Who started the regeneration of East Dulwich as a shopping centre?

[Keef]

I agree with your time frame. I went to Liverpool in 96, and didn't really come back much at all until I moved back in 2001, and I was surprised by the changes both in ED and Camberwell.

At that stage, only the EDT had really changed, and was packed every weekend. Up in Camberwell you had the funky munky and the Red Star which at that time was also packed at the weekends. It was strange seeing a nightlife in this area, having spent my late teens always going over to see friends around New Cross and Blackheath.

Between 2002 and 2004 everything seemed to start opening, all the pubs were getting done up, and Lordship Lane was taking it's current form. Funny though that in some ways it still seems the same as it was when I was a little kid.

[Zebedee Tring]

Surely it was inevitable that ED would go upmarket at some time when Dulwich Village became too expensive for a group of upwardly mobile people, who then colonised ED. The same thing early happened to Herne Hill - in the Swinging Sixties when I had a girlfriend living there, it was very much 'erne 'ill.

It has happened all over London. The village part of my old stomping ground of Walthamstow has become fashionable because people can no longer afford to live in Woodford Green and Wanstead.

[Keef]

Do you think even Archway might become okay when Muswell Hill gets too full? ;-)

[lozzyloz]

Time to start investing in Penge

[kford]

Time to start investing in SE26 and SE23:

http://www.thedolphinsydenham.com/

And they'll get the London Overground/East London Extension.

[kford]

I would suggest, again, that ED 2.0 started with The EDT, Palmerston, Inside 72, Liquorice, East Dulwich Deli and Cheeseblock

[cathg]

Actually when i think about it ED was on its way up back in the eighties. I lived in camberwell in the late eighties and was an avid reader of City Limits who once recommended the original East Dulwich Deli near the EDT as a great place to get real, fresh parmesan. I distinctly remember my first pioneering trip over denmark hill to lordship lane to invest in a chunk. A couple of years later Mr Lui got a mention in a best chinese round-up and i tried that. Then in about 1989 the EDT started running comedy nights and I became a regular there. The rest is lost in a blur of frenzied upwardly mobile history. Maybe Blue Mountain customers can be divided into those who first used it pre- and post-mosaics.

[clare]

We lived in Brixton for 5 years and I never set foot in East Dulwich for all of that time (no tube !). Then we had a baby in 1994 and someone told me that you could go to a shop in a place called Lordship Lane that sold maternity bras. That was Hey Diddle Diddle (corner of Hansler and LL).

We had a coffee in the Blue Mountain and the rest dear readers is history........

[EDmummy]

We moved here in 1999 and my uncle who lives in Brixton said it was quite "posh" already.

[rifleman harris]

Just to show how old I am (43) i remember when the only eating place apart from Savarins greasy spoon down LL when i was a kid was "The Spartan Grill" which was directly next to Somerfield. Then later "Never On a Sunday" opened up where i believe Spaghetti westerns is now. Yilmaz's which is next to Hissar; was great in the 80's because it stayed opened until you left. many a time me and a few friends from the Magdala Football team crawled out of there about 5am on a sunday morning.

[EDOldie]

Surely it's our old favorite demographics which change an area. We are merely the pawns in an over large game of chess over which we have little or no control. The estate agents move in afterwards like the parasites they are. I should know. Er, yes, it was a good lunch thanks.

[Keef]

kford Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Time to start investing in SE26 and SE23:

Shhhhh don't tell everyone, that's my plan, and I don't want to get priced out of another area! ;-)

[kford]

Mum's the word, keef, mum's the word.

[HOMum]

wouldnt you agree that gentrification and regeneration are very different?

[kford]

Gentrification comes after regeneration.

[????]

