If you have a spare 14 minutes (and we know you do) have a listen to a delightful podcast about the current life and history of Kennington Park by Blue Badge tour guide and Walworth resident Isobel.
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Category Archives: parks
Bee Urban, People!
A few days ago we had a stroll through Kennington Park to check out the new pizza joint ‘Collective’ (which we will review, but we’re busy at KR towers) and encountered a gaggle of folk apparently in haz mat suits. We instantly thought ‘FINALLY a team has assembled to grapple with the great pong of the Kennington tube platform. As it turns out they we had stumbled upon ‘Bee Urban’, a secret garden and bee sanctuary on the Walworth side of Kennington Common.
After becoming slightly obsessed with bees following our discovery of an apiary at Walworth Garden Farm, we totted along to Bee Urban and had a conversation with manager Barnaby to find our more about their good deeds. Bee Urban is a bee centric social enterprise with a goal of promoting positive, ecologically sound gardening and greening with a focus on faming and the preservation of our buzzy friends. They are particularly skilled in offering courses and training for vulnerable people and kids.
Based in the Old Keeper’s Lodge behind the café, Bee Urban is not only a lovely refuge from our urban lives but also a place to stroll, contemplate, and to purchase honey and other accessories associated with bees. There are also many ways to get involved for both adults and kids, from making (and buying) honey to courses dedicated community gardening and biodiversity. We only have a few days of warmth and greenery lefty folks, so check it out!
Cable Bakery & Roastery
Cable Bakery & Roastery is a very exciting new arrival from the couple behind the Cable Bar & Cafe and Waterloo’s Scootercaffe. It’s situated at 82 Bolton Crescent, a street that runs along the side of Kennington Park and was previously most notable for an adventure playground and a bondage shop (Fetish Freak – “your fetish is our business”, but not if, like us, your fetish is for four coloured pens, although to be fair, we haven’t enquired so we can’t be sure).
The decor is every bit as stylish as their other two establishments, with vintage coffee machines scattered around the place.
As well as these stools, there are a couple of small tables. The establishment is already proving popular so you may not get a seat at busy times, but you can always head around the corner to Cable Bar instead.
They bake sourdough bread and roast coffee on site, all organic:
As well as the expected hot drinks, they serve smoothies, sandwiches, chicken and beef broth and other lunch options with plans to add more. They also have a good selection of cakes – we had an excellent slice of apple pie.
They’re open Monday to Friday 9.30am to 7pm and Saturdays from 10am to 3pm, although hours may increase in the future. Let’s hope so – this place is great.
Address: 82 Bolton Crescent, SE5 0SE.
The Old Dairy at Vauxhall City Farm
We think we may have identified the most child-friendly corner of Greater Kennington, with the opening of the new extension to Vauxhall City Farm, and its star attraction, The Old Dairy Cafe.
A slick building with clean, minimal lines, it is at odds with the crafty, homespun aesthetic of the original farm buildings, which started life as a squat, and a neat visual metaphor for the area it sits in. It’s been busy on both occasions that we have visited, but there is plenty of seating both inside and out, with picnic tables around the duck pond for finer days.
They offer superior sandwiches and cakes – including gluten and dairy free options – and simple, homespun food, with a soup, salad, quiche, open sandwich and hot dish of the day in smaller and larger portion sizes, mostly vegetarian. We ordered the white bean “risotto” with asparagus, spinach and onion broth, and understood why quotation marks had been inserted once it arrived without a grain in sight. The leek and feta tart with olives and capers, and sun-dried tomato Spanish omelette were more satisfying and accurately described.
The cake stand:
For their core customer, they also provide a wide variety of Ella’s Kitchen products, a hot kids’ meal of the day (again in smaller and larger portion sizes), as well as a selection of mini sandwiches for smaller hands, and a pile of the iconic Ikea Antelop highchairs stacked in one corner, all in immaculate condition. There is a children’s play area in one corner of the cafe, and when we visited during their ‘Spring Spectacular’ there was a charming and well-attended story and rhyme time with an animal theme, complete with props. Watch out Tea House Theatre, pay attention NCT groups, there’s a new destination in Kennington’s own Nappy Valley.
Walworth Garden Farm
You probably know about Vauxhall City Farm, on Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. You may know about the newish Oasis Farm Waterloo, something of a work in progress on Carlisle Lane (Sadiq Khan visited there the other day). But did you know there’s rather a lovely Garden Farm just yards from Kennington tube?
