Creepy House on Grove Park - what is it?

[giantbears]

Was on a long Sunday walk today, after lunch on Bellenden Road to watch the football in Herne Hill and enjoying looking at all the big houses at the top of Chadwick Road etc when we saw a really creepy one.

On Grove Park after it has turned to meet up Camberwell Grove, on the right hand side of the road if you're looking towards CG there is a huge redbrick house covered in vines with a really overgrown front. It has a metal fire escape on its right side and out the front what looks like the remains of a large sign but all has rotted away except for the frame.

It literally looked like a haunted house from a horror film and really captured my imagination! Does anyone else know this place and what it is or used to be?

It is probably something very dull like an older person lives there and isn't able to sort out the front garden, but it looked so spooky.

Also if you live in this house and you read this, I am sorry for calling your house creepy.

[ratty]

Agh, so done told me the other day, (well in the summer at Dog Kennel Hill Chool summer fete) and I can't remember. Met someone who lives there too I think

[LuLu Too]

Is it the old Turning Point hostel (no's 31-32)?

Opposite the house (rather nice flats) where a female doctor was murdered on her doorstep by her ex boyfriend (in the mid 1990's) - maybe that's why it's creepy...?!

[mumof3girlies]

There used to be a children's home on Grove Park that ceased to operate as a children's home sometime in the ?late 90's ?early 2000 - it could be that building, I can't remember what number the children's home was.

Hopefully somebody knows more definitively - intrigued to know too

[LuLu Too]

The Childrens Home was No.17, adjacent to No.18 which was a hostel for homeless families - both more the Chadwick Road end of Grove Park.

[ibilly99]

[edhistory]

Wrong vernacular and Grove Park is not in East Dulwich.

John K

[ratty]

I was burgled by some blighters from that childrens home in 97 or 98 when I lived on Lyndhurst Grove!

[giantbears]

Got it! This is the place http://www.sheard.info/123grovepark/ although it looks a far sight less decrepit in that photo than it did when I saw it yesterday. So it used to be a Youth Offending Centre and now is under planning permission applications. I guess maybe it is still owned by the council? The land alone must be worth an absolute fortune.

I am now curious if anyone is still living there.

[Peckhampam]

I always understood it was a convent!

[Artastic]

In the 1960's it was a Police nursing home - the flats next door were police flats. It had fantastic gardens at the back which were really well maintained.

There was a convent round the other side of Grove Park but the building in the photo was the police nursing home for many years.

[susierose]

maybe a night of ghost hunting would be good!!!! love to have a night in a Big haunted house! altho mine was haunted and i had to leave due crazy stuff happning! :-)

[Salsaboy]

Ooooo tell us more!!

susierose Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> maybe a night of ghost hunting would be good!!!!

> love to have a night in a Big haunted house! altho

> mine was haunted and i had to leave due crazy

> stuff happning! :-)

[boo1]

Do you know much about the chidrens home in grove park

[PK36]

I've just seen that a planning application has recently been submitted for this site at 123 Grove Park: http://planbuild.southwark.gov.uk:8190/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=_STHWR_DCAPR_9563235

Had a quick glance at the documents and the proposals look pretty impressive, with the majority of the existing trees and green areas to remain. It's by the same architects who worked on No. 17 Grove Park which turned out very nice if unaffordable to most!

[EDOldie]

There was definitely something spooky going on up there!! I think this is part of a huge site the Met have had for many many years. They are gradually selling off their land, notably East Dulwich nick's old and new. I found the below on the net. It looks like 113 and 123 are next door to each other on google maps.

MI6 Telephone intercepts were for some time handled at the London Station or VBR, by a group of specialists and linguists known as UKZ and operating with a team of specially cleared BT engineers known as the OND. Metropolitan Police Interception and Special Services Centre was situated at 113 Grove Park, Camberwell, London SE5 and served as a joint MI5/MI6/MPSB/C7/GC & CS unit. This had been in operation as 'Grove Park' since around 1919 and was still a covert listening site well into the 1980's. Some operations were transferred to Sandridge near St Albans in the late 1930's and that base was taken over by GCHQ in 1946. A fleet of detector vans was based there throughout the 1950's and 1960's. By 1970's had reverted to Home Office control and had became a Surveillance Research centre developing equipment for Grove Park and other users.