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Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich – 2009

Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich: Sunday 28th June 2009 I photographed the Hare Krishna Chariot Festival from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square then travelled to Plumstead Common for short visit to the annual Mela there. But I didn’t find much to interest me and instead took a walk down to the Thames at Thamesmead West and then back alongside the river to Woolwich. On My London Diary I wrote at some length about the walk, which turned out to be surprisingly interesting and about how I thought the area could be improved.

Sri Jagannatha Rathayatra Festival – Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square

Chariot Festival, Plumstead & Woolwich - 2009 — *Musicians in the procession as it leaves Hyde Park*

I didn’t write much about the chariot festival on My London Diary in 2009 as I had written at some length about it the previous year – and I won’t say much here either as I posted about the 2012 Rathayatra festival a few days ago.

In 2009 I concentrated mainly on the people rather than the chariots.

More pictures at Sri Jagannatha Rathayatra.

Plumstead & Woolwich – Plumstead, Thamesmead West, River Thames

It was a long walk up the hill from Plumstead station to the common where the Mela is held and I arrived rather tired and was disappointed to find the the event seemed to be only just starting. But I’d stopped to take a few pictures on the way, and found several things of interest on the walk.

So after a short time at the Mela I decided it was too hot to wait around longer and to take a walk instead.

I walked down to Camelot Castle, home of self-proclaimed “celebrity gangster Dave Courtney“, who was made bankrupt in May 2009, owing £400,000 including an estimated £250,000 to HM Revenue & Customs.

Shouldn’t, I mused looking at the St Georges flags, patriots be pleased to pay taxes? I photographed the house and then onto the gates with a giant knuckleduster at their centre. Courtney also awarded himself a blue plaque with the text ‘Dave Courtney OBE lived here’ where the OBE stands for “One Big Ego”.

Soon after I came across Merlin Tyres. Is it coincidence that Merlin was one of the six main characters of Camelot?

The Plumstead Radical Club is a working mens club formed by local Liberals who later became members of the Labour party, but most working mens clubs lost any real political connection, though they still sell cheap beer to members. From Plumstead I walked into Thamesmead.

This part of Thamesmead West had failed to make good use of its location and what should have become a vibrant area at Broadwater was derelict and depressing.

But soon I reached the Thames path and photographed this woman cycling along it with the recent flats of North Woolwich around a third of a mile away on the opposite bank of the wide river.

And there are plenty of new riverside flats on the south bank too, with residents enjoying riverside views. These flats are perhaps less of an eyesore than some.

Woolwich Arsenal had three piers – this was the one in the middle, known as the Iron Pier, and you can see why from my picture. To the east was the Coal Pier, the lower parts of which still remain – built in 1917-20 it was used to bring in around 1500 tons of coal a week and is fenced off as a dangerous structure, The largest of the three piers, the T Pier has I think gone completely though there is now a Uber Boat pier.

In the Woolwich Arsenal site I came across a group of aliens, ‘Assembly’ by Peter Burke (b1944) placed here in 2004. I stopped to photograph them before heading to Woolwich Arsenal station for a train.

More on My London Diary at Plumstead & Woolwich.

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Clapham Road and South Lambeth – 1989

Clapham Road and South Lambeth continues my walk on Wednesday 19th July 1989 in Stockwell and South Lambeth which began with Stockwell Park, Bus Garage, Tower and Mason. The previous post was Meadows, Tate Library & Albert Square.

*Works, Clapham Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-64*

I walked southeast out of Albert Square past the plain brick 1960’s Regency Court block of flats which replaced the damaged No 37 – the only attempt this makes to fit in with the square is to keep to the same roof line but otherwise it stands out as a drab sore thumb – I think a good modern building would have been preferable to dull mediocre. A wide avenue with some trees lining it leads to Clapham Road.

There was no gap between this typically 1930s building immediately to the north of Sir Joseph Causton’s large Printworks building and it may have been a later part of the works or a separate small factory. At its north side it joined a house, still standing. This building has been completely removed, and the space is now a road, Lett Rd, next to the Printworks which has been converted into flats and retail. The left section of the building has been replaced by a recent residential block along Lett Rd.

The Printworks was built in 1903 and Causton’s were one of the largest printing companies, making labels for various products including Marmite and Guiness, stationery and objects including brewery pub trays. During the First World War they printed many propaganda posters and those encouraging war savings. They moved to Eastleigh, Hants in 1936 and the plant was sold to the catalogue company Freemans Ltd in 1937. The company was taken over in 1984 but the name is still used for Causton Envelopes and Causton Cartons, part of the Bowater Group.

