More pictures from Hull General Cemetery and Princes Avenue that I took on walks in the area in August 1989. You can see more pictures of the cemetery in 1989 at Hull General Cemetery – 1989.
Quaker Burial Ground, Spring Bank West, Hull, 1989 89-8d-42
According to the article by Chris Coulson on the Friends Of Hull General Cemetery web site, the Quakers bought a 999 years lease on a 0.23 acre plot, about 55 yards by 20 yards and burials took place there from 1855 until 1974.
The graves in this plot, still there, include those of many of Hull’s leading Quaker families and include some whose family names gained international recognition for there products including members of the Reckitt family and engineer William Priestman.
The graves in the foreground of my picture have stones recording seven members of the Reckitt family and there are some others in those behind. All except one of the burials and some whose ashes were scattered here have the same simple design for their memorials.
Hull General Cemetery, Spring Bank West, Hull, 1989 89-8d-41
Back in 1989 the cemetery was home to a number of feral cats who I think scrounged for food in the bins and at the back doors of some nearby houses, though I did see (but not photograph) old women bringing scraps into the cemetery for them. The cats generally scrambled away when I approached, but I caught one clinging to the trunk of a tree.
In the background you can see a grassed largely cleared area of the cemetery, then kept mown short by the council.
Fallen Angel, Hull General Cemetery, Spring Bank West, Hull, 1989 89-8d-55
I don’t know what happened to the many headstones that the council removed from the cemetery, though when the work was taking place there were quite a few piles of them and many had been broken as much of the work was done by unskilled and poorly supervised youth labour.
Vandalism continued in the cemetery after the council had done their worst, and many of the more ornate memorials were damaged and some completely destroyed by youths who roamed at night in the unfenced cemetery.
Dr William Atkin Thompson, Ely House, 149, Princes Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8d-52
Princes Avenue was only a country lane at the start of the nineteenth century and the first significant development on it were the ornate gates of Hull General Cemetery close to Spring Bank West. A few years later the railway branch to the Hornsea and Withernsea lines was constructed with a level crossing across Spring Bank and a station, Cemetery Gates, later called Botanic, opened in 1864. Further down the road, Pearson Park, Hull’s first public park, was opened in 1862.
Dr William Atkin Thompson (1978-1961) qualified at Owens College, Manchester in 1899 and became a GP in Hull in 1907. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1914, and after the war continued in service in the army and later the Territorial Army while also practising in Hull. There is a profile of him on the RAMC in the Great War site. He was one of Hull’s most distinguished doctors, continuing to practice well past normal retirement age.
Houses, Princes Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8d-65
Princes Avenue was laid out to lead to the Westbourne Park Estate, now known as The Avenues, and opened in 1875, with the houses facing the Park at its north some of the first built on it.
Shops, Princes Avenue, Hull, 1989 89-8d-64
Further south on Princes Avenue most of the development took place between 1890 and 1910, but the cemetery entrance was still on the west side at the southern end. I think these shops are on the long parade south of Welbeck Street which probably dates from around 1900, but those on the corner with Spring Bank West, which later housed one of Hull’s most internationally famous shops, Gwenap, were only added after the cemetery gates were moved to Spring Bank West.
Gwenap is said to have opened in 1903, though it was rather a different business back then and I think may have been in other premises as I think the shop the business occupied until 2013 was probably only built in the 1920s. The windows where it used to be are now of no interest.
Hull – Spurn Lightship & Spring Bank – In August 1989 I went with my family for a week with friends in Scotland and we spent a few days staying at my wife’s family home in Hull on our way there and again on our way home.
Spurn Lightship, Humber Dock, Hull, 1989 89-8c-35
In the 70s and early 80s I’d photographed the city extensively and had exhibited some of this work at the Ferens Art Gallery in the city. I think most of the over 140 pictures in that show are among those I posted online during 2017 when Hull was UK City of Culture – and I added a picture each day throughout that year to my website ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ – the same title as my show and my self-published book – still available but ridiculously expensive except as a pdf.
Going back to Hull again in 1989 I was still drawn to many of the same places I had photographed in previous years, particularly the docks, the River Hull and the Old Town, and it was sometimes difficult to find anything new to say.
