Hackney calling

Ah, the Goldsmithsonians? Dunno what it's like now, but when I was there in't mid-90s, it was quite possibly the perfect storm of quite rough, cheap, edgy etc, all the things 'kin students love. Loads of huge properties which were dirt cheap if you got a group of mates together to rent out (I remember one massive 8-bed town house near Greenwich going for £600 a month all in). Loads of cheap offies and kebab shops. Several pubs and clubs which woon't have survived without 'kin students.

Brockley though, as I remember, was strangely bereft of pubs. I mean, there weren't any. None. Weird.

I guess it's because of a combination of the people the houses were built for, and the moral atmosphere around the time they were built: the merchant classes and businessmen of Deptford river-bourne trade and warehousing; the Temperence movement were influential in seeing to it that new streets and whole new areas could be built with covenants that required avoidance of the building of gin palaces or beer rooms. There's a mid-late victorian merchant zone in Hull known as The Avenues that has no pubs too.

Having said all that Tyrwitt road has a large mid Victorian boozer just off Loampit Vale, and Upper Brockley Road too.