23 valuable community spaces in Lewisham

Part 2: Lewis Grove, Lee High Road and Loampit Hill

Hello and welcome to Wooden City, a newsletter about London. Every other week I publish an article about everyday places with unusual staying power, like shops, pubs, restaurants and public spaces.

Today’s newsletter is part two of a special free issue about Lewisham. You can read part one here, which introduces the guide and focuses on Lewisham High Street.

I publish pieces without a paywall occasionally, and you can read the others here and here. Thank you again to all the paying subscribers who make this possible, and are duly rewarded with access to maps, full articles and an archive of material covering over 240 places so far.

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Klos Deli

In mid-December, I found Klos Deli filled with people maneuvering pushchairs and wheelie bags around buckets of gherkins and pickled cabbage, as they stocked up for the festive period. After reading about the history of the polski sklep, I’ve been back twice to try the shop’s pączek. The first of these doughnuts was more familiar to me: spherical and bulging with plum jam. The second was a fat cuboid pumped with cottage cheese, and the best £1.50 I’ve spent in Lewisham so far.

33-35 Lewis Grove, London SE13 6BG

Antonio Delicatessen

I Camisa & Son in Soho was already a shadow of its former self by the time I heard about it, and I find Lina Stores a bit pricey. So when I moved to Brockley, I was thrilled to learn there was an affordable, well-provisioned Italian deli within walking distance. I’ve bought ciabatta and plump salsiccia toscana here, as well as wedges of provolone piccante as strong as Black Bomber. Antonio is a smiling presence, canonised in a set of drawings by the deli counter, one of which depicts him with a radiant halo behind his head. After a blessing from Antonio, get an espresso and a sandwich from his Genoan wife at the cafe next door.

23 Lewis Grove, London SE13 6BG

Sajee

Walk around Lewisham and you’ll eventually encounter a sandwich board with the words “Indian astrologer” on it, above a vivid blood-red hand. These are adverts for spiritual healing and psychic reading services, and their practitioners’ incense-scented vestibules are always close by. I’ve come across four of them: one in a newsagent on Loampit Hill, one next to Madras Restaurant and two near the Sivan Kovil Temple, in the heart of Lewisham’s primary Little Sri Lanka.

Sajee is around here too. It competes with Kaaram and Fu-Asian, and is the busiest canteen on this stretch of Lee High Road. The sambar is deep and complex, while the rasam is sharp, fiery and sometimes free of charge. I had my second ever mutton kothu here, an enormous and nutritionally complete Sri Lankan hash, that doesn’t seem too far a jump from the Indian-Chinese fried noodle dishes also available here.

19 Lee High Rd, London SE13 5LD

Rio Ice Cream & Unique Cakes 4U

Ruby Tandoh’s ice cream guide includes Rio Ice Cream more for its flamboyance than the quality of its ice cream, which is exactly what inspired me to go there. It’s just down the road from Sajee, making it an obvious dessert stop-off if you’ve just eaten a main meal around here. You can also buy cakes, banners and numbered candles, so even when its quiet, there’s always a celebratory air.

37 Lee High Rd, London SE13 5NS

Records

This record shop reminds me of Alan’s Records in East Finchley, mainly because I can’t believe it exists. It’s run by precisely the kind of long-haired, leather-jacketed guy you’d expect, with a 45 spinning in front of him. “I’m a cash only man,” he said when I bought a copy of Bob Dylan’s Infidels from him recently. After that, he told me he was 86 years old and may reduce his hours slightly in 2025, to focus on his painting. His works hang on the walls, dotted around organised yet haphazard stacks of soul, reggae and soft rock.

70 Lee High Rd, London SE13 5PT

Manor House Gardens

I excluded Ladywell and Hither Green from this list purely to give myself some constraints. And I was going to exclude Lee too, until Tobias, one of the locals who informed this piece, made me aware of Manor House Gardens. Since the top of this beautiful park is technically in Lewisham proper, I’ve included it here. It has a walled garden, an ornamental pond, even an ice house. But the best thing about it is the manor house itself, the ornately corniced rooms of which are used as a public library where I wrote part of this guide.

Taunton Rd, London SE13 5SU

Halcyon Books

Since I included Manor House Gardens, I couldn’t leave out Halcyon Books, somewhere I’ve covered on this newsletter before. It’s the kind of light-filled, highly-browsable bookshop I think every high street should have. Since it smells of coffee, it actually reminds me of an American Barnes & Noble, just more jumbled and community-oriented.

266 Lee High Rd, London SE13 5PL

Triple One Cafe

I would have continued walking past Triple One, an unlikely Lithuanian and Pakistani cafe, if it wasn’t for Sam Wilson’s piece about it in Vittles. I admire how much it squeezes into such a small space; you can buy vapes and phone chargers here, as well as paratha, tarka dal and šaltibarščiai. When I tried their honey cake recently, I could hear a washing machine completing a spin cycle in the back.

11 Loampit Vale, London SE13 7TG

Everest Curry King

For several years I was a member of PureGym Lewisham, which for me involved a lot of walking up and down Loampit Hill. This was post-Nunn map and pre-Rayner review, when Everest Curry King still had its acrylic plastic sign and hadn’t expanded into next door. I ate some great sit-down meals there, but mostly picked up fish cutlets and mutton rolls for the walk home, always paying my respects to Mr Pink’s house on the way.

When I returned to Everest Curry King recently after a two-year gap, I wasn’t surprised to find that its prices had risen in line with inflation. What I didn’t expect was the endurance of its canteen-like feel. I ate a plate of dal, cabbage, beetroot, biryani rice and mutton curry, each helping twice as big as it needed to be. “Everest’s set menu is still the best value, tastiest meal in SE13, I believe,” Thea Everett told me.

24 Loampit Hill, London SE13 7SW

Aladdin's Cave

Like Osterley Bookshop, Aladdin's Cave used to be a train station. It's also one of Lewisham’s most atmospheric businesses, filled with antique bathtubs, chandeliers and grandfather clocks, like a never-ending estate sale. Stock spills out onto the street, but I prefer to go inside, to walk over the creaky floorboards and get a look at its mildly haunted period rooms.

72 Loampit Hill, London SE13 7SX

Lewisham Station Free Book Library

Just as I was finishing this piece someone called Alice messaged me to say that the free library at Lewisham station was facing closure, after being deemed a fire risk. Before this I didn’t realise how well-used it was, supplying thousands of books to local people, particularly children. Lewisham’s main library is closed right now, so this free resource really fills a gap.

The library’s founder Michael Peacock has been told the bookcases and their contents need to be removed by 3 February, after the London Fire Brigade reclassified Lewisham as a “subsurface station”. Peacock has started an urgent appeal, asking the LFB to review its decision and Southeastern to find the library a new home. As Peacock makes it clear, the bookcases are outside, above ground and other free libraries exist at a half a dozen genuinely subsurface stations. You can sign Peacock’s petition here.

Lewisham Station, Loampit Vale, London, SE13 7RY

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Thanks for reading! Regular paywalled programming resumes w/c 3 February, with a piece about more Irish pubs.

Wooden City is written by Isaac Rangaswami, with editing from James Hansen.