A modern development named in 1956, snaking deep into old Dulwich woodland along the brow of the hill from Crescent Wood Road. Peckamins, first mentioned in 1621, was a 17-acre field of pasture which had been converted from coppice woodland and remained so, although another larger parcel of the former Peckamins Coppice (25 acres or so) retained its wooded character and its name until the early 1800s. As for the derivation of the name, perhaps, at the time that Dulwich Manor was owned by the Priory of Bermondsey, there was a dispute about rights of common for tenants of its various manors (we know of one such dispute in 1225), and men from Peckham were given rights of common in specific parts of the Dulwich woods which thus became known as the Peckham men’s coppice, the modern name being a contraction or corruption of that.
