Posts Tagged ‘Wandsworth Rd’

Rail, Housing, Matrimony & A Warning

Wednesday, January 10th, 2024

Rail, Housing, Matrimony & A Warning: More pictures from my walk which began at Vauxhall on Friday 28th July 1989 with Nine Elms Riverside. The previous post was Marco Polo, Chelsea Bridge, MAN holder & Convent.

Works, Silverthorne Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-43
Works, Silverthorne Rd, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7m-43

These buildings are still there in a side turning from Silverthorne Road now leading to Battersea Studios. Battersea Studios were built in 1970 as a warehouse for BT and in 1994 became the home of the short-lived BBC Arabic Television, closed precipitately on Sunday, April 21, 1996 having angered the Saudi regime (and the UK government) by its accurate and impartial reporting. At extreme left you can see the barrier leading to that site.

The buildings in the picture were part of the Stewarts Lane Goods Depot, a huge area bounded by this and Dickens Street to the south and going east to the railway lines at Portslade Rd. It was first set up by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1860 as Longhedge and used to build and house locomotives for their services from Victoria Station a short distance away north of the river. The original buildings were demolished in 1880/1 and replaced by these as Stewarts Lane which housed steam locomotives until 1963 and then diesels. Much of the building was destroyed by fire in 1967.

The depot remains in use as the Stewarts Lane Traction Maintenance Depot and is used by both DB Cargo UK and Govia Thameslink Railway.

Houses, 133-139, Heath Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-44
Houses, 133-139, Heath Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-44

Further down Silverthorne Road to its west is Heath Road, the north side of which retains its attractive Victorian housing, with a block of four houses with basements and steps to their paired entrances followed by five without basements but with the same style and decoration. At the end at left of picture is the recently build Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Heath Terrace, Silverthorne Rd, 514 Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-46
Heath Terrace, Silverthorne Rd, 514 Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-46

Heath Terrace is on the corner of Silverthorne Road and Wandsworth Road and as well as this corner entrance has two similar but slightly less ornate doorways on Wandsworth Road leading to sixteen Flats A to P as well as another door for a shop on Silverthorne Road part visible in my picture then occupied by taxi and transport company Guy Payne Of London Limited.

The building was built in 1897 and the corner door, in use when I made my picture in 1989 by Dr A J K Ala, still led to a surgery until around 2012. At the front of the traffic queue is a man on a moped with a large clipboard, studying the ‘knowledge’ required of taxi drivers.

Matrimony Place, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-32
Matrimony Place, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-32

Matrimony Place is one of my favourite street names, though this place is only an alley with steps leading from Wandsworth Road to St. Paul’s Churchyard. I’d photographed it a few years earlier and made a deliberate detour to see if had changed – it was still much the same.

Possibly it was once the custom for local couples to walk up the 29 steps to the church to be married – or down them after the ceremony, and the name appears to of some antiquity. The railings have since been replaced by a fake antique design (probably thanks to the Clapham Society) which I find rather less attractive. It’s probably still a place to avoid after dark unless you a looking for drugs.

St Paul’s, Clapham was built on the site of the original parish church of Clapham, St Mary’s, renamed Trinity Church at the Protestant Reformation, then demolished in 1774 to be replace by Holy Trinity on Clapham Common. St Paul’s was built simply in 1815, became a rather odd lump after later extension by Sir Arthur Blomfield in 1875, was burnt down in World War 2 and restored in 1955 and is Grade II* listed.

Houses, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-34
Houses, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-34

I didn’t go up Matrimony Place but instead turned back westwards down Wandsworth Road, hardly stopping until I came to the top of Victoria Rise which has these rather impressive Victorian Terraces on both sides. Looked at from this end the street should perhaps have been called Victoria Fall as it goes down noticeably to Clapham Common, but you can see why the developers decided against this. In fact they called it Victoria Road, but it was changed later as there were too many of these in London.

The street was laid out around 1853 its lower end on the site of an C18 villa built for the banker Henry Hoare by Henry Flitcroft known as The Wilderness. These houses on the east side were there by the time of the 1869/70 OS survey, though those on the west side are a little later.

Doorway, 144, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-35
Doorway, 144, Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-35

A notice in the window at right states:
YOU ARE WARNED
REPENT AND RECEIVE
THE LORD JESUS AS
YOUR SAVIOUR FOR
LIFE ETERNAL, LEST
YOU DIE SUDDENLY
AND GO TO HELL
WITH THE DEVIL
THE MURDERER.

Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-36
Victoria Rise, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-7m-36

At left is a window on the corner with Wandsworth Rd with plaster mouldings in a shop demolished in 1998, and at right is Clapham Baptist Church on the opposite corner.

The houses on this side of Victoria rise were built between the 1869/70 survey and the 1893 to 1894 revision. There was also a chapel here, the Victoria Baptist Church, built in 1873 but this was badly damaged by bombs in 1941. it was rebuilt in the 1950s, incorporating some of the Victorian remains on its west end on Wandsworth Road.

My walk continued – more later.

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Nine Elms Riverside – July 1989

Friday, December 15th, 2023

Nine Elms Riverside – July 1989: One of the benefits of working as a teacher as I still was in 1989 was certainly the long Summer holiday and I spent quite a lot of these taking photographs as well as going away for several weeks with my family – though some years this was also a photographic opportunity. And most years we also spent a week or so in Hull where I was able to add a few pictures to the work that had resulted in my exhibition Still Occupied in the Ferens Art Gallery there in 1983.

But our travels around the country in the Summer of 1989 – which as well as Hull included a week with a group of friends in a large holiday cottage in Scotland – only began in August, and the day after my visit to Hackney on Friday 28th July 1989 I returned to take up my work where I had left off earlier in Nine Elms.

Brunswick House, Market Towers, Wandsworth Rd, Vauxhall, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-13
Brunswick House, Market Towers, Wandsworth Rd, Vauxhall, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-13

Tuuning west out of Vauxhall Station took me to the junction of Wandsworth Road and Nine Elms Lane. Brunswick House at right appeared in an earlier post on my walks in 1989. This mid 17th century house, extended in 1758, bought by in 1869 by “the London and South West Railway Company who used it as offices and a Scientific and Literary Institute. In 1994 it was sold to the railway staff association who again sold it in 2002. It is now a restaurant and the yard around it is used by an architectural salvage and supply company.“

Market Towers was clearly a very much later building, or rather pair of buildings, the taller 290ft high with 23 floors, completed in 1975, with offices a pub, the Market Tavern, on the first floor. The pub was built to serve workers at the adjoining New Covent Garden Market completed in 1974 and its licence allowed it to open in the early hours. By the 1980s this had made it into “South London’s first gay pub with a 2am licence“.

According to Wikipedia, the buildings were bought by the misleadingly named property developer Green Property in 2008 and four years later they were given planning permission to redevelop. Instead they sold it to Chinese developer Dalian Wanda. It was demolished in 2014-5 who gained revised planning permission for two buildings containing 436 flats and a hotel, City Tower with 58 floors and 654ft tall and River Tower 42 floors and 525ft. The project was sold on to another Chinese company, and there were various problems over building contracts which delayed completion. The Park Hyatt London River Thames hotel is now predicted to open in mid-2024.

Nine Elms Cold Store, Nine Elms Lane, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-14
Nine Elms Cold Store, Nine Elms Lane, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-14

This tall, windowless monolith states across its top ‘NINE ELMS COLD STORE‘ and was built in 1964 on a former gas works site to store meat and other frozen goods brought by ship into the London Docks and transferred here by lighters. At its side was a large railway goods yard, from which these goods could be taken by rail as well as lorries from the site. But only a few years after its completion, London’s docks began to close and by 1979 it was redundant.

This gas works had closed in 1956 and the site was in use as a coach park when the cold store was built, and also included a small creek, Vauxhall Creek, which once had been the mouth of the River Effra, long culverted and diverted which was then filled in. After it ceased to be used as a cold store it stood for 20 years with various schemes for redevelopment coming to nothing. Part of the delay was caused by the huge cost of demolition, part by Lambeth Council not then wanting the kind of luxury riverside flats than now occupy the site, the 50 storey 594 ft St George Wharf Tower completed in 2014, as well as by some dodgy business dealings.

The cold store was used for various films as a dystopian urban location, was a dangerous gay cruising handily placed for the Market Tavern, as well as allegedly for “black magic, devil worship, sacrifices, and orgies” but was finally demolished in 1999.

