Asylum and Vauxhall to Battersea: I don’t often look back at posts from the early years of My London Diary for several reasons. Before I redesigned the site some time in 2008 there were no links to individual stories which makes linking to them trickier, and the stories and pictures come at different positions down the monthly page. Also in the early years I wrote entirely in lower case, something I now find an annoying affection. And back them the software for converting raw digital images wasn’t quite as good and the images are sometimes a little lacking in colour quality.
So here I re-present my post for Monday 10th April 2006 in a more convenient fashion. I’ve updated the text to conventional capitalisation, corrected a few spellings (back then I wrote in software without a spell-checker) and made a few minor changes to make the text easier to follow. The pictures – both those in this post and the larger number I link to on My London Diary are exactly as posted in 2006. Communications House was demolished in 2013-4 and new offices erected on the site which is now home to a number of businesses but no longer used by the Home Office.
Against Detention and Deportation – Communications House, Old Street
If you are an asylum seeker in Britain you have to sign on regularly at one of the Home Office locations. When you enter the doors of Communications House next to Old Street station (or any of the other locations) you cannot be sure that you will ever come out. Despite the regulations, some asylum seekers have been bundled onto planes and flown back to the country from which they have fled, others have found themselves banged up in detention centres such as Harmondsworth for years with no trial or appeal.
On Monday 10th April 2006, various groups including the All African Women’s Group, African Liberation Support Campaign Network, Payday Men’s Network and Women Of Colour formed a line along the front of the building over the lunch hour to protest and hand out flyers about the unfair treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
This was a part of a global action demanding justice and proper legal rights for asylum seekers and others without proper legal documentation, calling for an end to racist discrimination and inhumane policies.
New Flats Along the Thames – Vauxhall to Battersea
I had to leave for a little business elsewhere, then took advantage of the decent weather to take a walk along the Thames from Vauxhall to Battersea on my way home. As you can see I walked a little along the south bank, then back to Vauxhall Bridge to go along the north bank. Later I went on both banks between Chelsea Bridge and Battersea Bridge.
What was not long ago a totally industrial reach of the river is now largely lined by expensive riverside blocks of flats. St Georges Wharf is on the site of the Nine Elms Cold Store, and is now largely finished except for a tower whose slim 181 metre cylinder will soar far above the 72 m of the existing flats.
Along Grosvenor Road on the north bank are Rivermill House, the Panoramic, Crown Reach, and a survivor from the past, Tyburn House, followed by Eagle Wharf, with Eagle House and 138.
One minor gain for the public from this is increased access to the riverside, with new developments having a public footpath on the bank. But when soon all you will be able to see is the flats on the other bank, this perhaps isn’t a great gain.
In Pimlico there are often great contrasts between council or Peabody estates and millionaire apartments across the road on the river side, and some pricey stuff in some of the squares. A few yards makes a huge difference in price – and the newer buildings have often blocked the views some council tenants used to have of the river.
William Huskisson, Statesman 1770-1830. The main claim to fame of this MP for Liverpool was the he was the first to be killed in a railway accident, when knocked down by ‘Rocket’ during the opening ceremony of the Liverpool & Manchester railway on 15th September, 1830. Pimlico Gardens
Across the river are views of Battersea Power Station, gutted and largely left to decay by various developers over the years, roofless. Despite their efforts it still stands, its brickwork and four tall chimneys dominating the area.
The waterworks building on the north bank is also still there, and next to it around the canal a new Grosvenor Waterside is nearing completion.
Across Chelsea Bridge, between it and the power station is Chelsea Bridge Wharf, another huge development. Its a relief to be able to walk across the new bridge under Chelsea Bridge into the peace of Battersea Park with its Peace Pagoda. Next to Albert Bridge is a small wild area that looked very spring-like in some dramatic light under grey clouds.
There are more new flats and offices past Albert Bridge, including Foster and Partners building. It’s stunning close to, but seen from across the river is rather disappointing. Their Albion Riverside next door is a futuristic structure, like some vast mothership landed on the riverside, a fungus from which spores are doubtless emerging to colonise the country.
