Stockwell | >Re-PHOTO

More Stockwell Green & Mary Seacole

My walk which began in Clapham on Sunday 4th June 1989 continues in Stockwell. The first and previous part was Light & Life, Pinter and Stockwell Breweries.

*Combermere Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-51*

The decorations at right are on the fine frontage of The Marquess of Lorne pub. The Grade II listing for this mentions is fine terracotta window surrounds and these panels in green, gold and brown glazed tiles. The pub has the address 51 Dalyell Rd, but this side is in Combermere Rd. The Marquis of Lorne is a title given to the eldest son and heir of the Duke of Argyll (in full Marquis of Kintyre and Lorne.) The decoration on the building includes the name of the Licensee in 1881 although a licence for the pub was refused ten years earlier. CAMRA note that as well as the fine Victorian exterior decoration much of the inter-war interior refitting remains.

Probably the pub name dates from 1878 when John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell, later 9th Duke of Argyll but then Marquess of Lorne was made Governor General of Canada. He was married to Princess Louise, fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, who has a rather fine pub named after her in Holborn.

The decoration on 20 Combermere Road at left has also survived. This is a Laundromat and dry cleaners.

*Hargwyne St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-52*

A street of solidly built late Victorian houses. Their plain elegance is relieved by leaf decoration on three sides of the the first floor windows and dentillation above the ground floor bays. A boy plays with a ball outside in this quiet street. I can’t find any explanation of the street name.

*Shops, Brixton Station Rd, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-53*

I made a detour into the centre of Brixton, probably to use the public toilets in Brixton Market, taking a picture of the block of shops on its north side between Brixton Road and Beehive Place, before returning to Combermere Road. I made more pictures in Brixton the same day on another camera, either on this detour or later in my wanderings on the day but I can’t now remember which – I’ll include these in one of the later posts on this walk.

*Stockwell Depot, Combermere Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-42*

Another view of the former Waltham’s Brewery in Combermere Road which was for many years a Lambeth Council Depot and has since been replaced by housing. Although I wasn’t able to view the interior, this seemed to me to be a good example of a relatively early industrial building, few of which have survived.

*New Queens Head, pub, Stockwell Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-43*

The pub is still there on Stockwell Road, a short distance east of the corner of Combermere Road, and still looks similar though it has lost the ‘New’ and is now longer a Courage pub. The name board between the two first floor windows is gone, now just dull brown empty paintwork and the ground floor paint is all over, no longer emphasising the panels and door and window frames. It used to look rather smarter. Perhaps the beer is better.

Perhaps surprisingly this building is Grade II listed, described as a “Building of Regency appearance with alterations.” The listing states it is included for group value and my picture shows some of that group.

*Mary Seacole Mural, Stockwell Green, Stockwell Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-44*

I moved a few feet west to include a better view of the Mary Seacole mural on the west corner of Combermere Road. Not only has the mural now gone, so has the building on which it was painted.

Mary Seacole (1805 – 1881) was born in Jamaica, her father a Scots soldier and mother a free Creole. She became a nurse and a doctor using natural herbs, learning her skills from her mother who ran a house looking after injured soldiers. In 1854 she applied to the War Office to go as a nurse to the Crimean War (1853-6) but was rejected as she had no formal training. So she made her own way there.

In the Crimea she met Florence Nightingale who refused to let her work in the hospital there, so she set up her own British Hotel near Balaclava to look after sick and recovering officers, also going to nurse wounded soldiers on the battlefield, sometimes under fire.

In the Crimea, ‘Mother Seacole’ gained a reputation among the soldiers rivalling that of Florence Nightingale. She returned to England after the war in poor health and destitute, but thousands who knew what she had done for our soldiers set up a festival and collection for her in 1857. At the time William Russell who had been in Crimea as War correspondent for The Times wrote “I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.”

But somehow, probably because of her colour, Mary Seacole more or less disappeared from our history books, and this mural and a memorial garden close to where she was buried in St Mary’s Cemetery in Kensal Green were part of a campaign to revive the memory and reputation of this “Black lady of compassion” and Black history in general.

In 2016 a memorial statue to her was erected in the grounds of St Thomas’s Hospital, the first in the UK to a named black woman. There was opposition to the erection of a statue to her, led by the the Nightingale Society.

