Until a few months ago I lived on the other side of Blackheath
and my clearest visual recollection of Lee Manor Conservation Area was the curious group of "frenchified" houses in Micheldever Road.
Since last June, living in the heart of the area, I have been more than ever struck by this odd outbreak of Francophilia in what is otherwise so very typically a late Victorian and Edwardian suburb.
For once the local history collections are no help for there are no papers or other records relating specifically to this group of houses, although there are photographs of their most distinctive internal feature: the moveable partition that can be raised or lowered rather like a portcullis to divide the main through room on the ground floor.
Whilst this homage to the domestic styles of northern France may be rare in south-east London, there are precedents dating from earlier in the Victorian era, especially in relation to the handsome scale of these houses. As H. J. Dyos revealed in his study of Camberwell, one can identify the different levels of social class from the types of tree that were planted on the streets of the emergent suburban way of life. Limes and horse chestnuts were the mark of roads lived in by the well-to-do, acacias and laburnums were for those of middle incomes. and bare pavements were for the working class however heightened were their social aspirations.