Casino Avenue

Casino Avenue is a modest residential street of early-twentieth-century terraced houses in the Camberwell ward, lined on one side by the boundary wall of Sunray Gardens. The street itself is neither grand nor imposing; what makes it remarkable is what stands beneath it. The ground where these Edwardian homes were built once held a major country estate complete with ornamental lake and formal gardens designed by one of Britain’s most celebrated landscape architects.

2015

Casino Avenue, Herne Hill

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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

The street’s name preserves the memory of that vanished world. Beneath the ordinary suburban landscape lies the history of a lawyer’s triumph, a celebrated architect’s design, and the economic forces that swept it away.

The house was built for Richard Shawe, a wealthy lawyer, who had successfully defended Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal, on corruption charges in a case that lasted seven years. Shawe was the successful defence lawyer in the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings 1788-1795. He commissioned John Nash to design for him Casina House in Dulwich and the gardens were landscaped by Humphrey Repton. The site is all that remains of the 16 acre grounds of Casina House built around 1797 for the wealthy lawyer Richard Shawe which stood on Herne Hill (formerly known as Dulwich Hill) opposite the present day Poplar Walk on ground let from the Dulwich Estates.

In 1906 it was decided to demolish the house. In 1920, the Dulwich Estates Governors agreed to lease the property to Camberwell Borough Council for public housing designed on garden city principles. With the land on the other side of Red Post Hill, it was incorporated within the Sunray Estate and developed as 'Homes fit for Heroes' between 1920 and 1922. One of the new residential roads was named Casino Avenue in tribute to the house.

Richard Shawe’s fortune came from law, specifically from one of the longest and most costly trials in eighteenth-century Britain. Between 1788 and 1795, as Warren Hastings faced impeachment in the House of Commons on charges of corruption and abuse of power in his governorship of Bengal, Shawe argued the defence case through seven gruelling years of proceedings. When Hastings was finally acquitted, Shawe’s share of the legal fees was substantial. He used it to build a country seat away from the smoke and congestion of the City, commissioning John Nash’s contemporary architectural genius.

What distinguished Casina House was not merely its architectural pedigree but the sophistication of its grounds. The architect of the house was John Nash and the landscaped gardens were designed by Humphry Repton. 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 ornamental lake was no mere folly—it represented Repton’s signature technique of incorporating natural water features into designed landscapes. By the early 20th century, as London sprawled southward from Walworth and Peckham, the estate’s rural character became untenable. One of the requirements of the Governors was that the lake and land around it (amounting to about 4½ acres) should be preserved as open space with free public access. That stipulation ensured that when the houses were built, Sunray Gardens emerged to preserve at least a fragment of Repton’s vision.

Casina House survives now only in its name and in the park that guards one of its boundaries. The park is 300m north-north-east of North Dulwich Station. The surviving fragment preserves the essence of what Humphry Repton accomplished: not a manicured formal garden but a landscape that captured the feeling of rural Surrey whilst sitting within London. For residents of Casino Avenue, it is the nearest green space and a reminder that this street exists in the footprint of something grander than itself.

Casino Avenue remains a quiet residential street of mixed ownership and rental properties. The dominant property type is a early-century house built between 1912 and 1935. The postcode contains a total of 38 properties: 18 houses and 20 flats. The street connects to Sunray Avenue, which runs past Sunray Gardens, and to Red Post Hill, one of Camberwell’s main thoroughfares. It is walkable from North Dulwich station, making it part of the wider North Dulwich area sought by commuters.