that he had lived at 42 Trinity Square and 2 Finsbury Circus. The family were Quakers and Henry was born in the parish of St George the Martyr in Southwark in 1803. He was included in the group portrait of ‘The Anti-Slavery Society Convention 1840’ by Benjamin Robert Haydon – the online image of the painting shows him, almost hidden, just to the right of the centre of the painting.

Henry took out an 84 year lease, with a start date of Christmas 1862, on Lady-day 1864 at an annual ground rent of £36 11s 4d. He extended his site in March 1866 by acquiring a 21 year lease over an area woodland at the bottom of his garden – paying a further £27 18s 0d per annum. His daughter, Jane, who had married a successful surgeon, Buxton Shillitoe MD, moved into Mount Henly, 29 Sydenham Hill, the house next door, the same year. Henry Sterry died in 1869, aged 66, leaving just under £30,000 in his will.

His son, Joseph Ashby Sterry (1836-1917) was the best known member of the family. He was both an art critic and journalist who, for 18 years, authored the ‘Bystander Column’ in the newspaper, The Graphic, and was also a contributor to Punch. He was also a prolific author, his books included the popular ‘The Lazy Minstrel’, ‘Tiny Travels,’ ‘Boudoir Ballads,’ ‘Cucumber Chronicles,’ ‘Snail-way Guides,’ and ‘A Tale of the Thames.’

The 1871 Census listed the house’s resident as an elderly gardener called Thomas Aylesbury – presumably a caretaker. There is no name in the 1872 Street Directory but, by 1876 the occupier was a ship broker called Robert Grant. The 1881 Census shows him at the house with his wife, three nieces, a nephew, and five servants. The only record of the family found is in the Norwood News on 20 January 1883 when his wife advertised for a morning governess to teach elementary English to a little girl for three hours a day.

The Grant’s put the house up for sale in April 1884. Auctioneers, Messrs Debenham, Tewson, Farmer, and Bridgewater, advertised it in the Greenwich & Deptford Observer rather than a local Norwood or Sydenham newspaper – their copy called Moss Grange an ‘attractive and almost unique residential property in a choice position at 350 feet above sea level, with beautiful grounds and woodland, forming part of Dulwich Wood. The detached house has eight bedrooms, bathroom, three good reception rooms, conservatory, fernery, billiard room, and offices; stabling for three horses, coach house and dwelling rooms; lawn, kitchen garden and two vineries. The lower portion is in the wood, with forest trees and woodland walks. The beauty of the adjacent woods has not been destroyed, and this property (which commands views over six or seven counties) has attractions it will be difficult to match in an extent of four acres within 20 minutes ride of the City and West End.’

The lease was acquired by Frederick Thomas Huckle, a picture dealer who ran the Bloomsbury Gallery with premises at No. 29 High Street, Bloomsbury W2 (now St Giles High Street) and No. 439 Oxford Street, near the junction with Tottenham Court Road. From the large number of newspaper advertisements in various parts of the country, his main business appeared to be assembling collections of old master and modern paintings for sale by local auctioneers in towns as far apart as Aberdeen and Ramsgate – this is a typical advertisement from the Gloucestershire Echo on 24 February 1885; ‘Gawen Harle has again the honour of announcing his instructions from Mr F T Huckle of the Bloomsbury Gallery, London, to sell be auction in the Assembly Rooms, Cheltenham, tomorrow (Wednesday), Thursday and Friday, 25^th, 26^t,h & 27^th February, the whole of the extensive and magnificent collection of high class modern oil paintings and water colour drawings, being pictures that have come from various exhibitions or direct from the easels of the artists.’

Huckle died in December 1886 and there was a problem over his will. The London Evening Standard reported on 13 May 1887 on the probate suit of Ward v Huckle and Huckle v Huckle. The parties to the case were apparently happy to accept that the will had been drawn up correctly in April 1886, but not the three codicils which followed three months later. The case was resolved quickly after a Dr Erskine, of Sydenham, gave evidence that Huckle was of unsound mind in July, when he signed the codicils. Once the will had been sorted out, the house was up for sale, this time with Messrs Mansell & Rowe. They sold it quickly and then auctioned the entire contents of the Bloomsbury Gallery on the premises. They advertised the sale in the Norwood News on 3 March 1888 saying that ‘they were instructed by the Executrix of the late Frederick Thomas Huckle, to sell by auction at the above address (they having recently let the premises), the entire stock from the late Bloomsbury Gallery, comprising 500 and upwards of framed and unframed oil paintings. Sale by auction Wednesday and Thursday, March 14 and 15, at 1:30 each day. View Monday, March 12, and three following days. For further particulars apply to the auctioneers, Church Road, Upper Norwood.’

The next lessee was John Lawson Johnston, the inventor and manufacturer of Bovril, recently returned to England from Canada after his factory in Montreal burned down. He moved into the house in April 1888 and in June 1889 the Estate granted him a new 21 year lease at a rent of £27 18s a year, with break clauses at seven or 14 years, plus a requirement for him to leave the property at three months’ notice if the Estate wanted to redevelop the site for smaller houses.

The years 1887-1889 were the time when Lawson Johnston was developing his meat extract business that he had run in Canada into the Bovril we know today. His works were in Islington so why did he decide to live on Sydenham Hill? Most likely it was through a family connection to the area through his wife, who was related to Frederick St John, a past Controller of HM Customs, who had lived on Sydenham Hill in the 1860s. Perhaps he also wanted to send his second son, George, to Dulwich College where two of St John’s sons had previously been educated. George was at the school from April 1887 to April 1888, joining at 14 and leaving at 15, before going to school in Scotland.

In December 1889 the Estate discovered that Lawson Johnston had, without permission, constructed a large pavilion next to his tennis ground in the woods below the house. Normally he would have been told to demolish it but it was agreed that he could keep it as a temporary measure but would have to remove it ‘at any time the Governors asked.’ He was also involved in the local community and was one of the signatories to a letter published in the South London Press on 6 June 1891 about the formation of a committee of local worthies to persuade the Camberwell Vestry to do something about what the letter called ‘the scandalous condition’ of Crystal Palace Parade. It said ‘For many months past the road has been in a most deplorable state, until its condition has become a byword in the neighbourhood. The attention of the vestry has been repeatedly called to its dangerous condition, but no steps have been taken to repair it, and the patience of the inhabitants is now fully exhausted.’

Later in June 1891, Lawson Johnston began negotiations over the lease of Kingswood House, a much larger house on the far side of College Road. By that time Bovril had become a very successful business, and he was certainly in a position to acquire a much larger property and pursue his dream of living in a Scottish baronial style castle – without the inconvenience of actually having to live in Scotland. Altogether Johnston spent about £10,000 on his new property - then a very considerable sum.

Following the completion of the works at Kingswood House, Johnston tried to sell his lease on Moss Grange in the Westminster Gazette on 14 February 1893 – the copy said ‘ESPECIALLY DESIRABLE RESIDENCE TO LET on advantageous terms. MOSS GRANGE, Sydenham Hill, near Crystal Palace. High and healthy district; magnificent vineries, stable etc. Apply at Moss Grange or 30 Farringdon Street, London.’ He was initially unsuccessful but tried again in May 1894, this time using an agent, auctioneer George Pratt, who advertised it in the Sydenham and Forest Hill Gazette saying ‘ Moss Grange, Sydenham Hill, well-recessed from the road, with garden in front, and approached by a carriage drive, it contains on the upper floor five bedrooms; on the first floor, three bedrooms, bathroom, fitted WC & housemaid’s closet; on the ground floor, outer and inner halls, drawing room, opening to lofty span roof conservatory, dining room, library, butler’s pantry, & lavatory; the basement, large room under dining room, suitable for billiard room, kitchen, scullery, coal, wine and beer cellars, etc; also coach house for two carriages, and stabling for three horses, harness room, loft, two dwelling rooms, kitchen, WC etc; large pleasure and kitchen gardens, with tennis lawn, two vineries, greenhouses, and potting shed. At present in hand, the late tenant paying £175 per annum on lease – held for a term of 52 years.’ The same month he also assigned the extra area of woodland at the bottom of his garden to his neighbour, Nathaniel Geach Burch, who lived at Edenwood, 33 Sydenham Hill – thus avoiding the need for him to demolish the illegally erected pavilion.

From the summer of 1894 Moss Grange’s new lessee was Eberhard Focke, a German banker, moving from Dacres Road in Forest Hill along with his French born wife, Anna, and their children. In the 1901 Census he called himself a bank clerk but he was far more than that as the pictures of his private carriage demonstrate – in fact he was a senior staff member of the Anglo-German Merchant Bank, Frahling & Goschen, based at No 12 Austin Friars in the City. Established in 1814 by German merchant, Wilhelm Heinrich Goschen, the bank’s main business was funding the export of colonial produce, primarily cotton, to Germany and Hungary. His son, the 1^st Viscount Goschen (known as Harry), was the MP for the City of London from 1863 and served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury’s second conservative administration from 1887-92. From 1895-1900 he was First Lord of the Admiralty.

In July 1901 Focke sought the Estate’s permission to carry out a number of alterations and additions to the house. Designed by architect Richard Julian, the plans included an additional floor above the existing single story pantry and a three storey extension at the rear with another bedroom, a bathroom, and a separate lavatory. Julian said that ‘the new portion would be faced with red bricks to match the existing house, and would be well and substantially built’ and the Estate gave its approval.

By 1911 Focke was the Frahling & Goschen’s manager. Like most German families in the area he and his wife made some attempt to assimilate into the English way of life - in their case they sent two of their daughters, Dora and Else, to Priors Field boarding school in Guildford. Set up in 1902 by the well-known Edwardian educator Julia Huxley, it is still there today. It would appear, however, that his keenness to anglicise some of his children did not apply to him or his wife, and there is no record of either of them being naturalised - and he remained a member of the Goethe Society. In consequence, at the outbreak of WW1, he left very promptly for the USA, where he died in March 1917 - while he and his wife were living at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn, New York. His executor in London was solicitor (and old Alleynian) Ernest Adolph Rehder who lived nearby on College Road. Focke’s wife became a US citizen in 1920 and immigration records show her travelling regularly across the Atlantic. She settled in north-west London in the late 1930s and lived on until 1946.

Moss Grange then remained empty until 1919 when, along with a new extended 80 year lease, it was acquired by Edward William Lancaster, a 60 year old electrical engineering consultant with an office in Carteret Street in Victoria – he worked for the Holophane Lighting Company, which specialised in street and car lighting. He and his family had previously been living further along Sydenham Hill at a house in Elliott Bank. Educated at the Whitgift School in Croydon Lancaster had begun his engineering career in Birmingham – his 1892 application form to join the Institute of Civil Engineers noted him as a partner in the electrical engineers, Fowler, Lancaster & Co, prior to which ‘he carried out important electrical and engineering work in England, France, Egypt and India. He was engaged in 1882 by the Eastern Electrical Light Co for the lighting of the Suez Canal. Subsequently he had entire charge of the lighting of the camp of the Viceroy of India at Rupat, and carried out extensive works in different parts of India. He is the patentee of several inventions manufactured by his firm and is a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers.’

The 1922 issue of ‘Who’s Who in Engineering’ doesn’t mention his work on the Suez Canal but gives more detail on his Indian and other works abroad as well as a wide range of projects in England. Fowler and Lancaster were apparently responsible for the electrical installations in the Birmingham Electrical Exhibition of 1891, the Manchester Town Hall, the Yorkshire Post office in Leeds, and the Post Office and Town Hall in Birmingham. They also worked on a number of cathedrals and art galleries and also on naval ships – the Science Museum has a rotary switch dated 1890 designed for Royal Navy battleships. Lancaster was also an author of a book on street lighting and, along with his wife Maud, he wrote ‘Electric Cooking. Heating and Cleaning’ – still available today on Amazon.

The 1921 Census showed that as well as his wife and their 13 year old daughter, there were also four visitors and two servants living in the house. The visitors were actually lodgers, forbidden under the Dulwich Estate leases, but it was not until February 1923 that the Estate picked this up. The lease’s covenant said quite clearly that the house could only be used as a private dwelling house and they served notice on Lancaster telling him to stop. He responded, saying that he had spent about £1000 on the house at the time the lease was granted, and it cost him £200 a year to keep the garden in order. He said that his two sons whom he expected to live in the house, and help with the rent, were away with the RAF in India and Australia respectively. He added that he let out the rooms he did not require to friends who were paying guests as he did not want to turn the house into self-contained flats. The Estate was unsympathetic and he had to do what they said.

The eldest son, also called Edward William, left the RAF in 1930 but spent most of his time in the USA working in flying circuses or trying to break long distance flight records. In August 1932 he was accused of killing the fiancé of Mrs J M Millar, an Australian lady who the newspapers coyly said ‘had been associated with him on a number of air exploits.’ The defence case was that it was suicide and the jury agreed. A few months later, in April 1933, he disappeared while trying to beat the record for flying solo from London to South Africa. He used an Avro Avian, an old-fashioned timber framed biplane, and he planned a route which took him via the Sahara desert. He was already ten hours behind his schedule when he departed late at night from Reggane in Algeria on the next leg to Gao in Mali. At some point the engine must have failed and the aircraft crashed in the Tanezrouft Desert on the border between the two countries. When he failed to arrive at the next stop, a search was made but without success. 40 years later, in February 1962, a French military patrol found the wreckage and the body of the mummified pilot. He left a short note, still legible, which showed that he survived the accident but must have died a few days later of hunger and thirst. In 1975, the wreckage was transferred to the Queensland Museum in Brisbane where it remains in storage. Back in Dulwich the Lancaster’s kept a caravan in their front garden as a shrine to their lost son.

The family remained at Moss Grange after the outbreak of war in 1939. Edward was in his 80s, long retired, and the family had little money. In November 1942 the Estate Surveyor issued a report on the house’s condition which required the him to carry out basic repair and redecoration works in line with the requirements in their lease. It appears from later Estate minutes that some attempt was made to comply but, in July 1944, the house was badly damaged by the flying bomb that landed lower down the hill at Wood Hall, and the house became uninhabitable. The Lancaster’s were unable to pay for further repairs, or to pay rent, and they moved to the south coast.

The Estate was never particularly sympathetic to their lessee’s financial problems and, in February 1945, its solicitor issued a writ claiming possession and £243 10s 3d in rent arrears. The Estate minutes of 29 April noted that ‘an Order was made giving the Governors possession for payment of arrears of rent including profits and costs, but liberty to proceed was suspended for 14 days to enable the defendants to file evidence under the Courts Emergency Powers Act as to their financial position.’ The Lancaster’s then instructed solicitors and appealed against the Order. The judge dismissed the appeal but referred the matter back to the court as to whether the defendants were entitled to relief from forfeiture because of their financial position. The court subsequently directed that the defendants’ leasehold interest should be valued and it was assessed at £1630, if the property was used for multiple occupation, or £530 if used as a private dwelling house. At this point the situation was taken out of the Estate’s hands by Camberwell Borough Council who took over the property, without any formal notice, and began carrying out substantial repairs to convert it into flats for bombed out families.

There was no further mention of Moss Grange in the Estate minutes until May 1948, when there was a short note confirming that the house had been requisitioned by the Council in May 1946, a year after it had carried out remedial works, and that it had paid a compensation rental of £150 per annum to the Lancaster’s. The minutes added that the Estate’s court proceedings had been restored and a settlement reached with the Lancaster’s for the lease to be extinguished by a payment from the Estate amounting to £1100 – £1630 covering the lease valuation less £530 to cover the rent arrears from Lady-day 1943 to Lady-day 1948, the Estate’s costs and dilapidations. A further note in the same minutes confirmed that the former stables had also now been requisitioned – it had not been included in the original order as the lessee’s furniture was stored there.

The house was occupied by four families of council tenants through the 1950s but by the end of 1960 and the house had reverted to the Estate. It was demolished in 1961 as part of the third phase of the Woodsyre development carried out by Wates.

Grove House was quite a common house name Dulwich in in the early nineteenth century. There were two on opposite sides of the northern part of College Road, between Dulwich Common and Dulwich Village, while the third, the subject of this article, was on Dulwich Common. It was located in the middle of the open fields behind what is now the Camber Lawn Tennis Club next to the upper part of the Streatham and Marlborough Cricket Club ground. The ‘Grove’, after which this house was named, was Cox’s walk, the tree lined path cut through the Sydenham Hill woods in the 1740s by William Cox, landlord of the Green Man, the original public house on the Grove Tavern site. It closed in the 1780s and, by the late 1790s the building had become Dr Glennie’s Academy, a prep school – its most famous pupil was Lord Byron who spent three years there between 1799-1801 before going to Harrow. Dr William Glennie had several sons and it was one of them, Alexander, who, in 1801, became the leaseholder of the fields on the south side of Dulwich Common opposite the school. He agreed with Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift (now the Dulwich Estate) to take 5 acres at £18 18s per annum.

City lawyer, John Jephson, took over the lease in 1810 and built the house the following year. He lived there until September 1823 and, during the latter part of his time in the area, he became very friendly with Mary, the daughter of the Dulwich windmill keeper, Thomas Kemp - the windmill was where Dulwich College’s North Block is today. A letter written to her dated 1827 says ‘I can no longer struggle with a secret that has given me so much torture to keep... What I have to urge, is to ask you if you are disengaged, if not, permit me to offer myself as a candidate, and should I succeed, it would be the happiest moment I ever experienced in my life, as in you I consider all my happiness is centred...’Unfortunately, his proposal was unsuccessful and, later in the year, Mary Kemp eloped with someone else.

On Jephson’s departure, a new lease was granted to E W Smith and he assigned it to H Howard in June 1829 - there is, unfortunately, no information about them. By 1837, when the Camberwell tithe map was published, Grove House’s lessee was Samuel Waring, the wealthy son of the landlord of the historic ‘Gipsy House’ pub in Gipsy Hill. He owned other properties in the area, including ‘The Oaks’, a large house located roughly opposite the Paxton Hotel - Oaks Avenue off Gipsy Hill is named after it. At this point there is some confusion as the tithe map refers to the property as Grove Cottage – and two newspaper reports record Waring’s wife’s death at Grove Cottage in January 1837 and, exactly five months later, the birth of a grandson. Grove Cottage was actually a much smaller house fronting on Dulwich Common and it appears that Waring had let off Grove House itself to be run as a boarding house - presumably without telling the Dulwich Estate. This is confirmed by a number of 1839 and 1840 newspaper bankruptcy reports where one Henry Manning is called a ‘boarding house keeper, Grove House, Dulwich, Surrey’.

John Young, a produce manufacturer and foreign & colonial agent, took over the property in 1846 and was to live there for over 20 years. The Morning Chronicle of 9 December 1852 published a short notice about a stillborn son, but there was better news in April 1854 with the birth of another daughter. In the 1861 Census Young himself was away visiting his father, a ‘druggist’, in Hull, but his wife, Louisa, was at Grove House with a son, four daughters, and three servants.

In May 1868 Young asked the Estate about renewing the lease as it was due to run out in five years, at Michaelmas 1873. The Estate Governors viewed the premises on their annual review around the estate in July, and agreed to grant a new lease at £175 a year – somewhat more than the £48 Young was then paying. Given the five years left on the lease, they agreed to take £135 a year for 21 years from 1868 but Young decided to go elsewhere, and sold the five remaining years to Milbourne Clark, a wealthy merchant. Clark agreed to take a new 21 year lease at £130 per annum but also offered to take a longer 40 year one at £170 – if he would be allowed to carry out substantial building improvements to the property which also had a coach-house, stables, an outhouse, yard and garden, and several adjacent fields - presumably sublet for grazing.

Clark had spent his early adult life as a wine merchant in Jersey - his wife Louisa Hyne came from a prominent island family. By 1851 the family were at 2 John Street, Clerkenwell, but a year later he was reported to be bankrupt. There is no mention of him in the 1861 Census, though his wife and family are living in Plymouth – she, describing herself as a ‘merchant’s wife’. It is not until the following year that we have a hint as to what he had been doing when a report in the Jersey Independent & Daily Telegraph on his daughter’s wedding described him as ‘Milbourne Clark Esq, of Iquique, South Peru’. Iquique was a port in Peru (following the 1879-80 War of the Pacific, it is now in Chile) and it appears that Clark’s interests there were in the mining of saltpetre for use in the manufacture of gunpowder, and the construction of the railway to carry the ore from the mines to the coast.

Louisa died in 1864 and we do not know if he was still in Peru at the time - he had certainly returned by 1868 when he took over Grove House. He remarried in 1870, to Emily Herbert, 23 years younger than him, and the 1871 Census described him as a retired merchant, aged 60, living there with his new wife, a son, two daughters,Mary and Florence, and three visiting grandchildren - plus a clerk and four servants. A year earlier he had begun negotiations on a new lease, the Estate Surveyor noting at the time that ‘the buildings are in good order, but there is a large part that is old, low, and inconvenient’. The garden and paddock covered 7¾ acres and Clark finally agreed a rent of £208 per annum.

Clark turned 70 in 1881, and was living at Grove House with just his wife and three servants. It was not a happy year for him as there were two deaths in the family; his eldest son, Francis, aged 37, died in August while staying with him, and his second daughter, 31 year old Mary, also died less than a month later, in September. His other son, barrister John Hyne Clark, died just a few years later, in 1888.

The new Mrs Clark soon found things to do in the local area. In January 1882 Grove House’s extensive garden provided ‘a choice array of plants and evergreens’ to decorate the stage at the Dulwich Tradesmen’s Ball at St Peter’s Hall, Underhill Road, and in the summer of 1885 two major events were held there. The first was a ‘Fancy fair’ in aid of the completion fund for nearby St Peter’s Church where the South London Press said ‘the congenial signs of a gala day were everywhere present. The railway station seemed aware of it, the church spire itself was not destitute of its display of bunting, and the banners which ‘hung upon the outer walls’ were floating in greater variety upon the inner. Grove House did its loyal best to give the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress a right good welcome.’ The second event took place a month or so later, in aid of St Peter’s Walworth Sunday School. A large number of children, with their teachers, were reported as enjoying themselves on the swings, playing cricket, and riding the donkeys ‘in the meadow of the beautiful grounds of Grove House, Dulwich, by the kind permission of Mr and Mrs Milbourne Clark, both of whom showed not only a personal but a practical interest in the proceedings.’

In the same year the Clark’s were active participants in the group of wealthy local residents who set up the new East Dulwich Provident Dispensary which, as the South London Press put it, ‘enable the working classes of East Dulwich to ensure for themselves and their family’s efficient medical attendance and medicine by small weekly subscriptions, aided by voluntary contributions’. Its first president was the local MP, Morgan Howard Esq QC, with Clark as the treasurer and his wife as ‘collector’; the secretary was Henry Powell (of Whitefriars Glass fame). After eighteen months they secured an office and clinic at 184 Crystal Palace Road - before then the doctors had seen the patients in their own homes. When Morgan Howard resigned in 1888, Clark was elected president in his place. In proposing him, local doctor John Rand, said that ‘Mr & Mrs Milbourne Clark were practically the originators of the institution and that Mr Clark well merited the highest honour that society could bestow’. The dispensary later moved to larger premises in Landells Road.

In July 1888 the Clark’s decided to move to Sydenham Hill, to a house called Bardowie, and they gave the Estate a cheque for £125 in lieu of dilapidations. For a brief period, a retired Swiss clergyman, Louis Jaques Bourquin and his family, were installed as temporary caretakers but the house was empty when, in September 1892, William Grant Ross, a tailor with premises at 261 Oxford Street, agreed to take a full repairing lease at £120 per annum, subject to the Estate spending £450 on repairs to put the house in order.

Grant Ross clearly enjoyed a good time – in October 1895 the Kentish Mercury reported on a case of ‘Furious driving’ heard at Greenwich Magistrates Court when Ross and his coachman were summoned for being ‘drunk and furiously driving a horse and trap in the High Road, Lee’. It was late at night and the police witness said that their vehicle collided with a cart and threw them out on to the road. They were both fined. Grant Ross’s other interest was horses, particularly trotting or harness racing – in October 1903 he advertised in the Trotting World & Horse Review ‘For immediate sale through illness of owner; the noted American Trotter, LITTLE WONDER, with or without wagon and harness.’’

In 1906 Grant Ross moved to 506 Lordship Lane and, after some fraught negotiations over dilapidations, the lease was assigned to another tailor, Arthur Skinner, who had a shop at 59 Regent Street and had previously been living in Willesden Green. He agreed to take a 21 years lease from Lady-day 1909 at £120 per annum but only on a yearly basis – as the house was clearly not in good structural condition. He also added a clause that he could determine the lease at any time with six months’ written notice. The Estate agreed to fill up the pond in the meadow, level the stable yard paving, and to repair all the fences – and allow him half a year’s rent towards internal upgrades. In October 1911 Skinner wrote to the Estate saying that there were signs of serious settlement in the main walls of the house and, as he was specially exempt under the terms of his lease from liability in respect of damage by settlement, he ask the Estate to deal with it as soon as possible – the Estate Surveyor was told to sort it out.

The Skinner’s were still there early in WW1, as a report in The Sketch newspaper in February 1915 on their daughter Queenie’s marriage confirmed, but in 1916 they exercised their right to end the lease early. Skinner’s business had suffered badly in the War and he complained that he was in no position to pay any dilapidations. After considerable correspondence with the Estate, he finally agreed to pay £80 in instalments.

The Estate Surveyor then produced a report which confirmed that the house should be demolished. He said that the premises were very old and structurally in a very bad condition, with severe settlements in various places, and that he was convinced that it could never be relet at anything like the previous rent, even if they were able to secure a tenant.

The old house should have been pulled down at that point but it was to last another 40 years. Its saviour, if that is the right word, was Colonel Campbell, CB VD, the man in charge of the Dulwich Battalion of the 14th County of London Volunteers. The Dulwich Battalion had outgrown the existing headquarters accommodation in Lordship Lane and, having searched the neighbourhood, he said that they had been unable to find any suitable premises other than Grove House. He asked the Estate to grant the Battalion the free use of the house for the duration of the war, and possibly six months longer but, if that was not possible, hy were prepared to pay £25 a year. The Estate were sympathetic and agreed to an annual lease at one pound per annum, subject to the express condition that the Estate would have no responsibility for any repairs or other works.

The Dulwich Battalion left Grove House in the summer of 1919 and it was then occupied by a sports ground contractor called Frank Dyer who also rented some of the surrounding fields. He ran a series of advertisements in the Sydenham and Forest Hill Gazette through 1922 for turf and topsoil.

He was followed by the Camber Lawn Tennis Club who had moved to an adjacent site on Dulwich Common in the early 1920s - where they still are. In December 1925 they agreed to take the old house on as a club house. The club continued in occupation until 1956 when a further Surveyor’s report said that the old house really did have to come down as it was clearly unsafe, with cracks everywhere and bulging walls. There was a long negotiation with the club, who claimed protection under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, but agreement was finally reached after the Estate threatened that unless they agreed to let the house go, they would also lose their tennis courts next door. The note in the Estate minutes in September 1959 quoted the Manager as saying ‘I informed the secretary of the club that, unless it was prepared to accept the terms originally arranged, or the alternative terms put forward by me, and return the order forthwith duly completed, the offer of the lease would be withdrawn, and the Governors would take the appropriate steps to obtain possession.’

The Estate put the site up for sale as a building site and had an offer in July 1958 from a Mr Chalk who lived in Dulwich Village. The old house finally came down early in 1959 just a year short of short of its 150th anniversary.

The Dulwich College Sports Centre sits at the end of a short access road called Pond Cottages; it has a quaint row of small cottages on one side and the grounds of the Dulwich millpond on the other. This building opened in 1967 but only long term Dulwich residents will remember its predecessor, the ‘Covered Courts,‘ the large indoor tennis complex which stood on the site previously. It bore a strong resemblance, both in size and style, to an aircraft hangar and, when it was demolished in the summer of 1966, the St Barnabas Church magazine, the Dulwich Villager, noted that ‘It is doubtful if many people will mourn the passing of what was probably the ugliest building in Dulwich. The old covered tennis courts, which for generations marred the would-be artist’s view of the eastern aspect of the Pond and its adjacent cottages on Dulwich Common, is no more. In its stead will rise a new structure which it is earnestly hoped will be more pleasing’. Looking at the old pictures of it today, one has to ask why the Dulwich Estate allowed such a large building to be constructed on the site but they appeared relatively relaxed about it at the time.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tennis was growing rapidly in popularity. There were a number of outdoor clubs in the Dulwich area including the Old College Tennis Club, established in 1884, and the Dulwich Farm Lawn Tennis Club - they played where the tennis courts in Belair Park are today from 1904. The founder of that club, and a South Croxted Road resident, was prosperous city provision merchant Percy Wilberforce Rootham. He was a committee member of the Surrey Lawn Tennis Association and was, later, a vice president of the Council of the LTA and a member of several LTA committees.

One of the obvious problems with playing tennis year round was the weather and Rootham persuaded the directors of the Toksawa Hotel, a large residential hotel on Dulwich Common (where the Hambledon Estate is today), to fund the construction of an indoor tennis complex where play could continue year round. The original idea was that it would be both a facility for the hotel and a members’ club - Hiram Maxim, inventor of the machine gun named after him and, for a short time, a local resident, was the club’s first secretary. Interestingly, Dulwich College boys were not allowed to play tennis on the school’s grounds as A H Gilkes, the headmaster between 1885-1914, disapproved of the game.

Luckily for the promotors, Rootham’s brother, Howard Melville Rootham, was a civil engineer with relevant experience – he was previously at the LCC before setting up his own practice on the back of this project. Incredibly, it took just 13 weeks to construct. Newspaper reports noted that 100 tons of steel were used and that it had cost £6800. Leaving aside the steel for the frame and the roof, the walls were built in solid brickwork – by any standards a construction period of 13 weeks is some achievement. The floor and walls were painted matt black so as not to reflect the light and cause shadows, and the roof was extensively glazed. Each of the playing courts had eight large gas lights over them, apparently based on principles ‘used in the King of Sweden’s court in Stockholm,’ which meant that play was possible ‘at any hour of the day or night.’

