Kingston | >Re-PHOTO

Surbiton Festival 2006

Surbiton Festival: On Saturday 30th September 2006 I went to Surbiton to photograph the annual Surbiton Festival for the second time.

As a part of my photography of London I attended quite a few local events across London in the first decade of this century – in September 2004 I had photographed the Surbiton Festival and also the Angel Canal Festival, Walthamstow Festival, the City of London Flower Show, Lady Somerset Road Street Party, Brick Lane Festival, Thames Day, the Shoreditch Car Free Festival and Leytonstone Car-Free Festival, as well as several political protests and other events. I found it interesting how some of these reflected the different population of these areas.

But in 2006 I had another reason to go back to Surbiton, in that I was to appear with two other photographers, Mike Seaborne and Paul Baldesare in the exhibition Another London, at Kingston Museum in January 2007 and I wanted to include some pictures from the local area in my section of the show.

You can still see all 26 of my pictures from that show (and those by the other two. My set included pictures from both the Surbiton Festivals I attended, as well as one from the July 2006 Kingston Regatta, two from the September 2006 Kingston Festival and one of Koreans watching the World Cup in nearby New Malden.

Surbiton is centred around Surbiton Station, a classic 1930s Southern Railway modernist structure and an important commuter station with an incredibly frequent service – around ten trains an hour to Waterloo, the faster taking around 20 minutes.

When it was first developed in the 1840s it was called ‘Kingston-upon-Railway‘, only getting its current name in 1869 – although this is a name with medieval roots, with Suth Bere-tun being Old English for an outlying farm – then part of the Royal Manor of Kingston (Norbiton was closer to the centre.)

*Only one military vehicle joined this year’s parade – unless you count the model held out in the driver’s hand.*

Kingston is an ancient town – it was the town where Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned – but the Surbiton Festival is a modern tradition, begun by the Rotary Club a little over 25 years ago. It seems to have grown considerably since I went in 2006. The 2025 festival was last Saturday and though I considered briefly whether to go, I decided I had other things to do. Perhaps next year…

*Beavers, Cubs, scouts and guides were all present*

You can see a few more of the pictures I took in 2006 on My London Diary. The short text I wrote is a little hidden, so here it is in full – though there is more information in the picture captions.

The Annual Surbiton Festival seems still to be very much a local community based affair, and takes over one of the main shopping streets, still mainly lined by small shops. This year it’s centre was the station car park, with room for a brass band, morris dancing and other activities.

The day started with driving rain, but fortunately it stopped in time for the festival to start, opened by the Mayor of Kingston. I followed her for a while as she visited the stalls along the street, taking a real interest in what was going on.

The 10 am start meant that at first the streets were rather empty, but things began to fill up later. The parade was a little thinner than in previous years, and we [Paul Baldesare and myself] were disappointed not to see more.

After the parade I went back to watch the morris dancers perform a second set, but as it came on to rain, I decided it was time to take a train elsewhere

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Kingston Carnival 2007

Kingston Carnival: On Sunday 2 September 2007 I went to Kingston to photograph the carnival.

Kingston is a town I’ve visited fairly often over the years, though mainly just going through it or changing buses to meet friends or go to meetings elsewhere, but I’ve never really got to know. Its an ancient town, where Saxon Kings were crowned and the street layout in its central pedestrianised areas still follows much of its complex medieval pattern. It includes several pubs worth a visit.

Kingston (officially Kingston-upon-Thames) also has a fine museum where I was pleased to be a part of a show, Another London, in January 2007 along with Mike Seaborne and Paul Baldesare – which you can still see online. Among my 26 pictures which featured in it were three made in Kingston including two from the 2006 Kingston Carnival, as well as two from adjoining Surbiton.

The museum also has a permanent exhibition of Kingston’s most famous son, photographer Eadweard Muybridge, (1830-1904) best known for his pioneering studies of animal movement beginning with pictures of the racehorse Occident owned by the former governor of California, Leland Stanford made in 1878 using a line of 12 cameras triggered by strings the horse ran through.

His work had been interrupted earlier in 1875 when he was on trial for murder after having shot his wife’s lover. His lawyer pleaded insanity presenting evidence that he had bouts of unstable behaviour caused by a severe head injury in a stagecoach accident in 1860 and the jury acquitted him recording a verdict of justifiable homicide.

The centenary of Muybridge’s death in 2004 was celebrated in Kingston including by my late friend photographer Terry King whose re-enactment of Muybridge’s work using twelve 10×8 cameras at Ham Polo Club. Modern ponies apparently refuse to run through strings thinking they are an electric fence and a different method had to be found to trigger the special shutters attached to the cameras.

Kingston’s 25th Carnival takes place on Sunday 7th September 2025, and I might just go along again, though I don’t think I’ve been to it since 2007.

I didn’t write a great deal about it in 2007, but here it is:

“This year’s Kingston Carnival was a much more exciting event than last year’s but there was still a large rent-a-carnival aspect to it. Kingston is an ethnically rich borough, and although there was plenty of home-grown talent on display, particularly in the performances by youth from the borough, the procession was still dominated by out of town talent.

“It’s great to encourage diversity, but I think a borough carnival has a duty to promote its local expression rather more, even if it might mean – at least until it built up more – a rather less flashy display.

