After taking a near-identical image of Electric Avenue to that I posted earlier I moved on to Coldharbour Lane. Rather to my surprise this row of shops is still there, close to the corner with Electric Lane on the south side of the road.
Clifton Mansions, 22 flats at 429 Coldharbour Lane were built set back from the road in 1896 to house workers at the nearby Brixton Theatre, now the Ritzy Cinema and are still reached by a archway between shops at 427 and 431.
They attracted a wide range of squatters in the 1990s, including the Pogues and Jeremy Dellar. The flats were refurbished in 2012. Flats there can now be rented for around £2,500 a month.
Matlock House looks in rather better condition now and the blocked doorway covered with fly-posting has now been restored. I think the date on the tile above that doorway is 1892. These properties were refurbished in 2015-6 after some 75 squatters living in Rushcroft Road were forcefully evicted in July 2013. You can read about the eviction and see photographs on Brixton Buzz.
Lambeth Council had owned the flats since around 1975 when they had bought them for the constuction of the Innner London Motorway Box, plans for which fortunately were abandoned, as it would have been disastrous for Brixton. Like Clifton Mansions these flats had been built to house artists and technicians from Brixton’s theatre and music halls. The council abandoned the flats and left them to rot, with squatters moving in.
One resident was able to claim “ownership in the House of Lords under the so-called ‘twelve year rule.’ Five Law Lords threw up their hands in exasperation, took a flat away from Lambeth Council and gave it to him, gratis, after more than a decade of Council mismanagement, incompetence, irresponsibility and neglect.”
The squatters formed a neighbourhood association to defend the flats against sale by the council to property developers in 2002. But slowly, despite great public support for the residents the council pressed ahead, destroying a successful community and hugely accelerating the gentrification of Brixton. Flats here are now for sale at around £750,000.
Home in 1989 by Continental Foods, this Grade II listed building at 411-417 Coldharbour Lane, was built around 1914 to the designs of of T R Somerford as one of the chain of Temperance Billiard Halls. The company targeted south London in particular because many new pubs were built here around the end of the 19th century.
Since I made the photograph, there have been some changes with the ground floor now divided into a number of shops, including a community police station. Lambeth Council granted planning permission for it to be turned into a hotel in the 1990s, and the rest of the building around 2005 became a hostel with the name London Hotel, but has since been refurbished as flats named Billiard Lodge.
This row of shops with housing above is between Kellett Road and Saltoun Road on Atlantic Road and includes the Frontline Off Licence. The area around the north end of Railton Road which continues Atlantic Road south of here gained that name after the 1981 clashes with police which became known as the Brixton Uprising or Brixton Riots started here.
Rudra (Rudy) Narayan (1938 – 28 1998) was a barrister and civil rights activist who migrated to Britain in the 1953 from Guyana, spending seven years in the British Army before studying at Lincoln’s Inn to become a barrister.
A blue plaque now marks the building at 413 Brixton Road where he had a law practice from 1987-94. Erected by the Nubian Jak Community Trust and the Society of Black Lawyers it remembers him as ‘BARRISTER, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTION, COMMUNITY CHAMPION AND “VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS’. A heavy drinker who was thrown out of chambers for assaulting his head of chambers, he died of cirrhosis of the liver in Kings College Hospital in 1998 following a lengthy battle with alcoholism.
In 1989 Narayan who had been a Labour councillor and once been selected as Labour candidate for Birmingham Handsworth, but then deselected for allegedly anti-Semitic remarks in his books stood as a candidate in the Vauxhall by-election arguing that a largely black area should have a black MP. His campaign failed to attract much support and Labour’s Kate Hoey was elected.
The plaque is above the San Marino coffee shop on the corner with Brixton Station Road. From there I returned to the area around Ferndale Road where a further post will continue this walk.
Workfare, Methodists & Grow Heathrow: Saturday 8th September 2012 was another day of travelling around London, with protests against forced unpaid work for benefit claimants in Camden and Brixton, Ghanaian Methodists celebrating at Victoria and then an open day at Grow Heathrow in Sipson from where a couple of buses took me home.
Day of Action Against Workfare – Camden & Brixton
Boycott Workfare held a UK day of action targeted against charities and shops that take part in the government scheme of forced unpaid work which treats the unemployed as criminals. They also celebrated companies and charities that have withdrawn from the scheme.
Although the scheme is described as voluntary those who refuse to take part or or whose participation is judged unsatisfactory face the loss of some or all of their benefits. Under harsh government targets the number of claimants being sanctioned had increased threefold over two years and in 2012 there were over half a million under sanctions. It’s work for nothing or lose your benefits.
