March of the Human Rights Jukebox: On Saturday 16th June I went to South London to photograph this event and put many pictures and a fairly long text on-line on My London Diary.
Here I’ll share the text (with some corrections and links added) and just a few of the pictures – you can see many more of these on My London Diary. You can read about the Human Rights Juke Box on the South London Gallery site, and on Isa Suarez’s web site.
So this is what I wrote in 2007:
I joined the ‘Human Rights Jukebox’ in its progress from the Camberwell Magistrates Court to Peckham on Saturday 16th June. An event in the Camberwell Arts Week, the ‘March Of The Human Rights Jukebox’ was organised by Isa Suarez, who had a one-year artists residency in Southwark in 2006.
The juke box included thoughts on people’s rights from many residents and diverse groups in Southwark, some of whom marched with banners along with it.
At the start of the event, the Dulwich Choral Society performed a specially composed piece by Suarez, using words from the ‘jukebox’. On Clerkenwell Green we stopped for a impassioned recital (in French) by a Black African poet, and in front of the old baths in Artichoke Place (now the Leisure Centre) there was a long performance by Deadbeat International as well as a short song by three musicians that left us wanting more.
Deadbeat International also performed at various other points on route, including another energetic set at Peckham Library. The march was led into Peckham by a rapper, with some forthright views on human rights.
Accompanying the jukebox were the live art group ‘mmmmm‘, Adrian Fisher & Luna Montengro, covered from head to foot in sheets of paper containing the complete text of the UN Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, in both English and Spanish as well as the pages of a world atlas.
In front of the library at Peckham, mmmmm completed the event by unpinning the sheets from each other one by one, reading the clauses and feeding the sheets into a shredder (and when this gave up, tearing them up.)
Each then poured cold water over the other and threw the shredded papers, so that they stuck to the wet clothes and skin. Finally we were all invited (in what we were informed was an Argentine custom) to jump once into the air for each of the 30 clauses of the declaration.
On the way to the event, I’d jumped off the bus at the Oval, where ‘Stop The War’ and other demonstrators were protesting. Gordon Brown was apparently expected to arrive at 12.00 to watch some kind of game there. It was a very different kind of action to the ‘jukebox’ though both were political and art in their different ways, although only one gets Arts Council funding.
Also dropping in at Peckham Library were a group of young cyclists from the go-kart track in nearby Burgess Park. They were a lively crew and everyone seemed to want to be photographed.
No 326, with two doors above each other with steps to the upper door with a balustrade. Many of the houses along here date from the first development along the road and are good examples of early-mid 19th century houses and most have some intresting features but are perhaps not distinctive enough to deserve listing.
The house now looks much the same as when I photographed it. I suspect this unusual arrangement with steps up to the front door was how this house was built. While many houses from the period have basement flats, this appears to have been built with its ground floor rather higher, perhaps becuase of the risk of flooding from the River Effra. But if so, why was a similar approach not used for neighbouring houses?
J & P Motors, Thornton St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-5d-63
I walked a little back up Brixton Road to Thornton Street, though too much has changed for me to positively identify the exact location of J & P Motors on this fairly short L-shaped street. I think it was probably on the north side of the bottom of the L behind what is now the worker’s co-operative, Brixton Cycles.
There was a splendid utilitarian simplicity of this building which appealed to me, and which I enhanced with its symmetrical gates and No parking signs.
Back on Brixton Road, Evereds Bathrooms had its showroom in two shops at 308-10 Brixton Rd. The buildings here are still standing but no longer in use as a shop. For some years since 2011 the Victorian shopfront built as a house agents in 1879 has been in use as an art gallery, SHARP Gallery (Social, Hope and Recovery Project) which has shown the work of over 120 artists, many of whom use mental health services and is supported by the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. Both the early nineteent century house and these shops are Grade II listed, along with 312.
Both buildings at 304 and 306 Brixton Road have survived, but in 2013 planning permission was granted for changes to the Eagle Printing Works, and the fine semi-circular panel including the building date of 1864 and its wrought-iron decoration was removed – a piece of vandalism that should never have been approved.
Apparently the printing works a few years later became a sub district Post, Money Order and Telegraph Office, and it was from here that Sherlock Holmes sent his first telegram.
I turned off the Brixton Road where I had spent some time wandering back and forth and struck off to the east along Loughborough Road. The first picture I took was of the Loughborough Hotel, described in more detail on a previous walk, a well known music venue, closed in 2008 and has been converted into flats, with a café gallery on the ground floor.
From Fiveways I continued along Lilford Road, again stopping to re-take the impressive porch on its corner with Minett Road, also featured in a previous post. I chose a very similar viewpoint but the lighting was quite different as it had been overcast for the earlier image.
