Buildings in Greater Kennington have stories, and sometimes smells. The story of what is now Vox Studios is a living metaphor for how Vauxhall has evolved over time. From brewery to Marmite factory and from a homeless charity to a Gen Z pop up office space this is the four stage life of a building that reflects how we have changed and the smells we’ve tolerated.
From the dawn of the industrial age until the 1960’s our patch of south London provided a much needed repository for smelly things that London needed but didn’t necessarily want on its front door. Victorian Greater Kennington was punctuated with vinegar works, soap factories, coal spewing industries and of course Gasometers. So Vauxhall proved the ideal HQ for the New London Brewery Company. From 1897 they produced beers for over 78 local pubs. It was a major regional player in the drinks trade, employing hundreds of local people to work yeast, logistics, and deliver barrels. The present day car park was once filled with horses, carriages and doubtless heaps of acrid horse poo. Sadly, due to the extremely competitive nature of the drinks trade, our mighty brewery went into liquidation in 1925.
With all those hops and stills hanging around, when the mighty Marmite folks began sniffing around for a London HQ the brewery was an ideal spot. Part of the late Victorian building was pulled down and a more suitable edifice created in 1927. For the next 40 years Marmite was produced and hauled away by the lorryload, and the internet is full of tales of the aroma of the area. With Gasometers, Marmite, and a pickle factory (now Beefeater HQ) basically back to back the funk factor must have been overwhelming.
As smelly factories moved out, Vauxhall still acted as a repository of things London didn’t want to look at – the homeless. Older residents might remember the wonderful homeless charities Thames Reach and Centrepoint in Vauxhall, and when St. Mungos was looking for its first building to house the homeless, the old Marmite site seemed ideal and from 1973 it offered 200 beds to the most vulnerable. Since its humble days at our little factory, St. Mungo’s has become one of the UK’s largest homeless charities and helps tens of thousands of people a year.
Skipping jauntily ahead to its most recent incarnation. The Workspace group has built a massive extension and has styled the factory as ‘Vox Studios’ with the forecourt smell of hops, Marmite and horses being replaced with £5 skinny white lattes. Some might view the young tech types that it attracts as being good for the local economy. Others might see them as contributing little to the economy other than by making home prices higher. Making it yet another thing that Vauxhall doesn’t want but nevertheless needs.
If you want to watch a creepy, AI generated film about the smells of Victorian London, watch away! But you might need a nice shower afterwards.