It opened on 10 April 1911, with three indoor courts and a large seating gallery for up to 400 spectators, 300 seated and 100 standing. The official opening included several display matches, one between Dorothea Lambert Chambers (seven times Wimbledon winner between 1903 and 14) and Dora Boothby. How good it actually was might be debatable as the couple met again at Wimbledon in June - and Mrs Lambert won 6–0, 6–0!

The building had only been in use for just over three years when WW1 broke out and it was then used as a temporary ambulance station. Early in the morning of 6 December 1917, it received a direct hit in one of the rare German heavy bomber raids over London, killing the caretaker’s wife, Edith Howie and their niece, Edith Calloway. A total of 21 bombers (19 ‘Gothas’ and 2 ‘Giants’) had set out from airfields in Belgium following different routes towards London. Three of them flew a route over Dulwich, probably using the water towers at the Crystal Palace as a turning marker for central London but, perhaps not surprisingly given the anti-aircraft guns nearby at the golf club, started dropping their bombs almost immediately. The first two fell near Beechgrove, a large house on Sydenham Hill, the third hit the Covered Courts while the fourth landed in Dulwich Common by the Rosebery gate to Dulwich Park.

There were a number of contemporary newspaper reports on the subsequent inquest, generally using the headline ‘Blown through the Roof.’ They noted that Adam Howie, the caretaker, was sleeping in the kitchen while his wife and her niece were in the main bedroom. He had got up ten minutes before the bomb dropped to make a cup of tea and then, just as he was lighting the stove, there was a huge explosion and the ceiling came down on top of him. He said ‘the force of the explosion was such as to blow my wife and the child through the roof.’ He thought that the bomb had probably come through the rooflight and exploded on the bed. The police were quickly on the scene and found the bodies a few yards away in a field. The child was still alive but her aunt was dead. The coroner was told that she had died instantantly from shock, while her niece died in hospital a few hours later - she had severe internal injuries caused by the concussion and the fall. The jury’s verdict in each case was that death was due to the explosion of a bomb dropped by enemy aircraft. Their names are on the war memorial at the Camberwell Old Cemetery.

The building was back in use as tennis courts in 1919 and continued to hold the London Paris matches which had started in 1911 and were an annual feature between 1919-39 - the French winning most of the time. There were also many newspaper reports of these and other competitions - like the Surrey County Championships.

Perhaps the most unusual one was about Bunny Austin, the last Briton to be in a Wimbledon final before Andy Murray in 2012. A Daily Mail article in March 1933 said ‘Austin changes into tennis shorts: halt in final set of match’, and it described what was an ‘amazing scene in the London v Paris lawn tennis match at Dulwich today’. After losing the fourth set at 2-6, Austin apparently walked cross to the side of the court and asked an onlooker to go to the dressing room and find a pair of shorts in his bag. He then changed into them and came out for the fifth set - which he won. After the match he was quoted as saying ‘I will never play in long trousers again, they are most uncomfortable and shorts are obviously the things to wear, I will wear shorts in future.’ Despite the headline, this was not the first time he had worn shorts in a match, he had done so the previous year at the US open at Forest Hills but, in July 1933 he became the first man to wear them on the Centre Court at Wimbledon. He was not actually the first man to wear shorts at that tournemant, that honour goes to Brame Hillyard in 1930 - though he only wore them on an outside court.

The Courts remained an integral part of the Toksawa Hotel’s offer of ‘country house’ hotel accommodation near the Centre of London, with adjoining sports facilities (they also offered golf at the Dulwich & Sydenham Hill Golf Club). Their brochure said ‘Here, independent of the time or the weather, Tennis played on a hard wood floor is at its fastest and thrilling best. Three full size tennis courts occupy the floor space: there is a gallery with accommodation for 400 spectators. Continuous tennis is provided, the glass roof affords a steady light by day; by night the Courts are scientifically illuminated by 90,000 candle power high pressure gas. Professional players and a staff of ball girls are always in attendance.’

Early in WW2 the building was sublet to Messrs Convoys Ltd, for storage purposes, but in 1941 it was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works as a supply depot for the distribution of catering and other equipment to the armed forces. During 1944 there was an offer from the Gas Research Board to take the site and build a research facility but the Estate rejected it.

Messrs White Lodge Ltd., the owners of the Toksawa Hotel, surrendered their lease of the ‘Covered Courts’ back to the Estate in January 1945 but it was not until early in 1947 that it was finally de-requisitioned. It was no surprise that it was in a poor condition and the Estate Surveyor’s dilapidations report listed damage to the walls, the roof and roof glazing, the guttering, and the windows. The wooden floor was also badly decayed and would have to be replaced. The Estate pursued the Ministry for compensation – with some success.

At the same time, it rejected an approach from the Surrey Lawn Tennis Association to take over the building and, later in the year, let it to Dulwich College as a sports hall on a temporary licence at a rent of £50 per annum. There were rumours that it was used as one of the additional venues for the 1948 London Olympic Games but there is no record – and tennis was not an Olympic sport at the time. The College took out a longer lease in 1950 with the proviso that, in due course, it would replace it with a new building.

An Old Alleynian who was at the school in the 1950s wrote to the Dulwich Society some years ago recalling how ‘The gym (as it was in those days) was run by Wally Cromey and his assistant Ted Day. It was also used as the examination hall and was uncomfortably hot when the sun shone during the O Level exams in the summer. When it rained I remember Ted Day padding around in his plimsolls putting buckets out to collect drips from the leaking glass roof panels.’ Patrick Spencer, an OA and former Dulwich Society Secretary, confirmed the heat generated by the glazed roof and that the boys ‘all stripped off to our waists before even we had looked at the examination paper.’ Apparently, on the last day of term, the whole school congregated there for assembly and Ronald Groves (headmaster 1954-66) made his farewell address to the leavers. The school captain read I Corinthians 13. II ‘When I was a child I spake as a child. . . . etc,’ and the building then reverberated to the hymn ‘Now thank we all our God.’

The building was finally demolished in 1965.

Located on the east side of the Queen Mary’s Gate - one of two entrances to Dulwich Park from Dulwich Common, Cypress House was built by and for Robert Green, who took out a 21 year lease on 30 December 1796 at £14 per annum. From 1800 it was occupied, by Anthony Sterry, an oil and colour man, with premises in Borough High Street. He renewed and extended the lease in September 1808 after the passing of the Dulwich College Building Act earlier in the year allowed him to extend it to 84 years. Up until then the Dulwich Estate, or Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift as it was known, had only been able to offer 21 years – as originally stipulated by Edward Alleyn when he founded the charity in 1619.

The oil and colour business was mainly the supply of oil for paints and varnishes. Sterry was involved in a high court case in 1825 over the beneficiaries from the will of a Dulwich brewer called John Newberry, but he died the following year, aged 66. He had two sons - the eldest, Henry, was later to build his own house, Moss Grange, on Sydenham Hill. The younger son Joseph, was one of two executors, the other was stock broker James Neatley Warner, who assigned the lease to Joseph Ball in March 1831. Unfortunately Ball died less than three months later in June, and his executors then assigned the lease to George Whitehead, a solicitor with an office in Boyle Street, off Savile Row, on the Burlington Estate. Whitehead was listed as the lessee on the 1837 St Giles Camberwell Tithe Map but there is a further lease assignment in the Dulwich College Archive dated 20 February 1841 which noted him as a bankrupt, and that the new lessee was a Mrs Mary Baxter, a widow from Tulse Hill.

The rapid turnover of owners continued and, by June 1841, when the first national Census was taken, the occupier was 50 year old James Anderton, a wealthy City solicitor, along with his wife and five servants. He was both the legal advisor and the manager of the West of England Fire and Life Assurance Company, at the time the sixth-largest insurer in the country, and he also represented the City of London ward of Farringdon Without on the Court of Common Council for 30 years, from 1836 to 1866. His office address was 20 New Bridge Street, near Blackfriars, and both the 1851 and 1861 censuses show him resident there ‘above the shop’ as it were. Cypress House was probably his country home used mainly at weekends, and we know that he occasionally lent out the garden for charitable purposes. In 1860 the London City Press reported, under the headline ‘A day of rejoicing beneath the shade of the cypress’, how the pastor, parents, teachers and pupils of Peckham’s Hill Street Chapel Sabbath School enjoyed a day of ‘delightful and healthful recreation in the grounds.’ The article stressed how much the children enjoyed the games, including ’several terrific hay conflicts’. Some of the children gave a concert and the day ended, as was usual at the time, with the singing of the national anthem. It appears that even then party bags were not unknown as Anderton ‘presented each child, as he or she left the field, with a new bun’.

In the early 1860s, notwithstanding his age, Anderton joined the volunteer battalion of the 3rd London rifles. His obituary in the London City Press noted that ‘at a period of life when most men would have been loath to leave the easy chair, he used to attend parades and marches out, and take part generally in what in the volunteers may be termed active service. Among his comrades in the rifles his kind, genial disposition and his outspoken soldier-like address, rendered him a general favourite, and he was a warm and good friend to the poor.’ He died at Cypress House in 1868, aged 85 and his executors put it up for sale with 12½ years left on the lease. Auctioneers Messrs Foster, advertised the property in the London City Press as having ‘excellent grounds, kitchen garden, detached stabling etc, in all upwards of three acres,’ and noted that ‘the house is agreeably situated on the high road from Dulwich to Sydenham, and a short ten-minute walk of the Dulwich station of the London Chatham & Dover Railway, having termini both in the City and West End of London.’ The auction for the contents was held separately and there was a third auction for Anderton’s substantial art collection.

There was initially some interest in using the house as a school but plans for an iron schoolhouse on the site were rejected by the Metropolitan Board of Works in January 1869. Shortly afterwards James Dearle Padgett, a 43-year-old wine merchant took over the lease. A freeman of the Vintners’ Company, he was the son of a wine merchant and his company, the Imperial Wine Company, shipped and sold wine, primarily in Wales. His offices and warehouse were at 8 St Dunstan’s Hill, opposite the Custom House. Padgett had relocated from Orpington to be near Dulwich College where three of his nine children, Charles, Arthur, and Harry, were at school. They all joined during 1869 and all left at the same time, in July 1872 – according to Ormiston’s Dulwich College Register none of them made any impact on the school, academically or on the sports field. The family subsequently moved to Spencer Park in Wandsworth and, in later life, Padgett was mayor of Winchelsea. His eldest son, William Padgett, who did not go to Dulwich College, was a well-known landscape painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy and his paintings can still be seen in various art galleries – including the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Manchester City Art Gallery.

By 1874 the tenant was Thomas Wallis who owned property in Holborn and was a member of the Art Union of London. Established in 1837, the organisation distributed works of contemporary art amongst its subscribers by lottery - Sir Charles Barry (previously Dulwich Estate Surveyor from 1840-59) was a founding member. Wallis lived in Cypress House long enough to see his eldest daughter, Louisa, get married at St Stephens in College Road, but, by 1876, he had moved to Clapham.

The next lessee was 25-year-old George Nevile Wyatt, the scion of a wealthy Cheltenham family who was born in Bengal in British India in 1850. Both he, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather (and later his eldest son) were all given the same Christian names. Educated at Cheltenham College, he was a member of the football team as well as the cricket team – and was the record holder for throwing the cricket ball. He then went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst where, as captain of the cricket team in his final year, he led his team to its first ever victory over the Royal Military College at Woolwich. He was part of the Gloucestershire County team in 1871 but was then posted abroad with his regiment, the Fifth (Northumberland) Fusiliers, who were based at Nowshera in the Punjab, now in Pakistan.

He resigned his commission late in 1874 and returned to England. In the summer of 1875 he was playing for the MCC, scoring particularly well against the Universities, but he did not do so well as part of the Gloucestershire team against England. At the same time he met Edith Emily Gowan, and they were married at St Giles, Camberwell, on 21 October. His bride had been brought up in Dulwich, at No 1 Wood Lawn (now No 105 Dulwich Village) and her late father, George D’Olier Gowan, was a stock broker and a member of a prosperous family of ‘American merchants’ who ran the firm Gowan and Marx, led by George’s brother Charles, who lived at Bell House on College Road. They originally specialised in American bonds but expanded into other areas like railways - they financed Moncure Robinson, who designed a revolutionary locomotive which caused a sensation when it was launched in America - it was named Gowan & Marx after the backers.

Now that he lived in Dulwich, Wyatt was eligible to play cricket for Surrey. Funded by money from both his own and his wife’s family, he was a member of the team in 1876 and 1877, while he pursued his other interests which included dog breeding – he was a member of the Kennel Club and frequently acted as a judge for bloodhounds and St Bernard’s at its big shows. An advertisement in The Field in March 1878 said ‘Stud St Bernard, Barry (No 6442), half-brother to champion Avalanche. Barry has only served on bitch, and his pups took first prize at Alexandra Palace in December 1877 - £3 3s - G Nevile Wyatt Esq, Cypress House, Dulwich SE’. He was also interested in raising chickens and was again quoted in The Field the following year in an advertisement for ‘Christy’s Hydro-incubators and poultry appliances’ – apparently these gave much improved hatching conditions for eggs. In his testimonial for the company, he said that he kept the eggs and incubator in his bedroom where he maintained a fire ‘night and morning’. Later, in 1884, he was a prime mover in the formation of the English Guernsey Cattle Society.

He missed the 1878 season because of a knee injury and played only a few games in 1879, before he and his wife moved away in the autumn of 1880. In the four years the Wyatt’s lived at Cypress House, Edith gave birth to three children, a daughter in 1877, and sons in 1878 and 1880. She was pregnant yet again while they were moving as another son was born in their new home, Lake House in Cheltenham in 1881. In the Census taken on 3 April that year Wyatt described himself as a ’landed proprietor.’ He also had a house in Sussex, in Cuckfield, called Slough Place and this enabled him to play cricket for that county between 1883 to 1886 – his first match for his new team was against the MCC at Lords on 7 May. His highest score, and only career century, was obtained in 1884 during Sussex’s match against the touring Australians at Hove - he scored 112 runs. The following season, 1885, he was appointed captain, but he retired shortly afterwards, aged 36. After his wife’s death he returned to Cheltenham where he died at the relatively young age of 41, in 1891.

Following the Wyatt’s departure, Cypress House was left empty for almost a year. At an Estate Board Meeting in November 1881, the Manager noted that he had had several enquiries from potential lessees but only one firm offer – from a Mr Popham who said he would take a seven year lease at £160 a year on condition the house was refurbished and upgraded ‘to his satisfaction,’ but the Estate had said no. There was now a further offer on the table from a professor of languages called Muller who was offering to take the property for three years and use it both as his residence and a private boarding house for a small number of boys attending Dulwich College. He offered £120 a year rent and to put the house, fences etc, in good order at his own cost. The Estate asked for £130 but told him they were not prepared to allow him to run a College Boarding house – Muller ‘s offer went no further.

The house remained unlet until July 1883 when it was taken over by Samuel Stanley Brown, a prominent member of the City of London Insurance market. Born in Humberside, he had first lived in Dulwich in 1871 when he was appointed the Clerk to Dulwich College at the early age of 29. He initially lived above No. 5 Commerce Place (recently the delicatessen ‘D Village’), sharing the maisonette above the shop with a retired army captain and his wife. He married the following year, in Nottingham, and he and his new wife moved to the White Cottage, an old house, ling demolished, that sat roughly where No 107 Dulwich Village is today. He left the College in 1874 to join the Commercial Union Assurance company in the City and, within a year, was its secretary and general manager. In 1883 he moved on to a similar role at the Employers’ Liability Assurance Corporation, based at 84 & 85 King William Street. Incorporated in October 1880, the firm was the first insurer to offer employers’ liability and general accident insurance in the UK. Its chairman, Lord Claud Hamilton MP, was an early proponent of health and safety policy – he refused to insure those policy holders who did not take proper precautions to prevent accidents.

Brown’s 21 year lease on Cypress House confirmed that as well as the house, the property included a coach house, stables, and a number of outbuildings – although the latter were not in good condition and, as part of his agreement, he promised to carry out a comprehensive range of repairs and also connect the drains with the sewer in the road – slightly surprising that this had not been done previously. He was appointed an Estate Governor in 1896 and, in 1910, he and his wife moved to Oakfield, the large regency-style house on the corner of College Road and the South Circular. He died there the following year aged 70.

Cypress house was then occupied by a caretaker/gardener called George Rouse until March 1913 when there was a new lessee, Charles Joseph Anderson. The Estate minutes called him a merchant but he variously described himself as a financial agent, wine merchant and ship owner. He was also an early motor car dealer and a successful publican who, at different times, owned the City of London Tavern in York Road Islington, the Black Horse in Aldersgate Street, the King’s Arms, Bishopsgate, and the Fulham Bridge on Brompton Road. Anderson agreed to pay £90 per annum, somewhat less than his predecessor, and the Estate were surprisingly accommodating to his conditions which included ‘the lessee to be exempt from any structural liability in respect of the premises and at the determination, of the tenancy, and to be exempt from the upkeep in respect of the old outbuildings; the Governors to allow the sum of £400 for the reconstruction of the drainage, provision of new bath, kitchen range and hot water services, and general repairs and decorations to the house internally and externally, the work to be done under the supervision of the Estate Surveyor.’ C B Core, one of the two builders in the Village, carried out the work to budget.

Luckily Anderson had moved out when, early in the morning of 6 December, the house suffered broken windows and other damage from a German bomber raid. A total of 21 bombers (19 ‘Gothas’ and 2 ‘Giants’) had set out from airfields in Belgium following different routes towards London. Three of them flew a route over Dulwich, probably using the water towers at the Crystal Palace as a turning marker, and started dropping their bombs almost immediately, the first two near Beechgrove, a large house on Sydenham Hill. They then dropped one on the Covered Courts off College Road (where two people were killed), and this was followed by one on Dulwich Dulwich Park’s Rosebery Gate just along from Cypress House.

Late in 1918 there was a new lessee - solicitor Cyril H Kirby and, like one of his predecessors, James Dearle Padgett nearly 50 years earlier, he had moved from Orpington to make it easier for his sons to go to Dulwich College. His eldest son Stephen had a notable school career; he was both School Captain and editor of the school magazine, the Alleynian, in 1922-23. He was a scholar at Balliol College Oxford and won several university prizes for both Latin and Greek verse – he later became a solicitor like his father.

Kirby was the solicitor to the Chemists’ Defence Union, and he was involved in the famous Carbolic Smoke Ball case, a legal precedent still cited today (see the article in the Dulwich Society Journal - Autumn 2013). The balls were advertised with the claim that buyers who found they did not work would be awarded £100, a considerable amount of money at the time. A Mrs Carlill, coincidentally of West Dulwich, had used a smoke ball but still caught influenza. She sued and won her case – and lived till 96 when she died of old age and the flu.

During their 12-year occupation the family appeared to have kept a low profile, except when in January 1928, Kirby’s daughter Margaret, a law student, appeared at the Tower Bridge Police Court summoned under the Metropolitan Carriage Act 1869. She had refused to hand over some property accidentally left by another passenger to a bus conductor - three sixpenny pieces. She said that she was under no obligation to hand over the money but the police disagreed and charged her with ‘larceny by finding’. The magistrate allowed the summons to be withdrawn on the payment of 15s 8d costs and on the understanding that the 1s 6d was handed to the conductor. Cyril’s wife was a more upstanding member of society - together with Mrs Smith, the Master of Alleyn’s School’s wife, she helped to run the cake stall at local fairs to raise funds for the local children’s hospital in Sydenham.

In May 1929 Kirby wrote to the Estate Manager asking them to accept a lease surrender claiming that the house was too big for him – it had seven bedrooms, three reception rooms and a large billiard room (built of corrugated iron), as well as brick-built stabling and a coach-house. In July the Governors agreed to accept his offer of the payment of one year’s rent in lieu of dilapidations and he left shortly afterwards, in September. The concurrent Estate Surveyor’s report noted that a large sum would have to be spent on structural and internal decorative repairs before the old house could be relet and the Governors agreed to demolish it and redevelop the site.

The six neo-Georgian style houses now on the site (one called Cypress Tree House) were designed by Estate Architect & Surveyor C E Barry, and were built by one of the more upmarket local speculative builder/developers, Messrs Rider and Dove. They were finished late in 1931.

‘The Platanes’, the last remaining mansion on the west side of Champion Hill, has been used for student accommodation since before the First World War. It was occupied by Kings College Hospital medical students from 1913 and then, from 1923, it also housed students from Kings College London (KCL). It became part of a larger student ‘village’ in the 1960s when KCL demolished ‘Danehurst’, another large house to the south, and built a series of new accommodation blocks. These were themselves demolished in the early 2010s and replaced with new blocks – which are currently being refurbished owing to fire safety concerns.

While the second development was under discussion in September 2009, Historic England took the opportunity to give ‘The Platanes’ a Grade II listing as a building of special architectural interest. It gave two reasons, the first was because of the ‘extent and completeness of the late-C19 interior decorative schemes, and wealth of fixtures and fittings’ and the second was because of its rarity ‘as a large upper-middle class suburban mansion with virtually intact interior.’

The house best known occupant was the second one, City of London merchant banker Herman Greverus Kleinwort but it was built in 1883 for a South American merchant called George Egmont Bieber. The listing description gives no detail on Bieber but he is an interesting man - while his surname is German, his Christian names of George, William and Egmont give a clue as to where he was born, in England. His father, Nicolaus Elert Bieber, was German and had moved from Hamburg to Liverpool in 1838 – Liverpool was then the main British port for trade with South America as well as North America. He married a local girl and, by 1841, when their son Egmont was born, they were living in Clapham – the baby was baptised in St Leonards Church in Streatham in July that year.

Egmont Bieber first appears locally in the 1871 Census when he was recorded as living at ‘South Lodge’ on the other side of the road further along Champion Hill. He described himself as a Brazil merchant and he and his wife had two daughters, a son, and three servants. The family were still there ten years later though this time with three sons as well as three daughters. His firm, or possibly his father’s firm, was called Bieber & Co and they had offices at 147 Fenchurch Street EC.

Early in 1882 the family were looking for a larger house. They had decided to stay in the area - perhaps Bieber’s German born wife, Marie Sophie Augusta felt more comfortable remaining in Champion Hill’s German community with its links to the Lutheran Church on nearby Windsor Road. At this time the land on the west side of Champion Hill was not built on and, in March, Bieber made an agreement with builders Messrs Colls & Sons, the lessees of the land, for them to build him a new house. By the early 1880s the firm were a substantial contractor employing hundreds of men, with a yard at Camberwell Road and a branch office in the City. Benjamin Colls, the founder, had built a large number of houses on the Dulwich Estate in the early 1870s, principally on Croxted Road and Thurlow Park Road – the building housing the school Alleyn’s Oakfield is one. William Colls, one of his two sons running the firm in the 1880s also lived in Dulwich, on Dulwich Wood Avenue and, it was another one of his sons, Howard, that later formed the well-known City of London contractor Trollope and Colls

The house took a while to construct but was ready for occupation in December 1883 when Bieber named it ‘The Platanes’ after the German name for plane trees. Other than its size and interior finishes, perhaps its most interesting aspect was that it was probably the first house in the area to be lit by electricity. In October 1883, the trade magazine ‘The Electrician’ reported on the firm of Messrs J Edmundson & Co, who were installing ’ the electric light into a large new mansion on Champion Hill for Egmont Bieber Esq.’ They were using the recently invented Swan incandescent lamps, and the article added that ‘the various fittings are all designed and manufactured specially, and are in some cases of very elaborate design.’. J Edmundson & Co were one of the earliest firms of domestic electricians and had been originally based in Dublin – their London office was at 19 Great George Street, Westminster. There was no comment on how the power was generated but a following article said that, generally, the motive power was either steam engines or gas engines.

Other than his interest in the latest technology Bieber was also a keen gardener. At the Surrey Chrysanthemum Society show at the Peckham Public Hall in Rye Lane in November 1886, his gardener, Walter Dickens, was awarded a special prize, in the form of a handsome writing desk, for the best collection of decorative plants for the dinner table. Bieber was also a numismatist. In May 1889 the Pall Mall Gazette reported on a sale at Sotheby’s, then known as Messrs Sotheby, Wilkinson, and Hodge of ‘the select and valuable collection of English coins and medals, in gold, silver, and copper, formed by G W Egmont Bieber, Esq, who is relinquishing the pursuit. This collection contains the greatest rarities.’ It must have been a substantial collection as the sale was held over six days - catalogues were priced at one shilling each.

Why Bieber had decided that he was no longer interest in coin collecting we don’t know but, just under a year later, he sold his lease on ‘The Platanes’ to the banker Herman Greverus Kleinwort and moved to an arguably more prestigious address at 36 Cadogan Place, in Knightsbridge – was the sale perhaps to fund his move? The 1891 Census listed him there as a South American merchant along with his family and five servants. By 1901 he had moved to a much larger property in an even better area, 25 Wetherby Gardens, in Kensington. The house was a prominent corner property designed by noted architect, Robert William Edis CB. for Sir Edward Boehm. Boehm was a prolific Austrian-born sculptor, much admired by royalty, and perhaps best known for the statue of the Duke of Wellington at Hyde Park Corner and the design of Queen Victoria’s ‘Jubilee’ coinage in 1887.

Bieber was a director of the London & Hanseatic Bank in the 1870s but his business interests in South America are not so easy to unravel - other than his firm’s involvement in the sale of two rubber plantations in Bolivia in 1910. A number of newspapers including the London Evening Standard advertised a share offering for the Sorata Rubber Estates – the sale prospectus said ‘For several years large quantities of rubber from the Bolivian plantations of Andrez Perez have been profitably marketed in London by Messrs Bieber & Co, 4 Fenchurch Street, London EC (the commercial agents of the company). Bieber & Co were noted as both commercial agents, and company secretaries, and their address of 4 Fenchurch Street EC was also given as the registered office of the new company.

The Sorota Rubber Estates included two plantations, the ‘Tres Amigos’ and the ‘Nueve Brazil’ with a total area of over a million acres. The prospectus also detailed how the rubber reached Europe, it was first taken to the nearest town on Lake Titicaca, presumably by horse and cart, it crossed the lake by steamer, and then went by rail to the port of Mollendo on the Pacific coast, from where it was shipped via Cape Horn to Liverpool - the Panama Canal was only opened in August 1914. The transport cost equated to 2s 6d per pound of rubber and, in the previous five years between 1905 and 1910, Bieber & Co had imported 261,100 lbs of rubber.

Herman Greverus Kleinwort was 33 when he moved into ‘The Platanes’ in May 1890. He was one of four children, and the oldest of two sons, of Alexander Freidrich Kleinwort, the founder of the Kleinwort merchant bank, then known as Drake, Kleinwort and Cohen. The family lived in a large house on the Glebe, a road on the far side of Dog Kennel Hill – its garden is now part of the Dog Kennel Hill Estate.

Herman’s mother, Sophie (ne’ Greverus) died in 1860 when he was four years old. His father did not remarry and was, by the standards of the time, a relatively ‘hands-on’ parent – though he did employ a nanny and a large nursery staff. All four children were initially educated at home and, while the daughters, Sophie and Wilhelmina, remained there until their marriages, his two sons were destined to work with him at his bank. As children the sons would would be taken into their father’s office and told to listen while he and his then partner, Edward Cohen, discussed business matters.

Unlike some of the other German born residents of Camberwell, he did not educate his sons in English schools, and Herman was sent, age 12, to the Real Gymnasium at Karlsruhe in Prussia to make sure he had a full grasp of foreign languages, German, French and English. His further education was undertaken at the Antwerp Institut and, on obtaining his ‘Licencie en Sciences Commercial’ in 1876, he returned to London. He started as a clerk at the bank’s office at 20 Fenchurch Street in what was, by today’s standards, a very small office, but, as the son of the senior partner, it was not long before his career progressed. He became a junior partner in 1881 and the firm was remained Kleinwort, Sons & Company.

It appears that he remained living at the Glebe even after his marriage in 1883 to Marguerite Gunther from Antwerp. She was wealthy in her own right as the daughter of Otto Gunther, a prominent banker in the port city. She also had family connections with Charles Gunther, a near neighbour, who lived at Hill Lodge – the Gunther family had two businesses in London, the hide merchants Konigs, Gunther & Co, and Liebig’s Extract of Meat Co – at the time a rival to Bovril. For Herman the marriage brought a number of introductions to a range of European businessmen and it undoubtedly helped to generate more continental business for the bank.

Between 1883 and 1890 he and his wife had three children, all daughters, and one can understand their desire to live in their own house - they moved into ‘The Platanes’ with seven servants and two gardeners. Subsequently they had four more daughters, all born in Antwerp – it looks as if his wife had little faith in English doctors.

By 1901, the youngest twins, Lily and Daisy, were just a year old and, in addition to the family, there were 12 servants including three nurse/domestics, three housemaids, two ladies’ maids, a parlour maid, a pot cleaner, a cook, and a governess – only the governess was German. There was also a coachman and his family, a groom, and a gardener. In 1889 Herman acquired a country house, Weirton Place, near Maidstone in Kent - he spent most of the years between 1914 and 1918 living there keeping a low profile after he refused to anglicise the family name – he died there in 1943.

Despite their long standing family connections to the area, Herman seems to have decided that Champion Hill was no longer the place for a City grandee of his stature to be living and he and the family moved to 45 Belgrave Square in 1908 . It was said that he felt that the social status of the area had declined and he was probably right, as a number of large houses, particularly on Denmark Hill, were being converted into hotels – Ruskin’s father’s house which backed on to the Platanes was one. Unfortunately for Kleinwort, potential purchasers felt the same way, and the house did not sell. After trying for over a year to find a buyer he asked the Dulwich Estate for permission to change its use into a hotel or nursing home, which they refused. He was undoubtedly aggrieved and, presumably to demonstrate that he was not going to be told what he could and couldn’t do with his house, he donated the property to King’s College Hospital in 1910.

The first student doctors took up residence at ‘The Platanes’ in 1913 but, in February 1915, the building was requisitioned by the War Office for use as additional accommodation for the Maudsley Military Hospital, the neurological section of the Fourth London General Hospital based at Kings College Hospital. The Maudsley provided accommodation for 400 servicemen and N.C.O.s suffering from war neuroses and shell-shock, while ’The Platanes’, with 44 beds, was used to house officers. The building remained in use as a hospital until the spring of 1920.