Shop window, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8c-11
All of these pictures – and many more – are in my Flickr album Hull Black and White.
Phoenix Fitness Centre, Oderma House, 101, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8c-12
I had taken a bus into the city centre with my family and we had gone to visit the Spurn Lightship which was moored in what was by then Humber Dock Marina. The lightship was opened here as a floating museum by Hull Council in 1983 and has recently been restored and returned to the Marina to a new berth close to the end of the Murdoch’s Connection footbridge, just a few yards west from where it was in 1989. In the top picture in this post one of my sons is looking out of the ship and to his left you can see the tower of Holy Trinity Church, now Hull Minster.
Sunnybank Antiques, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8c-14
The second picture taken from the lightship is looking towards the City Centre and at Warehouse 6 on the north side of Castle Street at the end of Princes Dock Street. This warehouse survived the demolitions of the 1970s and is now home to an Italian restaurant chain. I found the place excessively noisy when I ate there.
We walked back from the City centre and along Spring Bank. A shop window included the book Batman:The Killing Joke a DC Comics graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland with the Joker using, a Witz camera with a 50mm f1.8 lens – Witz is German for ‘Joke’ . There was also a poster for American rock band Kiss, who were to perform at Donington Park, Castle Donington, Derby in ten days time. They had released their fourteenth studio album Crazy Nights in September 1987.
Houses, Spring Bank, Hull, 1989 89-8d-61
The Phoenix Fitness Centre at 101 Spring Bank is now Victory Socialcare Enterprise providing accommodation for adults requiring nursing or personal care.
Sunnybank Antiques and the St John Ambulance were in Georgian houses dating from around 1820. The St John’s HQ and its attached railings were Grade II listed in 1994.
Even the drainpipes on Eastfield House/Eastfield Villas at 226-8 on the corner with Louis Street are ornate, though you cannot see these in my picture.
As these houses show Spring Bank was once one of Hull’s ‘best’ addresses, but that was long ago, and much has been lost, both by wartime bombing and later developments.
St Peter & St Paul, Church, 121, Plough Road, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-74
I left the riverside and walked down Lombard Road and crossed York Road into York Gardens probably to find a pleasant spot to rest a while and eat my sandwiches before going through the gardens to exit on Plough Road close to the church.
St Peter’s Church is still very much alive now on Plough Road, but SPB looks very different to my picture in 1989. The first St Peter’s Battersea was built in 1875 but was seriously damaged by fire in 1970 and the church moved into the building in my picture which had been its church and school hall.
According to ‘Clapham Junction Insider’ Cyril Ritchert, the demolition of this Grade II listed building, “an accomplished example of the free gothic style“, was opposed by the Ancient Monuments Society, English Heritage, the Battersea Society and the Wandsworth Society but was approved by Wandsworth Council in 2010. The developers made a second application in 2015 before any building on the site had started. Google Street View shows the church still in use in 2012.
To finance the new church the developers had been granted permission for an 8 storey block of flats also on the site. Local residents were angered that the developers managed to game the planning system to eventually build a 10 storey block of housing with minimal affordable housing on the site.
Shop, St Peter & St Paul, Church, Flats, Holgate Ave, Plough Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989
The view of the church from Holgate Avenue shows clearly the position of the church on the edge of the Winstanley Estate to the north of Clapham Junction station. The view of the tower block Sporle Court is now blocked by the new 10 storey block on the church site. The trees at left are in York Gardens.
There is still a billboard and a shop on the corner of Holgate Avenue, but what was then BRITCHOICE is now SUNRISER EXPRESS POLSKI SKLEP. Holgate Avenue was until 1931 known as Brittania Place or Brittania Street and took its name from the Brittania beer house which was possibly in this shop, part of a group of two buildings at 38-40 Plough Lane which are the only remnants of the original 1860s development of the area.
Apparently the Revd Chad Varah, the founder of The Samaritans, was vicar at Saint Peter’s during the 1950’s. St Peter’s was amalgamated with St Paul’s at some time after 1969 – and St Paul’s had been amalgamated with St John in Usk Road in 1938.
