Streatham Hill

Streatham takes its name from the Saxon "Strat", meaning street, and "Ham", meaning settlement — a village that grew up beside a road. Streatham Hill names the rising section of that same route as it climbs south.

The road itself is far older than its Saxon name. It is thought to run along the line of a Roman road between London and the Weald, used from Roman times or perhaps earlier. Roman masonry, coins and a ditch turned up when St Leonard's Church — in old Streatham village, a short distance east of Tooting Bec Common — was rebuilt in the 19th century, evidence of activity along the same corridor. A far earlier written trace survives in the Chertsey Register, which records land granted in 675 by Frithwald, on behalf of the Mercian king Wulfhere, to seven farmsteads "apud Toting cum Stret" — Tooting-with-the-street. A dressed-stone milestone of around 1790, still standing outside No. 41 Streatham Hill, marks the same road in its later turnpike days.

A railway station turned a hillside of fields into a suburb. Streatham Hill station opened in 1856 on the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, making the area accessible to City workers for the first time. Large detached houses soon rose on the open ground between the old village and the new line.

Trams compounded the change. Cable cars began running between Brixton and a depot at Streatham Hill in 1892, and from 1895 the Streatham Tate Library became the terminus of the Brixton line. The route was electrified in 1904 and extended again in 1909 to link central London and Croydon, before the last tram ran through Streatham on 7 April 1951. The tram depot opposite Telford Avenue had housed cars, horses and the steam winding gear for the cable from 1891 into the 1950s. Electric trams, in turn, let Streatham Hill grow into a shopping centre serving a wide area to the south.

Growth was fast and visible in the numbers: Streatham's population rose from around 400 in 1725 to 2,357 by 1801, 5,000 by 1831, 12,000 by 1871 and roughly 70,000 by 1900. The parish of St Margaret, Streatham Hill, was carved out in 1901 to serve the new district, its church — designed by Rowland Plumbe in red brick with Corsehill stone columns, in a free 13th-century Gothic style — built in two phases, 1900 and 1906, at the corner of Barcombe Avenue and Faygate Road.

War reached the hill twice. On the night of 24 September 1916 a Zeppelin raid destroyed Arborfield, a large house on the corner of Sternhold Avenue. On 24 June 1944 a V-1 flying bomb hit Nos. 45–47 Streatham Hill, destroying an Edwardian mansion block at the corner of Wyatt Park Road.

After the First World War, Streatham Hill became an entertainment quarter. The Streatham Hill Theatre, built in 1928–29 by W. G. R. Sprague and W. H. Barton — Sprague's last theatre — joined three cinemas, the Locarno and Streatham Ice Rink in building the area's reputation as a destination comparable to the West End.

Among the interwar buildings is Pullman Court, a Grade II* listed scheme of 218 flats in three blocks designed by Frederick Gibberd, completed in 1936. Nanette Newman is thought to have lived there in the 1940s.

Herbert Hawkins was born at Streatham Hill on 9 January 1876, and went on to play 20 first-class matches for Cambridge University between 1896 and 1899.

Geoffrey Cather was born here on 11 October 1890, son of a man employed by the tea merchants Joseph Tetley & Co. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions on 1 July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.

David Jacobs, born into a Jewish family on Streatham Hill on 19 May 1926, became a familiar broadcasting voice, presenting Juke Box Jury on BBC Television in the 1960s and chairing Any Questions? on Radio 4. Anne Marie Waters stood unsuccessfully for Labour in the 2010 Lambeth council election for the Streatham Hill ward, and Anthony Hunt, the eldest child of a solicitor's clerk, also began his life here.

The grandest survivor of the entertainment years is now largely empty. Streatham Hill Theatre, Grade II listed, has stood out of use since 2018 apart from a small slot-machine lounge, with the Friends of Streatham Hill Theatre campaigning to save it for community use. Streetscape works at the station were not completed until 2015, and in 2020 and again in 2024 the council consulted on changes to the boundary of the Streatham High Road and Streatham Hill conservation area.

The road remains a working artery, part of the A205 South Circular, which runs through Streatham Hill on its way between the Woolwich Ferry and the Chiswick Flyover. The Crystal Palace railway line still runs beneath it, linking Balham Junction to Beckenham Junction via Streatham Hill. In 2002 Streatham High Road, at the foot of the hill, was voted Britain's Worst Street in a BBC and CABE poll — a reminder that this corridor's reputation has not always matched its 1920s billing as the West End of the south. The street, like its Saxon name, is still defined by the road it sits beside.