The passage was probably built around 1859-63 when the West London Extension Railway was built, disrupting a local route that links what is now Cabul Road with Sheepcote Lane on the eastern side of Latchmere Road.
The railway was an important route crossing the Thames and the three lines that cross Latchmere Passage, each on its own viaduct and bridge, link it to the lines into Waterloo, to the north platforms of Clapham Junction serving lines out of Waterloo and those on the south side for the lines out of Victoria. The latter two bridges are now used by Overground and Thameslink trains.
Cabul Road is part of the estate here and to the west of Falcon Road developed as the Falcon Park estate by Alfred Heaver in 1879 – 1881, with street names taken from the battles of the Second Afghan War (1878–80) and the 1879 Zulu War. Almost all of the area was covered with small two-storey terraced houses, with the exception of this 1885 Milton Congregational Hall, designed by Searle & Hayes in a restrained Queen Anne style.
Congregationalists had worshipped at Milton Hall, Battersea since 1873, presumably in some earlier building and after its congregation combined with Battersea Congregational Church in the 1930s had various uses including as a film studio. It was recently redeveloped, retaining the facade, as residential properties.
A large part of the area was damaged by wartime bombing and after the war converted to open and rather featureless green spaces, Shillington Gardens and Falcon Park.
This is one of three semi-deatched pairs of houses on Falcon Road which date from around 1850 when the area began to be developed by William Willmer Pocock, an architect and prominent Methodist and Thomas Daniel Carter who owned much of the land. Carter had sold some of the land to Pocock as containing brick earth, and Pocock set up the Falcon Brick Works here. But the bricks were not too good and the area soon began to be built over.
Next door to the dentists was Grove End House, also built around 1850 and now rather altered as the Battersea Mosque.
Knowsley Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7o-24
I realised then that I had missed out the Poyntz Road triangle, a small triangle of roads between the railway lines to the east of Latchmere Road, and I retraced my steps to Latchmere Road, then crossed over into Knowsley Road.
The picture shows the end of the road just beyond its junction with Shellwood Road. The houses here were built in the 1870s and seem little changed now. The archway led through to a yard with buildings around it, I think workshops, though there is now a more recent block of flats. The Overground from Clapham Junction to Wandsworth Road runs on an embankment to the right of the houses here.
I took a couple of pictures on Latchmere Road, not on-line, and continued north up Battersea Bridge Road, where I made this picture of a doorway with a rather flimsy-looking railing and what appears to be a fairly subtantial tree. The house and doorway are still there and in rather better condition but there is no sign of the the tree and its hard to see where it could have been growing.
By now I was looking for a bus stop to take me back to Clapham Junction, just a few yards further up the street. This was the end of my walk in July 1989 though I returned to Battersea a few days later.
Thes two handcarts on Ashbury Road close to the corner with Grayshott Road took me straight back to my childhood. Tradesmen commonly used such carts to carry their equipment and materials around the streets back in the 1950s, and my father continued using his until he retired in the late 1960s whenever he needed more than he could carry on his bicycle.
Ladders, bricks, tiles, sand, plaster, tools, cookers, fridges, bee hives and more would be carted around the streets of Hounslow and neighbouring areas. Dad never owned a car or a van, though in his youth he had ridden a motorcycle. Sometimes I would be recruited to pull the cart, and when younger still I sometimes got a ride on it when he had to look after me while he was working as a plumber, painter and decorator, electrician, plasterer, bricklayer etc. Though social services now would have a fit if he took me up with him to keep an eye on while he was roofing.
And as a Boy Scout in my teens I sometimes helped to pull a trek cart loaded with our camping gear for a weekend at Chalfont St Peter, setting off along busy main roads for around 15 miles to the camp site.
The doorway at left is on the corner of Grayshott Road and Eversleigh Road, where above the porch on the other side of the road is the date 1878 and the intertwined initials of the Artizans’, Labourers’, & General Dwellings Company. I’ve written in earlier posts about the company and you can also read a much more detailed account in the Survey of London’s Shaftesbury Park Estate chapter.
A closer view of the porches on some of the houses on Eversleigh Road – these are on the southern side of the street. The uniformity of the long terrace is enlivened by the occasional gable with a narrow window in the attic storey though any room there must have been only dimly lit and with steeply sloping sides. But servants were not kept in luxury.
In the distance you can just make out the octagonal turret with a steep roof, almost a spire, at the end of the terrace at No 44.