As Boycott Workfare pointed out, the four week Mandatory Work Activity scheme is the equivalent of a medium level community service order – such as might be given to someone found guilty of assault or drunken driving. And while the longest community service order a judge can give is for 300 hours, under some workfare schemes claimants are being forced to work without pay for 780 hours.
Many claimants unable to find paid work do find useful unpaid community activities they can volunteer for – and then are forced to give these up by workfare schemes.
These schemes are supposed to provide work experience than can then lead to actual jobs, but many companies in the schemes use them simply as a source of free labour – which then then be replaced by new free workers when they come to and end of their period. Often there is no possibility of people on the schemes moving into paid work.
Among well known shops and charities making use of this unpaid labour in 2012 were Boots, Argos, Scope, Cancer Research UK, Poundland and British Heart Foundation, and the protests took place in front of a number of their shops. In Brixton protesters handed out leaflets inside Poundland.
Protests against workfare had already had some effect with groups including Burger King, Oxfam, Waterstones, Shelter, 99p Stores, Pizza Hut and Sainsbury’s pulling out from the scheme.
Ghanaian Methodists Celebrate 10 Years – Westminster Cathedral
Celebrations of 10 years of the Ghanaian Methodist Fellowship UK and its 16 churches were to end in a thanksgiving service the following day. On Saturday the met at Westminster Catholic Cathedral and then danced away down Victoria Street towards Methodist Central Hall.
Methodism in the UK tends to be worthy and rather rather less exuberant, though with loud singing of hymns and much drinking of tea. There was a very different atmosphere at these dancing celebrations.
A journey to the end of the Piccadilly line and a short bus ride took me to Sipson where over two years ago Transition Heathrow moved onto the local eyesore and dumping ground of the former Berkeley Nursery site. This was an open day for their Grow Heathrow project.
People had moved onto the site to fight against plans for a third runway at Heathrow, but realised the potential of the site to create a productive alternative off-grid home that would become a creative hub for the area.
They started by clearing the rubbish and getting the local council to take away around 30 tons of it, but much of the material on site was a valuable resource that with a great deal of ingenuity they recycled for there own uses. Many built there own small temporary houses in the wilder areas of the site, though some were still then living in tents. And patched up part-ruined greenhouses and a couple of cabins on the site became communal spaces including a comfortable sitting area, a library and a vistor’s room.
Their activities gained a great deal of support from the local residents and when the site owners gained permission to evict them they were granted leave to appeal on human rights grounds with the judge describing the site as as “much loved and well used” by the local community. The site was open to them and other visitors weekdays from 10am – 6pm and on Sunday afternoons.
There are regular events every week open to anyone, including bicycle workshops, art workshops and gardening, and some of the results were impressive. Were it just a little closer to my home I’d be tempted to come here more often, but although it might be a pleasant place in Summer I think I would miss the comforts of my own home rather too much in winter. The wood-burning shower did look rather draughty even if the water was very hot.
Among firm supporters of Grow Heathrow was local MP John McDonnell who stated “This inspirational project has not only dramatically improved this derelict site but it has lifted the morale of the whole local community in the campaign against the third runway and in planning a sustainable future for our area. We cannot lose this initiativeand I will do all I can to enable it to continue.”
And continue it did for some years, surviving a number of legal challenges. Half of the site was reclaimed by bailiffs in 2019, but the final eviction only came in March 2021.
Possibly before going to Stockwell Green, perhaps even at some point on my previous walk I made some more pictures around the centre of Brixton. Unfortunately film doesn’t come with meta-data and my memory is not as reliable as EXIF data, but these pictures were certainly made around the end of May or beginning of June 1989 and so I’ll share them here.
240-250 Ferndale Rd on the corner with Stockwell Ave, just a few yards back from Brixton Road was built in 1905-6 as an annexe of Bon Marche department store, later becoming Post Office with council offices on the upper floor. You can see a post office sign at the left of my picture. A photograph in the Lambeth Archives taken around 1975 show it as offices for Christian Aid and it was later home to the Refugee Council. The ground floor more recently became Canova Hall, a restaurant and the building was revived as The Department Store, “to create a series of collaborative workspaces supported by an evolving hub of creative, retail and community uses“.
This estate was complete in 1929 for the London County Council as Ferndale Court to house police officers in the City of London Police, but converted into council flats managed by Lambeth Council in 1979 when one of the blocks was demolished to leave a public open space. They were designed by Sidney Perks, who was surveyor to the City of London from 1908 before being appointed as its architect in 1928.
Adjoining the site to the east was the City of London Police Sports Club ground, now the Ferndale Community Sports Centre.
