03 Jun

Neighbourhood Guide: Southeast London

Home to some of the up and coming sights in South East London which offers a local vibe to the Capital that will make you appreciate seeing 30+ attractions on a Top Sights Tour even more! Below is the guide for the best of local London.

 

Historically the south of London has “remained relatively unknown to other Londoners, except as a source of apprehension, it used to be home to the poor and to prisons (including the original Clink), not to mention taverns and “pleasure gardens”  These days neighborhoods south of the Thames — in specific, those approximately southeast of London Bridge — are among the capital’s most energetic. Well-known districts such as Greenwich are thriving on a rejuvenated riverbank, While the Crystal Palace (which gave the area its name when it was moved to Sydenham Hill following The Great Exhibition in 1851) gave birth to the phrase ‘spend a penny’. The giant greenhouse had the first British public toilet (men only) and, during the exhibition, Pullen writes, 827,280 make visitors paid a penny each to use the ‘Reading Rooms’. Now urban explorers, inventive types and middle-class families priced out of other neighborhoods are riding upgraded transport links into areas they had long overlooked. Come and discover th best of what south London has to offer. 

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As far as music goes, South London is a place to be. The birthplace of grime will always be east London, but when Stormzy asked where you knew him from the answer was well and truly south London. Thornton Heath to be specific. Others like Novelist, Mr Mitch and Krept & Konan have been rapping it in style from other areas of south London. Plus, who could forget that the founding members of So Solid Crew came from Peckham and Brixton?

 

In a city that’s sprouting distinctive buildings almost faster than it can conjure cheeky monikers for them — e.g. the “Cheesegrater” (the Leadenhall Building) and the, um, “Glass Testicle” (City Hall) — it’s the neo-futurist Shard, Western Europe’s tallest building, that offers views as cool as its name. The Shard,  also referred to as the Shard of Glass,  Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 95-storey supertall skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of the Shard Quarter development. Standing 309.6 metres (1,016 ft) high, the Shard is the tallest building in the United Kingdom, the tallest building in the European Union, and the fifth-tallest building in Europe.t is also the second-tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, after the concrete tower of the Emley Moor transmitting station. It replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-storey office block built on the site in 1975.

 

Borough Market, perhaps a millennium old, is still home to all that’s tasty and trendy in the capital

Borough Market is a wholesale and retail food market in Southwark, London, England. It is one of the largest and oldest food markets in London, with a market on the site dating back to at least the 12th century. The present buildings were built in the 1850s, and today the market mainly sells speciality foods to the general public.


Rapidly gentrifying Peckham (where John Boyega, who plays the rebellious storm trooper in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” was born) is one of London’s most diverse districts. n 2000, the Peckham Library became the first (and to date only) library to win British architecture’s highest accolade, the Stirling Prize. Seven years later, Peckham landed on the hipster radar with the arrival of Frank’s Café – a Campari bar plonked on an empty car park rooftop. And ever since, the surprisingly under-rated south London enclave has been spawning a long list of fun attractions, drawing cool seekers from across the city. 

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Not many neighbourhoods can claim a multi-storey car park as their most-valued asset. And yet, Frank’s Café is still probably the only place in the area a non-Peckhamite could name. With Frank’s also came Bold Tendencies, an annual sculpture show on top of the same car park, which firmly established Peckham as a thriving site on London’s art scene. The lower levels have also hosted classical concerts, including the Proms (apparently the concrete ceilings are excellent for acoustics). On the ground floor is the retro Peckhamplex cinema; scruffy but locally loved, it sells tickets for £4.99 – to any film, all day long.

 

With residents like Karl Marx, north London’s Highgate Cemetery is the city’s most famous. But Nunhead Cemetery in southeast London, an all-but-elvish realm where dense woods have grown up around the graves, and signs warn of the dangers of vine-clad stone crosses and monuments tilting under the weight of the ages, is the most atmospheric. Perhaps the least known, but most attractive, of the great Victorian Cemeteries of London. Consecrated in 1840, it is one of the seven great Victorian cemeteries established in a ring around the outskirts of London. It contains examples of the magnificent monuments erected in memory of the most eminent citizens of the day, which contrast sharply with the small, simple headstones marking common, or public, burials. It’s formal avenue of towering limes and the Gothic gloom of the original Victorian planting gives way to paths which recall the country lanes of a bygone era. 

The Friends of Nunhead Cemetery (FONC) exists to represent all those with an interest in the cemetery. The group seeks to promote the conservation and appreciation of the cemetery as a place of remembrance, of historic importance and of natural beauty. There is a conducted tour of the cemetery, open to all, on the last Sunday of each month, starting from the Linden Grove gates at 2:15 p.m. Members receive a multi-page quarterly newsletter containing news, features, letters and adverts. Also listed are details of meetings, tours and open days organised for members and the general public.

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