London’s Alleys: Green Dale, SE5

This is a long sloping passage in Denmark Hill that existed before the housing around it and was originally called Green Lane. Originally, it linked two large houses at the northern end, Hill Lodge and the Pelican House girl’s college, to Dulwich via Henry Bessemer’s Observatory.

Henry Bessemer was an English inventor whose steel-making process became the most important technique for making steel in the nineteenth century. He owned a home in Denmark Hill, where he continued inventing and built his Observatory for observing the night skies.

When built, the 30-inch mirror telescope was one of the largest in the world. The observatory was later repurposed into a clubhouse for the Bessemer Golf Club and (shamefully) demolished in 1947 to make space for the Denmark Hill Estate. At the time of its opening, the Denmark Hill Estate was Camberwell Borough Council’s biggest housing development, providing 682 homes.

That housing was on the western side of the alley.

There is though a bench roughly where the observatory was, and a photo of it on the side of the bench to remind us of what was lost.

The housing along the eastern side was developed on the former manor house grounds in the 1950s – with the road layout established by 1950, the first of the new blocks of flats completed by 1953, and the whole estate pretty much finished by 1960.

It was also around this time that the alley got a little bit longer – as it used to end about a hundred yards short of the main road, but was extended northwards to the main road when the houses in that bit of land were also redeveloped.

To the southern end are the Green Dales themselves — large swathes of open fields.

There has been local controversy over the past few years though, with plans to redevelop the site of the Dulwich Hamlet football club, which sits at the edges of the Green Dale, into housing, and build a replacement stadium on the Green Dale lands.

That was blocked, albeit not conclusively, and there are still attempts to redevelop the site ongoing.

Continuing south, you cross over a decorative railway bridge.

The railway was opened in 1868 by the London Brighton and South Coast Railway, running in a cutting through this part of London at a time when it was still largely fields, expecting the growth in housing to provide them with paying passengers.

The bridge is decorated with two coats of arms, and the date it was built – in 1866 (2 years before the railway opened).

The right-hand side coat of arms was originally for Edward Alleyn and adopted by Dulwich College, but in 1935, the College of Arms decreed that it was the exclusive property of the Alleyn family. Since then, Dulwich College and Alleyn’s School have used slightly different designs, with a band of ermine added.

The left side coat of arms is that of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. It contains the City of London cross, two dolphins representing Brighton, the three half-lion/half-ship for the Cinque Ports and the star and crescent for Portsmouth.

A bit further along, and the southern end of the alley was once nicknamed Mud Alley, thanks to the condition of the path, but following protests including keeping children from the neighbouring school, it was finally paved over in 1953, and that’s where the alley turns into a road.

Part of the reason it took several years of protests to pave the alley into a road is that it was owned by Dulwich College Estates, and they weren’t minded to spend money on it. Ultimately, Camberwell Council took over this stretch of alley as a public highway.

Later, in 1955, the alley was fully closed to road traffic, as post-war plans to turn the whole alley into a 60ft wide main road connecting Denmark Hill to East Dulwich were scrapped.

And it’s been pretty much like that ever since.