Acre Lane Mouldings Ltd, Acre Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-52
A board illustrates the range of skirting architraves and cornices the company could supply, ‘Quality Mouldings for That Finishing Touch!‘.
Acrelane Timber Ltd is still at this site in Brixton and can perhaps still supply some similar items. A previous frame, not yet digitised shows a little of the frontage offering heating and plumbing supplies.
In my father’s workshop, a very large shed with store rooms and work benches at the back of his family house in Hounslow, long sold off and demolished, I was intrigued as a child by many of the old tools used around the start of the 20th century which included a range of moulding planes used to produce shaped mouldings such as this, used in his father’s cart building business. Back when my elderly aunts moved out around 1970 there was little interest in things like this and I imagine they ended up in landfill, though I’ve since viewed far less impressive ranges in museums.
Lambeth Town Hall, Acre Lane, Brixton Hill, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-54
I turned back along Acre Lane to the junction with Brixton Road where I photographed the grandiose Lambeth Town Hall, complete with a banner advertising an event about child benefit taking place on June 2nd, as well as a sign about going to Lambeth Debtline for debt advice.
Grade II listed Lambeth Town Hall was built in 1905-8, designed by Septimus Warwick and H Austen Hall in what is described as a modified Baroque style, and was further raised and extended 1935-8. I think the clock tower looks like some strange parody, an ornament which doesn’t really belong but has somehow thrust itself up through the ceiling of the main building and flowered extravagantly, reminding me of an amaryllis.
This area was a pleasant garden before being destroyed by Lambeth Council to produce a windswept waste to discourage local people gathering here. It hasn’t really worked, just become less comfortable with oddly placed fixed chairs and the wind certainly rushes through the renamed Windrush Square. I think I might have come here in 1989 to sit and eat my sandwich lunch.
Henry Tate was born in 1819 in Lancashire, the son of a Unitarian minister, and set up a successful grocery business with six shops in the Liverpool area before going into partnership with sugar refiner John Wright there in 1859. When this partnership came to an end he founded Henry Tate & Sons with his sons Alfred and Edwin.
Tate introduced new more efficient refining techniques for the production of white sugar, and his business expanded and in 1878 he opened a large refinery at Silvertown still producing sugar now.
Tate was an employer who took care of his workers and supported many educational projects including free libraries in Streatham, Balham, South Lambeth and Brixton as well as hospitals. After he had built and opened a gallery on Millbank and presented his art collection to the nation he was told Queen Victoria would be offended if yet again he refused a title, and he became a baronet in 1898, a year before his death.
The business was merged with that of Abram Lyle & Sons in 1921, probably causing Tate to turn in his grave, as he had despised Lyle, not least for the way he treated his workers.
Reliance Arcade, Electric Lane, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-41
The Art Deco Reliance arcade was built into an exiting Georgian house and other buildings between Brixton Road and Electric Lane in 1923-5, its Egyptian style terracotta inspired by the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Home to around 30 businesses it was since 2014 this Grade II listed arcade was on English Heritage’s at risk list but was renovated in 2019-20. There are some good pictures from this time by Mike Urban on Brixton Buzz from before and close to the end of the renovation.
My account of this walk will continue in a later post.
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.
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.
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.
D Bess, Bakery, Brighton Terrace, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5l-21
Was this a Caribbean bakers? D Bess, The Best Bakery. The building is still there at 12-14 Brighton Terrace, trimmed off rather more neatly at the right, modernised and used as an NHS clinic for Lambeth Drug & Alcohol Service, with an extra floor added on top.
Brighton Terrace is one of the older streets in Brixton and was present by the time of the first Skeleton Town plans surveyed by the Ordnance survey in 1848-1851 and by 1870 was lined with smallish houses on both sides, none of which have survived.
At a guess this building dates from around the start of the 20th century but I can find no information about when it was built or its occupiers before it became D Bess Bakery.
A Robson & Sons at 20-22 Brighton Terrace tell us that they are ‘Manufacturers and Rewinders of Replacement xxxxxures Stators and Rotors’ – I think the illegible word must be Armatures, but the state of the sign suggests they were no longer in business at this address. There is still a company in the same business, Robson & Francis Rewinds Ltd, in the Vale Industrial Park in Streatham who call themselves UK Specialists in Rewind & Reconditioning Armatures, Field Coils & Motors and I wonder if this is its successor.
20-22 Brighton Terrace still bears some resemblance to this rather charming small factory building, perhaps dating from the 1930s, but is now the same height as the flats at right of the picture to which it is joined, having four floors rather than the two in my picture. But it still has the same wavy roof line.