“Of course it was good to see a greater diversity among the ‘foreign’ talent that paraded past the rather dazed looking shoppers along Kingston’s pedestrian streets, including even some clog dancers from Croydon, along with Caribbean groups.

“Beeraahaar Sweet Combination, based in Stamford Hill enlivened the main parade, and the elaborate larger costumes from Paddington Arts arrived later to play their part.”

Many more pictures start here on My London Diary.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Ed Davey Privatises the Royal Mail – 2011

Ed Davey Privatises the Royal Mail: 2011 is a year Liberal Leader Ed Davey would like to forget, particularly now that the scandal around the persecution of postmasters wrongly convicted because the Post Office and Fujitsu refused to admit the Horizon software had serious faults, long exposed by Private Eye and Computer Weekly, has now emerged into public view.

In 2011 Lib-Dem MP Edward Davey, MP for Kingston & Surbiton as was heading the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition’s plans to sell off our postal services as Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs. Before becoming an MP he had worked as a management consultant in Sweden, Taiwan, Belgium, South Africa and elsewhere, who specialising in postal services.

His then boss, Business Secretary Vince Cable, was the Lib-Dem MP for the neighbouring constituency of Richmond & Twickenham, so the plans to sell off the publicly owned Royal Mail came from Lib-Dems in this small area of West London.

So Kingston was the obvious place for the national ‘Keep the Post Public’ protest on Saturday 22nd January 2011 and over a thousand came from across the nation for a rally and march there.

Kingston-on-Thames was also relevant for the royal connections incorporate in its name. Kingston is a Royal Borough and the town where many of the earliest Kings of England were crowned, and the march passed within a few yards of the Coronation stone in front of Kingston Guildhall before ending by the River Thames.

And although the Queen herself was unable to come and defend her Royal Mail, a fairly convincing royal look-alike came suitably dressed to give a royal address against selling off her Royal Mail.

Also there to speak were a number of trade union leaders including CWU general secretary Billy Hayes, Dave Ward of the CWU Postal department, Jim Kirwan, CWU London regional secretary, Christine Quigley of London Labour Youth and Christine Blower, the NUT General Secretary. Others speaking included the local Labour candidate and a school student who got huge applause for telling the rally how they had organised and occupied their local school against government cuts and fees increases.

Speakers pointed out that privatisation would result in price rises and the abandonment of the universal service which requires the Royal Mail to deliver and collect to all of the 28 million UK addresses six days a week at the same cost. And we have since seen this happen although not officially; we now get deliveries of mail on perhaps four or five days in a typical week and the collections have become far more erratic.

The cost of a First Class Stamp was then 41p. Presumably as a sweetener for buyers of the privatised company there was already to be a 5p rise in a few months time. If prices had risen simply according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, the stamp should now cost 58p but the actual cost now is over double that at £1.25 – a huge increase. And although using a First Class stamp was supposed to mean next-day delivery, First Class letters now regularly take 2 or 3 days or more to arrive.

There were fears that the privatisation would have negative effects on Post Offices, which had been separated from the Royal Mail delivery service since the 1969 Post Office Act, but there were still strong business connections. So far this has not led to many post office branch closures, although many branches are now part of larger stores such as W H Smith. It remains to be seen what effect the closure of many of this company’s high street outlets as it moves towards a focus on travel will have.

In 2011 I wrote “An ICM poll in 2009 found that 78% of us believed selling Royal Mail would be a bad deal for the taxpayer and 82% thought prices would go up.” And it’s clear that we were right. I (and the coalition government) also thought that “the Royal Mail represents rich pickings for the rich supporters of the government“. Its operating profits since 2013 have been over £400 million in every year except 2020 and in 2022 were £758 million. We are paying through the nose for a reduced service. That’s privatisation for you.

More about the march and pictures of the speakers and marchers on My London Diary at Keep Royal Mail Public.

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A River Full of Stories

I’m pleased to have some of my pictures included in ‘A River Full of Stories‘ , a large hardback of around 200 pages recently published by Rich & Lou Duffy Howard in Hull. It’s an unusual title in several ways, and comes from their online project of the same name, a follow-up to their Open Bridges (which I wrote about here) which was a part of Hull’s 2017 year as UK City of Culture.

The book launch took place a little over a week ago, though I’m sorry I was unable to attend as I was at a weekend meeting elsewhere.

I have a small portfolio with 6 pages of my work, all reproduced well and to a good size on the roughly 10×11″ pages, as well as three other large reproductions in the main body of the book.

The book is packed with interesting photography, both historical and contemporary of Hull and its river, and the presentation is one only made possible by considerable sponsorship attracted to the project acheived by Rich and Lou Duffy-Howard who curated and edited it both online and in print.

You can of course read about it in the Hull Daily Mail (though I don’t get a mention) and there is an exhibition about both projects in the centre of Hull at the Hull Maritime Museum in Queen Victoria Square until the end of 2019.

The book is unusual in that it is not for sale, but contributors were given a free copy along with every library in Hull and the East Riding. However you can still buy the Café Royal Book The River Hull 1977–85 which has most of the pictures in it – if on a rather smaller scale and less expensively reproduced. My other Café Royal Book on Hull, The Streets of Hull 1979–85 is also still available. And you can see many more pictures on my Hull web site in the links below.

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, please share on social media.
And small donations via Paypal – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

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.