58, PECKHAM HIGH STREET

Reasons for Designation

No. 58 Peckham High Street has been designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * a 1720s house with some survival of original fabric including timber-frame, twin-newel stair, mantleshelf, fireplace surround, and some architraves; * the unusual plan survives above ground floor level, just one room deep with closet, stair and stack arranged to the rear of the rooms, a rare survival of a small house of this date; * a rare instance of a house that combines vernacular and polite idioms, gentility and smallness of scale, classicism and timber-framed construction, showing such characteristics were not mutually exclusive in the early C18.

Details

636-1/0/10098 PECKHAM HIGH STREET 12-OCT-09 58

II House, 1720s, possibly as part of a speculation by an Isaac Bennett. Later alterations include a Victorian shop built out in front, entirely renewed in the C20.

EXTERIOR: a timber-framed building of three storeys with a narrow two-bay front, stuccoed, with box-moulded timber eaves cornice and tiled roof. The upper storey proportions are classical, with tall window openings to the first floor and smaller, square openings to the second; the windows are placed symmetrically in the elevation. The ground floor has a built-out C19 shopfront, largely renewed in the late C20; the first floor has modern windows, one a 12-pane sash, within the original openings; and the second floor has late C19 sashes without glazing bars within original openings. The rear elevation was altered in the C20 and the two-storey extension here is later. No chimney is visible above the roof line.

INTERIOR: The building was originally only one room deep, and retains this narrowness on the first and second floors which each contain only a single room, about 15ft square. The building has a back wall chimneystack and so the area to the rear of each room contains the stack, staircase and a closet, arranged in a line and making the most of the limited footprint. The early C18 winder stair from first to second floor survives, this a twin-newel post with a single turned baluster between the two newels and a closed string to the one tread that is not a winder. In the first floor room the architrave to the closet survives. In the second floor room is an early C18 wooden fireplace with robustly moulded mantelshelf and simple fireplace surround, and a second closet architrave (with different moulding profile). The roof was rebuilt in the C20 and has machine-sawn rafters. The first floor was originally reached by a staircase in the rear ground floor room which has been demolished and access is now only via a C20 staircase in No. 60. No original features survive at ground floor level, save the brick stack. For a full survey see RHCME report of 1999.

HISTORY: Originally No. 58 was part of a row, with the slightly lower Nos. 60-62 in the centre flanked by pairs of three storey houses to either side, of which No. 58 is the only survivor. From the 1850s, shops occupied the ground floor and were later built out in front of all three houses. The C20 saw the demolition of neighbouring houses, once part of the row, and the replacement of most historic fabric at ground floor level. In the C18, Peckham was a place of resort, located away from major through roads on a gentle rise that offered prospects of London, and close enough to the metropolis to allow a day-trip. Its buildings were arranged west-east along what is now the High Street, and included the medieval manor, theatres, a chapel, villa residences of courtiers and well-to-do merchants, and rows of smaller houses like those at Nos. 58-62. Defoe described Peckham as having 'some of the finest dwellings about London'.

No. 58 originally overlooked a large house of 1672 built by Thomas Bond, a Restoration courtier, set in ornamental French gardens with views over to St Paul's, described and praised by John Evelyn and then, later, by Defoe. The house was demolished in 1797. Remarkably, the view of St Paul's from the third floor of No 58 can still be enjoyed, the famous dome not obscured by later buildings.

SOURCES: 'Nos. 58-62 and 98-104 Peckham High Street, London, SE15', RCHME Survey Report (February 1999). Peter Guillery, "The Small House in Eighteenth Century London" (Yale, 2004).

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: No. 58 Peckham High Street is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * a 1720s house with some survival of original fabric including timber-frame, twin-newel stair, mantleshelf, fireplace surround, and some architraves; * the unusual plan survives above ground floor level, just one room deep with closet, stair and stack arranged to the rear of the rooms, a rare survival of a small house of this date; * a rare instance of a house that combines vernacular and polite idioms, gentility and smallness of scale, classicism and timber-framed construction, showing such characteristics were not mutually exclusive in the early C18.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

496132

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Guillery, P, The Small House in Eighteenth Century London, (2004)

Other
Nos 58-62 and 98-104 Peckham High Street SE15, 1999,

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