Comments from Southwark Conservation Area Advisory Group
See below Southwark Conservation Areas Advisory Group comments on the Berkeley Homes’ proposal for the Aylesham site:
AYLESHAM CENTRE RE-DEVELOPMENT
Peckham Town Centre
24-AP-2074
Berkeley Homes, developers.
De Rijke Marsh and Morgan Architects
Southwark Conservation Area Advisory Group comments
November 2024
Architecture and Urbanism
A proposal to redevelop of the supermarket, shops and car-park of the Aylesham Centre in Peckham’s town centre is welcomed by the Southwark Conservation Areas Advisory Group. However, the current planning application for the Aylesham site would be seriously detrimental central Peckham, particularly the Rye Lane and Peckham Hill Street conservation areas. The CAAG panel unanimously recommends it refusal.
We believe a new planning brief for this site should be prepared shaping a development at significantly lower density that could fit harmoniously with the character of Peckham Town centre. A well-preserved town centre which has grown in an organic way since at least since it was recorded in the Domesday Book in 1180.
An obvious architectural criticism of this proposal, which comprises 870 flats and commercial spaces across the site in structures ranging from 5 to 20 stories, is it is far too dense to be shaped into a humane and attractive part of Peckham.
This scheme is characterised by overbearing height, and narrow spaces between the housing blocks. The project would have a destructive impact on the two town-centre conservation areas that the Peckham community long campaigned for. This scheme must be prevented. People need sunlight, air and outlook and Peckham deserves a more sensitively designed project.
There are some wonderful high-density developments in London, this project for Peckham could be so much better. For example, at the Barbican in the City of London the towers and housing blocks are arranged to capture the sun with fine internal and external views and high-quality public & private external spaces. Equally, the high density, mixed-use Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury arranges the flats for maximum sunlight, air and view, delivering shops, cinema and other public facilities to the ground level.
A development of 400-500 dwellings on the Aylesham site could be shaped into scheme on this site that fitted into Peckham’s unique and much-loved town centre context so much more comfortably. The 870 units proposed is too dense to deliver a quality environment.
It is plain to all that the current proposal is a commercially-driven design aiming to fit as much on this site with little meaningful regard for Peckham’s unique and attractive architectural character. We recognise the importance of creating new housing and developing this key town centre site. However, the CAAG panel are perplexed why voices within Southwark Council are promoting a project so blatantly capitalist, benefitting the developers so much more than it offers the Peckham community.
CAAG members wonder if a taller building to the east of the site could open up more space to make the interior of this site more open, better ventilated and humane.
Peckham High Street
The Aylesham proposal’s impact on the Peckham High Street is best described as astonishing. One of the most attractive things about Peckham town centre is the surviving groups of early 18th century houses and shops. They are remarkable survivors of when Peckham was a Surrey village, architecturally situated between rural, vernacular, buildings and urban architecture. The townscape views accompanying this application show a tall wall of modern flats and commercial buildings rising abruptly behind the 18th and 19th century townscape of the Peckham High Street.
The Peckham High Street has been wonderfully restored by Southwark Council and the HLF under the Peckham Townscape Heritage Initiative. Now the handsomely restored historic buildings are potentially met by a radically changed setting, which could be, perhaps, described as an aggressively changed setting.
The overbearing wall of proposed new buildings will be seen dramatically by people who use the Peckham Library Square, (townscape view 17).
The gateway view into Peckham from the north, (townscape view 5), is similarly transformed where the sky is exchanged for a tall façade of 10 to 15 story building rising hard on the historic High Street Buildings rear boundary lines.
It is curious how the, generally less affluent, people in Peckham who live in the in the Peckham Ward, north of the Peckham High Street, bear most of the visual impact of the Aylesham Centre proposal?
Rye Lane
The proposed re-building of the east side of Rye Lane in the Aylesham Centre proposal is problematic. The existing post-modernist three story buildings to Rye Lane will be replaced by seven storey housing block with shops to the ground level.
The impact on the setting on Rye Lane will be substantial. Rye Lane, once known as ‘South Street’ was a narrow country lane. Its pavements are narrow and crowded during the day. What sense of space and openness, we presently have, will be lost. The most attractive and popular part of the current Rye Lane frontage is the bright and airy Aylesham Centre arcade. A generous glass barrel-vaulted passage, cheerfully lined with shops and barrows.
It is a great shame that there is no re-provision of a shopping arcade in the proposed new Aylesham Centre. Peckham’s distinctive set of shopping arcades are much diminished with the proposed loss if its finest example of this useful part of Rye Lane’s shopping and urban scene.
The finest landmark on the Peckham High Street is the clock tower of the former Jones & Higgins department store. Its gently angled Victorian, Renaissance revival, facades neatly unite Rye Lane with a bend in the Peckham High Street. The proposed Aylesham Centre will cost many hundreds of millions of pounds to build. The CAAG panel wonders if a small amount of that money, perhaps with a Section 106 agreement, could be used to fund restoration work to the Jones & Higgins Clock tower building which has suffered from war-time damage. Rebuilding its lost Baroque stepped gable at the junction with the proposed new development could be a real benefit for Peckham’s historic architecture.