'Lewisham' probably means the village of a man called Leof or Leofsa.
The name ends in Old English hām, a village. Its earliest written form, liofshema, is in a charter of 862 fixing the boundary with Bromley. Older historians read the later form Levesham as 'the house among the meadows'. King James I once said: 'On my soul, I will be king of Lusen', a spelling suggesting a different pronunciation then.