Clive Road
The street bears the name of a controversial figure, Clive of India (1725-1774) who had two terms as Governor of Bengal and paved the way for almost two hundred years of British rule on the Indian subcontinent. It was customary in the Victorian period (1865) to name streets after Imperial figures to add prestige to an address. It was formerly called Hamilton Road, after Robert Hamilton, a Norwood gentleman who lived off his investments, rents and land speculation, until this recurring name in London caused too much post office confusion. Unlike the orderly and regulated streets of the adjacent Dulwich Estate, Clive Road was a prime example of the various architectural appetites and styles that span Britain between the 1870s and today. It definitely has an anarchical wild west feel to it as builders crammed their creations in the space over the years.
Maps and Land Ownership
Timeline
Building of the street
The road came out of a plot in Lord Thurlow vast Estate which was auctioned off in 1846 (Lot 12) 40 years after his death due to legal and access difficulties experienced by his trustees. His death coincided with the Lambeth Enclosure Act 0f 1806 which set the tone for a fairer distribution of land ownership. The first waves of the building accelerated with the local railway expansion (the London, Chatham and Dover Railway) which made the land more accessible. Hence the slow wave of development at the beginning.
In the tithe era, Clive Road sat on a contested boundary between the Parish of St Mary, Lambeth and the Parish of St Giles, Camberwell. In 1851 the land crazed by cows was mostly occupied by scattered cottages for agricultural labourers and woodmen that were eventually demolished in the Victorian property boom. It sat uncomfortably between two parishes in dispute, St Mary, Lambeth and St Giles, Camberwell. The transformation started showing in the 1861 census in the district of Lambeth, St Mary, Norwood where the population now stood at 162,000. The old guard was still present in the nearby manor house in nearby Park Hall Road while the rest of the housing was inhabited by estate staff.
Clive Villas
Clive Road
Clive Road 1870
Drainage for Clive Road
Application for 4 houses to be built in Clive Road
Apportionment for Clive Road
Clive Hall
92-102 Clive Road
105 Clive Road
106 Clive Road
Clive Road renumbering
Clive Road Freehold Sale of Land
Clive Road Lambeth Renumberting Map
Clive Road – drainage of 10 houses
Architecture
78 to 84 Clive Road
Dudley House 1954
Significant Street Buildings
Clevedon Court
Clevedon Court appears as a glitch built at the peak of the Art Deco and modernist movements of the 1930s at the height of the appeal of the luxury apartment block. Court suggested a privileged and secure gated community with wider, flatter rooms. The …Brethren’s Meeting Room Emmanuel Church
Brethren’s meeting room Emmanuel Church: The external and internal perspectives of accepted design were published in the Building News and in the Architect on February 7, 1874. The design from the architect Mr Edward Cookworthy Robins (1831-1918) was i …Social History
The 1871 shows a striking detail, the number of lived-in domestic servants. Almost every household, including the modest ones, claimed a general servant or housemaid. The 1870s saw the arrival of master tradesmen attracted to the freedom to build more freely and creatively.
In 1901 the population is made of general labourers and trade representatives, office bank clerks, salesmen, police constables, railway employees, plasterers, gardeners. In the new section appear, civil servants, chemists, herbalist, cotton manufacturer agent, accountants, engineers often with domestic servants, authors, solicitors, barristers, stock exchange employees and people living on their own means, teachers and nurses.
Residents