Kennington Park’s skate bowl is London’s oldest, having been here since 1978. It was closed soon after due to a design flaw that made it easy to fall through the safety rail, which of course made it hugely appealing to skaters. Then in 2011 Converse came along and ruined everything refurbished it, making it safer, and it reopened in 2012.
Happy new year.
Are you starting the new year in need of spiritual sustenance? Get yourself down to the Jamyang Buddhist Centre on Renfrew Road in North Kennington, one of two Buddhist centres in Kennington with a third one on the way in the former Beaufoy Institute.
On January 6th from 7.30pm till 9pm is one of Jamyang’s regular Introduction to Meditation sessions. We’ve been to one of these sessions before. What can we tell you about it?
– You’ll have to take your shoes off.
– It’s not a brazen attempt to convert you to Buddhism – Buddha barely got a mention.
– There are opportunities to ask questions. Someone else asked the question we should have asked – how to stay awake during meditation? The instructor did provide some practical suggestions but also said it doesn’t matter if you fall asleep, at which point we nodded off.
– They do a nice quiche and salad in the cafe during the day.
– It’s free but donations are welcome.
– Meditation is scientifically proven to boost concentration, reduce stress, depression, anxiety and addictive behaviours, and can even help with physical problems like heart disease and chronic pain (sorry we can’t lay our hands on the scientific proof right now).
So, all in all, an ideal opportunity to have a look around the Buddhist centre – which has a nice, welcoming vibe whatever your religious beliefs – and to try napping meditation.
Read about the history of the building – and old courthouse – here.
The Courtyard Cafe, featuring a Buddha in a glass cage made from pure Nepalese gold:
The cannons outside the Imperial War Museum in the snow:
Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park and Lambeth Road in the snow, with Perspective Building in the background, a building which is heavily inspired by ski jumps.
West Square in the snow:
Happy Christmas to all our readers.
Stuck for a Christmas present for that special food lover in your life? Get along to Bon Vivant Boulevard (AKA Brixton Road) and assemble a hamper from all the delights that are on offer.
South Kennington institution Mimi’s Deli is a good place to start. It’s a family-run deli and cafe selling Italian foods and wines, many of which would otherwise be hard to find in London.
Meats and cheeses:
Italian wines, starting at £7.50 per bottle:
If in doubt, there’s always Panettone:
They open till 7pm every day except Sundays when they close at 3pm. Still not sure? Let inspiring testimonials from the likes of Joanna Lumley, Kevin Spacey and Will Self convince you.
We need to think of a name for the northern stretch of Brixton Road to reflect all its foodie delights. Bon Vivant Boulevard? Gourmet Ghetto?
Anyway, Malinka Continental Delicatessen has been at 58 Brixton Road for at least six years but people are still discovering it. From the outside you could mistake it for a standard Polish delicatessen, and the aesthetic of the cafe area is rather utilitarian, but they make up for it with a great range of products – some Polish but mostly not – and a five star hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency (we are sticklers for hygiene).
Teapigs tea – hurray:
Cheeses:
They also do sandwiches, lasagne, pierogi and such like, and they have a comically bad website which claims they are closed on the weekends but we think this is wrong.
Malinka is a village in Northern Poland and has several meanings in Polish: raspberry, or love bite, or person who is prepared to pay wildly over the odds for nicely branded tea. Yes, we’re a pair of malinkas here at Kennington Runoff.
Other Kennington pubs boast Charlie Chaplin connections but The Three Stags trumps them all. It has a Chaplin’s Corner where Charlie’s errant father used to drink – Charlie wrote in his autobiography that this is where he saw his dad for the last time. If you can set its morbid history out of your mind then it’s worth securing the table in Chaplin’s Corner on the right in the photo below – it’s enclosed in dark wood and frosted glass for extra privacy.
We recently visited for the first time since a refit. It’s a good quality gastropub with table service and a selection of real ales, but what marks it out are its ethics. It was rated as a Three Star Sustainability Champion for the second year running this year, meaning it scored highly for sourcing local, seasonal food, focusing on animal welfare, and engaging with the community and the environment.
Plus they have 50,000 bees living on their roof, surrounded by pots of herbs such as lavender, thyme, basil, mint and sage, and flowers such as calendula, poppies, nasturtiums, cornflower and sedum. Honey can be purchased for a minimum of £20 per jar, all of which goes to fund a charitable project in Bali. Their queen bee is nicknamed Mae West and their drones are named Barack Obama.
The Three Stags is located at the junction of Kennington Road and Lambeth Road so it’s ideal for a drink or meal before or after visiting the Imperial War Museum, and good for a Sunday roast in winter.