River Thames – Battersea Riverside: Tuesday 14th August 2012 was a nice day with blue sky and some interesting clouds in the sky and I had an hour or two to spare.
So I took a walk from Battersea Bridge to Wandsworth along the Thames Path.
Battersea Bridge crosses the river to Chelsea and I photographed the views over the river towards Lots Road Power Station and Chelsea Harbour.
This is a stretch of the river I’ve walked quite a few times over the years. It’s an easy journey for me to get there but it is also one of the more interesting and varied to walk.
When I first walked this way in the 1970s this was an industrial area, with factories and wharves and limited access to the river. Now the Thames Path takes you along the riverside with just some short diversions.
Most of the riverside is now lined with blocks of expensive flats rather than the flour mills, oil depots and a power station at Fulham I photographed back then.
Silver Belle Flour, mill, Battersea, 1991
There are still a few traces of that industrial past, though some were being demolished on both sides of the river back in 2012.
Demolition at Fulham Wharf
The sand and gravel works immediated upstream from Wandsworth Bridge was still there and still working when I last visited the area a few months ago, although I expect before long it will also be another luxury block of flats.
I think the best images I made that day before catching a train at Wandsworth Town were probably some panoramic images I’ve not included in this post as they don’t fit well in its format. You can see these and others from the walk on My London Diary at Battersea Riverside.
Stratford, Woolwich & Chelsea Perhaps the only thing these three parts of London really have in common was that I photographed in them in the last few days of July 1988. The first two were on a family visit to the railway museum then at North Woolwich station, largely for the benefit on my two sons, then aged 12 and 9, and both with a real interest in railways and had decide on this as a birthday outing for the elder. I think we probably had a few of their friends with us, some in the second picture below.
North London Line, Stratford Station, Stratford, Newham, 1988 88-7m-35
And once we were in North Woolwich it would have been a shame to miss the free ride across the River Thames on the Woolwich Ferry. One of their favourite books when younger had been Alfie and the Ferryboat, by Charles Keeping, published in 1968 Keeping, born close the the Thames in Lambeth tells the story of a small boy from Woolwich crossing the river on the ferryboat to ‘the other side of the world’ in search of his old sailor friend Bunty and his dog.
Woolwich Ferry, North Woolwich, Newham, 1988 88-7m-24
Keeping was a superb and innovative illustrator and the book is perhaps his best work. Copies of it are now hard to find and rather expensive.
Woolwich, Greenwich, 1988 88-7m-12
The ferry that Alfie took was one of the same that we took, which were introduced in 1963 – the John Burns, Ernest Bevin and James Newman, double-ended ships with powerful diesel engines which were replaced in 2018 after 55 years on the run.
I only made twelve black and white pictures on this trip, along with three in colour, probably too occupied with herding 12 year-old boys than photography, and getting them all back to a birthday tea on the other side of London.
Probably I had looked at pictures I had taken earlier in the year and decided there were some I would like to retake, or perhaps found some things I had missed. I spent a lot of time on researching the areas I was photographing, which was much harder before the days of the world wide web – and many of the books I had to rely on were years out of date, often pre-war or even older.
Sir Hans Sloane, memorial, Chelsea Old Church, Cheyne Walk , Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-7n-62
I think I may not have got a picture – or not one I liked of this memorial to Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), an Anglo-Irish doctor and collector who travelled widely to France and the Caribbean, where he supposedly invented drinking chocolate as well as giving a harrowing account of the sadistic punishments inflicted on slaves and married the wealthy widow of one of the larger slave owners.
Her money from slavery and his income from a doctor and investments in property and slave trading companies enabled him to build up a collection of 71,000 items which he left to the British Nation. These provided the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum.