On the triangular sites on the corners of Eversleigh Road and both Ashbury Road and Kingsley Street are rather more substantial detached houses. This doorway is on Kingsley Street but the address is 18 Eversleigh Road. These ‘Gothic’ Houses were designed for the more prosperous ‘clerk’ classes and were the most expensive of four classes of housing built on the estate, deliberately creating a social mix. But even the smallest ‘Class 4’ two bedroom houses were too expensive for the many poorer working class families.
Iglesia Ni Christo, Church of Christ, Latchmere Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7o-46
I made my way west out of the Shaftesbury Park Estate onto Latchmere Road and turned north towards the railway. On the east side of the road is a short terrace of the estate, but the west side is very different, and even contains a pub, something the estate, built on temperance principles, lacked. Probably many of its residents made their away across Latchmere Road to the Fox and Hounds, although perhaps few could afford it as the estate rents were high.
A few yards further north, next to the railway lines was the Iglesia Ni Christo, Church of Christ. The church was founded in the Phillipines in 1913 and it now has 2.8 million worshippers there. Its founder Felix Y Manalo became dissatisfied with the theology of the established churches, eventually setting up his own which claims to be based on the true church established by Jesus Christ in the first century and rejects the traditional Christian belief in the Trinity for a belief in only ‘God the Father’ as the one true God.
The church now has members in “165 countries and territories in the six inhabited continents of the world” and has around 50 churches across the UK. The Latchmere Road site is now occupied by a block of flats but there is an Lglesia Ni Christo further north in Battersea.
I continued north on Latchmere Road under the long bridge taking 15 tracks out of Clapham Junction across the road, followed immediately by another bridge with two more and continued, going under yet another railway bridge a couple of hundred metres on.
Latchmere Passage is a narrow street running west from Latchmere Road and then turning south under two rather small bridges to Falcon Park and another on to Cabul Road.
My final post on this walk will pick up the story here shortly.
Clapham Common Northside, Cedars Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-24
This truly grand scale building facing Clapham Common is at the western edge of the London Borough of Lambeth and the road in the foreground is Cedars Road. A terrace of five mansions at 48-52 Clapham Common North side, it was built by J T Knowles in 1860 with the two ends as pavilions with roofs like those of French Renaissance chateaux. It was Grade II listed in 1969 as Knowles Terrace.
Earlier the road had been lined with villas built for rich City merchants in the mid-eighteenth century.
Clapham Common North Side, Wix’s Lane, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-25
Wix’s Lane is the boundary between Lambeth and Wandsworth, although the street sign is from the Borough of Battersea which was became a part of Wandsworth in 1965 and my map shows the boundary as running along this wall.
Charles Wix was a builder and he built a villa for himself on Clapham Common North Side on the west corner of Wix’s Lane around 1780, living there until his death in 1820. Not long after this was rebuilt as Cedars Cottage but it and its neighbours were later replaced by a rather bland red-brick terrace.
The view here gives a better view of the rather heavy ornamental work on the 1860s Knowles Terrace.
The London School Board built Wix’s Lane School, which opened on 27th April 1903. It later became Wix County Primary School. It is now still in use as Belleville Wix Academy and also houses a Lycée Francais.
Wix’s Lane had been a field path from Clapham Common to Lavender Hill but when villas were built along this section of Clapham Common North Side they were given back entrances from it for stabling their horses and carriages. The school was the first building on its west side, taking a large section of the gardens of one of these houses, Byram House.
The Belleville Wix Academy history page includes a quote from a 1937 school inspector ‘”in the early years it was not uncommon to see twenty or thirty children being led to and from Wix’s Lane School by maidservants“. However, it goes on to say: “now the larger houses are divided into flats, and these, as well as the smaller houses in the neighbourhood, are occupied mainly by clerical workers in the City, by local tradesman and shop keepers, and by artisans and labourers of the better type“. “Poverty exists“, it states, “although it is mainly courageously hidden“‘ .
Flats, Cedars Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-12
I walked back to Cedars Road and walked up it past some rather more modern flats on my way to Wandsworth Road. Much of both sides of this tree-lined road are now covered by similar modern flats, and few of the trees are cedars. A few older houses remain but although I photographed a couple of them I’ve not put these pictures on-line.
I turned west on Wandsworth Road and then went up Acanthus Road, on my way to Brassey Square.. Acanthus Road becomes Grayshott Road, and this house is on the corner of that and Glycena Road.
