On top of the Bussey Building, a Victorian works that once turned out cricket bats and now turns out sunset spritzes over Rye Lane
Peckham has an unusual talent for putting bars on top of buildings that used to make things, and the Bussey Rooftop Bar is a fine specimen of the trend. It sits atop the Bussey Building on Rye Lane, holds a 4.3 across 913 reviews, and offers the by-now-familiar Peckham reward: climb an unremarkable staircase inside an old industrial structure and emerge into a view.
What the building used to be
The Bussey Building is a Victorian industrial works with a genuinely splendid backstory – among other things it manufactured cricket bats and sporting goods before the long decline that leaves so many such buildings empty. Saved from demolition and reborn as the CLF Art Cafe, it became one of the anchors of Peckham’s creative resurgence, a warren of studios, music rooms, galleries and event spaces. The rooftop bar is the sunlit crown on all of it.
The Peckham cluster
Geographically, the Bussey rooftop sits within a few hundred metres of Frank’s Cafe, Peckham Levels and Forza Wine, forming what the Prat’s naming desk has started to think of as Rye Lane’s vertical drinking district – a dense knot of bars perched on the tops of buildings that were never designed to carry a cocktail list. What distinguishes the Bussey is its lineage: the structure has been a working part of Peckham for well over a century, and the arts complex beneath the bar keeps it from being merely a view with a bar attached.
The 4.3 sits a touch below its rooftop rivals, which is the sort of honest gradation the Prat respects. Rooftop bars live and die by weather, queue length and how full the sky is on the evening you happen to visit, and a rooftop this popular will always have nights that test its patience. What it will not do is pretend to be something other than a bar on a beloved old factory.
An anchor of the Peckham resurgence
The building beneath the bar matters more than the bar itself, and the Prat’s naming desk insists on giving it its due. When Peckham’s fortunes turned in the 2000s and 2010s, the Bussey Building was one of the structures that turned them: a vast, characterful industrial hulk that could have been flattened for flats and was instead filled with studios, club nights, film screenings, markets and rehearsal rooms. The rooftop bar is the part visitors photograph, but it sits on top of a genuine cultural engine – the kind of building that gives a neighbourhood somewhere to make things as well as somewhere to drink. That is a rarer combination than the view alone would suggest, and it is why the Bussey belongs in any honest account of how Peckham became Peckham.
The verdict
A cricket-bat factory that became an art centre that grew a rooftop bar is exactly the kind of layered reinvention Peckham does better than anywhere else in London. The Prat’s adaptive-reuse desk, already delighted by the car park up the road, files the Bussey alongside it: proof that in SE15 the quickest route to a good view is to find a building that has already lived one full life and climb to the top of it.
Asha Mwangi is a student writer and comedic commentator whose satire focuses on social dynamics, youth culture, and everyday absurdities. Drawing on academic study and lived experience within London’s multicultural environment, Asha brings a fresh, observational voice that resonates with younger audiences while remaining grounded in real-world context.
Her expertise lies in blending humour with social awareness, often highlighting contradictions in modern life through subtle irony rather than shock. Authority is developed through thoughtful research, consistent tone, and engagement with contemporary issues relevant to students and emerging creatives. Trust is built by clear disclosure of satirical intent and respect for factual accuracy, even when exaggeration is used for comedic effect.
Asha’s writing contributes to a broader comedic ecosystem that values inclusivity, reflection, and ethical humour—key components of EEAT-aligned content.
A teacher brought it to her English class. Her students suddenly understood what institutional critique actually sounds like.