RYECOTES MEAD, SE21
The present development was named in 1966. John and Cristina de Reygate figure as vendors in a sale of a freehold messuage and 9 acres of land in Dylewissh in 1311, and in 1405 Sir Robert Denny’s holdings in Dulwich included ‘the tenement lately called Reygates’. This property passed to the Legh family of Streatham, who sold it to the Drapers of Camberwell in 1542, and the last surviving Draper, Matthew, left it in his will to Sir Edmund Bowyer of Camberwell, who sold it in 1609 to Edward Alleyn. Unfortunately, there are no definite clues as to where within Dulwich manor the property lay. We have much better information on another, although unrelated, parcel called Rigates Green, which was encircled by Dulwich Common Wood and comprised 60 acres roughly where the various sports grounds on the south side of Dulwich Common are now to be found, and included the fields called Cokers. The house called Ryecotes, from which Ryecotes Mead directly takes its name, was named by William Young, a College and Estates Governor (and local historian), who occupied it from 1858. In 1909 it was home to Sir Hiram Maxim, inventor of the Maxim gun, who is buried in West Norwood Cemetery. The house was demolished to make way for the present development.
