Upper Norwood

Upper Norwood
Upper Norwood from the air, with the Croydon transmitting station in the centre
Upper Norwood Location within Greater London
Population	16,082 (2011 Census.Ward)[1]
OS grid reference	TQ329707
London borough	Bromley Croydon Lambeth Southwark
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	SE19
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
UK Parliament	Croydon North Dulwich and West Norwood
London Assembly	Bexley and Bromley Croydon and Sutton Lambeth and Southwark
List of places UK England London 51°25′11″N 0°05′16″W / 51.4196°N 0.0877°W / 51.4196; -0.0877

Upper Norwood is an area of south London, England, within the London Boroughs of

London postcode covers the entirety of the district.

Upper Norwood is one of the highest areas in London, situated along the

that date from the 1970s, as well as the recent construction of larger apartment buildings on Beulah Hill.

History

For centuries, Upper Norwood was occupied by the Great North Wood, an extensive area of natural oak forest which formed a wilderness close to the southern edge of the ever-expanding city of London. The name "Norwood" is a contraction of "North Wood". Local legend has it that Sir Francis Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, was made from timber cut from trees in this area. The forest was a popular area for Londoners' recreation until the 19th century, when it began to be built over. It was also a haunt of Gypsies, with many local street names and pubs recording the link, notably Gipsy Hill. The area still retains woodland in large amounts for an urban area.

The Beulah Hill ridge was used as a sighting-point for the

. It was particularly useful for this purpose on account of both its height and its relative proximity to Greenwich.

In 1831, one of England's most prominent architects,

The Crystal Palace was rebuilt nearby on

.

In March 1966, shortly before the

Landmarks

was established in the area as Westwood High School in 1958.

The Cedars School and The Laurels School are Roman Catholic independent schools located on the former site of Virgo Fidelis Convent Senior School on Central Hill, founded in 1848. They occupy an eighteenth-century grand house, once the home of the notable socialite and courtesan Mary Nesbitt.

The Church of England Parish Church of St John the Evangelist on Sylvan Road, completed in 1887, is a notable example of the work of the architect John Loughborough Pearson. Designed in the Gothic Revival style, this Grade II* listed red brick building features some significant interior stone decoration and a stained glass window by Ninian Comper, who lived in the area.^[7]

Upper Norwood Library in Westow Hill, the only independent public library in the UK, was built in 1899 by joint agreement of the London Borough of Croydon and the London Borough of Lambeth. The library holds a Local History Collection of the Upper Norwood district and the Crystal Palace.

A notable park in the area is Upper Norwood Recreation Ground. Its 19-acre (77,000 m²) site is part of the Harold Road Conservation Area. Its boundary is defined by Chevening Road, Hermitage Road, Eversley Road and Harold Road. One of London's hidden rivers, River Effra flows under the park and at the Harold Road end a wellhead exists. It was covered in the 1940s. The Upper Norwood Recreation Ground was a location in Patrick Keiller's 1983 film, Norwood, and in Chris Shepherd's 2010 film Bad Night for the Blues.^{[citation needed]}

The Croydon transmitting station, a TV transmitter tower, stands on the hill at Upper Norwood and a second larger TV transmitter, the Crystal Palace transmitting station, stands in Crystal Palace Park. Together these make the district a landmark location, visible from any part of the London area.

In 1985 a Safeway supermarket opened on Westow Street. In 1990 the exterior of this branch featured in a clip of the television drama series Grange Hill.^[8] The store was acquired by Morrisons in March 2004, who closed it in November 2005. The lease of the vacant store was purchased by Sainsbury's in August 2006.^[9]

Transport

The hilly nature of the land has restricted the construction of railways through the district. The former branch line terminus at Crystal Palace High Level railway station which opened in 1865 closed in 1954, and the remaining Crystal Palace railway station is some distance below Upper Norwood, and approached by many steps. However, Crystal Palace Parade remains an important bus interchange and many residents instead use plentiful local bus routes to travel to West Norwood, Tulse Hill, Streatham, West Dulwich or Norbury railway stations. The disconnection from the capital's rail/tube network has led to it having lower house prices than other areas possessing scenic views of London.

