Gipsy Hill takes its name after a community of gipsies who lived on a Hill in Norwood. It is generally assumed that Samuel Pepys is referring to them when he writes of a visit to the ‘gipsies at Lambeth’ in his diaries. The most famous was Margaret Finch, who died in 1740 at the age of 109. It is said that as she had sat in the same position for so long she had to be buried in a square coffin.