More pictures from my walk on 4th June 1989 in a later post.

Light & Life, Pinter and Stockwell Breweries

Light & Life, Pinter and Stockwell Breweries: A week after my previous walk I returned to South London to take more pictures on Sunday 4th June 1989. I began my walk from Clapham High Street.

*Landor Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-61*

Landor Road, originally named ‘Stockwell Private Road’ but changed at some date before 1912, possibly after the well-known English writer Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) runs from close to Clapham North Station to Stockwell Green. I made my first picture roughly halfway between the two at the corner with Hubert Grove. A group of five men standing around a car on the opposite side of the road had probably attracted my attention but I clearly did not want to attract theirs.

Many of the shops here have since been converted to residential use.

*Light & Life Full Gospel Fellowship, 105-11 Landor Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-62*

A row of four terrace houses here had been converted into the General HQ of the Light & Life Full Gospel Fellowship, and notices gave a full list of activities including Sunday Schools, Divine Worship, Gospel Meeting, Bible Study and Prayer but also Sewing, Cooking, Baking, Musical Rehearsals, Table Tennis , Darts and Snooker. The centre also housed a play group on Monday to Fridays and a Youth Club on Thursday evenings.

A message says ‘COME AND ENJOY YOURSELF – THIS IS NOT A BLACK CHURCH. WE DO NOT PREACH A BLACK GOSPEL – JESUS IS LORD’.

The Fellowship is still continuing its mission there, though with new noticeboards, blinds replacing curtains and a new coat of paint.

*Kimberley Rd, Landor Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-63*

I can’t read the notices in the shop window of 127 Landor Road, but I think they might have indicated that the shop had closed. It was perhaps about to be converted to its current residential use.

Looking down Kimberley Road there are two tall blocks of flats, but from my camera position only one is visible, I think Pinter House on Rhodesia Road, one of three blocks in the Grantham Road Estate. 1890s terraced houses there were destroyed by wartime bombing and the site was used for prefabs. Planning for these towers began in the early 1960s under the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth, but by the time they were completed in 1968-9 they were a part of the London Borough of Lambeth Council.

The three blocks were all named after modern play writers – in this case Harold Pinter. The block was designed by the deputy borough architect George Finch and system built; this 62m high block contains around 92 flats and maisonettes. The flats were refurbished in 2000-2001 after they became managed by Hyde Southbank Homes and now look rather different.

St Andrew's, Church, CofE, Landor Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-64 — *St Andrew’s, Church, CofE, Landor Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-64*

St Andrew’s Stockwell Green in Landor Rd was built as a chapel in 1767 but there were later additions and the exterior was rebuilt by H E Roe in this Romanesque style in 1867. Vestries and the Lady Chapel were then added in the 1890s.

The building beyond the church was a large post-war bottle store which was replaced in 2010 by the perhaps deliberately rather bland Oak Square development. This had been a brewery site since 1730 and had been taken over as Hammertons Stockwell Brewery in 1868. It was sold to Watneys in 1951 and they used it as bottling stores.

*Two Boys, Landor Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-65*

I find it hard to positively identify this street corner though I think it must be than of Dalyell Road, where Landor Road meets Stockwell Green. The building at left is the now-demolished bottle store, and on it you can read the name THE QUADRANT. The corner is occupied by a giant billboard, and shop appears to have fruit in its window, a sack of potting compost on the ground outside and to sell ice cream.

*House, 21, Combermere Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-66*

This is a rather unusual detached house on Combermere Road and I think from my picture that it may have been built or later used as a shop. This is a very mixed street and there was nothing like this anywhere along its length.

It is still there, though the windows have been replaced with something looking rather sturdier and the door has a wrought iron grille.

*Stockwell Depot, Combermere Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-6b-56*

Rhodes’ Brewery – Stockwell’s other brewery – took water from an artesian well on this site and was bought by Edward Waltham in 1851. His British Brewery or Half Guinea Ale Brewery in Stockwell Green produced Half Guinea Ale and London Brown Stout at 2/6d per dozen bottles; you paid an extra 6d for the mysteriously named ‘S N’ Stout. It many have stood for ‘Nourishing Stout’, something they also sold as Butler Brand Nourishing Stout.