Between 1921 and 1925 two additional wings were added to north and south side elevations in a sympathetic style and the building remains in use as student accommodation today.

Lyndenhurst was built in 1758 but there was a house on the site at least 150 years earlier as local historian Patrick Darby’s research in the Dulwich College Archive shows. The original house stood in a 3½ acre field, known in the Middle Ages as ‘Carter’s Hall’. The road in front of the house, now Village Way, was then known as Matthews’ Lane, leading from High Street Dulwich to ‘Ireland Green’ (now Herne Hill) . The name was changed to Half Moon Lane in the mid seventeenth century and to Village Way in the mid-1860s, when Half Moon Lane was realigned northwards after the construction of the new railway line from North Dulwich to Tulse Hill. Red Post Hill which linked High Street Dulwich with the direct road into Camberwell (now Denmark Hill) was then called Ashpole Lane.

When George Hethersall from Mitcham leased the site in 1599 it was still just a field but, by 1611, his son Walter had built a house there. William Price rebuilt the house in 1758, calling it Lyndenhurst – interestingly it is the only house in the area from the mid-Georgian period that has retained its original casement window design – all the others have had sliding sashes installed. Likewise its roof is clad in clay tiles, as it would have been originally, possibly sourced from the clay tile works at the Dulwich Pond, where Pond Cottages is today. The house was listed Grade II in the first tranche of the National Listings Survey carried out in 1954.

According to Patrick Darby there were two subsequent lessees after William Price, Robert Woodmass and John Doughty, and the latter put the house up for sale in May 1803 with auctioneers Messrs. Peter Coxe, Burrell & Foster. They advertised it in the Morning Post as follows ‘By order of the Proprietor, John Doughty Esq., removing to Lowlayton, being the desirable and very valuable lease of a most comfortable accommodating, family residence, advantageously situated at the entrance to the rural and social Village of Dulwich, five miles only from the three bridges; commanding to the left, in the home prospect, the view of a beautiful group of noble ornamental elm trees, faces the approach from Norwood, is invariably cheerful, abounds in excellent water, with large paved coach yard, standing for two carriages, stabling for four horses, servants’ room, cow house, piggery, hen house and other outdoor advantages; a forecourt, an excellent well-cropped kitchen garden richly planted with healthy full-bearing fruit trees, standard trees and espaliers; a paddock, and nine acres of most profitable land, in the highest state of manure, immediately adjoining, separated only by the road.’ It added that ‘the dwelling contains a variety of excellent apartments, in sitting rooms, lofty bed chambers, and servants’ rooms, all airy and pleasant; spacious staircase, back staircase, suitable domestic offices in the basement of every description’ and concluded by saying that ‘these most covetable premises are held under God’s Gift College, for the unexpired term of eighteen years, at a very moderate rent, presenting, according to the custom of the tenure, the usual advantages of renewal.’ The last comment referred to the 21 year lease which the Estate normally renewed for a further 21 years without question – giving a potential 42 years overall.

Lyndenhurst was then acquired by Richard William Clarke, who was described as a ‘gentleman of Dulwich.’ A prosperous biscuit manufacturer who supplied provisions to the Royal Navy from a bakery in Bermondsey, Clarke retired to a house further up Red Post Hill in 1810 and his younger son, Charles, a wine merchant, took over the property. Charles’ older brother, also Richard and also a biscuit maker, had been living at ‘The White House’ on the opposite corner since 1798. Clarke’s Green, the landscaped and planted area opposite Lyndenhurst and in front of the White House was named after the family.

The Clarke family members seemed to have lived long lives, and it was not until the mid-1860s that there was another occupier, barrister Edward Parker Wolstenholme - he took out a new lease at Michaelmas 1866 at £100 a year. Born in Ireland in 1824, where his family had large property holdings, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1850. He was conveyancing counsel to the Chancery Court from 1877 to 1905 and was the co-editor of Wolstenholme & Cherry’s ‘Conveyancing Statutes’ – published in 12 editions between the 1870s and 1932. Cherry was Wolstenholme’s pupil and they worked together on the first nine issues until Cherry took over as sole editor. There was a 13th and last edition, published in the 1970s.

Wolstenholme never married and lived at Lyndenhurst alone, albeit with a large staff including a housekeeper, cook, parlour maid, kitchen maid, footman, coach man and groom. He was there for over 20 years before moving to Clarence House in Herne Hill, later absorbed into Brockwell Park, and then to a house in King’s Avenue in Clapham, where he died in 1908 aged 83. A short obituary in the London Evening Standard on 4th June said that at his death he was one of the oldest members of the Bar.

In the June 1889 Estate minutes, the Manager reported that he had agreed to let Lyndenhurst for seven years on a full repairing lease to Australian born George Pender Smith of Fairlight, St Saviours Road, Brixton at a rent of £90 a year, ‘the lessee to put the premises into tenantable condition to his satisfaction and, in consideration of him doing so, the two first years of the term to be at half rent, £45.’ Smith, was a second generation Australian, the son of John Thomas Smith, a Sydney born Australian politician. In the very first election for the Melbourne City Council, held on 1 December 1842, his father had been elected as a Councillor for the Bourke ward and he remained on the Council for the remainder of his life. In 1851 he was elected Mayor of Melbourne and was subsequently re-elected to the position seven times, his last year of office being 1864. He was also a member of the State of Victoria’s Legislative Council from 1851 to 1879.

His son was born in 1862 and had moved to England in the late 1880s to study medicine at Guys Hospital He was 28 years old when he took over Lyndenhurst and, as well as being a medical student, there are several schedules in the newspaper, the Commercial Gazette, which also listed him as a money lender – perhaps that’s how he managed to afford to live in such a large house while still a student. A year later Smith complained that despite spending over £300 on the house, there were still more repairs needed – he said that recently a portion of the hall ceiling had collapsed because of dry rot in the joists, and that it now appeared there was a similar problem in the dining room. The Estate was unsympathetic and regretted that they were not able to help.

In April 1890, 19-year-old Phyllis Meo and her seven-month-old baby called Ellen, came to live at the house. There is no suggestion that she was an employee and she may have been Smith’s lover. One morning, four months later, the baby, now 11 months old, was found dead in her bed. The Weekly Despatch’s headline on its report on the inquest was ‘Singular death of a child’ and went into considerable detail as to what happened. Phyllis said she had gone to live at Lyndenhurst four months previously and her child, who had always been in good health, slept in a bedroom by itself. She put the child to bed at 9:30 and she last saw the her alive at 11.00 when she checked to see if she was safe - the child was then under the bedclothes and she adjusted them so that they could not get over her again. Next morning she asked Smith to see if the child was awake and he was gone some time before he came back to say the child was dead. She added that she thought he was joking, but she went and found that ‘the poor little thing was doubled up, and its head was on one side.’

Smith said that the child had been healthy since it had been in his house. When he opened the door to wake her he saw the child’s form under the bed clothes. On removing these he saw her lying face downwards on the bed close to a chair. There were blood stains on her face, and he thought she had been dead some hours. The only way he could account for the marks would be pressure against the chair. He then consulted a friend who advised him to go to the police station. One of the men on the inquest jury said ‘Disgraceful, it ought to have been in the same room as the mother.’

A local doctor called Hopkins said that the body was that of a strong, healthy, well-nourished child and his post-mortem examination showed that death was due to suffocation. The Coroner asked about any marks and the doctor said ‘Yes., there was a bruise on the left cheek and another on the right. Also, on the nose and lip. My opinion is that they were caused before death.’ He then added a comment that seemed to be ignored by the jury ‘The nose appeared to be pinched. I could not explain except in a way that I should not like to suggest.’

Another juryman asked whether ‘the child have hit its face against the chair in struggling for breath?’ The doctor said that he thought not as the child would not have had enough strength to produce the bruises. He said the stomach was full of food which suggested that she had been dead for some time as it should have passed through her it within a few hours. The Coroner then asked whether the child had ever had a fall and Phyllis said that she had fallen out of bed and made a mark on the tip of her nose. She then added that Smith was very fond of the child and denied that he had ever said that he wished the child was not there.

In its summary the newspaper said ‘The jury consulting for some time among themselves, and ultimately returned a verdict of ‘death from suffocation’. The foreman added ‘we think the child should not have been left alone’. The coroner: Accidental? The Foreman: Yes’. Looking at the newspaper reports from today’s perspective it seems very clear what happened but perhaps it was less obvious at the time or the jury just found it impossible to think that the baby had been murdered.

Later in the year Smith married Phyllis but they left Dulwich very shortly afterwards. Messrs Bray, Young & Co’s auction of the house’s contents on the premises was advertised in the South London Press on 30 May – the copy said that the sale included ‘genuine household furniture and effects, most of which is nearly knew, comprising ash bedroom suite, brass and iron bedsteads and bedding, handsome Brussels and pile carpets, tapestry window curtains, inlaid rosewood drawing room suite and cabinets, American walnut dining room ditto, full compass cottage pianoforte by Knauss, oil paintings, almost new C spring polo cart, and other effects.’

It is unclear where the newly married couple moved to next but, by 1896, they were living in Walton on the Naze in Essex where George was practising as a physician and surgeon. He had not graduated MB from Guys Hospital but had secured his qualification via the Society of Apothecaries - an acceptable alternative at the time for those wanting to enter general practice. He must have been quite successful because he later secured the job of Medical Officer of Health to the local council, Wyvenhoe, beating two other better qualified candidates. There were several letters of objection to his appointment which were quoted in the local newspaper, The Walton Gazette and Harwich and Dovercourt Advertiser in June 1898 – this one was from a local vicar, Rev Sinclair Carolin. He said ’I beg to protest against the appointment of Mr George Pender Smith as Medical Officer of Health for Wyvenhoe. Of the three who applied, Dr Cook, of Colchester, and Mr Hewlett MB, of Wyvenhoe, were the other two. I submit that Mr. Smith is the least qualified for the appointment, because he never did any sanitary work in his life, and is only a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries. On the other hand, Mr Hewitt is a Master of Surgery, Bachelor of Medicine, Diplomat of public health, and also a Diplomat of Sanitary Science.’ Smith kept the job and the 1911 Census records him living in Walton on the Naze with Phyllis and two children – though the Census form says that they had had three children, two living and one dead – was the latter child Ellen? By 1917 the family had moved back to Smith’s home country, Australia, where he worked at an asylum in Queensland. In 1928 Phyllis died falling off a balcony at her home apparently, according to the local press ‘while calling to the milkman’.

From the summer of 1891 Lyndenhurst’s lessee was Thomas William Duff. Born in 1841 in Brixton, he had lived in China for over 30 years, and was a prominent opium dealer in the trade between India, where most of the raw material was grown, and China where it was consumed. He married Ellen Smithers, from Hong Kong, and two of their children were born in China – one in Chinkiang (later known as Zhenjiang) where his business was based, and one in Shanghai. Chinkiang, a treaty port, lay on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal and was, in the late nineteenth century, a major regional distribution centre for the opium trade

The Duff’s had returned to England in 1889 and, prior to moving to Lyndenhurst, lived at 10 Townley Road. He and his wife had another son in November 1892, born at the house, while his older son, Gordon (born in 1877) was at Dulwich College for a year, between July 1894 and July 1895. Duff gave evidence to the 1894 Royal Commission on Opium, saying that opium ‘has no deleterious effects on the Chinese, quite the contrary’ and that in 33 years he had only seen a couple of cases of misuse. Helped by testimony from merchants such as Duff, the Commission effectively removed the opium question from the public agenda for 15 years. It was criticised for giving undue weight to Duff’s evidence, given that many other witnesses, including several medical men, said the opposite.

On a lighter note, one of his is daughters appeared in an article in the Echo (London) in August 1896 in an article headed ‘A surprise for Li.’ Li Hung-Chang, the Chinese Qing court’s man in charge of foreign affairs (sometimes called the ‘Oriental Bismarck’), was visiting England and was being taken to see the Crystal Palace. As he and his entourage were paying their toll at the College Road tollgate, he was surprised to be addressed in perfect Mandarin by one of two English ladies who were waiting there with their bicycles – one of them was Duff’s daughter, Gladys.

The family left Lyndenhurst in 1899 and moved to a smaller semi-detached house at 38 Lewin Road in Streatham where Duff died in 1903 – leaving £845 11s 1d in his will - one wonders whether both his opium business, and his finances, were a casualty of the Boxer Rebellion which ran from September 1899 to September 1901.

Charles Cuthbertson Esson, the new lessee was, a mechanical engineer at the family firm, John Essen & Son; their premises were at 104-107 Fetter Lane. He was the managing director when the firm went public in 1905 – the share offer particulars described the business as printers’ engineers and valuers, electrical engineers and hot water and sanitary contractors. Charles lived in the house with his siblings Ernest, Sophia, and Kate, none of them married, while their father, John Esson, lived at the much larger Hill House nearby on Red Post Hill. As well as his day to day work, Charles was a member of the army reserves and, in the years before and after WW1, a prolific author of books on army drills and map reading - primarily aimed at schools and army cadet corps. The varied titles included ‘Battalion Drill Illustrated’, ‘Squad Drill Illustrated’. ‘The Drill Instructor,’ and ‘Map Reading made easy: with Illustrations.’

Late in 1906 Esson assigned his lease to William H Moore, a shipowner’s agent then living at 100 East Dulwich Grove. In March 1910 a length of about 30 feet of the garden wall, forming the north-east boundary, blew down in a gale. Moore had some correspondence with the Estate about who was responsible for repairing it - he said it could not be him as it was not mentioned in his lease. The Surveyor obviously did not agree and they served notice on him to rebuild it.

From 1914 Moore was a director of the newly formed Commonwealth and Dominion shipping line, later known as the Port Line. He died at the end of March 1920 and his wife, Lydia, moved to Lake House further south down Dulwich Village along with a companion, Miss Dean, and her pet dog – according to local historian Brian Green, Lydia Moore apparently bore an uncanny resemblance to Queen Victoria.

The next tenant was Joseph Dear Wiskar and his wife. They took out a new lease in October 1920. Wiskar was a partner in a firm of potato merchants, Beeson & Wiskar, with premises at 24 Borough Market. The company were best known as the first firm to supply potatoes to Frank Smith in his new crisp making venture, Smith’s Crisps’ in 1920 - within 20 years they were supplying 100,000 tons of potatoes a year. The firm is now called Beesons and it still operates today.

The family were previously living in St Mary’s Road in Peckham and had suffered the tragic loss of their only son in the war. Captain Joseph William Wiskar of the 6th Battalion, London Regiment (City of London Rifles), died at the Mont Doré Military Hospital, Bournemouth, in March 1917 of wounds sustained at the Battle of Loos 18 months earlier. He was 23.

The Wiskar’s had five servants, a cook, three maids and a manservant. When advertising for a housemaid at £36 pa, they were careful to note that in addition, a woman came in to do the windows and silver and that ‘the washing goes out’. Within four years the Wiskar’s had moved elswhere and passed the lease on to their daughter, Ida, and son-in-law, Major Percie Cooper. When war broke out in 1939 Joseph and Ida went to live at Toksowa, the hotel on Dulwich Common (now the site of Hambledon Place).

Cooper was a director of the Moorgate based wholesale printers, Alfred C Cooper & Sons, and was also involved in WW1 as a member of the 1st Battalion Honourable Artillery Company, a reserve regiment based in the City of London. By the end of the conflict he was their commanding officer and, post-war, was based in Cologne as part of the British occupation force. He returned to civilian life in 1923 as a Lieutenant Colonel and he and his wife remained at Lyndenhurst until April 1939 when they moved to 104 College Road. They also suffered the loss of their only son in wartime. Captain Derek Joseph Percie Cooper (1919-42) was educated at Lancing College and worked for a short time at his father’s firm before enlisting as a gunner in the Royal Artillery. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in January 1940 and was killed in action on Christmas Eve 1942 when a member of the 1st Airborne Division – his funeral was held at St Stephen’s Church, College Road, and he was buried at Camberwell Cemetery.

The next occupier was Berlin born barrister Dr Reinhold Lachs. He had studied law in Berlin and Freiburg and served in the German Army in the First World War. He had worked in the Pre-War Debts Office until 1925 and then practised as a lawyer in Berlin before moving to England in 1933 – he was Jewish. He qualified as a barrister, and was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1937. He must have known that he could be interned as an enemy alien and he briefed local estate agent, Marten and Carnaby, to secure the lease on a yearly basis. He was correct and he was interned for two months in 1940 and then released. It is unclear as to what he did during the remainder of the war years but from 1945-47 he was a legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and from 1947 legal adviser to the Control Commission for Germany. From 1950-56 he worked in Hamburg as Chief Executive of the Jewish Trust Corporation for Germany and he played an important role in recovering heirless and unclaimed Jewish property. He later went to Canada to join his daughter and her family.

The 1945 Electoral Register listed the lessees as Tom and Irene Denning with their maid, Daisy Hubbard. In July 1947 the South London Observer reported on the Camberwell Rotary Club’s first garden party which was held at Lyndenhurst – it said that in the afternoon, club members’ children were entertained by a Punch and Judy show, conjuring, sports, and tea.

From 1961 the Rackow family lived at Lyndenhurst. Dr Frank Rackow was a consultant physician at St Helier Hospital, Sutton, and St Anthony’s Hospital, Cheam. His parents were Jewish immigrants who had come from Odessa in 1903 during the pogroms. His father, Joseph, had had a successful business career in London, working his way up to being managing director of the luggage manufacturer, S Noton Ltd, best known for the brand ‘Crown’ luggage. In 1968 the company was reputed to be the largest manufacturer in Europe of moulded luggage for air travel.

Frank studied medicine at King’s and, after serving in WW2, trained in diabetes and cardiology. From the 1950s to the 1970s he ran a highly successful correspondence course to help medical students studying for the MRCP, under the pseudonym ‘J Arnold’. Sadly, his retirement was marred by the tragic loss of his daughter Rachel in the Marchioness boat disaster in August 1989.

This pair of semi-detached houses in the centre of Dulwich Village was built in 1767 by London merchant, William Stephenson. A survey of the graves in the Old Burial Ground opposite, by some Dulwich College boys in 1930 noted a mural tablet (now lost) with a carved shield in the south wall inscribed ‘Mr William Stephenson: buried 16 September 1787, aged 86, formerly of the Precinct of the Savoy, late of Dulwich.’ The Precinct of the Savoy was a small area between the Strand and the River Thames which originally included the fourteenth century Savoy Palace, the home of John of Gaunt. It is largely covered today by the Savoy Hotel and the northern approach to Waterloo Bridge - presumably Stephenson had his business premises there. The Dulwich College Archive also has a letter, written on his behalf by his wife Ann, asking permission to cut down some trees in front of the houses. The next information we have is from the guidebook, Edward’s ‘Companion from London to Brighthelmston’ first published in 1795 but surveyed in 1789. It described a trip along what was then High Street Dulwich saying ‘On the right is a handsome red brick house, with a pleasant garden behind, and a grass place in front. The north part (The Hollies) is inhabited by the proprietor, Mr Adams, and the south (The Laurels) is let to Captain Hunt.’

Both properties were listed Grade II in 1972 and Historic England’s list entry gives a brief description of the properties and notes that their most interesting feature, the canted bays on the front elevation, are a later edition. Originally the front elevation would most likely have been flat fronted, like the other contemporary Georgian houses in the Village, with casement windows, broadly similar to Lyndenhurst on Village Way, built almost at the same time – indeed one of the dormer windows on the front elevation still has a casement. Plate glass of the size used in the windows became more practical (and affordable) after 1834, when the Chance Brothers introduced what was called ‘improved cylinder sheet’ plate glass using a German process – which was also used on the Crystal Palace. Unfortunately there are no records of when these bays were added but the best guess must be sometime in the 1850s or 60s.

The Laurels, 60 Dulwich Village

Local plumber John Adams, was the first lessee. He had a small yard in the centre of the Village, now part of the housing development called ‘Mitchell’s Yard,’ and members of his family lived in the house for many years - in May 1817, his unmarried daughter, Elizabeth, renewed the lease at £21 per annum. On her death in 1837, a new lease was taken out by an elderly retired East India Merchant called Edward Batten. His son, also Edward, and his family, were living across the road at Stanley Villa, 57 Dulwich Village – perhaps they put Batten Snr up across the road so they could keep an eye on his welfare.

In 1851 the occupant was John Raymond, a 34-year-old special pleader, a lawyer who specialised in drafting what are now called statements of case. He later became a barrister but had had a very different start in life. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to his uncle, a Thames lighterman, but he had clearly abandoned any thoughts of a career on the water, when he was admitted, aged 21, as a pupil in the Middle Temple. We must assume that he studied in the chambers of Walter Oak Edye as he named his eldest son after him – Oke Edye Raymond. He later published a book on the Bill of Exceptions which was described in its preface as a ‘short account of its origin and nature showing by whom and to whom a Bill of Exceptions may be tendered; what may be the subject of it; its form and mode of tendering it; the proceedings upon it; and the mode of enforcing the statute.’ It was published in London by the law publisher S Sweet of 1 Chancery Lane, and also in Philadelphia in the USA. (it is available online as a pdf file download from Google Books). Raymond moved to Clapham in the late 1850s where he and his wife brought up their 12 children.

In the 1861 Census the occupier was listed as a young 23 year old governess, Elizabeth Hood, along with an even younger female servant, 18 year old Jane Brisk. There is no more information until the Estate minutes of 30 November 1865 which noted that a new 21 year lease would be granted to Thomas F Cooke, of New Wharf, Whitefriars, in the City who had ‘acquired Mrs Hughes’ interest in the lease of the Laurels, at Dulwich’ - Mrs Hughes’ must have been the lessee though there is no record in the Dulwich College Archive. Cooke agreed to pay a rent of £42 1s a year for the first two years, and £50 for the rest the term, and put both the premises, and the fences, into a complete state of repair. By 1871 the occupier was John Walmsley, a commercial traveller, who had moved to Dulwich from West Terrace in Newington – he had previously been a wood turner. He, his wife, and four young children remained in the house until 1875 when they moved to City Road in Islington.

The next lessee was Fredrick J Cox. He had started in life as an optician but, by 1858, he was an optical and scientific instrument maker specialising in photographic equipment. His first premises were in Newgate Street, and then at 22 Skinner Street in Snow Hill – sometimes described at the time as the ‘City of London Photographic Establishment.’ Unfortunately his building was demolished in the construction of the Holborn Viaduct in 1863 and he moved to 26 Ludgate Hill. He is known today as a manufacturer of early cameras and they regularly appear in specialist auctions. His 1861 catalogue shows his product range and also suggested bizarrely that he had been in business for 130 years. Unfortunately, he was declared bankrupt in 1882 - as the notice in the London Gazette on 3 October confirmed. It said ‘Bankruptcy Act, 1869. In the London Bankruptcy Court. In the Matter of Proceedings for Liquidation by Arrangement or’ Composition -with Creditors, instituted by Frederick James Cox, of No. 26. Ludgate-hill, in the city of London, and of the Laurels, High-street, Dulwich, in the county of Surrey, Optician. NOTICE is hereby given, that a First General Meeting of the creditors of the above-named person has been summoned to be held at the offices of Mr. George Ward Nanton, Solicitor, No. 75, Cheapside, in the city of London, on the 17th day of October, 1882, at two o’clock in the afternoon precisely.’ His business was taken over by H & E J Dale and shortly afterwards he moved to Eastbourne – where he went back to practising as an optician.

Cox was succeeded by Henry Ostler Hinton, who was a relatively rare thing in Victorian England, a divorcee. Two years earlier his former wife, Amelia, had been found guilty of adultery – there was a counter claim of cruelty but that was ignored. By the time he was living in Dulwich, Hinton had a new wife and very young children and he moved on to a house in Lewisham Park in 1890. He was a leather merchant and later, in 1913-14, master of the Leather Sellers Livery Company.

The house was then occupied by a young local doctor, Henry Blatherwick. Born in Canada while his father was posted there (he was a noted RAMC medic), he trained at Guys Hospital, and had joined Dr Reynolds Ray’s general practice, the Woodlawn Surgery, at 97 Dulwich Village. He remained at the house until 1900 when Dr Ray retired and he moved across the road to the practice’s main base. The Laurels was then occupied by a junior partner in the practice, Frederick James Dixon but he did not stay long, setting up his own practice in Thurlow Park Road. His father owned a substantial draper’s business based in Nottingham called Dixon & Parker and his elder brother, John Auger Dixon, was a noted sportsman, being the Captain of the Notts County Cricket XI, 1889-99 and a member of the Notts County Football team between 1883-85 - and he played in the 1884 England v. Wales match.

The next lessee, Alfred Gentry, left within two year after sustaining heavy business losses in India which meant that he was unable to pay the quarterly ground rent of £14 10s. The house was then empty though the Estate had an offer in May 1903 from a Mrs Crookes of 34 Alleyn Road to take the property for seven years at £50 per annum subject to the Estate carrying out some remedial work. The Estate Surveyor said this might cost up to £250 and the offer was declined. Mrs Crookes came back the following year offering £65 but the Estate turned it down again. In the Estate minutes in June 1904 the Manager commented on the likely future for the house, saying ‘The premises, as the Governors are aware, are very old, and the brickwork generally is in bad condition. Having regard to the fact that the land on which this house stands and the land forming an island between the Village, Turney Road and Boxall Row, will probably be cleared for building developments in a few years and I do not think the Governors should spend this amount of money.’

The Laurels remained empty for almost another 18 months before they had an acceptable offer from Arthur E Henderson, an architect working for the LCC Architect’s Department. He agreed to take a seven year lease from Christmas 1905 at a rent of £48 per annum without requiring any remedial work, the lessee being responsible for internal repairs only. There was some discussion over an expensive fireplace and chimney piece that the previous tenant, Gentry, had had installed in the dining room by local builder C B Core at a cost of £18 - which he had failed to pay for. Henderson said he would pay £10 if the Governors would pay £8 to let it stay in place – they agreed.

Prior to coming to Dulwich, Henderson had been living in Istanbul. He had gone there in 1896 on being awarded the Owen Jones travelling studentship and was subsequently appointed architect to the British excavations at the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, and he also took part in an archaeological survey of Cyzicus. He designed several buildings in Istanbul and made a detailed study of the church of St. Sophia there - his watercolour paintings of it are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Later in life Henderson focused on the decoration and restoration of churches in England -- his frescoes at Christ Church in Streatham Hill are a notable example of his work.

In January 1910 Henderson assigned his lease to William Anderson Paine, a well-known journalist and author, who had begun his career as a shop assistant and risen rapidly to store manager. He subsequently wrote popular biographies of well-known people and was later editor-in-chief of Mate’s Illustrated Guides, a series of very successful illustrated travel guides of England in the early part of the twentieth century – still available online, at auctions, or from second hand booksellers. He is better known today for his books on social issues like ‘The Counter Exposed’ - an indictment of the poor conditions under which the shop assistants served in the late nineteenth century. This was followed by one titled ‘Shop Slavery and Emancipation’ which was said to have played an important part in improving conditions in the ‘living in system’ operated by large shops in big cities, where accommodation was provided for the staff, particularly women. He then joined the staff of the London Press Exchange (founded in 1892),and was there for over 22 years, during the period when it grew to be one of the largest advertising service agencies in London.

Paine stayed at the Laurels until his death in 1933 although there was a short break in 1921 when the house was lived in by a lady called Ermengarde Nugent, presumably a friend of his, along with her adopted daughter. Mrs Nugent was a well-known confidence trickster and her life is covered extensively on the substack on KIngsley Dene, a large house on Green Dale.

Between 1933 and 1938 the Laurels was lived in by a widow, Mrs E C Marshall, formerly of The Grove, 48 College Road, downsizing after the death of her publisher husband. After her death a new lease was taken out by journalist Douglas Crawford who worked for the Daily Mail. During his career with the newspaper he had been the foreign editor and the assistant editor of the London edition but, when living in Dulwich, he was the editor of the Daily Mail’s overseas edition. He died in 1950 and the lease was taken over by his son Kenneth who renewed it in 1957 and was still in the house in the 1960s.

The Hollies, 62 Dulwich Village

Captain Anthony Hunt, the occupier in the 1780s and 90s had had a successful career in the Royal Navy and had been appointed as the ‘Second Captain’ of the Greenwich Hospital (his wife was the matron). His obituary in the Times on 5 December 1795 said ‘On Thursday last died, very much regretted by all who are acquainted with the virtues of the heart, Anthony Hunt, Esq., Second Captain of Greenwich hospital, who concealed under the honest roughness of a seaman, the warmest sentiments of friendship and benevolence, and who, after spending his youth in the service of this country, continued in the honourable retreat of his advanced life, a faithful servant to its King, and a ready advocate for its constitution.’

The next lessee was John Tomlinson, who agreed to pay £14 a year in rent. He was described in the Estate minutes as being ‘of Staple Inn, London, Gentleman, the surviving executor of Mr Stephenson deceased, late of Dulwich, Gentleman.’ At some point the house was taken over by Mrs Jane Gill, a widow once married to stationer Francis Gill, a partner of Thomas Wright, the builder of Bell House in College Road. She renewed her lease in March 1838 and the 1841 Census recorded her at the Hollies along with her sister Dorothy Bustard and two servants. Another sister, Isabella, had married the City of London banker, Johann Friedrich Schroeder, and this explains why both ladies were later buried in the Schroeder tomb in the Dulwich Burial Ground.

Dorothy Bustard died in 1851 but Jane Gill remained at the Hollies until 1864 when she assigned her lease to Edward Evison who, within a year, sublet the house to Arthur Longley, a hosier with a business in Borough High Street. He was also an Estate Governor – appointed on 5 January 1865 to represent the Parish of St Saviour. He died early, aged 48, in January 1871, and his wife sought to extend the lease for five years ‘in consideration of certain additions and improvements he had made at the present rent of £50 a year.’ The Estate were happy to agree.

In July 1880 Mrs Longley wrote to the Estate saying that her poor health meant that she did not intend to remain in Dulwich for another winter, and wanted to surrender the lease. The Manager noted that the house was in good order and that her late husband had spent money on improvements, but that there were six years remaining on the lease and, consequently, he was unwilling to accede to her request. He did say, however, that if she could find a suitable tenant to take over the lease they would not stand in her way. By Census day 1881, she had left and there was a new occupier, 31-year-old James Lewis, an auctioneer.