River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7k-15
River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7k-15

I had crossed the border from Lambeth to Wandsworth and beyond the cold store the Riverside Walk had been opened up by the council as far as the Thames Water pumping station at Heathwall and after a short diversion past that to Kirtling Street, some years later in 1996 becoming a part of the new Thames Path.

This view from the path across the river past a moored lighter is from its start and there are now new buildings on the riverbank at the left, but the rest remain. These buildings are on Grosvenor Road, Pimlico. You can see the tower of Westminster Cathedral in the distance and I think to its left is the rather ugly block which contains Pimlico station.

A large brick arch on the riverbank is the ancient mouth of the River Tyburn, long since culverted. Plans for the resurfacing of the river by the Tyburn Angling Society seem limited to Mayfair and not to extend to the Thames, though the chances of it happening are as close to zero as can be imagined.

Battersea Power Station, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-02
Battersea Power Station, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-02

The bend of the river here makes it look as if I was walking on water to take this picture, but my feet were firmly on dry land. Battersea Power Station has since then been given something of a facelift, with the removal of some of the more interesting features of the riverfront, as well as now being surrounded on several sides by large blocks of flats and being turned into a wasteful luxury shopping centre.

The pair of distant chimneys just to its right are Lots Road Power Station. The nearer bridge is Grosvenor Railway Bridge taking trains into Victoria Station, but Chelsea Bridge just upriver can also be seen clearly.

Battersea Power Station, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-64
Battersea Power Station, River Thames, Riverside Walk, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-64

Another view upstream from the riverside path, which shows all four chimneys of Battersea Power Station as well as the riverside path and some of the earlier flats built beside the river here, Elm Quay Court. This luxury flat development built in 1976-8 includes secure underground parking and a 47ft swimming pool, gym and sauna.

Elm Quay Court, 30 Nine Elms Lane, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-54
Elm Quay Court, 30 Nine Elms Lane, Wandsworth, 1989 89-7l-54

A view of the Elm Quay Court flats from the road. The new US Embassy was built opposite them. Neither building seems attractive to me. The best feature of the US Embassy is the moat which runs along only its north side, and the best feature of Elm Quay Court is the riverside walk, which enables the public to walk past it almost without seeing the building.

My account of my walk will continue in a later post.

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More From Stockwell & South Lambeth

Wednesday, November 8th, 2023

More From Stockwell & South Lambeth: My apologies that the previous post in this series from my walk on 19th July 1989, Tradescant, Old South Lambeth Rd and Caron, ended with a repeat of three images taken on Fentiman Road from my walk two days earlier.

After taking pictures on Old South Lambeth Road I probably simply walked to Vauxhall Station without taking more pictures. But I have now found a few more pictures I took probably at the start of the walk which began with Stockwell Park, Bus Garage, Tower and Mason, and also some at the end of my walk in Vauxhall.

Houses, 43-49, Lansdowne Gardens, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7h-14
Houses, 43-49, Lansdowne Gardens, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7h-14

These fine houses were built in the mid-nineteenth century and are Grade II listed. The closer and further houses are semi-detached pairs while 47 in the middle is detached. Behind them is the tower block Edrich House on Lansdowne Way.

House, 93, Priory Grove, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-62
House, 93, Priory Grove, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-62

Priory Grove runs south from Lansdowne Way (formerly Priory Road) and much of it is beside Larkhill Park. This four-storey block, with the name at the top Priory Building is close to its end at Larkhall Lane. In 1989 it had two doors, but now there is only one at the left giving access to the four flats inside. The ground floor has been coated with stucco eliminating the architraves which are a feature of the upper floors.

Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-65
Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-65

Larkhall Lane has a listed building and several on the local list, but all I chose to photograph were a couple of odd corners, the first perhaps showing something of the state of the property with a fine stone hidden pillar. I think this has now disappeared.

Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-52
Larkhall Lane, Stockwell, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-52

66 Larkhall Lane is now much improved rendering, a tidy garden and the anachronistic shutter removed. The tree has also gone and I suspect much of the interior has also been remodelled. A property listing on the web describes it now as “This is an attractive 2 bed, 1 bath semi-detached house in Lambeth, London. This efficient home is 753 square feet in size with 2 fireplaces and has been extended 3 times since construction before 1900” and estimates its value at £1m-£1.2m.

