The corner house

The corner house at the Broadway (formerly Springfield Crescent) and the alleyway ( no official name has ever given to this footpath) is where the two girls allegedly lived.

The entire crescent block where the house belongs behind the theater and the original town hall was originally planned as a grand housing development, however, due to the delay of the development commencement around 1880, the original housing development turned into mixed-use hosting shops on the ground level the crescent was realised as a high street. The development of the area and much beyond was carried out by Archibald Cameron Corbett and his Catford builder James Watt.

The corner house in red

James Watt has built about 5000 homes in Catford not only being a successful contractor he was but also known as a pioneer of popular entertainment in the area. His first cinema - The Electric in Catford was open in 1909 and went on to build about 25 cinemas and also ice rinks in mostly South London.

The area has been changed rapidly around the 1950s. Lewisham town hall was knocked down and rebuilt in 1958 and the council radically redeveloped the town center from the early 1960s, with blocks of flats and a shopping centre. The brutalist office tower Eros House replaced the Lewisham Hippodrome and the Gaumont cinema. St Laurence’s church was demolished and replaced by the council’s Laurence House, and a new church was built on Bromley Road.