Notable people

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Upper Norwood" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• Margaret Gill
  . A blue plaque unveiled in 2007 commemorates Aldridge as the "African Roscius".
• Thomas Attwood (1765–1838), pupil of Mozart and organist at St Paul's Cathedral, lived in Roselawn, a large house on Beulah Hill near the junction with Hermitage Road. He played host to the composer Felix Mendelssohn in 1829 and 1832.
• Admiral Sir Robert Lambert Baynes KCB (1796–1869), Royal Navy officer; Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Station; credited with adopting a policy of non-intervention that helped defuse the San Juan Boundary Dispute of 1859 between Britain and the United States of America.
• Blue Plaque.^[10]
• Gothic Revival architects of the 20th century, lived at The Priory, 67 Beulah Hill (now demolished). His son Nicholas Comper (1897–1939) was an aviator who designed the Comper Swift monoplane in the back garden.^[11]
• Crystal Palace Concerts
  .
• Bernard Fagg (1915–1987), archaeologist and museum curator, was born in Upper Norwood.
• Sir Theodore Ford (1829–1920), chief justice of the Straits Settlements, lived in Upper Norwood from his retirement in 1896 to his death in 1920.
• Robert FitzRoy (1805–1865), captain of HMS Beagle, second governor of New Zealand, and inventor of the weather forecast, lived during the last years of his life at Lyndhurst House, 140 Church Road and is buried in front of All Saints' Church.
• Walter Franklin (1891–1968), first-class cricketer, who played for the MCC.
• Simon Friend, multi-instrumentalist in the alternative rock band The Levellers founded in 1988.
• Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807–1894), sculptor of the famous dinosaurs in the park, lived at Fossil Villa, 22 Belvedere Road.
• Anthony Ludovici (1882–1971), philosopher, and his wife the writer Elsie Finnimore Buckley (1882–1959) lived at 35 Central Hill, soon after they were married in 1920.
• G. E. Moore (1873–1958), philosopher, who was the father (with Bertrand Russell) of analytic philosophy.
• Mary Nesbitt (1742/3–1825), an 18th-century courtesan who became involved in political intrigue, lived at Norwood House off Central Hill. The house is now part of The Cedars School and The Laurels School.
• Charles Patteson (1891–1957), clergyman, first-class cricketer and international hockey player.
• Joseph Paxton (1803–1865), famed designer of the Crystal Palace, lived in a house called Rockhills at the top of Westwood Hill.
• Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), the impressionist painter, moved with his family to the area upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.
• Troy Southgate (b.1965), writer, musician and publisher, lived in Gipsy Hill and grew up on the Central Hill Estate.
• Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) highly influential English Particular Baptist minister known as the Prince of Preachers was Pastor of Metropolitan Tabernacle from 1854 to 1892 and lived in Upper Norwood at Westwood on Beulah Hill from 1880 until his death. The namesake of Spurgeon Road.^[12]
• Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1840–1929), suffragette and Shakespearean scholar, organized cultural groups in Upper Norwood in the 1880s.
• Marie Stopes (1880–1958), daughter of the above, a botanist and birth-control advocate who opened the first birth control clinic in Britain.
• Sir William Treloar (1843–1923), a Sheriff and Lord Mayor of London lived at Grange Mount, a house situated at the junction of Grange Road and Beulah Hill.
• Sir Francis Wyatt Truscott (1824–1895), Lord Mayor of London 1879–1880, lived at Essex Lodge on Central Hill.
• Sir George Wyatt Truscott (1857–1941), son of the above, also Lord Mayor of London 1908–1909, lived at Emilena House, Central Hill.
• Émile Zola (1840–1902), French novelist, lived in exile at the Queen's Hotel on Church Road, here from October 1898 to June 1899.

Nearest places

Nearest stations

• East London Line
  services from 2010)
• Gipsy Hill railway station
• West Norwood railway station
• Norwood Junction railway station
• Thornton Heath railway station

References

Sources

• Alan R. Warwick; The Phoenix Suburb: A South London Social History; Publisher: Crystal Palace Foundation;
  ISBN 0-904034-01-1
  / 0904034011
• Brewer's Britain and Ireland, compiled by John Ayto and Ian Crofton,
  ISBN 0-304-35385-X

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Upper Norwood.

• Upper Norwood Library – Independent Public Library
• Virtual Norwood
• Norwood Society
• www.uppernorwood.com