A215 Road - Camberwell Road

Camberwell Road

Walworth Road transitions into Camberwell Road where the A215 enters the former Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell. The road runs adjacent to the railway between Elephant & Castle tube station and Loughborough Junction railway station. Much of Camberwell Road is a conservation area, due to its well preserved large houses from the early 19th century.

By the time of the Domesday Book, Camberwell was already a significant settlement. The town remained a popular resort for Londoners due to its believed medicinal wells. In 1685, John Evelyn's Diary mentions a Roman urn filled with bones which was uncovered intact during repairs to the road and exhibited at the Royal Society.

Camberwell Green, at the junction of Camberwell Road and Camberwell Church Street, was the traditional site of Camberwell Fair, an annual fair held every August. Following complaints about the noise and high crime levels generated by the fair, a group of residents bought the fairground in 1855, converting it into the park which remains today.

In Victorian times Camberwell Road was a focal point of South London's Music hall scene, with a number of music halls opening from the 1850s onwards. Following the advent of the cinema and later of television, the music halls fell into decline, with the last closing in 1956. Nearby Orpheus Street marks the site of the Metropole Music Hall.

Since the New Works Programme of the 1930s, London Transport and its successors have planned to extend the Bakerloo Line south to a station on Camberwell Road. The original plans were abandoned due to the war before much construction had been completed. Construction again began in the 1950s and 1970s, but was abandoned each time. Transport for London still intend to build this extension but no date has been set for this.