Casino Avenue

Casino Avenue is a residential street of early 20th-century terraced houses forming part of the Sunray Estate, a conservation area recognised as one of the finest examples of the ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ social housing developments built after World War I. The street is bordered by Sunray Gardens, a small public park that preserves the sole surviving element of celebrated landscape designer Humphry Repton’s original work—an ornamental lake and mature woodland that once formed part of a 15-acre private estate.

c.1820

Casino House (The Casina) — the mansion that gave the street its name

Historical engraving · Public domain

2018

Casino Avenue

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

Today

Cottage estate on Red Post Hill — near Casino Avenue

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

But Casino Avenue’s name tells a deeper story: not of the gaming establishments that claim the word today, but of a grand Regency house whose owner was a famous trial lawyer. That mansion is long gone, demolished in 1906, yet its name endures on the street that rose from its ruins.

Before gambling houses claimed the word, casino meant something far more elegant. The Italian casina—literally “little house”—was a fashionable term for a pleasure pavilion or refined country retreat: a place of leisure and conspicuous taste. Richard Shawe (1755–1816), a wealthy barrister, chose it deliberately when commissioning his new Herne Hill villa in 1796. Shawe had just concluded the most celebrated case of his career—seven years defending Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India, against parliamentary impeachment for corruption and abuse of power. The trial ran from 1788 to 1795, the longest in British political history. Hastings was acquitted. The fees made Shawe rich.

With those proceeds Shawe hired John Nash—later the architect of Regent Street and Buckingham Palace—to design the house, and Humphry Repton to landscape its fifteen acres of grounds. The result, completed around 1800, was a Regency villa set in designed parkland with an ornamental lake at its centre. In 1800, Herne Hill was still open countryside four miles from the City; the Casina was exactly the kind of rural retreat that prosperous London professionals aspired to.

Shawe died in 1816. The house passed through several owners and stood for another century before being demolished in 1906. Camberwell Borough Council leased the land in the early 1920s and built the Sunray Estate—one of the earliest “Homes fit for Heroes” developments—on its grounds. Casino Avenue was one of the new streets, keeping the mansion’s name alive. A condition of the development preserved the area around the lake as public open space; renamed Sunray Gardens in 1923, it remains the only surviving fragment of Repton’s original design.

Lawyer Richard Shawe (1755–1816) was appointed to defend Warren Hastings (1732–1818) in Britain’s longest political trial. Having served as the Governor-General of Bengal following years in India, Hastings was impeached on charges of corruption upon his return to Britain. The Hastings trial ran for years and made Shawe’s fortune. He invested that wealth in a new country estate, commissioning the architect John Nash and the landscaped gardens designed by Humphry Repton. The site is all that remains of the 16 acre grounds of Casina House built around 1797 for the wealthy lawyer Richard Shawe…An illustrated description of the house and grounds, which included a kitchen garden and hothouse, was published in 1804. This made special mention of Repton’s conversion of flooded, spring-fed brick pits at the lower end of the site into an ornamental fishing lake.

The Sunray Estate has proved one of the most celebrated products of the post-war housing movement. The estate, now a conservation area, was built by Camberwell Borough Council after World War I, modelled on the garden suburb ideal and part of the drive to provide Homes Fit for Heroes. 154 dwellings were built on what was then called the Casino Estate or just over thirteen to the acre if Sunray Gardens was excluded. The houses were arranged in generous streets with deep front gardens, emphasising the garden city principles that influenced the era’s best social housing.

The most striking cultural feature of Casino Avenue is its proximity to Sunray Gardens, where Humphry Repton’s 1800 ornamental lake survives as the sole remnant of his landscape design. The park was refurbished at a cost of £220,000 in 2001/2 and currently holds a Green Flag Award. The lake underwent important modifications when it became public: Some changes were made to Repton’s lake when it was transformed into the public park. These included being made more shallow and given shelving banks after a small girl fell in, luckily rescued by a local postman; at one end it was infilled for the creation of a playground.

Casino Avenue itself represents a pivotal moment in London housing history. The street and its neighbours embody the garden city ideals of the 1920s—a deliberate break from Victorian terrace monotony, with generous frontages, tree-lined verges, and culs-de-sac creating a distinctly suburban character. For returning First World War soldiers, Casino Avenue offered not grand estates but solid, dignified homes, a tangible token of a grateful nation.

Richard Shawe (1755–1816) was appointed to defend Warren Hastings in Britain’s longest political trial. His success on that case transformed his fortune and enabled him to create one of the finest estates in South London. Shawe lived and died a man of consequence in the district, though the house he ‘at great expense erected’ outlived him only by ninety years.

The house that bore his name then welcomed other notable figures. One of the most famous occupiers is thought to have been Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother and former King of Spain, who stayed briefly in England in the 1830s. Later, ordinary working families arrived when Casino Avenue was laid out for them after 1920—the soldiers and their families for whom the Sunray Estate was built.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Casino Avenue and the Sunray Estate gained recognition as historically significant. The estate’s original layout and character, largely preserved through the decades, made it a candidate for conservation designation. In 2009, the Sunray Estate was formally recognised as a conservation area, safeguarding its garden city character from unsympathetic development.

Sunray Gardens, the surviving public park, has similarly been restored and maintained. The original ornamental lake, saved from being filled in during the 1920s only through legal intervention, remains the focus of the park. Friends of Sunray Gardens, formed in 1997, continues to advocate for its preservation and enhancement, ensuring that Humphry Repton’s 1800 landscape design remains visible to residents and visitors more than two centuries after its creation.

Casino Avenue remains a quiet residential street of early 20th-century terraced and semi-detached houses, characterised by generous front gardens and tree-lined pavements. The dominant property type is a early-century house built between 1912 and 1935. The street is largely composed of owner-occupied family homes, reflecting the original vision of the Sunray Estate as housing for working families rather than speculative rental properties.

The street itself is residential and car-oriented but pleasantly leafy, with mature street trees contributing to the garden suburb atmosphere that planners intended. Nearby Sunray Gardens provides immediate access to significant green space, and the wider conservation area setting discourages heavy through-traffic. The street’s modest villas and terraces have appreciated significantly in value since the 1920s, though they retain the solid, unpretentious character of housing built for heroes returning from war.