I can’t remember why I made the detour, though possibly it was just the sheer pleasure of seeing an area with so many fine buildings again. Or it could have been to find a pleasant place to sit and eat my lunch, as I walked as far as Myatts Fields before returning to Loughborough Rd.
On Loughborough Road I was in a very different London, the Loughborough Estate, redeveloped after much of the area was devastated by wartime bombing. The first stages of the rebuild were in five-storey red brick blocks typical of 1930s LCC estates of that era, solid and with decent sized rooms but uninspiring visually. There height was kept to five floors as they had no lifts.
From 1954-7 more of the estate was developed with a mix of high and low-rise modern buildings designed by the LCC Architects Department which included nine eleven-storey slab blocks which became a model for later LCC estates. They even gained approval from John Betjeman who Layers of London quotes as writing “When one compares their open-ness, lightness, grass and trees, and carefully related changes of scale from tall blocks to small blocks, with the prison-like courts of artisans’ dwellings of earlier ages, one realises some things are better than they were… Maybe it has no place for someone like me, but it gives one hope for modern architecture.”
Not everyone shared Betjeman’s enthusiasm, and by the time I made these pictures the area had gained a reputation for crime, one of a number of estates in London about which some people expressed shock that I was walking around taking pictures. More about my walk in a later post.
A Submarine, Flats, Pub, Dog, Ducks & Milkmaid is the final post on my walk on Friday afternoon, May 5th 1989. The previous post was Around Camberwell New Road – 1989
I crossed over Camberwell New Road to the southern side, turned own Vassall Road and then left into Langton Road. I’ve not digitised the one picture I took of a house here, nor the single image I made in Lothian Road, but I continued further south along here, lured by the sight of an unusual object in the centre of Akerman Road.
Two vertical concrete towers rose up from a more organic looking low concrete body. Later I was to learn that this was known as the Camberwell Submarine.
I had no idea what this structure was, though clearly it was providing ventilation for some below ground installation. Was it Lambeth’s nuclear bunker, perhaps an underground city? Was there some secret tunnel underneath – though the nearest Underground line was well over a mile away. Later I looked it up to find others had made similar speculations to mine, but of course the real purpose is rather more prosaic.
This is the visible structure of the below ground Myatt’s Fields North Boiler House designed by Michael Luffingham in the mid-seventies for Lambeth Council, and described at the time as Hollamby’s submarine after his boss, borough architect Ted Hollamby. An attempt was made to get it listed ten years ago but failed.
I could only walk around the outside of the submarine and although it had doors at each end, both were locked. In 2007, Mike Urban of Urban75 was photographing it and was invited inside by a maintenance worker and his post reveals some of the hidden secrets of the interior.
Flats, Akerman Rd, Lambeth, 1989 89-5b-26
These are some of the flats on the Myatt’s Fields North which were heated by the submarine. The estate later got a very poor reputation and much was demolished and replaced in controversial redevelopment in 2014, mentioned in a previous post.
I turned down Evandale Road and walked down to the Loughborough Hotel on the corner with Loughborough Road. The earliest record of a pub here – on the corner with what was then Cromwell Rd – was in 1864, and it was built on the site of Loughborough House which was demolished in 1854. This had been the Manor House of Lambeth Wick, home to the 1st Baron Loughborough, Henry Hastings. He had been given his title in 1643 for fighting for the Royalists in the English Civil War and returned to live here after a period of exile in 1661.
In 1900 the hotel was replaced by this splendid new building, designed as an entertainment palace with a large ballroom on the first floor. The name ‘Hotel’ simply meant it was a posher establishment than an inn, and it never had rooms where people could stay.
The nature of entertainment at the hotel changed from the late 1960s as did the local population. The Island Disco, a South Pacific Island themed disco opened in 1967 and various other night clubs followed including the legendary Latin and African music club, the Mambo Inn. There were drag nights too from !969.
All this finished in 2005, when the upstairs room s were turned into flats. The ground floor pub finally closed in 2007 and the former bar is now a café and possibly at times an art gallery.
I turned east along Loughborough Road and made my way to Fiveways, the junction with Akerman Road, Lilford Road and Fiveways Road. This shows the house on the corner with Akerman Raod, which has since been considerably refurbished. This was once the end of a long terrace from the Loughborough Hotel with ground floor shops, but those at this end and some others have been converted to residential.
I continued along Lilford Road, where at number 15 I photographed this small menagerie. I’m pleased to see that the ducks are still there on the short pillars at the front door, though now looking a little worn, but the milkmaid and dog have gone.
Auto Stores, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5c-63
By now it was getting a little late and I was getting hungry and I made my way quickly along Knatchbull Road towards Camberwell Green to catch a bus back to Waterloo for my train home. I only took this one last picture, though I’m not sure exactly where it was taken around Camberwell Green, though my contact sheet says Camberwell Road.
