A cemetery hill and a village green
This guide treats two neighbouring conservation areas in the London Borough of Southwark as a single study area of about 36.5 hectares. The larger, about 21.5 hectares, follows the edges of the cemetery, which the council's appraisal places on the north-eastern slope of a conical hill; the smaller, about 15.0 hectares, takes in the Green, the buildings round it and parts of the streets that run off it. One is mostly woodland, monuments and paths and the other mostly 19th-century terraces, shops and pubs.
On the NaPTAN record the local station lies 140 metres outside the study area. Council appraisals and a 2023 conservation management plan for the cemetery fill gaps that the national datasets leave, and the wider borough is the subject of the Southwark guide.
What the cemetery and green records show
Every statement below links to the public record it comes from; sources were re-checked on .
Two designations, two dates
The cemetery conservation area, spelt Nunhead Cemetry on planning.data.gov.uk under reference 27, covers about 21.5 hectares and has a record start date of 29 September 1986.
Southwark's conservation-area list gives that same day as the date it was made a conservation area and describes a roughly diamond-shaped site bordered by Linden Grove, Ivydale Road and Limesford Road.
The Green's conservation area, reference 38 and about 15.0 hectares, has a record start date of 16 January 2007, which its appraisal confirms as the designation date, adding that a slightly smaller area round the Green had earlier been an Area of Special Character.
The cemetery is owned by the London Borough of Southwark and run by its Parks and Natural Environment department, according to the 2023 conservation management plan, so the council is the neighbouring owner for any house that backs onto it.
A registered landscape and listed structures
The cemetery is on the register of parks and gardens at Grade II* as Nunhead Cemetery (All Saints), and 20.24 hectares of that registered landscape lie inside the study area.
Across the two boundaries the NHLE dataset returns 19 list entries, every one at Grade II.
Southwark's cemetery appraisal names the ruined Anglican Chapel, the entrance piers and gates with their railings and boundary walls, both entrance lodges and nine funerary monuments among the Grade II structures.
Round the Green, the audit in the Green appraisal lists Beeston's Gift Almshouses on Consort Road with the pump, gates, piers and railings in front, a K2 telephone kiosk, the Beer and Wine Trade Homes and St Antony's Church on Nunhead Lane.
The cemetery appraisal also notes that the eastern boundary runs behind the gardens of houses on Ivydale Road, so work to a rear garden wall there starts with the listing text and the conservation-area line.
Article 4: single premises, a centre and frontages
None of the eight polygons that the national Article 4 dataset returns for the study area is titled as a householder or conservation-area direction.
Four are single premises, the Old Nuns Head, the Pyrotechnists Arms, the Man of Kent and The Beer Shop London, and the largest is the local town centre polygon, recorded twice and covering 6.6% of the study area.
Two protected shopping frontages complete the set, SF34 on Evelina Road, the Green and Kirkwood Road at 0.6% and SF51 on Nunhead Grove and Nunhead Lane at 0.4%.
Southwark's Article 4 page also carries a direction for one address on Linden Grove, SE15, which is not among the national polygons for this study area, so the council's map is the place to confirm it.
For a house, the conservation-area guidance in the Green appraisal does more of the work than any direction: it calls the loss of front gardens to parking unacceptable and full-width rear extensions normally unacceptable.
London Clay on a wooded slope
Every one of five sample points is London Clay Formation clay and silt, with no superficial deposit recorded, on the BGS 1:50,000 map.
The cemetery appraisal puts the cemetery at about 50 metres above sea level and records original planting surviving as mature holm oak, lime, plane, yew and ginkgo.
Clay drying out near large trees can let shallow footings move, so for a house facing the cemetery, cracks are plotted against the nearest mature trees and read with the BGS ground data rather than put down to age.
The Environment Agency's Flood Map for Planning shows neither Flood Zone 2 nor Flood Zone 3 anywhere in the two conservation areas.
With no river zone mapped, the open question for a lower ground floor is surface water, which the long-term flood risk service shows for an area, though not for an individual property.