But after taking around thirty pictures the next (not on-line) shows a view from the back of two women on a station escalator, with the next frame on the Commercial Road in Limehouse. I think I will have taken the Underground from Sloane Square to Tower Hill and walked to Tower Gateway for the DLR which had opened in 1987 to Limehouse. But pictures from my longer walk from there will be in a further post.
Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the rest of the album.
For various reasons the pictures in my albums online are not always in the order that they are taken, but it often makes more sense to write about them in the same order as I walked around taking them – which I can normally see from the contact sheets I made at the time. Usually too these contact sheets identify at least the rough locations of the images, though I often have to resort to maps and sometimes Google Streetview to find the precise spot. Chelsea hasn’t changed radically since I took these pictures but in some other areas this can be impossible. How I wish we had GPS on cameras back in 1986 – and I’m surprised so few cameras incorporate it now.
Westfield Park, Tetcott Rd, Lots Rd Power Station, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5j-16
Most people know Lots Road because of the power station of the same name which was built to power the District Railway (now the District Line.) Completed in 1905, it enabled the line, most of which in central London is underground, to convert from steam to electric traction, which must have made it very much more pleasant to use.
The power station, which has Chelsea Creek on one side and Lots Road on the other finally closed in 2002 and the area on both sides of the creek was developed as Chelsea Waterfront. The development only began in 2013, delayed both by having to get planning permission from both Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham and then by the financial crash and was finally due to be completed in 2021. The power station should by now be “193 highest quality luxury loft-style apartments together with high-class restaurants, bar, cafes, boutique shops and a health & fitness club.”
As the pictures show, I wandered a little around the area before returning east along Cremorne Road and Cheyne Walk to Battersea Bridge where I took a bus back to Clapham Junction.
I had wandered perhaps up Tadema Road to Cremorne Road some way west from its junction with Lots Road to get to Cornwall Mansions at left of this picture, which is looking east past the junction with Edith Grove with a small part of the World’s End Estate towering in the right half of the picture.
I walked back east on Cremorne Road to the junction with Lots Road and back down on to the riverside Cremorne Gardens. A house was built here around 1750 and later became home to the 1st Viscount Cremorne, an Irish peer from County Monaghan who gave it his name – which came from the Irish for ‘Mountains of Morne’. Charles Random De Berenger, Baron De Beaufain, (actually a fraud called Charles Random) bought the house and grounds here in 1831, turning into a sports club and adding some popular attractions including balloon ascents. The business failed in 1843 and was reopened in 1845 by James Ellis as the Cremorne Pleasure Gardens, with entertainment including concerts, fireworks, balloon ascents and galas. It closed in 1875, losing its licence with accusations that it was a “nursery of every kind of vice”. Much of the gardens were then built over then and later in the 20th century by the 1960s Cremorne Estate. A small riverside garden was re-established and opened in 1981, and the gate which had originally been at the King’s Road end of the Cremorne gardens was re-erected here, having spent the interim at Watney’s Brewery.
Chelsea Wharf, River Thames, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-53
I think this view was taken looking upriver from one of the two landing stages at Cremorne Gardens.
Houseboats, River Thames, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-55
I think this view is from Old Ferry Wharf, which is actually on Cheyne Walk. The bridge is Battersea Bridge.
Houseboats, River Thames, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5k-42-positive_2400
These houses at left are on the corner with Blantyre St. The blue plaque at No 120 marks where Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-160) lived as an impoverished art student from 1906-09.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s house at 98 Cheyne Walk. Some of his best-known pictures show the Thames at Cremorne Gardens. The house next door to the right, hardly visible from the road, was the home of both Sir Marc Isambard Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Click on any image to see a larger version in the album 1988 London Photos, from where you can browse the whole album.
Church Of The Ñazarene, Grant Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5j-54
I returned for another walk in Chelsea, taking the train to Clapham Junction and taking a few pictures on my short walk to the bus stop of the Church Of The Ñazarene close to the north entrance to the station on Grant Road. The church, a twelve-sided building by Green Lloyd Adams was built in 1970 on the edge of the Winstanley Estate, developed by Battersea Council in the 1960s. The lettering on the ramp ‘JESUS SAID I AM THE WAY’ is designed for maximum size rather than typographical nicety.