This is the third and final post on the walk which began with Naked Ladies, 3 Doors & A New Walk. But two days later I was back again on a new walk in South London which I’ll write about shortly
Houses, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-64
These houses are 137-141 Camberwell New Road and seem fairly typical of the houses along the road, though unlike many of the others these appear not to be listed. I was interested in particulr at the link between 137 and 139, both with the archway and the butress above. I wondered if the terrace at right was a later replacement for an earlier house here, rather more like the house at left.
Pub, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-66
A dog sits at the entrance of the Taylor Walker pub on Camberwell New Road, with a small plaque proudly noting the brewery was established in London in 1730. They began in Stepney as Salmon and Hare, and only added John Taylor in 1796, becoming Taylor Walker when Isaac Walker became a partner in 1816. In 1823 they moved from Stepney to the Barley Mow Brewer in Limehouse. They were taken over in 1959 by Ind Coope who closed the brewery, continuing to brew beer under their name at Burton until the 1990s, but some London pubs continued to use the brand. The brand name was revived by another company for some pubs for a few years this century but has not gone.
I’m not absolutely sure which pub this was but it was probably the Skinners Arms, now known as The Kennington, on the corner with Foxley Rd. It closed around 2004, reopening as the Black Sheep Bar for a few years before getting its new name around 2012. Someone must remember the “Chute In Saturday Nights With Big Ray” and “Music Mirth & Melody” with “Max & Tom”, if only with dread.
Fineservice TV & Video Repairs is now a shop and post office, but it still has a reccognisble frontage with the two heads on Farmers Road with a matching pair at the other end of its frontage on Wyndham Road.
Flats, Grenfell House, Comber Grove, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-55
I think I walked on up Wyndham Road but took no pictures until I turned down Comber Grove and made this image of the stone ornament in front of Grenfell House, one of several large blocks of solid 1930s London County Council flats in the estate. This stone ball is no longer in the grass but has, like the flats, gone up in the world, and there are now of pair of them on solid brick columns each side of the gateway from the street.
Calvary Temple United Church, Councillor St, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-44
I walked back onto Camberwell New Road and couldn’t resits taking a few more pictures of Calvary Temple, including some slightly closer images of its frontage (not yet digitised) and a repeat of my earlier viewpoint, before making this view which concentrates on the church without the inclusion of a tower block behind it.
Shops, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-45
This whole block from 227-253 Camberwell New Road is Grade II listed as “14 houses, now mostly commercial premises. Early to mid C19 with several later C19 shop fronts of intrinsic interest.”
I’m not sure my photograph shows that intrinsic interest, but the lettering and clutter on the pavements certainly interested me.
Clifton Cottage, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-46
Clifton Cottage at 189 Camberwell New Rd conveniently announces it was built in 1833 at the time of the earliest developments on the road which was created under the 1818 Turnpike Act. It is Grade II listed – and was for some time by mistake listed twice. Possibly the confusion arose as from the annoying failure of listings always to include the full street address, or perhaps because the boundary between the two boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark runs down the middle of the road here. I’ve tried hard here to put my pictures into the correct boroughs, but I know I’ve not always got it right everywhere in London.
My walk on Friday 5th May 1989 continued and there will be more in later posts.
Naked Ladies, York House Gardens, Twickenham, Richmond 1989 89-5a-53
I took few pictures in the rest of the month after my walk on Sunday 9th April 1989, my time being taken up with other things. I did make a few pictures on a CND demonstration in Lambeth with family and friends which I’ve yet to digitise, and some when the photography adult class on which I was assisting went to photograph Twickenham’s famous ‘Naked Ladies’, who now have a beer named for them. Some of my pictures of this were made on large format 4×5″ film so I could contact print them using historic processes such as platinum and kallitype, and I helped make at least one on 8×10″ for the tutor.
Upper St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden, Westminster, 1989 89-4l-13
And there were a few other pictures such as this, made on my way to the Photographers’ Gallery, then in Great Newport St, a short walk around the corner, or on my way to meetings in other parts of London, and a few closer to home.
But my next walk to take pictures came on Friday 5th May when I rushed out of college after around four hours of teaching and jumped on a train to Vauxhall and a bus to the Oval, walking down Foxley Road, then Vassal Rd to Cowley Rd, eager to continue to photograph in the area around Myatt’s Fields. I paused to take half a dozen pictures on the way, but have yet to digitise any of these.
The top end of Cowley Road is in the Vassall Rd conservation area and this terrace is a remnant of the Holland Town Estate development begun by Henry Richard Vassall, Third Baron Holland in 1818 when Camberwell New Road was laid out. This terrace is possibly from around 1830 and its Grade II listing describes it as Early-mid C19.
No 25 at the right of the previous picture is the last house in this section of the street. On the west side of the road, behind me as I took the picture is a large block of redbrick five-storey council housing, Knowlton House, built by the LCC as part of the Cowley estate in 1934-6. There is another similar block, Stodmarsh House further south on the street.
