By Christine Camplin

The transformation of the Goose Green area from countryside to suburbia took barely three decades. Railways sped the commuting clerical class into the city and the final years of the century brought more churches and shops plus schools, medical and leisure facilities.
 
The local authority responded accordingly and in 1883 the Parks Committee recommended the planting of 40 lime trees, 35 planes and 12 elms on Goose Green at an estimated cost of £13O.
 
Many young families moved into the new terraces, and the move of St John’s school to larger premises at the corner of Archdale and Northcross Roads in 1872 proved insufficient for the increasing number of children. Until the 1870s all schools apart from church schools were private. Following the 1870 Elementary Education Act, the London School Board opened a number of imposing three-storey elementary schools locally. They acquired the northern garden of Walnut Tree Villa in Adys Road in 1880 and on 17 November 1884 opened Adys Road Board School with 942 elementary school pupils. Designed by the Board’s architect, Thomas Jerram Bailey, it had a corridor and four classrooms on each of the three floors with boys on the top floor and infants at ground level. Halls and four other classrooms were opened some four years later. Today the building is used by St John's & St Clement's C of E Primary School.

A new school with almost 1000 children came as a bit of a shock for the neighbours. So in 1885 Walnut Tree Villa was rebuilt in its southern garden, separated from the school by four semi-detached houses (63-69 Adys Road) plus the schoolkeeper's house.
 
A second school followed on 1 June 1896 when the Board replaced a temporary building in Darrell Road with The Friern School on Peckham Rye (today the site of Harris Boys' Academy East Dulwich). The architect was again Bailey whose design accommodated 218 boys, 216 girls and 214 infants. It had “all the latest improvements in school buildings” including a house-wifery centre. The site received approval of the Vicar of St John’s who was consulted “so that the position should not injure his voluntary schools”.
 
Bailey’s third local school was The Grove Vale School (now Goose Green Primary School). It opened on 23 April 1900 on the former site of Suffolk Nursery. By 1904 it had 1084 pupils.
 
The area around Peckham Rye had long been associated with education. As early as 1837 Pigot and Co.’s directory claimed: “Peckham is remarkable for the great number of boarding schools for youth of both sexes established in it; this may be attributed to the salubrity and purity of the air and water, both of which are considered as excellent as any in the neighbourhood of the metropolis.”
 
The following schools featured on the 1881 or 1891 Censuses:

• Malmesbury College, Malmesbury house, East Dulwich Road (Boys preparatory boarding; 1878-1890s).
• Langley House School, 71 East Dulwich Road (Girls day; bef. 1880-1906+).
• Rye College, 81 Peckham Rye (Boys day; 1880s-1890s).
• Fenwick College, 22 and 24 East Dulwich Road, also 52 Fenwick Road. (Boys and girls boarding; 1887-1906).
• Rye Lodge, 14 Peckham Rye (Girls boarding; 1860s-1890s).
• “Ladies College”, 3 Tredegar Villas, East Dulwich Road. (Girls boarding; 1878-1880s).
• “Ladies College”, Tredegar House, East Dulwich Road (Girls boarding; 1881-1903).
• Misses Cocking, Bedford Lodge, Fenwick Grove (Girls day; 1880s).

The new community’s growing number of residents needed a hospital. (Until King’s College Hospital opened in 1913 patients were sent to Guy’s or St Thomas’s.) What they got was a workhouse infirmary, not a general hospital, and it was not for locals as it belonged to the parishes of St Saviour and St George-the-Martyr in Southwark, and St Mary in Newington. After discounting a site near Peckham Rye Common in 1871 on cost grounds, St Saviour's Union Infirmary purchased 6.5 acres in East Dulwich Grove for £14,000 and opened what is today Dulwich Hospital in April 1887. It was laid out in a pavilion-plan with a central administrative block and two wings containing 723 beds in 24 Nightingale wards each with isolation, day and staff rooms.
 
In 1892 Camberwell Board of Guardians began work on their own workhouse for 898 mostly mentally ill, elderly and infirm inmates. Opened in 1895 in Constance Road it was located on the opposite side of the railway line to St Saviour's Union Infirmary (a tunnel beneath the railway connects the two institutions). It eventually became St Francis' Hospital.
 