*Housing, Liberty St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-66*

Liberty Street runs from Caldwell Street down to Durand Street behind the Printworks. It was one of the last part of the area to be developed and when these 54 flats were built as Wyke Mansions close to Caldwell Street in 1902 they faced the works across an open field. According to the Oval History site this was later built on by Freeman’s for warehousing after they took over the Printworks. Some of those buildings were demolished in 1996 to build Bakery Close and the rest demolished in 2008 by Gaillard who converted the site into modern flats. But these mansions remain. There appears to be no record of why the street was named Liberty St.

*House, Garden, Brixton Rd, Angell Town, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-55*

I walked along Caldwell Street to Hackford Road, then down there to Southey Road and on to Brixton Road. I think this remarkable garden of thistles which would have even sent the pessimistic and depressed Eeyore into ecstacy was at 130 Brixton Road, part of the Vassall estate let to Henry Richard Vassall, third Baron Holland. He gave building plots on 80 year leases to builders and speculators in a piecemeal fashion which probably accounts for the stuccoed No 130 adjoining the brick 132. There are brief descriptions of the houses along the road on the Survey of London.

These houses are on the west side of Brixton Road and the River Effra ran on the east side, but was put underground around 1880 and still runs there. But the buildings on that side are set well back from the road.

*The Co-op Centre, 11 Mowll St, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-45*

The Co-op Centre was built in 1898 for as a hall for Christ Church, Brixton Rd and used for worship until the church was completed in 1902. Lambeth Co-op Centre became Mowll St Business Centre in 2016. Until the late 1930s the street was named Chapel St, but was renamed to avoid confusion with other Chapel Streets in London after the Rev William Rutley Mowll, the first vicar of Christ Church on the corner of the street.

*Doorway, Kinki-Bee Characters, 46 Wilkinson St, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-33*

Kinki-Bee Characters was in the locally listed Venetian gothic former Stockwell and North Brixton Dispensary on the corner of Wilkinson Street and Bolney Street, South Lambeth built in 1866 to provide medical and surgical advice, medicine, and attendance. The charity was only removed from the Charity Commisions listing in 1997. In 1920 it stated its aims as providing ‘MEDICAL AND SURGICAL AID TO THE SICK CHILDREN OF POOR PERSONS RESIDENT IN THE PARISHES CHRIST CHURCH, NORTH BRIXTON; ST. MICHAEL, STOCKWELL; ST. ANDREW, STOCKWELL; ST. ANN, SOUTH LAMBETH; ST. BARNABAS, SOUTH KENNINGTON; ST STEPHEN, SOUTH LAMBETH; AND ALL SAINTS, SOUTH LAMBETH.’ The plaque on the house was restored in 2012.

Kinki-Bee Characters Limited was set up around 1952 and sold hand-painted dolls and ornaments, bottle stoppers/pourers etc as collectors items. You can still find them on eBay and other web sites. A placard inside the window has the message ‘CHILDREN WANT REAL MOTHERS NOT MADE OF STONE’.

Tradescant sculpture, St Stephen's Church, Wilkinson St, St Stephen's Terrace, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-21 — *Tradescant sculpture, St Stephen’s Church, Wilkinson St, St Stephen’s Terrace, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7f-21*

The Tradescant sculpture by Hilary Cartmel was funded by the local residents’ association and unveiled by naturalist David Bellamy in 1988 and is a memorial to the Tradescant family. John Tradescant, father and son, were 17th century nurserymen and collectors of plants from around the world based in Lambeth.

The sculpture stands on the pavement in front of St Stephen’s Church, built in 1967 to replace the large Victorian building of 1861, built to seat 1,200, which was demolished. The 1967 building has since been modified to replace its narrow slit windows with larger ones. But my back was to this rather plain brick building when I took this picture, and in the background is the rather fine dispensary building from 1866 on the corner of Wilkinson St and Bolney St.

To be continued.

Back in Stockwell

Back in Stockwell: It was the 17th July 1989 before I was able to return to Stockwell and take up my wanderings around south London where I had left off on 4th June.

