Lewisham and Deptford have been a single borough since 1965, but they have very different histories. Deptford became an important shipbuilding centre after Henry VIII established a royal dockyard there; this attracted over heavy industry. Lewisham and its surrounding villages were primarily rural, until nineteenth-century improvements in transport encouraged so many new residents that by the 1920s only a small agricultural area remained, to the south of the borough. Renowned local historian John Coulter’s new book describes and illustrates the changing scene in these two contrasting areas. Most of the more than two hundred photographs have never been published in book form before, and will suprise and fascinate anyone who knows this part of south-east London.