The South London hidden ruins which you can discover overrun by wildlife

London is full of hidden gems.

As the city has aged and grown, many of its treasures have fallen out of public view.

But as we’ve forgotten them, nature has moved in, claiming its hold on the ruins of our past.

Here are some of the best ruins in South London that have become overrun by wildlife.

READ MORE: The chilling discovery of a mass Great Plague burial site at one of London’s most famous train stations

Nunhead Cemetery

One of London’s infamous ‘Magnificent Seven’, this Peckham cemetery opened in 1840 and is home to magnificent monuments and humble headstones, made up in typical Victorian gloom.

Covering 52 acres, an eerie Gothic chapel looms at the entrance of the graveyard, and patches of graves are dotted around its criss-crossing paths.

But it is the unkempt foliage give it a mystique. After its closing in 1969, the surrounding scrub and woodland was allowed to invade the cemetery, and trees began spreading their roots between graves and overrunning paths.

Nunhead Cemetery is an oasis of calm in Lewisham

Now, whole areas of headstones are inseparable from the tangled plants that cover them, and nature has been left to ravage the gothic architecture long abandoned.

In 1987, the site was designated a local nature reserve, and an extensive council-funded restoration project in 2001 restored some of the memorials and chapel. But nature continues to reign supreme and the site is managed to promote the conservation of tawny owls, woodpeckers, and songbirds.

The cemetery offers a window into the Victorian world, left to the hands of untamed nature.

Sydenham Hill Woods Folly

Buried within Sydenham Hill Wood in Southwark lies a ruined medieval structure.

With an intricate carved archway and thick stone walls, it could be the remnants of a church, an abbey, or maybe a section of castle. Bulky stone fragments lie buried in the ground, and the walls left standing remain surrounded by dense woodland on all sides.

It’s a secret hideaway of a forgotten time.

Except this secret hideaway is actually a sham. The ‘ruins’ aren’t the remnants of some historical building but were built for purely ornamental function in the mid nineteenth century.

They were a folly in the grounds of Fairwood House and served as an impressive garden feature before the house was demolished and the area was redeveloped as woodland.

Sydenham Hill Woods is now designated a local nature reserve and is the largest remaining area of the Great North Wood – a vast area of ancient woodlands that once covered South London. With bats, hedgehogs, butterflies, and over 200 species of trees and flowering plants populating the wood, the ‘ruins’ sit amongst the wildlife as a Victorian garden relic.

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Lesnes Abbey Woods

Covering a whopping 88 hectares, Lesnes Abbey Woods contains a lot of history.

A prehistoric burial mound, ancient woodland and, most importantly, the ruined walls of the twelfth century Lesnes Abbey.

Founded after the Norman Conquest and even making an appearance in the famous Peasants’ Revolt, Lesnes Abbey was one of the first to fall victim to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

The surviving walls of the abbey can now be seen in stark outline in the Lenses Abbey Woods.

Protected from the tempest of untamed nature, and saved from surrounding building development, the woods are operated as a nature reserves and provides clear view of the abbey’s previous scale and relation to its neighbouring wildlife.

Viewing the abbey’s ruins first-hand, you can appreciate the towering dominance it once possessed over the area.

Crystal Palace

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A very famous one, we know, but do you know the story behind it?

The Crystal Palace was representative of a lot of Victorian inventions.

A technological marvel intended to spearhead the future of art and architecture and venerated in its time, but eventually neglected until its destruction by fire in 1936.

Now only the ruins of its terraces and plinths remain, slowly seeping back into the trees and hillside on which they were placed.

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Much of the terraces remain intact and the sphinxes, bar a nose here or there, still hold their royal magnificence. But without the huge glass domes of the Great Exhibition standing alongside them, they feel empty and defenceless against the encroaching trees.

And for a slightly different take at ‘wildlife’, check out the Victorian dinosaur sculptures that occupy the Crystal Palace Park.

Commissioned in 1852, they were the first dinosaur sculptures produced in the world and give an amusing insight into the then-burgeoning field of palaeontology. Walking around, you can see the Victorian lent heavily the ‘lizard’ side of dinosaurs.

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