Category Archives: buildings

The Elephant (not) in the Room

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If you’re the astute sort you’ve probably noticed that the famous statue that used to adorn the primary entrance to the ‘now past tense’ Elephant and Castle shopping centre has been removed. And if you aren’t astute then trust us, it ain’t there anymore. We’re here to tell you more about the Elephant and if we’ll ever see it again. 

The original

When the Elephant and Castle pub closed for redevelopment in 1959 the metal statue was removed and then given a second lease on life as the centrepiece when the new shopping centre opened in 1965, above. Unfortunately it vanished in still mysterious circumstances a few years later and the centre was left without a mascot. Fast forward a few years and our current elephant was fashioned as a fibreglass replica and given pride of place. For over four decades it grew as a loveable mascot of Elephant. Frequently repainted in red and pink, over time it settled into a more grey patina, more suitable for a proud pachyderm. 

The statue has been removed for several months as it is apparently undergoing a million pounds (??!!) in renovation work. According to developers Delancey “We have been keen to keep the Elephant in the local area and are now therefore pleased to announce that the Elephant & Castle statue will be moving to its new home in Castle Square”.  We think this is builder’s parlance for ‘we wanted to get rid of it but Southwark told us we had to keep it’. Castle Square is a surprisingly spiffy little square behind the old shopping centre and is the current but temporary home to many of the centres’ former tenants, as seen below. 

If you have a preoccupation for statues that go missing from one place and then turn up somewhere else, first of all you might want to seek professional help. If the condition persists, have a look at our intriguing article about the mighty South Bank Lion that adorns our fair side of Westminster Bridge. 

Regal Cinema and the Winds of Change

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Think back to those fondly remembered halcyon days when you could sit in a dark room with other people and laugh out loud. Well those days just aren’t a happenin’ at the minute, but did you know that one of London’s largest and most vital cinemas used to exist in Kennington Cross? 

When the ‘Regal’ cinema opened in Kennington Road in 1937 it was advertised as ‘South London’s new luxury super cinema’. With 2100 seats, the cinema also had a large stage with dressing rooms behind the screen, creating its dual function as a theatre.  The centrepiece was a spectacular 25 foot chandelier and full service cafe on the first floor. 

The Regal survived the Blitz but by the late 1940’s it was suffering as a result of a rapid decline in cinema attendance (we suspect that the proximity to the West End didn’t help). Change was in the wind and it was sold to a larger chain and renamed the ‘Granada’ in 1948. Sadly even the Granada couldn’t make it work and our building was closed as a cinema forever in 1961. 

There aren’t a whole lot of uses for a purpose built building with a massive stage and 2100 seats, but quickly Granada saw where the winds were prevailing – Bingo halls.Our Regal was called ‘Granada Club’ until 1991, when it was sold to Bass Holdings and renamed ‘Gala Bingo’. Some of you readers out there might have even tried your luck. 

The decline of bingo halls in the late 90’s mirrored the decline of cinema 50 years previous, and the Regal was once again left adrift. And by the late 90’s the wind was in the direction of…. The mega church. Regal/Granada/Gala/Church was a place of evangelical worship for just five years until the mega church craze waned and gave way to the next wave….Property developers.

Regal/Granada/Gala/Church finally succumbed to the wrecking ball in 2004. Luckily, by then the building was part of a local conservation area, and Lambeth told the developers they could bulldoze some of the building but had to retain the original facade and entrance to the cinema. The entrance survives as part of our most recent wave of obsession….The mini supermarket.  The rest of the site was redeveloped into what is now the architecturally soulless ‘Metro’ apartments, but inhabited by many lovely locals.

Royal Doulton in Vauxhall

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We humans were not built to spend six hours a day on ‘Zoom’ calls (which we are thinking about renaming ‘Co-Vid’ calls) and if you’re working from home it is always good to take a brisk walking break. We recommend having a gander at one of the most striking buildings in our area, the former Royal Doulton Pottery building now known as ‘China Works’.

Royal Doulton was established in Vauxhall Walk but moved to the corner of Black Prince Road and Lambeth High Street where this Gothic wedding cake was erected in 1876. This building is a survivor of a vast Doulton complex which was in use until the 1950’s. The building is cast in red brick with polychromy and an array of terracotta highlights. It was intended as a living advertisement to show off the Doulton product. 

This particular building was used as a museum and art school, and the relief above the door (called a ‘tympanum’, and aren’t we smart) depicts a group of people inspecting some terracotta pots, and a woman with a cat painting one. By the 1870’s Doulton was moving in a more decorative direction with the aid of Lambeth School of Art, which is now City & Guilds of London Art School in Kennington Park Road. It should be noted that almost all of the painting and decorating of the pots was undertaken by women, and was a rare and early example of a skilled craft which women could access. 