Back in the 1940s or 50s, my mother, then languishing in hospital, was prescribed a daily bottle of Guinness. As a lifelong total abstainer she refused to drink the demon alcohol, but her Irish nurse had no such qualms.

The buildings probably dated from before 1851. The Lion Brewery bought the company in 1906 and for many years this site was a council depot. It has now been replaced by housing.

To be continued…

Brixton Road and Angell Town -1989

The third post on my walk in Kennington and Brixton on Sunday 6th May 1989. The posts began with Hanover, Belgrave, Chapel, Shops, Taxis. The previous post was On the Road to Brixton.

*House, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-62*

No 326, with two doors above each other with steps to the upper door with a balustrade. Many of the houses along here date from the first development along the road and are good examples of early-mid 19th century houses and most have some intresting features but are perhaps not distinctive enough to deserve listing.

The house now looks much the same as when I photographed it. I suspect this unusual arrangement with steps up to the front door was how this house was built. While many houses from the period have basement flats, this appears to have been built with its ground floor rather higher, perhaps becuase of the risk of flooding from the River Effra. But if so, why was a similar approach not used for neighbouring houses?

*J & P Motors, Thornton St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-63*

I walked a little back up Brixton Road to Thornton Street, though too much has changed for me to positively identify the exact location of J & P Motors on this fairly short L-shaped street. I think it was probably on the north side of the bottom of the L behind what is now the worker’s co-operative, Brixton Cycles.

There was a splendid utilitarian simplicity of this building which appealed to me, and which I enhanced with its symmetrical gates and No parking signs.

*Evereds, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-66*

Back on Brixton Road, Evereds Bathrooms had its showroom in two shops at 308-10 Brixton Rd. The buildings here are still standing but no longer in use as a shop. For some years since 2011 the Victorian shopfront built as a house agents in 1879 has been in use as an art gallery, SHARP Gallery (Social, Hope and Recovery Project) which has shown the work of over 120 artists, many of whom use mental health services and is supported by the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. Both the early nineteent century house and these shops are Grade II listed, along with 312.

*Eagle Printing Works, Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-51*

Both buildings at 304 and 306 Brixton Road have survived, but in 2013 planning permission was granted for changes to the Eagle Printing Works, and the fine semi-circular panel including the building date of 1864 and its wrought-iron decoration was removed – a piece of vandalism that should never have been approved.

Apparently the printing works a few years later became a sub district Post, Money Order and Telegraph Office, and it was from here that Sherlock Holmes sent his first telegram.

*Loughborough Hotel, Evandale Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-52*

I turned off the Brixton Road where I had spent some time wandering back and forth and struck off to the east along Loughborough Road. The first picture I took was of the Loughborough Hotel, described in more detail on a previous walk, a well known music venue, closed in 2008 and has been converted into flats, with a café gallery on the ground floor.

*Lilford Rd, Minet Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-54*

From Fiveways I continued along Lilford Road, again stopping to re-take the impressive porch on its corner with Minett Road, also featured in a previous post. I chose a very similar viewpoint but the lighting was quite different as it had been overcast for the earlier image.

I can’t remember why I made the detour, though possibly it was just the sheer pleasure of seeing an area with so many fine buildings again. Or it could have been to find a pleasant place to sit and eat my lunch, as I walked as far as Myatts Fields before returning to Loughborough Rd.

*Elmore House, Loughborough Estate, Flats, Loughborough Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-43*

On Loughborough Road I was in a very different London, the Loughborough Estate, redeveloped after much of the area was devastated by wartime bombing. The first stages of the rebuild were in five-storey red brick blocks typical of 1930s LCC estates of that era, solid and with decent sized rooms but uninspiring visually. There height was kept to five floors as they had no lifts.

From 1954-7 more of the estate was developed with a mix of high and low-rise modern buildings designed by the LCC Architects Department which included nine eleven-storey slab blocks which became a model for later LCC estates. They even gained approval from John Betjeman who Layers of London quotes as writing “When one compares their open-ness, lightness, grass and trees, and carefully related changes of scale from tall blocks to small blocks, with the prison-like courts of artisans’ dwellings of earlier ages, one realises some things are better than they were… Maybe it has no place for someone like me, but it gives one hope for modern architecture.”

