A development next to the Territorial Army Centre in Lordship Lane. The original 15 acre Northcroft, first mentioned in 1402 (when it was divided up into typically 2-acre strips, in various ownerships), was a triangular field, the present boundaries of which would be Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, and Ruskin Walk. After 1606 it was leased out as part of Alleyn’s Dulwich estate and used as pasture.
In ’Praeterita’ (1885), John Ruskin wrote: ‘Central in each amphitheatre, the crowning glory of Herne Hill was accordingly that, after walking along its ridge southward from London through a mile of chestnut, lilac and apple trees hanging over the wooden palings on each side, suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field [ie Northcrofts] sloping down to the South into Dulwich Valley - open field animate with cow and buttercup, and below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of Dulwich; and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood Hills’.