The area around the Doulton Factory is about to undergo some very profound and very controversial changes. We don’t make judgements on planning issues on KR but judge for yourself. The building is, thank god, listed and currently occupied by one of those workspace outfits which recently have been popping up like head lice. So our gothic confection is going nowhere, but it might suffer the indignity of having a ‘Franco Manca’ stuck into it one day.

Vauxhall goes Marmite

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A picture tells a thousand words #3

The last of our three part mini posts takes us up to Vauxhall. The now rather unprepossessing Westminster Business Square (now the much cooler named Vox Studios) at the corner of Kennington Lane and Durham Street for many years was the London HQ of Marmite.

The Marmite Food Extract Company was formed in 1902 and was based at Burton upon Trent where it had ready access to its main ingredient – a by-product of the brewing process – courtesy of the Bass Brewery. It is still manufactured in the Staffordshire town today.

This ‘Marmite Goes Vegas’ photo was taken in 1951. It closed in 1967. The homeless charity St Mungo’s took on the building for use as one of its first hostels in the 1970s, and now it is one of those flexible workspaces that nobody goes to anymore. It doesn’t look quite as exciting now.

The internet is littered with stories of the smells that came out of the place. People either hated it or loved it (you knew that was coming, right?).

The children of Walnut Tree Place

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A picture tells a thousand words #1

If you’re a regular reader then you’ll know that we love old photos of Greater Kennington. We have unearthed three very different photos and over the next three days we will take on little journeys to let you know what they tell us about our community. 

These lovely kiddos were residents of former Walnut Tree Place and the photo was taken in the summer of 1921. If you look closely you can see blackout boards on some of the windows (although obsolete after WW1 ended in 1918). These homes were built during the first half of the 19th century mostly to house the families of people who worked in factories along the Thames. 

Poor housing conditions became a pressing issue after WW1 and these homes were torn down by London County Council not long after this picture was taken. Between 1928 and 1934 the homes were replaced by what is now the China Walk Estate on the south side of Lambeth Road. The buildings were named after renowned China manufacturers. Walnut Tree Place has changed quite a bit in the past 99 years.

A mysterious model village in Vauxhall

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If you’re anything like us (and you know you are) you probably spend a fraction of your working week thinking ‘if only there was a miniature mock Tudor village of homes no larger than two feet high in greater Kennington’. Well guess what dear reader, you’re in luck. A mysterious village exists in Vauxhall park, but if you blink you’ll miss it. 

Our little Smurf village was created in 1949 by a retired engineer from West Norwood but not a great deal more is known about it. It was originally intended for Brockwell Park (where the rest of the  village still stands) but this assortment was moved to Vauxhall park in the 1950’s. I mean really, why should Brockwell Park have all the fun? The village consists of six homes and three outbuildings and something vaguely resembling a pub. Cast in concrete and lead, these diminutive dwellings were meant to last, but the reason still remains unknown. 

A nice gawp at the tiny homes in Vauxhall park is just one reason to check it out. It’s also a delightful place to spend a few hours, even in the midst of autumn. They have tennis courts, a kids area, and table tennis amongst other attractions. A few years ago a local benefactor even donated an interesting human sundial to the park. The method by which time is told by the use of the body is suggestively called an ‘analemmatic sundial’. We would love to have been a fly on the wall when the following conversation took place – 

“Hi, is this Vauxhall Park? I’m a benefactor who is really interested in anatomy and I’d like to install an analemmatic sundial into your garden. Any chance of that”? 

Getting a bit botanical in Montford Place

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The Beefeater Distillery became an ‘experience’ in 2014 and since then the Runoff has been keen to visit.  However, we rather balked at the notion of shelling out £16 a head to tour what is in essence a factory, even with the added benefit of getting sozzeled in the end. So when we saw that #beinvauxhall were offering two for one tickets we leapt at the chance. We wrote a little missive about the history of Beefeater in Kennington last year. 

The Beefeater experience starts self guided, with a very slick history of the sauce, covering everything from the ‘gin lane’ era of Hogarth and unregulated spirits, to US prohibtion and the rise of the speakeasy. Intertwined are fun little videos about how gin is produced and the propagation of gin distilleries in London over the years. 

Our enthusiastic Italian tour guide Maria took over for the second part of the tour and put more depth into the gin making process. In the tasting room we sampled different kinds of gin and the botanicals that give different varieties their unique flavour. This included not only juniper but also orange peel, coriander, tea, licorice, and angelica seed. Our only slight digression was when Maria asked ‘so what does that remind you of’ and your scribe shouted ‘Bombay Sapphire’. Moving on…

The last part of our journey was indeed the most fascinating as we had a very informative tour of the stills and learned more about the distillation process. Maria was also able to verify a long held Kennington urban myth-…..only five people are employed and produce all of the Beefeater gin sent around the globe. 