He was there less than two years and, by 1883 the lessee was music hall entertainer, Charles Godfrey, perhaps the house’s most ‘famous’ occupant. He was described by some contemporaries as ‘one of the most phenomenally successful artistes ever seen in the British music halls.’ Another called him ‘a first-class actor with an outstandingly good baritone voice, plus a highly developed flair for the dramatic.’ Born in Southwark, he had been a waiter at the Surrey Theatre before becoming a stage actor in melodramas. He seemed to have led a riotous life, dying of alcoholism aged only 46 in 1900. He was declared bankrupt in 1886, just after he left Dulwich - newspaper reports said that he had not only ‘been guilty of rash and hazardous speculation’ but had also lost money betting. He attributed his failure to losses following his purchase of the Castle Tavern & Music Hall in Camberwell. His best known songs were ‘Hi-Tiddley-Hi-Ti’ and ‘The Masher King’ - mashers were dissolute dandies who apparently importuned single women in public spaces. A short letter in the theatrical trade newspaper, The Era, in October 1883 addressed to Harry Rodgers, another singer, said ‘ I agree to allow you the sole singing rights to my song called ‘The Masher’ for America only. C Godfrey - The Hollies, Dulwich, London, September’

The Masher King (first and last verses)

I used to be steady, I used to be staid
And my toys were all bought in the Lowther Arcade
I’d sit at the feet of my dearest Mamma
And recite little poems to fondest Papa
Or go with my sister for walks in the park
And get home quite an hour before it grew dark
But now that’s all changed, that is easy to tell
I’m the latest invention, the Masher, the Swell.

I’m a darling old chap-ity, go you at nap-ity
Slip-ity, slap-ity, swella
Hip Hip, hooray-ity, inside the Gaiety
‘Beg yours, Sir, this is my stall!’
Gaiter of drab-ity, gift of the gab-ity
Row with the cab-ity fellah
Rick-ity, rack-ity, bric-ity, brac-ity
Prize medal Masher of all.

Godfrey left the Hollies in such a bad state of repair that the Estate Surveyor, Charles Barry Jnr, commented ‘that it will be hopeless to expect to obtain a tenant for them in the present condition.’ He put forward plans for repairing the roof, gutters, drains and fences (at a cost of £78 10s), and thought that at least £120 would have to be spent on the interior. Surprisingly it appears that there was also no WC attached to the house and he said that a further £20 would have to be spent on providing one. Despite the refurbishment the premises proved unlettable at £55 a year – the Manager reported that there had been at least 25 viewings but no acceptable offers above £40. The house remained empty through 1889 and more remedial work had to be carried out before a tenant was finally secured at the end of 1890. He was Herbert Massey, the Camberwell Vaccination Officer, and he agreed to take the house at £42 a year conditional on the Governors spending a further £25 in forming an out-door water closet and laying on a water service with the housemaid’s sink on the first floor. In addition, because of the old and decayed condition of the house, he refused to enter into a general repairing covenant, agreeing only to paint the outside once every three years, and the inside once in seven years. The Estate were only too happy to accept.

He and his family remained at the house until 1911, when Massey retired to the country, and managed to assign his lease to a hotelier from India called Robert Maiden. Maiden had come over to England to find somewhere for his young wife and children to live while he went back to run his hotels at Kasauli, a popular hill station in the Punjab - he was the proprietor of both the Kasauli Hotel and the Grand Hotel there. His wife Eva had been born in India, and had lived there all her life until she came to Dulwich – both their children had been born in Lucknow. Their son, Ralph Lincoln Brookes Maiden was at Dulwich Prep from 1908-11 and then at Dulwich College where, even though his mother lived nearby, he boarded at Elm Lawn. He was in the 2nd XV 1916-17 and won the 120 yards and high jump in the school’s athletic competition. He joined the army but just missed WW1 - he later served in 2/19th Punjabis in Waziristan 1919-20 but left the army in April 1922 moving to the colonial service in Nigeria.

In February 1915 there was an item in the Estate minutes about rental arrears. It seems that Robert Maiden’s career in India had not been a success and he had joined the army as he had no income - leaving his wife and children to live on the army separation allowance and a little financial help from her family. The Manager noted that the wife and daughter would shortly be returning to live with her parents and that he had taken possession of the premises - the outstanding rent having been covered by the sale of the Maiden’s furniture.

In the meantime, the Manager had received an offer from the local builder and amateur artist, Charles Browne Core, then living across the road at No 57 Dulwich Village, to take a new 21 year lease at £50 per annum. The house was still not in very good condition and Core made sure the lease contained a clause exempting him from dilapidations at the end of the term. The Estate agreed to allow a sum, equivalent of one year’s rent, towards repairs, and improvements – to be paid in cash. Core then queried the condition of the drains saying that he had not examined them and, should it be found necessary to carry our remedial work on them the Estate should pay. They finally agreed to split the cost between them and Core then let the property to one of his workmen, a foreman decorator called Charles Butcher and he lived there with his wife Minnie and a range of lodgers until 1928 -- though by 1926 the house also housed a local dental practice on the ground floor, Vernon and Farmer.

Late in 1928 Core assigned the lease to Archibald Duckett, an insurance clerk who was moving from a flat over the grocery shop at 6 Croxted Road. He had been in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War 1 and had been demobbed as an acting sergeant.

In 1931 there was a new lessee, Paul Schmidt-Werden, a paper merchant. He stayed until 1939 when the house was taken over by Leonard Hutton, a retired school master moving into the Village from Alleyn Park. He had taught at Dulwich College between 1896 and 1901 before moving on to the Merchant Tailor’s School; he was later an examiner at the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board. He died in 1954 and his wife lived there for another couple of years before putting it on the market late in 1956 for £1650.

The May 1957 Estate Minutes confirm that a new lease had been taken out by architect Cecil Elsom ARIBA, for a premium of £1650. It also noted that he intended to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment scheme including new electrical wiring, central heating, internal alterations to enlarge the basement kitchen, the installation of new sanitary equipment, the creation of a new toilet in the old coal cellar and complete redecoration. Elsom sent both his children to Dulwich College and, in the late 1960s, built a new living room extension on the side of the house and a swimming pool in the garden. He and his wife, Mary, remained at the house until they moved to Ferrings, on College Road, in the mid-1980s. The new purchasers of the house then subdivided the garden and, after many years of argument, another house was built on the site of the swimming pool with access from Boxall Road.

Lapsewood, a large house on the corner of Sydenham Hill and Cox’s Walk, was built in 1859 by architect Charles Barry Jnr, shortly after being appointed Dulwich Estate Architect and Surveyor - he had succeeded his father, Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Working with his older partner, Robert Richardson Banks, who lived nearby on Crystal Palace Parade and was previously his father’s senior assistant, the two were responsible for the design of many of the large houses on Sydenham Hill, Crescent Wood Road, and College Road. They also designed two local churches, St Stephen’s, South Dulwich, and St Peter’s, Lordship Lane, as well as the tower at Christ Chapel and a new entrance hall to the Dulwich Picture Gallery – demolished after WW2. The partnership’s best known building in central London was the forecourt of Burlington House (home of the Royal Academy), in Piccadilly; it ended on Banks’ death in December 1872.

Barry lived at Lapsewood with his wife, four daughters, three sons & seven servants until February 1872 when the family moved to 15 Pembridge Square in Kensington. He assigned his lease to Edward Clark, a 30-year-old stockbroker, who had been living nearby in a house called Eardley on West Hill (now Westwood Hill). He and his wife, Adeline, were from the area and had been married, both aged 21, at St Bartholomew’s Church on West Hill. While large families were quite common in Victorian times, one has to feel some sympathy for Mrs Clark as between 1867 and 1883 she had a total of 14 children, 12 daughters and two sons, almost one every year. In 1881 the family were employing six servants but ten years later, in 1891, they, perhaps understandably, required nine! All but one of the children survived infancy, but 1887 was a very sad year for them as they lost both their youngest daughter, Sylvia aged 3, in February, followed in May by their third daughter, 18-year-old Katherine Annie, who unfortunately died of acute pneumonia after only a week’s illness.

As the family increased in size, as well as more servants, they needed more space. Rather than move, Clark made a number of additions to the house. In May 1884 he applied for a 21-year lease extension and in the relevant Estate meeting minutes Charles Barry Jnr. was noted as saying ‘this gentleman is the assignee and occupier of an excellent house . . . . . During his occupancy he has expended no less a sum than £7,330 in doubling it size, erecting stabling, gardener’s cottage, and other garden buildings, thereby adding very largely to the permanent value of the premises.’ The Estate agreed his request subject to an additional £5 per annum ground rent.

By the mid-1890s the Clark daughters were starting to get married and the first to do so was the second daughter, Edith, in April 1895. The groom was George Gordon Powell, the eldest son of George Thompson Powell who lived further back along Sydenham Hill at a house called ‘Rotherwood’. The magazine The Gentlewoman reported on the service at St Stephens which was officiated by the bride’s uncle, Rev William Clark MA, assisted by Rev J H Mallinson (headmaster of Dulwich College Prep School from 1887 to 1909) and the Rev F E White, the vicar. According to the article there were nine bridesmaids, mostly her younger sisters, and it commented that ‘the modish dresses of the bride’s trousseau, including her wedding and travelling gowns, were supplied by Messrs Manning of Grafton Street, Dublin. The smart gloves and hosiery came from Mr Frederick Penberthy, Court Glover, 192-193 Oxford Street. The excellent wedding cake was furnished by Messrs Buzzard of 197 & 199 Oxford Street.’ The Norwood News also attended the wedding but had a slightly different story – here the bride’s trousseau and dresses were supplied by Mrs Naylor of Bayswater and part of the outfit was also the work of the Crystal Palace Needlework Society. The flowers were by Mr Blundell, the carriages by Mr H Frost, and the photography was by Mr Hallier, all from Sydenham. The reception for 200 guest was held at Lapsewood, and the presents ‘were greatly admired for their beauty and intrinsic worth.’

In November 1899, another daughter, Lucy, aged 21, was also married at St Stephens to Darent Henry McDonald, Receiver General and Treasurer of the Bahamas – this time the vicar, Rev F E White, was allowed to lead the service. The next daughter to get married was Christine, who did so in Guernsey in August 1902, and she was followed by Dora in December 1902 - her marriage to Colin Rees, one of the sons of the late Sir William Davies, MP for Pembrokeshire, took place in Nassau Cathedral in the Bahamas – perhaps they had met while she was visiting her sister. The family were back at St Stephen’s in June 1903 for the marriage of Evelyn to William Graham, the former secretary to the Sultan of Jahore, while Violet married barrister Herbert Higgins in the church in June 1906 – both ceremonies were conducted by the Rev F E White.

Lapsewood was directly bordered by Cox’s Walk, one of several quiet unlit footpaths known at the time as ‘lovers lanes’. In July 1897 the South London Press expounded on the need for the Camberwell Vestry and the Metropolitan Police to deal with the ‘complaints that have reached us which would seem to point to the necessity for further police supervision of the locality, particularly at night. Certain young men, all the more formidable because they are generally found in gangs, relate to Cox’s walk after dark. Whether promoted by the spirit of mischief or actuated by more serious intentions, they certainly have interfered with passers-by and even gone so far as to hustle, threaten, and otherwise molest them. This is an intolerable state of things, and it is to be hoped the police authorities will adopt prompt measures to put an end to it’.

As well as his membership of the stock exchange, which he joined in 1864 (he was also a manager and trustee of the organisation from 1887 to 1914), Clark had several other business interests. He was a director of the Crystal Palace Company and, along with two of his near neighbours, Buxton Shillitoe FRCS and ironmonger Frederick Braby, he was a director of the Trimsaran Coal, Iron & Steel Company Limited in South Wales. The company was wound up in 1876 but Clark was still involved in mines in the area as, on his death, the notices called him Edward Clark of Lapsewood, Sydenham Hill and Trimsaran, South Wales.

A keen church goer, he was one of the first church wardens of St Stephen’s in College Road, where he was also one of the trustees. He was a justice of the peace for Kent, sitting at Penge, and a Dulwich College Estate Governor (though neither of his sons went to the school). On the charity front, Clark was an active supporter of the National Hospital for Consumption, Ventnor, the Royal Female Orphan Asylum at Beddington near Croydon, and the Boys Home in Sydenham. He was Hon Treasurer of the Gentlewomen’s Work Society, previously known as the Crystal Palace Ladies’ Needlework Society, and he and his wife, Adeline, frequently opened their garden for fund raising fetes in aid of it. The Norwood News reported on one in June 1908 saying ‘many visitors took the opportunity of strolling around the beautiful grounds and gardens’ and enjoyed, a play, specially written for the occasion, magic shows and ‘Miss d’Enereaz’s pupils again showed their skill in dancing, while music was provided by ‘Les Cigales.’ The weather was apparently not particularly good but ‘Tea was served on the lawn and, despite a rather rough wind and threatening sky, it was a pleasing and mirthful function, many ladies serving as amateur waitresses.’ The article concluded by saying that ‘The fete was admirably arranged in every way, it not only afforded much pleasure to the large number of visitors, but will help to make the work of the society more widely known.’ Clark was also a golfer and was president of the Dulwich and Sydenham Golf Club in 1899/1900.

He and his wife celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1915, just a year before his death. He left just over £80,000 and his wife remained in the house until her own death in August 1929, aged 86. The Lewisham Borough News of 4 September 1929 carried an obituary which said that ‘her death will be much deplored, for she was of a kindly, sympathetic and generous disposition, and loved to do good work by stealth, especially in the Parish of Holy Trinity, Sydenham, to which he was much attached.’ It added that the Clark family ‘was one of those, now rapidly diminishing in the neighbourhood who are highly esteemed, not only for their close interest they took in the district which they lived, but for their general benefactions to all good causes.’ The floral tributes included a massive cross, composed of carnations, which completely hid the coffin and, afterwards, her remains were laid to rest in the family vault in West Norwood cemetery.

In March 1930 the Estate Surveyor, C E Barry (Charles Barry Jnr’s. son), prepared a schedule of dilapidations noting that the house was still in good structural condition but that the external stonework needed a number of repairs and the interior needed redecoration. The Estate accepted a payment of £2500 on the surrender of the lease and agreed to forgo any claims for dilapidations..

Given the country’s financial situation at the end of 1929 following the stock market crash in October, there were few potential purchasers for the property. The executors had two approaches, one from a private school and one to use the house as a private hotel - in both cases, the Estate’s response was unenthusiastic. The house remained empty until the end of 1930 when it was leased by the Ministry of Works and handed over to the Central Committee on Women’s Training and Employment. The name has a slightly ‘soviet’ connotation but its aim was more prosaic, it was a domestic service training centre for unemployed young women from what were called at the time, the ‘special areas’ - unemployment hotspots like Tyneside and Wales.

The facility was opened by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Maurice Jenks, early in June 1932 and a rather patronising article was published in the Northern Daily Mail a few days later headed ‘SUNSHINE SUSIES – how they are solving the servant problem. (‘Sunshine Susies’ was the title of a musical comedy film starring Jack Hulbert produced in 1931). The article went on to say that ‘The Sunshine Susies of Sydenham Hill are the happiest girls in London. There are 40 of them – Welsh girls with dark and dancing eyes, rosy-cheeked Yorkshire lassies, nimble-witted cockneys, and so on, and they all live in the big and beautiful house’ Lapsewood’ among the trees and the flowers. But although they are all so different, they have one thing in common, and that is whatever they are doing they are singing all the time. You can almost hear them singing “I don’t know why I’m happy, I only know I am” As a matter of fact though they do know why they are happy and the secret of the sunshine in the Sydenham Susies is this – they are learning to be first-class domestic maids and are being taught house-wifery, cookery, needlework, and other difficult things.’ It was apparently one of six similar residential centres in England (there was one more in Scotland) and the article also said that to give the girls the right domestic atmosphere, Miss Andrew, the superintendent, ran it like ‘a big private house.’

The new centre was not short of eminent visitors and Queen Mary visited the house at the end of June - she was photographed admiring the centre’s mascot, a small dog named Jennifer. She was also apparently concerned over the heat in the ironing room– it was a hot summer, and she sent an electric fan to help keep the girls cool. In February 1937 the visitor was Ernest Brown, the Minister of Labour. The Scotsman reported that he inspected the dormitories and club rooms and saw the girls at work in the kitchens, sewing rooms and laundry, while Miss Andrew apparently drew his attention to Queen Mary’s fan which had been much appreciated. The Minister expressed himself very satisfied with the home and its methods and complemented the superintendent and her staff on their work.

In March 1939 Lapsewood had a very different visitor - Reichsfrauenfühererin Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the head of Nazi Germany’s National Socialist Women’s League, who was on a tour of England hosted by the Women’s League of Health and Beauty and the Anglo-German Fellowship.

The Central Committee on Women’s Training and Employment continued to occupy the property until 1940. The house was then left empty until October 1947 when the Estate agreed to let it be used as a hostel for student teachers. The Ministry of Work’s lease was due to run out on Lady-day 1952 (25 March). In March 1951 they surrendered the lease back to the Estate agreeing to pay rent until the end of the term. By June C E Barry had prepared a schedule of dilapidations amounting to £12,748 and the Manager said that he was negotiating with the Ministry on the amount to be paid. Progress was slow and it was not until February 1952 that he reported back that the Ministry thought that the figure was excessive and had made a counter offer of £4,500. It had also pointed out that it was not government policy to pay for a house to be brought back into good order if it was then to be knocked down. An agreement was finally reached and the house was then left empty for a few years before being demolished and the site left empty; it is now part of Dulwich Woods.

Dulwich College’s Kindergarten and Infants School (DUCKS) occupies the last remaining original house on College Road south of the tollgate. It’s site is a historic one as it was here, in the late eighteenth century, that John Morgan, Lord of the Manor of Penge, and builder of both College Road and the tollgate, grazed his herds of cows. The road, originally called ‘Locus Lane’ and then ‘Penge Road’, dates from 1787 and linked Penge Common (where the Crystal Palace later stood) to Dulwich Common. The aim was to give better access for Morgan’s cattle and carts but, unsurprisingly, others started to use it, and he built the tollgate in 1789 to control the amount of traffic.

Now called ‘Eller Bank’, but originally known as ‘Comely Bank’ after the Edinburgh suburb, the house was the most expensive one to be built on the Dulwich Estate prior to the First World War – it cost £6,800. The Estate Board Meeting minutes of January 1898 confirm that the plans, by architect Edwin J Sadgrove, were discussed in some detail, and that Charles Barry Jnr., the Estate Architect and Surveyor, had commented that ‘the design is a somewhat remarkable one and decidedly costly. The Manager and I have examined the plans and have pleasure in recommending them for approval’.

The client for the house, named after his wife’s birth place, was 38-year-old Walter Hoggan. He and his young family had only moved to Dulwich relatively recently and were renting a house called ‘Lorrimore,’ No 9 Alleyn Road, itself only completed in 1896. In the 1901 Census Hoggan gave his occupation as a ‘commercial clerk’, so how did he have the money needed to build a house of this size? The answer is not hard to find, he was left the funds on the death of his father, Robert Beveridge Hoggan, in November 1895.

Robert Hoggan was the managing director of Rylands & Sons Limited, the largest textile manufacturing concern in the UK at the time. Founded in Wigan in 1819 by Joseph Rylands and his three sons, the eldest son, John, became the sole proprietor in 1842 - the firm was so successful that he became known as Manchester’s first millionaire. The company expanded even more during the ‘cotton famine’ in the north of England caused by the American Civil War. It bought up other mills and machinery cheaply and, from 1872, it started to concentrate more on the manufacture of ready-made clothing. A London office and warehouse were opened 1874 - where Robert Hoggan was based, and it began to display its wares at international exhibitions in Europe and America. Between 1860 and 1877, the workforce increased from 2,000 to 12,000, employed across 17 mills and 42 warehouses. Although John Rylands had died in 1888, the company continued to expand until the 1920s when, like the rest of the Lancashire cotton industry, it went into decline. It was later taken over by Great Universal Stores Limited and finally ceased trading in 1971.

Robert Hoggan left just under £83,000 (equivalent to about £10 million today). He must have been a strong believer in primogeniture as Walter received the lion’s share of the estate while his three younger brothers were given annual annuities of between £100 and £150. His wife didn’t do very well either, she received an annuity of £52 per annum, but presumably she was able to remain in the marital home.

Walter worked at Rylands & Sons, but we don’t know whether he took over from him as manager of the London Office. He retired by the age of 50 – understandable perhaps given the amount of money he had been left. He and his wife Mary had three children, a girl, also named Mary, and two boys, Robert and Ralph. Both the boys went to Dulwich College - Robert was on the engineering side and won a prize for mathematics. On leaving Dulwich in 1916 he served in WW1 as a lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery and then took an engineering degree. Ralph played rugby and cricket for the College - he was in the 2^nd XV for two years, 1917-8-9 and the first XI cricket team in 1918. He left in 1919, taking a mathematics degree at St John’s College, Cambridge, before becoming an accountant.

Walter’s Hoggan died suddenly and unexpectedly in June 1925 aged 66 – his funeral service was held at the house before his body was cremated at West Norwood Cemetery. In the following year, 1926, his wife leased part of the large grounds to City of London metal dealers, Johnson Mathey, who used it as their staff athletic association sports ground. Two years later, in 1928, she put the house up for sale with local agent, Messrs Marten and Carnaby. They advertised it in the Norwood News on the 6 April saying ‘Unique residence of Character, COMELY BANK, COLLEGE ROAD, SOUTH DULWICH: Occupying an unrivalled position on high ground. Lounge, entrance hall, three receptions rooms, handsome full-size billiard room, eight bedrooms, sumptuous bathroom, replete domestic offices, electric light, central heating, garage. Prettily arranged and shady gardens. Long lease, moderate ground rent.’

Mrs Hoggan and her daughter subsequently moved to 113 Dulwich Village and the lease was assigned to Percy St Lawrence Jepson and his family - they changed the house’s name to ‘Eller Bank’. Percy had grown up in Manchester before moving to Eltham. Initially a commercial traveller in packaging materials, he later sold office equipment and, by the mid-1920s, was a manufacturer. The business was successful and, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he was travelling regularly to South Africa and New York. The Jepsons had two sons, Peter (born 1910) and Guy (born 1913) who both joined their father’s business after leaving school. In 1945 the family suffered a double tragedy when Major Peter Jepson was killed in action on 2 May, aged 34, two days before Germany surrendered – he had fought as a gunner with the Royal Artillery airborne division, was mentioned twice in dispatches and he also won the Military Medal for exceptional bravery in the Middle East. His younger brother, Wing commander Guy Jepson RAF, 32, was killed in an air crash at Bad Eilsen, the HQ of the British Air Force of Occupation, on 3 December.

As early as 1933 street directories were showing two more sports clubs on the site, Stockwell College and the Trocoll Sports Club. By 1936 the Jepson’s had acquired another house in Catherine Place, in Victoria, and it seems likely that a large part of ‘Eller Bank’ had become almost a sports pavilion as, by 1939, there were two other sport clubs registered there, the John Blundell Sports Club and the TMC Athletic & Social Club. In October 1944, Jepson sold the remaining part of his lease, the house, to Johnson Mathey for £2500 and they remained there for almost the next 50 years.

In the late 1960s the Dulwich Estate and Wates tried to redevelop the site with seven blocks of maisonettes. The designs were similar to the development at Constable Walk directly opposite on the other side of College Road, but the application was rejected by Southwark Council.

The house and grounds were taken over by the Alexander Howden Group in the 1980s as their sports ground, and the site was then acquired by Dulwich College who opened DUCKS in 1992.

Constructed circa 1855/56, Crescent Wood House, now known as High Tree Mansions, was the first house to be built on the recently completed Crescent Wood Road (then known as Wood Crescent Road). While the boundary line between the Dulwich Estate and the Parish of Lewisham Parish generally ran along the line of Sydenham Hill, it diverged at this point, and the Estate put in the new road to provide additional building frontages. The house, which had ten bedrooms, was most likely built as a speculation by solicitor Edward Saxton, the owner of the adjacent property, Beltwood, which had been constructed a few years earlier, in 1850. The only other building on the road at the time was the Dulwich Wood House public house built in 1857.

The first occupier was William Cooper, a provision merchant, previously living in Theobalds Lane in Cheshunt. He moved in around 1860 with his wife, two children, five servants and a coachman. He died in May 1885 while on holiday at the ‘Bristol Hotel’, Marine Parade, Brighton, and the house was up for sale just over a year later, in June 1886. Auctioneers Mansell and Rowe advertised the contents in the Norwood News & Crystal Palace Examiner saying ‘Genuine furniture and effects, removed for convenience of sale from Crescent Wood House. . . . the well-made modern furniture and effects, comprising brass and iron French bedsteads and bedding, wardrobes, marble top wash stands, dressing tables etc., capital polished walnut-wood bedroom suite, Brussels carpets and rugs, ebonised early-English drawing room suite, covered in tapestry, two ebonised cabinets, occasional tables and chairs, brilliant-toned Trichord cottage pianoforte in ebonised and gold case, chimney glasses, elegant mantel clocks and ornaments, pollard oak dining room furniture, early-English sideboard, inlaid oak pedestal writing table, dinner services, china and table glass, and miscellaneous effects.’

The purchaser was John Prince, previously living in St John’s Wood with his elderly mother and brother. Born in 3 August 1829, in Castle Street, Southwark, Prince was the son of a stationer also called John Prince. In 1843, aged 14, he was apprenticed to stationer and printer, Joseph Henry Page of 71 Queen St, Cheapside. The 1851 Census showed him living in Bread Street on the City and by 1855, he and his brother, George, were in business together as stationers at 43 Watling Street. He became a Freeman of the City of London in 1856 and moved to St John’s Wood shortly afterwards. The next two Census say that both he and his brother were merchants rather than stationers, but there is no detailed information on their actual business activities.

While he was certainly living at Crescent Wood House between 1886 and his death in 1906, he was never there on Census night, it was always just his servants – possibly he was travelling abroad. We know that he became a member of the Royal Geographical Society and had a particular interest in the shelled slug, scientific name ‘Testacella haliotidea’, a rarely seen, air-breathing, worm-eating slug! He supplied a specimen to the British Museum in the 1890s and his name is mentioned in the scientific literature for it. He was a supporter of free trade and the Howard Association (now the Howard League for penal reform). He was also a member of both the Liberal Party and the National Liberal Club. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, it was completed in 1887. The club’s Italianate style building on the Thames Embankment was, at the time, the largest club building on London.

There is a bronze medallion of his face on a wall in the club which reflects the size of the legacy he left it on his death in 1906. His generosity was much commented on at the time, and his will was covered in detail in newspapers throughout the country. He left around £42,000 of which, after other provisions, approximately £30,000 went to the National Liberal Club. He also left bequests of £500 to the Howard Association; £2,000 to the Devonshire Club, ‘to be applied by the management for such purposes and in such manner as they in their sole discretion shall think fit,’ and £1,000 to the Cobden Club, to be used as for ‘the furtherance of free trade principles.’ His legacies to his staff included an annuity of £50 to his former housekeeper, £100 to his coachman, and a complex formula for his other staff based on their length of service. The male staff were also left two morning suits - he clearly ran a very formal household.

Messrs Debenham Tewson & Co sold the house quite quickly and then auctioned off the contents separately in June 1906. Their description in the Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette confirms that Prince was a man of wealth and taste, and one can then perhaps understand why a single man with three servants, who appeared to travel widely, needed a large ten bed-roomed house. He had a diverse collection of 120 oil paintings and watercolours ranging from Dutch old masters by Melchior d’Hondecoeter, Jas Frans van Bloeman and Philips Wouwermann, to British landscape painters like Edward John Niemann, James Peel, and Alfred Walter Williams. There were also old engravings, 300 volumes of books, old needlework panels, statuary, metal clocks, ornaments, a chronometer by Johanssen, guns, and a ‘fine collection of oriental Bronzes and porcelain.’

The description of the rest of what the auctioneer called the ‘excellent furniture,’ included ‘massive brass bedsteads, bedding, mahogany and ash bedroom suites, drawing room settees, couches and chairs, Louis Quatorze Boulle writing and other tables, elegant satin-wood, rosewood, mahogany, and inlaid Sheraton cabinets, six carved Egyptian and Japanese cabinets, pedestals, noble carved mahogany sideboard, dinner wagon, solid mahogany dining tables, and a mahogany dining suite.’ There was a piano buy Collard and Collard, one of the top British makers, along with a number of Persian and Axminster carpets, bearskin rugs, and velvet curtains. He obviously enjoyed a drink, there were 50 dozen cases of choice wines, and he also had a refrigerator – was the house wired for electricity? He also probably did not use the local train service as, in the coach house, there were two carriages, a brougham and a Victoria.

The purchaser was Adrianus van den Bok, a Dutch born fruit and pickle salesman with three shops, the largest of which was at 3 Crown Place, Borough Market. He had arrived in England in 1889 and married Ellen Isabel Collis, a young Australian-born woman living in Gipsy Hill, in 1891. By 1901, they were living at 11 Westhill in Sydenham nearby. They had three daughters and five sons, and he and the family were naturalised in 1915 - he subsequently changed his Christian name to Adrian. The fruit trade was a profitable one - he had a summer house in the Isle of White, and he was a car owner from as early as 1910, though not a driver – he employed a chauffeur as most wealthy car owners did at the time. The family took a European road trip in the car before the First World War.

All the van den Bok sons went to Dulwich College between 1907 and 1924. The eldest, Frederick, was there for three years before leaving in 1910 for a school in Bruges in Belgium. He then worked for the Union-Castle Shipping Line in their offices on Fenchurch Street and, on the outbreak of the war in September 1914, he enlisted in the Public Schools Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. He took up a commission in the 6th Battalion of the same regiment the following April. After a year spent training in England, he was posted to the front for the first time in May 1916, attached to the 2nd Battalion, and was involved in the preparations for the Somme offensive. He was killed in action near La Boisselle on July 1st 1916, the first day of the Somme.

The youngest son, Ralph, fought in the Second World War in the Royal Canadian Air force and was one of very few aircrew to be award a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) with two bars. He was also a member of the Caterpillar Club - the informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. His medals are now part of the Lord Ashcroft Medal collection.

