Place Name
Reverend John George Storie (June 8, 1797 – November 4, 1858), was vicar of St Giles Church Camberwell between 1823 and 1846. Storie had been born and had grown up around Camberwell, where his family owned Springfield Lodge and were local landowners. After studying at Cambridge he returned to take up his church post and threw himself into parish work, overseeing, among other things, the rebuilding of the church by the renowned English architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. Scott, who would go on to design the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, found that while he “greatly admired” the vicar he had some trepidation whenever they met, writing: “I feared him for he was a man whose very look would almost make one tremble when his wrath was stirred. He was determined to have a good church.” Storie’s energies during this period also saw his support for local education, helping to establish the Collegiate School, and as an opponent of the Camberwell Fair, a regular annual fixture since the Middle Ages which by the 19thCentury had become a riotous affair. Writing to the lords of the manor in 1840 with a petition of residents, Storie summed up the feelings of the locals: “the annual fair, held under your authority is productive of the greatest possible evil in a moral as well as every other point of view.” The last fair was held in 1855. On a wall close to the corner of Camberwell Grove is a stone which states: “Mr Stories Freehold extends 18 Feet 4 inches North from this Stone.”
