This continues my posts on my walk in Walworth on 8th January 1989. The previous post was Heygate, Shops, English Martyrs & St John the Evangelist
This building on the corner of Larcom Street and Walworth Road is now Larcom House and has a blue plaque for “Michael Faraday – 1791-1867 – Scientific genius and discoverer of electromagnetism’ put there by the London Borough of Southwark. It isn’t clear why they put it here as he was born in Newington Butts.
Built as a health centre in 1937 this Grade II listed art deco building is now office space and offers are invited for internal development behind the listed facades
This is the main frontage of the 1937 Grade II listed health centre, with statues of mother and children on the roof showing its association with family health, and the text ‘THE HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE IS THE HIGHEST LAW’. It appears to be still in use as the Walworth Clinic.
The building remained in use as a secondhand furniture business, Chapel Furniture, until it was demolished in 2016 and replaced by a new block. At 4 Downing St it was not actually a former chapel, but St Mark’s Church Hall, for St Mark’s Church in East Street, opened around 1874.
There was a much larger and well-known chapel a little further along Browning St, the York Street Chapel, an Independent or Congregational chapel built in 1790. It was renamed Browning Hall in 1895 after Robert Browning, the Victorian playwright and poet who was baptised here in 1812, and York Road was also renamed Browning St in the 1920s.
The church was very active in relief of poverty in the area and had a settlement on Walrworth Rd, opened in 1895 by Herbert Asquith. Charles Booth began a campaign here with a conference in 1898 and in 1899 Browning Hall became the headquarters of the National Committee of Organised Labour on Old Age Pensions, which eventually led to the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908. Browning Hall was demolished in 1978 when a council housing estate was built here.
Until the 1920s I think this street was simply one of many King Streets in London. Many London streets were renamed in the 1920s and 30s to try make their names unique in the city. There was at the time a Queen’s Head pub in the street, long gone.
Although my contact sheet suggests this was taken in King & Queen Street, there is nothing in the picture which allows me to confirm that. I’d walked some distance before I took my next pictures on the west of Walworth Road, and it could well have been another nearby street.
But this was certainly somewhere in Walworth and I think demonstrates the run-down nature of the area at that time. The rubbish on the grass here may have been in part because this was close to the busy East St Market which I avoided on this walk, though I did photograph there in later years.
The oldest houses in Sutherland Square date from the early 19th century and most of the houses and railings are Grade II listed. The square was built on part of the former Royal Surrey pleasure gardens, but not long after it was completed the London, Chatham and Dover Railway line was opened on a viaduct across the east end of the square. The gardens continued as a the Surrey Zoological Gardens and Surrey Music Hall until sold for housing development in 1877, and a small area of them became a public park, Pasley Park, in the 1980s.
Southwark designated the Sutherland Square Conservation Area in 1982.
The notice on the wall states ‘COMMUNITY GARDEN. PLEASE DO NOT STEAL PLANTS AND FLOWERS. THEY ARE PROVIDED FOR OUR ENJOYMENT by NO 12 the Sq’ . The notice has gone, but there is now a rather more healthy looking area of planting here on the corner just to the west of the railway viaduct.
Macleod Street leads from Sutherland Square east to Walworth Rd, and this building on the corner is now a gym, with the ground floor on this corner being an Iceland store.
The building has a long frontage on Walworth Road, which now houses several shops. It was built around 1960 as a Co-operative store. Previously the site had been occupied by Grose Bros department store. This had started as a drapery business in the area by John Wellington Grose who was born in Padstow, Cornwall around 1840. He had two daughters and four sons, some at least of whom continued the business.
To be continued…
The first post on this walk was Elephant, Faraday, Spurgeon & Walworth Road.
Comments and corrections to these posts are alway welcome.