Walworth Garden Farm is a charity and social enterprise which has been going for nearly 30 years (presumably they used to be based in Walworth).
They have very frequent events and courses, about gardening, beekeeping, herbal medicine and such like, or you can just pop in if the gate on Manor Place is open (that’s what we did).
It’s a real oasis, and very lush:
This bench is rather lovely:
They also have some sizeable greenhouses:
Address: 206 Braganza St, London SE17 3BN.
Bee Urban
Bee Urban is a honeybee-centric social enterprise based in Kennington Park. They also sell the most delicious honey we’ve ever tasted. Beware – it’s so flavoursome that supermarket honey will never taste the same again. You can buy it from local fetes like the Kennington Fete and Pullens Yard Open Studios, or just pop in to Bee Urban and pick some up.
They used to be based in the Old Keeper’s Lodge but since Northern Line extension works began they have moved to a spacious new site behind the cafe in Kennington Park:
There are three great opportunities to visit Bee Urban this weekend as part of Find Your London festival. Tomorrow night, Friday, they’re having a cob oven pizza night from 5pm to 9pm.
Then on Saturday March 19th there’s an open day from midday to 5pm with bees, habitats and cob oven breads.
And on Sunday they’re putting on tasters about honey bees and beekeeping from 11am to 1pm, 1pm to 3pm, and 3pm to 5pm.
Address: Bee Urban, The Hive, Kennington Park, St Agnes Place, London SE11 4BE.
GROW ELEPHANT
Today was our first visit to GROW ELEPHANT, a new community garden just off New Kent Road (enter by the red telephone box opposite Falmouth Road).
They’re open until 10pm tonight as part of Open House London and there will be a BBQ and DJs.
Mobile Gardeners are behind the garden, as they are behind the Wansey St and Elliott’s Row Pocket Parks, but this venture is much bigger in scale and in an even more dramatic location, surrounded by the new and half built tower blocks of North Kennington.
It’s free to join and one of these tubs could be yours to tend:
The Top Ten Best Lunch Spots in Kennington – no. 10 – Imperial War Museum café
Positives: The food, by Peyton & Byrne, is unusually good for a museum cafeteria. Update in 2019: the food is no longer by Peyton & Byrne and is no longer above average.
You can sit outside in Geraldine Mary Harmsworth park when the weather is fine.
Negatives: Hordes of tourists, especially during school holidays. Often a lengthy queue at lunchtime.
Hygiene rating: doesn’t seem to have one yet
Address: Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ
Come back next Sunday to see what’s at no. 9.
Kennington Park and its new Flower Garden
It’s all change in Kennington Park at the moment, and this weekend was a big one thanks to the reopening of the flower garden after a £500k makeover. We bring you photos, with apologies to the woman who we inadvertently followed around:
The flower garden originally opened in 1931 and its layout has remained much the same since, including this water feature:
This new sundial was made from Welsh slate by Sam Flintham, a student of historic stone carving at Kennington’s own City & Guilds:
Get down there quick while the roses are still in season:
Elsewhere in the park, the Kennington Park Centre on Bob Marley’s old hang out, St Agnes Place, is newish and features an arts and community centre, a stay and play club, and an adventure playground. Also newish is the exercise equipment just north of the cafe, which is proving very popular.
Finally, one of the big concerns about Northern Line extension works in the park was that Bee Urban, those harvesters of the world’s tastiest honey, would have to be relocated. Well, they have been, and their new site next to the cafe looks mightily impressive:
Join the Friends of Kennington Park here – they made all this happen.
Lambeth Palace Gardens
We finally visited Lambeth Palace Gardens for the North Lambeth Parish Mega-Fete.
This is a garden so big (over ten acres) that you can barely see from one end to the other!
We were promised morris dancing, and we got it:
The North Lambeth Parish Fete was Kennington’s best publicised event since The Great Chartist Meeting of 1848. But if you somehow missed it then don’t despair – there’s another chance to visit the garden today, and the first Wednesday of every month – it’s the Lambeth Palace Garden Open Day from midday to 3pm. It’s £4 or free for children. The entrance is on Lambeth Palace Road. More info here.
This is the oldest continuously cultivated garden in London, having been a private garden since the 12th century. The big question is why isn’t this huge, lovely central London garden open to the public every day? Sort it out Archbishop Welby.