Currently extensive building work is being carried out to considerably extend the church, though its future may be threatened if Crossrail 2 goes ahead. Of the two pictures I made I preferred a view across the small area with seats to a cleaner architectural view also included in the album.
Falcon Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5j-55
On the bus I took advantage of an unusually clean front window on the upper deck to take a photograph of Falcon Road with the Queen Victoria pub. Also apparently known as ‘Spikey Hedghog’ the pub which had been there since the 1860s closed permanently in 1999 and was demolished to build the 8 flats of St Luke’s Court.
The picture also includes a falcon – both image and text on the side of a lorry. Elsewhere you can read a short post Falcon Road – a Memory of Battersea by someone who grew up living in the pub which gives an idea what the area was like, probably in the 1950s.
I got off the bus in Beaufort St in Chelsea and photographed this doorway there before walking along Cheyne Walk. Although the door is on Beaufort St, this is Belle Vue Lodge with the address 91 Cheyne Walk. It gets a lengthy mention in the Survey of London, first published in 1913 which suggests it dates from before 1771. It states that in 1829 it was occupied by “Luke Thomas Flood, who was a great benefactor to the parish. He was evidently a friend of the historian, for he addressed some lines to him, which conclude with the halting line ‘Sweet Chelsea shall ever live in thee.’ Flood Street was named after him, and his benefactions are celebrated at the parish church by a service on January 13th,—’Flood’s Day.'”
Houseboats, River Thames, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5j-32
I walked across Cheyne Walk to make a photograph over the roofs of houseboats at the moorings, looking towards Chelsea Harbour and at left the Rank Hovis flour mills at Battersea and the Battersea Rail bridge. Then I think only used by goods trains this now carries frequent services of the London Overground as well as Thameslink trains.
I took a picture of houses in Cheyne Row. That at left is No 104 with two blue plaques, for the artist Walter Greaves (1846-1930) and Anglo-French ‘Poet, essayist and historian’ Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) whose poem Jim (who ran away from his Nurse and was eaten by a Lion) ends with the famous lines: ‘And always keep ahold of nurse For fear of finding something worse.’
No 104 doesn’t get a mention in the Survey of London, but No 100 at right of the picture is part of Lindsey House which it suggests was “rebuilt much in its present external form by the third Earl of Lindsey in 1674” but then divided into separate houses as 95-100 around 1775. It gets a very long entry.
I walked back up Beaufort St, passing a long row of frontages with identical garden ornaments which I think is Beaufort Mansions, though the gardens now have hedges. I think these mansion flats probably date from around 1890.
I was on my way to take a few more photographs on the King’s Road, including a several shop interiors. I think the name of the shop is on the wall at left, part hidden, Pineapple.
More pictures from this walk in a later post.
Click on any of the images above to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse other images in the album.
Dovehouse Green was the name given to the King’s Road Burial Ground on the corner of Dovehouse St and King’s Road when it was improved by the Chelsea Society and Kensington & Chelsea council to celebrate the the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and the Golden Jubilee of the society in 1977. The area was given to the parish by Sir Hans Sloane in 1727 and opened as a burial ground in 1736. Chelsea soon outgrew this small area and a new burial ground was opened on the east side of Sydney St in 1812 and there were no more interments here other than in existing family tombs.
The Millar Obelisk which became the centrepiece of this small public park was erected in the old burial ground in 1751, by the wealthy leading bookseller and publisher Andrew Millar to mark the family burial place. Buried close to it were three of his children who died before it was erected and Millar himself who died in 1768 and his wife who outlived him by 20 years. You can read more at Millar’s obelisk, a post by Baldwin Hamey on London Details.
