Sydenham Town Forum

It was a public hanging, Robin.Bishop was, according to this site http://tinyurl.com/gpyajqk, "the last man to be hanged in public [at Maidstone Gaol]... on Thursday, the 30th of April 1868." Also, several local papers described "a small crowd assembled on the occasion, but their demeanour was ...

The Swiss Cottage was, as Pat says, a pub on the corner of Wastdale Road and Stanstead Road. Alfred Cartwright lived in Wastdale Road and his parents Henry, a shoemaker, and Matilda lived round the corner in Malham Road. Approaching midnight on 2 April 1868 Alfred and his parents left the Swiss ...

Sharla, the spire of St Antholin's was damaged by lightning in 1850 (or earlier, according to some sources) and bought by Robert Harrild who erected it in his garden at Sydenham. Unles your painting is earlier than 1850, it would show the replacement spire.

There was a cinema on Bromley Road, where you describe MartinH, called The Splendid. It was closed and demolished in 1958 after, according to a local newspaper, "Teddy boys" had slashed and broken the seats. I can't find Falkor's picture, so this is the best I can do: http://farm3.static.flickr.com ...

It was. The hospital had various official names but between about 1920 until the early 1950s it was called the South Eastern Hospital for Children.

There was a mansion, Lee, called Home Park Lodge. The estate dates back to at least the 1550s, when it was a farm. By the 1770s the farm had expanded to become one of the largest estates in Sydenham. The estate came up for auction in 1776 when it was described as "a compact farmhouse... and about 18 ...

Oh dear, and I thought it would slip through without anyone else noticing.

It seems sensible to start a new thread to deal with Roman remains...

On another thread Falkor wrote: …Sydenham Hill is an ancient boundary between the parishes of Lewisham and Camberwell. When was it first formed? Does it have a Roman origin? … the Romans did at least walk across Sydenham Common (included most of Upper Sydenham), as a major Roman artefact was dis ...

Hi, I believe we communicated on this some years ago. The Lurcucks are fairly easy and I’m sure you know far more about the family than I do. William (probably born in Rodmersham, Kent in about 1865) was living at 59 Coombe Road in 1894. By 1898 he had moved to 39 Mount Ash Road where he appears in t ...

I would also like to add my congratulations, Reg. Your memories of life in Sydenham during the inter-war years and beyond are absolutely priceless. Books and documents offer an accurate but often dry and even dull record of the past. Memories such as yours bring these dry facts to life. Even more ...

Not much information to go on, Chris. One possibility is William Edwin Usher. He was a bootmaker/shoe repairer at 141 Kirkdale from about 1931 to 1958. The shop was just past Willow Way, on the site of Tesco's. In this picture (taken in 1956) it is between Packman and Mann's: http://farm3.static ...

The story that Lalique attended “Sydenham College” was told to me twelve or more years ago by someone who had heard it from somebody else. I treated it then, as now, with some suspicion. Many dozens of websites say that he was at “Sydenham College”, “Sydenham College of Art” or even “an art school in ...

That would have been of some interest, SydenhamHillAndy, if the original owner had been Edward Stanton. In fact it was Edward Saxton (I'm sure I've written about this elsewhere on this site). Saxton lived at Beltwood from 1851, when he had the house built, until his death in 1911. This is an extract ...

Mark, Crownbrook was at 25 Mayow Road. The house was demolished and replaced by a housing estate, probably in the 1970s. Andre Rieder and his family were only there for a short time as by 1906 Kellys directory has him at Branscombe, 75 Mayow Road. That house does survive, opposite Mayow Park. I don ...

Parochial? Me? Not at all! It's not my fault that that so many influential and important people of the past two centuries had Sydenham connections. The Crystal Palace may have played a part, but many who visited either stayed in or passed through Sydenham, and recorded the experience. Why only a few ...

...presumably now's the time to change the name... Juwlz, you and others have not convincingly explained why the name should be changed at all, other than describing it as "silly". The name (with that spelling), has been in use for 70 years so why change it? At the risk of repetition, in 1910 an ...

Simon wrote:Boots has been on that spot for 70 years...

A lot longer than that, Simon. Boots has been at 55 Sydenham Road since at least 1911

Marion, I don't have the PC from the 1950s you mention. These are the only pictures I have of Sydenham Avenue, both taken about 1905-1910: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2537/4095585367_cc953dee27_b.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2696/4096344516_74c8af7cec_b.jpg If you want to download them , go ...

This is the only picture I know of of Beechgrove. It shows the back of the house: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2424/3977801704_878d084824.jpg Beechgrove, 111 Sydenham Hill, was built in the early 1860s. It was a private home perhaps until the end of WW2. Lionel George Logue lived there from before ...