The park here appears to have had a number of names and is now Eythorne Park, though Google Maps hedges its bets by also calling it Myatt’s Field Common Park and on the old A-Z I used on my walks it was Mostyn Gardens, given to Lambeth Borough Council in 1925 who passed on the the LCC in 1958. They extended and renamed it Melbourne Fields. Parts of it were built on in the 1970s the low-rise Myatts Field North council estate in the 1970s and disastrously redeveloped under a Private Finance Initiative programme hit by various cost-cutting directives and carried out with little or no regard for the residents.
You can see these roofs over the mound in the park in the previous picture, though the park is now flat and surrounded by the redeveloped buildings. These buildings looked in good condition in 1989 and the estate looked well designed and a pleasant place to live. But years of neglect by the council meant that in 2004, as Zoe Williams wrote in The Guardian “Myatts Field North in Lambeth, south London, was a byword for what goes wrong on a housing estate. It had been poorly maintained; the interiors were shabby. Garages had become hazardous and were out of bounds; shared spaces were desolate and only teenagers and children used them, “engaged in nothing very positive”, according to a council report at the time.”
The state of the estate in 2004 led residents to vote by a fairly small majority for the council’s plans for regeneration, “demolishing and rebuilding 305 homes, refurbishing 172“, but work only began in 2012, by which time the plans had been considerably altered with cuts to the budget. Five years later when Williams wrote her article the problems with the regeneration were clear, with the refurbished homes poorly plannede and shoddily implemented and the residents many complaints largely simply ignored.
St John’s Schools, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-62
St John The Divine Junior Mixed and Infants School is still there on Camberwell New Road, though ILEA has long gone and the entrance to the school is now on Warham St, as it probably was when I took this picture. The church itself is a short distance away in Vassall St and is a good example of Victorian gothic by George Edmund Street. The parish was created in 1871.
The school, with buildings in Warham St (then James St) opened in 1872 for 400 children but this building on Camberwell New Road came some years later.
Shops, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-5b-63
The school building in flanked on both sides by shops and is in the centre of a terrace. Edward Wells & Sons Ltd at 143-145 offered a wide range of printing services. I think the businesses closed soon after I made this and other pictures.
From Longfield Hall I wandered up Knatchbull Road to Cormont Road, which runs halfway around Myatt’s Fields Park on its southwest and northwest sides. I took half a dozen pictures which I haven’t digitised before coming to this on the corner of Brief Street which I think was built as flats. Almost all the buildings in the area are fine examples of late Victorian housing, largely in the Queen Anne style but there is perhaps a slightly overpowering amount of red brick directly onto the streets.
Another finely designed large block of flats a few yards down Brief Street, Burton House, its hedges a few years ago more tidily trimmed but now again reverting to wild. On the opposite side of the street is a short terrace of two storey houses with brief front gardens and Brief Street is appropriately short – a little under a hundred yards in length.
According to Lambeth’s 2018 Character Appraisal for the Minet Conservation Area, “Kennington Boys’ High School (latterly known as Charles Edward Brooke School), Cormont Road opened in 1897.” This was a LCC board school and the Grade II listing states that this building dates from 1912, architect T J Bailey. It is listed on Historic England’s Heritage At Risk Register.
Confusingly – and I hope I have got this right – the school renamed itself Saint Gabriel’s College when it became co-educational as a Specialist Arts and Music College in 2012, and then moved out to Langton Road a few years later.
Again from the Lambeth appraisal, “The former St. Gabriel’s College on Cormont Road opened in 1899 as a training college for Anglican schoolmistresses, the vision of Charles Edward Brooke, a senior curate of nearby St. John the Divine church; the attached chapel was added in 1903.” The style is described as “vaguely Art Nouveau“. In 1989 it was Myatts House, run by the ATC Group of Training Companies and offering courses in Accountancy, Finance, Management and I think Computers, though the final word on the sign is hard to read. Grade II listed.
The building was requisitioned in the First World War, becoming part of the 1st London General Hospital, and was where Vera Brittain was first stationed. Later it became a LCC rest Home. It is now residential, converted to expensive flats as St Gabriel’s Manor.
This is Calais Gate, also Grade II listed and said in the listing to date from the early 20th Century, though the Myatt’s Park history site dates that these large mansion blocks as c. 1895.
Perched on top of the fine stepped gable is a terracotta cat, one of a number of cats on buildings on the Minet estate, though most are rather less prominent. The whole estate was developed by the Minet family who were of French Huguenot origin, and their name is an affectionate or childish French term for a cat, (minette if the cat happens to be female.)