The family moved away for Dulwich in 1928 to a house called ‘Silver Birches’ in Dartnall Park, West Byfleet. The house was acquired by the elderly Rev Alfred Edward Clarke MA and he and his family lived there until his death in March 1932. From 1933-37 the occupier was Arthur Daniel Smith and it was then bought by a Swedish widow, Mrs Marta Hasse. Although she remained the lessee until 1947, she moved up to central London in 1943, and later emigrated to Quebec in Canada.

In September 1946 the Estate granted Mrs Hasse permission assign the lease to an organisation who wanted to use the house as a boys’ hostel but it did not go ahead. In February 1947 she asked for permission to do the same for a young local GP, Dr Ursula Hickman, who was planning to use it as a nursing home for what was called ‘mild cases of mental disorder.’ The Estate, keen to have the house in use, raised no objections. Again, it appears that nothing happened and the next relevant report in the Estate minutes in May 1950 noted that the house was being converted into nine flats by a contractor called the C W Construction Co.

The property was taken over by Southwark Council in 1969 and they converted it into 19 bedsits or studios, each with their own kitchen and bathroom. The Council stopped using it in 1999 and it was left empty – to be occupied by squatters until 2002. Once they were removed, it was sold off to a developer who refurbished it, adding a mansard roof and a side extension in matching style. The additional floor space created allowed 21 units with a better mix, ranging from studios to two bed-room flats. The property was renamed ’High Trees Mansions’ and it remains today.

Of the seven large houses built along Sydenham Hill between Crescent Wood Road and Cox’s Walk in the 1860s, none remain; Beechgrove, the last one, was demolished in the 1980s. All their former sites are now part of Sydenham Hill Wood but it is possible to identify the site of Fairwood, the fifth house along, as the remains of the two follies built in the garden can still be found in the wood. The house was built for a prominent City of London solicitor, and later Lord Mayor in 1874-75, Alderman David Henry Stone and, shortly after he moved in, he employed James Pulham & Son, to build the follies. The material used, Pulhamite, was a patented anthropic rock material which looked rather like sandstone and was used to link natural rocks together by simulating natural stone features. The material was a blend of sand, Portland cement and clinker, sculpted over a core of rubble and crushed bricks. It was quite popular with the residents of Sydenham Hill and Crescent Wood Road and there are at least four other known examples nearby.

Henry Stone came from a wealthy family. His father, Palmer Stone, was also a solicitor, and the family owned large amounts of land at Framfield near Lewes in East Sussex. He was educated at St Olave’s Grammar School under Dr Lempriere, then located by the southern end of the old London Bridge, and began his legal training under Mr F N Devey of Ely Place. He qualified as a solicitor and attorney in 1839 and practised until 1864 when he retired to pursue his city career more seriously. That had started in 1840 when he was appointed Under-Sheriff to his uncle, Alderman Farncombe (Lord Mayor in 1849-50). He acted as his honorary private secretary and, according to an article in The Pictorial in November 1874, he was ‘instrumental in arranging the banquet given in that year to the Mayors of the United Kingdom, at which the Prince Consort was a guest.’ Stone was Alderman of Bassishaw ward from 1864, and Under-Sheriff to Alderman and Sheriff Kennedy in 1865, before being appointed one of the two City of London Sheriff’s in 1867-68. He was also Chair of the City Police Committee and a JP for Surrey.

A member of four livery companies, the Coopers, the Haberdasher, the Spectacle Makers and the Tallow Chandlers, he was Master of the Coopers the year he was elected Lord Mayor, and had been master of all the others prior to that. As a member of the Haberdashers Company he was heavily involved in their educational and charitable outreach, and was Chairman of the Board of Managers for the construction of two large schools in Hoxton and Hatcham. Later on, he was Treasurer of St Thomas’ Hospital from 1877 to 1890 and treasurer of the Honourable Artillery Company from 1880 to 1890. He was also a member of the Metropolitan Board of Works from 1866 to 1868 and again in 1871 to 1874.

Prior to purchasing the site for Fairwood on Sydenham Hill, he and his family lived in a house on Sydenham Park. He had married first in 1841, but his wife died young, leaving him with one son. He remarried in 1850, to the daughter of a member of Lloyds, and was to marry again after his second wife’s death in the 1880s. He was a very wealthy man and clearly required a large property commensurate with his position in the City.

Fairwood was designed by Banks and Barry, the architectural practice headed up by Charles Barry Junior, Dulwich Estate Surveyor from 1859, and architect of the ‘new’ Dulwich College. His older partner, Robert Richardson Banks, had been Sir Charles Barry’s senior assistant on the construction of the Houses of Parliament, and was chosen by him to go into partnership with his son to provide him with an experienced helper. Luckily for us today, the plans and elevations of the house were published, along with Bank’s own house on Crystal Palace Parade, in The Builder magazine in 1865.

Stone and his family lived in the house for just under ten years before moving to the Mansion House, and then to 23 Park Lane. He also built a country house called Castleham, at Hollington near St Leonards, in 1868. Nothing remains of that house, it was demolished in 1977, and the site is now an industrial estate.

Fairwood was advertised in the Surrey Gazette in May 1874 by auctioneers Norton Trist, Watney & Co: ‘Sydenham Hill, Surrey - a very superior family residence, known as Fairwood, of handsome elevation, erected in the most substantial manner, and finished and decorated throughout in the best taste, regardless of cost; containing 10 principal and secondary bedrooms and dressing rooms, turret room, bathroom, entrance hall paved with Minton’s tiles, elegant lofty drawing room 26’ 9 x 15‘ 6, exclusive of bay, spacious lofty dining room, both with French windows opening to handsome conservatory laid with Minton’s tiles, serving room adjoining, excellent library, lavatory, water closet, superior domestic offices, and every accommodation for a gentleman’s establishment; coach house, harness room, and stabling for three horses. The property stands detached in beautiful grounds, well timbered, which are laid out with lawns and flower gardens, terrace walk, greenhouse, hot house, peach house, ornamental wood, and extensive shrubbery in the rear; the whole comprising about an acre and a half. It is situated on the summit of the Hill, in one of the finest positions of this unrivalled locality, commanding views of great extent and beauty seldom to be met with so close to the metropolis.’

The purchaser, was an elderly man called Thomas Fenerty previously living in Hillyard Road nearby – he paid £4,400. He and his family were all born in Canada but we cannot find any information on his business interests – unhelpfully his 1881 Census entry said ‘no calling or profession.’ His wife, Isabella, died in March 1882 and he died 14 months later, in May 1883, leaving a little less than £50,000. Just over a month after his death the house was up for sale with Norton Trist & Watney & Co, the same estate agent and auctioneer that the family had acquired it through nine years earlier, using pretty much the same advertisement. The one thing they did add though was ‘It is, moreover, only a mile from the Crystal Palace, a few minutes’ walk from two stations of the London, Chatham, and Dover railway, and about a mile from the Sydenham station on the Brighton Crystal Palace railway.’ The house did not sell straight away as the Dulwich Estate rent roll confirms that the two Fenerty daughters, Annie and Elizabeth, were still living in the house, along with two servants, as late as 1886.

In the late 1880s they moved to a house called ‘The Gables’ in Laurie Park Road and Fairwood’s lease was assigned to a retired corn and wine merchant called William Clifton. He had been in business in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, though more recently, he had been living in Dover. He was in the house, with his wife and four servants, until 1893 when, following his wife’s death, he moved to a smaller house in Streatham. He put the house up for sale and auctioneers Mansell and Rowe who advertised it in the Streatham News in March 1893 as ‘The substantially-built, Detached Family Residence known as Fairwood, Sydenham-hill, approached by a carriage sweep and standing in almost an acre and a half of charming pleasure grounds, and containing 10 bed and dressing rooms, tower room, bath room, three elegant reception rooms, and capital domestic offices. Stabling for three horses, rental value £300 per annum, ground rent £42, lease about 53 years unexpired, possession on completion.’

The purchaser was Joseph Miller, a 60-year-old fruit merchant, born in the Canary Islands. He and his family, wife, son and two daughters plus four servants lived at Fairwood until 1908. There is no more information on him other than a brief note in the Tatler magazine in 1905 when one of his daughters, Dorothy, received an honourable mention in a photographic competition run by it for a picture entitled ‘The Cathedral, Las Palmas, Grand Canary’. The Miller’s put the house up for sale in June 1908 with estate agent Hamptons who advertised it in Country Life. The text said ‘Summit of Sydenham Hill. Near four stations. Sydenham Hill, Fairwood, for sale comfortable residence, in stately Tudor style, nearly 360 feet above sea level, commanding magnificent prospects. Fine staircase and lounge hall, excellent reception rooms, conservatory, tower smoking room, 11 bed and dressing rooms, ample offices. Stabling for three. Beautiful old pleasure grounds, Terrace walks, ornamental lawns, glass houses, tennis court, lovely woodland walks, all nearly 1½ acres. Company’s electric light gas and water.’

Retired accountant William Frederick Garland took over the lease, moving from 8 Colyton Road in Peckham; before that he was at 44 The Gardens off Peckham Rye. He and his wife lived in the house until 1921 when they moved to Rectory Road in Beckenham – they later returned to the area settling in a house in Laurie Park Gardens called, rather grandly, the ‘Villa d’Este’. Garland worked for a firm of mining engineers called John Taylor and Sons with offices at Queen Street Place, EC, in the City. The firm had been founded in 1799 and, according to the 1914 Grace’s Guide, were ‘Consulting Engineers to, and Managers of Companies Working Metalliferous Mines’, the scope of their work included the setting up and management of mines, mine inspections, and providing technical advice on mining plant.

In March 1922 the Estate were approached by an architect called Major Oliver, then living at Oakover, the house on the corner of Crescent Wood Road, who was looking to convert Fairwood, along with several neighbouring houses, into flats. The Estate Surveyor, C E Barry, described Fairwood as being well built and well maintained, and thought the proposed conversion a reasonable option. It seems, however, that in this case, no work was carried out, as the house remained in single family occupancy until the late 1930s.

The next occupier was a young Horace Walmsley Dutton who had his own heating and ventilating engineering business. He stayed less than two years before the lease was taken over by Swiss-born civil engineer, Hermann Hintermann. He had moved to England around 1906, after the death of his first wife. He remarried in the spring of 1911 to Amalia Brentano, and they set up home in Golders Green. We have found a record of a letter he wrote in 1912 to a publication called ‘The Peace Movement’, a magazine published by the Swiss based International Peace Bureau. This was a short -lived organisation (1912-14) which aimed to disseminate and promote ideas for maintaining peace between countries via arbitration, bilateral peace treaties, and the establishment of a permanent court of international justice. By 1914 the family were living in Redbourne Avenue in Finchley and Hintermann joined the Waterloo Lodge of the Freemasons, giving his profession as statistician. There is a 1915 report of him being interned in Ruhleben Prison Camp for civilians in Germany – possibly he was on business or visiting relatives and didn’t have the right documents but, by 1921, he was back living in Finchley. The 1921 Census gave his profession as civil engineer but also noted that he was an invalid – and he had also changed his name to Hintermann-Brentano.

The Hintermann-Brentano’s moved to Fairfield in 1926 and lived there until 1934 when, following the death of Hermann at the German Hospital in Dalston, his wife moved to Orpington. There is note of the Estate minutes in November 1934 granting permission to the executors to hold an auction sale of the furniture and effects in the premises early in December, but it was almost a year before the house was put up for sale. Local auctioneers, Noys and Howes advertised in the Lewisham Borough News in early August 1935 calling the property a ‘handsome detached residence, containing six principal bedrooms, five other bedrooms, bathroom, fine central lounge, drawing room, dining room, library, billiards room, and domestic offices, Trader’s entrance. Detached garage. Beautifully timbered grounds about 1½ acres. Unexpired lease 67½ years. Ground rent £60 4s 4d p. annum.’ It did not sell and appears to have remained empty until 1941 when a note in the Estate minutes in April reported the receipt of a letter from a firm of solicitors acting for the mortgagee, the Birmingham based Ideal Benefit Society. It said that that there was no money left in the Hintermann-Brentano estate to pay any outstanding ground rent.

In December a further report confirmed that the house had suffered serious war damage, that the roof had been blown off and that, as no temporary repairs had been carried out, the interior of the premises was suffering badly from the effects of the weather. The Estate agreed to accept a lease surrender as long as it came with the assignment of all rights to compensation for war damage. A further report from the Manager in June 1942 confirmed that he had obtained the lease and other documents of title from the executors and the mortgagee, and that the lease held title at the Land Registry had been closed. The house was demolished shortly afterwards.

The original site of Thurlow Lodge was roughly where the 1920s houses, Nos 136-146 Thurlow Park Road, are today; it was bordered by another large house to the east, called the Woodlands, and its site extended as far as Croxted Road (then called Croxted Lane) to the west. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the road along the north of Dulwich Common started at Gallery Road (then known as Back Lane) and ran east past the junction with College Road, and on to join Lordship Lane just beyond the Green Man public house, opposite Cox’s Walk. Only a narrow foot path connected the end of Back Lane with Croxted Lane and this formed Thurlow Lodge’s northern boundary – on the other side of the path were the grounds of Belair, a large house built by John Willes, still standing in Belair Park today. The footpath was widened to form Thurlow Park Road in the 1850s.

The first record of a tenant at Thurlow Lodge is in a lease assignment in September 1735 to Elizabeth Wakeham from Faver & David Barrett, father & son, both College servants, the latter the College Butler. Miss (sometimes referred to as Mrs) Wakeham apparently kept house for James Allen, Master of Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift between 1721 and his death in 1746. He was the first incumbent to be elected without having exactly the same surname as the founder, Edward Alleyn. He is best known today as the man who set up the Dulwich Free School which taught local boys to read and, from 1741, girls, to read and sew. It was the forerunner of today’s James Allen’s Girls School (JAGS).

The Master was not allowed to marry and it is unclear as to what his precise relationship with Elizabeth Wakeham was – she may just have been his housekeeper but, in his will he left her many items from the contents of the house including ‘all my Cloaths, Linen, Chinaware, Tea Tables, Mahogany Tables, Walnut tree bureau which is in my closet, my repeating clock, worked counterpane and squab’ – the last was a type of divan. The reason for his generosity was, he said, ‘for a reward of her great care of me in my former sickness and in hopes of her future care of me in my last sickness,’

Elizabeth Wakeham died in 1757 and the lease was assigned to Elizabeth Plaw, a widow. who renewed the lease in 1762 and again in 1768. She subsequently married Dr Joseph Allen, the next Master of Alleyn’s College of God’s Gift, on his retirement in 1775. After her death in 1781 he remained at the house and renewed the lease in April 1793 at a rent of £22 per annum. He died in 1796, reputedly the last remaining survivor of the Royal Navy’s notable round the world voyage led by Commodore George Anson between 1740-43.

In April 1796 a new lease was granted to Matthew Robinson, a furrier, with a shop in Budge Row in the City – he agreed to pay £35 per annum. He was there for a relatively short time as, between 1798 and 1803, the Estate rent rolls show that the house was occupied by a Huguenot silk merchant, James Dalbiac. His grandfather came from Albi (hence d’Albiac) and was one of two brothers who had fled to England to escape religious persecution in France after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Over the years the family had assimilated into British society, anglicising their names and moving out to the suburbs. He and his wife moved elsewhere in Dulwich late in 1803 and, when they died, they were buried in the south-east corner of the old burial ground in the centre of the Village; their tomb cost £13 and 1 shilling, though the College reportedly ‘did not take the odd shilling’.

Dalbiac was followed in March 1804 by Robert Brettell who took a new 21 year lease at a rent of £32 a year. He moved on in November 1813 and the new tenant, Richard Budd, handed back Brettell’s lease and took out a new one for 42 years – taking advantage of the Dulwich College Act of 1808 which allowed the Estate to grant leases longer than 21 years. He agreed to pay £63 per annum in rent, presumably this increase reflected a larger land holding. In May 1832 the Morning Advertiser carried a notice offering a reward of £20 for the return of one of his horses that had either strayed or been stolen. It was described as a remarkably handsome black gelding and easily recognisable with its with one white leg behind, a good deal of white on his face, and a non-existent tail that had recently been removed.

Budd moved away early in 1835 and assigned his lease to John Charles Lacey, a gunmaker, who surrendered it back to the Estate and took out a new shorter one for 21 years. The lease changed hands twice in the next eight years. In June 1839 Lacey assigned the lease to William Law Wood, a City iron merchant with premises in Bishopsgate Street and, in May 1843, the latter assigned it to Ralph Wilcoxon, a successful City shoe and bootmaker. His main premises were at 60 King William Street but he had others in Oxford Street, the Quadrant in Regent Street, and Tottenham Court Road. Wilcoxon died unexpectedly in 1846 aged 45, probably from a heart attack. The coroner’s investigation into his death was reported in the newspapers ‘On Sunday the deceased was in excellent health, attended divine service, and dined with his family. About nine in the evening he suddenly complained of shortness of breath, and went to the window for air, but feeling no relief, he proceeded down stairs, with the view of getting into the garden, but he got no further than the hall, when he fell on his knees, and died.’

In July 1847 his widow, Hannah Wilcoxon, assigned the lease to a City grocer called John Craven who sublet the property (today we would say ‘flipped’), within two days, to an Austrian born merchant in the chemical business, 40 year-old John Christian Friedrich Engelhardt – his offices were at No 1 Fencourt. The 1851 Census records him at the house with his English wife, Emma (born in Herne Bay in Kent), two daughters, two sons and four servants – one of his daughters was later to marry the prominent Dulwich GP, Dr Edward Reynolds Ray. The 1854 Dulwich Estate rent book describes the property as ‘ A messuage and tenement adjoining Dulwich Common with the coach house, stable, barn, outhouse and gardens thereto belonging abutting north on the railway or path leading to Knights Hill and Norwood and east on premises demised to Samuel Palmer.’ Englehardt acquired the lease from Craven in May 1855 and renewed it with the Estate at a rent of £70 per annum.

In January 1859 the Englehardt family moved to Clapham and the lease was taken over by 35 year-old Thomas Green, another City merchant whose business was shipping iron and hardware to the United States. The 1861 Census, taken on the night of the 7^th April, recorded him at the house with two servants. Just over a month later, in May, the Estate received a letter from the solicitor to the London Chatham & Dover Railway Company, requesting that Green be granted a licence to assign the premises to them to enable them to construct the planned new railway line between Herne Hill and Bromley – this included the construction of the new Dulwich Station (renamed West Dulwich in 1926). It is unclear whether the railway company took the whole site, including the house, or just the land they needed for the actual railway works. The station opened in the Summer of 1863 and, shortly afterwards, Green, newly married, moved to ‘The Elms’, a house further east along Dulwich Common.

The Estate minutes of 8^th February 1866 confirm the granting of a new lease to Thomas Livesey, the secretary and general manager of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, off a reduced site (part had been cut off by the new railway line) which included the main house, a coach house, stable, garden, meadow land and a pond. Founded in 1829 and incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1842, the South Metropolitan Gas Company was one of the largest gas companies in London. The original site of the works, completed by 1833, adjoined the Grand Surrey Canal on the eastern side of Old Kent Road where, by 1856, there were seven gasholders on the site.

Thomas Livesey died unexpectedly in October 1871 and the lease was assigned to the Rev. Robert Taylor. He was the minister at the Presbyterian Church in Camberwell and in 1874 he was transferred to oversee the foundation and construction of a new church in Westow Hill, St Andrew’s Upper Norwood. The church, which sat 600 people, was finished in 1878 and is now known as Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church, He remained the minister there until 1893 when he retired to live with his daughter in Scotland.

In January 1879 Rev. Taylor moved to a house in Beulah Hill and assigned the lease of Thurlow Lodge to Joseph William Clark of Alston Street, Hackney Downs. He lived in it for only two years before passing it on to a John Harry Evens, a former captain in Her Majesty’s Militia and now an insurance company director. He changed the name of the house to Ericht Lodge and reached an agreement with the Estate to develop the western half of the site, between the main house and the railway line, to build ‘three substantial detached private dwelling houses and offices, value together £3000 at least.’ Work started on the new houses in April 1883 and in May Evens sold the main house’s stables and coach house separately to Nicholas Sheffield Maughan, the purchaser of the first house, No 140 (later called Holme Lea). He was a wine merchant living nearby at a house called Saint Clair in Croxted Road - he paid £300. Some of the stable buildings remain in an unused piece of land behind No. 140, accessed via a discrete gate on Thurlow Park Road between Nos 140 and 142. In the early years of the twentieth century they were used by a cab proprietor called Walter Sills. When the new houses replacing Thurlow Lodge were built in the 1920s the intention had been to use it as a common recreation area, with a tennis court, but nothing came of it, and the site still remains vacant.

In January 1884, once the houses were complete, Evens moved elsewhere and assigned his lease on Ericht Lodge to John William Haylock, of Billingsgate Chambers, Billingsgate in the City, a fishing smack owner. He lived at the house for just over a year before passing it on to Walter Frederick Hammond who changed the name of the house back to the original. He called himself a wine merchant but in reality he was a licensed victualler, and the proprietor of a number of public houses including the New Inn in the Edgware Road. He was later at the Red Lion in the Walworth Road and, in August 1893, he assigned his lease on Thurlow Lodge to Richard Julius Hoffmann, a City of London businessman. Although his surname was German, he was born in England and, as a child, had lived at 52 Sydenham Park; he and his four brothers were all educated at Dulwich College. He had started out as a manager of a printing works but had then become a director of a number of public companies with interests in gold mining and rubber growing.

In July 1898 he wrote to the Estate saying that he was keen to carry out major work on the house and asking about a lease extension – at the time there was just four years left on the lease. The Estate Manager responded negatively saying that they had no intention of renewing the lease as the Estate had plans for redeveloping the site. Within a couple of years Hoffman had moved his family to another large house in Leigham Court Road in Streatham and, late in 1900, the Estate let the house to a retired brewer, Charles George Glass.

Glass is possibly the most interesting of the house’s occupants from today’s perspective, as the firm he founded in South Africa became, before it was taken over in 2016, one of the world’s largest brewers, SAB Miller. The Glass family - his wife Eliza (20 years his junior) and their two children, Charles George Trojan and Ruby, only lived at Thurlow Lodge from March 1901 until 1903 though they had been living elsewhere in the area since 1894, first at 132 Rosendale Road and then across the road at Fenwick, No 129 Thurlow Park Road, on the north east corner of the junction with Croxted Road. His 13-year-old son had joined Dulwich College in May 1895, leaving in December 1899.

The key to finding out more about the Glass family is contained in the note in the 1901 Census which said that the son was born at sea. Trojan is an unusual name and he was named after the ship on which he was born, the Union Steamship Company’s Royal Mail Ship ‘Trojan’ on a voyage from South Africa to England in December 1881. The records of those born at sea in that year confirm that the last location where his parents were living before boarding the ship was Newcastle, in the British Colony of Natal, and that his father’s profession was hotel keeper.

Following up the names online leads directly to the history of Castle Lager. The history of the company in South Africa says that ‘A man named C G Glass, red-haired and red-faced, who had previously been brewing beer for the troops at some station in India, came to Natal, and, after the discovery of gold on the Rand, felt that there might be a good opening for a brewery in such a rapidly-developing town.’ There are alternative views which imply that it was Eliza who did most of the brewing, but we do know that during 1884, Charles and Eliza Glass had returned to northern Natal from England and had set up a small brewery called Glass & Co. The discovery of gold nearby in the Witwatersrand reef in the Transvaal two years later meant a huge influx of thirsty miners and, to take advantage of it, Charles Glass formed a partnership with two local businessmen, coach operator Jim Welsh and local financier, Henry Brown Marshall. Glass and his wife were responsible for the technical skill and brewery management and Marshall and Welsh provided the capital. Around the same time, Marshall had bought a large plot of land to accommodate the influx of fortune-seekers. Dubbed ‘Marshall’s Township’, the area quickly became the business centre of Johannesburg. This is where Glass established his new brewery and where, he and his wife brewed and sold their beer. In 1889 they started to call it Castle Beer and began to use the famous three turreted label. According to a lecture given by Charles and Eliza Glass’ grandson some 70 years later, the name ‘Castle’ was taken from the town of Newcastle where Charles and Eliza had first settled. He also added that in the early days, beer was delivered by horse and cart and that the first consignment had to be given away in order to compete with a particularly potent local gin.

The new beer soon became popular amongst the prospectors, and one of Johannesburg’s early newspapers, the Digger’s News, declared it ‘a phenomenal success.’ It wasn’t long before other brewing companies took notice, particularly Frederick Mead of the Natal Brewing Syndicate in Pietermaritzburg. He saw that the market on the goldfields was far larger than in Natal and, in July 1892, backed by a syndicate that included Barney Bernato, diamond magnate, gold baron and rival to Cecil Rhodes, he purchased the Castle Brewery and its trademark for £18,000. Subsequently Mead and his syndicate formed the South African Breweries - a company which later grew into SAB Miller.

But what happened to Charles and Eliza Glass? The assumption must be that they took the money and returned to England with the two children, the dates fit very well with their arrival in Dulwich around 1893/94. There is no record of the family after 1903 and this again fits well with online travel records which show Charles taking his son out to Cape Town in June 1902 and returning alone the following year. Charles Trojan remained in South Africa for the rest of his life (he died in Johannesburg in 1949) and his sister Ruby also went out there marrying a local policeman in Worcester, a small town in the Transvaal – he died of disease in the German East African campaign in 1916 and was buried in the War Cemetery in Dar-es-Salam in Tanzania. She and her son later moved to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) where she died in 1964, aged 81.

If you buy a bottle or can of Castle beer today you will see what is supposed to be Charles Glass’ signature on the label. Luckily the Dulwich College Archive has a copy of the lease he signed for Thurlow Lodge in 1901 and his actual signature bears no resemblance to the one used on the label – though, in fairness, the latter is far more legible.

Thurlow Lodge’s final resident was Herbert T Gratton, a cigar and cigarette manufacturer based at 35 Jewry Street in the City. Shortly after moving in in June 1903, he was injured in a railway accident at Kings Cross – the newspaper report said he had ‘suffered a broken leg and injuries to his head.’ He and his family had previously lived in Putney and, like many other parents of boys at the College, it would appear that they moved to Dulwich to allow easier access for their three sons, Herbert, Cyril and John. They all served in WW1 and survived. Gratton’s lease ran out in the summer of 1921 and he remained as a quarterly tenant until he moved to 52 Alleyn Road at the end of 1922. The Estate then took back the lease and sold the site, along with the Woodlands next door, to the South London Real Estate Co Ltd. The house was finally demolished in October 1923 with local estate agents and auctioneers, Marten and Carnaby, advertising an auction for the sale of the building materials from the demolition in the local press.

Wensley House and Grove House, Nos. 13 & 15 College Road, are two semi-detached houses built circa 1781-85, by Thomas Wright, the tenant of Bell House, the large house to the south. To go with his new house, completed in 1767, Wright had acquired a large area of land along the east side of College Road, from Dulwich Common northwards towards the Village, as far as what is now the College Gate entrance to Dulwich Park but was then the Bell Public House. It included Bell Cottage, the small timber clad house built in 1741, and the four small cottages adjoining. Although surrounded by the Dulwich Estate, the land was a copyhold (today it would be called alien freehold) and it meant that the Estate had no control over what was done in it or who lived there. Wright gave the tenancy of the two houses to his daughter Ann, presumably as a source of income, though she continued to live at Bell House until her marriage in 1813 to John Willes of Belair, the large house nearby in what was then known as Back Lane (now Gallery Road).

Both properties have been considerably extended, the original houses would have just occupied the centre three storey block. While the façade of this block follows the 1774 London Building Acts in having the window frames set back behind the brickwork, Dulwich did not come under their jurisdiction at the time. This is confirmed by the hipped roof profile without a projecting party wall - this would never have been allowed under the Acts. This roof form suggests that the original design of the houses was less urban and that an up to date contemporary facade was added as the houses were completed to make them look more up to date. The windows themselves are also not as they would have been when built, Victorian style replacements have been used - the giveaway is the horns on the bottom of the upper sliding sash, Georgian sashes did not have that detail.

Wensley House, 13 College Road:

There is no record of any residents until the 1841 Census when Wensley House was occupied by a merchant called Henry Broughton. He was 54 and was living at the property with his wife Jane, three daughters and a son. In the late 1840s he was followed by a retired silver smith called George Waterhouse whose firm, George Waterhouse & Co, was based in Sheffield – it had originally been set up in Birmingham but had moved further north to take advantage of cheaper labour rates. He was a wealthy man and had lived in a large property on the outskirts of Sheffield called Mushroom Hall. By the late 1840s the rising popularity of electro-plate was impacting on the silver business and this may have been one of the factors that persuading him to retire. A report in the Sheffield Independent in September 1848 confirmed that not only was he selling Mushroom Hall and its contents, he was also off-loading his dies, stamps, and old stock. Why he selected Dulwich for his retirement is unknown but he only lived there for about six years. He died on 26 September 1855, aged 64, possibly while travelling, as his place of death was given as Gennevilliers, a small town near Paris. He was buried in West Norwood Cemetery.

The house’s occupants in the late 1850s and early 1860s are unclear. The Dulwich Estate maps of the period show various other buildings in the rear garden and the 1861 Census lists a total of eight different families, most of them one or two people. Amongst them were a retired meerschaum pipe maker, a retired tobacco pipe maker, and three ‘Poor Sisters,’ living with daughters or servants. This implies that parts of the property were being used to house some of the former occupants of the alms houses who had to be moved out while the east and west wings of the Old College were being rebuilt - to provide more classrooms and additional accommodation for teachers.

From the late 1860s Wensley House was occupied by Charles Paris, a wholesale goldsmith and diamond merchant, paying a rent of £75 per annum. Paris had previously rented a small house called The Cottage further north in Dulwich Village on the far side of the Crown Inn (now the Crown and Greyhound). Born in Beckenham, the sixth of seven children, Paris had begun his career as a commercial traveller in the jewellery trade but, by 1858, he was a partner in a jeweller’s shop called Eady and Paris located in Red Lion Street. His partner, H J Eady, had made a chess set for the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park in 1851 – the subject was the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I of France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The firm was later renamed Eady, Paris and Eady.