341-9, Wandsworth Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-56
341-9, Wandsworth Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-56

I think I took this rather rapidly through a gap in the traffic which perhaps accounts for its rather odd tilt. At left is a rather odd Gothic Grade II listed building trying to be a castle, with shops on the ground floor and an octagonal tower at each end. The building dates from the mid-19th century but the shops reaching out to the main road were added probably around 40 years later over what was originally a front garden and have since been much altered.

Tucked away in the centre of the picture is a slim building with some interesting polychromatic brickwork at No 345, small and rather unusual Victorian infill.

Wilbraham House, Wandsworth Road, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-41
Wilbraham House, Wandsworth Road, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7i-41

Through the imposing three story vehicle entrance of Wilbraham House we can see Fosbrooke House behind. This long block of flats occupies most of the block between Thorncroft St and Wilcox Road. One web site helpfully tells me it was built between 1930 and 1949 and my guess would have been it was at the end of that period. Four impressive sets of steps on the frontage lead to the 36 flats, with glass bricks providing natural lighting for the stairs. Nine Elms underground station opened in 2021 is just a few yards up the road.

The Elephant And Castle, pub, South Lambeth Place, Vauxhall, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-11
The Elephant And Castle, pub, South Lambeth Place, Vauxhall, Lambeth, 1989 89-7k-11

You get a good view of these elephants from trains going through Vauxhall Station on the Windsor and Reading lines I normally go to Waterloo on. This picture is taken from immediately outside Vauxhall Station entrance. The pub building is still there but closed in 1997 and is now a Starbucks, but its upper floors look much the same. The local list dates it as mid-late 19th century, but the building replaced an earlier one on the site.

The name Elephant And Castle thought to have been first used for pubs around 1770 in nearby Southwark probably derives from the coat of arms of the Cutler’s Company who adopted it in 1622. They used ivory to make knife handles. Though if so it may have been used first for a pub in the City for which we have no record.

I’ll post the other pictures I’ve found from the end of the walk in Vauxhall later.

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Houses, Almshouses, A Pub and Cold Store

Wednesday, October 4th, 2023

Houses, Almshouses, A Pub and Cold Store: The end of my walk on 17th July 1989 which began with Back in Stockwell. The previous post was Stockwell Housing and Adventure.

Terrace, 195-203, Brixton Rd, Angell Town, Lambeth, 1989 89-7e-64
Terrace, 195-203, Brixton Rd, Angell Town, Lambeth, 1989 89-7e-64

This terrace is on the east side of Brixton Road, with 195 on the corner with Normandy Road. They were built on a part of the large Lambeth Wick estate which was owned by the Church of England but was developed by Henry Richard Vassall, the third Baron Holland, who had adopted his wife’s maiden name of Vassall in 1800. The manor was leased to him in 1820 with a building lease that specified he had to built “houses of at least the third rate” and keep them in good repair, painting outside wood and ironwork every 4 years “and offensive trades were prohibited.”

Vassall’s lease was for 99 years and he let out small plots such as this one to builders and speculators on 80 year leases. The lease for the plot for these three-storey terraces was granted to James Crundall in 1824, but the actual date of completion of Alfred Place as they were known may have been a little later. The Grade II listing simply states early-mid C19.

The end wall facing Normandy Road has no windows – its interior layout is presumably similar to those houses in the middle of the terrace, but what would have been a massive slab of brickwork is relieved by a central pilaster and blind windows.

House, 104, Fentiman Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-62
House, 104, Fentiman Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-62

I was now on my way home and walked quickly north up Brixton Road before cutting through Crewdson Road to Clapham Rd and then turning down Fentiman Road, heading for Vauxhall Station.

It wasn’t until I stopped opposite No 124 that I made my next picture. This was built on part of the large Caron House estate which stretched north from South Lambeth Road. Fentiman Road was laid out just to the south of the large house after it and its extensive grounds were sold to Henry Beaufoy in 1838 and this unlisted mid-19th century building probably dates from shortly after this.

There are a number of other interesting buildings on this section of the road, some listed I did not stop to photograph, and I think the reflection in the car and the shadow of the tree which occupy much of the lower part of the picture may have made me stop here.