This and a similar house opposite act as a gateway to the Shaftesbury Park Estate built between 1872 and 1877 by the Artizans’, Labourers’, & General Dwellings Company, about which I’ve written in previous posts. These houses and their short terraces are one of only two listed parts of the estate. It was just a little further up the road at what are now Nos 65-7 that Lord Shaftesbury formally began the estate with a memorial stone in 1872. It is still in place but I didn’t photograph it.
I turned east down Sabine Road, another of the first streets to be built after that stone was laid with its message ‘Healthy homes, first condition of social progress’ in 1872. Supposedly the main figure in the 1951 Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob lived in a seedy boarding house here, though none of the film was shot in the area. In just a few yards I was in Brassey Square, intended to be the centre of the estate which is now the Shaftesbury Park Estate Conservation Area.
Brassey Square which took its name from contractor Thomas Brassey and his three sons who all became MPs and had shares and it was meant to have a garden at its centre, but this was built over in 1879. This building with its frontage on Sabine Road has doors numbered 78 and 1 presumably for that road and Brassey Square respectively. The building is locally listed and is presumed to have been a part of the never-completed plan to build a library, central hall and co-operative shops fronting Brassey Square.
My account of the walk will continue in a later post.
Battersea was one of the most progressive areas of the country in the late nineteenth century and in 1886 Battersea Vestry came to the decision that the parish should itself erect working class dwelling on the site of the Latchmere allotments, themselves enclosed from Latchmere common in 1832 to provide allotments for the poor.
But, as the Survey of London which recounts the development of the area in some depth states, the Local Government Board told them that they did not have the power to build houses. The Vestry put forward a bill in parliament to enable them to go ahead but it met wide opposition and had to be withdrawn.
Things began to move again in 1898 when Fred Knee, a member of the UK’s first organised socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation and of the Co-operative Society, moved to Battersea and founded the Workmen’s Housing Council to campaign for better housing for workers to be built by public authorities on a non-profit basis. He tried to get the London County Council involved as they had the powers to build homes. But this shortly became unnecessary as the 1899 London Government Act replaced the Vestry with the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea which under the 1900 Housing Act was able to apply for the power to build housing itself. Knee continued to play an important role in the development by the council.
In 1901 Battersea Council set up a competition for plans asking for designs for five house and flat types, and prizes were eventually awarded to five of the 58 entries, and work began by Borough Surveyor, J. T. Pilditch and his architectural assistant William Eaton on finalising the designs and estate plan.
The Survey of London states that the final plans included “eight five-room houses, 69 houses with a three-room flat on each floor, 73 houses with a four-room flat on each floor and six odd houses of four or five rooms“. The competition-winning designs were simplified with their more picturesque features “expunged in the interests of economy” which perhaps makes them more aesthetically pleasing to modern eyes.
Where expense was not spared was in the internal facilities for the new tenants, with electric lighting (and slot meters), unusual at the time and “patent combined kitchen range, boiler and bath … fitted in all the houses at the high cost of £18 10s apiece.”
Battersea is cut through by the railway lines from two of London’s major termini, Waterloo and Victoria with junctions, goods yards, engineering works and a number of branches creating an incredible maze of tracks, viaducts, and bridges, now only slightly simplified.
Culvert Road predates the Shaftestbury Estate and was important as an entrance to Poupart’s market garden on which that estate was built. It originally had a level crossing over the railway line here – four tracks leading from Clapham Junction and from the rail bridge over the Thames at Battersea to Wandsworth Road – but this was closed and a narrow footbridge reached by slopes on each side provided in 1880. This footbridge provided may vantage point for this picture.
Culvert Road continues to the north in a tunnel out of picture to the left under around 13 more tracks leading to Victoria or Waterloo. Over the railway viaduct you can see the blocks of the Doddington Estate.
The history of the Shaftesbury Park Estate, developed by the the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwelling Company between between 1873 and 1877 was roughly based on workers cities (cités ouvrières) built earlier in France.
Its development was overshadowed by one of the era’s largest scandals which resulted in the entire board of directors being replaced in 1877 and its secretary/manager William Swindlehurst and chairman Baxter being jailed for conspiracy and fraud, and another director fleeing the country. You can read more of the details on the Survey of London.
