Although my caption states than this modern house is in Campden Hill Rd, its address is in Campden Street which leads off at the left of the picture. The building by architect Douglas Stephen is said to be in the style of pioneering Italian modernist architect Giuseppe Terragni, (1904-43), something perhaps best seen in his 1937 Villa Bianca in Seveso. I think like a similar larger block by Stephen in Bedford Gardens it was probably built in the mid-60s.
Le Gourmet Gascon gives I think a fairly clear idea of the population of this area of Kensington, where there is a takeaway service offering Quenelles au Brochet. The shop is no longer there and a short walk away you can now get rather more plebian food for tourists at Notting Hill Gate, though I think there is still no shortage of over-priced restaurants in the area and of course Fortnum & Mason still deliver.
Later in September I was back south of the river in Lambeth, and photographing in Lambeth. The terracotta carving above the doorway on the corner of Black Prince Rd and Lambeth High St is of Mr Doulton in his studio, and seated at left Hannah Bolton Barlow paints on one of the vases from his pottery, her pet cat under her chair.
Pottery was produced not far from this site in Vauxhall Walk by Jones, Watts & Doulton from 1815 and they moved to Lambeth High St in 1826. In the early years their most successful product was ceramic sewage pipes, for which their was a surge in demand driven by the 1846-60 cholera pandemic.
The company had several parts and a complex history but by the time this building was erected as their museum, school and design studio in 1871, with close links to Lambeth School of Art. The Lambeth studio pottery was producing signed works of art as well as more mundane items in the rest of the factory – and they later bought a factory in Burslem for making bone china tableware. The company only became Royal Doulton when it obtained a Royal Warrant in 1902. Production at Lambeth was forced to end in 1956 with the Clean Air Act which prohibited their salt glazing in this urban area, and all work went to the Potteries.
Doultons were major producers of the architectural terracotta or stoneware which adorns many Victorian buildings, and their building acted as a real life catalogue for their wares, though they also produced many specifically commissioned pieces as well as the more general stock.
A few yards up Lambeth High St is a view of this rather strange obelisk in the yard beside the (now former) headquarters of the London Fire Brigade, which moved to a new building here on a part of the former Doulton pottery factory site in 1937. This obelisk or ‘snorkel tower’ was built to provide ventilation for the war-time underground control room, according to the listing text “constructed to withstand a direct hit and a gas attack, with its own reserve electric light installation and forced ventilation.”
A short distance away in Lambeth Rd is another rather bulkier structure, also a ventilator, for the underground Metropolitan Police Central Communications Command Centre. A new special operations room was opened there in 2008, but there are also other communications centres in Bow and Hendon.
As this and other pictures in the Flickr album 1987 London Photos show, there was rather more evidence of the area’s industrial past then. This chimney and works was a former soap factory.
My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage : Flickr
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.
