As someone who has lived in the area for much longer than BARA (the person) I'd like to add to BARAS's comment: > Many of the older people rented from private landlords who had refused to put in bathrooms, indoor toilets etc due to costs In the 1950s and 1960s the area between Lordship Lane and Barry Road had a high incidence of rented properties with elderly (in those days over 60) tenants. Nearly all of these tenures had Controlled Rents or (later) Regulated Rents, sometimes for Controlled Tenancies with the right to inherit the tenancy. There was also a fair number of requisitioned properties rented out by Camberwell Borough Council. For landlords the return on these tenancies with government controlled rents below market price rents was less that the return on Consols. The landlords could not afford these improvements without subsidising their tenants. An additional problem for modernisation was the number of properties with two or more households in one property with no structural internal division (typically one up, one down). A local estate agent's brochure from c1880 seems to support the history books and confirm that a significant proportion of these properties were built for rental.