When the disgraced board of the Artizans, Labourers and General Dwelling Company was replaced in 1877 their architect, the self-taught Robert Austin was sacked. His more conventionally qualified assistant was also dismissed the following year to save money. But the work of the pair has stood the test of time with a remarkable overall unity about the estate, planned on a grid system, enlivened with some minor and varied decorative features.
Despite its board’s fraud, the estate was generally well-built and houses provided with good ventilation and an improved system of drainage, though this was a cause of arguments with the local authority which favoured traditional methods. There were also various community buildings, but the estate is best-known for not including a single pub, influenced by the temperance movement of the times. William Austin, usually thought of as the founder of the company, was a poor and illiterate navvy before taking ‘the pledge’ and becoming a successful drainage contractor and builder. He set up the company as largely a business enterprise, aimed at making an annual profit of 6% rather than for any great philanthropic intent. He was voted off the board before the scandal with The Survey of London quoting him as later explaining ‘I was too honest for them’.
Houses, Broughton St, Park Town, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7n-52
Broughton Street runs from the end of Eversleigh St east parallel to the railway lines before turning to cross Queenstown Rd and ending on Silverthorne Road. I think I was probably standing on the end of Eversleigh Street to photograph this long terrace on the north side which according to the Survey of London were built by partners Robert Lacy and James Flexman shortly after an agreement they made in 1867.
This block of over 20 virtually identical houses (that nearest the camera has a carriage entrance, as No 1 still does) is followed past a narrow entrance road leading to a tunnel to the London Stone Business Estate between railway lines by another long block much the same. The houses here along this side of the road are numbered consecutively from 1-52.
The houses in these terraces are quite substantial, three floors each with two main rooms and rather than their front doors opening directly onto the pavement all except the two end houses have vestigial front gardens.
Shops, 56-64, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-56
I walked down Prairie Street to Queenstown Road taking a couple of pictures there before turning down Lavender Hill where I made another three, only this one on-line. I’d photographed this row of shops earlier but took this second picture showing the multiplicity of signs – a cinema poster with dinosaurs, Ice Cream, the two posts with signs for the off licence and vegetarian food. the shop fronts and a large JEANS up one of the curved ends of the houses. The area in front of the shops looks very different now.
This was the end of my walk on Friday 28th July but I returned to Clapham the following day to take more pictures – in a later post.
Shops, 56-64, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-22
The six houses between Woodmere Grove and Shirley Grove at 56-66 on the north side of Lavender Hill were built at a slight angle to the road. Each of them also has a rounded corner at the south-east, making them look from the east side as a series of round towers, some strange castle beside the road. Unlike the other terraces on the road this makes them stand out as individual buildings, though shop extensions on the ground floor present a straight line on the pavement.
These houses were built as a part of Seymour Terrace in around 1870 as private houses with basements on a part of an estate bought by Clapham surgeon and GP Henry Meredith Townsend who lived nearby on Clapham Rise. The ground floor was converted into shops in 1882. The Survey of London which gives more detail describes them as “a minor masterpiece of street architecture.“
Queen’s Road Stores, Hartington Terrace, Stanley Grove, Queenstown Rd, Clapham, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-24
Hartington Terrace on Queenstown Road is still there though the shopfronts have changed a little over the years they are still basically the same. No 43 on the corner has lost those ‘decorative’ blinds and looks very much more sober, not welling bathroom fittings rather than wine. This whole area of Battersea, Park Town, was the heart of a single farm, Longhedge Farm, which began to be developed after the opening of Battersea Park in 1858. Its long and complex story is told in great detail in the link cited.
Developments at the southern end included some large villas close to Clapham Common, and the developers of the northern part under Philip William Flower (1810–72) originally hoped to make this a middle-class area with its location between Clapham and Chelsea but later had to lower their expectations largely because of railway expansion in the area and develop it as homes for working-class artisans.
An Act of Parliament in 1863 allowed the laying out of Queens Road (known since 1939 as Queenstown Road) and building on the estate continued over the next 30 or so years. One of the two major builders was Walter Peacock who began Hartington Terrace (named by Cyril Flower, (1843–1907), Philip’s eldest son and first Lord Battersea) in 1885. No 43 was built as a pub and there was a parade of 7 shops with stabling and workshops behind. A few more shops were added to the north in 1888 by another builder.
Stanley Grove at left was an earlier development with houses built by a number of builders in 1867-8.
Life Tabernacle, United Pentecostal Church, 32, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-26
The church is still there, set back from Battersea Park Road, but the temporary looking building occupying most of the picture has been replaced by a rather nondescript block with a large ground floor betting shop.
