As for many post-War developments on the Dulwich Estate, Giles Coppice is a genuine place-name resurrected from our dim and distant past.  The first mention of it is in November 1626, when (very shortly before his death) Edward Alleyn sold to William Sewer, a yeoman of Deptford, for £2 10s per acre, the woods, underwoods, trees and bushes in "Gileses Coppice", except 50 wavers and 12 of the best and fairest trees or staddles to be left standing on every acre.  Favor (or Faver) Fox, a Dulwich yeoman, entered into a similar contract with the College for the sale of the woods and underwoods in "Gyles Copice", this time for a lump sum of £20, on 4th December 1637.  Further such sales are recorded more or less regularly every ten years until 1695, but the name fell into disuse after 1716.

Where was the original Giles Coppice?  Lacking any contemporary maps, or boundary descriptions, no-one knows for certain.  I believe that Giles Coppice, 'The Park', and Ambrook Hill Coppice (the combined acreage for which is given in a 1668 Survey as 47 acres, and which from 1645 to 1695 invariably feature as a 'job lot' in wood sale agreements) were felled in the first quarter of the 18th century and, with the later addition of the grubbed-up Fifty Acre Coppice that adjoined them, became the meadows and cultivated fields that now comprise most of Dulwich & Sydenham Hill Golf Course.

Who was 'Giles'?  If that was his Christian name, then there are several possible candidates, from the 1330s onwards, and it could be any one of them.  If it was, as is more likely, a surname, the choice is much more limited.  Before the end of the 18th century there was only one person with the surname Giles, or anything like it, since Dulwich records began.  John Giles features three times in the Old College Chapel Register of Baptisms and Burials from 1631 to 1636.  Thus in June 1631 "Mr Giles' daughter Anne" was buried in the Churchyard (i.e. the Village Burial Ground).  More happily, the baptisms of "Elizabeth, daughter of Goodman Giles", and of "John Giles, the son of John Giles", are recorded in the Register in February 1634 and May 1636 respectively.

From these entries, and the lack of any others in the Estate records, we can infer that John Giles was of yeoman stock (the title 'Goodman' implies it) if not a gentleman (hence "Mr Giles"), lived near, but probably not in, Dulwich (since otherwise there would be references to him in the Rent Books or surviving leases), and was born around the turn of the 16th/17th centuries.  Perhaps before 1626 he was given informal, or at least no longer recorded, rights to gather woods and underwoods in the coppice named after him.  If it was this John Giles from whom Giles Coppice took its name, how odd that such a tenuous connection should have resulted in such a lasting memorial.

Patrick Darby

(former Chairman, Dulwich Society History Group)

32 Giles Coppice

3rd March, 2001

Since the above article was written (for the Giles Coppice Newsletter), further research, and particularly the accession to the Dulwich College Archive in 2023 of a 1726 lease to William Snelling of "a piece or parcell of New Grubbed Ground called Giles’s [(21a.2r.18p.)] Abutting towards the West on the walk that leads to the [Sydenham] Wells, North on John Davis’s and Robert Budders Ground, South and East on the Colledge woods, Which said peice or parcell of ground was late on the tenure or occupation of James Haines deceased his undertenant or undertenants  And also free use and liberty of a passage by the old way to and from the said Land hereby Demised for a horse Cart or Waggon through the woods to and from Sidenham Common to bring Amendment for the said Land … "  has raised almost as many questions as it answers.  My best guess is that during Edward Alleyn’s lifetime John Giles, or his father, was given coppicing rights over the land between Peckamins Wood and the field (or fields) called Peckamins.  James Haines had begun the grubbing-up process in 1721, but apparently neither he nor his widow ever completed it.  In 1806 it was measured as 22a.0r.5p. (16a.1r.7p. + 5a.3r.38p.), which is significantly larger than the 17a.1r.25p. (and a barn) let from 1725 to John Foy, and the 18a.2r.0p. let to William Baty.  These holdings were marked A.C, V, and A.B respectively in the 1725 Survey of the Dulwich estate.  By 1806 there was no trace of "the old [cart-]way to and from the said Land", although by 1852 one had reappeared as a continuation of Grange Lane.  It cannot be Cox’s Walk, as that ran through the Fifty Acre Wood, and wherever Giles Coppice was, it was not to the east of Cox’s Walk.

(Additional text written 11 July 2024.)