Not everyone shared Betjeman’s enthusiasm, and by the time I made these pictures the area had gained a reputation for crime, one of a number of estates in London about which some people expressed shock that I was walking around taking pictures. More about my walk in a later post.

On the Road to Brixton

On the Road to Brixton is the second post on my walk in Kennington and Brixton on Sunday 6th May 1889. The posts began with Hanover, Belgrave, Chapel, Shops, Taxis.

*Christ Church, Brixton Rd, Kennington, Lambeth, 1989 89-5c-31*

This remarkable Grade II* listed building in a composite of Art Nouveau and Byzantine Revival style was designed by Arthur Beresford Pite who was the brother-in-law of the then vicar, Rev William Mowll, whose name is on the adjoining street. It was completed in 1907, though the design dates from the 1890s and the foundation stone was laid in 1898 and the building consecrated in 1902.

It remains in use as an Anglican Church. Some describe it as an architectural monstrosity, but although I think it has a rather split personality it has an overwhelming impact.

*Christ Church, Brixton Rd, Kennington, Lambeth, 1989 89-5c-33*

The church was built on the site of an earlier chapel, Holland Chapel, built as an Independent Chapel around 1823 and sold to the Church of England around 1835 and renamed Christ Church. This was a simpler building with a central bell turret but of some size, seating around a thousand and was demolished in 1899, with worship continuing in a hall behind while the new church was being built.

The Holland Chapel had no graveyard and Christ Church was at first only a chapel in the parish of St Mark’s Kennington where burials took place. Before 1825 all this area was in the parish of St Mary Lambeth, now the Garden Museum next to Lambeth Palace. Christ Church became a parish church in 1856.

*Christ Church, Brixton Rd, Kennington, Lambeth, 1989 89-5c-21*

The building is often open to the public over the centre of the day and the stained glass is said to be spectacular. The interior (which I’ve not photographed) has more of an Art Nouveau feel than the exterior. The building has been considerably altered since 1907. It was built to seat 1,200.

You can just about see one of the many unusual features of the church at the extreme left of the picture, where there is a bell-shaped roof over an external pulpit, added to the building in 1907 at the insistence of the vicar.

*Terrace, Brixton Rd, Kennington, Lambeth, 1989 89-5c-24*

This terrace is opposite Christ Church and runs from 91 to 115 and was built at Bowhill Terrace. Some of the houses are stuccoed like these with others left as plain brick. I chose this pair partly for the bark of the tree at left, but also because of the different treatment of the two doors at the top of the steps leading up to both. I think the steps and their railings are probably a modern replacement.

Many of the houses along Brixton Road were in poor condition in the 1970s and were refurbished by the Greater London Council, mostly becoming social housing

Brixton Road was a Roman Road leading down to the south coast and was at one time known as ‘The way to Brighthelmstone’. Among other former names was Brixton Causeway, an embanked roadway running along the west bank of the ,. That it was also known as ‘The Washway’ perhaps suggests that it was sometime flooded by the river. The river was lowered and built over in 1880, becoming a sewer below the street and the earth extracted used to provide banking at the nearby cricket ground, The Oval.

Modern development beside the road only gathered pace after the building of Vauxhall Bridge in 1816 and acts of parliament for roads south from that meeting with Brixton Road at the Oval.

“Between 1820 and 1824 the whole of the Manor was let to Henry Richard Vassall, third Baron Holland” and developed piecemeal by “builders and speculators” under building leases as brick houses “of at least the third rate“. According to the Survey of London, “This policy of piecemeal letting, especially in the Brixton Road, resulted in unrelated groups of villas and terrace houses which, in spite of the charm of individual members, gave to the whole an untidy and haphazard appearance.” For me it perhaps enhances the street with many of these varied Regency and early Victorian buildings remaining.

*Brixton Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5c-12*

No 188 is a Grade II listed early mid C19 house. The listing text fails to indicate why this building, listed in 1981, has any particular architectural or historic interest. Originally this was one half of a pair of houses, the other half having been replaced by a dull 4 storey block of flats, Willow Court. Perhaps it was listed to save it from a similar fate.

*Sheet Metal Works, Robsart St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989, 89-5c-13*

I made a short detour from Brixton Road down Robsart St which leads west attracted by this three-story works just a few yards down on the north side.