Houses, Calais St, Myatts Fields, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4j-22
Substantial houses in Calais St facing the park on the north-east side. I wondered when I took this on the significance of the gateway at left with the cross above, but am no wiser now. Hard to make out from this picture but those are cats heads above the doorway.
Fine railings and decorative elements on these houses at 22 and 24 Flodden Road make them stand out and the absence of cats perhaps suggests these large semidetached Queen Anne style houses were not a part of the Minet development. Instead there are leaves and floral motifs and human heads.
Flodden was the site of a battle in 1513 in Northumberland, close to the border with Scotland when the English Army soundly defeated the army of King James IV of Scotland. England were engaged in a war with France and the Scottish invasion was in support of the ‘Auld Alliance’ they had made with France in 1295.
It was time for me to leave the area, and I walked up Flodden Road to Camberwell New Road to get a bus, coming out almost immediately opposite Calvary Temple of the United Pentecostal Church a few yards to the north of the road in Councillor St.
The church incorporates a memorial stone “laid by William Appleton Esq (Sutton), June 2nd !890″ with the text “Hitherto Hath the Lord Helped Us” (1 Samuel 7:12), naming George Baines Architect and H L Holloway Builder. The church, then Clarendon Chapel, opened as a Baptist church in March 1891, replacing an earlier ‘tin tabernacle’ which had burnt down in 1889. Clarendon Street became Councillor Street some time before 1912 and the church was renamed Camberwell New Road Church, continuing in use for Baptist worship until the 1950s.
It narrowly escaped demolition in 1959 when it was saved by Caribbean immigrants who were looking for a building for their Pentecostal worship and they held their first service there in March 1959. They kept and restored the churches original late Victorian fittings and it remains in use.
Then and now it makes a dramatic composition with the tower block behind, Laird House on Redcar St, one of five 22-storey 210ft blocks on the 1966 LCC Wyndham & Comber Estates.
New Road Bargains, Camberwell New Road, Lambeth, 1989 89-4j-12
There are few if any shops in Myatt’s Fields but several parades within walking distance including on Camberwell New Road where at 243 was New Road Bargains with a small chair fixed above its door and a wonderfully packed window of assorted items. For some years this has been Camberwell Daily, now with a shop front that offers GROCERIES | FRUIT & VEG | OFF LICENCE | NEWS & MAGS.
I might have photographed other shops in the row, but my bus came and I got on it to begin my journey home.
Back in 1989 I was still pretty pressed for cash, still buying film in bulk 100 ft lengths and loading it into cassettes myself in total darkness.
Over the years I’d perfected my method. Two nails on the back of my darkroom door, hang one of the sprocket holes at the end of the roll of film on the top one, unroll it down to the second, cut across, replace film in can. Pick up first spool from a waiting row on the bench, already with a short length of masking tape on it, attach to the bottom end of the hanging length of film, carefully roll it up to the top, remove from nail, pick up cassette body, insert spool with film end though velvet light trap, pick up end cap and pinch cassette to push it into place. Repeat another 18 times until the film roll is finished. Turn on light, trim film ends to fit cameras and put into plastic pots to go into camera bag.
Slow, tedious but then less than half the cost of buying film in 26 exposure cassettes, though I did ocasoinally treat myself – and if I bought Ilford film rather than Kodak I could reuse the cassettes with bulk film. Kodak had crimped on ends which had to be removed with a bottle cap remover destroying them.
I had learnt to be very careful with film in this project to photograph London, working with 35mm cameras much as I would have done with large format camera, carefully considering various viewpoints before deciding on an exposure. But when working with people I had to respond rather more quickly, and seeing these two men in front of the white church door my response was immediate.
After that rather snatched image I continued with photographing the two shops which had attracted my interest here, making first a vertical image and then moving back across the road for a wider view. In this (below) you can see the notice for the Celestial Church of Christ and the alley leading to this.
As well as these black and white images I also took a couple in colour which you can see in another album. I had two Olympus OM bodies with me and only brought the one with colour negative film out of my bag occasionally, while the black and white camera was usually on a strap around my neck. When I was intending to photograph people rather than buildings I usually went out with a Leica M2 instead.
Coldharbour Lane leads from Camberwell to Brixton and got a very bad reputation after the 1981 clashes between police and locals in Brixton. In 2003 it was called in an article in the London Evening Standard the most dangerous street in the most dangerous borough in London, but that was lagely rabid tabloid journalism. Wikipedia gives several theories about its name none of which seem entirely convincing, but the name seems often to have been associated with the ruins of Roman or Romano-British settlements, The area we know usually call Loughborough Junction around the station on early maps was called Cold Harbour. Coldharbour Lane was then known as Camberwell Lane.
The S&J Corner Café was on the corner with Wellfit Street, close to Loughborough Junction station. The railway line here is just south of the station. A second bridge can be seen going above this and the cafe which is the line from Brixton to Denmark Hill, now used by London Overground services.