That same year on 25 June 1892 Dulwich Baths opened to the public. Adults paid 6d (old pence) for a 1st class swim and ‘tuppence’ for 2nd class in two swimming pools with separate entrances for men and women. Designed by Spalding & Cross they are today London's oldest public baths in continuous operation and originally had public slipper baths and a laundry in the basement.
 
Dulwich Baths also provided lessons for local Board Schools: in October 1906 a swimming competition between boys of Adys Road, Bellenden Road, and Grove Vale Schools, was won by Grove Vale who received a silver challenge cup from the chairman of Grove Vale school managers.
 
Many more public houses and ‘beer retailers’ were established in the parish in the last quarter of the 19th century;  there have been at least 16 pubs in total. Other early watering holes joining the King’s Arms, East Dulwich Hotel and The Old White Horse (1826) were: The Foresters Arms (The Bishop), Lordship Lane (1865), Lord Palmerston, Lordship Lane (1866), Herne Tavern, Forest Hill Rd (1870), Old Cherry Tree Hotel, Grove Vale (1872), The Upland (The Actress), Crystal Palace Rd (1882), The Oglander Tavern (1883), and the Gowlett Tavern (1885).
 
Following the creation of the new Dulwich parliamentary constituency in 1885 two constitutional clubs were opened in East Dulwich. Both were members only social clubs - and exclusively for men.
 
Dulwich Reform Club opened on the south-west side of Goose Green on 31 March 1886 “amidst the congratulations of a large number of Peckham and Dulwich Liberals”. Ironically, Norland House was formerly the home of John Scott, President of the Camberwell, Peckham, and Dulwich Conservative Club. The premises, which were converted in two weeks, contained a room nearly 70 ft long for smoking, concerts and political meetings, and an adjoining billiard room on the ground floor. Upstairs a large smoking and reading room had a corner set aside for card-players.
 
Local Conservatives were not to be outdone and two years later John Blundell Maple, Conservative Member of Parliament for Dulwich (1887-1903), bought the freehold of Clumber House at 33 East Dulwich Grove. After extensive structural alterations Dulwich Constitutional Working Men's Club opened on Thursday 1 November 1888 with similar facilities to its counterpart. These included a concert hall, a small hall plus billiards, smoking, reading and games rooms. The bowling green was laid out in 1889.
 
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century a number of other churches were built in St John’s parish:

• Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Barry Road (1874 ) superseded a small 1860s building in Lordship Lane and held 1,000.
• St Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, Five Elms, Lordship Lane (1879) was a large house acquired by members of the Franciscan Order who later opened a school in 1882.
• Christ Church, McDermott Road (1880), built by Ezekiel James (E J) Bailey for Norfolk Street Baptist Church, has since been used by a variety of independent congregations.
• Dulwich Grove Congregational Church, East Dulwich Road (1890). The foundation stone was laid in 1878, the Lecture Hall opened the following year, and the church, designed by James Cubit, opened on 11 June 1890
• Peckham Rye Baptist Tabernacle, Nigel Road (1891) opened for the Norfolk Street congregation after a move from McDermott Road.
• Amott Road Baptist Church, Amott Road (1896). After services in the open-air and a series of rented chapels (including Norfolk Street Baptist Church) the community built a small corrugated iron chapel and hall.
• St James Church, Church of Scotland, (Presbyterian), East Dulwich Road (1896) was the last Scottish church built in London and faced St John’s on the opposite side of Goose Green. St James' Cloister retains the name of the church today. The Scottish congregation had worshipped at Norland House from 1881. The foundation stone of the church was laid on 25 March 1893 in the gardens of Norland house and the church and lecture hall opened in 1896.

Between St James Church and Dulwich Baths stood Westwood House, the residence of Mr Henry Littleton. On Saturday, 3 April 1886 between 300 and 400 people attended a reception in the spacious music room given in honour of composer Franz Liszt on one of his last foreign tours. Liszt was staying at the house.
 
It must therefore have been disquieting for the locals when this “old-fashioned mansion” was demolished and replaced with a ginger beer factory barely twelve years later. Batey and Co. manufactured ginger-beer, “Coda,” “Kola,” ginger-ale, lemonade, and soda water at one penny per bottle.
 
And what was happening at St John’s during all the changes in the neighbourhood?
 