Housing in a single statistical area
Only one LSOA, E01004001, Southwark 026B, has at least half its area inside the study area, and it holds about 770 dwellings in the VOA's 2025 property stock release, which rounds counts to the nearest 10.
Its stock dates 35.1% to 1973-1999, 24.7% to 2000 onwards, 20.8% to 1945-1972 and 19.5% to before 1900, with no count for 1900-1939 and 1.3% undated, in the VOA age table.
Flats and terraced houses are level at 46.8% each in the VOA type table, and band C is the largest council tax band at 44.2%, with 1.3% in bands F to H.
That post-war weighting fits the cemetery appraisal, which describes 1970s social housing facing the cemetery on Linden Grove and, on Ivydale Road, three 1960s infill houses on a 1940 bomb site and post-war prefabricated bungalows on a 1944 one, so a building's age is established on site rather than read from the street.
Guides for each kind of instruction
Each link in the first list opens this area's guide to one type of instruction, and the second list gives the matching practice-wide service page.
Guides close by
The Southwark guide covers the wider borough. Peckham, Camberwell, Brockley and Forest Hill have guides of their own, as do East Dulwich, elsewhere in Southwark, and Ladywell, across the borough boundary in Lewisham.
Questions on the cemetery and the Green
When were the cemetery and the Green designated?
Southwark's list gives 29 September 1986 for the cemetery and 16 January 2007 for the Green, matching the record start dates on planning.data.gov.uk. Before 2007 a smaller area round the Green was an Area of Special Character.
Is the cemetery a registered park?
Yes, at Grade II*, as Nunhead Cemetery (All Saints), with 20.24 hectares of it inside the study area. Registration recognises the designed landscape, so work affecting it is weighed against that as well as conservation-area policy.
Do Article 4 directions cover the houses round the Green?
None of the eight polygons in the national dataset is a householder direction: four are single premises, two the local town centre and two shopping frontages. The appraisal still treats front boundaries, roofs and windows as sensitive, so consent is checked before they change.
What does the council expect for windows and roofs on the Green?
The Green appraisal treats the double-hung sliding sash as the traditional window and rules out UPVC and aluminium on historic buildings. It calls roof extensions generally intrusive and warns that heavy concrete tiles can overload old roof structures.
Could the cemetery's trees affect nearby houses?
They can be one factor. London Clay underlies all five sample points and the cemetery keeps mature holm oak, lime, plane, yew and ginkgo, so cracking in a neighbouring house is examined, drains included, before a cause is named.
Are most homes in these streets old?
Not in the one LSOA used: 35.1% of about 770 dwellings date from 1973-1999 and 19.5% from before 1900. A house on the Green may still be 19th century, so its own age is confirmed rather than assumed.
How we work on an instruction
Hampstead Chartered Surveyors is a RICS-regulated firm (RICS Regulated Firm No. 923064) working from its registered Hampstead NW3 office. The firm does not claim premises, staff or completed instructions in an individual locality, and it does not treat a neighbourhood name as evidence about a particular building.
An instruction starts with the full address, the decision the client faces and the documents already available, such as leases, drawings, notices or earlier reports. The scope, fee and inspection date are confirmed in writing only after that review, and access to roofs, lofts, basements or common parts is agreed before the visit.
Reports include RICS Level 2 and Level 3 home surveys, building and defect investigations, party wall appointments, reinstatement cost assessments, contract administration and schedules of condition. Each report records what was inspected, what could not be seen and what further investigation the evidence supports.
Public datasets such as the conservation-area register, the National Heritage List for England, British Geological Survey mapping, the Environment Agency flood map and Valuation Office Agency housing statistics describe areas rather than individual properties. They frame questions before an inspection; they never replace it.
Reviewed by Savas Bulduk BSc (Hons) MRICS, Director & Chartered Building Surveyor at Hampstead Chartered Surveyors & Building Consultancy. Last reviewed: . Our people · RICS firm record