Another picture I took on the spur of the moment as I saw a cyclist coming towards me under the bridges on Hinton Road. I was standing on the pavement beside the cafe in the previous image, and the cyclist is on the pavement, rather safer than roads like this in London. At the end of the row of shops on the left are the traffic lights and Coldharbour Lane whch I had just begun to walk towards.
Hinton Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4j-52
The pub at right of this picture is The Green Man on the corner with Coldharbour Lane. According to a post on the Brixton Buzz, this had been on the site since 1881, but that is the date of the current building which replaced an earlier pub on the site important enough to be marked on Stanford’s 1862 map. The Buzz says it was closed in 2003 because of drug dealing and crime, and it quotes from the Urban75 blog that it was “was frequented by dealers (crack, heroin you name it), prosi’s and general madhatters.“
The buildings at the left date from around the same time as the area was developed around the railways, and number 6 at left has a barely legible road name ‘Hinton Terrace‘ and I think at the top the illegible name of a builder and decorator whose sign presumably once hung on the bracket beside the street name.
I walked up past Loughborough Junction and made my next picture on Lilford Road at the corner of Minet Road, returning to the area I had been earlier on this walk, the Minet Estate around Myatt’s Fields. This is on the corner of a terrace with basement flats with an entrance here under the steps which extends along both streets and this grand entrance is actually for two adjoining houses above the flats, one on each street. The Grade II listing calls these “Early-mid C19″ and describes this a “double prostyle composite porch with fluted composite columns.”
William Minet founded this Grade II listed community hall, architect George Hubbard, which opened in 1889, as well as the Minet library opposite which was destroyed by bombing and rebuilt in 1956 in what Pevsner described as ‘a meek replacement’. The Library was a memorial for his late wife. The Hall is still in use for various community activities including three church congregations and from 1969 -1975 was the base of Britain’s first Black Theatre Company, ‘Dark And Light’, recently marked by a Blue Plaque. It was Grade II listed in 1979 and is now run by a charity, The Longfield Hall Trust.
My walk made on on Sunday 9th April 1989 will finish in a later post. The first part from it is at Peckham and East Dulwich 1989.
Escort Parts Centre, Camberwell Station Rd, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-43
Camberwell Station Road runs south from Camberwell New Road alongside the railway line, and along its west side are a number of small businesses in the railway arches, almost all garages of some kind.
The Escort Parts Centre was on the corner with Camberwell New Road and remained in business here until around 2010. The premises are now covered with graffiti and look derelict. The number 344 does not appear to be for either street and I think is some numbering for the arches in the viaduct.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, RC Church, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-32
The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart is in Knatchbull Road, just past the railway bridge and is on a dramatic scale, towering above the railway viaduct.
The Grade II listing text states it was built in 1952-8 from designs by D Plaskett Marshall in a moderne style, reminiscent of the inter-war churches of Cachemaille-Day. According to Wikipedia, “Nugent Francis Cachemaille-Day (1896–1976), often referred to as NF Cachemaille-Day, was an English architect who designed some of the most “revolutionary” 20th-century churches in the country.“
Again according to Wikipedia he designed his first church in Northenden in 1936-7 and by 1963 had been responsible for at least 61, many Grade II listed. Because of its location it is difficult to get a picture of this one which provides a good overall impression.
Tyre Fitting Bay, Camberwell Station Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-36
This was little further down Camberwell Station Rd which hasn’t had a passenger station since 1916 , though if you go down far enough you can still see the former station building, now occupied by a motorbike repair shop.
Camberwell station opened in 1862 on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway’s line into Blackfriars from Herne Hill. After the closure for passengers it remained in use for goods until 1964. The goods yard is now a housing estate.
Various schemes this century have looked at the reopening of the station but all so far have been abandoned.
I walked back up to Camberwell New Road and took three pictures of terraces there ( not on-line) before going down County Grove. These houses are 22 and 24 Flodden Road. On my map the Southwark-Lambeth boundary runs down the middle of the road, making these in Lambeth.
The Survey of London states that this area was bought from Sir Edward Knatchbull in 1770 by Hughes Minet, the grandson of a French Hugenot refugee, but it was only after the railway was opened in 1863 that it was developed to meet the demand this generated for small suburban houses. Builders obtained leases from the Minet family who were public-spririted landlords and provided a church and the Minet library and also closely controlled the building ensuring a mix of house sizes. In 1889 William Minet gave the 14.5 acres to the London County Council for a permanent open space, Myatt’s fields.
The Metropolitan Public Gardens Association spent around £10,000 to lay it out as a park to the designs of Fanny Wilkinson, a suffragette and one of the first women to be a professional landscape designer. The new park was named for Joseph Myatt, a well-known market gardener who produced a number of then famous strawberry varieties including Eliza, British Queen and Deptford Vine at his nursery in Deptford. His son James Myatt brought the business to the fields here.
