In 2011 Soni Marquez spotted an advert on Gumtree for a warehouse to rent. She was looking for a base for a new art studio, the warehouse was appealingly cheap and Soni, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, jumped at the chance.
Sonsoles Print Studio (sonsolesprintstudio.co.uk) has been providing affordable space to a community of hundreds of local artists ever since.
Marquez is one of the creative entrepreneurs who helped kick-start the evolution of Peckham, from vibrant but down-at-heel backwater to global destination.
On Rye Lane, discount stores and beauty salons now stand next to art galleries, bars and cafes, house prices have spiralled and big money is sniffing around SE15.
Locals fear that peak Peckham has been reached, and its character is about to be erased in the same way that the rough edges and excitement of Brixton and Hackney were sanded down by fancy new apartments and organic coffee shops.
It is certainly no longer easy to run a small, community-minded business, and by last year Sonsoles was struggling.
When Marquez started out her monthly rent was £1,300. It is now close to £2,000pcm, and the studio had to close during the pandemic, losing vital revenue.
The local community has also changed. When Marquez moved in, the place was teeming with impoverished young artists grateful for budget studio space.
“The original crowd that came to print have moved out of London — they can’t afford to live here any more,” she says. “We were dying a slow death.”
While small businesses are hanging on by their fingernails, big business is eyeing this hip and lucrative corner of London.
‘Gentrification on steroids’
The biggest housing development in Peckham’s recent history is Berkeley Homes’ plan to redevelop the ugly Eighties Aylesham Shopping Centre.
The house-builder bought the prime seven-acre site at the junction of Peckham High Street and Rye Lane in 2021 after a USA/Ireland consortium failed to get redevelopment plans off the ground.
Its first attempt to win planning permission was condemned by campaigners as “a citadel that will loom over historic Peckham”, featuring more than 1,000 homes (35 per cent affordable) in blocks up to 27 storeys tall.
The firm retreated, has reduced its aspirations to around 850 new homes and a crack team of architects has been assembled, led by dRMM. Their initial plans were unveiled at the end of January.
Berkeley will lodge a planning application this year, and hopes to start work on the 10-year project in 2025.
But Chris Allchin, 44, a member of campaign group Aylesham Community Action (ACA), is rolling up his sleeves for a fight.
Nobody claims that the monstrous Aylesham is an architectural gem, but ACA wants to ensure that what replaces it is better.
“The Aylesham Centre is badly designed and underused and its redevelopment is an opportunity for the area,” says Allchin. “But 850 homes is inappropriate for the site, and there is going to be the absolute minimum of affordable housing.
“If the area is zhuzhed up then rents will go up and local businesses will be squeezed out. Regeneration on this sort of scale will mean gentrification on steroids.”
What campaigners would like to see at the Aylesham is genuinely affordable housing, good-quality green space, and a plan for how the commercial space on the site will be used to support local businesses.
Berkeley declined to comment further, but history suggests that Peckham’s community knows how to fight back.
Peckham power
Marquez witnessed the strength of Peckham power first-hand last summer when, in desperation, she launched a Crowdfunder to help her stay in business.
To her astonishment she raised more than £13,000, more than enough to clear her rent and plan for the future — a new website and a National Lottery bid for funding to offer residences to local artists are on the cards.
“We had not realised what a community we had,” she says. “Everyone helped out, all the local businesses; they didn’t think twice.”
Peckham also has an active community association, Peckham Vision, co-founded by the redoubtable Eileen Conn in 2005.
It was initially set up to see off plans to demolish a site by Rye Lane rail bridge to make way for a tram depot. It then went on to derail plans to stop housing blocks being built around Peckham Rye station.
Peckham's rising house prices
2013: £350,000
2024: £588,000
In 2017 Peckham Vision was instrumental in protecting the Peckhamplex cinema and adjacent Peckham Levels and Frank’s Café from demolition.
Conn shares Allchin’s concerns about the Aylesham, and is generally horrified by how fast house prices in Peckham have spiralled.
Back in 2013 you could pick up an average property for just over £350,000, and a flat would cost around £250,000 according to estate agent Hamptons.
Since then average prices have jumped almost 67 per cent, easily passing the half-million pound milestone and hitting an average of £588,000.
Across outer London prices grew 58 per cent during the same period, to an average of £582,000.
To Conn, developing Peckham should be done for the benefit of local businesses and residents. Old buildings should be restored, not demolished, and biodiversity should be central.
“For this, we need a well thought-through plan for the town, a plan which is co-produced by the operators in the town centre, with local people, not just responding to plans created in the town hall, which have shown over time not to be the right approach,” she says.
One project that meets with Conn’s approval is ongoing work by Southwark council to build a new piazza plus shops around the Grade II-listed Peckham Rye Station.
More controversial is Network Rail’s plan to build an extra station entrance to increase capacity and upgrade access.
Some critics complain that the new facade resembles an out-of-town data centre and could hardly be more jarring alongside the fancy Victoriana of the original station.
Nonetheless, planning permission has been granted and work on this £40 million project, which includes a new accessible concourse and widened platform, will start in 2026, according to a Network Rail spokesman.
“We can only hope that it turns out to be a design that is sympathetic with the listed station and better than the computer-generated designs we have seen,” says Conn.
‘Not many opportunities are being created’
Alongside the Aylesham, Peckham Vision’s next challenge is going to be how to react to plans to repurpose Jones & Higgins, a Victorian department store on Rye Lane’s golden mile of shops, topped with a clock tower inspired by St Mark’s Square in Venice.
Jones & Higgins was built when Peckham was one of London’s premier shopping destinations, but closed in 1980. Since then it has been a nightclub, the Peckham Palais, and is now largely empty. The Victorian Society lists the building as one of its top 10 at-risk structures in the capital.
In November, a planning application dropped, proposing a full renovation of the building, and its rebirth as a 1,500-capacity nightclub and event space. The man with the plan is Louis Hyams, founder of Night Group, which operates a string of venues including Night Tales in Hackney.
The slick interior of the building has been designed by the award-winning interior designer Fare Inc, which has worked on high-end projects including Kolamba in Soho.
Bringing this fine old building back to life is clearly a good thing, although neighbours are already voicing concerns about living cheek-by-jowl with a superclub that will open until 6am through the weekends, and it is hard to say how such an upscale attraction will benefit locals.
Natalie Worgs is all for investment in her neighbourhood but is thoroughly fed up with businesses and organisations treating it as a cash cow.
Worgs has lived in Peckham for more than 20 years, raised three sons, works as a community outreach worker and has also founded Girls About Peckham (girlsaboutpeckham.co.uk), a digital platform focused on creating creative opportunities for young women.
“A lot of the changes in Peckham are for the new people, not for the original people of Peckham,” she says. “Not many opportunities are being created. A lot of the original people have moved out of the area or been pushed out.”
When Worgs first moved to the area, Rye Lane was packed with specialist food shops and the atmosphere was dynamic and diverse. “There was more of a community spirit,” she says.
“The shop owners would make you feel like they were celebrating your culture, but over time those elders that were running the businesses have handed them on and there is not that relationship any more.”
Worgs, 47, is also painfully aware that her boys, now aged 24, 20, and 14, are unlikely to be able to afford to live in Peckham unless something changes radically.
What the area needs, she said, is more spaces for kids and the elderly, more affordable housing and more job opportunities.
What it does not need is outsiders telling the people of Peckham what is good for them. “They need to work with us in a proper way,” Worgs says. “We don’t want to be told by someone who doesn’t even know the area.”