Caron's Almshouses, Fentiman Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-63
Caron’s Almshouses, 121, Fentiman Rd, South Lambeth, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-63

Sir Philip Noel Caron, Dutch Ambassador to King James I founded his almshouses in 1621 on what is now Wandsworth Road to house seven woman aged over 60, but by the 1850s these were, according to the Survey of London ‘“uncomfortable and unsuitable” for aged persons‘ and the site was sold to Price’s Patent Candle Company for their factory. They sold the site in 1865 to the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Company, which later became part of the South-Eastern Gas Board.

The £1500 from the sale in 1853 was used to erect these new almshouses in a Tudor style in 1854 and they are now Grade II listed. Various charity amalgamations took place over the years and in the 1990s the Trustees granted a 50-year lease on the almshouses to the Family Housing Association. Modernised and repaired they were officially reopened by the Dutch Ambassador in 1997 and are still housing local women in need.

Builders Arms, pub, Wyvil Rd, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1989 89-7g-52
Builders Arms, pub, Wyvil Rd, Vauxhall, Lambeth 1989 89-7g-52

The pub was built in 1870 and an application for a licence refused in 1871 but it did open shortly afterwards, and remains open now, though under a different name. At some time in became Wyvils, then the Vauxhall Griffin, but after it was bought in around 2018 by Belle Pubs & Restaurants they renamed it the Griffin Belle. According to Camra, “Refurbished in contemporary style in 2017, with a further make-over in 2018, the interior now features varied seating, plastic foliage and an array of TV screens showing sport (can be noisy at times). Upper floor has been converted to hotel rooms.”

Still overshadowed by tall buildings (although those in my picture have been replaced by more recent versions) and on the edge of what has for some years been the largest building site in the country if not in Europe, stretching all the way to Battersea, its earlier name might have been more appropriate.

Nine Elms Cold Store, Brunswick House, Wandsworth Rd, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-53
Nine Elms Cold Store, Brunswick House, Wandsworth Rd, Nine Elms, Lambeth, 1989 89-7g-53

Brunswick House is still there on one of the busiest traffic schemes in the country, at the junction of Wandsworth Road and Nine Elms Lane close to Vauxhall Cross, but the Nine Elms Cold Store is long gone, replaced by St George Wharf, which isn’t a wharf but a “landmark riverside development spanning across 7 acres of London’s newest area of regeneration” with the 48 storey Tower which is the tallest solely residential building in the UK.

Some describe it as ‘magnificent’ but others think it hideous and I’m more inclined to the latter view. The Guardian in 2016 called it “a stark symbol of the housing crisis“, with two-thirds of the apartments in the Tower “in foreign ownership, with a quarter held through secretive offshore companies based in tax havens.” At its peak is a £51 million five-storey penthouse “ultimately owned by the family of former Russian senator Andrei Guriev“.

Brunswick House has a long article on Wikipedia. It dates back to the mid seventeenth century but was extended in 1758. In 1860 it was bought by the London and South West Railway Company who used it as offices and a Scientific and Literary Institute. In 1994 it was sold to the railway staff association who again sold it in 2002. It is now a restaurant and the yard around it is used by an architectural salvage and supply company.

The Nine Elms Cold Store was built in 1964, a huge windowless monolith erected on the site of the South Metropolitan Gas Works, ideally placed to take barge loads of frozen meat and other goods from London’s docks and store them in its 150,000,000 cubic feet of cold dark space for onward distribution from the adjacent railway yard or by lorry. But when the docks ran down it was redundant, only 15 years after its construction.

According to Kennington Runoff after it closed it became “used illicitly as a cruising ground, a recording studio, a performance space and even a convenient spot for devil worshiping.” It remained in place derelict until 1999 as it was extremely difficult to demolish and it provided a popular location for filming when desolate urban industrial landscapes were required.

Vauxhall Station was a short walk down the road and I was soon sitting on a train on my way home.

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Lavender Hill & Wandsworth Rd – 1989

Monday, July 24th, 2023

Lavender Hill & Wandsworth Rd: On Sunday 28th May 1989 I again took the train to Clapham Junction, with time for a rather longer walk than I had made the previous day.

Battersea Reference Library, Altenburg Gardens, Battersea, 1989 89-5i-54
Battersea Reference Library, Altenburg Gardens, Battersea, 1989 89-5i-54

A short walk up Lavender Hill from the station brought me to Altenburg Gardens and this remarkable Grade II listed ‘Arts and Crafts’ Reference Library. Initial designs by Borough Surveyor 1924 T W A Hayward were treated to considerable improvements by his architectural assistant Henry Hyams who was appointed in January 1924 and was responsible for the unusual building we see today.