The spirit of the pleasure gardens is seeping back into West Kennington, if not quite reaching the decadent heights of its prime when Duchesses (including Georgiana of Keira Knightley fame), Princes and other notables – including Samuel Johnson, Handel and Dickens – would flounce around what is now Spring Gardens in hot air balloon races, watch cats dropping by parachute, and marvel at the Lilliputian King in the human zoo.
Spring Gardens was also the setting for a series of summer film screenings earlier this year, such a success that they are being reprised this week in the arches of Vauxhall station with a festive Christmas theme. Complementing the Winter Screen series is a Christmas market dishing up mulled wine or cider to raise your body temperature before you sit down, and blankets to keep you from going numb while you watch the film. We are hoping that local author Will Self will honour the spirit of Dickens and Thackeray and the original pleasure gardens and settle in to watch Elf with a mega bucket of popcorn.
Full programme:
December 2013
MK II:
MK I:
Ticket proceeds are going to ‘Thames Reach’, a charity who operate a local homeless shelter.
London SW8 1SP
Ava Catherside is an East Kennington-based, ready-to-wear, androgynous fashion label created by Anna Gloria Flores and Veronica Todisco. From an austerely chic Victorian studio in Pullens Yards, the duo produce minimal designs that are stocked in boutiques around the world- including London stockist LN-CC (alongside heavyweights Balenciaga, Comme Des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto). Their clothes, produced using environmentally ethical fabrics such as Alcantara, have been featured in style bibles Vogue Italia, Tank and iD, and have been spotted in the real world catwalk that is the Cleaver Square summer fete.
For one day only (tomorrow) Ava Catherside will be selling their wares in Kennington, at their first ever private sale event:
Ava Catherside A/W 13:
The South Kennington end of Brixton Road in is becoming a haven for food and drink lovers. There’s the Oval Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, plus some very good delis and restaurants which we’ll write about soon. Best of all for hot drinks and extended visits is Cable Bar & Café, from the people behind the Scootercaffe on Lower Marsh in Waterloo – a cafe so cool it wouldn’t be out of place on Redchurch Street or in The Marais in Paris.
Cable, which used to be a greasy spoon, has a similar aesthetic to the Scootercaffe, which used to sell scooters, with vintage furniture, exposed brickwork, a poster for North by Northwest, a playlist featuring Edith Piaf, Françoise Hardy and the Velvet Underground, and live music on Tuesdays (jazz, bop, bluegrass – that kind of thing). Bands playing the nearby Brixton Academy gravitate here after soundcheck, so if you see someone who looks like they’re in Gogol Bordello or Lamb of God, they probably are.
Their coffee is top notch and food-wise they offer a selection of sausage rolls, scotch eggs and cakes. The Evening Standard have been breathlessly promoting West Kennington for some time now, which stretched to this South Kennington spot not long after it opened.
They also have a piano:
Cable Bar & Café
8 Brixton Rd, London SW9 6BU
020 8617 9629
It’s a beautiful day so, on your way to the Pullens Yards open day, why not take a walk through Kennington Park?
This is is Lambeth’s oldest park, having been established in 1854, and was previously Kennington Common where up to 300,000 chartists rallied in 1848, as well as being the site of many other protests. Nowadays it plays occasional host to fairs and London’s version of Oktoberfest, but the rest of the time there’s plenty to look out for:
There are football and hockey astroturf pitches. Bob Marley used to play football in Kennington Park while recording the Exodus album and staying at the Rastafari temple on St Agnes Place (a long-standing squatted street alongside the park that was needlessly demolished in 2007).
Oh, and Kennington Common was the place where football began – the Gymnastic Society played regularly on Kennington Common during the late 18th century.
There are also tennis, netball and basketball courts, outdoor gym facilities, a community cricket area, a skate bowl, and these outdoor table tennis tables which are a recent arrival:
Delicious local honey from Bee Urban is harvested in the grounds of the Keeper’s Lodge, although, controversially, they are due to be relocated within the park as a consequence of the Northern Line extension. You can purchase the honey from the cafe in the middle of the park, as well as at local fetes, and it really does taste great.
Prince Consort’s Lodge was originally built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 as an example of a “model dwelling” and was re-erected in the model location – Kennington – from 1852-3. It was sponsored by Prince Albert, hence the name:
Look out for these trees with weird triangular-shaped trunks (technical term), and there’s also a nature trail through the park (look for the silver signs):
Generally the park looks lovely at this time of year, although the English Flower Garden doesn’t really come into its own until spring:
So how did Kennington Park become so desirable and have so much going for it? Remember the Friends of Durning Library? Well, there’s another mysterious Kennington organisation that are equally feared and equally powerful – The Friends of Kennington Park – and they have a very informative website here. There’s also an exhaustive and exhausting Kennington Park Wikipedia entry.