Joseph also experimented with various varieties of rhubarb, hoping that he could get people to eat this together with strawberries, but this proved rather less successful, though rhubarb did become popular later.
Lambeth Council became the freeholder of the Minet estate in 1968.
Paulet Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-12
Lambeth Council redeveloped a large stretch along the west side of Paulet Road in the early 1970s. Although the long terrace blocks of the Paulet Road Estate are in a modern style they have a similar scale to the Victorian terraces opposite and were built using yellow stock bricks and slates like them. But they still look like monolithic slabs rather than the repeating units of the earlier houses.
Paulet Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-13
The side and rear of one of the blocks on the Paulet Road Estate. I think that these stairs lead up to the front doors of the upper level flats. These buildings are some of relatively few modern buildings in the Minet Conservation Area designated in 1980.
The south end of Paulet Road ends at Lilford Road and I turned east along it, going under the railway again. I think this shop just a little to the east of the railway bridge was at No 106 and has been converted into a private residence and is no longer recognisable. There are many fewer small corner shops now.
My walk will continue in a later post. The first part my walk on Sunday 9th April 1989 is at Peckham and East Dulwich 1989.
Hairdresser, North Cross Rd, East Dulwich, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-61
I’d taken a picture of this poster in a hairdresser’s window when I’d walked along North Cross Road a couple of months earlier but hadn’t been entirely satisfied with it. In winter I had been working with Kodak’s TMAX400 and I think I felt that the fine graphic detail on the poster would be better on the more fine-grained TMAX100 I had switched to for the summer. The difference isn’t huge but it does show. The framing is also a little different, though in making this digital image I have made this version just a little more skewed than my usual slight lean. I blame it on living in a house where nothing is quite a right angle.
North Cross Rd, East Dulwich, Southwark, 1989 89-4i-62
I’m not sure what the shop at 65 North Cross Road was then selling but I rather liked the graphic on the window. It could have been, as it now is, another hairdresser. The doorway was for the flat above.
I think I may have jumped on a bus on Lordship Lane to take me to Camberwell Green. Coming up to London for many of these walks I used a Travelcard which had first been introduced by the Greater Londo Council in 1981 and had greatly simplified travel around London. At the beginning of 1989 it had been extended to cover British Rail services, replacing an earlier One Day Capitalcard. The GLC had lost a legal battle to cut London fares in 1982, and was abolished by Thatcher in 1986, with fairly disastrous consequences, but their rationalisation of travel continued. Without it I don’t think I would have been able to do much of my extensive work across London. Now it seems that Tory cuts are going to force TfL to get rid of it for those of us travelling into London.
This is the next frame on my film, and was made around a mile and a half away, probably around a 15 minute bus ride from the previous image. The picture was made from Coldharbour Lane looking down Coldharbour Place, which continues with a narrow alley to Denmark Hill. The large building at left was a garage and has now been replaced by a larger block of flats, but the buildings at the right which front onto Denmark Hill remain and the wall at right is now covered by the ‘Great Wave’ mural based on Hokusai’s iconic image.
This Grade II listed church was built in 1823 and though some alterations were made in 1869 still looks remarkably like it did in Victorian times. I wounder why it has four doors along its frontage, and is without a central door. Possibly the doors at the left and right of the set may lead to galleries around the main hall, and some more strict churches had separate doors for men and women, but although the listed text has a fairly full description of the exterior it gives no clues for the reasons behind the design.
A rather fine row of shops with flats above, Denmark Mansions at 78-96 Coldharbour Lane. These mansions replaced earlier semi-detached villas with front gardens on the street at some time around 1900 though I can find no exact date.
Kenbury St, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-51
A derelict frontage in Kenbury St, just off Coldharbour Lane. This is part of Kenbury Mansions and has long been restored. These buildings are rather decorative fronts on a rather large solid block behind, each front door leading to half a dozen flats.
Arcanum Works, Warner Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-54
Arcanum means the mysteries or secrets of a subject but other than the name I’m unsure what was mysterious about the Arcanum Terrazzo & Stone Company Limited who shared this works with the Decorative Tile Company Limited and the yard at rear with Wandle Paving Ltd.
This building is still there, but is now the Glory Divine Christian Centre & Community Hall. The factory behind is labelled as a Brewery on the 1877 OS large-scale map, but by the time of the 1916 OS map had turned sour as a Vinegar Works.
St Marys Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-55
The Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God, Camberwell is a church in the Archdiocese of Thyateira & Great Britain. Greek Orthodox Christians had begun to celebrate in nearby St Giles in 1962.
