Nunhead is a suburb in the London Borough of Southwark in London, England. It is an inner-city suburb located southeast of Charing Cross. It is the location of the Nunhead Cemetery. Nunhead has traditionally been a working-class area and, with the adjacent neighbourhoods, is currently going through a lengthy process of gentrification. Nunhead is the location of several underground reservoirs, built by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company. Etymology The name is first recorded in a deed of 1583 relating to a land sale including estates "lying at Nunn-head." The origin of the name Nunhead is not certain but is believed to be derived from a local inn named variously The Nun's Head or The Nunhead Tavern. Local historians and local legend maintain that this name refers to the beheading of a nun during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The legend claims that the head of the Mother Superior of a nunnery, which stood where the current public house The Old Nun's Head now stands, was placed on a spike on the green following her death. There is no evidence to support this claim. However, a nunnery in the area may have been connected with the nunnery of The Augustinian Priory of St. John the Baptist, Holywell (now Shoreditch) which acquired lands in Camberwell and Peckham in the 12th century. History A rural settlement of approximately ten buildings named "NoneHead" is clearly visible in the 1762 map titled A topographical map of the county of Surrey by John Roque. The settlement occupies the land which is now Nunhead Green and Nunhead High Street. At the time it was separated from the nearby settlement of Peckham Rye by fields and the now covered River Peck. In 1834 the Girdlers Company built the Beeston's Gift Almshouses, a terrace of seven Tudor-style cottages which still stand in front of a garden with railings on Consort road. Further almshouses were built in 1853 by the Asylum of the Metropolitan Beer and Wine Trade Association on the edge of Nunhead Green to provide housing for aged members of the trade. In 1868, Brocks Fireworks, a manufacturer of fireworks, built a firework 'manufactory' close to where the pub, The Pyrotechnists Arms, still stands. The pub is so-named because of its original proximity to the firework factory. Until 1878, Nunhead formed part of the large ancient parish of Camberwell in the Brixton hundred of Surrey. The area's