His older sons were educated Dulwich College, all three joining in April 1871. Walter left in April 1875, Charles in December 1872, and Arthur in July 1878. Sadly, Walter later committed suicide at the house in December 1884 by drinking prussic acid.

In July 1877 the head lease came up at auction and Paris acquired it, through an agent called Wassell, based in Herne Hill, for £1470. Early in 1893 he and his wife moved to a smaller house in Brighton where she died in March 1900. He subsequently moved to West Driffield in Yorkshire to be looked after by Alice, his eldest daughter, and died there in May 1907 aged 83. Auctioneers, Messrs Debenham, Tewson, Farmer & Bridgewater advertised the house in the South London Press in October 1893 calling it a ‘charming Copyhold Family Residence, occupying a most attractive and open situation in the best part of College Road, nearly opposite the Old College, close to one of the entrances to Dulwich Park (over which it has an uninterrupted view), near Dulwich College and the new Middle-Class Boys’ and Girls’ Schools, the Athletic Grounds, and the Public Library, and equidistant about seven minutes’ walk from Dulwich and North Dulwich Stations. It contains seven bed-rooms, bath-room, elegant drawing room, double dining room opening to a veranda, morning-room, billiard room, and offices: wash-house, stabling for two horses, and good yard, fowl house, pretty pleasure garden, with tennis- lawn and summer house, kitchen garden, span-roof vinery with vines in full bearing, the total area being about half an acre.’

The purchaser was Rosina Petronella Elizabeth Turner, a widow moving from Fenwick, a house on the corner of Thurlow Park Road and Croxted Road. Born in Cape Colony, South Africa, she had married her husband, James Edward Turner in 1872, and they had returned to England in the late 1880s - all their children were born abroad. Her husband was one of the brothers of Thomas Turner, the Treasurer of Guys Hospital, and many of her nephews and nieces were noted medics. One, Eleanor Davies-Colley, had the unique distinction of becoming the first Woman Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1911. Mrs Turner enfranchised the house in 1903 so it became part of the Estate and, three years later, in 1906, moved to a house in College Gardens on the other side of College Road.

The new occupier was Robert Milligan, a stuff merchant, previously living at 86 Herne Hill. Stuff was another name for woollen cloth, and his business was focused on women’s dress fabrics. In the summer of 1924 he and his neighbour at Grove House (No. 15), Herbert Taylor, had a dispute with the Estate over their rights of way on a private road leading from College Road to the rear of their properties. The problem arose when local builder Charles Brown Core gave up the lease of some fields he was renting behind Stella House, 11 College Road. It appears that the previous Estate Manager, who had recently retired, had not appreciated that the road to those fields was also used by Milligan and Taylor and had ordered the two gates that accessed their gardens to be closed with new locks and keys. After some correspondence with Taylor’s solicitor the Estate agreed that both Milligan and Taylor had used the road for well over 20 years and had acquired a right of way, and that they should have the keys of the gates returned to them.

Shortly after the outbreak of Second World War Milligan and his wife went to live in Pytchley, in Northamptonshire, presumably to avoid the bombing. His wife died in May 1941 and he died shortly afterwards in November, aged 85. The executors put the house up for sale in March 1942, estate agents, Wetherell Green & Smith, advertised it as ‘Wensley House, College Road, five bedrooms, box room, bathroom, three reception rooms, billiard room, and ample offices, garage; good garden.’ Not surprisingly, given that it was wartime, there were no offers, and in February 1943 Messrs Evan Cook, the Peckham based furniture store and depository, agreed to take the premises on a yearly tenancy, at a rent of £69 per annum, to store furniture from bombed houses.

The house was briefly occupied between 1946 and 1947 by Miss Alice Abbott, the daughter of the owner of Grove House next door, and the lease was then sold to Brian Bromley Woollard, an Old Alleynian barrister and businessman, and his wife, moving from a flat in Dulwich Wood Avenue. As well as his legal interests he was deputy managing director and sales manager of Steele Griffiths & Co, a Camberwell New Road based motor business which also had a showroom in Knightsbridge. They specialised in luxury cars with a side line in American car imports - they had a stand at the 1949 Earl’s Court Motor Show displaying examples of the short lived Kaiser brand. The family were still living at Wensley House well into the mid-1960s. when they were succeeded by Donald O’May and his wife Beryl. He was a distinguished maritime solicitor, and was later the Senior Partner of Ince & Co. a leading law firm in the marine insurance market during the 1970s and 1980s.

Grove House, 15 College Road:

Like Wensley House, the names of the property’s early occupants are unclear. The 1841 Census notes the residents as 70 year old Lesley Brooke, a clerk, along with his wife and two daughters, while the 1851 Census lists 60 year old widow and fundholder, Mrs Jane Kingsley as the occupier. Her name is also in the Pigot’s Surrey Directory of 1839 as living in Dulwich but it does not give an address. Her husband Charles Kingsley, was apprenticed as a cooper but later became a stock broker, and it would appear that they were certainly living in Dulwich as early as 1823 as there was a newspaper notice on the death of their 12 year old daughter Emily - it gave the address of Charles Kingsley as Dulwich. Whether they were living at Grove House we don’t know. Charles died in 1836, while Jane outlived him by 17 years, dying in March 1853.

Presumably the house remained empty until occupied in 1858 by Canon Alfred Carver, the newly appointed Master of the Upper School at Dulwich College. The 1861 Census confirms that he is living there along with his wife, two daughters aged four and three, two sons aged six and two, a nurse, an under nurse, a cook, a housemaid, a page, and a coachman and his wife. Prior to Carver’s arrival in Dulwich, the post of Master had always been held by a bachelor - as set out in Edward Alleyn’s original statutes, (along with the requirement for his name to be Alleyn or Allen) so there was no suitable accommodation available in the Old College for a married man with a large family.

In May 1858 the Estate’s House Committee inspected the Old College buildings, along with the Surveyor and Canon Carver. The Estate minutes reported on their subsequent discussions on how to ‘start the proposed new schools efficiently at the earliest period,’ while expanding the number of classrooms and providing accommodation for Canon Carver and his family. They concluded that ‘for the residence of the Master of the Upper School, the rooms lately occupied by the Master and Warden of the dissolved Corporation should be rebuilt and converted into the Master’s House, with suitable offices.’ They also went on to cover accommodation for the Under Master and the Master of the Lower School, and the Estate Surveyor, the recently appointed Charles Barry Jnr., was instructed to prepare plans and cost estimates as a matter of urgency. In addition, given that the current building’s occupants, the ‘Poor Brethren,’ were going to have to live elsewhere while the work was done, they recommended ‘a pecuniary compensation for rent, and in lieu of residence,’ be made to them until their new rooms were ready.

From contemporary records we know that the works to the Old College, which included work on Christ’s Chapel, were extensive, and they would have taken some time to complete. Assuming they started late in 1859 it would be no surprise that Carver was still living in Grove House in the early 1860s particularly as his wife was a member of the wealthy tea brokers the Peek family, and would have been more than able to pay to rent a larger house more suitable for the family.

The 1871 Census shows a new occupier, architect Richard Nicholson. His eldest son, also Richard, was at Dulwich College from July 1865 to March 1869, so it’s likely that the family moved into the house at around that time. The younger brother, Frederick, was also at the College from March 1869 to July 1876. He had a more illustrious school career than his older brother; he was a scholar in 1872, President of the Science Society for three years from 1874 and was in the 2nd XV rugby team in 1875-76. He went on to study medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital and was later a GP in Putney. Nicholson is not listed in any Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) directories and there is no record of any buildings he designed though he did register a patent in 1873 for ’an invention for improvements in junctions for gas and water mains.’ The family moved away once their youngest son finished at the College.

Grove House’s lease was then sold to Mrs Louisa Taylor, a wealthy widow. Her husband, Henry Taylor, whom she had married in 1840, was an iron founder, and they had lived for most of their early lives in Shoreditch and later in Charterhouse Square, where her husband had died in 1867. The 1881 Census noted her age as 72 living in the house with her four sons and two daughters, ranging in age from 31 to 39, all unmarried. She died in January 1889 and her eldest daughter, also Louisa, then took over as head of the household. The third brother, Joseph, died in 1894 while the youngest sister, Fisa, died in October 1899, the notice in the Daily Telegraph & Courier on 1st November said that her death had occurred ‘after a few hours illness.’

In July 1903 Louisa Taylor enfranchised the property to the Dulwich Estate for a payment of £363 12s 6d. The Estate minutes noted the agreement in the usual legalese of the time, saying it was ‘made between the Governors, as Lords of the Manor of Dulwich of the one part, and Louisa Taylor, of Grove House, College Road, Dulwich, Surrey, spinster, of the other part, with the sanction of the Charity Commissioners from England and Wales endorsed thereon, of the copyhold message now known as Grove House aforesaid, and appurtenances belonging thereto, situated in the Village of Dulwich aforesaid, at which the said Louise Taylor has been duly admitted, and all mines, minerals, rights and easements referred to in Section 23 of the Copyhold Act, 1894.’ From this point the property was subject to the rules and regulations of the Dulwich Estate.

Louisa Taylor died in November 1916 leaving £6,158 to her last surviving relative, her younger brother Herbert – all the other siblings had died several years earlier. Herbert who had worked as a commercial clerk in a firm of mica merchants called Baker & Startin at 19 St Dunstan’s Hill in the City, also took an assignment on the lease.

Herbert died in July 1925 aged 76. The house was apparently in poor condition and the Estate decided to take back the lease so they could renovate it and relet it at a higher rent. The contents were sold by Herring Son & Daw – their advertisement in the Norwood News listed the contents as ‘the appointments of five bedrooms and three reception rooms, Axminster and other carpets, mahogany dining room suite, china, glass and plate, 2000 volumes of books, pictures, engravings , and a multitude of useful effects.’

In November 1926, C E Barry, the Estate Architect and Surveyor, put forward a scheme for a major refurbishment. In his report he said that ‘the basement is not adaptive for use except for cellars, the heating chamber and a garden room under the new addition. The ground floor addition at the back consists of a kitchen, larder, and servant’s WC, with a tradesman’s entrance and staircase to the side passage. The kitchen is a combined kitchen-scullery with gas cooker and hot water boiler, and a serving hatch into the dining room. The first floor addition has a maids bedroom, bathroom and cupboard, and separate WC, as well as two other bedrooms and a dressing room. The second floor has two bedrooms and a small room. The garage is provided at the end of the garden with access from the private road at the side. I estimate the cost of this work to include the new addition, garage, hot water, heating and gas, electric light and bells, drainage, and redecoration as £1070.’

Following completion of the work later in 1927 the lease was acquired by Mary Clark Auchinvale, previously living in St John’s Wood in north London. She lived there with her son and three servants until April 1932 when the lease was assigned to Herbert Atmer. He stayed less than two years, perhaps he decided that the house or Dulwich Village was not what he wanted – he had previously lived on a private road in Sydenham.

In January 1934 the Estate had an offer for the property from Albert Leigh Abbott, an architect. He agreed to take a 14 years lease from Lady-day 1934, at a rent of £140 per annum, subject to the money from the outgoing tenant’s dilapidations being given to him as part of the deal. The Estate minutes noted that he proposed ‘to lay parquet floors to the ground floor rooms; remove the wallpaper and panel the walls of the dining room and drawing room; remove and renew the fireplace interiors but leave the mantelpieces; recondition the bathroom; wire the house for electric power and install electric cooking apparatus and fires.’ From this we must assume that the house was still lit by gas.

Abbott was born in 1890 and had taken part in World War One, initially as a corporal in the London Regiment, but he later transferred to the Royal Engineers – he was awarded the MC Croix de Guerre (Belgium) in 1918. In the interwar years he was in the Territorial Reserve and, after promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, he was Commander of the Royal Engineers, 56th (1st London) Division Territorial Army and Supplementary Reserve from 1933 to 1939.

Early in his architectural career he was one of the designers of the Memorial at Thiepval to the 36th Ulster Division. The memorial was officially opened on 19 November 1921 and is a very close copy of Helen’s Tower which stands in the grounds of the Clandeboye Estate, near Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland. Many of the men of the Ulster Division trained on the estate before moving to England and then to France early in 1916.

Abbott had a successful career in the inter-war years designing a number of private housing estates and private houses - he was apparently an exponent of ‘stockbroker Tudor style.’ He also built a number of factories and, in the late 1930s, was the architect of the Australian Pavilion in the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow. He was also involved in the reconstruction of the German Embassy in London, then located in Carlton House Terrace.

After the war he was appointed to supervise bomb damage repairs in Camberwell but, it appears that his professional or personal life may have been unhappy as in December 1952 he committed suicide. The Norwood News reported that ‘the Fire Brigade and police were called to a house on College Road, West Dulwich, on Saturday, they found the garage in flames and Mr Albert Leigh Abbott, aged 62, inside it. Mr Abbott was taken to Dulwich Hospital, but was dead on arrival.’ His son, Tony Abbott, an old Alleynian, was well known as a set designer for television shows and was senior designer at the BBC from 1962. He won several awards for his work, for a TV version of Othello in 1969, and was the Society. of Film and TV Arts Designer of the Year, for Vortex, Rembrandt in 1970.

The Abbott family moved to 72 Herne Hill and assigned the lease to Frederick John Monkhouse, comedian Bob Monkhouse’s uncle - Frederick’s brother Wilfred was Bob’s father. Frederick had grown up in Sydenham and was a partner in a firm called Monk & Glass (named after him and his partner Fred Glasscock) which had perfected the manufacture of dried custard and jelly crystals, and also invented hundreds and thousands. Bob Monkhouse lived in Beckenham while he was at the College and his autobiography doesn’t mention 15 College Road by name, but he does talk about his aunts and cousins and attending family parties and celebrations such as birthdays – he must have visited the house at some point.

Frederick and his wife moved to a brand new maisonette in Gainsborough Court on College Road in 1970 and Grove House was acquired by Geoffrey Pattie, then the managing director of Collett Dickenson Pearce, one of the country’s leading advertising agencies. Pattie had parliamentary ambitions and became MP for the constituency of Chertsey & Walton in 1974, holding the seat until his retirement in 1997. He was a Conservative and his parliamentary career included roles as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence (RAF), Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence Procurement and, from January 1983 until September 1984, Minister of State for Defence Procurement. He was then Minister of State for Industry, responsible for information technology, civil aviation, space, biotechnology and advanced research until June 1987. In that capacity, he carried through the privatisation of British Telecom in November 1984. In January 1987 he was made a Privy Counsillor and in the same year he was knighted. He and his family moved away from Dulwich in 1983.

Woodhall, or the Wood House as it was first called, was built on the east side of what is now College Road between 1810 and 1812. Originally named Penge Road, it linked Dulwich Common with Penge Common at the top of Sydenham Hill (later the site of the Crystal Palace), and was built in 1787 by John Morgan, Lord of the Manor of Penge, to enable him to access the two fields he rented near Dulwich Common, now the playing fields for DUCKS, the Dulwich College Kindergarten and Infants School. The original intention was to allow ‘the College and its tenants free use of it,’ but that proved impractical and Morgan built the tollgate in 1789 to control the frequency of its use.

The site of the Wood House was first leased by Thomas Lett, a prosperous timber merchant who, with his brother John, owned premises known as Lett’s Wharf on the south side of the River Thames by the future Waterloo Bridge. While Lett remained the leaseholder until 1830, he had moved out by 1820 after building another house just outside the Dulwich Estate’s north-western boundary, nearer to Camberwell. Called Dulwich House, its grounds later formed what is now the North Dulwich Triangle.

Lett died in July 1830 and on 5 May 1831 his executors assigned the lease to George Grote, probably best remembered today as a classical historian, and author of a notable book on the history of Greece, as well as being one of the founders of University College, London. Born near Beckenham, his grandfather was a German who had set up a banking house in the City of London called Grote Prescott & Co. He was a political radical and, with his wife, Harriet, he was heavily involved in the parliamentary reform movement in the late 1820s and early 1830s. He was elected as MP for the City of London in December 1832 and in January 1833 the couple moved into lodgings at 34 Parliament Street. We do not know how much of their time was actually spent in Dulwich but they managed to offend the Estate by carrying out a heavy-handed pollarding of a screen of trees surrounding the house without permission. The Master, John Allen was quick to respond, fearing that turning a blind eye to this blatant disregard of the covenants of a lease by such a famous resident might set a precedent, and he fined Grote £20. Allen also wrote the following: ‘For myself I have only to add the expression of my sincere regret that the first interview I have had with a gentleman whose literary attainments and public character I respect, should have turned on so disagreeable a subject.’ Grote paid the fine promptly and the Estate were then faced with what to do with the it. The Governors gave £10 to the Rev. Vane for use in the recently established infants school and put the other £10 into the College’s repairing fund.

Grote put the lease up for sale in July 1836. Auctioneers Messrs Simson & Son described the house as ‘a desirable gentlemanly residence is in most perfect order, encircled with 20 acres of excellent land, in pastures, superior pleasure grounds, wood, and well concealed gardens, commanding rich and extensive views, replete with offices of every description.’ It was then acquired by Robert Snow, who lived there between 1836 - 40, and he assigned it to Richard Robinson who occupied the house from 1840-48, there is, unfortunately, no detailed information on either of them.

This was not the case with the next lessee, Philip Novelli. Born in Turin in Italy in 1781, he had moved to Manchester around 1820 living on Cooper Street and trading as a merchant from Bond Street. He was naturalised in 1824 and was a co-owner of the firm Novelli & Albanelli who were what were then called Manchester warehousemen, wholesalers of linen and cloth. Novelli was also part owner of the Egerton Mill in Bolton and he was at one time in business with a Swiss inventor called Johann Georg Bodmer who was well-known for his work in improving the performance of cotton and wool spinning machinery. Novelli had Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell of Bolton build a Bodmer designed waterwheel, 60 feet in diameter, capable of supplying 120 HP and causing the spindles in the mill to turn at 6,000 rpm. The wheel required an estimated 4,320,000 gallons of water a day to power it and it became a popular local attraction.

Novelli was also a director of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and was one of the founders of The Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester, providing facilities for working men to learn the principles of science through part-time study. It was notable as the place where three significant British institutions were founded: the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He was also a Free Trader and helped found and fund the Anti Corn Law League which aimed to abolish the unpopular Corn Laws which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat.

At much the same time as Novelli’s arrival in Dulwich he had some family problems involving two of his three sons, Lewis and Alexander. Lewis had worked in his father’s business but had died unexpectedly early in 1848 aged 35, leaving a young wife, Harriet, and two children under four. Novelli had bought his widowed daughter-in-law a house in Manchester and his second son, Alexander, who was Lewis’s executor, moved in with her and the children temporarily, in order to settle the estate. It appears that Alexander wanted to marry Harriet but she repeatedly refused him. One Sunday in January 1850 Harriet and Alexander, having attended church twice and taken tea with a family friend, returned home and retired to their dining room for a night cap. Alexander was due to move to Dulwich the next day but neither of them were seen alive again. The next morning, the cold corpse of the strangled Harriet was found in the dining room while the still warm body of Alexander was found in his bedroom, hung from the curtain rail on his four poster bed by his dressing gown cord.

The case was covered extensively in the press, an upper middle-class murder and suicide being of huge interest. Harriet’s character was dragged through the mud with the press being strangely fixated on the ‘strong smell of liquor in the room’ and the gin that was found beside her: gin being a drink of the lower orders and associated with prostitutes in the popular mind. In fact, the servant who gave evidence at the inquest, said the liquid was brandy and was on a table near the sofa, but that didn’t stop the newspapers. There were lurid descriptions of her partially-clothed body while there were no such descriptions of Alexander, of whom the inquest was told that he ‘manifested the greatest possible kindness to his sister-in-law’. The inquest verdict said that Alexander ‘passionately fond of his sister-in-law, had tendered his suit, been rejected and in a moment of frenzy had strangled the object of his love’. Being overcome with remorse he then ‘destroyed himself’.

Philip Novelli died in 1852 and was buried in West Norwood Cemetery. He left his extensive property portfolio in Manchester, and over £60,000 in investments and cash, to his only surviving son, Augustus. The Wood House was up for sale in September 1856 in the Morning Post, where auctioneers Messrs Winstanley described it as ‘a unique and desirable residence, most delightfully situated on Penge Hill, which has chaste in elevation, stuccoed in imitation of stone, and substantially built, approached from the high road by a carriage drive through avenues of ornamental trees.’ Interestingly the description concentrated far more on the garden than the interior of the house, saying ‘the lawn and pleasure gardens are disposed with infinite taste, ornamented with flowering shrubs and evergreens, intercepted by gravel walks, and are bounded by beautiful wood: the land is finely undulated, and presents a park -like appearance, studded with timber, and belted on the road side with full grown forest and other trees.’ A brief report in the Morning Advertiser on the 11 October confirmed that the house had been sold for £3600.

The successful purchaser was James Budd, an iron and tin plate manufacturer. Born in Ireland, he had married the daughter of a German insurance broker, Friedrich Natusch, and his brother-in-law, Frederic Natusch was one of the original 12 members of the Committee of Lloyd’s when it was reconstituted in 1871. He and his wife, Genevieve, had four daughters and five sons, two of whom went to Dulwich College - both boarded at Plasgwyn, one of the privately run boarding houses in Dulwich Village. Lewis was at the school from 1859-64, later going to Westminster School, while his older brother, Francis, was only there for just over a year from 1860.

Budd died in 1858 aged 50, and the next lessee was 53 year old John Todd, a Russian merchant. In the 1861 Census he was at the Wood House with his wife, three daughters, four sons, a visitor, a nephew and nine servants – a groom, butler, cook, house maid, two nurses, two laundry maids and a kitchen maid. The family had previously lived in Marylebone and they moved back there, to a house at 1 Northwick Terrace, in 1867. Todd was then succeeded by Robert Palmer Harding, an accountant, then living on Sydenham Hill.

Harding was a major City of London figure, and one of the founding fathers of professional accountancy in Britain. He was among the 37 accountants to sign the draft rules of the Institute of Accountants in London, founded in 1870. Later, he became a founder of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), and was its vice-president when the charter of incorporation was granted in May 1880 and was president in 1882-83. A knighthood, awarded in 1890, was the first awarded to a professional accountant.

His particular specialisms were liquidations and bankruptcy. He had set up his firm, Harding and Pullein, in 1848, and it became one of the several founder practices of one of today’s top four firms of accountants, EY (formerly Ernst and Young and, prior to that, Ernst and Whinney). In 1866 he was appointed as the joint liquidator in the notorious Overend, Gurney & Co bank failure following the Bank of England’s refusal to bail them out. The same year the Government’s Select Committee on the Limited Liability Acts revealed that his firm were handling the winding up of nearly 25% of all the companies then in liquidation. He retired from his firm in 1883 and was appointed Chief Official Receiver in the Board of Trade’s bankruptcy department.

As well as being a successful accountant Harding was also a housing developer and had, between 1863-65, constructed several new houses on Crescent Wood Road, as well as Burleigh House, his own property at 35 Sydenham Hill. Presumably he aspired to an even larger one and, when John Todd left the Wood House, he took an assignment of the lease. He was still living at Burleigh House in September 1869 when he wrote to the Estate about the charges for the College Road tollgate. He had seen the Estate’s notice in the Times newspaper seeking tollgate keepers and suggested that this would be a good opportunity to bring in a pre-purchase ticket system so that Estate lessees would not have to physically pay every time they went through the Tollgate. He ended his letter saying ‘It may possibly be said that the toll is but small, but it is the constant repetition of such small annoyances which we seek to be relieved from.’ It took over 100 years for such a system to be introduced.

Palmer started negotiations on a new lease in March 1868, promising to spend a considerable sum on enlarging the house - in the end it was over £3000. In addition he wanted to enlarge the area of the grounds and also sought an option to build four other houses, ‘of a very superior class,’ on large plots around Wood Hall itself. He employed the Estate Architect, Charles Barry Jnr., to rebuild the house – which he then renamed Woodhall.

Although he had six daughters as well as two sons, neither of the latter went to the College, and he and the family moved back to town within six years, to 88 Queens Gate and later to 20 Wetherby Gardens. Auctioneers, Messrs Norton, Trist, Witney & Co, advertised the property in the Surrey Advertiser in May 1874 calling it ‘One of the most charming residential properties in the suburbs of London.’ They noted that it had been ‘almost entirely rebuilt in the last few years, regardless of cost under the superintendence of the eminent architect, Charles Barry, Esq.’ and that its location on high ground meant that the house had ‘ very extensive and varied views of the surrounding highly picturesque district.’ It described the ground floor as having ‘a spacious entrance hall, elegant drawing room, noble dining room, with carved oak chimney piece, groin ceiling, and parquetry floor, library and study, or gentlemen‘s room. The principal rooms open to a terrace walk with a glass covered corridor, leading to handsome conservatories and the three last named rooms have been recently decorated by Messrs Crace. John Gregory Crace, the owner of the firm, one of the leading interior designers at the time, was also a Dulwich resident, living at Springfield on Half Moon Lane.

Not only had Palmer spent money on the house, he had also employed an ’eminent landscape gardener, ‘ to upgrade the garden – perhaps he used another local resident, Edward Milner, who lived at No 1 Fountain Drive and, having worked with Sir Joseph Paxton on a number of parks including the Crystal Palace, ran the Crystal Palace School of Gardening. If the description is correct, the gardens do seem to be very impressive being described as having ‘a beautiful lawn and pleasure grounds ornamentally timbered, richly adorned with choice rhododendrons and luxurious shrubs of all kinds: an Italian rose garden designed with great taste, broad terrace walk leading to an elegant fountain, beyond which are turf avenue and delightfully secluded walks through the wood, where there are several well place summer houses: large kitchen garden, abundantly stock with choice, fruit trees, peach-houses, four vineries with full bearing vines, hot and stove houses, ferneries, mushroom house etc, garden cottage, poultry houses, model farmery, labourer’s house, and numerous other useful buildings, together with richly timbered meadowland, pleasingly undulating a park like character, in which is a sheet of ornamental water, with well planted island readily adapted for the rearing of wild foul.’

Palmer was still noted as living in Woodhall in 1876 street directories so, despite the garden, the house may have taken some time to sell. The new owner was George Campbell of whom we know very little other than in March 1877 he sought an extension to his lease, along with some rearrangement of his boundaries, if he agreed to spend up to £1500 in substantial additions to the house. There is no record of a new lease so it is unlikely that any work was carried out.

In March 1879, a new lease was granted to Julius Frederick Donner, of the leather merchants, De Clermont & Donner, their offices were at 27 St Thomas Street SE1. He was born in Germany and his wife was a member of the Koebel family who had lived locally in Grove Lane Camberwell for many years. All five of his sons went to Dulwich College between 1871 and 1887 and the 1881 Census at Woodhall shows the eldest, Harry Phillip, aged 20, in residence with three of his younger brothers and seven servants – a nurse, butler, cook, butler, house maid, parlour maid, kitchen maid plus a coachman and his family in the entrance lodge. While it’s possible that Donner had purchased the house as accommodation for his sons while they were at the College that seems unlikely, given its size and the cost of the staff required to run it. At much the same time his partner, Phillip de Clermont was also living nearby, at a house called Dunearn on Crescent Wood Road – his sons also went to Dulwich College.

Donner moved to an even larger house at Englefield Green in Surrey in 1883 and assigned Woodhall’s lease to James Crossley Eno, a pharmacist and the inventor of the famous fruit salts that bore his name. He had moved down to London from his native Newcastle in 1878 and had opened a factory at Pomeroy Street, New Cross. The 1881 Census showed him living in Dulwich, at Eastlands, a large old house on Court Lane but, by October 1883, he was certainly living at Woodhall as his daughter’s marriage reception was held there.

Eno was a noted Victorian industrialist. Not only did he invent and manufacture his products, he was also reputed to control all aspects of the advertising, including writing all the text which accompanied each advertisement where he expounded the wide benefits of his product - a cure for biliousness, feverishness, sleeplessness, headaches and ‘sudden changes in the weather’! Eno’s Fruit Salts had enjoyed world-wide sales, possibly stimulated by the fact that Newcastle was a busy seaport and Eno ensured that sea captains had samples of his product (which was also apparently a cure for sea-sickness). Eno left an estate worth over one and a half million pounds and, among his many bequests, he gave £50,000 to Guy’s Hospital; £40,000 to the Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle-upon-Tyne; £20,000 to the London Lock Hospital, and £20,000 to Dr Barnado’s Homes. He also left £500 to Dr Edward Reynolds Ray, the Dulwich Village GP, ‘as a slight token of his appreciation of his skill and attention.’

Eno’s executors must have been aware that selling a lease on such a large house in wartime might be difficult so they tried secure a short term let. Their agents, Hamptons, and the local firm, Marten and Carnaby, advertised the house in Country Life at the end of October 1915 with a picture and this description ‘TO BE LET UNFURNISHED, this beautifully situated RESIDENCE (five minutes form Sydenham Hill Station) occupying a superb and quite rural position with extensive views and surrounded by renowned gardens of altogether exceptional charm, and probably having no parallel within a like distance of town.. . . . . . The house is surrounded by about 16 acres in which are comprised the wonderful gardens and undulating meadows, the former holding a unique position among the famous gardens of the country. ‘

There were no takers but, in November 1917, the executors agreed to let the house to the British Red Cross Society to be used as the Lambeth Auxiliary Hospital, previously located at Homedale, a house in Dulwich Wood Avenue. It opened in December 1917 with 57 beds, three more were added later. The nursing staff consisted of two trained nurses and five full-time and 49 part-time members of the Lambeth Voluntary Aid Detachment. The Hospital closed at the end of January 1920, the last of the County of London Red Cross Society hospitals to do so.

The 1921 Census records a number of staff living in the main house who appear to work for a hotel run by a Mrs Bartlett, but there is no record in the Estate minutes until December 1922. At that point Mrs Bartlett took out a 21-year lease which, she assigned just two months later, in February 1923, to Miss Lydia Anne Biddle – with a proviso that she would also be allowed to take paying guests. The Estate were upset, however, when Miss Biddle started advertising the premises in The Times, and her solicitor had to apologise saying that she only ‘entertains as paying guests people of exceptionally good position and conducts the house in a manner calculated to keep up the character of the property.’ It appears that the house remained as a guest house run by a Mr Coles and then, from April 1925 by Robert Charles Hope FSA FRSL and his wife.