According to the Survey of London, “Holgate Avenue, started in the 1920s, was Battersea’s first successful slum-clearance scheme.” Poorly built Victorian houses from the 1860s were replaced by these three-storey tenements built by Battersea’s Labour Council in 1924-37 to high standards with some impressive brickwork and detailing. Probably more importantly for the residents they were provided with electric cooking, heating and lighting facilities, unusual luxury for the time.
There was little land in Battersea for building and while the council would have liked to build single family homes it had to compromise with these. But at least tenants at most had only to walk up three flights of stairs, while most new council building by the LCC in the interwar period was in five-storey tenement walk-up blocks.
Price’s Candles, York Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-62
I walked back up Plough Road to York Road, and continued my walk towards Wandsworth Bridge. There was no access to the River Thames on this stretch before the bridge, as the area was still occupied by industrial premises.
Price’s Candles on York Rd was built on part of the site of York House, the London residence of the Archbishop of York from which York Road got its name. You can read more than you will ever want to know about York House in All about Battersea, by Henry S Simmonds published in 1882 and now on Project Gutenberg, which also has a long section on the Belmont Works or Price’s Patent Candle Factory.
Price’s Candles was begun in 1830 by William Wilson and Benjamin Lancaster who had purchased a patent for the separation of coconut fats. They chose the name Price for the business to remain anonymous as candle-making was not at the time a respectable occupation.
They moved to this site in 1847 setting up a large factory and workforce, making candles, soap and other products with stearine wax for the candles and the by products of glycerine and light oils coming cocunuts grown on a plantation they bought in Ceylon. In 1854 they began to import large quantities of crude petroleum from Burma and developed paraffin wax candles. Later they developed processes to work with other industrial wastes, animal fats and fish oils. By 1900 they were the largest candle manufacturer in the world.
The company was taken over by Unilever in 1919, and became owned by other oil companies including BP, who sold part of the site which opened in 1959 as the Battersea Heliport. A few of Price’s buildings remain, though most with added floors, and the rest of the site is mostly new blocks of flats.
York Tavern, pub, 347, York Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-63
The York Tavern was on the corner of York Road and Usk Road in the late 1850s but was given a makeover later in the century in the typical 1890s Queen Anne style with fake gable facades. I can’t find a date for the closing of this pub but it was clearly very shut when I made this picture. The building was demolished in 2003.
John Watney & Co Ltd, Wandsworth Distillery, York Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-8c-64
Wandsworth Distillery on York Rd was founded by Richard Bush at Gargoyle Wharf around 1780. By 1874 it was owned by John and Daniel Watney. Gin was produced here, having become popular after heavy taxes were imposed on French brandy, and later particularly in the colonies to counteract the unpleasantly bitter taste of the anti-malarial quinine.
Acquired by Guinness, the distillery was demolished in 1992, and I photographed its occupation as the ‘Pure Genius Eco Village‘ by The Land is Ours in 1996. It was redeveloped as Battersea Reach housing from 2002 on.
Some Madness and Houses in Clapham: On the 29th July 1989 my walk began in Clapham and I found this sign on The Pavement. I could make very little of it then and still can’t now.
Notice, The Pavement, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-43
At the top of the painting on the wall is a geometric device surround by a circle with a square inside divided into four quarters and various triangles inside and on its two vertical edges. Four arrows from the circle have a 90 degree left turn and point anticlockwise and to the letters ‘PH.’, ‘MAY’, ‘MARY’ and ‘C.R.’. Underneath I can just make out the scrawled word ‘MADONNA’, though I think think this has been overwritten at the start to read ‘CRAP’ and there are some other letters and numbers including a ‘6’.
Below this, boldly painted in the same script as the words around the device are a series of words or rather letters in which there are some actual words and some plausible inventions. The whole is a mystery though I rather suspect one that many have involved copious amounts of illegal substances. There was some colour in this notice which you can see in the different shades of grey, and a few sections were in red, particularly the only lower case line just above the bottom, ‘dunhillthwaiton’ while the bottom line, ‘HYPOSTASISTA’ was in green.
I think this was a part of the block called The Polygon which was demolished in the early 2000s. But it is difficult to understand street names in this area of Clapham, and this writing on the wall is impossible.