The land for the church building was, according to the Survey of London, acquired in 1868 “from the Crown’s Battersea Park purchase, to be used ‘as a branch from Mr Spurgeon’s tabernacle’. ” One of the leading Baptist figures of the age, Spurgeon was for 38 years pastor of the New Park Street Chapel (later the Metropolitan Tabernacle) at the Elephant & Castle. He was a powerful preacher and prolific writer and supporter of many practical schemes to improve the lot of the urban poor as well as missions such as this to convert them to his Calvinistic Christianity.
The first building erected was this, built as a lecture hall seating almost 500 by Lambeth builder and architect William Higgs, and it was 25 years later that a chapel was added to Battersea Tabernacle. This occupied the space between the hall and Battersea Park Road and was demolished probably in the 1970s having been damaged by wartime bombing. The hall was purchased for £25,000 by members of Calvary Temple in Camberwell and became Life Tabernacle.
Decoration, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth 1989 89-7m-13
Somewhere on the stretch of Battersea Park Road between Propert’s blacking factory at 142 (photograph not on-line) and the villas at 445-7 I made this picture of terracotta decoration in panels on a building, but I can no longer find it. Unfortunately although my note says Battersea Park Road it does not give a street number. From the picture I think it must had been only a few courses above street level.
The central panel seems more generic, with a vessel with appears to have a fruit tree growing out of it, perhaps with apples, but the two roundels at the sides are perhaps more interesting. I think they probably represent some trade or other, but can’t decide which. Perhaps someone reading this can solve the mystery and make a comment.
This remarkable pair of villas, now apparently a hotel, were built in the 1850s and the architect is thought to have been Charles Lee. The two are Grade II listed. The gable has a distinctive scalloped bargeboard or decoration and this continues for a short length along each side of the house to a low wall bearing an urn.
Café Window, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-15
This café on Battersea Park Road, I think in the parade between Stanmer St and Balfern Street, seems a suitable place to pause my walk which will continue in later posts. Although it looks as if it was taken from inside I think it was probably closed and I was standing in a recessed doorway.
These buildings are still there in a side turning from Silverthorne Road now leading to Battersea Studios. Battersea Studios were built in 1970 as a warehouse for BT and in 1994 became the home of the short-lived BBC Arabic Television, closed precipitately on Sunday, April 21, 1996 having angered the Saudi regime (and the UK government) by its accurate and impartial reporting. At extreme left you can see the barrier leading to that site.
The buildings in the picture were part of the Stewarts Lane Goods Depot, a huge area bounded by this and Dickens Street to the south and going east to the railway lines at Portslade Rd. It was first set up by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1860 as Longhedge and used to build and house locomotives for their services from Victoria Station a short distance away north of the river. The original buildings were demolished in 1880/1 and replaced by these as Stewarts Lane which housed steam locomotives until 1963 and then diesels. Much of the building was destroyed by fire in 1967.
The depot remains in use as the Stewarts Lane Traction Maintenance Depot and is used by both DB Cargo UK and Govia Thameslink Railway.
Further down Silverthorne Road to its west is Heath Road, the north side of which retains its attractive Victorian housing, with a block of four houses with basements and steps to their paired entrances followed by five without basements but with the same style and decoration. At the end at left of picture is the recently build Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Heath Terrace is on the corner of Silverthorne Road and Wandsworth Road and as well as this corner entrance has two similar but slightly less ornate doorways on Wandsworth Road leading to sixteen Flats A to P as well as another door for a shop on Silverthorne Road part visible in my picture then occupied by taxi and transport company Guy Payne Of London Limited.
The building was built in 1897 and the corner door, in use when I made my picture in 1989 by Dr A J K Ala, still led to a surgery until around 2012. At the front of the traffic queue is a man on a moped with a large clipboard, studying the ‘knowledge’ required of taxi drivers.
Matrimony Place is one of my favourite street names, though this place is only an alley with steps leading from Wandsworth Road to St. Paul’s Churchyard. I’d photographed it a few years earlier and made a deliberate detour to see if had changed – it was still much the same.
Possibly it was once the custom for local couples to walk up the 29 steps to the church to be married – or down them after the ceremony, and the name appears to of some antiquity. The railings have since been replaced by a fake antique design (probably thanks to the Clapham Society) which I find rather less attractive. It’s probably still a place to avoid after dark unless you a looking for drugs.