*Stockwell War Memorial, South Lambeth Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7c-26*

Coming out from Stockwell Underground I turned left and came to the war memorial, then on a rather scruffy triangle of grass and litter between the South Lambeth Road and the A3 Clapham Road. This has since been tidied up as Stockwell Memorial Gardens with a mural celebrating others who died in WW2 including war hero Violette Szabó, GC and a the Bronze Woman statue by Aleix Barbat, a tribute to all black Caribbean women.

The Stockwell War Memorial was erected in 1922 to the design of Frank Twydals Dear which attracted praise at the time for its excellent proportion, refined detail and simple lines.

The figure of Remembrance is by sculptor Benjamin Clemens and the clock with a face on all four sides of the tower was donated by the father of one of the 574 men named on the memorial who died on the Somme on 9th August 1916, aged 19, Frederick H S Caiger. He was the only son of Dr Caiger, superintendent of South Western Fever Hospital.

The mural is on the Security Archives in my picture, one of eight deep level shelters built for WW2. Stockwell was used to house US troops. The bunkers were 100ft underground and had 8000 bunks, canteen and hospital facilities.

*Scallywag, Clapham Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7c-15*

Scallywag was a pine furniture showroom which had started in an old church in Camberwell in 1970 and moved here in 1985 becoming the largest pine showroom in Europe. It is now based in a rural location in East Sussex as well as in the USA.

*TDA House, Mecca Bookmakers, 211-213, Clapham Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7d-66*

Opposite the war memorial on Clapham Road were these two architecturally very different buildings, TDA House and Mecca Bookmakers.

TDA House at 211 was built as the Stockwell Palladium cinema which opened in 1915 but was rebuilt as the Ritz Cinema in 1937. In 1954 it became Classic Cinema and in 1969 the Tatler Film Club showing uncensored blue movies, reverting to the Classic for a couple of years before closing in 1981. A snooker club for some years it then became TDA House for the Tigray Development Association supporting Ethiopian refugees and in 2017 became an Ethiopian restaurant.

Next door at 213 Mecca is now Ladbrokes.

*Stockwell Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7d-53*

I didn’t go up Clapham Road but turned into Stockwell Road, walking along her and making this picture just after I had turned into the narrow Stockwell Lane. It shows quite a mixture of buildings, with a recent house close to where I was standing, the back of a row of shops on Stockwell Road and a white building on the opposite side of the road which then had shops on its ground floor, but which is where Stockwell Green United Reform Church moved to after selling its premises on Stockwell Green.

The tower beyond is Birrell House, with an address on Stockwell Road but set well back from it, now managed by Hyde Housing, who took it over from Lambeth council after a vote by residents in 1999. The block, approved by the London County Council in 1964 was an addition to the Stockwell Gardens estate with 68 flats on 18 floors was named after Miss Elsie Birrell, London Undergroud’s first female porter who worked at Stockwell Station during the Second World War.

*Garden, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7d-56*

Stockwell in the past was noted for its gardens, particularly the botanical gardens of the Tradescant family and I could resist these fine specimens (certainly not Tradescantia) filling a fairly small front garden near Stockwell Park Crescent.

Houses, 2-4, Stockwell Park Crescent, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7d-46 — *Villas, 2-4, Stockwell Park Crescent, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7d-46*

Stockwell Park Crescent was laid out in the late 1830s and many of the houses in it date from the 1840s. These were large houses for the middle classes many of whose heads will have worked in the city but wanted to live in the ‘country’ in places such as Stockwell. The small attic rooms will have been for the servants. These were villas rather than the terraces common in urban London and on a crescent which aimed for a more informal and romantic landscape.

Although basically plain, there are classical details on the frontage rather than actual columns, extending to the eaves which give a classical facade. The pair is Grade II listed.

Men At Work, Cherubs, Trees and More

Men At Work, Cherubs, Trees and More continues my walk which began with A Walk In the City – March 1989

I returned to Bank and photographed some men working on the street there on the corner of Lombard St. I think they were working on one of the entrances to Bank Station but the boarding made it hard to see. They did have some very big buckets.

Recently there has been yet more work to improve access to Bank Station, with a new entrance opening a couple of days ago on Cannon St. Bank is a very busy station during the weekday rush hours, even with more people now working at least some days from home. But on Saturdays and Sundays the City is still something of a ghost town, though rather more tourists can now be seen wandering around, lost souls searching in vain for an open pub or restaurant.