The park has been refurbished a couple of times since I made this picture, but its basic layout remains. On the other side of Dovehouse St is Chelsea Fire Station with its tower. If Crossrail 2 is ever built this may be the site of a station on it. Dovehouse street got its name around 1880, having previously been called Arthur St; I think the name was probably ‘borrowed’ from an early Dovehouse Close some distance away on the other side of King’s Rd. Just to the north of the burial ground was the workhouse for St Luke’s Parish, Chelsea, demolished in the 1970s.
Chelsea Square, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5i-42
Chelsea Square is a couple of hundred metres to the northwest of Dovehouse Green, though a little further to walk. It was developed as Trafalgar Square in 1810, five years after the battle, with houses around a garden designed to encourage wealthier people to move to Chelsea, then something of a slum. The area came to the Cadogan estate when the lease ran out in 1928 and they redeveloped the area replacing the existing houses from 1931 and building on around a quarter of the garden. New houses were according to the Victoria County History, “designed in early Georgian style by Darcy Braddell and Humphrey Deane, and built of pinkish stock brick, with bright red brick dressings and green-glazed tiles.” and “neo-Regency villas in white stucco… designed by Oliver Hill and built in 1930 and 1934.”
Chelsea Square, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5i-55
Presumably to avoid confusion with the rather better known Trafalgar Square in Westminster it was renamed Chelsea Square in 1938. Many other duplicated London street names were also replace at the time.
Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St Thomas More, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5i-61
Designed by Edward Goodie, this Grade II listed Roman Catholic church opened in 1895. It gained the dedication to St Thomas More after he was made a saint in 1935. Damaged by bombing in 1940, it was repaired after the war. Much internal work was carried out in the 1970s.
The Studios, Upper Cheyne Row, Lawrence St, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5i-62
Upper Cheyne Row is sometimes referred to as Millionaires’ Row, though that would now apply to most London streets. One house here was recently on the market for £22m. The sign ‘The Studios’ on No 27 has now gone.
Chelsea Pottery, plaque, Lawrence St, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5i-63
The LCC square blue plaque which can just be seen on 16 Lawrence St has the message ‘CHELSEA CHINA WAS MANUFACTURED IN A HOUSE AT THE NORTH END OF LAWRENCE STREET 1745-1784 TOBIAS SMOLLETT NOVELIST ALSO LIVE IN PART OF THE HOUSE 1750 TO 1762′. You can read more about Lawrence St from the article on ‘A London inheritance’ Lawrence Street And Chelsea China.
Click on any of the images above to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse other images in the album.
Glebe Place on the southern side of the King’s Road is a curious street with two right-angle bends and includes a series of artists studios, some grander than others, and its residents over the years have included a huge list of artists and writers – Wikipedia lists around 30 – as well as Paul Robeson, Shirley Williams and Constant Lambert.
I don’t remember outside which house I found this rather fierce sculpture which I think is no longer present.
25 and 25a Glebe Place. The heraldic lions have since left and the roof has been replaced. No 25 was the home of artist George Washington Lambert (1873-1930) who was born in Russia, educated in Somerset and emigrated with his mother and sisters to Australia in 1887. There he began exhibiting paintings and working as a cartoonist and illustrator. In the 1900s he spent a year in Paris, then moved to London; in the First World War he was an official Australian war artist, and he returned to Australia in 1921. His second son, Constant Lambert (1905-51), a notable British composer, was born in London in 1905 and also lived here; he was the Founder Music Director of the Royal Ballet.
The houses at left of the picture are the pair at the north end of the east side, No 27 and 28 and to the right of them are the doors of No 25 and 24 on the north side.
This rather agonised looking sculpture on the balcony was at No 28 but is no longer present.
Carlyle Square was laid out by the Cadogan Estate in the 1830s after Lord Cadogan bought the land on the north side of King’s Road in 1835, quickly clearing it of the existing small houses and cottages and laying out Oakley Square around an ornamental garden. But development of the square was slow. As originally set out, there were entrances for vehicles from both the east and west sides to King’s Road; more recently an area of garden separates the square from King’s Road, allowing only pedestrian entrance, with vehicle entrance being only from Old Church St.
