Author Archives: Kennington Runoff

Walworth Garden – The Opposite of a Garden Centre 

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If you’re lucky enough to have a garden or a windowsill, then we want to tell you all about Walworth Garden, our own organic community garden shop. If what you demand in a garden shop are gnomes, water features and fragrances then you’re out of luck here, as it’s all about the dirt and the plants and it possesses a refreshingly hippy quality.

The motto at Walworth is ‘if it isn’t in the ground then its for sale’. This hopefully doesn’t extend to the staff, as they are able to offer expert advice and possess forensic knowledge of what they’re selling. The garden sells everything from euphorbia to ferns, perennials to house plants. They also stock statement plants such Tasmanian tree ferns. And every if you don’t buy anything, check out the cacti and succulents in a giant geodesic dome. Pots and soil are also sold. It’s also a very relaxing place to just wander and sit on the many benches to escape our rather chaotic enclave.

Walworth Garden also have an extensive training programme in addition to offering a Level 2 in horticulture. Interesting courses include making perfume and fermentation, but at £85 a pop this training is far from cheap.  But on the other hand, imagine the pleasure at Christmastime when you say ‘look aunty Claire, I made you a bar of soap with some thyme stuck in it’! Or by taking the moral high road with your flatmates when they complain that your bedroom smells like a decomposing rat, by saying  ‘excuse me, but I’m HOME COMPOSTING’! 

The Craggs, the Kennington Family of Acrobats Who Went Global 

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In an age before Netflix and Hulu +, Victorian folk of all classes were entertained at music hall entertainment venues. An almost constant presence in the Halls in their early years was the Cragg family who were multigenerational acrobats specialising in trapeze acts, acrobatics, and it looks like basically just throwing each other around. For 45 years the Cragg family lived at 68 Kennington Road (now the China Walk estate) and even installed a private gym to practice their trade.  

JW ‘Papa’ Cragg was the scion of the family and was soon joined by his five sons and their probably long suffering wives. It was an expectation that the offspring join the family trade, and eventually the grandchildren were taking part.  In the early 1870’s the Craggs upped their game and took residencies in Leicester Square and at the Folies Bergeres in Paris. As there were a number of competing acrobatic acts in London at the time, the Craggs distinguished themselves by donning evening wear, as you do.  

After rave reviews In the 1870’s the Craggs went global, and embarked on a kind of Victorian Taylor Swift Eras tour of the world. The troupe made four trips to Australia, the first in 1873, and also toured Europe, New Zealand, India, Asia, and had a two year residency in the USA. After a lifetime of working together the Craggs became a very disciplined troupe and commanded huge audiences for their unique and daring way of flipping, balancing, moving and coordination. At the end of the European jaunt they earned the highest salary of any acrobatic act in the world. 

As you can imagine, juggling, rolling on the ground, and throwing people in the air while wearing evening wear can take a toll on even the fittest person, and Papa Cragg retired from performing in 1916 when he was 70 and his oldest son was 53. The family act then ceased performing but Papa continued to teach circus skills and acrobatics in his Kennington home gym until the 1920’s. In an interview in 1928 he was described as ‘the youngest old man in the world’. Proof, if ever needed, that Greater Kennington has always embraced its share of oddballs, and that’s why we live here. 

Collective Cakes

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The lovely building in the middle of Kennington Park is occupied by a family run pizza/cake establishment called ‘Collective’. Several years ago they decided to open a sandwich shop called ‘Sugar Pot’ in that frankly quite depressing parade of shops in front of Kennington Park It has now been replaced by a bakery and sandwich place called, fittingly, Collective Cakes.  

Reassuringly, the space at Collective has turned entirely into a kitchen, with goods available to consume either on a takeaway basis or on small tables out front. Our peppy server explained that the pastry chef arrives and cooks all of the baked goods (excluding croissants) from 5am. We saw your typical complement of Victoria sponge, muffins, scones, carrot cake, coffee and walnut, and lime and ginger. There are also vegan and gluten free options. 