Hyams was – as the Survey of London at UCL Bartlett suggests “an obscure but intriguing figure, who had spent time in central Europe in the Edwardian decade before settling in Devon. He had advanced views – Esperanto, theosophy – perhaps atypical of a Hackney publican’s son, and had spent time in Wandsworth jail during the First World War for his trenchant pacifism”. His rather eclectic “Arts and Crafts” design came well after the style had gone out of fashion and included some unusual decoration as well as the Council’s motto ‘ NON MIHI, NON TIBI, SED NOBIS’ (Not for Me, Not for You, But for Us) over the main doorway.

Altenberg Gardens had been developed in the late 1880s, and has some substantial late Victorian housing but I didn’t continue along it to photograph these but returned to Lavender Hill.

Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-56
Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-56

The reference library was an extension linked to the main Battersea Central Library on Lavender Hill which had been built in 1889-90, shortly after Battersea had managed to gain its status as a separate vestry from Wandsworth.

Battersea Vestry held a competition for the building of the central Library and the winner was local architect Edward Mountford who had submitted the only design of ten submissions that was within the Vestry’s budget of £6,000.

Edward Mountford went on to win a further competition against designs by another 11 architects to design a new town hall for the Vestry of St Mary Battersea which was erected in 1891-3 and continued to serve the local authority until 1965. Here the budget was considerably larger and it shows in this Grade II* building, which according to the listing text has “Relief sculpture by Paul R Montford. Decorative plasterwork by Gilbert Seale of Camberwell. Mosaic floors by the Vitreous Mosaic Co, Battersea.“

Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-44
Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-44

This is the Grand Hall Entrance on Town Hall Road, of which I made several pictures. The design was described by Mountford as ‘essentially English Renaissance, though perhaps treated somewhat freely’. And it had included this separate entrance on the east side to the large public hall at the rear of the building. There are detailed descriptions of the building in the Survey of London on the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture site.

Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-46
Battersea Arts Centre, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-46

When Battersea became again united with Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth in 1965, this building was made redundant. Wandworth’s plans to demolish much of it were defeated by a public campaign by the Victorian Society and Battersea Society and it was Grade II* listed in 1970. It became a community arts centre in 1974 and despite a major fire in 2015 which required extensive rebuilding continues in use as Battersea Arts Centre. I appeared briefly on stage there in 2017 in a after-performance panel discussion ‘Art & Accidental Activism’ after a Lung Theatre performance of ‘E15’.

Scrap Metal Merchants, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-34
Scrap Metal Merchants, Lavender Hill, Battersea, Wandsworth, 1989 89-5i-34

This whole section of Lavender Hill including the scrap metal merchants Chase Metals at 92 has been demolished. There is a building dating from 2015 at 100 Lavender Hill but nothing on the street between this an No 66 except a hedge in front of the five storey housing blocks on Wandsworth’s Gideon Road Estate.

Houses, Lambourn Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-35
Houses, Lambourn Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-35

I walked to the end of Lavender Hill and continued along Wandsworth Road, walking a short distance down Lambourn Road to photograph these houses before returning to Wandsworth Road. This road was laid out at the start of large scale development of the area in the 1860s by Eken and Williams and the houses this terrace are larger than most with three storeys and a basement.

I liked the steps up in the roofline, partly with an extra storey but also as the houses go up the hill, as well as the repeated decoration abouve the windows and doors.

Hibbert Almshouses, 715-729 Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-22
Hibbert Almshouses, 715-729, Wandsworth Rd, Clapham, Lambeth, 1989 89-5i-22

The Hibbert Almshouses were built in 1859 to provide accommodation for older women from the Ancient Parish of Clapham, commissioned by Sarah and Mary Ann Hibbert, in memory of their father William Hibbert, a long-term resident of Clapham.

The Hibbert Almshouse Charity was established in 1864 to take over the running from the sisters and still manages the buildings for their orginal purpose, although married couples and single men of the appropriate age are now also accepted as residents – though preference is given to women if there is more than one applicant when a house falls vacant.

The architect of these Grade II listed almshouses was Edward I’Anson and the building is largely unchanged although bathrooms were added in the 1960s. The charity is currently raising funds for a manor renovation and donations are welcome.

The account of my walk will continue in a later post.

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