For most of the last four hundred years the site on the corner of Lordship Lane and Dulwich Common has been used as a public house or, as it was described in 1748, a "house of entertainment".  The first known occupant, Richard Peare or Pare, made the original clearing in what was then still woodland (part of Hammonds Coppice) in about 1605.  In February 1667 Mary, wife of Francis Pare (probably Richard's grandson), was murdered "in her house near Dulwich" by one Henry, alias Hamshire, who was not apprehended and then executed for the crime until two years later.  Perhaps the Pares ran some sort of hostelry (we don't know), but certainly after Francis Pare's death and the demolition of his "timber messuage" the new brick house built on the site by William Merrill in 1685 was intended as an inn.  Merrill's lease was soon assigned to John Cox, who was permitted by the College to cut a footpath (known to this day as Cox's Walk) through the Fifty Acre Wood, to increase his custom from the direction of Sydenham.  The premises, then known as 'the Green Man', remained in the Cox family for several generations.  With its bowling green, "handsome room for breakfasts, dancing and entertainment", and with the medicinal attractions of the 'Dulwich Wells' in the grounds, its reputation and popularity spread far and wide.

Charles Maxwell acquired a later lease of 'the Green Man', which he renamed 'Dulwich Grove', but four years' litigation with the College followed his request in 1780 for a renewal at the old rent.  By 1796 the premises had been converted into a private school for boys, run by Dr William Glennie.  His most notable pupil was Lord Byron, there for two years before going to Harrow in 1801.  Blanch's somewhat misty-eyed account of Byron's Dulwich schooldays in his 'Ye Parish of Camerwell' may be contrasted with the poet's own terse comment on Dr Glennie's Academy - "this damned place" he called it.  He seems to have spent much of his time organising parties of schoolboy vigilantes against footpads and highwaymen in the Dulwich woods and lanes.  During these sorties he must have encountered the celebrated Dulwich Hermit, Samuel Matthews, who was himself to meet a violent end in 1802.

Soon after Glennie retired in the mid-1820s the house was demolished, but a College servant named John Bew, and later his widow and daughter, operated a beer-house or teagarden from a cottage on the site.  When John Courage the brewer (a Dulwich resident) built the new Grove Tavern in 1863 its first tenant was the grandson of 'Old Mother Bew', James Owen.

Substantially rebuilt earlier this century, the Grove Tavern has recently undergone ‘certain elements of refurbishment’.

                                                       Patrick Darby

[from 'History Supplement No. 3, first published by the Dulwich Society, October 1984.  The Grove Tavern afterwards became a Harvester Inn, and remained as such until it closed following a kitchen fire in 2014.  It remains empty.  Article revised and re-formatted 9 July 2024.]