Streatham is a place in the London Borough of Lambeth in the United Kingdom .
It is an inner London suburb situated south of Brixton.
Streatham is 5.5 miles (8.8 km) south of Charing Cross.
Streatham means "the hamlet on the street". The street in question started as the Roman Road from the capital Londinium to the coast near Portslade. It is likely that the destination was a Roman port now lost to coastal erosion, which has been tentatively identified with the 'Novus Portus' mentioned in Ptolemy's Geographia.
The road is confusingly referred to as Stane Street in some sources, although it diverges from the main London-Chichester road at Kennington.
After the departure of the Romans, the main road through
Streatham remained an important trackway. From the seventeenth century it was adopted as the main coach road to Croydon and East Grinstead, and then on to Newhaven and Lewes. In 1780 it then became the route of the turnpike road from London to Brighton, and subsequently became the basis for the modern A23. This road (and its traffic) have shaped Streatham's development.
Streatham's first parish church, St Leonard's, dates back to Saxon times, although only the mediaeval tower remains in the present church. The mediaeval parish covered an extensive area, including most of modern Balham and parts of Tooting.
Streatham appears in Domesday Book of 1086 as Estreham. It was held by Bec-Hellouin Abbey (in Normandy) from Richard de Tonbrige. Its domesday assets were: 2 hides and 1 virgates; 6½ ploughs, 4 acres (16,000 m2) of meadow, and herbage. It rendered £4 5s 0d.
The village remained largely unchanged until the 18th century, when the village's natural springs, known as
Streatham Wells, were first celebrated for their health giving properties. The reputation of the spa, and improved turnpike roads, attracted wealthy City of London merchants and others to lay out their country residences in Streatham. Few of these large houses still remain, as the area was rapidly urbanised as London expanded.
Between the First World War and the Second World War
Streatham developed as location for entertainment, with Streatham Hill Theatre (now a bingo hall), three cinemas, the Locarno ballroom (now Caesar's nightclub) and Streatham Ice Rink all adding to its reputation as "the West End of South London".
With the advent of electric tram services it also grew as a shopping centre serving a wide area to the south. In the 1930s large numbers of apartment blocks were constructed along the Main Street (High Road). These speculative developments were not initially successful. They were only filled when émigré communities began to arrive in London after leaving countries under the domination of Hitler's Germany.
In 1932 the parish church of the Holy Redeemer was built in
Streatham Vale to commemorate the work of William Wilberforce
In the 1950s
Streatham had the longest and busiest shopping street in south London.
Streatham was the site of the first Waitrose supermarket, which opened in 1955. However a combination of factors led to a gradual decline through the 1970s and a more rapid decline in the 1980s. These included long term population movements out to Croydon, Kingston and Sutton; the growth of heavy traffic on the A23 (main road from central London to Gatwick Airport and Brighton), and a lack of redevelopment sites in the town centre. This culminated in 1990 when the closure of Pratts - a department store, which had grown from a Victorian draper's shop, and had been operated since the 1940s by the John Lewis Partnership - coincided with the opening of a large Sainsbury's supermarket 1 km south of the town centre, replacing an old, smaller Sainbury's store opposite Streatham Hill station.
More recently Sainsbury's opened a smaller 'Local' branches on the High Road and on Streatham Hill, near the site of the
Streatham's first Sainsbury store (opened in 1895). The company also has offices in Streatham. Other fairly recent additions, such as Argos, are located on the site of Pratts' (see above) but the retail recovery has been slow, and vacant space has been taken by a growing number of restaurants and bars. The High Road's Woolworths store, closed late on 27 December, 2008, when the company ceased trading.Within a month, the site was occupied by a 99p Store.
Streatham is a place of contrasts, with middle class families occupying houses in leafy streets that fetch over £500,000 while there are large amounts of asylum seekers, predominantly from north and east African countries.
In September 2002, Streatham High Road was voted the "Worst Street in Britain" in a poll organised by the BBC Today programme and CABE. This largely reflected the dominance of through traffic along the High Road. On a positive note this was a catalyst for Lambeth Council and Transport for London's Street Management to start co-operating, and there is now a joint funding arrangement for ongoing streetscape improvements, although spending has been slowed because of TfL's budgetary shortfall.
Investment and regeneration had begun before the poll, with local amenity group The Streatham Society leading a successful partnership bid for funding from central government for environmental improvements. Work started in winter 2003-04 with the refurbishment of Streatham Green and repaving and relighting of the High Road. In 2005 Streatham Green won the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association 'London Spade' award for best public open space scheme in the capital.
Streatham Festival was founded in 2002. Now in its sixth year, it is a two-week festival with over 50 events held in an array of locations, from bars to churches and parks to youth centres, attracting over 3,000 people.
