About this project
Hello! I’m Kake. I live in Croydon, South London, just around the corner from a shopping and residential street known as London Road.
Croydon has centuries’ worth of fascinating history, but I’ve chosen to focus on London Road, as it’s where I do a lot of my daily shopping and the different architectural styles along the street have intrigued me since I first moved here.
In the articles on this website, I follow the history of each individual address back as far as possible — in most cases, to the time when it was first built. I don’t neglect the present day, though; my articles also cover the current uses of the buildings, with photos and descriptions of the things I’ve bought there myself.
London Road stretches over two and a half miles, all the way from West Croydon to Norbury. It includes more than 1500 addresses, so this is certainly a very long-term project. I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s also a worthwhile and interesting one.
Further reading
My introduction post has more details of why I originally started doing this, and my April 2017 interview with Croydonist has an overview of some of the more interesting London Road addresses I’d covered up to that point.
In Spring 2020 I worked with Turf Projects on creating an audio tour of London Road, which can be followed either while walking along the road yourself, or at your computer using Google Street View.
How to cite this work
When citing this website, do be aware that all articles may be edited after publication to add new information or to correct errors, and that the numbering of footnotes may change as new ones are added. If referring to me personally, please note that my pronoun is “they”, not “he” or “she”; here are some usage examples.
About this website
Website designed by me. Thanks to Henry and Kevan for useful suggestions on aesthetics and usability, and to Jodi for help with accessibility. Programming also by me, using Jekyll.
The map used on the borders of some pages (including this one) is an extract from the 1800 Enclosure Map of Croydon, courtesy of the Croydon Local Studies and Archives Service.