Karen from Finance loves nothing more than a midday sweet treat to take her mind off numbers and wondering what happened to the fax machine. She had an apricot croissant, which she described as ‘of good quality and not as bouncy as those chain coffee shops’, adding that it possessed good flakiness and was a nice dark bronze, with apricot notes. Your scribe opted for one of the many savoury options and had a mozzarella, pesto and tomato sandwich. Good quality mozzarella, rich pesto, served on a kind of sourdough bread. Other sandwiches ingredients included prosciutto, stilton, and brie. They also sell homemade sourdough bread (I mean, who doesn’t).

In addition to the goodies outlined above, Collective also serves latte, cappuccino, and that old fashioned thing called coffee. Our server was keen to point out that that they also serve turmeric latte with no caffeine. We have no idea what that is but once we find that fax machine we’ll get to it.  

Raging Planet and The Power at Newport Street Gallery

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We just attended the premiere of two exciting new shows at Newport Street Gallery. And by ‘premiere’ we mean ‘the first day’ as people like us don’t get invited to actual premieres. Curated by the son of the man who owns the Gallery, Connor Hirst, in a strange manner the exhibits contrast and relate to one another. 

In the downstairs we find the exhibit ‘Raging Planet’, which is a group show of six different global artists who are endeavouring to incorporate the chaos which is inherent in our planet into their work, mostly by using elements found in the earth. So what we find are swirling, abstract paintings on aluminium. Other paintings feature pigments mixed with sawdust, and in one arresting piece large clumps of mud are painted over in a Franz Klein blue.

For us the best room is the last, where artist Richard Hiornes encrusts sculpture and paintings with copper sulphite crystals. What we see is a giant engine made inert by a residency of crystals and duelling cathedrals in the midst of a crystal invasion. So if what you demand in a show is rocks on the floor and even a small DJ booth, then this could be right up your avenue. You can dance and then fall over on a rock, recreating the experience of many Observer staff at Glastonbury.

More unsettling is the exhibit upstairs, ‘The Power and the Glory’, which is about nuclear weapons testing. We thought it was a strange contrast to the previous exhibit celebrating the earth as opposed to destroying it. The exhibit features a great deal of photos about nuclear weapons tests post WW2 in the Pacific . They are aesthetically pleasing if you can divorce this from their intended purpose, which we struggled to achieve. Mixed in with these are images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after they were destroyed. 

In the middle of the exhibit we have a beautiful exhibit of what are called ‘scholars rocks’. For centuries they have been collected in East Asia and appreciated by their abstract and wave like forms. As they are also associated with downfall,  one definition of a scholar rock is as a ‘weapon that shatters a dream’. Perhaps this therefore serves as poignant complement to the photos that surround them. 

Raging Planet and The Power and the Glory are on now until 31 August and, like love itself, is totally free. 

Unique in Black Prince Road.

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We’re blessed with an abundance of independent coffee shops in Greater Kennington, and we  recently paid a TKO (that’s The Kennington Observer) visit to new kid on the block ‘Unique’ in Black Prince Road. Located close to the Beaconsfield Galley, it inhabits that patch of land that calls itself Vauxhall but really isn’t.

Unique is a pleasing place to work for a few hours for those of you (not us as we’re in and underground bunker in Kennington Cross) fortunate enough to work from home a few days a week. In addition to teas and juices, they also have the traditional compliment of flat whites, Americanos, lattes, mochas and cappuchinos. And they even sell the coffee range ‘Curious Roo’. It is a quiet place to work and to listen to ambient music while chilling with middle class white people. They also serve croissants, cookies and brownies and have some bonkers art the walls.

And while we never objectify people at TKO based on looks alone, the staff are not bad to look at. 

Millicent Fawcett and Vauxhall Park

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The research division here at Observer have been working overtime to establish and claim feminist writer, politician, trailblazer and suffragette Millicent Fawcett as one of our own, and we think they’ve cracked it. Her many achievements are outlined here and if you’re the attentive sort you’ll be aware that she was the first female honoured with a statue in Parliament square a few years ago.

For a number of years Millicent and her equally esteemed husband Henry Fawcett lived in a house in what is now Vauxhall Park. The house included grounds and the couple realised that in an increasingly cramped Vauxhall this was a privilege which they wanted to share with others. Although the genesis of the idea came from Henry, when he died prematurely in 1884 it came down to Millicent and several other people to fashion the reality. 

