Sydenham is surrounded by green space, and most of it is closer than the nearest bus stop. A park is a two-minute walk from the average front door. Dozens more are within a kilometre. Water is a short stroll away. The high street is long on shops and short on pubs.
The average home in Sydenham is about 115 metres from a park or green space, and about 45 of them lie within a kilometre. Wells Park, Mayow Park and a wooded nature reserve on the hill are on the doorstep, with Crystal Palace Park, Dulwich Park and the Horniman Gardens a little further. In the 1640s Londoners came out to Wells Park to drink the spring water for their health. The cure these days is getting there on foot.
The nearest water is about 530 metres from the average home, and about 12 ponds, lakes or stretches of river are within a kilometre. The River Pool runs along the east side of Lower Sydenham, and the lakes in Crystal Palace Park are within reach of the western half.
The nearest stretch of the National Cycle Network is about 1.4 kilometres from the average home, and only 13% of postcodes are close to it. The Waterlink Way follows the rivers north from Sydenham towards the Thames, which is the route for anyone who would rather cycle beside water than on the South Circular. Cox's Walk, an oak avenue cut soon after 1732 to link the wells at Dulwich with Sydenham's, still runs up from Lordship Lane.
The rated-premises figures count 229 shops, 12 restaurants and 10 pubs in Sydenham, along with 25 offices. That is a working high street before it is a night out, and anyone after a big choice of dinner will be catching a bus.
Across Lewisham, fine-particle pollution averaged about 9 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, a borough-wide figure that covers Sydenham's quieter ridge and its busier roads alike.
The character comes from the hill. Sydenham Hill is one of the highest points in London, and the western side, around Upper Sydenham and towards Crystal Palace Park, is greener and more spread out than the flatter, busier streets running down to Lower Sydenham and Bell Green. The Horniman Museum sits just beyond, and the prehistoric animal sculptures by the lake in Crystal Palace Park are listed, which gives the dinosaurs more protection from alteration than most of the houses that look down on them.
Private gardens are less generous than the public ones. Sydenham has about 42,700 square metres of private garden per 1,000 residents, and in a district where most homes are flats, a lot of that space belongs to the ground floor. Ask whether a flat's garden is demised to it or simply visible from the window, because the parks are public and the lawn may not be.
The business rates valuation list carries 579 premises in Sydenham, 229 of them shops. These are rateable units on the list, so some will be empty or used for something other than their category, and the count says what the high street was built for more than what is trading this month.
Of 168 food outlets with a hygiene rating, about 63% hold the top score of five, and about 3% sit at the bottom of the scale.
No area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest or ancient woodland overlaps Sydenham. The Great North Wood once covered the whole hill, and what the district has now is parkland, reserve and golf course in place of a formal landscape designation.
The surroundings are one of the best things about living in Sydenham, with parks in every direction, a nature reserve on the slope and more green space within a kilometre than most of London can manage.