This large house formerly stood in Charles Street, just off the Old Kent Road roughly where Drovers Place is today. It was built by the parochial authorities of St Mary le Strand to serve as a workhouse; the foundation stone was laid on 29 June 1811 by Strand bookseller Francis Wingrave. The funding for the workhouse came from the St Mary le Strand charity. The charity had been created on 24 January 1667, when Mrs Alice Loveday, widow of Nicholas Loveday, said to have been ‘oftimes’ a past churchwarden of the parish of St Mary le Strand, London, established a rent charge of £7 per annum on her
land at Peckham in the parish of Camberwell ‘out of a pious intencon to releive certaine poore people’. [sic]
Read more in Peckham Society News Issue 172 Spring 2023