Hope had had a varied career as a musician, antiquary and author. Born in Derbyshire, the early part of his working life he had been spent in Scarborough where he had been closely associated with Yorkshire lawn tennis and was reputed to have invented both the net adjuster and the folding umpire’s chair used at tournaments. His books included ‘The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England,’ A Glossary of Dialectical Place-Nomenclature,’ English Goldsmiths,’ ‘The Leper in England’ and ‘English Leper Houses.’ He also compiled a Monumental History of Music and was the editor of Barnabe Goodge’s Popish Kingdoms. He then travelled widely abroad before coming to Dulwich.

Hope died in December 1926, aged 71, and his wife continued to run what she called ‘a select hotel’ until May 1931 when she assigned the lease to Kevin P J J Turnbull. There was a licence for some alterations in February 1932 and street directories show it was in use as a private hotel until the end of 1938. A letter in the houses’ deed packet in the Dulwich College Archive dated 19^th February 1939 confirms that Turnbull surrendered the lease back to the Dulwich Estate along with the keys to the property.

In May 1940 the Estate agreed to lease Woodhall to his ‘Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the War Department’ at a rent of £120 per annum. On 3 July 1944. At 8.03am, a V1 Flying Bomb destroyed much of the house but with no casualties. Fortunately, it did not fall nearby where there was an ammunition dump servicing the anti-aircraft guns at the top of Grange Lane.

The house was finally demolished in the early 1950s when the Estate decided to redevelop the site as the Woodhall Estate.

While London Road and Sydenham Hill had been roads since the middle ages, Sydenham Rise dates from the late 1850s. The opening of the Crystal Palace a few years earlier had made the area a more popular place to live and the Dulwich Estate began encouraging house building. The original developer for the houses on the upper section of the new road was a successful coal merchant, 34 year old William Hazelwood Phillips, who agreed to lease the land in September 1859 at a ground rent of £60 a year. He contracted to complete the construction of the road, which had been started at the lower end by another developer called Homan, and build ‘no less than seven and no more than eight detached villas at a cost of at least £1200 each,’ within two years. One of them was to be his own house, St Clair, at 19 Sydenham Rise (No. 269 on the map and now part of the 1960s development, Little Brownings).

Phillips came from a family of Radical reformers. As the age of 18 he reportedly attended an Anti -Corn Law demonstration in Covent Garden where he met Richard Cobden and John Bright. In 1862 he was involved in the campaign to relieve the plight of Lancashire textile workers affected by the ‘Cotton Famine’ caused by the American Civil War. In a series of letters to The Times signed ‘A London Lad’ he called for donations which he arranged to be distributed in the affected areas. He was later one of the original members of the London County Council, and in 1880 he hosted the meetings of the incipient British peace movement and apparently fought for Home Rule for Ireland.

Shortly after he moved into his new house, in July 1861, he asked the Estate for permission to build ‘at a cost of not less than £500, a small ornamental building of one story for a stable and cow shed,’ at the upper end of the field opposite his house on the other side of Sydenham Rise. The Estate agreed and a year later, in July 1862, Phillips asked for approval to add a billiard room – it seems it was now to be used more as what today would be called a garden building rather than a stable. The Estate Manager told him that, if he wanted to make the building larger, he would have to pay more rent. It is not clear whether he did but it took until December 1867 for the construction work to be finished. At that point he went back to the Estate saying that he had converted a small portion of the site into a garden for what he now called the ‘chalet’ and asked for permission to retain it – as his original lease did not allow him to dig up the field. The Estate agreed.

Phillips moved back to town in the summer of 1871 and assigned the lease to Joseph Slatterie Edwards, a corn merchant working in the family firm of Edwards Brothers in Blackfriars Road. In the 1881 Census the ‘chalet’ was occupied by Edmund Pankhurst, a gardener, and he remained in the cottage until his death in 1919 – serving three different lessees over the 40 years he lived there. In the early 1890s, there was another gardener living with him called Frederick Nowell. In May and June 1893, the Morning Post quoted him in advertisements by the Medical Battery Company Institute, of 52 Oxford Street, for an ‘Electropathic combined Belt and Suspender.’ The advertisement said that the product was ’a boon to the afflicted,’ and quoted Novell as saying ‘Since I started wearing the appliance, I am a new man altogether. I have lost the pains in my back, all the nervousness, can digest all I eat, and can do double the amount of work without feeling tired.’

From the early 1920s the occupiers were no longer gardeners but small local businessmen. The lessee from 1920 through to 1928 was John H Laughlin, a china dealer with premises at 213 Rye Lane, Peckham. He and his family kept dogs and there are a number of newspaper reports on him exhibiting his animals at the Crystal Palace Kennel Club Show.

From 1929 the occupier was Alex G Calder, a director of his own coal company based in Cubitt Town, but he was also what we would call today a lifestyle farmer as he and his wife used the property for pig breeding (he owned a boar) but also apparently kept poultry, ducks, geese, horses, goats, and sheep. In October 1941 under the heading ‘Pigs escape on Sydenham Hill,’ the Lewisham Borough News reported that Mrs Calder had appeared before the Lambeth Magistrate’s Court and been fined £2 for letting her pigs stray from her field onto the carriageway of Sydenham Hill; she had also been fined 10s for a similar offence a year before. She said she had tried to fill in the hole in her hedge but without success as she could not get hold of either wire netting or timber because of the war. She said ‘I’m doing my bit but the police, instead of helping, are being a nuisance.’

In May 1943 Lewisham Council wrote to the Estate telling them that it was intending to take about 60% of the site, just under 2.5 acres, to use as allotments under the 1939 Defence (General) Regulations Act. In response, Austin Vernon, the Estate Architect & Surveyor, visited the site and reported back that there was a large bomb crater lower down the hill and that he had been told that there had been two others which had been filled in. Unsurprisingly the ‘chalet’ had suffered some damage - which had been partly made good, but there was still further work to be done. He added that there were also a large number of sheds and hovels in the grounds - to house the various animals, and that the area immediately surrounding the house was very untidy and covered with rubbish. He was instructed to draw up a schedule of repair and, at the same time the Estate Manager suggested to Lewisham Council that it might prefer to use all of the site for allotments – which it did.

In March 1944 there was a report that the agreed figure for repairs on the house (£279) had not been paid and that Mr Calder had left - as he was no longer replying to letters. By May the Manager was negotiating with a Miss Ida M Paul to take a 60-year lease at £30 per annum with a premium of £500, to convert the cottage into a guest house by adding rooms and bathrooms - £1000 was to be spent on alterations and improvements. Austin Vernon was unhappy about Miss Paul’s plans calling them ‘eyesore on the landscape.’ She intended to use the old cottage as a reception and dining room, while bedrooms and bathrooms were to be in a new building to the side. Owing to the problems of obtaining building materials during the War the new building was to be built of cheap fletton bricks with a flat concrete roof - he thought that the proposed elevation was unattractive and totally out of keeping with the old house. He summarised his report by saying that the Estate would be ill advised to accept it in its current form - they agreed, and nothing more was heard of the scheme.

In June 1944 it was one of the local sites briefly considered for temporary government buildings but it was rejected because of the allotments. In January 1945 Lewisham Council suggested that, when the war ended, they would take over the site for housing but, after some discussion the Estate’s Manager persuaded it that there were better sites elsewhere. In May 1945 the Estate let the site to a Mr Langue for £90 per annum.

The following month the Estate Governors discussed the possibility of using the site for a new development to replace both the Old College almshouses in Dulwich Village and the St Saviours almshouses on Hamilton Road, West Norwood – both had suffered considerable bomb damage. The idea was to accommodate 100 old people, 84 from Camberwell and 16 from Dulwich. The meeting thought it an ideal site, with its frontages to three roads, and the development would have other facilities ‘including a Superintendent’s house, chapel, hospital, boiler houses, laundry, bowling green, gardens and walks for the occupiers.’ The proposal was for the Estate to donate the land and Camberwell Council to pay the building cost. All agreed it was a good idea but there was no money and nothing came of it.

Everything went quiet until March 1947 when Mrs Langue told the Estate that her husband had left her and the Estate woke up to the fact that there was outstanding rent; the arrears amounted to £45. Mrs Langue promised to pay these off as well as the current rent but she proved unable to do so. The Manager recommended that the Estate seek repossession as, not only was there a rent problem, but Mrs Langue had allowed the land to be used as ‘a shoot for debris’ or, in modern terms, fly tipping. She had been asked to stop but had not done so. The Manager also took advice from Counsel whose opinion was that she was not a contractual tenant and the Estate could obtain vacant possession on the grounds that the husband had abandoned the premises.

In July 1948 the Estate received a letter from the London County Council (LCC) Director of Housing advising it that the LCC were considering an extension to the Horniman Museum’s gardens by acquiring the whole of the site. The Manager and LCC Valuer agreed a 99-year lease though they had different aspirations on the rent. The Council suggesting £25 per annum but, after much discussion, the Manager managed to raise this to £105, with the LCC having the right to repair the ‘Chalet,’ now in a very bad state of repair, or to demolish it and erect a superintendent’s or gate keeper’s lodge.

In October 1950 the LCC decided that they did not want to be responsible for rebuilding the ‘Chalet’ in any form and threatened to acquire the site compulsorily under the 1906 Open Spaces Act. The Governors agreed to the LCC demands. Final negotiations took place in March 1951 when the outstanding point was the Governors’ requirement that there should be no games played on the site on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday. The LCC would not accept such a constraint and the Estate finally agreed to an amendment which allowed games after 9am on Sundays and normal working hours on all other days. The agreement was signed on the 28th April 1951 and the ‘Chalet’ was demolished shortly afterwards.

The LCC designed the Horniman Play Park along the lines of contemporary Scandinavian play parks and the grassy mounds were an integral part of the scheme. An essential element of such play parks, however, was the necessity for adult supervision and, over time, funding problems for staff led to the park facilities deteriorating.

Now known as the Horniman Triangle Playground, the site was completely revamped in 2009 with a large circular sandpit, a climbing boulder with a giant spider and rope ‘web’ attached and many other interactive sand-play additions. There was a new onsite café as well.

Fountain House is now the only remaining original Victorian house on the west side of Sydenham Hill and one of only two houses in the immediate area to have an English Heritage blue plaque. In this case it commemorates the house’s first owner, Francis Pettit Smith, the inventor of the screw propeller for ships. His father was the postmaster at Hythe in Kent and, as a boy, he had apparently been an avid constructor of model boats. He began his working life as a grazing farmer on the Romney Marsh, later moving to Hendon in North London, and reportedly perfected the propulsion of model boats by means of a wooden screw driven by a spring, on a reservoir on his farm.

In 1836 he took out a patent and, after securing financial backing, he was able to build a 10-ton prototype vessel which he demonstrated on the Paddington Canal and the River Thames. With further support he set up the Ship Propeller Company which, in 1839, constructed a bigger ship, the 237 ton Archimedes. This was tested against the Vulcan, then regarded as the fastest paddle-driven steamship afloat, which it easily outran - though it took a reluctant Admiralty five more years of deliberations before it gave the order for 20 screw driven warships to be built under Smith’s supervision. Meanwhile, the Archimedes had been demonstrated in all the major ports in Britain and Europe - Isambard Kingdom Brunel was invited to see it and was so impressed with the new invention that he used it on the Great Britain, the first iron-hulled ocean-going ship.

Smith was retained by the Admiralty as an advisor until 1850 but derived little remuneration either from his work for the government or from his commercial operations. Some recognition of his services was made in 1855 when he was granted a government pension of £200 per annum but, when his patent expired the following year, he moved briefly to farm in Guernsey. In 1857 he was the recipient of a national testimonial with a gift of plate and a sum of £3000, which was subscribed to by a number of shipbuilding and engineering companies. It was probably with this money that he was later able to contemplate building his house in Dulwich. His prospects improved when, in 1860, he became the curator of the Patent Museum at South Kensington and in 1871 he received a knighthood.

The Estate minutes dated 4 April 1864 agreed to grant him a lease of ‘a plot of land at Sydenham Hill, having a frontage of 100 feet and a depth of 250 feet, abutting north on premises on lease to the Lambeth Waterworks Company.’ This was a large underground water storage tank built a few years earlier which was still in use as late as the I990s - it is now the site of the houses on Chestnut Place and a block of flats called Blyton House.’ Pettit Smith called his new home, which also included a sizable stable building in the rear garden, ‘Cintra House’ – online research gives several possible derivations of the name, perhaps the most appropriate is the Celtic word ‘Syntia,’ which means ‘sacred place.’ He and his family lived there for just over four years before he put the house up for sale in May 1868 with 80 years remaining on the lease.

Messrs Norton, Twist and Watney advertised the property in the Maidstone & Kentish Journal on 18 May, four days before the auction, calling it ‘a valuable leasehold property, comprising a substantially built detached residence, delightfully situated at Sydenham Hill, commanding very extensive and lovely views of the surrounding highly picturesque country. It contains seven bed chambers, two dressing rooms, bath room, entrance hall, elegant drawing, good dining, and breakfast rooms, library, lavatory, water closet, billiard room, kitchen, and convenient domestic offices, stabling for two horses, coach house and man’s room: delightful pleasure grounds and garden, laid out with much taste with croquet lawn, dry gravelled walks, flower gardens and productive kitchen gardens, altogether almost two acres.’

The purchaser was Dr John Boyle Barry, recently returned from India. Born in County Down in Ireland in November 1824, he had studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and Edinburgh University and, according to the Medical Register, he had qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1844, though that seems quite young by today’s standards. At some point in the late 1840s he had gone out to India and his name appeared next in January 1851 when Indian marriage records showed him marrying Emily Jane Parker, in Assam, East Bengal, India’s main tea growing area. Whether he actually practiced as a doctor there is not known but the clue to what he actually did is contained in his brief death announcement in newspapers in 1880 which noted two addresses, one in England and one at 5 Lyons Range, Calcutta. Calcutta (now Kolcata) was then the capital of both West Bengal and the whole of British India, and Lyons Range was a street in the main business area in the city, locateddirectly behind the Writer’s Building, the headquarters of the East India Company.

Online research confirms that Barry worked in the tea business, initially as a horticulturist and then as a trader, and ran a firm called Barry & Co, based in Lyons Range, which exported tea to England. The family moved back to England in the early 1860s and he and his son, James Hewitt Barry, set up a company called J B Barry & Son with offices at 110 Cannon Street. Concerned initially with the sale of tea shipped to London by its sister firm Barry and Co of Calcutta, its interests subsequently expanded to include the handling of oil cake, jute and coal.

One of the first things Barry did on moving in was to change the house’s name to ‘Dilkhoosh’ which is an Urdu word meaning ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’ heart. The second was to employ James Pulham of Pulham & Co, to provide a number of artificial stone or Pulhamite garden features including an ornate fountain – hence the house’s later name. Historic England researched the company’s records in 2008 and found a prospectus dated 1877 listing the gardens they had worked on up to that date including six in Sydenham and two in Forest Hill. The installation at ‘Dilkhoosh’ is dated 1874-75.

It appears that Barry may have still aspired to practice medicine as his name appeared in the Medical Registers for both 1875 and 1878 but there is no mention of it in his obituary. Although his name is still noted in the 1880 street directory as being resident at the house, he and his family had apparently gone to live elsewhere and rented the house out to the Viscountess Combermere. A report in the Wellington (Shropshire) Journal of 25 October 1879 said that she had ‘left Dilkhoosh House, Sydenham for St Leonard’s on Sea, where she intends to reside during the winter months.’ John Barry died in August 1880, aged 55, while staying at the Grand Hotel in Brighton - could it have been that he was unwell and had gone to the seaside to recuperate? Barry was buried in West Norwood Cemetery and, after his death, his wife and daughter moved to Jersey where, in the 1881 Census, she called herself a ‘doctor’s widow.’ Meanwhile the occupant of ‘Dilkhoosh’ in 1881 was a solicitor’s clerk called Thomas Hawkes and his wife.

Mrs Barry and her daughter were back in ‘Dilkhoosh’ by 1884, and they both continued to live there along with six servants until 1898 when the daughter, Emily Jane, got married. Mrs Barry was then joined by her sister and a companion. There are no pictures of Barry or his wife but there is one in a newspaper of their only daughter. She became the second wife of Dr Sidney Turner, a prominent local doctor in Annerley, and a short obituary in the Norwood News in June 1933 said ‘Until quite recently, Mrs Turner was a familiar figure at many local meetings, presiding over all kinds of gatherings and maintaining the keen interest which she had always shown in the district. In a modern world she had had too many traditions from the Victorian era to which she belonged and her appearance added dignity to any function she graced with her presence.’

Mrs Barry died at the end of 1914 leaving just over £4000. She must have been a very keen gardener as, before the main house was auctioned, there was a separate sale of plants including ‘choice, conservatory, stove and greenhouse plants, including a choice collection of orchids, large Camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas etc., geraniums, chrysanthemums, gloss, amaryllis, hydrangeas etc.’ The house itself was advertised in the London Evening Standard in September with what messrs Mansell & Rowe said was ‘a very low reserve.’ They described it as ‘a well-built family residence, having 11 bed and dressing rooms, two bathrooms, four reception rooms, billiard room etc: grounds nearly 4 acres, glass house & stabling.’ Like so many other large houses on Sydenham Hill for sale in wartime it did not sell, remaining empty for many years - though the 1921 Census showed it occupied by John Romany, a chauffeur – presumably a caretaker.

In 1923 the Estate discovered that the house was now let as flats and they served a notice on Mrs Turner who was, according to the Estate’s register, the current lessee. They wrote to her solicitors, Messrs Snell & Co, who replied that the lessee was now a Mr Percy Goddard. They also forwarded, somewhat belatedly, a deed of registration confirming an assignment of the lease to Mr Goddard with Mrs Turner as the mortgagor. The Estate refused to accept it saying that there had been a breach of covenant. Messrs Snell & Co then wrote that their client, Mrs Turner, denied any such breach claiming that this was the first time she had heard that the house was let out as tenements and that she had not ‘permitted or suffered’ the lettings to take place.

The Estate minutes are silent as to what then happened to the house until March 1928, when the stables, which were accessed separately from Rock Hill, were leased as a separate property. Herbert Edward Smith, of No 1 Pont Street, Belgrave Square, offered to take a 60 year lease on the building at a rent of £30 a year and agreed to spend not less than £1500 in converting it into a dwelling house – it is now known as Stoney Hill House.

‘Dilkhoosh’ was still not included in any street directories until 1929 but from then on it was clear that it had been divided into flats, one per floor. It remained like this until the early 2000s when it was converted back to a single property and renamed Fountain House.

‘The Hoo’ was one of seven large houses built on the northern section of Sydenham Hill in the 1860s, between the junctions with Crescent Wood Road and Cox’s Walk. Originally known only by its name it later became No. 49 Sydenham Hill and, in the 1930s, when the road numbering changed to run north to south, it became No. 109. The extract from the 1932 Estate Map shows its site in green.

W H Blanche’s book ‘The History of Camberwell’ published in 1875 described ‘The Hoo’ in the most positive terms, his description was so flattering in fact that you have to wonder whether the then owner, Richard Thornton, had taken him out for a good lunch beforehand. Blanche said that the house was ‘not only substantially built, but elegantly designed, and for compactness, convenience, and comfort, can hardly be excelled. Standing on the apex almost of Sydenham Hill, it’s elegant turret is a recognised boundary mark far and wide, whilst on all sides are invitingly open some of the prettiest pages of nature’s gorgeous tome, a rich and varied panorama of woods, leafy lanes, cosy villas, park-girt mansions, and a richness and affluence of foliage but seldom met with.’

‘The Hoo,’ presumably named after the Hoo peninsular which separates the estuaries of the rivers Thames and Medway (‘hoo’ is a Saxon word thought to mean spur of land) had originally been known as ‘The Mansion,’ an appropriate name given its size (it had 13 bedrooms). It was designed and developed in 1861 by architect Henry Dawson who lived nearby in Sydenham Village, and had previously worked on Sydenham’s Public Lecture Hall, later known as the Kirkdale Institute (listed grade II in 2011). Dawson had his office at Finsbury Circus in the City of London and was Architect and Surveyor to the Salters’ Company. His main work was the design and construction of office and warehouse buildings in and around the city, but he did occasional housing schemes as well as buildings for the Pitt Press in Cambridge – now the Cambridge University Press. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA) in 1859 and a Fellow (FRIBA) in 1869.

He signed a building agreement with the Dulwich Estate in September 1861 for a 430 foot frontage to Sydenham Hill, four times the size of most of the adjacent plots, at a ground rent of £131 4s per annum. The new house was to have a value of at least £4000 and be for his own occupation. Alternatively, he could build two or three smaller houses in lieu at a value of £4500 - he located the house to one side of the site so perhaps he was undecided when he started work as to which option he would go for. Progress was slow, perhaps there were cash flow problems, and he had to go back to the Estate in July 1863 and ask for a year’s extension. He was given until Christmas 1864 to complete and was also allowed to extend the site into the woodland between the bottom of his future garden and the new railway line.

By the time Blanche was writing about the house, it was already on its third resident. Dawson had decided it was not for him and it remained empty for two years until he could sublet it. According to Blanche it was first taken for a short period by an unnamed German family, but by 1870 the occupier was the Howard family. James Howard was MP for Bedfordshire at the time, and also the senior partner in the firm of Messrs. James and Frederick Howard who owned the Britannia Iron Works in Bedford, one of the country’s leading manufacturers of agricultural implements and machinery. Its range of products reflected the growth of mechanised farming and, amongst many other products like ploughs and harrows, the firm also produced ‘machinery for tilling land by steam power.’ His obituary said that he possessed great mechanical skill and made many improvements to the design of the firm’s products - he was also a land owner, farmer and a three-time Mayor of Bedford.

The family only stayed for about a year before moving to Eastbourne and the next lessee was 28 year old Richard Thornton, his wife and daughter, and eleven servants – he had previously lived in a house on Lordship Lane. Although he was a relatively young man, he listed his occupation in the 1871 Census as ‘retired merchant’. How had he acquired the money to purchase what was probably the largest house on Sydenham Hill at such a young age? The answer lies with his fabulously wealthy great uncle, after whom he was named, Richard Thornton, known in the City of London in the early half of the nineteenth century as ‘the Duke of Danzig.’ Thornton’s grandfather, Lawrence had been his partner, and his late father Thomas had been a beneficiary of Richard Thornton’s will which, at £2.8m was, at his death in 1865, the largest the country had ever seen – the equivalent of several billion pounds today.

The Thornton’s were Baltic merchants and a large part of their business was the import of hemp for making ropes for the Royal Navy. This became more difficult during the Napoleonic Wars and, especially after 1807, when Denmark was at war with Britain. To make sure that their trade could continue the Thornton’s armed their ships and managed to largely escape the Danish gunboats operating a blockade in the Kattegat between the Baltic and the North Sea. The trade proved to be very profitable but it was Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia in 1812 that was to be the firm’s greatest coup. In October 1812, Laurence Thornton was in the port of Memel, now known as Klaipėda, when he heard of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. He got word back to London so speedily that it was three days before the news reached anyone else, including members of the British Government. Realising he had a unique opportunity, his brother Richard went quickly about the city obtaining signatures on contracts for the forward delivery of Baltic goods. Since current contract prices were inflated by the blockade, his already sizable profits became significantly greater when they dropped after it was removed.

Richard Thornton had no legitimate children and left his money to his nephews – Thomas Thornton, the father of Richard Thornton of ’The Hoo’ was one. Thomas died in 1869 leaving just under £900,000 and Richard moved into ‘The Hoo’ the following year. He clearly didn’t need to work and, allegedly quite a humble man, he spent his time following his interests one of which was raising St Bernard Dogs - in July 1883 the South London Press reported on a dog show at Crystal Place saying ‘Mr R Thornton, The Hoo; Sydenham Hill, third, and very highly commended for St Bernard’s; and highly commended, third and first for St Bernard puppies.’

His main interest however was his garden, and Blanche describes the well-kept lawns and neat flower beds surrounding the house as being ‘laid out with great taste.’ He then added that, once the visitor moved down the garden he was suddenly transported ‘into a wild and woody scene, and an almost endless succession of surprises. This woody adjunct - a portion of the once famous Dulwich Wood renders the grounds of ‘The Hoo’ altogether unique, for nowhere else within the hamlet is to be seen in such close juxtaposition, the landscape garden and a mazy labyrinth of trees.’ Blanche also drew attention to Thornton’s azaleas saying that special attention was given to them ‘indeed, in this respect it stands unrivalled, in Dulwich at any rate.’ Contemporary press reports about the Crystal Place horticultural shows confirm that he, or more often his gardener, were frequent prize winners.

Thornton contributed to the construction of St Peters Church on the junction of Dulwich Common and Lordship Lane, laying the foundation stone on 1 May 1873. He was also keen on athletics and was the first president of the South London Harriers, from 1874, and he paid for their new sports ground at Balham. He was only 42 when he died in October 1885, leaving just £30,000 – he had certainly spent his inheritance. His obituary in the South London Press in October 1885 said that ‘Mr Thornton will be known to our readers as a successful exhibitor in the leading canine shows for some years past of the finest dogs of the St Bernard breed. This gentleman was an ardent enthusiast of athletic sports, and his sudden and unexpected demise will be a sad and irretrievable blow to the sporting community and to athletes in general, especially to the South London Harriers, as he had been their president since the formation of this well- known club. His interest in this association was undying, not only by his generous munificence, but in his great and general interestedness in its behalf. ‘ The ‘Thornton Cup’, named after him, and dating from 1886, is the second oldest Club championship. He was buried at West Norwood Cemetery and his ‘much respected widow, Mary Thornton,’ became the club’s first lady member when she was elected as a vice-president of the club in 1888, a title which she held until her death over 25 years later.

In 1891 his wife was living at the house with seven children ranging in ages from twenty one to six, together with a surgical nurse, a ladies’ maid, a butler, two house maids, a nurse, a cook, a kitchen maid and a coachman. Along with various members of the family, she remained in the house until September 1915 and, on her death, the house was sold ‘absolutely without reserve’. Harrods were the auctioneers and their sales particulars from 1916 describe it as ‘a very attractive and exceptionally well-built leasehold residence occupying a choice position, standing high and commanding exceptionally fine views over the surrounding country. It has 13 bed and dressing rooms, 4 reception rooms, a billiard room, conservatory, handsome staircase hall, spacious offices. Electric light, company’s water, main drainage, stabling, coachman’s cottage and gardener’s lodge. Delightfully wooded, well-timbered grounds of almost 5 acres, tennis, croquet and badminton lawns.’ The second year of the First World War was not a good time to market a very large house with less than 30 years left on the lease and a high ground rent, and it did not sell, the Globe newspaper reported that not only was there no bids, there was also no offer for a private sale afterwards. In December, the family’s solicitor wrote to the Estate saying that they were unable to wind up Mrs Thornton’s affairs because of problems getting rid of the lease. They finally had an offer from a Mrs Sawtell, who lived in Crystal Palace Road, to take it as a high class nursing home, principally for nerve cases, would the Estate consider it? The answer was no.

Despite further attempts to sell, the family tried again in both November 1919 and November 1920, the house remained empty. It was not until March 1922 that the Estate received an approach from a Major Oliver, then living in ‘Bardowie,’ 47 Sydenham Hill, to convert the property into flats. Oliver was the resident architect at Whitehall Court, the huge residential block built in the 1880s facing the Victoria Embankment opposite the South Bank. The Estate Surveyor, C E Barry, reported that ‘The Hoo’ was very large, with 29 rooms, and had been well built in white brick with stone dressing, but had not been well maintained. He added that the conversion scheme for six flats would retain the house’s character but that any development would also require lease extensions to make the flats saleable.

As well as ‘The Hoo’ and ‘Bardowie,’ Oliver was also working on ‘The Woodlands,’ 45 Sydenham Hill, and ‘Fairwood,’ No 53. Once he had all his permissions from the Estate he sold the individual properties on to others to actually carry out the work. In the case of ‘The Hoo’ he assigned the licence to Hector D Duncan. The flats were occupied until March 1941 when the house suffered blast damage from a number of bombs dropped in the garden. Duncan disclaimed the lease in December and the house was left empty until June 1944, when it was requisitioned by Camberwell Borough Council for the storage of furniture from bombed properties.

The Estate received a notice of release in April 1948, and Austin Vernon, the Estate Architect, carried out a survey - describing the house as very large and well-built, but too expensive to repair. It was demolished in the mid-1950s, and its site is now part of Sydenham Hill Wood.

The impetus behind the housing development on the southern part of the Dulwich Estate in the late 1850s came as a direct result of the relocation of the Crystal Palace from Hyde Park to Penge Place on Sydenham Hill. In order to construct the much enlarged building the Crystal Palace Company acquired an area of land from the Estate to build Crystal Palace Parade and then leased further land to the west going down towards Gipsy Hill to build houses. George Wythes, a major shareholder in the company, leased land to the east towards Sydenham, while the area to the north, along Sydenham Hill towards Forest Hill, was let to Francis Fuller, the Company’s Managing Director and Surveyor. His original concept for what was optimistically to be called the ‘Sydenham Palace Estate’ included a church and parsonage, three taverns, two hotels, and 188 large houses - to be designed by Dulwich Estate Surveyor Charles Barry Jnr’s firm, Banks and Barry. Unfortunately, Fuller was soon in financial difficulties and, by 1858, the land had reverted back to the Estate.

At the same time the Estate’s charitable obligations were going through a period of re-organisation and, once these were complete, a more proactive management regime came into play. The Estate put a series of advertisements in The Times, The Daily News, and The Builder offering sites for sale – they said ‘The Governors of Dulwich College are now prepared to let a portion of their land for building purposes. Applications to be made to C Barry Esq, Surveyor Dulwich College, 27 Sackville Street Piccadilly, W1.’ To encourage purchasers Barry was told to offer what were called ‘educational privileges’ - guaranteed places at Dulwich College for their sons, now much in demand since the arrival of the new master, Canon Carver.