Development began with short terraces of 3 houses on both the east and west sides next to King’s Rd, all now Grade II listed. They were followed in 1855 by a couple of semi-detached villas on the west side and around 1860 the north side of the square was largely completed with some varied houses. The remaining gaps – including most of its east side – were completed not long after, mainly with large identical semi-detached houses with a few feet gap between them.
Among notable residents over the years were Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, William Walton, Sybil Thorndike, Edna O’Brien and David Frost (who held an annual summer party for some years in the garden.) No 21 was built for the Duke of Portland around 1860, and a later Duke of Portland who was Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee during WW2 was still in residence.
No 37-40 have walls and gate posts like this, and this is the entrance of 38. Most of the rest of the houses on the east and west side have plain iron railings.
Click on any of the images above to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos from where you can browse other images in the album.
Sir Thomas More, St Thomas More Gardens, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5g-25
My Chelsea walk continued with a little wandering close to the Thames where I found two elderly people contemplating the statue of Sir Thomas More. More (1478-1535) opposed the Reformation and wrote polemics against Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Tyndale, although he is better known now as the author of ‘Utopia’, published in 1516. But it was his opposition to the politics of a real island, refusing to accept Henry VIII rather than the Pope as supreme head of the Church of England that led to him losing his head at Tower Hill and eventually to his being made a Catholic saint in 1935.
It was the elegant iron work supporting the balcony that particularly attracted me to 48 Cheyne Walk, though I didn’t think it was particularly improved by the lamp post outside, awkwardly in the pavement, which though of relatively elegant design seemed out of place.
Cheyne Row leads north away from the river between no 49 and 50 Cheyne Walk and I get confused between the two similarly named streets. This house, known for obvious reasons as Old Sun House at No 2 is the first on its east side.
Boy with a Dolphin, David Wynne, sculpture, Cheyne Walk, Oakley St, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5h-62
One of several variations on a theme by Sir David Wynne including his Girl with a Dolphin close to St Katherines Dock, this is perhaps the most interesting. I have to admit of not being a great fan. At least two other casts of this sculpture exist, both in the USA.
The model for the boy was Wynne’s son Roland David Amadeus Wynne, then 11. After Roly committed suicide aged 35 in 1999 a plate was added to the statue dedicating it to him.
Cheyne Walk, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-8h-63
Perhaps the only distinctive later building on Cheyne Walk, this Grade II listed house at 38 was designed by Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942) one of the leading figures in the Arts and Crafts movements and built around 1900. C R Ashbee like Moore wrote utopias, though his two, like much of his work was very much inspired by William Morris, whose ‘News from Nowhere’ appeared in 1890. He was a prominent homosexual, but he married in 1898 and some years later the couple had four daughters.
Cheyne Walk, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5h-64
C R Ashbee, like More, wrote utopias, though his two, like much of his work was very much inspired by William Morris, whose ‘News from Nowhere’ appeared in 1890. He was a prominent homosexual, but he married in 1898 and some years later the couple had four daughters, one of whom wrote a frank ‘novel’ about the family relationships in which only the names are thought to be fictional.
Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea Embankment Gardens, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5h-55
I took another picture of Thomas Carlyle sitting on his chair as well as the two in a previous post. I think this perhaps better describes both the statue by Sir Edgar Boehm, erected in 1882, the year after his death and also the surroundings.
Click on any of the pictures to go to a larger version in my album 1988 London Photos. They appear in a different order in the album but in this post are in the order I took them on my walk.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Sculpture, In Town, John Ravera, Battersea Bridge, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5f-12
My next walk in London on the following Friday started where I had finished the previous Sunday. I think I’d finished my teaching for the week at midday and jumped on a train to Clapham Junction then a bus to Battersea Bridge. I got off on the south side of the bridge to photograph a couple of pieces of sculpture and to enjoy the walk across the river.
