Borough in London, England
Lewisham
Lewisham is where Peter the Great came to learn shipbuilding, where a giant fibreglass cat watches over the shops, and where British police first used riot shields on the mainland.
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Key information
- County
- Greater London (south-east London)
- Nation
- England
- Population
- About 300,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- About 35 square kilometres
- Known for
- Deptford's royal dockyard, Goldsmiths, the Horniman Museum, the Catford Cat, the Battle of Lewisham
- Famous people
- Mary Quant, Christopher Marlowe (killed in Deptford), Damien Hirst (studied here)
About Lewisham
The royal shipyard where Peter the Great played at being a carpenter
In 1698 the young Tsar Peter the Great arrived in Deptford to learn how England built its ships. He worked in the royal dockyard, which Henry VIII had founded in 1513, and lodged at Sayes Court, the home of the diarist John Evelyn. He and his companions left the house in such a state that the Crown paid for repairs. Deptford has been telling the story ever since. The yard was a big deal long before the Tsar. Francis Drake was knighted aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford in 1581, and Samuel Pepys came here on Navy Board business. The dockyard closed in 1869, but its old slipways and wharves still shape the riverside. Deptford also has a darker literary footnote. The playwright Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a house here in 1593.
Why a giant cat sits above Catford
Catford's mascot is a huge black fibreglass cat, crouched over the entrance to the Catford shopping centre. It has been there since the 1970s and is one of south London's best-known pieces of street art. It gives the place a tidy bit of wordplay, and locals have long treated it as the neighbourhood's unofficial guardian. Catford was also a greyhound town. Its stadium hosted racing until 2003, and the old track is still part of local memory.
A tea merchant, a walrus and a lot of curiosities
The Horniman Museum in Forest Hill began as the private collection of the tea trader Frederick Horniman, and opened to the public in 1901. He collected everything: natural history, musical instruments, anthropology. Its best-loved star is a walrus. The taxidermist who stuffed it had never seen a live one, so he overfilled it until its skin was smooth and bulging. Visitors adore it for that very reason. The museum's gardens look out over London from a slope in Forest Hill. They are a popular spot for a picnic with a skyline view.
The day the riot shields came out
On 13 August 1977 the National Front planned a march through Lewisham. Thousands of counter-demonstrators turned out to stop it, and the clashes became known as the Battle of Lewisham. Police used riot shields on the British mainland for the first time that day. The borough has lived through other defining moments. In January 1981 a fire at a house party in New Cross killed thirteen young Black people, and the Black People's Day of Action followed in March that year. In 1957 the Lewisham rail crash at St Johns, in thick fog, killed 90 people, one of Britain's worst rail disasters. Together these events shaped how locals think about community and justice.
Art school graduates and street markets
Goldsmiths, University of London, in New Cross, has helped shape British culture. Damien Hirst studied there, as did fashion designer Mary Quant, who was born in Blackheath. Blur's Graham Coxon and Alex James also met there. The borough's markets feed the neighbourhood. Deptford Market and Lewisham Market sell fruit, veg, fabrics and the produce of Caribbean, West African and other communities that have settled here. The DLR reached Lewisham in 1999, tying the town to Canary Wharf and the Docklands. Meanwhile Beckenham Place Park, the borough's biggest green space, has a lake where open-water swimming has been possible since 2019. In 2022 Lewisham was London Borough of Culture, a fitting title for a place where artists, sailors and tea merchants have all left their mark.