I wrote about Rectory Gardens at more length in the post about an earlier visit there in May 1989. Built in the 1870s as philanthropic housing for low paid workers after being damaged in the war they were squatted in the late 1960s and 70s and a unique artistic community grew up there. Lambeth Council bought the area and intended to develop it in 1970, but there was strong local opposition both from residents and others in the local area.
The Clapham Society wanted them to be kept as a group and run by a housing association but eventually Lambeth Council evicted the residents and in 2016 sold them off to a developer to build expensive luxury properties in “a triangular mews-style development“.
Porch, 39, Turret Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-32
I walked up Rectory Grove to Turret Grove, developed on the site of the Elzabethan manor house, Clapham Manor, demolished in 1837. Some of the houses in it date from 1844-5 and are in the Rectory Grove Conservation Area which notes their “attractive trellis style porches“.
Doorways, Clapham Common Northside area, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-35
I made my way through the backstreets towards Clapham Common. One of the streets I walked down was Macaulay Road and this has some impressive doorways and I think this pair were probably on this road.
Zachary Macaulay, born in Scotland had emigrated to Jamaica in 1784 when he was 16 and worked as an assistant manager on a sugar plantation, returning to London five years later. In 1790 he visited Sierra Leone, set up as a home for emancipated slaves many of whom had fought for Britain in the American War of Independence, returning in 1792 and becoming its Governor from 1794-9. He became one of the leading members of the Clapham Sect working for the abolition of slavery, able to provide William Wilberforce with first-hand information and statistics.
In 1799 he came back to Clapham with 25 children from Sierra Leone and set up a the School of Africans to train them with skills to support the development of their country when they returned. Unfortunately “one by one they succumbed to the cold“, though in fact what killed most of them was measles and only six survived.
Further down the street was once the site of the Ross Optical Works which made cameras, lenses and projectors which moved here in 1891 and expanded greatly in 1916 when their work was considered essential to the war effort. At its peak the company employed 1200 people. Ross Ensign was said to be the premier optical company in the United Kingdom, but was unable to compete with foreign competition and closed in 1975.
Clapham Common Northside, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7n-23
I think I probably photographed this house on the corner of Clapham Common Northside and The Chase mainly because it was so different from the rest of the properties, terraces and blocks along there. A large house, but only two storeys and with an attractive upper floor window, but largely hidden behind its rampant bushes and trees in its front garden.
On its side in The Chase are three plaques commemorating street parties for the Queen’s Birthday, a royal wedding and the Golden Jubilee in recent years.
These buildings are still there in a side turning from Silverthorne Road now leading to Battersea Studios. Battersea Studios were built in 1970 as a warehouse for BT and in 1994 became the home of the short-lived BBC Arabic Television, closed precipitately on Sunday, April 21, 1996 having angered the Saudi regime (and the UK government) by its accurate and impartial reporting. At extreme left you can see the barrier leading to that site.
The buildings in the picture were part of the Stewarts Lane Goods Depot, a huge area bounded by this and Dickens Street to the south and going east to the railway lines at Portslade Rd. It was first set up by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1860 as Longhedge and used to build and house locomotives for their services from Victoria Station a short distance away north of the river. The original buildings were demolished in 1880/1 and replaced by these as Stewarts Lane which housed steam locomotives until 1963 and then diesels. Much of the building was destroyed by fire in 1967.
The depot remains in use as the Stewarts Lane Traction Maintenance Depot and is used by both DB Cargo UK and Govia Thameslink Railway.
Further down Silverthorne Road to its west is Heath Road, the north side of which retains its attractive Victorian housing, with a block of four houses with basements and steps to their paired entrances followed by five without basements but with the same style and decoration. At the end at left of picture is the recently build Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Heath Terrace is on the corner of Silverthorne Road and Wandsworth Road and as well as this corner entrance has two similar but slightly less ornate doorways on Wandsworth Road leading to sixteen Flats A to P as well as another door for a shop on Silverthorne Road part visible in my picture then occupied by taxi and transport company Guy Payne Of London Limited.
The building was built in 1897 and the corner door, in use when I made my picture in 1989 by Dr A J K Ala, still led to a surgery until around 2012. At the front of the traffic queue is a man on a moped with a large clipboard, studying the ‘knowledge’ required of taxi drivers.