Tunstall Hall at the left of the picture was built around 1860 and at one time was storage for Morleys Department Store on Brixton Road, whose rear entrance is just across the street. The central building is Carlton Hall – Bernay’s Grove was originally called Carlton Grove but renamed before 1912. All these buildings apparently became an engineering works in the mid-20th century.
The house at right, 1 Bernays Grove dates from the 1820s and is Grade II listed. It was one of the villas which then lined Brixton Road, set back from it with long front gardens, later built over.
Carlton Hall and No 1 was in 1889 the Carlton Club, the hall used for religious services only, and from 1905 to 1909 Brixton Synagogue. In 1989 it was a Carlton Hall Community Centre. Tunstall Hall is now an architects studio.
The London, Chatham and Dover Railway opened Brixton and South Stockwell Station in 1862 taking commuters from what was then a fairly affluent suburb to Victoria, with a further line to Blackfriars opening in 1864. The population of Brixton rapidly expanded. Atlantic Road was laid out in the late 1860s following the railway viaduct and many smaller properties soon appeared. But wealthier residents in the villas along Brixton Road moved out and shops and commercial premises were rapidly built in their place covering their long front gardens.
The Railway Hotel has a conveniently located plaque bearing the date 1880 it was built in a finely ornamented neo-Gothic style surmounted by an octagonal clocktower. What can’t be read on my picture is the text underneath the date, LAID BY ANNIE ALLEN, who was its first licensee.
Still the Railway Hotel when I took these pictures, it was renamed Brady’s Bar in the 1990s and became an important music venue, played by Jimi Hendrix, The Clash as well as more local bands such as Alabama 3.
The pub closed in 1999 and was squatted and vandalised. Lambeth Council compulsorily purchased the building, but resisted various local campaigns to turn it into a community asset, selling it off to the highest bidder in 2013. The top floors were converted to flats and the ground floor became a Mexican restuarant, which closed in 2020. It reopened later as DF Tacos. The whole area is under threat from a comprehensive development scheme.
I think these old wooden stairs have now been replaced by metal, but I can’t work out exactly where I was standing. They go up to platform level and going above the platforms is the line leading towards Denmark Hill which now carries the Overground but has no stop at Brixton. There used to be an East Brixton station on that line but about a quarter of a mile further on, at Barrington Road, but this closed in 1976.
Brixton’s British Rail stations became less important after the opening of the Victoria Line to Brixton in 1971.
Shops, Electric Avenue, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5l-14
Back in 1989 there was virtually no Sunday trading before the Sunday Trading Act 1994 and I took the opportunity to photograph the normally bustling market street of Electric Avenue when it was almost empty.
This was one of London’s most elegant shopping streets when it was first built in 1885-8 and it was one of the first market streets to be lit by electricity. And around 1890 canopies were erected along both sides of the street so that shoppers could keep dry if it rained.
In 1989 I was surprised to see that these canopies had been removed, perhaps to give more space for the street market. The council I think blamed wartime damage, but it seemed a very thin excuse when they had continued to stand for over 40 years. The street has since been further damaged by partial redevelopment, and more is likely.
These huge pillars carry the railway line over the top of Brixton Station. Behind is one of the railway arches which for years were home to many small businesses that served the area well. In 2015 Network Rail decided to close and refurbish the arches over a year – and any traders that wanted to return would be faced with a 350% increase in rents.
The Save Brixton Arches Campaign was set up to oppose the changes, organising a number of public protests which had very wide popular support in the area. Despite this Lambeth Council decided to go ahead with Network Rail and most of the traders went out of business.
Many of the arches have now re-opened, but not with the useful and down-to-earth shops that people in Brixton had used for years, providing useful goods cheaply. When I last walked along Atlantic Road and Brixton Station Road many were still empty. Brixton has lost a large chunk of its heart.
And it was here at the centre of Brixton that the photographs from my walk on 28th June 1989 ended, though I think I will have walked back to Acre Lane to catch my bus back to Clapham Junction.
Built 1937, architect F E Simpkins Sunlight Laundry is a fine example of Art Deco ‘moderne’ style which unfortunately some architectural historians have turned up their noses at – perhaps why this building and some others are unlisted. Clearly this should be.
The Sunlight company was founded in 1900 and expanded with branches across London and after a merger in 1928 became a national business. Until the 1960s much of its work was for middle class domestic homes, but the wider ownership of washing machines shrunk the market and it concentrated on hotels, factories and other commercial clients. Later it also became a major contractor to hospitals.