St Paul’s, Clapham was built on the site of the original parish church of Clapham, St Mary’s, renamed Trinity Church at the Protestant Reformation, then demolished in 1774 to be replace by Holy Trinity on Clapham Common. St Paul’s was built simply in 1815, became a rather odd lump after later extension by Sir Arthur Blomfield in 1875, was burnt down in World War 2 and restored in 1955 and is Grade II* listed.
Houses, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-34
I didn’t go up Matrimony Place but instead turned back westwards down Wandsworth Road, hardly stopping until I came to the top of Victoria Rise which has these rather impressive Victorian Terraces on both sides. Looked at from this end the street should perhaps have been called Victoria Fall as it goes down noticeably to Clapham Common, but you can see why the developers decided against this. In fact they called it Victoria Road, but it was changed later as there were too many of these in London.
The street was laid out around 1853 its lower end on the site of an C18 villa built for the banker Henry Hoare by Henry Flitcroft known as The Wilderness. These houses on the east side were there by the time of the 1869/70 OS survey, though those on the west side are a little later.
Doorway, 144, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-35
A notice in the window at right states: YOU ARE WARNED REPENT AND RECEIVE THE LORD JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOUR FOR LIFE ETERNAL, LEST YOU DIE SUDDENLY AND GO TO HELL WITH THE DEVIL THE MURDERER.
Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-36
At left is a window on the corner with Wandsworth Rd with plaster mouldings in a shop demolished in 1998, and at right is Clapham Baptist Church on the opposite corner.
The houses on this side of Victoria rise were built between the 1869/70 survey and the 1893 to 1894 revision. There was also a chapel here, the Victoria Baptist Church, built in 1873 but this was badly damaged by bombs in 1941. it was rebuilt in the 1950s, incorporating some of the Victorian remains on its west end on Wandsworth Road.
Marco Polo House, The Observer, Queenstown Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-13
One of few interesting postmodern buildings in London, Marco Polo House, designed by architect Ian Pollard for The Observer and British Satellite Broadcasting this was completed in 1989. It was demolished in 2014, probably to prevent it being listed and replaced by the rather anodyne flats now on the site.
Marco Polo House, The Observer, Queenstown Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-12
Another picture of Marco Polo House with cars parked giving a good impression of the impressive scale. At right is the railway viaduct with a train passing on the line from Victoria Station. This is the southern end of the building with a fairy mature tree newly planted in the foreground; it only briefly survived the demolition of the building.
Marco Polo House, The Observer, Queenstown Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-14
This giant stone carried the name of the building and I think was at the north end of the building on the corner of Sopwith Way or perhaps a little down that minor side-street. At right you can see a little of Marco Polo House and above it the unmistakable chimneys of Battersea Power Station, with the cranes with which McAlpine had removed the roof in the then recently abandoned scheme to convert it into a theme park.
Chelsea Bridge, River Thames, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-64
I walked up Queenstown Road to the foot of Chelsea Bridge and went a few yards down the path into Battersea Park to take this picture looking across the Thames to Pimlico.
Although this was the side of an ancient river crossing fordable when the tide was low, the first bridge here was only opened in 1858 to provide access from north of the river to the new Battersea Park opened in the same year. This was a rather narrow and flimsy looking structure was named Victoria Bridge – and at the other end of the park Albert Bridge was built a few years later. Both were originally toll bridges but failed to be a commercial success and were taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1877 with the tolls being abolished in 1879.
It was renamed Chelsea Bridge when it was found to be structurally unsound to avoid any embarrassment to the Queen should it collapse but it was not until 1926 that a replacement was proposed. In the meantime the old bridge had appeared in many paintings, drawings and photographs, although the bridge that inspired Billy Strayhorn – probably from the painting by Whistler or Turner to name his impressionist composition Chelsea Bridge, was almost certainly of Battersea Bridge. The jazz standard was first recorded by the Ellington orchestra in 1941, after both had been replaced by more modern structures. Somehow I think the tune would have been less successful had it been named Battersea Bridge.
The current bridge opened in 1937 and “was the first self-anchored suspension bridge in Britain, and was built entirely with materials sourced from within the British Empire.” The main cables attach to the end of the bridge deck rather than onto the bank.
Marco Polo House, The Observer, Queenstown Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-66
I turned around and walked back down Queenstown Road, and could not resist taking more pictures of Marco Polo House from the opposite side of the road.
