Mundania Road and Therapia Road are as far away from East Dulwich as you can get within the East Dulwich postcode.

I don't know anyone who lives in that part of the world who calls it East Dulwich. The same can be said for residents who live at the southern end of Underhill Road, or Melford Road. Or even Lordship Lane from the Library towards Horniman Gardens. That's "Dulwich"

The golf club claim Marmora Road as being in Honor Oak

(I have no affiliation with the golf club despite several recent posts.)

Just gets more and more weird

So Lordship Lane is classed as Dulwich, yet Dulwich village is quite a way from there and then West Dulwich is right up where the college is near Belair park, whichis not that far from Dulwich village, all very confusing, bet there are places in others parts of London/UK that are even more obsurd

A quick trawl of google brought up the following information and suggests Honor Oak is at the top of Forest Hill Road sweeping down to Honor Oak Park station and thE roads coming off from there as per the map.
http://www.londontown.com/LondonStreets/...k_e26.html

The Oak of Honor
Honor Oak, the area in SE23, takes its name from the Oak of Honor on One Tree Hill.

There are many myths and stories about the Oak, but tree currently at the top of the hill was planted about 100 years ago - so a relatively young oak.

It marks the position of an earlier tree which was probably a "boundary oak" which was used to mark a parish boundary. in this case the parish of Camberwell
http://www.onetreehill.org.uk/honoroak/

http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2010/0...r-oak.html

http://www.honoroak.towntalk.co.uk/about/

The post about parishes exactly typifies the wierdness surrounding this issue. St. Augustine's is described as Forest Hill. St Augustine's is about as close to Honor Oak (as in the tree itself) as you could possibly get and certainly the nearest building.

Indeed. Now where I am, you can walk through 3 or 4 postcodes within 10 minutes. Start off at the junction of Dulwich Common and Lordship Lane. Dulwich Common/Cox's Walk is SE21 (Dulwich/West Dulwich), then LL SE22. (Dulwich/East Dulwich) then Sydenham Hill (SE23 FH) and Kirkdale (SE26) Sydenham.

Forest Hill is my local railway station, the nearest open spaces are Dulwich Park, Sydneham Hill Woods and Horniman Gardens. So where exactly do I live!

We live in Dunoon Road and we consider ourselves to be HOP because we use HOP station. But to people from further afield we just say Forest Hill. We think of HOP as being a subset of FH, really.
I suspect this isn't the end of the matter though.

And something I just thought of reading Forest Hillier's post on "More Lies" thread, no one's yet claimed that we should be in Camberwell as both (Old and New) cemeteries are so named.

I believe that the cemeteries were so named when they were both within the boundaries of the old London Borough of Camberwell. You can still see the old metal boundary marker half-submerged at the top of One Tree Hill. It reads 'ERWELL'.

Ah... the joys of being on a boundary!

You do just have to vary it depending on who you are talking to. I've got an SE23 postcode but live in Southwark so it can get interesting on occasion (e.g. when the police are figuring out which SNT team might be interested!)

In general, when talking to someone who knows South London, I say Forest Hill and reference the Horniman. If they look blank, I move to near Dulwich and then 'a bit further east than Brixton' if they are completely clueless.

I tell people I live in Dulwich (just!) and when explaining to friends to use Forest Hill station, they're confused as they don't know that parts of SE22 are closer to FH and HOP than East Dulwich.

Also when it comes to discussing local issues, I visit here and EDF as when you live on a boundary, you're not going to get everything from one place.

The trouble is, there is no written record of the word 'picnic' used in England until 1748, and even then it was more drink than food related. Picnics as we know them were a 19 century pastime. (on wiki so it must be true).

I think the original words were ~ that they 'rested' there, on May Day. Which is a pretty loaded statement by any standard. It implies informality and intimacy at best.

I'm not easy with an oak tree being 'honored' either- what does that mean? People have honour, not trees.

To me it sounds like the oak of honor was so named as it is the place where they want you to believe that both the queen and Sir Richard Bulkeley acted with honour and integrity on that May Day 1602.

And to be fair, today 'honor oak' sounds better than 'fornication oak', so alls well that ends well, really.

Maybe 'Celebrity Oak' would have been closer than 'Fornication Oak'? Queen Bess was a big deal back then and her arrival would have caused a bit of a stir. It was probably featured in 'Hey Nonny No!' magazine or whatever the contemporary equivalent was. Wasn't she in the habit of spending the summer undertaking long freebie jaunts across the countryside with her entourage? With the local nobles obliged to provide hospitality when she turned up on their doorstop? 'Rested' really might have just meant 'rested'.

Personally, I think 'Fornication Oak' is a terrific name for a neighbourhood and I'd be delighted to live there.

To confuse matters further, I think there's a longstanding feud over who's got the real 'Oak Of Honor' with a rival claim for another tree in Greenwich Park.

Anyway, it meant that we retained the Elizabethan spelling of Honor, as did the Americans, while all those -or endings mutated into -ours throughout the rest of the English language.

I'm amused to see how Lordship Lane has been aquired by Dulwich since it became trendy.
When I lived in SE22 in the 80's, Lordship Lane was firmly in East Dulwich. The road sign showing you were entering East Dulwich was at the bottom of Lordship Lane. (Possibly still is)

The sign has vanished now. The last Southwark sign was removed a couple of years back and said Welcome to Dulwich.

Other signs I think just said "Southwark" or "Welcome to Southwark" or Southwark Council.

The Lewisham sign on London Road by Horniman Gardens[/quote] is as grand as ever, although there is a tiny "Welcome to Sydenham" either on Sydenham Hill or at the top of Kirkdale.

Very true Steve B

I also recall Lordship Lane in the 80,s when I used to walk up and down it going to the Magdala from near Hornimans where I live

I don't think the gentrifcation reached the FH end of LL. The yummy mummies and Dulwich Mum super sized buggies seem to stop as soon as you get past Dulwich Library.

There isn't a trendy coffee shop or deli on the row of shops opposite the Harvester for example!

She was 68 in 1602!

Backtracking a bit: at least two posters on this thread would extend the northernmost boundary of Honor Oak to include the stretch between Wood Vale all the way up to Peckham Rye Park. Is that the majority view?

When I grew up in East Dulwich I always thought of those roads as part of East Dulwich. My memory is that people who lived there did as well, possibly on account of the SE22 postcode. And this would have been a time when there wouldn't have been any status or financial advantage to having a home in East Dulwich rather than Honor Oak. East Dulwich was just one more ordinary South London district with a predominantly working class population. (Or 'a dump' as a snootier / more discriminating poster has styled it elsewhere on this forum. Take your pick.)

That may have been the case when the boundaries were more clear, however I've lived in SE22 almost all my life and that row of shops along FH road has been called by my family as Honor Oak. It then becomes Peckham Rye as you reach the park although the streets that are in SE22 that come off Forest Hill Road and Peckham Rye are East Dulwich.

For Wood Vale itself, I'd consider it to be Honor Oak as far as Langton Rise, then Forest Hill for the rest of it. With the streets on the Southwark side being in Dulwich.