Sculpture, In Town, John Ravera, Battersea Bridge, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5f-15
The first piece, just the the west of the bridge was the sculpture In Town by John Ravera (1941-2006), commissioned by Wates Built Homes Ltd who developed the area around it and dates from 1983. Ravera was born in Surrey and went to Camberwell School of Art and created many public sculptures still on display. This one was cast at the Meridian Foundry in Peckham, where two of Britain’s leading art foundries were located in the railway arches between Consort Road and Brayards Road.
Sadly this sculpture is no longer intact, and the dove for which the young child is reaching – the real climax of the piece – has gone.
Two swans, Catherine Marr-Johnson, sculpture, Battersea Bridge, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5g-62
On the Thames Path on the other side of Battersea Bridge Road in front of an office block is Two swans, by Catherine Marr-Johnson, born in Crickhowell in Wales in 1945. The two piece sculpture dates from 1984 and the swans taking flight reflected the formation of the new company in front of which it stood.
Two swans, Catherine Marr-Johnson, sculpture, Battersea Bridge, Wandsworth, 1988 88-5g-65
I think on this visit I didn’t have a lens with a wide enough angle of view to take the picture I wanted with the pair of swans taking off across the river, though I returned at a later date to do so. It was rather easier to show both from the front, but not so satisfying as you can see if you browse the album.
Former Dairy, Old Church St, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5g-56
I walked across the bridge and began taking pictures in Chelsea, including one of a house decorated with tiles at 46 Old Church St and, between the second floor windows a cows head, with another cows head on the building down the alley by its side, which is dated 1908, though it could be the date a much older building was restored.
Wrights Diary was first set up in 1796 with around 50 cows and a goat, though it moved slightly west to this site in the 1800s. Cows were kept here into the 20th century but eventually milk production moved completely out of London. The company was eventually bought by United Dairies probably in the 1950s. Their properties on Old Church St became shops but the courtyard building was converted into a recording studio, Sound Techniques which was in business from 1964-74, where, according to Metro Girl, “Among the acts to record at Sound Techniques Ltd included Sir Elton John, The Who, Jethro Tull, Judy Collins, Tyrannosaurus Rex and John Cale.” as well as Pink Floyd and Nick Drake.
The picture looks up from Justice Walk into Lawrence St, and was probably named as the home of John Gregory, a Justice of the Peace, who possibly lived in the house which now has the name Judges House. An imposing building on the street, named The Court House has had many stories told about it by estate agents and others about trying highway robbers and other criminals is a former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel built in 1841 and used as a church until 1903.
This corner is the former site from 1750-84 of the Chelsea china works, demolished at the end of the 18th century. It was the first factory outside of Japan and China to produce high quality porcelain. Should you wish to walk around this area I recommend Adam Yamey’s Where A Judge Once Walked In Chelsea from which much of the information above comes. Nothing like this was available to me when I was walking around in 1988 before the days of the World Wide Web.
Lawrence St, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Kensington & Chelsea, 1988 88-5g-42
Lawrence St took me back to Cheyne Walk, and on the corner was this side of Carlyle Mansions, No 54 Cheyne Walk, dated 1886 and named after Thomas Carlyle who lived nearby. The white-painted stone relief panels with cranes and flowers date from 1888.
The block is nicknamed the “Writers’ Block” and has been home to authors including Henry James, Somerset Maugham (briefly), Erskine Childers and Ian Fleming who wrote Casino Royal here. Henry James who lived and died in Flat 19 described his flat as his “Chelsea Perch…the haunt of the sage and the seagull“.
Untitled, bas-relief, Jacob Epstein, sculpture, Ropers Gardens, Chelsea Embankment, Chelsea, 88-5g-45
More sculpture close to the riverside in Ropers Gardens – this by Jacob Epstein.
And a rather more realistic nude by Gilbert Ledward in this very artistic area of London. Ledward (1888-1960), born in Chelsea, trained at the Royal College of Art (where he was later a professor) and the Royal Academy Schools and became one of the best-known of British sculptors. His works included many war memorials.