The event ended with a G&T in their tasting room and we left with the best of both worlds – feeling cerebrally enhanced and a bit tipsy. With the added benefit of being able to say to our mates with confidence – ‘yeah, I’m really getting heavy notes of angelica seed here’. 

The Be in Vauxhall deal runs at least until the end of the year, and details can be found here.  Even if Be in Vauxhall is a faceless marketing company they still seem to know what’s going on, so its fun to have a root around their website if nothing else.

From workshops to squatters – a social history of the Pullens estate

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If you live in Walworth, or just walk through it, you’ve probably noticed a very fine example of Victorian tenement style dwellings in Penton Place. These are the remaining buildings of the Pullens estate. They have a very curious history, boys and girls, and we’re going to tell you about their history of workmen and squatters rights. 

The Pullens estate was made of 684 almost identical one bedroom dwellings with 106 workshops behind (in Clements, Pecock and Illfie Yards, which remain). This was an early version of a live/work space as most of the people worked in the workshops and cobbled streets behind the buildings.  This contrasts with the later Peabody dwellings which just focused on housing families. While the dwellings proved wildly popular, not a great deal is known about the workshops.  

Zoom ahead to the 1977 and, in the eyes of Southwark, the estate was in serious decline and they wanted it demolished. After a high court battle half of the estate was demolished and half remained. The battle emboldened the residents, who formed a tight knit community in order to fend off future threats. To combat this, Southwark decided to stop letting out properties as they became vacant. With the support of the Tenants Association, the properties were given over to squatters who acted as caretakers. During two drawn out legal procedures in the 1980’s over threatened evictions, public interest in the plight of the squatters grew and it gained national attention. 

By 1986 Southwark had enough, and on 10 June the bailiffs moved in to evict the squatters. The residents were prepared, and many barricaded their homes against forced entry. 26 people were evicted, but as the bailiffs did not understand the unique layouts of the buildings, many just shifted their belongings and moved back in again. This became known at the ‘Battle of the Pullens’. Negotiations followed afterwards which led to the squatters being awarded caretakers rights and plans to demolish the rest of the estate were abandoned. The association were also responsible for turning the site of a demolished building into a park. It is now Pullen’s Gardens and a lovely place for a spot of lunch. 

Runoff gets cultural

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Pimlico isn’t in Greater Kennington, so let us apologise in advance. However, you can actually kind of see it from Greater Kennington, so yesterday we packed our passport to Pimlico to check out Tate Britain on it’s first week of reopening. 

There have been split opinions in the media about the efficacy of reopening museums in the midst of a pandemic. Some see it as unsafe and also burdensome to have to be allocated a slot to view a painting, while others see it as crucial to an institutions’ survival and a source of inspiration for folks. All public galleries in London now operate via timed entry only, booked online (which means you can’t just swan in off the street). At Tate you are asked to choose two ‘routes’ through the free stuff; 1540-1890 or 1930-now.  Booking was easy enough with plenty of open slots.

We approached the gallery with an ominous feeling that we might be the only people in there, but were pleasantly surprised. It was about as busy as usual and felt quite normal (well if your definition of normal extends to walking around looking like a bank robber). There were arrows on the floor to guide you through the collections but it was more or less the route taken anyway, and there was no harm in visiting a previous room if you desire. There was no queuing in front of paintings and the rooms felt well spread out, with plenty of gallery guides present to ensure that it stayed that way. 

Some of the rooms are closed (such as the Turner galleries) but most are open. The giftshop and Djanogly café are open, and the acclaimed ‘Steve McQueen Year 3’ exhibit in the main gallery has been extended. The cloakroom ain’t gonna happen, however, so leave your giant suitcase at home and enjoy!  Oh, and the exit is now through a small door in the cafe.

Popup paella in Elephant?

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If you told us a new restaurant had opened in the soon to be demolished Elephant and Castle shopping centre we’d suggest you rush off to your nearest hair salon to have your temperature checked. But it has! A new pop up paella place (say that 10 times fast) has just opened on the former site of the rather dreary caff ‘Sundial’ next to Boots. 

For the uninitiated, paella is a rice based Spanish dish and one of those things god placed on this earth to make us happy. A bit like Lorraine Kelly. Paella Shack is run by the London Paella School (who knew?) and has been open for a few weeks. It offers seafood, chicken and vegan paella for £6/7 and they also do a side treat in bits of tapas. 

My associate had the seafood paella and she/he described it as being stuffed with seafood, well cooked rice, good portion size, nice oily pepper, and just the right amount of saffron. Your scribe opted for the chicken paella which was presented with big chunks of chicken, saffron, paprika turmeric and oil. A lot of non authentic paellas include things like onion and chorizo, but this one was the real deal and a perfect size for a hearty lunch. 

Paella Shack is open daily and available for takeaway and you can also eat in. We chose the eat in option, which is probably what it feels like to eat in a prison canteen, but there you go. Pop up places are almost by definition not pretty, but this food certainly is.