The Fawcett’s home and gardens extended from South Lambeth Road back quite a bit. Although spacious, the gardens weren’t quite large enough to create a promenading style park, so Millicent and another pioneering champion of the underdog, Octavia Hill, set about purchasing buildings to create a solid, square park. The park was opened by Prince Charles in 1890. And before you throw your laptops out the window, as he was the Duchy of Cornwall the ground beneath the park was (and is) technically his. 

Vauxhall Park doesn’t look so inviting in March, but you get the point

So, you may be asking yourselves ‘now why isn’t there a memorial to the Fawcetts in Vauxhall Park’? Well this is a great local mystery. There was a very fine stature created by the Vauxhall based Doulton factory of Henry (but not our heroine, go figure) and it lived in the park for 70 years. In a moment of characteristic insanity, Lambeth Council took a sledgehammer to the statue in 1960.  Henry Fawcett’s legacy now lives on in the form of Henry Fawcett Primary School in Bowling Green Street in Oval. Apparently the bust of Henry in the school is all that remains of the vanquished statue, but this has never been proven.  And when you compare a regal bronze statue in Parliament Square to a chipped bust in a primary school corridor, I think we know who ended up with the better deal.

Fawcett’s legacy lives in the form of the Fawcett Society, which is in Black Prince Road. Their mission is to fight sexism and gender inequality through research and campaigns.  

Can You Help With Our Project?

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Some of you might think that the current Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens is the open space that was created when the original Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was closed in 1859, but you’re mistaken. It was actually a vibrant, working class neighbourhood for over 100 years consisting of Glyn Street, Auckland Street and Italian Walk. It was destroyed developed by Lambeth into its current incarnation only in the mid 1970’s.  And believe it or not, the Vauxhall Tavern used to have shops and homes attached to it. The photo with the woman in it was taking in the early 1970’s in Goding Street in the sad dying days.

As we’re sure you are aware, we here at the Runoff are nothing if not highly academic. If you lived in this community or have any information about it we’d love to hear from you and feel free to email us at kenningtonrunoff@gmail.com . So you can be a staff member, or just act like one. Our online research has not exactly been, lets say ‘fruitful’, but we plan to go to Minet history reference library when we can muster the courage to leave Greater Kennington. 

Here is a lovely photo of a family who resided in Auckland Street in 1905. If you’re reading this from your heavenly perch then we welcome your feedback. We’ll get out our ouija board. 

Top Ten Best Places to Eat in Greater Kennington

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+ One Sunday Roast

Best Roast – 24 The Oval

As 24 The Oval has maintained the Observer crown for Best Sunday Roast in our highly-scientific-yet-wholly-subjective top 10 Best Places to Eat Locally list for four years, in Summer 2024 we found it incumbent to pop over to see if they’re still deserving of this noble accolade.

As the office staff visited on a nice August Sunday,  we chose to dine on the outside terrace. Off the bat Phil from Accounts insisted on a round of Bloody Annas, which was really just a Bloody Mary spelled differently. It was high on the lemon and spice: Delicious as such but they will adjust to your taste. To get us ready for the main event of the roasts, we shared some Belted Galloway beef croquettes, which were a hit with all: Spanish-style with their crisp outer casing and unctuous middle. When the Bloody Annas started kicking in Karen from Finance even stuck two croquettes in her mouth and said, garbling, ‘well these are just ace’. Moving on.

Mini Yorkes
Extra Veg
Croquettes

Next up was the first delightful idiosyncrasy of 24 The Oval: the sharing plate of mini Yorkshire puddings with pot of gravy, just to get you going. When the roasts arrived, your scribe indulged in the roast herb fed chicken breast with bread sauce. The chicken was grilled in a kind of upmarket Nando’s style and came with a roastie and salad. The second idiosyncrasy of 24 is that extra vegetables and gravy are provided French family style to share, including a cauliflower cheese made with pungent Ogleshield.

Karen opted for the lamb roast and was served as slices of leg meat plus a small confit of shoulder. Both very tasty even if we did think at first the confit was a brownie, and were presented with a homemade mint sauce. This dish was also already supplied with most of the vegetables: roast potatoes, roast mixed colour carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, a smear of spinach puree and some gravy. 

