Origin of Placenames in Peckham and Nunhead

Dulwich means the meadow where dill grows, while Peckham means village by a hill - probably Nunhead Hill. Nunhead is a local name with particularly gruesome origins. At first Nonehead, Elizabethan England recorded this name after a Mother Superior was beheaded for opposing Henry VIII''s pitiless sacking of the monasteries. Her severed head was placed on a pike for public view at Nunhead Green. Kin...