[4] The name may derive from the Old English Cumberwell or Comberwell, meaning 'Well of the Britons', referring to remaining Celtic inhabitants of an area dominated by Anglo-Saxons.

[citation needed] Springs and wells are known to have existed on the southern slope of Denmark Hill, especially around Grove Park.

Up to the mid-19th century, Camberwell was visited by Londoners for its rural tranquillity and the reputed healing properties of its mineral springs.

[6] There is evidence of a black community residing in Camberwell, made up mostly of enslaved people from Africa and North America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

[10][11] The parish covered 4,570 acres (1,850 hectares) in 1831 and was divided into the liberty of Peckham to the east and the hamlet of Dulwich to the southwest, as well as Camberwell proper.

The area has historically been home to many factories, including R. White's Lemonade, which originated in Camberwell, as well as Dualit toasters.

Proceeds of a property in Threadneedle Street used as a coffee-house were used to pay for apprenticeships for the poor boys of the parish, but as demographics in the City changed, it was decided to set up a school.

However it had difficulty competing with other nearby schools including Dulwich College, and was closed in 1867.The land was sold for building.

[19] [20] [21] Camberwell today is a mixture of relatively well preserved Georgian and 20th-century housing, including a number of tower blocks.

The Salvation Army's William Booth Memorial Training College, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, was completed in 1932: it towers over South London from Denmark Hill.

It has a similar monumental impressiveness to Gilbert Scott's other local buildings, Battersea Power Station and the Tate Modern, although its simplicity is partly the result of repeated budget cuts during its construction: much more detail, including carved Gothic stonework surrounding the windows, was originally planned.

[24] Nearby, marked by Orpheus Street, was the "Metropole Theatre and Opera House", presenting transfers of West End shows.

The paper factory has since been demolished but the mosaic was removed and re-installed on the side of Lynn Boxing Club on Wells Way.

[31] A group now known as the YBAs (the Young British Artists) began in Camberwell – in the Millard building of Goldsmiths' College on Cormont Road.

A former training college for women teachers, the Millard was the home of Goldsmiths Fine Art and Textiles department until 1988.

During the years 1987–90, the teaching staff on the Goldsmiths BA Fine Art included Jon Thompson, Richard Wentworth, Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Jeffrey, Helen Chadwick, Mark Wallinger, Judith Cowan and Glen Baxter.

[35] The Victorian art critic and watercolourist John Ruskin lived at 163 Denmark Hill from 1847, but moved out in 1872 as the railways spoiled his view.

"[39] This led him to writing In the Year of Jubilee, the story of "the romantic and sexual initiation of a suburban heroine, Nancy Lord."

[40] Muriel Spark, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Ballad of Peckham Rye lived, between 1955 and 1965, in a bedsit at 13 Baldwin Crescent, Camberwell.

[41] The novelist Mary Jane Staples, who grew up in Walworth, wrote a book called The King of Camberwell, the third instalment of her Adams family saga about Cockney life.

[42] In Daniel Defoe's novel Roxana (1724) the eponymous protagonist imagines her daughter, Susan, "drown'd in the Great Pond at Camberwell".

Nearby Peckham Rye was an important in the imaginative and creative development of poet William Blake, who, when he was eight, claimed to have seen the Prophet Ezekiel there under a bush, and he was probably ten years old when he had a vision of angels in a tree.

Florence Welch from British indie-rock band Florence and the Machine wrote and recorded a song entitled "South London Forever" on her 2018 album High as Hope based on her experience growing up in Camberwell, naming places such as the Joiners Arms and the Horniman Museum.

Thameslink trains carry passengers to Kentish Town in the north, whilst some peak-time services continue to destinations in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, such as Luton Airport.

Southeastern trains eastbound serve destinations in South East London and Kent, including Peckham, Lewisham, Gravesend, and Dover.

This provides Camberwell with a direct link southbound to Herne Hill, Streatham, Tooting, Wimbledon, Mitcham, and Sutton, amongst other destinations in South London.

Routes through Camberwell typically run east-west between Vauxhall and Peckham, or north-south between Elephant & Castle and Brixton or Dulwich.

Residents of the area have included children's author Enid Mary Blyton, who was born at 354 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, on 11 August 1897 (though shortly afterwards the family moved to Beckenham),[52] and the former leader of the TGWU, Jack Jones,[53] who lived on the Ruskin House Park estate.