Rev Thomas Acton Warburton retired in 1888 due to the ill health of his wife, Emily. He died on 22 August 1894 at Hastings Lodge, Dulwichwood Park. His successor, the sixth incumbent of St John’s, and the third Irish-born, was the Rev William James Strickland (1858-1900). He first came to St John's as Curate in 1880 but within a few weeks had to seek warmer climes for the sake of his health and took up an appointment in Natal, South Africa where he married Editha Margaret Buttemer on 27 August 1884. They had four children, three of whom were born and baptised at St John’s.
 
Strickland returned to St John’s in 1885 to resume his Curacy, succeeding Thomas Warburton as Vicar in 1888. His ministry saw a time of financial crisis in the church. Though the area of the parish had reduced with the creation of additional churches, the population had grown to 19,946 and the number of houses to 3,266.

Many wealthy families, residents of the big houses, had moved away and income from seat rents reduced accordingly. James Strickland’s health deteriorated and he died on 17 December 1900, aged 42, the first year of the new century and the end of the Victorian era.
 
First mosque in Peckham
The first mosque in Peckham was in the basement of 51 Fenwick Road, the home of  Khalid Sheldrake. Born Bertie William Sheldrake (1888–1947), he was a pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam in 1903. From about 1905 he began conducting prayers at his house in Peckham, and also held several well-attended open-air meetings on Peckham Rye.
 
Sheldrake was honorary president of the Western Islamic Association and supported the construction of the first purpose-built mosque in London which opened on 23 October 1926 in Southfields, Wandsworth.
 
The house was demolished after bombing in September 1940.

And finally...

"WARNING TO CYCLISTS. - On Thursday night a young gentleman riding a tricycle, while attempting to descend the steep hill leading to East Dulwich station, lost control of his machine and was thrown off with tremendous force. He was seriously injured about the head. Cyclists are reminded that he danger of "trying" the hill in question is greatly enhanced, especially in the dark, by the extremely bad condition of the roadway."
(South London Press, 28 July 1888)

Seeing Differently: Franciscans and Creation by Simon Cocksedge, Samuel Doble and Nicholas Alan Worssam (Canterbury Press, 2021)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field” (Matthew 13:44), and so it proved for members of the Society of St Francis living at Hilfield Friary in Dorset when they learned in 1995 that they had one of the finest wildflower meadows in the county on their land. Little regarded up to then, and normally used as a campsite for visitors, the words “You have here a treasure to be guarded and nurtured” transformed the community’s attitude to the land and led them back to a deeper study of the value St Francis placed on the natural world. Francis’s theology of creation is wonderfully expressed in his Canticle of the Creatures which we know as the hymn ‘All Creatures of our God and King’. The Canticle’s Italian title ‘Laudato Si’ was used by Pope Francis for his encyclical ‘On Care for our Common Home’, published in 2015.

Last year, in the early years of the pandemic, when the skies were empty but for birds, the air was clear of pollution and the roads had little traffic, some of us had a chance to see the world differently. On the daily walk we may have felt more connected to nature than since childhood. The garden, the allotment, the window box and the bird feeder gave us a chance of contemplation, and a hope that real change might be possible if we stopped the frenzied misuse of creation and learned to respect it. It also made us think again at what makes a community.

This book by three Anglican Franciscans examines the stories of St Francis, his teaching on humanity’s fellowship with the created world, his own lived spirituality and what it can teach us today. Simon Cocksedge, a priest and member of the Third Order, reflects on Francis and Creation through the familar stories such as the saint’s preaching to the birds and the reconciliation between the people of Gubbio and the wolf terrorising the town. Br Nicholas Alan SSF looks at Francis’s theology of creation and how it was developed by his early followers like St Clare, Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Jacopone da Todi. How relevant is the wisdom of a mediaeval friar to our contemporary world? In the last few chapters Br Sam SSF, who is based at the House of the Divine Compassion in Plaistow, East London, discusses Franciscan experience today in the heart of the city. This, perhaps, is the part of the book which may be more immediately accessible to the reader, but the stories and theology in the first two parts underpin it all. If you think of St Francis through the soft focus of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 film Brother Sun, Sister Moon this book will make you think again. We need Franciscan wisdom if we are to reset our minds and refocus our eyes in the face of the climate emergency. It is a radical and profoundly hopeful book.