The Brixton Sheet Metal Works building is still there at No 2, but considerably tidied and now Raw Material Music & Media Education who describe the building as a “purpose-built 3-storey building hosts 2 recording studios, computer suite, DJ, music and video production equipment and a live room for performance, workshops and ensemble work.”

It now has a red plaque with the message ‘This project is proudly funded by Comic Relief – All the silly nonsense of Red Nose Day is about the serious business of helping people change their lives – BILLY CONNOLLY 2003‘.

In 1919 No 2 Robsart St was occupied bys W Mason & Co. I think the building was possibly no longer in use in 1989, though there appears to still be a small shop at the left, firmly shut behind wire grilles in my picture.

This walk will continue in a later post.

TQ30

Back in 1986 I began a serious attempt to photograph London. Serious but not entirely credible I set out the photograph the whole of the city. Of course I never thought I could photograph everything, but set out a number of principles or themes that would govern my project, or rather a series of projects that I continued to work on for the next ten or 15 years.

The larger part of this work was in black and white, and concentrated on buildings and streets, the physical infrastructure of London, with the goal of photographing every built structure I thought significant, as well as representatives of the typical across the city. You can see a little of this on Flickr in the album 1986 London Photographs, which contains over 1300 photographs, perhaps a third of those I took in the first six or seven months of the project.

Heads & Dummy, Shop,Streatham High Rd, Streatham, 1990TQ3072-010

In colour I was largely concerned with a more intimate level, or how individuals arranged their surroundings and how this reflected their differing social and cultural values. Some of the more obvious reflections of this came in small businesses with the face they displayed toward the public, particularly in shop windows and interiors, which feature strongly in this work.

The previous year I had abandoned colour transparency and moved to working with colour negative film which provided much greater flexibility. For some years this was entirely trade-processed, and to cut costs (I had a young family to support) I used cheap processing companies aimed for the amateur market. Technically these were rather variable (even from the same company) and the prints I received back, usually 6×4″ ‘enprints’, were extremely variable in quality.

Shop, South Lambeth Rd, South Lambeth, 1989 TQ3077-005

As the stack of fat envelopes containing the negative strips and prints grew I wondered how to make some order of them, and came up with the idea of a traverse of the city with pictures filed together representing a number of ‘vertical’ north-south 1km wide strips of London based around the National Grid.

Cafe, Plato Rd, Brixton, 1989 TQ3077-009

Prints from negatives that interested me were then filed in a series of A4 files, labelled with the first 4 digits of the six figure grid reference which I had begun to mark on the prints. The pictures in this post are all from ‘TQ30’, and the 1km wide strip starts at Streatham and goes north from there. I started scrap book style, pasting the prints onto cartridge paper, but soon moved to using plastic file pages which held four prints on each side, arranging the prints roughly in order of their ‘northings’ in kilometre squares.

From these albums – a longish row of A4 files on my shelves – I was able to select images that were worth printing larger, keeping costs down by printing and processing in my own home darkroom. I’d discovered that Fuji colour paper not only gave cleaner looking prints but enabled the kind of dodging and burning that I’d become used to in black and white without the unwelcome colour shifts of other papers. I’ve had one set of prints from a show in the mid-80s framed on the wall beside the stairs since that show. They are out of direct sun and 35 years later show little of no sign of fading.

Bicycle, Shop, Kennington Lane, Vauxhall, 1989 TQ3078-005

I began putting images from this project on Flickr several months ago, and at the start tried to replicate the layout of the albums – and the vagaries of the prints in terms of colour balance, exposure, saturation etc. Having done several 1km strips like this I’ve decided it doesn’t really work to well, and although I’m still scanning the prints in their sheets of four have separated them into individual images – still roughly in the same order – for TQ30. And while some of the defects of those trade-processed prints are still evident (and occasionally rather a lot of dust on the plastic sleeves) I’ve tried to improve the colour balance etc where necessary. But they are still showing enprints enlarged on screen and this makes some problems more visible.

So far I’ve put just over 100 prints into the album TQ30, from Streatham to Westminster, with another 250 or more to follow, taking the ‘slice’ north to Hornsey. You can view them on Flickr.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.