Sepia-tinted real photo postcard of carpet bed at Peckham Rye Park. Peckham Rye Park was originally a common, but in 1868 Camberwell Vestry purchased the site from the Lord of the Manor, and in 1882 it was transferred to the Board of Works. It was turned into a municipal park by Col. J.J. Sexby, and opened in 1894; various adjacent properties were added up to the Second World War. The Friends of Peckham Rye Park were founded in 1995, and the park restored with a Heritage Lottery Fund grant in 2004-5. Peckham Rye was one of the two sites where the former RHS bandstands were relocated on the closure of the RHS garden in Kensington, but the bandstand was destroyed during the War