Pubs with Rooms in Peckham, Dulwich and Herne Hill

This corner of south-east London is a long way from the postcard sights, and rather better for it. Peckham has Rye Lane’s market bustle and the Bussey Building; Dulwich has a village centre, a park and Dulwich Picture Gallery, which Sir John Soane designed and which opened in 1817; and Herne Hill has its station and the Half Moon. The four pubs here are all in or beside that, with trains into central London rather than the Tube.

The Victoria Inn in Peckham dates back to 1878 and has fifteen design-led rooms above the pub, close to Peckham Rye Park. The Crown & Greyhound is the big pub of Dulwich Village, with twenty rooms and two beer gardens.

The pick for anyone who cares about old pubs is the Half Moon at Herne Hill: a Grade II* listed pub of 1896 whose interior is on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, reopened in 2017 after almost four years closed by flood damage, now with twelve boutique rooms. The Tulse Hill Hotel, between Brixton, Herne Hill and Dulwich, has nine rooms, beer gardens and a car park, and the clearest dog policy of the four.

The lore here is more literary and musical than naval. Dulwich College was founded in 1619 by the actor Edward Alleyn, John Ruskin grew up at Herne Hill, and the old Greyhound in Dulwich Village hosted a literary dining club from 1772 whose guests are said, but not proved, to have included Dickens. The Half Moon’s gig history is better recorded than most: U2 played it three times in 1980. Peckham’s pub tales are mostly about the screen, with the Victoria Inn’s outside seen in the film ‘Last Orders’, while ‘Only Fools and Horses’ put the district on the map even though much of it was shot elsewhere. Beyond that, treat the local stories of Victorian ghosts and famous drinkers as pub talk.