Matrimony Place is one of my favourite street names, though this place is only an alley with steps leading from Wandsworth Road to St. Paul’s Churchyard. I’d photographed it a few years earlier and made a deliberate detour to see if had changed – it was still much the same.
Possibly it was once the custom for local couples to walk up the 29 steps to the church to be married – or down them after the ceremony, and the name appears to of some antiquity. The railings have since been replaced by a fake antique design (probably thanks to the Clapham Society) which I find rather less attractive. It’s probably still a place to avoid after dark unless you a looking for drugs.
St Paul’s, Clapham was built on the site of the original parish church of Clapham, St Mary’s, renamed Trinity Church at the Protestant Reformation, then demolished in 1774 to be replace by Holy Trinity on Clapham Common. St Paul’s was built simply in 1815, became a rather odd lump after later extension by Sir Arthur Blomfield in 1875, was burnt down in World War 2 and restored in 1955 and is Grade II* listed.
Houses, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-34
I didn’t go up Matrimony Place but instead turned back westwards down Wandsworth Road, hardly stopping until I came to the top of Victoria Rise which has these rather impressive Victorian Terraces on both sides. Looked at from this end the street should perhaps have been called Victoria Fall as it goes down noticeably to Clapham Common, but you can see why the developers decided against this. In fact they called it Victoria Road, but it was changed later as there were too many of these in London.
The street was laid out around 1853 its lower end on the site of an C18 villa built for the banker Henry Hoare by Henry Flitcroft known as The Wilderness. These houses on the east side were there by the time of the 1869/70 OS survey, though those on the west side are a little later.
Doorway, 144, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-35
A notice in the window at right states: YOU ARE WARNED REPENT AND RECEIVE THE LORD JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOUR FOR LIFE ETERNAL, LEST YOU DIE SUDDENLY AND GO TO HELL WITH THE DEVIL THE MURDERER.
Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-36
At left is a window on the corner with Wandsworth Rd with plaster mouldings in a shop demolished in 1998, and at right is Clapham Baptist Church on the opposite corner.
The houses on this side of Victoria rise were built between the 1869/70 survey and the 1893 to 1894 revision. There was also a chapel here, the Victoria Baptist Church, built in 1873 but this was badly damaged by bombs in 1941. it was rebuilt in the 1950s, incorporating some of the Victorian remains on its west end on Wandsworth Road.
More From Stockwell & South Lambeth: My apologies that the previous post in this series from my walk on 19th July 1989, Tradescant, Old South Lambeth Rd and Caron, ended with a repeat of three images taken on Fentiman Road from my walk two days earlier.
After taking pictures on Old South Lambeth Road I probably simply walked to Vauxhall Station without taking more pictures. But I have now found a few more pictures I took probably at the start of the walk which began with Stockwell Park, Bus Garage, Tower and Mason, and also some at the end of my walk in Vauxhall.
These fine houses were built in the mid-nineteenth century and are Grade II listed. The closer and further houses are semi-detached pairs while 47 in the middle is detached. Behind them is the tower block Edrich House on Lansdowne Way.
House, 93, Priory Grove, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-62
Priory Grove runs south from Lansdowne Way (formerly Priory Road) and much of it is beside Larkhill Park. This four-storey block, with the name at the top Priory Building is close to its end at Larkhall Lane. In 1989 it had two doors, but now there is only one at the left giving access to the four flats inside. The ground floor has been coated with stucco eliminating the architraves which are a feature of the upper floors.
Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-65
Larkhall Lane has a listed building and several on the local list, but all I chose to photograph were a couple of odd corners, the first perhaps showing something of the state of the property with a fine stone hidden pillar. I think this has now disappeared.
Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-52
66 Larkhall Lane is now much improved rendering, a tidy garden and the anachronistic shutter removed. The tree has also gone and I suspect much of the interior has also been remodelled. A property listing on the web describes it now as “This is an attractive 2 bed, 1 bath semi-detached house in Lambeth, London. This efficient home is 753 square feet in size with 2 fireplaces and has been extended 3 times since construction before 1900” and estimates its value at £1m-£1.2m.
