148 BOROUGH OF LEWISHAM. 
along its course. Portions of the canal remained as late as 1870 at 
the rear. of the houses on the western side of Devonshire Road, 
and east of the line near where Dacres Road now runs. 
The new Croydon line, which was thus opened in 1839, joined 
the Greenwich railway (which had been opened in 1836) at Corbett’s 
Tane. There were stations at ‘‘ Dartmouth Arms” (now Forest 
Hill) and at Sydenham, Penge, etc. From 1845 to 1847 the rail- 
way was worked by atmospheric pressure, an iron tube being laid 
between the rails, and the air pumped out, when the pressure drove 
a piston connected with the carriages forward. The system proved 
a failure, and was discontinued in 1847. 
CHAPTER VII. 
SYDENHAM. 
ROCEEDING along London Road to the summit 
of the hill, we come to the boundary between Kent 
and Surrey, on the further side of which lies the 
Horniman Museum and Park. The boundary of 
the old Parish of Lewisham passed along the 
western side of Eliot Bank and Sydenham Hill 
to the gates of the Crystal Palace; the modern 
boundary of the borough is Wood Vale and Sydenham Hill. . 
The name Sydenham was formerly Sippenham or Cypenham, 
and as such occurs down to the middle of the 18th century, after 
which the modern form gradually came into use. The greater part 
of the district, now known as Upper Sydenham, was open common 
land called Westwood, a name which is at least as old as the time 
of Edward I. Although styled a ‘‘manor” in later documents, it 
is doubtful if the term was strictly applicable to Sydenham, for the 
whole of Westwood was esteemed part of the common land of the 
Manor of Lewisham. Many free tenants of the manor, however, 
held small portions of land in ‘‘Sypenham,” according to the 
Rental zemp. Edward II, and there seems to have been a fringe 
of cottages and other houses along the Sydenham Road, from Bell 
Green to Peak Hill, from very early times. 
In 1442 Sir John Welles, Grocer and Alderman of the City of 
London, left his ‘‘ manor of Sippenham in the parish of Leuesham 
in Kent to be sold for pious and charitable uses, saving an annuity 
of 40s. to William Osborn.” (‘‘ Husting’s Wills.”) 
In the reign of Henry VII, Robert Cheseman, a member of an 
old Lewisham family, possessed the ‘‘ Manor” of Syppenham, and 
had also a lease of the Manor of Lewisham from the Prior of 
Shene. In his will, dated 1498, he left Syppenham and Perystreet 
to his wife for her life, with remainder to John Cheseman, his son. 
tie ieee A 
Ue eee 
+e: 
deities 
