It is approximately five miles from Charing Cross and is bordered by Brixton, Dulwich, Herne Hill, Streatham and West Norwood.

The enclosure of land in the parish of Lambeth in 1811 led to the construction of Effra Road in the area immediately to the north.

An 1832 map shows that Tulse Hill still had only a few buildings on the new roads in contrast to nearby recently developed areas in Brixton and Norwood and the longer established hamlet of Dulwich.

Tulse Hill is represented on the Lambeth London Borough Council by councillors for the Brixton Rush Common, St Martin's, and West Dulwich wards.

Tulse Hill is represented in the London Assembly by Marina Ahmad and in Westminster by Helen Hayes and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

In March 2022 Lambeth Council initiated a consultation with residents as to renaming the area, to avoid a possible association with Henry Tulse who was once a board member of the Royal African Company, a slave-trading concern in the seventeenth century.

[10] Samson Young, protagonist in Martin Amis's London Fields goes to Tulse Hill to buy drugs.

[11] Jason Strugnell, a fictional poet in Wendy Cope's Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis, lives in Tulse Hill and mentions it a couple of times in "his" poems.