The street once led from a Tudor manor house south to the top of a hill, which afforded a view of the City of London,[1] approximately three miles to the north.

[2] In the mid-1770s, when Camberwell was still a rural village, the dilapidated manor house was demolished and the surrounding land subdivided and sold.

[4] John Lettsom, a doctor, had a villa built at the southern end which was demolished when the estate was broken up in the early 1800s, but one of its cottages, 'The Hermitage' (number 220) survives, at the junction with Grove Hill Road.

[h] In the 1960s, a proposal to build an elevated motorway across the grove, above the railway, in the style of the Westway, was opposed and eventually overturned by local residents.

[1] The artists David Hepher and his wife Janet bought a house on the grove in 1961, and set up studios there.