Blue mountain by itself, then Graces and then The Thai Corner Cafe led the charge, when the whole lane was crap...indeed my neighbour back then (1993) called it 'hardship lane'

[dulwichmum]

I am inclined to agree with ????, it was Blue Mountain (with their home made chocolate eclairs on a Thursday), The Thai Corner Cafe and Grace and Favour. Before Blue Mountain, there was really only Le Chardon and Springers, Walshes the Glaziers, 7-11, The Old Palmerston and some tumbleweed. The curry houses of choice were Mirash, Eastern Eye or Surma. The area around Lordship Lane has been very middle class for quite a while. The late 90's saw an influx of young professional families. I even remember the first "it" pram. It was a Landrover 3 wheeler. The don't make them anymore - bless!

[katgod]

Back in 1995 a good friend moved into the flats opposite Kings on the Rye near the estate agent Burnett Ware and Graves. I didn't live in London then. My mother in law, ex of Balham, stated "there is no such place as East Dulwuich, its Peckham". The friend who lived here refused to answer my questions about it (I hadn't visited) because"it's not great and there is no way you are ever going to live here so there's no point telling you". He had me down as too suburban.

Move forward to 2001, priced out of Greenwich where we were living, we came, saw houses we could afford, and moved here. The friend had moved out and up to St John's Wood, then to Highgate, and is now in Wanstead. So plenty of mobility for East Dulwichites?

[blinder999]

> "there is no such place as East Dulwuich, its

> Peckham".

Yes I heard that too - from the wife of a colleague who grew up in Forest Hill and attended Fairlawn Primary school thirty years ago - she thought the idea that East Dulwcih was distinct from Peckham was hilarious.

[dc]

It all started in 1983 when my future wife moved into ED. Marked acceleration when I joined the local throng in 1986 and finally stratospheric heights were reached when we married in 1997. Oh, and the baby/kiddy thing took off after the birth of our daughter in 1996. Simple really - I'm surprised nobody else has noticed.

Incidentally, Blue Mountain started in a shop near the old Co-op building just beyond the southern end of Rye Lane (opposite the end of Nigel Road) although it was called something different. It changed its name to BM and moved to ED - clearly sensing the zeitgeist of the time - or perhaps helping to create it.

[????]

Yes, the old crap about East Dulwich= Peckham.....SE15=Peckham SE22=East Dulwich, erm there's also a long eatblshed train station in SE22 called, erm, East Dulwich. So tell your mum-in-law and your mate they talk crap East Dulwich is not an estate agent's fabricatio but a long established postal district of London, ironically Peckhm was ctually posher for a long time.

[Frisco]

"We moved here in 1999 and my uncle who lives in Brixton said it was quite "posh" already."

Well it was compared to Brixton, but Brixton always had a much more edgy atmosphere than ED could ever have, and seemed attract people with more money, mainly because house prices were higher, due to having the underground. I suppose it's hard to imagine that ED didn't have a train service on Sundays before the early 1990s, and that off-peak train services were even less frenquent than they are now (believe it or not).

"The friend had moved out and up to St John's Wood, then to Highgate, and is now in Wanstead."

It may be mobile, but I'm not sure that ending up in Wanstead could be considered upwardly mobile. I'd rather chew my foot off than go to live there. Not that keen on the though of living in St John's Wood or Highgate (too close to Archway) either.

[dc]

SE15 has been Peckham and SE22 East Dulwich since 1917. So somebody must have spotted the difference between the two a long time before the estate agent malarkey took hold.

[Frisco]

"Gentrification comes after regeneration."

I don't agree with this. Gentrification predates regeneration in lots of places e.g. Notting Hill and even parts of Camberwell, where regeneration has never really took place. Also, in terms of ED, it's never really been either regenerated or gentrified, but the demographics of the area have definitely changed as its housing stock and location became more appealing to a broader range of people, for reasons other than direct intervention or regeneration. Certainly nothing approaching the Bellenden model.

[macroban]

> suppose it's hard to imagine that ED didn't have a train service on Sundays before the early 1990s

Perhaps because it's not true?

Passenger Services Timetable 16th September 1957

Table 65

East Dulwich to London Bridge

SUNDAY

07:46

08:08

08:26

08:38

08:46

08:56

09:08

09:16

09:26

and so on

to

23:52