Gipsy Hill

Gipsy Hill in south London is a hilly neighbourhood spanning the southern parts of the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. It is known for its views of Dulwich and the City of London.

Historically, north of its traditional Westow–Central Hill southern limit, it was split between the southern projections of the West Norwood daughter parish of Lambeth and the St Giles church daughter parish of Camberwell in Surrey, until urban reforms in 1889 created the County of London. It takes in, due to a diagonal, slightly weaving border, somewhat less of the London Borough of Southwark, and it has a ridge-top border along the retail/services/leisure street Westow Hill and residential street Central Hill with Upper Norwood in the London Borough of Croydon.

History and geography

Gipsy Hill is the name of the central road that runs south upwards from Gipsy Road, where it becomes Alleyn Park near the southern end of Croxted Road, up to Central Hill and Westow Hill (a brief eastern continuation in the Crystal Palace Triangle). The latter are two crest-top roads marking the limit of Upper Norwood, part of the London Borough (and, here, former parish) of Croydon. Due to its station, as common across London, the name has been taken to extend to encompass a wider, in this case, upper hill-side zone in extreme projections of the two relevant boroughs.

The district takes its name from the presence of Gypsies in what was, until the 19th century, a sparsely populated rural area. On 11 August 1668, Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that his wife had visited "the gypsies at Lambeth"; Keats also wrote about the Norwood gypsies.

The hill and particularly its southern climactic ridge are part of a much larger formation, the Norwood Ridge.