341-9, Wandsworth Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-56
I think I took this rather rapidly through a gap in the traffic which perhaps accounts for its rather odd tilt. At left is a rather odd Gothic Grade II listed building trying to be a castle, with shops on the ground floor and an octagonal tower at each end. The building dates from the mid-19th century but the shops reaching out to the main road were added probably around 40 years later over what was originally a front garden and have since been much altered.
Tucked away in the centre of the picture is a slim building with some interesting polychromatic brickwork at No 345, small and rather unusual Victorian infill.
Wilbraham House, Wandsworth Road, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-41
Through the imposing three story vehicle entrance of Wilbraham House we can see Fosbrooke House behind. This long block of flats occupies most of the block between Thorncroft St and Wilcox Road. One web site helpfully tells me it was built between 1930 and 1949 and my guess would have been it was at the end of that period. Four impressive sets of steps on the frontage lead to the 36 flats, with glass bricks providing natural lighting for the stairs. Nine Elms underground station opened in 2021 is just a few yards up the road.
The Elephant And Castle, pub, South Lambeth Place, Vauxhall, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-11
You get a good view of these elephants from trains going through Vauxhall Station on the Windsor and Reading lines I normally go to Waterloo on. This picture is taken from immediately outside Vauxhall Station entrance. The pub building is still there but closed in 1997 and is now a Starbucks, but its upper floors look much the same. The local list dates it as mid-late 19th century, but the building replaced an earlier one on the site.
The name Elephant And Castle thought to have been first used for pubs around 1770 in nearby Southwark probably derives from the coat of arms of the Cutler’s Company who adopted it in 1622. They used ivory to make knife handles. Though if so it may have been used first for a pub in the City for which we have no record.
I’ll post the other pictures I’ve found from the end of the walk in Vauxhall later.
In 1994, five years after I made this picture the Stockwell Park Community Trust was created in response to the high crime rate and poor housing services on the Stockwell Park Estate and surrounding areas. The estate was then ranked by the UK government in the worst ten estates in the country. Tenants on the estate got together and formed a Tenant Management Organisation to get funding to refurbish the estate which had been built around 1970 for Lambeth Council.
The Community Trust held a ballot and gained a 97% vote for them to manage the £220 million investment and managed not only to retain all the social housing but to create another five units as well as building some new private housing to help with the finances.
Working with others in the community they also tackled crime and drug dealing on the estate, reducing these massively. The estate was transferred from Lambeth to Network Housing Group in 2007 and is now managed by SW9 Community Housing.
The graffiti here refers to the well-known case of George Davis, sentenced in 1975 to 20 years for an armed robbery which for once he had no part in. Though there were probably many other Georges who were also fitted up by police.
A block of 23 acres ofland of the west side of Brixton Road was leased in 1804 by Randle Jackson, barrister-at-law and an expert on Indian affairs and Robert Slade. In 1804 they split the estate, Jackson taking the northern part. In 1832 Jackson also acquired a stretch of Stockwell Park Road.
Only a few houses along Brixton Road were built before Jackson’s death in 1837, and it was only after this around 1840 that the two streets Lorn Road and Groveway (then Grove Road) were laid out on what had been gardens and outhouses. Lorn Road forms the approach from Brixton Road to St Michael’s Church on Stockton Park Road.
These Grade II listed houses date from the 1840s and are described as cottages ornés and are very much in a Gothic style. Perhaps rather over-exuberantly Gothick.
A wider view of the two houses. There are quite a few other listed houses and others of interest from the mid and later 19th century in Lorn Road, Groveway and Stockwell Park Road which were build on the Jackson estate, but I took few pictures.
Slade Gardens gets its name from Robert Slade, proctor-at-law, who took the southern part of the estate he had leased with Randle Jackson and was suceeded by his two sons. Slade’s younger son Felix is rather better-known than his father for the art school which he enable by a bequest to University College London in 1871. The Slade School of Art was one of the earliest schools to admit women on the same basis as men.
The site was acquired by the London County Council after the Second World War when many of the houses on the site had been badly damaged by a flying bomb which killed 11 people. The LCC bought up the remaining houses and demolished them. It was opened to the public as a park in 1958 and the adventure playground is on part of the site.
