Time Walk
The Lane Behind the Shopfronts
A street named for a garden now serves as a delivery route for the shops built over it. Walking it today, the lane has an unkempt, working character, hemmed in by the backs of the Brixton Road stores it serves. At its two ends, older commercial buildings still stand, giving the lane occasional moments of interest amid its back-street function.
Beneath the delivery vans and service yards lies a plot that was once cultivated ground, long before Brixton Road grew its parade of shops. That older layer gives the street its name.
Name Origin
From Market Garden to Department Store
Nursery Road is named after a nursery, a market garden that once occupied the site later built over by the Bon Marché department store. The sources used here do not explain who ran the nursery or when it closed.
History
A Passage, a Store, and a Statement
The street's earliest documented link is not to itself but to a passage leading to it. Dorrell Place, running from Brixton Road through to Nursery Road, appears on an 1863 map but is absent from the 1841 Tithe map, suggesting it was cut through sometime in the intervening decades.
The nursery ground that gave the street its name was eventually overtaken by retail. The Bon Marché department store, fronting Brixton Road at numbers 442–444, had good elevations onto both Ferndale Road and Nursery Road. Around 1905 an Edwardian extension to the store was built at 201–205 Ferndale Road, on the corner with Nursery Road.
Dorrell Place, the little passage linking Nursery Road to Brixton Road, did not exist in 1841 — it appears for the first time on a map made in 1863.
Today
Animation on a Working Lane
In 2012, surveyors described Nursery Road mainly as a service route, used for deliveries to the Brixton Road shops, with an unkempt, back-street feel. Even so, a handful of buildings were picked out for the life they bring to the lane. On the corner with Dorrell Place stands a 19th-century building housing SW9 Bar, noted as an attractive building that adds much-needed animation to the locality. A café bar at 11 Nursery Road was likewise singled out as an attractive building bringing life to the street. Well-detailed 19th-century commercial blocks frame the junction with Ferndale Road.
On the Map
Nursery Road Then & Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Nursery Road?
It takes its name from a nursery, or market garden, that once stood on the ground later covered by the Bon Marché department store on Brixton Road.
What is Nursery Road known for?
It functions mainly as a back lane serving deliveries to the Brixton Road shops, with a few notable 19th- and early 20th-century buildings at its junctions with Dorrell Place and Ferndale Road.
Is Nursery Road within a conservation area?
Its northern end lies within the Brixton Conservation Area, as set out in Lambeth Council's 2012 conservation area statement.