Towering above it was the giant gasholder and I carefully chose my position to make this into an unlikely addition to the post-modern building. This was the largest and seventh gasholder to be built on the site for the Nine Elms gas works which was further down Nine Elms Lane and was built in 1932 to the innovative designs of the German company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg and so was the MAN holder. It and the other remaining holders were finally demolished in 2015.
Marco Polo House, The Observer, Queenstown Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-51
And this was the final picture I took of Marco Polo House on the walk, showing the south end of the building and attaching to it at right two of the Battersea Power Station chimneys.
Convent of Notre Dame, School, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-53
I turned back onto Battersea Park Road to make this photograph of the former convent school, with the MAN gasholder appearing on the right edge of the picture. The Sisters of Notre Dame came to Battersea in 1870 to provide Catholic education for the poor children of the area with a public elementary school and also a private day school. In 1901 it reopened as Notre Dame High school for Young Ladies and in 1906 increased in size as it began to admit girls on LCC County Scholarships and a new wing was opened in 1907. Until 1919 there were some dormitories for boarders which were then converted to more classrooms and a library.
The grammar school expanded further after the Second World War and became a comprehensive in 1972, closing in 1982 when the building was sold. It was later converted into flats as The Cloisters.
Kirtling Street to Battersea Power Station & the Dogs continues my walk which began at Vauxhall on Friday 28th July 1989 with Nine Elms Riverside. The previous post was More from Nine Elms Riverside.
Works, Kirtling St, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-36
The riverside path still ends at Kirtling Street but Greenham’s aggregate wharf has now been replaced by the central site of the Tideway 25km London super sewer project underneath the River Thames due for completion in 2025, when it should prevent 95% of sewage spills in London entering the river. It was here that the two tunnel boring machines were lowered 50 metres below ground to make their way east and west to produce the central section of the tunnel between Fulham and Bermondsey.
T & W Farmiloe, paint factory, Cringle St, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-21
This bricked up entry in a tall brick wall on the corner of Cringle Street was for many years all that remained of the 50-year-old glass, lead, paint and sanitary ware manufacturing company which had opened a large 4-storey factory here in 1884 with a frontage on Nine Elms Lane. The Farmiloe brothers had set up in business in Westminster in the 1840s as glass cutters and taken over the Island Lead Mills in Limehouse in 1885, and expanded with a brass foundry on Horseferry Road, a varnish works in Mitcham and this large warehouse in Nine Elms, producing everything a plumber could need. In the twentieth century their main business moved to sanitary ware and paint, including ‘Nine Elms’ white lead paint which was made at this white-lead factory built around 1910. I think the company which had trademarked ‘Nine Elms’ had long vacated the site before it was dissolved in 1988. The trademark passed to Akzo Nobel and expired in 2005.
Works, Sleaford St, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-23
Sleaford Street was on the eastern side of one of the earliest developments in the area, Battersea New Town, begun in the 1790s and was first developed on its west side the by Southwark butcher William Sleford. Apparently later “One side of Sleaford Street was formerly derided as Ginbottle Row, while the other was called Soapsuds Bay, presumably because it accommodated laundresses.”
I can find no signs of the building in this picture and most of the west side of Sleaford Street is now occupied by a large block of flats extending back from the corner with Nine Elms Lane completed around 2008. John Oswald and Sons had a foundry in the street from 1871 and this may be their building.
At the left of the picture you can see the Battersea gasholder, demolished 2014-7 and at right Battersea Power Station.
Battersea Power Station, Battersea Park Rd, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-24
A slightly unusual view of the power station six years after its final closure. Planning permission was obtained for it conversion to a theme park, but the scheme was halted when money ran out in March 1989. By this time the roof had been removed, presumably by McAlpine whose name adorns the building, which led to considerable subsequent deterioration of the steelwork and foundations.
After various failed redevelopment plans the power station was eventually refurbished as an expensive tourist destination surrounded by new homes, a hotel, shops and restaurants and a new London Underground station. McAlpine was the construction manager for the final phase three of the development.
Battersea Power Station, Battersea Park Rd, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-25
Another view of the wrecked power station, along with a rather unconvincing double at the right with a view of the abandoned scheme.