*Cherubs, King William St, Bank, City, 89-3d-35*

At the start of King William Street and I think part of the magnificent St Mary Woolnuth I photographed this doorway with three cherubs which was later used on a book cover, but somehow I had lost the digital image of that. Having spent around half an hour searching for it on my computer and various hard drives I decided it would have been faster simply to produce it again from the negative. I think I may have also havephotographed it on a previous occasion. The doorway was rather dim and this image isn’t quite as sharp as I would like.

While I had the negatives out of the file, I digitised this one as well. Again it’s a view which I had previously photographed, possibly on several occasions, with the splendid cat and fiddle sign which is still there, though the TSB’s castle has gone. I don’t mourn the loss of the depressing distant block, though rather wish its replacement had been better.

*Leadenhall Market, City, 1989 89-3e-61*

I walked along Lombard Street and up Gracechruch St and then turned into Leadenhall St and then into Whittington Avenue where I photographed the entrance to Leadenhall Market, a nice piece of Victorian exuberance, though of course finance by our crimes of Empire.

I’d photographed the quite a lot before, often in colour, put I think this was the first time I’d photographed this entrance. I walked through to Cullum Street taking a few more pictures of buildings in the area including some more of the Lloyds Building but little really new for me, and none I selected to put on-line.

From Fenchurch Avenue I turne into Fen Court, where as usual I was fascinated by the trees wiggling in front of the austere offices of the Pan Atlantic Insurance Company and others. I’d taken two frames without any people when a man walked across carrying some hefty paperwork and I made this third exposure as he moved into the space between the two brick and stone beds.

This garden is the site of St Gabriel Fenchurch, burnt down in the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was re-landscaped in 2008, with the addition of the sculpture ‘The Gilt of Cain’ by Michael Visocchi which commemorates the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

I was on my way towards the markets just to the east of the City, where the next installment of this walk will continue.

Feb 1987 Camden, London

Saddler, Monmouth St, Covent Garden, Camden, 1987 87-2c-13-positive_2400 — Saddler, Monmouth St, Covent Garden, Camden, 1987

This building is a part of a comprehensive redevelopment of the area, the Comyn Ching triangle, by the Terry Farrell Partnership which took place from 1983-1991, retaining the facades with rebuilt or restored shopfronts. This part of the Grade II listed terrace at 65-71 Monmouth St was only rebuilt in the third and final phase of development which began around two years after I made this picture. The lettering ‘B. FLEGG/ ESTd.1847/ SADDLER & HARNESS MAKER/ LARGE/ STOCK /OF/ SECONDHAND SADDLERY & HARNESS/ HORSE/ CLOTHING/18, with the name B. FLEGG applied diagonally to each side’ was then painstakingly restored.

Though sometimes referred to as a ‘ghost sign’, like many others it should more correctly be called a ‘resurrected sign’.

Thornhaugh St, Bloomsbury, Camden, 1987 87-2b-54-positive_2400 — Thornhaugh St, Bloomsbury, Camden, 1987

One of the minor themes in my work at this time concerned the urban tree. London is a city with a great many of them, notably those London Planes, a hybrid of American sycamore and Oriental plane which first appeared by cross-pollination of these two introduced species in the Lambeth garden of London’s best known plantsman, John Tradescant the younger, who named it after the city around the middle of the 17th century. It has been widely grown in streets and parks across the city since the late 18th century.

I think these trees in their regimented rows are probably flowering cherries though probably some with greater aboreal knowledge will correct me. But this was a militarised forest that rather made me shudder. The planting was apparently designed to stop students playing football in the area. It hasn’t lasted and there is now a green area here – though some of the trees in it may be these same specimens, and there are still a couple of large brutalist concrete boxes around a couple of groups of trees.

UCL Institute of Education, Thornhaugh St, Bloomsbury, Camden, 1987 87-2b-43-positive_2400 — UCL Institute of Education, Thornhaugh St, Bloomsbury, Camden, 1987

And in the background of the previous image was one of my favourite brutalist buildings, with a playfulness by Denys Lasdun’s that is perhaps more exiting than his National Theatre. It was a part of a larger plan, never completed and much opposed at the time, though in the end it was only a lack of money that really stopped the destruction of more of the area and the building on the open areas such as the ‘garden’ above.