Much of the ideas behind adventure playgrounds came from the ‘Junk Playground’ estatblished by Carl Sorenson in 1943 near Copenhagen, based on his observations of how children actually played on waste ground, building sites and bomb sites etc. The movement spread to this country and a number of such playgrounds were set up in urban areas in the decades after the war. Play leaders encouraged imaginative play and tried to prevent serious accidents as well as discouraging drug use.
I think this adventure playground was set up around 1970. In 1999 it became independently managed by local residents and a voluntary committee was formed and the playground was set up as a new charity.
This house has its main frontage on the Stockwell Park Road with this fairly recent extension at the side along Lorn Road.
The other half of this semi-detached house, probably dating from the late 1840s is grade II listed, but this half is not, probably because of this extension as the two halves look almost identical from the frontage on Stockwell Park Road. But although very different in character this seems to me an interesting addition.
House, 41, Stockwell Park Rd, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7e-62
Another house in the area with considerable individuality, 41 Stockwell Park Road described as an ‘Irregular stuccoed early C19 house’ is Grade II listed. The house is on the corner of Groveway and I think was probably one of the first built on the road, probably in the 1840s.
It has a much less sympathetic building attached, a plain four storey modern block you can just see at the right of the picture but this has not prevented its listing – and no reason why it should. But sometimes there seems to be a large element of architectural snobbery in listing decisions.
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 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.
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.
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.
All I can tell you about SERIUS GALLERY is written on the door of 44 Bellefields Rd, which continues with ‘QUEEN MARTIN’ and gives its opening hours as Mon-Fri 2-6pm and Sat, Sun 12-3. These houses are still there, looking in rather better condition but no longer as a gallery.
Nor can I tell you anything about Queen Martin, though these was a rather nice looking Victorian pub at 45 Bellefields Road opposite this house named The Queen, which was demolished in 2006 and replaced by an rather ugly block with flats above ground floor commercial spaces also named THE QUEEN.
MOT Centre, Ferndale Rd, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-24
The M.O.T. Centre for Cars & Motor Cycles offering Free Steering & Brake Safety Check would not inspire my confidence with its heap of car scrap at the left of the picture. This site is now a little tidier as Zaks Tyres and the Ferndale Road Car Wash, on the corner of Ferndale Road and Pulross Road.
The fence just visible above its notices is along the railway line.
Tintern St, Brixton, Lambeth, 1989 89-6a-12
I made another picture of the M.O.T centre (not on line) which continues on the other side of the railway bridge and a couple more and continued along Ferndale Road, wandering down some of the side streets. I’ve also not yet digitised a picture of the Brixton Seventh Day Adventist Church on the corner of Ducie St and Santley St, and my next picture on-line is this one from Tintern Street. The building at right of the picture is on the corner with Ferndale Road, with two shops there not visible in my picture.
The shopfronts have changed but the upper floors and general appearance are still much as they were in 1989, and the whole remains a rather nice reminder of the Victorian era. The main loss is in the shopfronts at the left of my picture. Of course it is no longer the ‘TWO BEES LADIES AND GENTS HAIRDRESSERS’ but still in the same trade as a Unisex Hair Salon.
I’m not sure I entirely understood the amendments made to this billboard which advertised Billy Graham’s 1989 Evangelical Mission when I made this picture. It helps too look up Luke 12:19, which in the King James Version reads “And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” And to put the comment into more standard English, “Dollar bill still has to be my bowl of cherries.”
While it’s clear that the L is now a pound sign, and is followed by a dollar symbol. I think the ‘E’ at right is added to make this now read £$ FEE.
I think it was probably a different hand that posted a line of five anti-poll tax posters posters at bottom right.
The Chequers Café, a greengrocers and a pub on the corner of Bedford Road with Landor Road. The pub is still there. In 1989 it was the Bedford Arms, there since around 1874, but I think later was the Hog’s Head and simply the Bedford. In 2003 it became The Clapham North, the first of several pubs in the area opened by the pub group Livelyhood who made it one of Clapham’s most popular pubs. But they were simply tenants and the pub was bought by Young’s in 2013 and ten years later they decided to take over the lease. So now just another Young’s pub.
This was the last picture on my walk on 4th June 1989. These unusually ornate early Edwardian houses caught my attention. They are terraced houses, but built to look grander than they are with substantial doorways over paired front doors. The houses at left are part of a short terrace of four, and then a longer terrace goes around a corner in the street.
