Apartment tower, West Kennington, London by Keith Williams Architects. Behold those children transfixed by its beauty:
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is open for another week, until August 17th.
Here was Kennington’s contribution to last year’s exhibition, which is being built at present.
You could live in Kennington for decades and never happen across Kempsford Road. You could live on Kempsford Road and have no idea there’s an art gallery there. But there is – Greengrassi, AKA Corvi-Mora. Even the doorbell is hard to reach – presumably short people aren’t big art buyers.
If you can find the gallery, we recommend visiting between now and April 26th as the main room downstairs is showing Everything is about to happen, “an ongoing archive of artists’ books selected by Gregorio Magnani”.
All the books and pamphlets are either self-published or from small publishers. So yes, what we’re talking about here is a load of art books by people you’ve never heard of, laid out on a huge wooden table. It’s much better than it sounds because so many of the books are intriguing and/or beautiful, like the room in which they’re displayed.
These books celebrate the mundane, cheap jokes, puns, sloganeering, and porn… all the classic themes of modern art are here. If you want to read them in depth you are supposed to take them into the reading station and don white gloves.
Or rubber gloves if you want to look at the top ones below (n.b. this next image is NSFW, unless you work in a modern art gallery or The Locker Room):
Opening hours: 11am to 6pm Tuesday to Saturday
Address: 1A Kempsford Road (off Wincott Street), London SE11 4NU
There are plans afoot to fill in the subways at the north roundabout in North Kennington. With our focus on the finer things in Kennington life, you might think we’d say good riddance to subways. You’d be wrong. Subways provide extra space for pedestrians. Without them, locals will face long waits at pedestrian crossings or, more likely in our case, dangerous dashes across up to six lanes of traffic. Where they’re confusing or aesthetically challenged, let’s have more signs, more lighting, and a fresh lick of paint rather than filling them with tonnes of concrete.
So we’re backing the Save Our Subways campaign.
This is our biggest foray yet into campaigning, but we’re brimming with confidence following the success of our campaigns to bring veggie burgers to Honest Burger, Waitrose to Kennington, and mindfulness to Sally White staff. Only this time we need your help.
Have a look at the “Boris Bodge” proposals here and register your opinions here, paying particular attention to question 4.
Photo courtesy of saveoursubways.org
Lambeth Walk was immortalised in a music hall song from 1937. When the song was written, 159 shops lined the street and catered for every need, including eleven butchers, two eel and pie shops (one with a tank of live eels outside), a bird dealer and a tripe dresser. To read about the history of the street, go here or to this site which has some great old photos and maps, dating back to a time when it was surrounded by fields.
While the street declined in the second half of the last century, it’s on its way up again, along with the rest of North West Kennington, with lots of cool, creative businesses opening up nearby such as architects, a violin maker, a poetry school, pop up bars, and of course Damien Hirst’s new gallery coming soon.
Here’s the former Pelham Mission Hall, now the Henry Moore Sculpture Studio which is part of Morley (adult education) College:
On the left of the photo, on the first floor, you can see the outdoor pulpit, once used to offer two-for-one perfumes to the market-goers below in exchange for their attendance at church.
(Incidentally, there’s a Henry Moore sculpture on display close to Kennington, in the middle of the Brandon Estate.)
Lambeth Walk’s other great surviving building is the former Lambeth Baths, which since 1971 has been the Lambeth Walk Group Practice award winning GP surgery (who knew that there were awards for GP surgeries?):
Imagine if a community took over an abandoned square and restored its houses and communal areas to their former glory, planted mimosa, beech and mulberry trees, lavender, vines, ferns and palms where there had been a derelict playground, and turned the whole square into an oasis of peace and beauty. Imagine they started a café and community centre where volunteers fed the residents vegan food while they rebuilt the kitchens in their derelict homes. Then imagine one of London’s finest delis and cafes opened on the square. Imagine no longer – this is Bonnington Square in West Kennington, a magical, tranquil yet vibrant area, just yards from the noise of the Vauxhall gyratory. The only thing you might have to imagine is the part where Coalition politicians make the short walk from Parliament to Bonnington Square, then have an epiphany about the positive side of squatting.
The square was built in the 1870s, and was earmarked for demolition in the late 1970s, until squatters moved in. This video from The Guardian’s website tells the story of the remarkable work the squatters carried out.
Here’s the community garden in the middle of the square, dubbed Bonnington Square Pleasure Garden in honour of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens:
Not bad for a former WWII bomb site. Channel 4 gardener Dan Pearson was amongst the residents responsible for it.
In 1998 the squats were legitimised when the housing cooperative the squatters had formed was allowed to purchase the buildings. Nowadays Bonnington Square is one of the most desireable addresses in London thanks to its beautiful houses and gardens, its location, the Bonnington Cafe, and Italo Deli. Oh, and there’s a ley line running directly through the square, which also takes in Brunswick House, Sally White and lane seven of the Palace Bowl in Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre.
Bee Ridgway writes evocatively about her time staying on Bonnington Square here.
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.
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.
In the early 20th century, East Kennington’s magnificent Pullens Estate, AKA the Pullens Buildings, comprised almost 700 properties and stretched all the way to Manor Place. In the seventies the surviving buildings were threatened with demolition. Residents and squatters fought back (Kennington owes a lot to the preservation efforts of squatters) and thank goodness they did – these are some of London’s last surviving Victorian tenement buildings, and their workshops host a thriving community of creative people, as well as providing film sets for the likes of The King’s Speech (in the scene where the king goes to visit the speech therapist for the first time).
Twice a year they host an open day and their Christmas event is coming up next weekend. It’s the ideal opportunity to look around these unique spaces and pick up unusual Christmas presents. How about some Alex Monroe jewellery for a fraction of the Liberty’s price, or some pottery moulded from vegetables, or a handmade loot, or some architect-designed furniture, or a print of all the regions of the shipping forecast? It’s all here, in the most amazing and rather Christmas-y setting.
Pullens Yard, with workshops along both sides:
An installation of umbrellas from a previous open day, an idea that later made it to Carnaby Street:
Naomi Campbell used to live in Iliffe St, below, and, wait for it, the young Charlie Chaplin lived in one of the Pullens Buildings for a while:
The loot making workshop, who supply all Kanye West’s loot needs:
The International Maritime Organisation is headquartered in North West Kennington, near Lambeth Bridge. They have an impressive collection of flags on the front of the building, and the ship you can see poking out of the front continues all the way back for some 300 metres, with the rest of the building having been constructed around it.
