White plaque № 58612

SOUTH CROXTED ROAD BUS STOP This wooden bus shelter is an old tram stop relocated to this site in 1961. Its installation was a part of a much wider negotiation between the Dulwich Estate and the London Borough of Camberwell about new Council Housing sites. Early in 1960 the tenant in the old house at 110 Alleyn Road, Mrs Edwards, agreed to give up the land from her garden in return for a five-year extension on her lease (the house now on the site dates from the mid-1970s). The Dulwich Estate meeting minutes say that the land will be given to Camberwell at no cost but that the Council would be responsible for the payment of all paving charges, legal cost, surveyors fees, and the cost of setting back and reconstructing the fences. Unfortunately, there is no mention of the shelter itself or where it came from. A deed dedicating "a piece of land fronting No 110 Alleyn Road, for use as a bus draw-in and shelter" was signed in November 1960. The shelter and its site now belongs to Southwark, which incorporated the Borough of Camberwell in 1965. The Dulwich Society secured CGS funding in 2005 and 2015 to repair the shelter. This work is now complete. Although there had been some development on the west side of the southern end of South Croxted Road as far as Church Parade in the 1880s, the road's extension as far as the Park Hall shops had to wait for the demolition of the old 'Manor House'. The grounds of this historic 18th Century house occupied the area between Alleyn Road and Clive Road. Edward Van Vliet, a builder from South Norwood who had acquired the 'Manor House Estate' in 1890, built the final section of the road in 1897-98. The road was not made up (tarmaced) until just before the First World War and the Camberwell Vestry were obliged to water it regularly in the summer to keep the dust down. The water carts were kept under the viaduct arches off Burbage Road. Historic postcards confirm that there were unnumbered horse drawn buses running along the road from around 1900. It seems likely that they were owned by the Thomas Tilling bus company, who had a large stable nearby in Gipsy Road at the rear of the Paxton Hotel. The route was probably from Crystal Palace to Herne Hill and Brixton. Tillings were beginning to run motor buses from 1904 but there is no record of when they started to use them in South Croxted Road. There was no bus regulation at that time - anyone could set up a bus company, and moor buses effectively offered a much lower cost entry to bus operation than horse drawn ones. Bus drivers, known as 'pirates' used to compete with each other to pick up passengers and, unsurprisingly, it resulted in some aggressive, and dangerous, driving. Several residents raised the problem with the Dulwich Estate through 1912 and a January 1914 letter to the Times sums it up very well. Headed "TRAFFIC NUISANCE - INVASION OF DULWICH", the letter pointed out the "potential serious injury to health and property caused by the rapid passage of heavy motor traffic" and went on to say "This suburb has recently been invaded by the motor-omnibus, and from morning till night the houses are shaken to their foundations.' At the beginning of November 1908, the daily unnumbered route operating between Brixton Station and South Croydon, which ran along South Croxted Road, was allocated route number 3. Later in the month the route was extended to run between Oxford Circus and the Swan & Sugar Loaf at South Croydon. From April 1909 it was extended as far as Purley on Sundays. There were a number of route changes between 1910 and World War One and, in August 1914, it was extended from Crystal Palace to Upper Norwood. By 1918, the bus ran from Camden Town to Crystal Palace. In December 1924, when the London-Traffic Act created a new system of route numbering etc on London buses, the 3 was joined by the 3A, which stopped at Brixton. The latter was withdrawn in 1934 only to re-appear just before the outbreak World War Two, when-route 3 was replaced on Sundays by a new 3A route, running from Crystal Palace to Oxford Circus and on to Mill Hill and Edgware station. This was withdrawn on 15 October 1939 as a wartime economy. Route 3 returned to 7-day operation and remained virtually unchanged until relatively recently when, because of increasing traffic and concerns over traffic pollution, the northern part of the route was reduced in length it now runs from Crystal Palace to Trafalgar Square. This information sign was erected by the Dulwich Society in 2018. The support of the Mary Boast fund is gratefully acknowledged. Further information is available on the Society's Website www.dulwichsociety.com

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