Champion, Dog Kennel, Denmark...Which hill is which?

[Reg Smeeton]

This is an odd question from somebody who has lived in this area for decades, but can somebody clarify where exactly they think the following hills are:

- Dog Kennel Hill (I think of this as the hill that Sainsbury's is on)

- Champion Hill (er, this is the name of the football ground whose location is by Sainsbury's, yet the road called Champion Hill is over the ridge, next to the Fox on the Hill pub)

- Denmark Hill (I think of this as the hill that leads up to the Fox on the Hill)

Are they all basically the same hill? Why is the Hamlet ground not called 'Dog Kennel Hill'?

[nxjen]

Geographically they?re all the same hill and the names are of the different roads that go through it.

Geeky info: Denmark Hill used to be called Dulwich Hill and renamed after Queen Anne?s husband. Champion Hill named after the Champion de Crespigny family who owned the land.

[rendelharris]

Don't forget Champion Hill (the road) doesn't only run alongside the Fox, it turns left and runs along the top to meet DKH at the summit - so everything down the slope from it, and to the left of DKH as you go up, is Champion Hill - hence the estate above Sainsbury's being the Champion Hill estate. Dog Kennel Hill is the section of the hill to the right as you go up, hence Dog Kennel Hill estate.

It's actually not the football stadium name that's an anomaly, it's the Sainsbury's calling itself DKH Sainsbury's; chosen I guess for its nearest major road.

[Mick Mac]

Where are or were the dog kennel's? that might help us.

[Townleygreen]

and I think Herne Hill probably is a continuation of these hills?

[Mick Mac]

Denmark Hill

Named in honour of George of Denmark, husband of Queen Anne, who owned property here. Nearby Dog Kennel Hill once contained his kennels.

Champion Hill, part of the same mound, comes from the wonderfully named local landowner Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny.

https://londonist.com/2016/04/how-london-s-hills-got-their-names

[EDOldie]

Always worth a look and explains Herne Hill

http://www.dulwichsociety.com/local-history/465-dulwich-roads-and-place-names

[rupert james]

ARNOULD AVENUE, S.E.5

One of a group of roads on the Champion Hill Estate, named (in 1952) after friends or acquaintances of the Camberwell-born poet Robert Browning (1812-1889), although oddly not including one named after Browning himself. The group comprises:

ARNOULD AVENUE, after Sir Joseph Arnould, a barrister, author and judge, born in Camberwell in 1815;

DOMETT CLOSE, after Alfred Domett, later Prime Mini- ster of New Zealand;

DOWSON CLOSE, after Chris Dowson;

MONCLAR ROAD, after Count Am?d?e de Ripert-Monclar;

WANLEY ROAD, after Nathaniel Wanley.

I always thought the Champion Hill Estate was The Cleve Hall estate.

[lavender27]

...... the hills are alive with the.............

[Reg Smeeton]

Thanks people, the forum at its best.

[civilservant]

so what about Quorn Road and Pytchley Road - they're the wrong side of the tracks for the Dulwich Soc thing

were they so named because they run off Dog Kennel Hill or is there some other hunting connection, however tenuous?

[Vik]

Quorn, Pytchley, Albrighton and all the blocks on the DKH estate are names after hunts. The estate and roads were all created in the 1930's, I presume as the kennels were for hunting dogs, this is the link.

.

[ianr]

John Ruskin (1819-1900) first lived on Herne Hill when he was four. From an extract from his autobiographical Praeterita at https://blog.oup.com/2013/01/john-ruskins-childhood-home/ (there's a full version at https://archive.org/details/praeterita01rusk):

Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground is for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand), on the dome of Mont Blanc; presently falling, however, in what may be, in the London clay formation, considered a precipitous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dulwich) on the east; and with a softer descent into Cold Harbour-lane* on the west: on the south, no less beautifully declining to the dale of the Effra, (doubtless shortened from Effrena, signifying the 'Unbridled' river; recently, I regret to say, bricked over for the convenience of Mr. Biffin, chemist, and others); while on the north, prolonged indeed with slight depression some half mile or so, and receiving, in the parish of Lambeth, the chivalric title of 'Champion Hill,' it plunges down at last to efface itself in the plains of Peckham, and the rural barbarism of Goose Green.