The Dulwich Society

".... today, parts of the ancient village, which goes back beyond Domesday Book, are reminiscent of the battlefields of France in the last war." It is difficult to imagine that this could ever have been a description of Dulwich, but it comes from a booklet, The Wardens' Post, published during Spring 1946, after the end of World War II. The editor was George Brown, sometime Warden of Post 60, a well-remembered local resident, Dulwich historian, and former editor of The Villager. The booklet, dedicated to "all our comrades who wore the silver and gold of London's Civil Defence", is one of a number of records of the Air Raid Wardens' Post 60, which have been presented to the Dulwich Society. Another booklet, Pen Portraits of Post 60 by R.K. Spedding, has graphic lino-cut illustrations by Edwin Tucker sometime Senior Fire Guard. The other items in the collection are the actual archives of the Post, a rare survival: the Minute Book, April 1941 - March 1944 and Log Books, August 1941 - April 1942 and June 1944 - June 1945. These latter are brief notes, in pencil, by whoever was on duty that day. Much of the contents of both Minute Book and Log Books is of a routine nature, but as a whole this little collection gives a revealing and human insight into the life and work of one local A.R.P. Post among the thousands that covered the country during the war years. Used in conjunction with records at the Southwark Local Studies Library such as Camberwell Borough Council Minutes 1939-45, the unpublished Camberwell Incidents Register and the published List of Civilian Dead, combined with the memories of local residents, one could build up a detailed history of Dulwich during the war.

The Census return for 1851 gives a fascinating picture of Dulwich before the impact of the railways and the Crystal Palace, when it was still part of the administrative county of Surrey and a village in every sense. The census enumerators took their own idiosyncratic route in carrying out their duties, so that it can be difficult to link households with particular buildings. Occasionally houses are named, and it would be possible (although this has not been done for the purposes of this survey) to arrive at definitive answers to such problems of identification by consulting College leases. Allowing for a few houses which may have been included incorrectly, this appraisal is concerned with the Village, the Common, Half Moon Lane, Dulwich (now Red Post) Hill, Herne Hill, the west side of Lordship Lane, and the Penge (now College) Road, in other words the College Estate excluding Sydenham Hill. It covers 278 households, about two- thirds of which had 'heads of households' born in the south-east of England. 122 had come from what is now Greater London or Middlesex, and of this number only 38 had their origins in Dulwich, showing (perhaps surprisingly to most people) that although the population may not have been as mobile as it is today, Dulwich was by no means an inbred country village. Of the remaining one-third 'heads', a substantial group came from the south and west of England, 7 from Scotland, Ireland or Wales, 7 from Europe, and 2 from Asia.