Planning a London Suburban Estate: Dulwich 1882–1920
Abstract
Planning a London Suburban Estate: Dulwich 1882-1920 BERNARD NURSE Introduction London's apparently relentless expansion in the nineteenth century dismayed contemporary obser- vers. South of the Thames the growth was less extensive than in the north but equally dramatic. Walter Besant writing in 1898 complained that 'it is difficult, now that the country south of London' has been covered with villas, roads, streets and shops, to understand how wonderful for loveliness it was until the builder seized upon it'. 1 Speaking as a true south Londoner, brought up in Battersea, he believed the south, with its ring of hills and heaths from Greenwich to Wimbledon, was more attractive than the north, which could only boast the heights of Hampstead, Highgate and Hornsey. He saw much of this countryside disappear in his lifetime, leaving only fragments of common between the rows of suburban residences. By 1901, the population of the County of London south of the Thames had almost trebled since 1851, to reach 1,746,758 or an average of 41 persons per acre. By the First World War, the built up area had carried well beyond the county boundary, in the south and west as far as Beckenham, Croydon and Wimbledon.