There are another three pictures of this building online (click on one of these images to go to the album to see them), and I’ve also photographed it on other occasions when passing, though usually I’ve gone past on a 37 bus and not stopped.
Sunlight became part of the Danish Berendsen group and in 2013 changed its name to reflect this. It continues in business internationally and in the UK is the leading company in textile and laundry services to the hospitality and healthcare sectors. The company was acquired in 2017 by the French laundry services group Elis, whose name and logo now label its frontage.
Trinity Homes is a Christian Charity which provides accommodation to both single and married couples over the age of 57 who are members of a Christian denomination. As it states on its frontage it was erected in 1822-4 and was built and Endowed by Thomas Bailey. Additional homes were added in 1860. Initially it was The Trinity Asylum for Aged Persons. The building is Grade II listed.
Bailey was a cut-glass manufacture in the City of London and lived in Bethal House on Trent Road in Brixton Hill behind Corpus Christi Catholic church, built on land given by Bailey. His house, built in 1768, became part of the RC primary school built on the site in 1902 but has since been demolished.
The Assembly Hall is at the west end of the Town Hall complex and this striking sculpture relieves a huge plain brick wall area. This rather plain building is covered by the Grade II listing of Lambeth Town Hall and I think dates from 1935-8 when the Town Hall was raised and extended. The striking sculpture on what the listing text calls a particularly handsome rear elevation is ‘Youth rising from the Past‘, by Denis Dunlop (1892–1959).
Lambeth Town Hall, Acre Lane, Brixton 89-5l-35-Edit
Lambeth Town Hall seen from Acre Lane, though my more usual views of it have been either from Windrush Square or in close-up from the bus stop on the opposite side of the road during those long waits for a No 37 bus.
I’m not a great fan of the rather pompous clock tower of this Grade II listed town hall designed by Septimus Warwick and H Austen Hall and built in 1905-8. Edwardian Baroque always seems to me a period where architecture lost its way and was given excessive funding thanks to our plundering the wealth of the Empire.
Granada Brixton, Brighton Terrace, Bernay’s Grove, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989
Opened in 1898 as the Empress Theatre, designed by Wylson & Long, it was reconstructed in Art Deco style by Andrew Mather, reopening in 1931 as the New Empress Theatre. It showed films on Sundays when live performances were not allowed. It closed as a theatre in 1957 and after alterations opened a month later as a cinema. Granada Brixton became a Bingo Club in 1967 and when this closed was used as a furniture store. It was demolished in 1992 and the rather ugly Pavilion Mansions built on the site.
This walk continues along Brighton Terrace in a later post.
The Alexandra, Sanitary Ware & Ace continues the account of my walk on Sunday 28th May 1989. The previous post was http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=15138 Shops, Flats, Trade Unions, Monks… and the walk began with http://re-photo.co.uk/?p=15080 Lavender Hill & Wandsworth Rd – 1989
Shops, The Alexandra, pub, Clapham Common Southside, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5k-25
The Alex is one of the best known pubs in the area and upstairs is the Clapham Darts Club, open to non-members where you can book an oche, though at £20 an hour you might think it a bit steep. I’ve never played darts in a pub where you had to pay, but then its probably 50 years since I’ve played pub darts. Then you paid by buying beer.
Its a pub too that is best avoided on match nights and at weekends unless you want to watch sport. The pub dates from 1866, though has sadly lost a much of its Victorian interior features.
6 Haselrigge Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5k-15
I can’t remember what route I took from Clapham Park Road to Bedford Rd, probably cutting through some of the estates but not stopping to take photographs. But this house is visible from Bedford Road and drew me down to make this pictures. It was certainly the slender spire which attracted my attention. Built in 1871 it also has an observatory and apparently a matching coach house behind. Long converted into flats, this locally listed house I feel must have more of a story to tell than I’ve been able to unearth.
Haselrigge Road gets its name from one of the oldest well-connected families in England, which dates back before the Norman invasion and are said to have been the lords of the manor on the now lost West Yorkshire village of Hesselgreave. Bartholomew Clerke lord of the manor of Clapham who died in 1589 and his wife, Eleanor Haselrigge, and their son are commemorated in figures on a monument in St Paul’s Church Clapham.
63, Bedford Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5k-16
53-63 Bedford Road were Grade II listed in 1981, the listing reads in part “Circa 1870, in stock brick with creamy terra-cotta dressings, built by J G Jennings as part of a larger scheme of houses of varying size and quality, to the designs of T Collcutt.” Josiah George Jennings was a noted sanitary engineer.”