In 1963 they moved into and later bought the former Catholic Apostolic Church, Camberwell New Road built for this splinter group of Anglo-Catholics in 1877, architect J & J Belcher. They had worshipped there until 1961. The church was damaged by bombing in 1941 and lost the impressive frontage rising behind the cloisters which can be seen in an illustration on Archiseek.com – with almost half the former nave now being a courtyard.
St Marys Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Camberwell New Rd, Camberwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-4i-42
I peered into the rather strange buildings to take this picture of the cloisters which the Anglo-Catholics had required of the architect. The more recent addition at left is probably very practical but rather spoils the impression.
Bird in Bush Road, Peckham, Southwark, 1989 89-3c-21
I spent some time exploring the area around Malt Street and Ossory Road, now on the other side of Asda, where some demolition was taking place but took few photographs, none on-line, and then walked back along along the Old Kent Road to Peckham Park Road, going down this to Green Hundred Road. I found myself in a large area of council housing, much of which was fairly standard LCC five storey blocks dating from the late 1930s, solidly built, their height limited back then by the lack of lifts.
The foreground flats in this picture are from the late 60s and are on Bird in Bush Road, part of the GLC designed Ledbury Estate, and as well as these 4-storey maisonette blocks there were also four identical 14 floor H shape tower blocks, including this one, Bromyard House, which has its entrance on Commercial Way.
Bird in Bush Road, Peckham, Southwark, 1989 89-3c-22
This picture was taken from close to the east end of Bird in Bush Road, and the building cut off at extreme left of the image is the former Arthur Street Board School (now Camelot Primary School.)
The design dates of these flats, also on the Ledbury estate, is from the early 1960s and was replicated across London by the GLC, using the prefabricated Danish Larsen-Nielsen system. After one at Ronan Point suffered a disastrous collapse following a gas explosion flats built using this system should have been strengthened, but somehow Southwark Council failed to do so on this estate. I’m not sure whether this had now been put right. but none have yet collapsed.
This semi-detached residence dating from 1836 which was Grade II listed together with the neighbouring Doddington Place around nine years after I took this picture.
The name possibly comes from Doddington Hall in Cheshire, built by Samuel Wyatt for Sir Thomas Broughton in 1777-90 and its parkland landscaped by Capability Brown. There is also Doddington Place at Doddington near Sittingbourne in Kent, but this was only built around 1870.
Tustin Estate, Old Kent Rd, Peckham, Southwark, 1989 89-3c-11
The Tustin Estate is on the north side the Old Kent Road immediately west of Ilderton Road. It has three 20 storey towers, Windermere Point, Grasmere Point (in the centre here) and Ambleside Point, each with over 70 flats which were approved by the GLC in 1964. There are also six low-rise blocks on the estate.
According to Southwark Council, “In March 2021, residents voted in favour of demolishing and rebuilding the low-rise buildings in a residents’ ballot. This will include replacement council homes, additional council homes and key worker housing, shared equity homes and homes for private sale. There will also be a replacement school building, new commercial spaces and a new park. All existing residents will be able to move to a new council home in the first phase of the scheme.” I’m unsure how far this scheme has so far progressed and it remains to be seen whether the council will keep its promises, which it almost completely failed to do on some earlier schemes.
I returned to Clifton Crescent which I had photographed earlier and too a rather better and closer picture of this magnificent curved terrace. As I explained earlier, it was Southwark Council’s decision in 1972 to demolish this crescent that led to a local action group which became the Peckham Society in 1975. Fortunately they managed to stop the demolition when only No 1 had been lost. They convinced the council that retaining and restoring the properties was a cheaper option, and the lost house was rebuilt and the entire crescent, Grade II listed thanks to their efforts in 1974, was restored by 1977. The Crescent was built in 1847-51 and represents an interesting transition between earlier Regency styles and the simpler Victorian terraces.
Car spares, Loder St, Peckham, Southwark, 1989 89-3c-15
From there I made my way east, going under the railway on Culmore Road or Clifton Way and then south to Loder St. This whole area has been redeveloped since I made these pictures in 1989 and is now covered with low-rise housing. I made two pictures of this car breaker’s yard (you can see the other on Flickr).The tower blocks are those of the Tustin Estate.
Hatcham Liberal Club, Queen’s Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1989 89-3d-61
I walked down to Queen’s Road, I think along York Grove, stopping briefly to photograph a street corner. On Queen’s Road before catching a bus I photographed the Hatcham Liberal Club, built in 1880 in Queen Anne Dutch style and Grade II listed ten years after I took this picture. It was one of the largest of a number of late Victorian working men’s clubs and became a popular venue with a large hall at the back available for hire for parties and gigs and also for until it closed in 2006. In 2009 most of the interior was converted into flats.
Shops, John Ruskin St, Camberwell, Southwark, 1989 89-3d-62
I changed buses in Camberwell, where I made a slight detour to make another visit to photograph the row of shops on John Ruskin Street as the final picture of the day and this walk.