North St, Rectory Gardens & Rectory Grove: Continuing with my walk on Sunday 28th May 1989. The first and previous post about this was Lavender Hill & Wandsworth Rd – 1989 which ended with a picture of the Hibbert Almshouses still on Wandsworth Road in Clapham.
M S Automobiles, 97-9 North St, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-24
From Wandsworth Road I turned down North Street and took this picture just a few yards down the street. This rather elegant group of three of houses at 97-1010 have been altered somewhat since my picture and the entrance to the rear yard of M S Automobiles Ltd now leads to North Street Mews workshops and studios, the the two properties on the street now residential.
The doorway for West One Carriers is now a bay window (and was probably originally built as one) and the flower pots and ventilators have disappeared. 99 now has a small plain painted brick wall joining to the post at the right of my picture.
Unfortunately I can’t make out the sign at the left of the door to 99, though it looks rather like a pigeon. Scooter geeks would doubtless be able to tell me more about that parked underneath.
Doorway, 28 North St, Rozel Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-11
A small terrace two storey houses with shopfronts on North Street has its north end on Rozel Road, and just behind the shop front – here with a metal shutter at right – is this doorway which is now to 28a North Street which has been considerably extended to the rear.
There were some similar decorations above the doors of most of the houses on Rozel Road, and some with similar brickwork which I imagine were all built around the same time in the late nineteenth century, probably in the 1880s. I’m not sure what the mirrored objects in the relief are meant to represent, possibly a coornucopia or horn of plenty. But for many the bubblegum machine at right of the door will have been of more interest.
NECO, Electric Motors, North St, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-13
Normand Electrical Company were manufacturers and suppliers of ‘NECO’ electric motors and gearboxes here in Clapham from around 1938. The company was bought by P C Henderson in 1982, and later they sold it to FKI Electricals. The NECO brand is still used. The factory was demolished and replaced by gated housing, Floris Place, its entrance in Fitzwilliam Road.
Rectory Gardens, Rectory Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-14
Rectory Gardens was built around 1870-80 as philanthropic housing for low paid workers. Many of the 28 houses were in very poor repair after war damage and had been squatted in the late 60s and 70s to form a unique community. In 1969 Lambeth Council planned to redevelop this area and acquired Rectory Gardens in 1970.
Rectory Gardens, Rectory Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-16
The redevelopment was opposed by the Rectory Gardens Squatters’ Association (RAGS) and Clapham Action Rectory Grove (CARG) and at a public inquiry the council lost an appeal over the compulsory purchase of adjoining properties needed for the redevelopment. The council refused to formalise the occupation by residents who had formed a housing cooperative, but continued to try to evict the squatters who had turned the area into a flourishing artistic community.
Rectory Gardens, Rectory Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5j-63
Eventually Lambeth Labour Council under Cabinet Member for Housing Matthew Bennett began evictions and put in ‘security guardians’ and in 2016-7 sold off the properties. The very active Clapham Society lobbied for the retention of these houses as a group run by a housing association but developer Lexadon is rebuilding them and marketing them as luxury properties, “a triangular mews-style development” as a private close in an expensive area.
49, Rectory Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5j-65
49 Rectory Grove is Grade II listed as an early 19th century two storey house with attic and basement. When I made this picture there were new houses being built on both sides of it behind the tall corrugated iron fences topped with barbed wire.
The area behind the house had been the printing works of Clark & Fenn Ltd and was redevelped as the Charles Barry Estate, taking its name from Sir Charles Barry, the designer of the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square who lived not far away at 29-32 Clapham Common North Side.
20-28, Rectory Grove, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5j-66
This fine terrace on Rectory Grove, ending at Turret Grove has the name above it Cromwell Cottages is unlisted, unlike many other properties along the street. Rectory Grove leads to the churchyard of St Paul’s Church which was the original parish church of Clapham around which the village from the 12th century, although the current church dates from 1815.
The tiny village began to grow when people fled London during the plague and the Great Fire and it became a fashionable place to live in the l8th century. By then the area further south and around the common was becoming the centre of the village which expanded greatly in the early nineteenth century.
More from Rectory Grove and Clapham in the next instalment of pictures from this walk shortly.
