The manor of Dulwich, of which Edward Alleyn purchased the lordship in 1605/6, was still very much a rural community, of perhaps a hundred adult souls, most of whom earned their living, in one way or another, from the land, as small-holders or farmers.  The largest farm, at about 130 acres, was Dulwich Court, straddling both sides of the present Court Lane (taking in much of what is now Dulwich Park on the south and extending to Lordship Lane on the north), which had in former times been the demesne farm of Bermondsey Abbey but which since at least 1530 had been leased out to substantial tenants who then sub-let it to a succession of Dulwich residents.  As for the rest of Dulwich, the modern South Circular marks the great divide:  south of it lay Dulwich Common and Woods, about 650 acres of scrubland and ancient woodland, some of it managed commercially using the technique of coppicing (regular 10-yearly fellings), the rest available for the local inhabitants to pasture their animals and forage for firewood, all of it (except for the 30-acre Hall Place estate on the western fringe of the manor) entirely uninhabited; north of it lay a patchwork quilt of fields, both arable and pasture or meadow, varying in size between about 2 and 20 acres each, the whole comprising about another 650 acres.

The bulk of the population was concentrated, as one might expect, around the present Dulwich Village, but there were some houses dotted around the manor.   Along the north side of Dulwich Common, between the present Gallery Road and College Road, were five of the more substantial houses, including the old Blew House (already over 300 years old in 1606).  At the east end of Dulwich Common Road (past Dickariddings and Agnesfields to the north), at the junction with Lordship Lane, Richard Pare had recently built a house in the clearing which in later centuries was to become the Grove Tavern and is now the Taverner, but the nearest house to his, at least on the Dulwich side, was the farmhouse of Dulwich Court.  West of Gallery Road, on the site of 'Belair', was a farm comprising fields such as Gilcotts, Court Mead, and Great and Little Spilmans, and further west, on the other side of Croxted Lane, were Hillcrofts and Whitesfields.   Moving north to the junction of Croxted Lane and what is now Half Moon Lane, lay about 40 acres called Napps, in various occupations, some holdings being as small as 2 acres, a relic of the medieval strip-farming system, with as yet no houses on them - the building of the Half Moon public house was still 150 years off.

Moving into the Village, the most impressive dwelling would have been that known as Car-ters Hall, the site of Pond House, owned and occupied by Thomas Calton, younger brother of Sir Francis from whom Edward Alleyn purchased the manor.   Thomas, whose father Nicho-las Calton had settled over 100 acres of Dulwich land on him in 1575 when he was still a child, at the same time as the rest of the manor was settled on his elder brother Francis, subsequently sold all his properties to Edward Alleyn, as did all the other owners of freehold properties within the manor, and all but three of the copyholders (holding a mere 15 acres or so between them, 15 acres which remained out of the hands of Alleyn and his successor, Dulwich College, until the 1880s), so that by the time Alleyn started building his 'Hospitall' on the hitherto vacant site at the apex of the village green in 1613, he was the only landowner of any substance in the area, from Champion Hill in the north to the Vicars Oak on the crest of Sydenham H ill to the south, and from Herne Hill on the west to Forest Hill on the east, over 1300 acres of prime farming land, pasture, and wood.   These lands, for which he paid a total of over £9,000 one way or another, together with his other properties in north London and Southwark, Alleyn was able to settle on his foundation for Twelve Poor Scholars and Twelve Poor Brothers and Sisters, presided over by a Master, Warden, and Four Fellows, which became what we know today, more than 375 years later, as Dulwich College.

                                                                                                              Patrick Darby

[Written for inclusion in a booklet marking the 375th anniversary of the foundation of Dulwich College, in 1994.]