Phoenix Cafe, Chalton St, Somers Town, Camden, 1987 87-2a-64-positive_2400

The Ossulston Estate in Somers Town, close to Euston Station was a remarkable council estate built by the London County Council in 1927-31, taking inspiration from modernist public housing which the LCC’s Chief Architect G Topham Forrest had visited in Vienna. The 7-storey housing blocks are behind a low wall of shop units along Chalton St, of which the Phoenix Cafe was one. Some of these units are still in use as shops, though not this one.

The 310 flats were built to high standards for the time and the development also included The Cock Tavern – all are now listed. Some of the estate has been extensively refurbished.

St Pancras Church, Euston Rd, Bloomsbury, 1987 87-2a-25-positive_2400 — St Pancras Church, Euston Rd, 1987

One of my favourite church exteriors in London is that of St Pancras (New) Church in Euston Rd, built in 1819–22 in Greek Revival style to the designs of William Inwood and his son Henry William Inwood. Perhaps its most remarkable feature are these caryatids, who look to me pretty fed up, perhaps unsurprisingly as they have a stone roof sitting on their heads. They are above the entrance to the burial vault and hold symbols suitable to this position, empty jugs and torches which have gone out.

Mahatma Gandhi, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, Camden, 1987 87-2b-01-positive_2400

A short distance away in Tavistock Square is a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, 1869 – 1948, who studied not far away at UCL in 1888. The powerful likeness is by Fredda Brilliant and the site for it was chosen by V K Krishna Menon who was a member of the Theosophical Society and for some years a St Pancras Councillor before being made High Commissioner for India in the UK. The memorial was erected for the 125 anniversary of his birth and unveiled by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Most years for some time I have visited Tavistock Square each August for the annual remembrance on Hiroshima day around the Hiroshima Cherry tree a short distance from this statue. The square also contains a memorial to the victims of the 2005 bombing here, the Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone, a memorial and bust of surgeon Dame Louisa Aldrich-Blake (1865 –1925) and a bust of Virginia Woolf.

More pictures on Flickr in the album 1987 London Photos.

Osterley House

Osterley is a place few people seem to know about, though many pass through its station on the Picadilly Line between Central London and Heathrow or drive past it on the Great West Road. It’s place where few actually live, a handful of streets to the north of that road along with a huge estate of Osterley Park House and an even vaster area of Green Belt with sports areas and a golf club between Southall, Heston, Hanwell, Isleworth and Brentford, whose football club have a training site there. Now the M25 runs through the northern part, cutting it off even more.

I knew it from my early years, an easy bike ride from my home in a densely built up part of Hounslow, with a grand avenue of Sweet Chestnuts where you could rummage through the grass to pick up chestnuts to take home and roast in the oven. Doubtless in earlier years one might have been transported to Australia for such theft, but things were easier in the 1950s.

Later I ran through the ‘Hole in the Wall’ into the fields of Osterley Park on cross-country runs from my secondary school – at least until we learned to disappear into Jersey Gardens on the way there, hiding out enjoying a few fags until the mud-spattered runners came past on their way to the finish a few hundred yards away, coming in respectfully down the field.

Osterley was a country house for two of the wealthiest of English Bankers, the first house built here for Sir Thomas Gresham in 1576. Sir Francis Child acquired it after a mortgage default and his two grandsons had Robert Adam do a much more fashionable makeover in the 1760s. The stable block survived and now contains the shop and tea-room.

On the death of his brother the property as a whole passed to his younger brother Robert Child; when his only child, a daughter eloped with the Earl of Westmoreland the enraged father changed his will leaving the property in trust to his as yet unborn first granchild. She was born a couple of years later and went on to marry George Villiers, the 5th Earl of Jersey (later he got a royal licence to change his surname to Child Villiers) which explains why Osterley’s main road along which you approach the estate is Jersey Road.

The house was first opened to the public briefly by the 9th Earl in 1939, before becoming a Home Guard training establishment. After the war he moved to Jersey selling the furniture to the V&A and giving the house and park to the National Trust – who handed it over to the Ministry of Works and the V&A for restoration. There was some limited opening of the house to the public and I remember going there when quite young, but it was only in 1991 that it was handed back to the National Trust.

Our visit to Osterley was a short one, and I didn’t have time to go around the house but after a meal in the stables (not hay, but I don’t recommend it) did go into the gardens. Although the wider park is free to the public, there is a charge for the house and gardens, but free entry for members of the National Trust and the Art Fund.

More pictures at Osterley Park.
Images taken on National Trust property are copyright but not available for reproduction or sale.