It wasn’t a brownie

Overall, this is Sunday roast prepared with care and dedication by proper chefs: Top quality ingredients, attention to detail and the delight of abundant proper, homemade Yorkshire puddings and gravy with no sight of Aunt Bessie. We found particularly exciting (we don’t have much of a life here at the Runoff) that the 24 Oval kitchen exists entirely within the restaurant. So if you’re curious about how your Yorkies are being made, or if you just like getting burned, you can inspect how your food is being made. But maybe not after three Bloody Annas. 

Roasts are between £22-£26. Food of this quality doesn’t come cheap, but is excellent.  But will it top our list in 2026 for a fourth crown? There is a lot of competition out there, after all. 

By the way 24, if you’re reading this then you might want to ‘Glow Up’ the front of your shop as it looks rather like that branch of WH Smith in Elephant & Castle shopping centre before it closed

The Best Places to Eat in Greater Kennington #1

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(+ One Sunday Roast)

ADULIS

For the past fortnight Observer staff have been fainting in the corridors in anticipation of the top spot. Or it could be the small amount of air available in our underground offices. We can announce that the best restaurant in Greater Kennington for the sixth year is Adulis in Oval (and no, in 2025 we’re not being lazy they just still deserve it). For over 28 years Adulis has served up tender and well cooked meats, huge kirchat platters, zingy stews, great service, and all the wait staff have great hair. And they were serving tasty vegetarian fare long before it was cool.

If Eritrean food is new to you, or even if it isn’t, the best launching point at Adulis is the sampler plate  called ‘Kirchat’ (there is a vegetarian version as well). It is fundamentally a selection of their best meat and veg dishes served on a platter usually featuring Kifto, which is tender meat in Ghee and to die for. All of the dishes have have a sweet and sour, almost vinegary tinge to them. They gladly pimped our 2 person serving up to 3 as we had a third diner, and the pic is below.  Please don’t let our bad photo below put you off, as not all Eritrean dishes look like cat food.

The dish above is served on a platter with a base of bread called ‘injera’, which is a leavened pancake made with sourdough (and if you run out you can get more for free). Almost all meals here are served with it and the whole shebang is to be eaten with your good hands (or cutlery for the timid). We also recommend the chicken stew ‘dorho’ with loads of herbs and further recommend the prawns. They also have some fine looking vegan options.

On the drinks front, we usually have the Kenyan beer ‘Tusker’ or a South African white. Having said that, the speciality of the house is their Adulis honey wine. We’ve had this previously and let’s just place it in the category of ‘experimental’. The place has a slightly retro Eritrean feel to it with memetoes both current and from the past. The staff are very friendly and a good chunk of the punters are (tick!) Eritrean themselves. The place also wafts with the aroma of their coffee and popcorn ceremony.

ርሑስ መመገቢ!

The Ten Best Best Places to Eat in Greater Kennington #2

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+ One Sunday Roast

THEOS

We can see the 2025 finish line, people! Recommending the best pizza in Greater Kennington is fraught with opinionated tension and might even cause small dough based riots in Kennington Cross. We’ve chosen Theos in Elephant because of its creative toppings, great sourdough base, their delicious Pannuozzo wood fired lunch sandwiches, tiramisu, and good price point. The runner up is the newish and quirky 400 Rabbitts, in Elephant Park.

Gorgonzola
Anchovy

On the pizza front my colleague had the aubergine and Gorgonzola. An adventurous choice; the aubergine was very soft and this was offset by the sharp hit of pecorino followed by the blue hit of Gorgonzola. Your scribe had a ‘my blood pressure needs to be checked’ salt kick of an anchovy, capers, olive and mozzarella pizza. All the salty elements were balanced well, and the best element of these pizzas is that they are served on a sourdough bread that is blistered on just the good side of being burned. 

Theo’s recently won an award for best Tiramisu in London, and in our opinion it is well deserved. It ticked all the boxes of ‘Italian almost trifle’ with a perfect balance of strong coffee, dark chocolate, creamy mascarpone and served between layers of soft cream. 

While writing this article several staff people became rather obsessed with the very notion of Theos’ panuozzo sandwich so we unlocked the door to our subterranean bunker and headed over there. Your scribe had an Ortiz tuna sandwich with olives and onions and mozzarella dripping out. My colleague had the sausage and gorgonzola with mushrooms. Mind you, we will need to run to and from Theos 65 times to burn off the calories, but it was delicious nevertheless.

The tuna, but in reality they all look the same