Pullens buildings

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Pullens buildings are some of the last Victorian tenenment buildings surviving in London. At Amelia Street, Crampton Street, Iliffe Street and Penton Place, they are about to be protected by Conservation Area status granted by Southwark Council. They are near Elephant and Castle and Kennington Underground stations.

The Pullens Estate was built by James Pullen, a local builder, who acquired the land and developed it over a 15 -year period from 1886. The full estate, which originally extended southwards as far as Manor Place, comprised 684 dwellings in 12 blocks. Attached to the rear of the dwellings, arranged round four yards, were 106 workshops. The estate’s shops were located at the entrances to the workshopyards.

In the 1970s the council planned to demolish the buildings but were stopped by squatters who campaigned and fought police to save them.

The residential buildings are four storeys in height, and each unit is three bays wide with an ornate central entrance to a common stair well. The ranges vary from three to twelve units in length. They are faced with yellow stock brick, the front being enriched with the use of decorative terracotta arches to the door and window openings. The roofs are flat, providing amenity space for the residents. The workshops attached to the rear of the residential blocks are simpler and more“functional” in appearance. They are two storeys high, and also built of stock brick andflat-roofed. The two-storey loading bays are edged with blue brick quoins. The shops, flanking the entrances to the workshop yards, have traditional painted timbershopfronts, with pilasters supporting a fascia and cornice, and stallrisers.

Some of the builings were destroyed during German bombing in World War II. According to records at www.flyingbombsandrockets.com a V1 rocket at Manor Place by the Railway on 27 June 1944 at 22:45. The V1 demolished six houses in Crampton Street and 4 in Manor Place. Public wash house and stores damaged in Manor Place.Railway Bridge and 2 arches damaged.300 houses and buildings damaged in Manor Place and surrounding streets.

Much of the flats in the buildings are local authority owned but many have transferred in to private ownership and prices have rocketed boosted by the imminent £1.5billion development plan for the Elephant and Castle area. In 2007 the local authority - Southwark - is planning a refurbishment of the pullen buildings. A young Charlie Chaplin lived in one of the Pullen buildings for nine months in 1907. Supermodel Naomi Campbell lived in Iliffe Street.

• Southwark Council public consultation on development at Crampton Street "[1]"
• Evening Standard article about the mews workshops at the Pullen buildings "[2]"