Click on any of the images to go to a larger version in the my album 1988 London photos from where you can browse other images.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
Camera Place, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-64
Having found there was a street in Chelsea named Camera Place I had to photograph it. It’s a short street and my picture shows around half of it, looking roughly west towards Limerston St. Chelsea used to have a Camera Square, Camera Street and Little Camera Street which have since disappeared, but as they were built in the 1820s they almost certainly have little to do with photography. By 1918 Camera Square had become something of a slum and the area was demolished, rebuilt as Chelsea Park Gardens with up-market housing in suburban garden village fashion, though retaining a rigidly square layout without the typical sinously curving streets.
The view in Camera Place has changed little; some new railings and the small tree is now rather large.
Elm Park Mansions, Park Walk, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-62
Elm Park Mansions has five large blocks around a courtyard, with one of the blocks (flats 25-54) occuping half the length of the north side of Camera Place, behind and to my right as I took the previous picture. The mansions with 189 mostly one and two bedroom flats were built by the Metropolitan Industrial Dwellings Company on land leased to them by Major Sloane Stanley in 1900. The Freehold for the property was taken over by the leaseholders in 1986 and since then the state of the properties has been improved. Two bed flats have sold in recent years for around £800,000.
Elm Park Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-15
Elm Park Road dates from 1875 when Chelsea Park House was demolished and the houses, many designed by George Godwin, were built between then and 1882. The central house in this picture, at 76 Elm Park Road for built for Paul Naftel, (1817-91) a Guernsey born watercolour painter and his wife and family who came to London in 1870. He moved here in around 1884 and the adjoining houses were also homes to landscape artists. Naftel later moved out to Strawberry Hill, Twickenham where he died.
The Grosvenor Canal was began by the Chelsea Waterworks Company who had leased the land from Sir Richard Grosvenor in 1722, and enlarged a creek there to supply drinking water and also to create a tide mill used to pump the water. When their lease expired in 1823, the then Earl of Grosvenor decide to put in a lock and turn the creek into a canal, extending it to a basin where Victoria Station now stands, around half a mile from the Thames. It opened in 1824 carrying coal, wood and stone into the centre of a rapidly growing area of London.
Victoria Station was built over the canal basin, and more of the canal closed in 1899 for a station extension. Westminster City Council bought what was left of it in 1905, then filled in more of it in 1927 for the Ebury Bridge estate.
The canal continued in use by the council taking refuse in barges from Westminster and other local authorities downriver to be dumped until 1995, making this vestigial canal the last in London in commercial use. In 2000 it began to be developed as an expensive waterside development, with the lock being retained but a boom across the entrance from the Thames prevents access for boats despite mooring pontoons inside the development.
Western Pumping Station, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-15
The Chelsea Water Works continued to extract water from the Grosvenor Canal until an Act of Parliament prevented extraction of water from the Thames in London in 1852 and they moved up-river to Surbiton. Sewage was increasingly becoming a problem as London grew and the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858 prompted Parliament into action, passing a bill in 18 days to construct a new sewerage system for London.
The solution by Joseph William Bazalgette was a system of sewers that delivered the sewage around 8 miles downriver to Beckton on the north bank and Crossness on the south, through main high level middle and low level sewers through North London and main and high level sewers in South London. The plans included stone embankments beside the river – the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert embankments which he designed.
Lamp post, Western Pumping Station, Thames Water, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-16
Bazalgette didn’t do everything himself, but he kept a very close eye on every aspect of his great project, and some of the specifications he laid down – such as the use of Portland Cement – have kept the system running despite increasing demands since it was completed in 1875. Now it is being augmented by the new ‘Super Sewer’ running underneath the river, the Thames Tideway.
As well as engineering considerations, Bazalgette was also a stickler for the aesthetics and there are some fine examples of Victorian design in his works. The Pumping Station which housed the powerful steam engines needed to send the sewage on its way, as well as its chimney (in a picture above) and the Superintendents House here are all Grade II listed.
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
