Pullens buildings

The Pullens Buildings, also known as the Pullens Estate, are some of the last Victorian tenement buildings surviving in London, England. In the Walworth, Newington area, they are near Elephant and Castle and Kennington Underground stations. Located in Amelia Street, Crampton Street, Iliffe Street, Penton Place and Peacock Street, they are protected by Conservation Area status granted by Southwark Council.

The Pullens Estate was built by James Pullen, a local builder, who acquired the land and developed it over a 15-year period from 1886.

The residential buildings are four storeys in height, and each unit is three bays wide with an ornate central entrance to a common stairwell. The ranges vary from three to twelve units in length. They are faced with yellow stock brick, the front being enriched with the use of decorative terracotta arches to the door and window openings. The roofs are flat, providing amenity space for the residents.

The workshops attached to the rear of the residential blocks(buildings) are simpler and more “functional” in appearance. They are two storeys high, and also built of stock brick and flat-roofed. The two-storey loading bays are edged with blue brick quoins. The shops, flanking the entrances to the workshop yards, have traditional painted timber shopfronts, with pilasters supporting a fascia and cornice, and stallrisers. Flats in the buildings were originally connected to the workshops by internal doors which have since been bricked up.

The first block of 16 flats was built on Penton place without the required consent of the Metropolitan Board of Works but Pullen managed to persuade local officials that his work was good and continued building until 1901 – ten years more than he'd been granted permission for.

When the philanthropist Charles Booth was surveying London for his poverty map in 1899 he encountered Mr Pullen at work describing him thus 'Old Mr Pullen in a top hat and fustian suit was on a scaffolding superintending'. Booth stated that demand for the 'well built' flats was high and they were 'Occupied before the paper is dry on the walls' often by police officers from Whitehall and Lambeth districts. The rent was 'eight shillings for three rooms, kitchen and scullery, plus 6 pence a week charged for cleaning the stairs and gas'. Each had to make a deposit of 24 shillings which is an effectual bar to any poor tenants.

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