Battersea Dogs Home, Battersea Park Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-11
Then there was no way back to the riverside before reaching Chelsea Bridge at the north end of Queenstown Road. A long detour away from the river around the power station and gas works site took me past Battersea Dogs Home where I took this picture with one dog begging on the top of the wall and another emerging from the Exit to the building. There is now a rather larger building on the site and it has added ‘and Cats’ to its remit.
The description of my walk will continue in a later post.
More from Nine Elms Riverside: My walk on Saturday 29th July continued from yesterday’s post.
Libation, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-66
At the end of the William Henry Walk I photographed a small coastal vessel, the Libation, moored at a short pier.
Libation, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-51
As a took a few photographs the skipper of the vessel came up to talk with me. He told me that he and his mate brought the ship up on the tide every day with a load of gravel dredged from the estuary, where it was unloaded by the crane with a grab into the hopper at left of the picture. As soon as I ended the conversation and moved on I regretted I had not asked him if I could take his picture, but it was too late to go back.
The Battersea Barge, Bistro, River Thames, Nine Elms Lane, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-41
The Battersea Barge is at the west end of this section of walk, immediately west of the Heathwall pumping station. And although the area around has changed completely the Battersea Barge is still there, a 1930s Dutch barge converted to a floating bar and restaurant, much in demand for private parties, though it now seems only to offer a bar to which people are welcome to bring their own food – and there are many local outlets which have now opened. And it now has a sister ship nearby, another converted Dutch barge, the Tamesis, a “walk-on neighbourhood bar, live music & events space” moored nearby.
Until around 2008 the path here was reached by an fairly narrow alley beside a warehouse, but the commercial properties along this side of Nine Elms Lane were replace from 2012 on by tall residential blocks, part of the immense development that has taken place in the Nine Elms area.
River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms Lane, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-44
The dock here was originally Manor House Wharf and a dock ran into the gas works on the other side of Nine Elms Lane. The jetty at Imperial Wharf allowed larger ships to unload coal here.
Jetty, River Thames, Imperial Wharf, Nine Elms Lane, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-31
The jetty for the Nine Elms Gas Works was rebuilt in 1952 to handle the flatiron coastal colliers which brought coal to the works. The gas works had begun here in 1858 and were taken over by the Gas Light and Coke Company in 1883 who ran them until nationalisation in 1949. The gas works closed in 1970 when the UK changed to natural gas.
There are now more houseboats moored here in what is now called Nine Elms Pier.
Pier, Riverside Walk, River Thames, Kirtling St, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-34
At the west end of the Tideway Walk I used the steps up to the jetty to take this and a landscape format image from the same position – below. Both are looking upstream towards Battersea Power Station at left and its jetties and cranes, and on the other side of the river the 1875 chimney for the Western Pumping Station on Grosvenor Road.
Pier, Riverside Walk, River Thames, Kirtling St, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-35
The Tideway Walk ends here, turning south to Kirtling Street, which leads back to the main road. The riverside here is still in industrial use as the Cringle Dock Solid Waste Transfer Station. Back in 1989 there was a long walk before you could access the river at Chelsea Bridge and Battersea Park, but now you can go down Cringle Street to the Battersea Power Station development.
My description of this walk continues in a later post towards Battersea.
River Thames – Battersea Riverside: Tuesday 14th August 2012 was a nice day with blue sky and some interesting clouds in the sky and I had an hour or two to spare.
So I took a walk from Battersea Bridge to Wandsworth along the Thames Path.
Battersea Bridge crosses the river to Chelsea and I photographed the views over the river towards Lots Road Power Station and Chelsea Harbour.
This is a stretch of the river I’ve walked quite a few times over the years. It’s an easy journey for me to get there but it is also one of the more interesting and varied to walk.
When I first walked this way in the 1970s this was an industrial area, with factories and wharves and limited access to the river. Now the Thames Path takes you along the riverside with just some short diversions.
Most of the riverside is now lined with blocks of expensive flats rather than the flour mills, oil depots and a power station at Fulham I photographed back then.
Silver Belle Flour, mill, Battersea, 1991
There are still a few traces of that industrial past, though some were being demolished on both sides of the river back in 2012.
Demolition at Fulham Wharf
The sand and gravel works immediated upstream from Wandsworth Bridge was still there and still working when I last visited the area a few months ago, although I expect before long it will also be another luxury block of flats.
I think the best images I made that day before catching a train at Wandsworth Town were probably some panoramic images I’ve not included in this post as they don’t fit well in its format. You can see these and others from the walk on My London Diary at Battersea Riverside.