Thomas Edward Collcutt (1840-1924) was an important English architect, better known for designing the Wigmore Hall, Savoy Hotel, Palace Theatre and more. This house at 63 is on the corner with Ferndale Road which now has its very own Conservation Area which provided me with much of the information below.
Rathcoole house, Grade II listed in 1981, was the main and final house of a scheme designed by T E Colcutt and built by Josiah George Jennings. Remarkably this house was derelict and had been scheduled for demolition in 1966 but was rented from the GLC as a hostel for vagrant alcoholics and decorated and fully furnished mainly by the efforts of voluntary organisations. A decorated sign on the side has the initials JG, the street name and date 1882.
The house is on the corner with Ferndale Road which has its on Conservation Area. Lambeth Council’s document on this gives more detail of George Jenning (1810-1882) who set up a company in Paris Street Lambeth making sanitary ware, “patenting revolutionary improvements to toilets.”
His ‘Monkey Closets’ installed at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851 were the world’s first public toilets – and for a penny clients “received a clean seat, a towel, a comb and shoe shine“. Ever since we have been going to spend a penny even if that now costs 50p and comes without most of the original accompaniments.
Jennings set up the South Western Pottery in Parkstone, near Poole in Dorset to produce sanitary products from the local clays, later expanding to “bricks, chimney post and architectural terracotta” all in a pale creamy colour. He developed other areas of south London including around Nightingale Lane in Clapham.
Jennings began building Ferndale Road in 1870 and only completed the scheme the year he died in a traffic accident. The completion is commemorated on the side of Rathcoole House which had been one of the earlier houses to be built.
Not all houses in the area were built to the same standards as those by Jennings. I think this small building was probably at the front of some works behind whose corrugated iron roof is visible at left. I’m no longer sure exactly where on Bedford Road it was, but somewhere on the west side quite close to the railway bridge.
Another rather basic building a little to the north of the railway bridge at 16 Bedford Road and surprisingly still there, now a minicab office. Ace had a rather wider scope, offering driving lessons and also selling and exchanging books – some of which you can see on the shelves through the window.
I took a second picture without the woman walking past who is reflected in the window, but I think this is better.
I turned around and walked back down Bedford Road to Acre Lane where my account of this walk will continue in a later post.
Reparations, North Woolwich & LouLou’s: Thursday 1st August 2019 was a long and busy day for me with an Afrikan Emancipation Day protest, finishing a walk in North Woolwich I’d begun six months earlier and photographing an evening protest outside the exclusive Mayfair club LouLou’s.
Afrikans demand reparations – Brixton, London.
People of African origin met in Windrush Square in the morning to demand an end of the Maangamizi, the continuing genocide and ecocide of African peoples and Africa on Afrikan Emancipation Day.
After speeches & libations they marched from Brixton to Westminster with a petition calling for an end to acts of violence by Britain, the misuse of taxes and the stolen legacy plundered from Afrika under the British Empire and European Imperialism and demanding reparations.
The protest was supported by Extinction Rebellion XR Connecting Communities who marched in an Ubuntu Non-Afrikan Allies bloc.
I left the march as it went past Brixton Police Station on its way to protest outside the Houses of Parliament so I could have some lunch before going to take pictures elsewhere.
I’d taken the tube back into central London to have a quick lunch before taking the DLR from Bank to London City to King George V Dock station for the final section of the walk I had begun in February but had run out of time to finish because I’d had to take a roundabout route to get there as the direct DLR services were suspended following an accident.
Bow Creek
This time the trains were running properly. They start from Bank and so come into the station empty and I was able to chose my seat and for once I found myself sitting next to a clean window on my way to North Woolwich and took a number of pictures.
Tate & Lyle
Later on my way back to Canary Wharf from King George V I was less lucky and the windows were rather grimy, but I still made a few images.
The footpath goes across these gates of the entrance lock to Albert Dock Basin
I took a few pictures as I walked from the elevated King George V station at North Woolwich to the King George V Dock entrance and joined the path by the river.
The lock here is huge, 243.8m long and 30.48m wide. I’d first photographed the area back in the 1980s as a part of a wider project on the Docklands following their closure, both in colour but mainly in black and white – in the album 1984 London Photographs. Although the docks themselves remain, much around them has changed, although there are still some derelict areas.
The riverside path here is part of the Capital Ring, and continues north and over lock at the Albert Dock entrance to the curiously desolate Armada Green Recreation Area.
Here the path ends, with beyond it the former site of the Beckton Gas Works, used as a location for at least 17 films and TV series since its closure, though best known as a stand-in for Vietnam in the 1987 Full Metal Jacket. Past that is the Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, set up in 1864 as part of Joseph Bazalgette’s scheme to treat London’s sewage and still receiving it from all of London north of the Thames.
