Re-photo

Light & Life, Pinter and Stockwell Breweries: A week after my previous walk I returned to South London to take more pictures on Sunday 4th June 1989. I began my walk from Clapham High Street.

Landor Road, originally named ‘Stockwell Private Road’ but changed at some date before 1912, possibly after the well-known English writer Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) runs from close to Clapham North Station to Stockwell Green. I made my first picture roughly halfway between the two at the corner with Hubert Grove. A group of five men standing around a car on the opposite side of the road had probably attracted my attention but I clearly did not want to attract theirs.

Many of the shops here have since been converted to residential use.

A row of four terrace houses here had been converted into the General HQ of the Light & Life Full Gospel Fellowship, and notices gave a full list of activities including Sunday Schools, Divine Worship, Gospel Meeting, Bible Study and Prayer but also Sewing, Cooking, Baking, Musical Rehearsals, Table Tennis , Darts and Snooker. The centre also housed a play group on Monday to Fridays and a Youth Club on Thursday evenings.

A message says ‘COME AND ENJOY YOURSELF – THIS IS NOT A BLACK CHURCH. WE DO NOT PREACH A BLACK GOSPEL – JESUS IS LORD’.

The Fellowship is still continuing its mission there, though with new noticeboards, blinds replacing curtains and a new coat of paint.

I can’t read the notices in the shop window of 127 Landor Road, but I think they might have indicated that the shop had closed. It was perhaps about to be converted to its current residential use.

Looking down Kimberley Road there are two tall blocks of flats, but from my camera position only one is visible, I think Pinter House on Rhodesia Road, one of three blocks in the Grantham Road Estate. 1890s terraced houses there were destroyed by wartime bombing and the site was used for prefabs. Planning for these towers began in the early 1960s under the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth, but by the time they were completed in 1968-9 they were a part of the London Borough of Lambeth Council.

The three blocks were all named after modern play writers – in this case Harold Pinter. The block was designed by the deputy borough architect George Finch and system built; this 62m high block contains around 92 flats and maisonettes. The flats were refurbished in 2000-2001 after they became managed by Hyde Southbank Homes and now look rather different.

St Andrew’s Stockwell Green in Landor Rd was built as a chapel in 1767 but there were later additions and the exterior was rebuilt by H E Roe in this Romanesque style in 1867. Vestries and the Lady Chapel were then added in the 1890s.

The building beyond the church was a large post-war bottle store which was replaced in 2010 by the perhaps deliberately rather bland Oak Square development. This had been a brewery site since 1730 and had been taken over as Hammertons Stockwell Brewery in 1868. It was sold to Watneys in 1951 and they used it as bottling stores.

I find it hard to positively identify this street corner though I think it must be than of Dalyell Road, where Landor Road meets Stockwell Green. The building at left is the now-demolished bottle store, and on it you can read the name THE QUADRANT. The corner is occupied by a giant billboard, and shop appears to have fruit in its window, a sack of potting compost on the ground outside and to sell ice cream.

This is a rather unusual detached house on Combermere Road and I think from my picture that it may have been built or later used as a shop. This is a very mixed street and there was nothing like this anywhere along its length.

It is still there, though the windows have been replaced with something looking rather sturdier and the door has a wrought iron grille.

Rhodes’ Brewery – Stockwell’s other brewery – took water from an artesian well on this site and was bought by Edward Waltham in 1851. His British Brewery or Half Guinea Ale Brewery in Stockwell Green produced Half Guinea Ale and London Brown Stout at 2/6d per dozen bottles; you paid an extra 6d for the mysteriously named ‘S N’ Stout. It many have stood for ‘Nourishing Stout’, something they also sold as Butler Brand Nourishing Stout.

Back in the 1940s or 50s, my mother, then languishing in hospital, was prescribed a daily bottle of Guinness. As a lifelong total abstainer she refused to drink the demon alcohol, but her Irish nurse had no such qualms.

The buildings probably dated from before 1851. The Lion Brewery bought the company in 1906 and for many years this site was a council depot. It has now been replaced by housing.

To be continued…

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