Quakers, Beer, a Palace and the Wandle: My walk on Sunday 4th March 1990 had begun at Clapham Junction in Battersea with St John’s Road & East Hill, Battersea – 1990 and the previous post to this, St Anne’s and St Ann’s, Wandsworth – 1990, had ended close to Wandsworth High Street where I made my next picture.
My view here today would be very similar. The norices have chanted and at left there is now a large sign QUAKER MEETING HOUSE over much of the area where you can just make out a bricked up window. Even the sign for WINDOVER PIANOS – GRAMOPHONE RECORDS MUSIC – STRINGS AND SMALL GOODS – CASH OR EASY TERMS remains, though perhaps a little less visible. Then and now it is over a branch of William Hill. The bracket for a hanging sign remains empty, but the gatepost at left has gone – replaced further back for a new gate.
The Grade II listed Quaker Meeting house was built in 1778 but later enlarged and this frontage dates from 1927 with later alterations. It is the oldest Quaker Meeting House in London. Unlike much of the old High Street it survived the widening of the road, now a busy part of the South Circular.
The Palace Theatre was a pupose-built cinema, architect John Stanley Coombe Beard (1890-1970) who designed many cinemas around London. It opened in 1920 and in 1958 was renamed The Gaumont, closing in 1961 and becoming a bingo club and then a church. For sale when I made this picture it was bought for use as a night club, The Theatre. It now has columns at each side of the entrance and houses a gym.
Now called The Ram, this fine 1883 pub building on the corner of Ram Street and with a ram above its doorway at at 68 Wandsworth High Street was still in 1990 the brewery tap for the Ram Brewery. Beer has been brewed here since 1533 and from 1831 by 2006 Young’s & Co who moved out to Bedford.
When I last visited a year or two back the tradition was being continued in the Ram Brewery, now Sambrook’s Brewery – and you can go on tours, even make your own beer there, though I simply enjoyed the Sambrook’s Brewery Wandle, first brewed there in 2008.
You can see the brewery behind the pub in my picture and to the left. This Grade II* building is now ” a premium boutique bowling venue, including traditional bowling, duckpin bowling, electronic darts and shuffleboard under one roof.”
I turned south down Garratt Lane and wnet donw an alley leading to The notice tells us that this “122 luxury one and two bedroom flats set in courtyard development, with private parking”, but those were yet to come.
Linstone Court looks to me like 1960s council flats, though many will have been bought under ‘right to buy’ and sold on.
The River Wandle, once an important industrial river, flows underground though the large Southside Shopping Centre south of Wandsworth High Street. I had come down Garratt Lane mainly to see the river upstream from there.
This was the view downstream from Mapleton Road with Wandsworth Medical Centre on the right.
And I think this is the view upstream from the same bridge or possibly the next bridge upstream. There has been considerable building around this area since 1990.
I walked back up Garratt Lane to Wandsworth High Street and made another picture of the Ram Brewery, with its Ram on the weathervane. Then I walked back to Garratt Lane where the next post on this walk will begin.
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