I had to turn inland, through more recent development and the refurbished Gallions Hotel around Alber Dock Basin. I went briefly under the new bridge to see again the East London University student residences, then went back and across it, taking more pictures from the bridge and the road on my way back to King George V station.
Finally I joined the IWGB Cleaners and Facilities Branch outside the exclusive Mayfair private club LouLou’s where they were picketing and protesting for kitchen porters to be paid a living wage, be treated with dignity, respect and given decent terms and conditions including proper sick pay, holidays and pension contributions. Recently outsourced to ACT, porters want to be returned to direct employment.
Among those supporting them were Class War, and in the picture above Ian Bone confronts a police office asking why they protect and support the rich. Needless to say the officer had no answer to the question. In general the protesters were reasonably behaved and acting within the law, but police and security hired by the club worked together to try and prevent their protest being effective.
There were angry scenes as staff escorted wealthy clients of the £1800 a year club past the picket, particularly when some roughly pushed the protesters. Police repeatedly warned the protesters but not the security men or customers who had assaulted them. The security also tried to prevent the picket from handing their flier to the customers.
As at previous protests outside of the club, none of the security staff were wearing the visible SIA door supervisor licences required under the Private Security Industry Act 2001, but the police refused to take any action over this.
Ghost Sign, S.Errington, Dulwich Road, Herne Hill, Lambeth, 1989 89-5f-41
I turned into Dulwich Road and walked up it towards Brixton, stopping to make very few pictures, perhaps keen to get to the end of the walk. Just before reaching Water Lane on the side of what was then Ellis Newsagents at 1a Dulwich Road I couldn’t resist the finely painted sign ‘ S Cooltan ERRINGTON DEALER IN ANTIQUE & MODERN
FURNITURE
FURNITURE BOUGHT SOLD OR
in drop capitals, decorated with some fine curly bits. Clearly something at the bottom following the ‘OR’ had been painted over, but I couldn’t decide what it might have been. Perhaps ‘EXCHANGED’ or ‘HIRED’?
The property now looks to be residential, but on Google Maps it still appears as: S Errington Dealer In Antique & Modern Furniture Home Furniture Shop Temporarily closed
and that sign is still there, rather more faded and with the lettering now looking very much plainer. Unfortunately although I will have had a camera body with colour film in my bag I did’t photograph this in colour. Some days I only thought in black and white.
I walked along Brixton Water Lane, taking a couple of pictures (not digitised) on my way to Effra Road. The the names suggest I was following the route of the River Effra, underground since the early nineteenth century, but in fact I had been doing so all the way down from Herne Hill and was now walking away from it. Effra Road got its name from Effra Farm which was on the bank of the river.
The former Suntan lotion factory was squatted and in June 1991 became the CoolTan Arts Centre. They were evicted in February 1992, and the centre moved first to offices above Brixton Cycles before squatting the former Unemployment Benefit Offices in Coldharbour Lane. There it became a thriving art space, with a cafe, live music and offices for various campaign groups including Reclaim the Streets, Earth First! and the Green Party until 1995, when the building was taken over by The Voice newspaper – who boarded it up and left it empty and rotting. The Effra Road factory was demolished shortly after their eviction and remained as empty unused ground for over ten years.
But Cooltan Arts continued. From 1993-2016 Michelle Baharier was, as she writes in her statement on the South London Women Artists site, “Founder, Artistic Director and CEO of CoolTan Arts, London. In twenty-five years, I grew CoolTan Arts from an old suntan lotion factory squatted social centre in Brixton to a user-led disabled people’s arts and mental health charity. CoolTan Arts worked with over three thousand people face-to-face per year with its participatory art programme. The charity improved the lives of individuals with mental distress through creativity, self-advocacy, and volunteer opportunities within the arts. During my tenure at CoolTan I developed psycho-geography walks and other collaborative events with different communities.”
Clearly I was intrigued by this empty 1930s moderne factory and by its gates and their shadows. Unfortunately the gates were locked and although the fence was fairly low the location seemed a little public for me to climb over and explore the site further though it was more decorative than a real barrier. Eventually I managed to tear myself away and continue my walk, taking a few pictures not online as I walked past St Matthews Church and on to Brixton Hill.
Former Cinema, 101-3 Brixton Hill, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5f-24
The Tarpaulin & Ten Mfg Co, T&T was for many years in the former cinema, which was converted from shops and opened on 10th March 1911 as Brixton Hill Cinematograph Theatre, and was 13th of Montagu A. Pyke’s chain of Cinematograph Theatres. Pyke went out of business when he was jailed after his projectionist in his cinema died in a fire in 1914, and the cinema was taken over by others. It changed its name then and several other times over the years, operating under names including ‘New Royalty’, ‘New Royalty Kinema’ and finally the Clifton.
