Bellenden Residents' Group (BRG)

The Rye Lane West area of Peckham is full of hidden surprises. Many people will know what the Almshouses in Choumert Road look like from the front but probably don't peer round the back. The Victorians usually treated rear domestic elevations in a fairly basic manner but here there is real attention to the architectural detail. Note especially the parapet/coping detail, and the roof profiles. And who said chimneys are always boring?

The 1940s 'prefab', once so reviled, is in danger of becoming extinct and some are even being preserved. This one, on the corner of Choumert Grove looks well looked after and is a pleasing contrast with the recent development on the far side of Mcdermott Road.

Time was when advertisements like this, on the corner of Chadwick Road and Bellenden Road, were painted all over the gable ends of terrace houses. They are now very rare and fading and so what to do with them? Remove them as eyesores? Unthinkable. Yet to carefully repaint and restore them would be equally crass as it would erase those evocations of the past which we so like about the area.

Most of the area has survived reasonably intact since first developed. So its interesting to note the occasional odd echoes of changes in Peckham's recent history. Although of no particular interest in itself, this little terrace from the 50s looks like a WWII bomb site infill.

These superb remnants of our past are obscured by tatty shops in Peckham High Street. See Peckham Society account http://www.peckhamvision.org/wiki/images/8/82/Peck_Soc_Guillery.jpg of the history of these oldest Peckham buildings from the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries. There is a good view from the Lidl car park.

One of our finest historic buildings obscured by an ugly security fence and motor cars in Highshore Road. The building is now used by Royal Mail for the Highshore Sorting Office.

This is an old painting of Lyndhurst Square from the mid nineteenth century.