West Norwood area guide

This very urban slice of south London abuts genteel West Dulwich on one side and flows up and over the hill into Streatham on the other. At one end, under-appreciated Tulse Hill sits huddled around the train station and the South Circular’s one-way system, its Victorian terraces and light-industrial units housing glass-blowers and other local artisans. At the other end, slightly raised above the dust of Norwood Road and still exhibiting signs of its grander Victorian past, is West Norwood, dominated by Grade II-listed St Luke’s Church and the 40-acre South Metropolitan Cemetery (one of London’s ‘magnificent seven’). The long straight stretch of Norwood Road linking the two is where you’ll find the workaday shops along with an impressively multicultural selection of cafés. The classic middle-class catnip (organic cafés, gastropubs, vinyl stores, interiors shops) is up in the Knight’s Hill triangle around the church and station (roughly 20 minutes into Victoria) and served by plenty of buses.