It showed its last film in 1957 and deteriorated badly before becoming the T&T shop. I think this kept going into this century and the building was up for sale in 2004 and became the Dalxiis Somalian restaurant. By 2008 the auditorium had been demolished and the front of the cinema had become the South Beach Bar, which lost its licence in 2012. In 2015-6 it was ‘Believers Home Chapel’ , in 2018 the S.G.H Events Hall and in 2019 the TAMI Gospel Centre of The Anointed Ministry International, though still with the South Beach Bar sign on that metal structure, empty in my picture at roof level that had once carried the The New Royalty Kinema and Camping Centre signs.
Post Office Building, Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5f-11
I went down Blenheim Gardens, photographing this building, dating from 1891 and still in use by the Royal Mail as Brixton Delivery Office, and the windmill, before walking through the back streets between Brixton Hill and Tulse Hill on a roundabout way to Brixton Water Lane to catch a bus on my way home at the end of my long walk.
I’m not sure which of the nine eleven-story slab blocks on the estate is shown in my picture; the estate was and remains a rather confusing area. Possibly this is Leicester House on Loughborough Road, or more likely Harpur House on Angell Road where I think I walked to next, but the lower buildings in front of the block appear to have gone.
The sign ‘NO HATS’ is not a reference to any headgear but to Housing Action Trusts, an important part of Margaret Thatcher’s marginalisation of local authorities. Having ochestrated the run-down of council estates by earlier restrictions on council spending and the right to buy schemes, the Housing Act 1988 aimed to transfer these estates to non-departmental public bodies which were to redevelop or renovate them so they could be transferred into private ownership.
Opposition to HATs was intense, with the Labour Part, local authorities and estate residents all fighting their imposition, and the first six areas intended to becom HATs managed to avoid implementation, though later six were formed, but none in south London.
I think this rather temporary-looking building as on Angell Road close to Harpur House, but no sign of it remains. I photographed it largely for the posters showing opposition to Housing Action Trusts in Broxton.
As well as a Luncheon Club for pensioners it also has a sign for the Loughborough Sports & Social Club.
Fence, St John the Evangelist, Angell Park Gardens, Angell Town, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-32
Further along Angell Road – named like the area after the Angell family who had owned large parts of the Lambeth and developed this area in the 1850s. In 1852 Benedict John Angell gave a site here for the building of St John the Evangelist Church which was consecrated in 1853. Unfortunately trees along the edge of the site along Angell Road and Angell Park Gardens had too many leaves in May to clearly see the church.
These paintings on the fence around the church are still visible but rather faded. I took a few pictures of them both in black and white and in colour before walking on past the church and across Wiltshire Road into Villa Road and back onto Brixton Road, where I photographed the rather austere Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church (not yet digitised.)
Abeng Youth Community Centre, Gresham Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-22
I walked on down Brixton Road to the Police Station where I turned back east along Gresham Road, stopping to photograph what looked to me to be a former chapel. In 1877 this was the Angell Town Institution and later became Brixtons first telephone exchange.
In the 1970s the Rev Tony Ottey founded the Abeng Centre here to provide supplementary education and youth services to the local children. In 2003 it was relaunched with new management as the Karibu Centre, its Swahili name Karibu meaning welcome, with similar aims. It is also hired for weddings, funerals, birthdays and business meetings.
Soon I was walking through the Loughborough Estate again, going along Millbrook Road and through Wyck Gardens, a public open space which is thought to be the remnant of a larger wood knwon as Wickwood in the Manor of Lambeth Wick which had been cleared by the end of the 17th century.
The land had belonged to the Archbishops of Canterbury and was bought by the London County Council from the Church Commissioners for a new public open space, opened in 1959 and since extended and improved. You can see more pictures from the park on Brixton Buzz.
I think the large block here is Barrington Court, the first of three I walked past on my way through the park towards Loughborough Junction.
I left the park and walked along Ridgeway Rd, beside the railway line from Brixton which curves around to a junction just north of Loughborough Junction Station. The next station on this line is at Elephant & Castle.
Some extensive work seems to be in progress on what I am reliably informed (thanks to comments on Flickr) is a Ford Escort, while inside the garage a Renault 4 and a Rover P5 await their turn.
Arch 500 was empty for some years but later became home to the very Brixton Buzwakk Records Recording Studio a few years ago. The arches on both sides are still garages.