One of the first offers they received was from a wealthy and successful engineer, Josiah Latimer Clark, of Adelaide Road in Hampstead. He offered to take a four-and-a-half-acre site on the north side of Rock Hill, an ancient foot path leading down through the woods to what was then known as the Penge Road (now College Road). Clarke was introduced to the site by a Sydenham based estate agent, C F Biggs – to whom the Estate had to reluctantly pay an introduction fee, and he agreed to build a house with a value of £2500 - spending £2000 at the outset and £500 more within the next five years. He called his new house Beechmont, and it was ready for occupation by 1862. It had several living rooms including a library, ten bedrooms, and two bathrooms with hot and cold running water, the ultimate luxury at the time. He also acquired two acres of additional woodland between the bottom of his garden and the Penge Road and he subsequently added a series of garden follies made from Pulhamite – the ruins can still be seen below the current houses on Rock Hill and Woodsyre.

Latimer Clark was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire. He had been interested in chemistry at school and his first job was in a large Dublin chemical manufacturing firm. In 1848 he joined his older brother, hydraulic and structural engineer, Edwin Clark, as assistant engineer on the construction of the Menai Strait bridge. Two years later, when his brother was appointed Engineer to the Electric Telegraph Company, he again acted as his assistant, and subsequently succeeded him as Chief Engineer. In 1854, he took out a patent ’for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum,’ and later, in 1863, was concerned in the construction, by the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company, of its direct link between the London North-West District Post Office and Euston Station.

He published a pamphlet in 1855 about his experimental research on the design of submarine communication cables and in 1859 he was a member of the government committee appointed to report on how to expand the cable network around the British Empire. In 1861 Clark formed a partnership with Sir Charles Tilston Bright, the engineer who had laid the first transatlantic cable in 1858, and together they introduced numerous improvements in their manufacture, testing, and operation. They were both strong advocates of establishing a unified system of electrical units, and a number of the proposals they made formed the foundations of the system of ohms, amps, and volts still in use today. Later on. he was a member of several firms engaged in laying submarine cables, in manufacturing electrical appliances, and in hydraulic engineering. He was President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers in 1875 and also a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Astronomical Society.

He put the house on the market in June 1883. The auctioneers, Messrs Debenham, Tewson, Farmer & Bridgewater calling it ‘one of the most delightful residential properties, within the like distance of London, occupying an unrivalled situation on the summit of the hill, commanding the most extensive panoramic views over a wide tract of picturesque and well-wooded country, embracing the valley of the Thames as far as Windsor Castle, and the vast expanse of the beautiful scenery of the home counties . . . . . . . and is arranged and fitted with every requisite for a gentleman‘s family. It stands at an agreeable remove from the road, is approached by carriage drive, and entered by a portico, with a flight of stone steps.’ It added that it had been erected by the owner for personal occupation ‘from the designs of an eminent architect,’ possibly Charles Barry Jnr.

The purchaser was a prosperous City of London merchant and banker, Matthew George Megaw. A director of Megaw & Norton, Brazilian merchants, the Merchant Banking Company, and the Rio Clara Sao Paulo Railway Company, he was also Deputy Governor of the Royal Exchange Insurance Corporation. At his death in 1908 he left over half a million pounds. His major contribution to Dulwich, though, lies in the formation of the Dulwich and Sydenham Hill Golf Club. In November 1893, at the house, which he now called Hitherwood, he chaired a meeting of three other prominent local residents to discuss how they could set up a golf club. It was to be known as the Sydenham Hill Golf Club and, shortly afterwards, they circulated a leaflet locally seeking expressions of interest from potential members. There already was a course of sorts, set up in the fields of Dulwich Wood Farm off Grange Lane near the College Road Tollgate. This had been built without the knowledge of the Estate, and it was to take several years before the lease for the new club was finally agreed.

Megaw moved to a house in Pont Street in Chelsea in 1900 and he assigned Hitherwood’s lease to Charles Albert Stewart, a Russian born but British timber merchant; his office was in St Helen’s Place in the City. His wife died in 1908 but he remained at the house until he moved to Sidcup early in 1926. As well as a large number of servants, he employed a live-in coachman who, by 1921, had become a motor driver.

In November 1926 Stewart, keen to move, had an approach from an organisation called the Holiday Fellowship, who wanted to set up an international hostel. The Estate appreciated that a house of this size, with a short 22 year lease, would not be that easy to sell but in this case, luckily for Stewart, they were prepared to be flexible. The chairman of the Estate Governors and his deputy interviewed Arthur Leonard, the organisation’s secretary, and requested further information regarding the nationality, social standing, and financial viability of the prospective guests. They were clearly reassured but there was then a discussion about who would actually sign the lease and be responsible for the rent - the Estate were reluctant to let properties to companies. They finally agreed to go ahead and gave permission for a small brass plate to go on the front gate (only doctors were normally granted this privilege), and also allowed a path to be built through the woods down to College Road for easier access from Sydenham Hill Station.

The hostel was opened in 1927 by Joseph Rountree, ex Liberal MP for York, a director of the family chocolate business, and chair of the Joseph Rountree Trust. In his speech he called the new venture a little ‘League of Nations’ and added that ‘Hitherwood is a dangerous as well as a hopeful experiment because proximity is this test of friendship.’ A report in the South London Press said that there was accommodation for 50 guest (the large bedrooms must have been divided up) and noted that a number of other organisations were involved including the Friends Council for International Service, the Adult School Movement, and the Women’s International League. It also quoted Arthur Leonard, who was also known for helping to create the Youth Hostels Association and was one of the founders of the Friends of the Lake District, as saying how important it was to encourage international students to stay in London as they often find it ‘the loneliest place in the world.’

The hostel ran successfully throughout the 1930s but, following the outbreak of war in 1939, foreign travel was almost impossible and the numbers of guests reduced. There was also the problem of bombs – the tall water towers at Crystal Palace were used as a turn marker by German bombers until they were demolished in early 1941, and several bombs were dropped in the Sydenham Hill area though not on Hitherwood itself. By the early autumn of 1940 the situation had become unsustainable and the Holiday Fellowship secretary wrote to the Estate saying ‘I am sorry to say that, owing to the intensity of nearby air raids, we have recently lost most of our residents from our guest house, and, as the staff also became restive and we find difficulty in replacing them, we were forced to close the house on Thursday last, 19^th September.’

It is unclear whether Hitherwood, like several other of the large houses on Sydenham Hill and Crescent Wood Road, was then used for the storage of furniture from bombed out properties, but the house was subsequently requisitioned by Camberwell Council and converted into flats. Up until 1959, electoral registers record upwards of 14 families living in it.

In the mid-1950s the Estate produced a number of schemes to demolish Hitherwood and most of the large houses on the west side of Sydenham Hill and redevelop the sites with smaller houses. It was not until 1958-59, when they had put together a joint venture partnership with Wates Builders, that things moved forward, and Hitherwood was included in what was called the Sydenham Hill Estate. Over the next ten years this was built out as four separate developments, Rock Hill, Woodsyre, Crouchman’s Close & Great Brownings.

Hitherwood was the first house to be demolished, in the spring of 1960, and Rock Hill, a terrace of five three-storey town houses built in its place. Only the ruins of the Pulhamite follies remain to mark what was one of the largest houses on Sydenham Hill.

Marlowe House, 103 Dulwich Village was presumably named after the famous Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe. Originally known as No. 2 Woodlawn, High Street Dulwich, it was one of a pair of semi-detached houses (with No 1 Woodlawn) built in 1759 by stone mason and speculative house builder Moses Waite, his office was in Blackman Street, Southwark (now Borough High Street). They were originally much smaller than they are today, occupying just the three storey central block.

The first occupier was a widow, Mrs Lydia Normandy, and her two daughters. The elder one, Sarah, married a man called William Hucks while the younger, called Lydia like her mother, married Charles Vanderplank, a warehouseman and factor with offices at Bevis Court, Basinghall Street. The mother died in 1775 followed by the younger daughter in 1782. Marlowe House was then lived in by Sarah and William Hucks and this is confirmed by the guide book Edward’s ‘Companion from London to Brighthelmston, in Sussex.’ Hucks renewed the lease in 1794 and his wife, Sarah, died in 1810, aged 76, having succeeded her husband as the lessee in 1808.

There is no further information on the property until 1841 when the occupier was John L Havenith, a merchant with a business in Love Lane in Eastcheap. Born in Prussia in 1808, his real name was Johann Leon Hubert Havenith and had a Belgian wife, born in Antwerp. They had been married at the church of St Johns in Hackney – she was possibly his cousin as they had the same surname on their marriage banns. They lived in the house along with their twin daughters, and a baby son, Hermann. Havenith’s name was included on the Estate’s 1846 rent schedule so they must have moved to their next house, in Grove Hill Terrace in Camberwell, in 1847.

The next occupant was the elderly Benjamin Samuda and his family. Born in 1768, he was a wealthy businessman with interests in shipping and sugar plantations in Jamaica. He was a slave owner and the UCL Slave Compensation Register lists his name in seven claims on a total of 79 slaves in the island parishes of Manchester and Westmoreland. He had moved to Jamaica in the late 1780s and was married there in 1794. Following the death of his first wife in childbirth in 1812, he moved back to England with his children. He remarried two years later to a 17 year old, Frances Georgiana Walsh (he was 46), the ceremony taking place at St Mary’s church in Lambeth. He and his new wife then lived in Bailey’s Grove (now the eastern end of East Dulwich Grove) before moving to Dulwich Village. He had eight children by his first wife and three by his second and, interestingly, neither wives were Jewish despite his strong Jewish ancestry.

The Samuda family were Sephardic Jews originally from Portugal. Benjamin’s father, David, was born in London in 1733 to Abraham Samuda, a Portuguese refugee and physician who had emigrated from Lisbon to London sometime before 1720. David and his family lived in Leman Street from the 1760s onwards and used Goodman’s Fields as the base for his mercantile business, Samuda & Co. which traded with the Caribbean islands. In his will he bequeathed money to the poor of Bevis Marks Synagogue as well as the Portuguese Synagogues in Kingston and Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Benjamin Samuda died in May 1848 aged 79 and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery. His wife remained at the house along with her eldest daughter, also called Georgiana, and her son-in-law, Thomas Hatcham Woollard, a merchant. By the end of 1851 the Woollard’s had left for Cherry Hinton in Cambridge, her husband’s birth place, where, sadly, he died the following year. Georgiana remarried and lived with her second husband, Charles Lucas, in Belgrave Villas, Park Road, in Lambeth. Meanwhile her mother moved in with one of her sons, Theodore, who lived in Peckham.

The next lessee was Louis Englehardt. Born in Trieste, he was a partner in the firm of Belcher and Engelhardt, merchants and importers of iron ore from Germany, with offices at 8 Size Lane in the City. He had understandably shortened and anglicised his christian names from the original Alois Augustus Euphrosius and had moved to Marlowe House from the Retreat in Red Post Hill, one of two houses that used to be part the old White Hart Inn. The Dulwich Estate rent book of 1854 described him as the ‘underlessee and occupier’ and noted that the property included a coach house and stable on the opposite side of the road, next to the Greyhound Tavern, along with a small paddock between the coach house and what was described as ‘a lane or drift-way which divides it from the College Grammar School’ – presumably a path approximately on the line which is now Burbage Road. Englehardt and his wife were to have ten children in all and they were still at the house at the 1861 Census with four daughters, two sons, and five servants though the next year they moved to Loat’s Road in Clapham. He retired in 1868 and died in 1892.

In March 1862 the Estate let the house to Mrs Eliza Dryland, one of the ladies licensed to run a boarding house for Dulwich College Boys – she had previously been running one at Camden House, 61 Dulwich Village. She was a widow, with a son, William, at the College. Her prospective next-door neighbour at No. 1 Woodlawn, Philip Gowan, was unenthusiastic at the idea and the Estate Surveyor was ‘directed to communicate with Mr Gowan and Mrs Dryland with a view to see if she can abate any objection arising from the contiguity of the premises.’ The solution was apparently a new and higher fence and she remained at the house until 1869 before moving to Elm Lawn on Dulwich Common – it was unclear whether there were still problems with Mr Gowan or it was just a more suitable house, being much nearer the College.

The Dryland’s were followed by Captain Charles Granger Weller, an Elder Brother of Trinity House, and his family. He had had a successful career as a ship’s captain ending up as a commander in the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company whose main business was running ships to and from South America and the Caribbean. His obituary said that he was well regarded at Trinity House as a leading member of the ‘Rule of the Road Committee’. He had been living in Southampton and appeared to have moved to Dulwich to educate Edgar, one of his three sons, at Dulwich College. The boy was at the school from 1873 to 1877 while his younger brother Francis was there for about 18 months six years later - at much the same time as the oldest brother, Charles, was a form master at the Junior School. He left Dulwich in December 1885 and later owned his own prep school in St Leonards in East Sussex.

Marlowe House’s head lease was due to run out on Lady-day 1878 (84 years from 1794) and, in March 1877, Weller enquired as to whether the Estate would allow him to renew it for a further 84 years. The Estate tried to persuade him to spend £300 on refurbishing the house and pay a higher rent, £90 per annum rather than his current £75. It also decided to remove the two plots he had on the other side of the road, next to the Greyhound Inn. Weller was positive to start with, but he then changed his mind, probably because Edgar had just finished at the College, and the family moved to Dover. The Estate was not overly surprised as the Surveyor’s report on the house’s condition gave another possible clue as to why Weller left. It said ‘I have surveyed the house, which is brick built and contain seven bedrooms and three sitting rooms, none of them large and some very small, while the upper floor and the basement are seven feet and six and a half feet high respectively, and the kitchen offices are most inferior. ‘

The house remained empty through 1878 but in the late spring of 1879 the Estate had a stroke of luck. Mrs Matilda Perkes who was living at Cheshunt Bower, a house at the northern end of Dulwich Village, needed to move as it was due to be demolished to allow the construction of East Dulwich Grove. She was very keen to remain in in the area and was prepared to take Marlowe House as it was, though at a reduced rent of £55 per annum rather than the £90 the Estate aspired to.

Matilda Perkes and her husband Samuel had lived in Dulwich for many years, beginning in the late 1850s at Belvedere House in Park Road in West Dulwich, before moving to the northern part of Dulwich Village in 1868. Samuel Perkes was a noted Victorian civil engineer though his name has been forgotten now, perhaps because most of his work was overseas. If his obituary is to be believed, he was on a par with Brunel in the range of his projects and inventions. His main claim to fame, however, was the major part he played in saving the young Queen Victoria from an assassination attempt. On 10th June 1840, Perkes was visiting London and was outside Buckingham Palace when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert drove out in an open carriage. Security was very different then and, as the carriage turned onto Constitution Hill, he was just a few feet away from the Queen when eighteen-year-old Edward Oxford fired two pistols at her. He and another bystander wrestled Oxford to the ground and handed him over to the police. Today Perkes would have been given a medal but, back in 1840, he just received a letter of thanks from Prince Albert. He later gave evidence at the Old Bailey trial where Oxford was found not guilty, by reason of insanity. After the trial Perkes wrote to the newspapers to correct their reporting of the case and their spelling of his name. In fact, the Old Bailey had missed the second ‘e’ in his name and the newspapers had simply followed suit, but you can tell from his letter how much he was hurt by being called Mr Perks, rather than Mr Perkes.

Both Samuel and Matilda Perkes were born in Dudley in the Midlands, he was initially a builder while she was a straw-hat maker. By 1847, they were living in Liverpool where he was employed as a civil engineer on railway construction projects and bridges - including an innovative suspension footbridge in Chester’s Grosvenor Park. He also built and exported iron buildings to the United States from a factory in Birkenhead and his innovative designs for folding iron bedsteads were sold worldwide - winning a first-class medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition.

During the Crimean War Perkes worked with Florence Nightingale constructing iron hospitals, including the Castle Hospital in Balaclava. She also introduced him to the famous chef Alexis Soyer, who had cooked for Queen Victoria at her coronation. Soyer brought with him the field stove he had invented in Ireland and he and Perkes worked together on improving hospital kitchens. Perkes named one of his sons Inkerman after the 1854 battle and called his youngest daughter after Florence Nightingale.

By 1856 he was in Bombay (now Mumbai) working for the Honourable East India Company on harbour, gas and water works, including the sewer system, street lighting and the proposed Central India Tramway. He even designed an oil press, for which he co-founded the Bombay Oil Pressing Company. His other inventions ranged from a machine for extracting ore from quartz, used in gold mining, to a wind-powered cotton gin. He patented improvements in mine ventilation systems and ship building. He even patented from abroad: in 1862 he sent details from Bombay to Dulwich for his wife Matilda to register for him.

In 1866 Perkes, on a brief visit to Dulwich, was one of the first to spot the breakout of a major fire at the Crystal Palace He was reported to have given directions which helped prevent the flames extending beyond the Tropical Department where the fire had started. He continued to travel to and from the Far East, working for the Madras Irrigation and Canal Company but, unfortunately, on his way back from India in December 1869, he was taken ill with liver disease and died in Venice. The grandiose notice of his death in the newspapers described him as ‘Samuel Perkes, Civil Engineer, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow of the Geological Society, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and of Her Majesty’s Government, Her Majesty’s Government India, Madras Irrigation and Canal Company and the late Honourable East India Company Society.’ No wonder he was annoyed when newspapers misspelt his name.

Given the number of Samuel Perkes’ inventions and patents, he should have left the family very well-off, yet Matilda was always complaining to the Estate how hard up she was. It is not clear why she and her unmarried daughters left Dulwich in 1886, but perhaps she did have money abroad or, possibly, she just wanted better weather. She moved to San Remo on the Italian Riviera and she lived out her remaining years in a large house called Villa Rosina, dying there in 1895 aged 79. Her daughter Victoria remained there for another 30 years.

In September 1886 the Estate let Marlowe House to a Mrs Pontifex of 32 Lancaster Road in West Dulwich, for three years at £65 per year, subject to it being put it into ‘complete tenantable repair’ and making the butler’s pantry into a kitchen. The Surveyor noted that ‘the premises have been left much out of repair by the late tenant, Mrs Perkes’ and that £200 would need to be spent on it. Mrs Pontifex stayed until 1888 when she had financial problems and could no longer afford to pay the rent.

Hamilton Edward Laurence, a young barrister then living at Teynham House in Half Moon Lane, agreed to take over the lease. Lawrence had been well regarded at Lincoln’s Inn where he had won a first class studentship in 1878, and the Barstow law scholarship and certificate of honour in 1879. He had been called to the bar in June 1880 and practised on the South-eastern circuit. Sadly, it would appear that he suffered from mental health problems and he was committed to a lunatic asylum in West Malling in Kent in 1890. With no income his wife was in a difficult financial position and in September she asked the Estate to relieve her husband ‘of his agreement in respect of this premises.’ The Estate were unusually sympathetic and, luckily, they soon had an offer to take over the lease from Mrs Lydia Jane Walker of Court Road, West Dulwich. A wealthy widow, she had been recommended by Samuel Stanley Brown, the secretary and general manager of the Employers’ Liability Assurance Corporation who lived in Cypress House on Dulwich Common – as a young man he had been employed as the clerk to the Governors between 1871-74.

Mrs Walker and her children were all Canadians, from new Brunswick. Unfortunately she died less than a month after taking over the lease in October 1890 while staying at her sister’s country house, Coghurst Hall near Hastings. The 1891 Census showed Mrs Walker’s two children, Annie and Harry, a medical student, living in the property along with two servants. Harry gave notice to terminate the lease at Christmas 1892 though street directories show him still living there in 1893, while Annie had moved to Coghurst Hall to live with her aunt. Marlowe House was then empty for two years although the Estate did install a caretaker.

Street directories covering the four years between 1896 and 1900 confirm that the tenant was Joseph Hankey though there is no record in the Dulwich Estate Archive. He had a controlling interest in the firm of J. H. Sankey & Son of Essex Wharf, Canning Town and the Refractories Works, Ilford. The Company was established in 1857 and made cement, lime, bricks, slates, tiles, sanitary and fireclay goods like sanitary stoneware, pipes, etc. Sankey moved to the much larger Glenlea on Dulwich Common (now Tappen House) in 1900 and educated his son, Herbert Massey Sankey, at Dulwich College from April 1902 to July 1906. There was a family history of sons attending the College, two uncles, a cousin and a nephew also went there.

In 1901 there was a new lessee, John George Dalzell, and here too there were family connections with Dulwich College. Dalzell was a City solicitor but he had been born in India where his father, Nicholas Alexander Dalzell, was the assistant commissioner of customs, salt and opium in Bombay. He later became the conservator of forests in Bombay and superintendent of the Botanical Gardens there. He was also well-known as an author of a number of books on Indian botany. Dalzell senior retired back to Edinburgh in 1870 when John George was 14, and the family moved to East Dulwich in 1879 following his father’s death. His younger brother, Reginald Alexander, was sent to Dulwich College.

Dalzell also had a close connection with Marlowe House as in July 1897 he married, as his second wife, Annie L Walker, who had previously lived in the house in the early 1890s. Their son, Alexander Charles Dalzell, born in 1901, also went to Dulwich College between 1915 and 1920. The house was still in need of some upgrading and in order to secure a reasonable length of lease, and a much higher rent, £87 10s as opposed to the £32 10s paid by Sankey, the Estate agreed to spend some £325 on improvements, particularly to the drains.

Dalzell and his wife continued to live at the house for a further 30 plus years years until his death in 1933. They had a relatively quite life until November 1928 when there were several newspaper reports on the suicide in the house of his younger brother, Reginald, He had been the Director of Telegraphs and Telephones and it appeared that he had had a mental breakdown after he retired.

In May 1936 the Estate minutes noted that the house had been empty for almost three years and it seemed that every applicant who expressed an interest in taking a new lease eventually declined to do so owing to the state of the house and the lack of a garage. Several potential lessees had made suggestions for improvements but the 21 year lease on offer was too short to make them financially viable. C E Barry said that, in his opinion, no satisfactory offer could be expected unless the house was modernised and a garage provided, adding that he thought it was structurally sound and would warrant the considerable expenditure required. In September 1936 he put forward proposals to install new gas and electrical installations along with forming the all-important garage by raising the floor of the kitchen to the general ground level of the house. He also planned a new main staircase, the removal of a front bay window and changes to the other windows. The cost would be circa £2000 and the house, when finished, would contain three sitting rooms, seven bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a much-improved kitchen. George Dean, managing director of builders W J Mitchell, agreed with the price of the work and offered to take the building on a long lease at a ground rent of £25 a year and a premium of £500. They finally agreed on an 80-year lease and a premium of £250.

Work was completed in late summer 1937 and Dean assigned his lease to Noel and Bridget Lucas, who were moving from 26 Alleyn Road. The left in 1940 and the house was then taken over by Edward Cole, a merchant importer/exporter with an office at 167 Upper Thames Street. Louisa Perry, his aunt, lived with the family and was the headmistress at Grove Vale Primary (where his sister also taught). Cole died in 1976.

A lease on this site was granted to Moses Waite, a stone mason and speculative house builder based in Blackman Street in Southwark (now Borough High Street), on 20 July 1759. According to Patrick Darby’s detailed research on 105 Dulwich Village (No 1 Woodlawn), Waite acquired a sufficient land to build three houses, Nos. 101, 103 and 105 (Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Woodlawn). When No. 101 was complete in March 1762, he assigned an underlease of it to Luke Lightfoot, who had also been involved with him on the construction of the other two houses. Lightfoot was in his late thirties and had already had a varied career as a wood and stone carver, cabinet maker, architect, and surveyor. He was later best known locally as the owner and developer of Denmark Hall, a ‘grand place of public entertainment’ built on the what is now the site of the pub, the Fox on the Hill. According to a contemporary account, ‘when it was first opened it was much frequented by large parties from London; it contained one of the largest rooms in England, being upward of 100 feet in length, and 30 feet in width.’ It subsequently became known as the Denmark Hall Tea Gardens, operated by his son Theophilus Lightfoot.

Just over a year later, in April 1763, Lightfoot assigned his lease to Noble Spring ‘of the Customs House, London, gentleman’. While he may have been a gentleman, Spring was also a fraudster as was confirmed in an article in the Police Gazette in October 1775 directed at ‘the comptrollers & searchers of the different ports.’ Spring worked at the Long Room in the Custom House at the Port of London under ‘the collector outwards’, presumably collecting duties on goods leaving the country. He was charged with counterfeiting a receipt for the sum of £182 10s ‘with an intention to cheat and defraud his Majesty of the same.’ The Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs promised a reward of £50 to ‘any person or persons who shall, within one month of the date hereof, apprehend and take, or cause to be apprehended and taken, the said Noble Spring, and brought before the Lord Mayor of London, or some other of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace.’ There is no record as to whether he was actually arrested but the advertisement gave a very good description of his appearance - he was apparently ‘a short thick man, of a fair and ruddy complexion, between forty and fifty years of age, about 5 feet four inches high, is knock-kneed, is very apt to blush when spoken to, his walk is very indifferent from having frequently had the gout, generally wears a lightish brown wig.’

On 27 March 1776, a few months before he went on the run, Noble Spring assigned the house to Edward Browne for a premium of £920. Browne was a wealthy corn factor and, according to Patrick Darby, he had acquired the house as temporary accommodation while his main house, No. 105 Dulwich Village (No. 1 Woodlawn) was refurbished and extended. Subsequently he retained the lease and sublet the house to a surgeon called Robert Lulman until it expired in 1795 . This could explain why there is no record of Lulman’s name in the Dulwich College Archive though he is noted in the contemporary guide book Edward’s ‘Companion from London to Brighthelmston, in Sussex’ which described the property as ‘a genteel house in the possession of Mr Lulman, surgeon.’

The Estate granted a new lease dated September 1797 to William Billeter, who owned other property in the area but, by 1813, the occupant was Philip W Urlwin who was still in residence in 1830. Sometime in the early 1830s the house was leased to Robert Warner and then, between 1837 and 1841, to Samuel Parkman Mann.

Mann ran an oil and colour business (oil and colour men were suppliers of paint). He was not at home at the 1841 Census which showed his 65 year old mother, Sarah, as head, plus three brothers, eight sisters, and a number of servants. The family had previously lived in Clapham and had moved to Dulwich a few years after the death of his father, Abraham Mann, a merchant. Samuel died relatively young in 1843 but his family remained at the house for another nine years. One of his brothers, George, was heavily involved in railway construction and there are at least two mentions of him in newspapers in connection with the Vale and West Wales Junction Railway and the Bristol and Dover Direct Junction Railway. One of his sisters married Dr Edward Ray, a local GP, then living at the White Cottage a few doors down Dulwich Village - they later moved next door into No. 97 Dulwich Village.

Sarah Mann, died in 1854 aged 78, and the lease was then assigned to Rev William Frederick Greenfield, the recently appointed headmaster of the Lower School at Dulwich College (later to be known as Alleyn’s School). Educated at Christ’s Hospital School he had then gone up to Pembroke College, Cambridge University, as a scholar to read mathematics; he had graduated as 24^th Wrangler in 1849. It was not unusual at this time for teachers also to be clergymen and, before he went to teach at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School Ipswich in 1850, he was a minister in two churches in Suffolk. Perhaps the most interesting story told about him was that when he was a senior boy at Christ’s Hospital School, it was the tradition at the school for senior boys to give orations on speech day on the benefits of the royal hospitals in different languages, English, French, Latin, and Greek. In 1845 he gave the one in Greek while another senior boy George Voigt, also later a teacher at Dulwich College, gave the one in French.

His wife Emma ran the house as a boarding house for Dulwich College boys and, in 1871, she had 12 of them. Greenfield died early, aged 49, in 1875 - with George Voigt acting as his executor. His widow continued to live in the house and run it as a College boarding house for another 35 years In the 1881 Census she was listed as ‘Lady in charge of Dulwich College boarding house’ living there with 11 scholars and three servants but, by 1891, she was down to only three scholars.

As time went on the house’s condition gradually deteriorated. In February 1885 there was a serious problems with the drainage which had to be reconstructed at a cost of just over £70, paid for by the Estate. The note in the Estate minutes said that the drains had been built ‘a great many years ago when there was only a small shallow drain on the High Road. It was found of course that the fall was most insufficient, and the cellars under the house were not drained at all. The drains themselves were partly in brick and partly in pipes but were broken up and almost filled with roots of trees, and this not only within the premises but in that part between the front fence and the public sewer.’ In September 1897 the problem was the roof, which was leaking badly, the Surveyor reporting that he had made ‘a personal examination of the roof and recommend it to be repointed and twice coated with tar, the cost of which would be about £18.’ In November 1901 one of the front bays and the entrance steps had to be underpinned.

Emma Greenfield was still living in the house in 1911, with two boarders and two servants, but she had also let part of the ground floor to Isobel Woodman, who ran a nursery school there called the Woodlawn Nursery. The school seems to have been running for some time though there is no record in the Estate Minutes until 1918 when it moved over to the former Old Grammar School on the corner of Gallery Road and Burbage Road. Miss Woodman lived in Lewisham and according to an advertisement for the school in 1895, she held the Froebel Society’s Certificate and so was likely to have been one of the first intake of students who trained and obtained the certificate when it was introduced in 1894.

Emma died in November 1918 and the Estate had an offer in January 1919 from one of the directors of the local builder, W J Mitchell & Son, George A Dean, to take out a new lease subject to the Estate carrying out some repairs and redecoration. The £340 cost also included a new bathroom and WC, but Dean managed to convince the Estate that the house was still in a questionable condition and the new lease, dated 25 March 1920 specifically excluded any tenant responsibility for structural work and repairs to roofs.

It was to be ten years before any problems occurred and it proved yet again to be the drainage. In March 1930, Dean wrote saying that the drains at the front of the house were no longer working because of damage from the roots from the trees on the Manor Waste, the grassed area at the front between the house and the road. While the lease required the lessee to keep the drains in good order and condition, he said that he considered that the situation was beyond his control, and sent a bill for £31 8s 2d for the Council’s remedial work – which the Estate paid.

In November 1932 Dean obtained approval to build a billiard room at the back of the house and install central heating. He and his wife remained in the house for another 35 years until his death in 1967 when a new lease was acquired by David and Elizabeth Pickford moving from 17 Alleyn Park.