Sydenham borders Crystal Palace, Beckenham, West Dulwich, Forest Hill, Catford, Bellingham and Penge. This neighbourhood area is located on Sydenham’s busy high street, Sydenham Road, which hosts its own bakery, independent cafes, restaurants and a recently opened comedy club. Sydenham is a diverse area with around 30% of its population being from black and ethnic minority groups, which is five times the national average of 6%. Sydenham’s diversity is also expressed in its architecture with a mix of housing from the interwar period, to post war council flats, to 21st century mixed use developments.

Once known as Shippenham, Sydenham was originally a small settlement made up of a small number of cottages in the woods, whose inhabitants made their livelihood through collecting wood and farming animals. In the 1640s, new crowds were attracted to Sydenham because springs of water containing medicinal properties were found in what is now Wells Park. In 1854 the Crystal Palace was brought from Hyde Park and rebuilt on the southern ridge of Sydenham Hill in the south-west corner of the district. It was used as an events and entertainment centre for Sydenham’s growing wealthy elite, until its destruction by a fire in 1936. Similar to most of London, Sydenham has always historically been a Christian area, with over 56% of its population ascribing to the Christian faith.

This neighbourhood is home to Sydenham’s only public library which was built in 1904 and funded by Scottish businessman Andrew Carnegie. The area’s local park built in 1901, Home Park, was named after a local home that used to stand nearby (Home Park Lodge).

Residents have been protesting local developments that will cut down local woods.

There are a number of large scale residential developments underway in Sydenham at the moment. Maybrey Works and Dylon Factory Works are the foremost of these schemes, hosting over 400 new homes between them, with the former offering a gym and Landscaped communal gardens. There are also a number of lower density developments currently underway offering more traditional housing to potential buyers rather than the flats on offer in the previously mentioned schemes. Sydenham Groves, the collection of 1 & 2-bedroom apartments and 3-bedroom townhouses between 154 and 158 Sydenham Road, is the largest example of this type of development in the area.