Category Archives: Gardens

BCO Christmas Estates Tour

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Orchestral music is often inaccessible to many people for a variety of reasons, but we’re about to be blessed yet again this weekend in Walworth for a different kind of Christmassy concert that are free and open for everyone! 

Brixton Chamber Orchestra is a diverse group of 25 Brixton based instrumentalists who provide and create music across a range of genres including…wait for it….classical, disco, gospel, grime, rap, swing, pop, drum & bass and others, and often have guest vocalists. They usually ply their trade in community halls and churches in Brixton, which explains why they’re not on our radar. And they’re not in Greater Kennington. But they are now.

Funded by Arts Council England and, surprisingly, by Lambeth Council, BCO is in the midst of a Christmas estates tour of 11 estates in Lambeth. They will be gracing us with their presence on Saturday in the Brandon Estate (those large buildings at the back of Kennington Park). Saturday, 21st December @ 3:30 PM 
Maddock Way, London SE17 3NH 

This looks like it might be outside, so stop by the offie your way to pick up your favourite Christmas tipple.

We attended this event in 2022 and it was great fun. Each show is unique and they’ve been known to feature guests musicians. They also encourage folks to get up and sing along, which should be made easier with that bottle you bought from the offie. And if this is sounding like a kids event, trust us it isn’t. Not that there is anything wrong with kids, a few Runoff staff were once kids themselves. If you can’t make it or don’t live in Greater Kennington there are more dates on their website.

Did we mention it’s free? Did we add that we love free? The clip below is a summer tour from a few years ago but lets you know what they’re about.



Fun Event This Weekend at Bee Urban

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We might be taking the word ‘fun’ a bit far here but this event on Saturday certainly sounds bonkers so of course we’re interested. Of the information available by the QR code, the event ‘is grounded in spoken and written and spoken language’ with live performances including a jazz band. This is all sounding a bit New Agey to us, which begs the question of bees actually getting involved in the event. We’re thinking along the lines of synchronised stinging.

Multipolyscripttoscribble (?) takes place this Saturday at Bee Urban in Kennington Park

RVT Sports Day at Spring Gardens

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Looking for a fun distraction on what is probably the last weekend of the summer? Of course you are and so are we, and we can recommend nothing better than the charity raising and inclusive Royal Vauxhall Tavern Sports Day at the back of Spring Gardens on Monday 26 August from 1pm. 

For the uninitiated, Sports Day is our own little Notting Hill carnival, with soca and steel drums substituted with handbag throwing, tug of war and drag queens.  The event is composed  of approximately 10 teams, usually dressed up and with great names. As you can imagine, there is a definite comedy element to the proceedings and is MC’ed some real BBC sports reporters who corral events into a semblance of actual competition. The various tasks (egg and spoon, the 50 metre mince, drag race relay, etc) are constructed in a knockout format with the winning team being crowned at about 5pm

This event is free but bring some cash as there will be charity buckets and volunteers about, and there is also a raffle.  The day is certainly not limited to a specific demographic and there are a number of families there with kids, older folks, and an overall sense of mirth abounds. There are bars, music and once in a while the cute critters from Vauxhall City Farm even pop over for a visit. Our suggestion is to grab a blanket and some food and make a picnic out of it. The website indicates a kickoff at 1, but is usually about 1:30. And If you are going please pop over and say hello to the Runoff team. And good luck trying to find out what we look like, as we might just be a room of AI chatbots.  

The highlight of the day has to be the rhythmic gymnastics because, let’s be frank, you haven’t truly lived until you’ve witnessed a dozen hairy men in tutus dancing to ‘Toxic’. 

Women’s Books at Lambeth Palace Library

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Located at the very pinnacle of the Runoff catchment area, you might not know about the nine storey Lambeth Palace Library. In fact, you’re probably thinking ‘SAY WHAT, there’s a nine storey library in Greater Kennington?!’ The massive structure opened in 2021 in a pocket of Archbishop’s park and is a victory of understatement (a bit like us). While it’s a research library primarily, they allow access to us pesky Greater Kenningtonians when they have an exhibit  and is now an establish part of the Kennington cultural scene (it’s a thing). 

‘Her booke’ Early Modern Women and their Books at Lambeth Palace Library  is the petite yet perfectly formed exhibit currently on in the exhibition room.  Focussing on a time when female erudition was viewed with suspicion, this exhibition highlights material owned, written, commissioned, and translated by women from the 15th to early 19th centuries. It celebrates the ways in which women and their books were an integral part of England’s devotional, intellectual, and bibliographical cultures. Insightful little sections outline the production and use of books for personal and spiritual practices; books as a statement of power and piety; books as a site to demonstrate women’s intellectual ability; and the material evidence of women’s book ownership.


Items on display in this almost complete dark but still legible exhibit include correspondence from a future Archbishop of Canterbury about Jane Austen; first editions of the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley including a first edition of Frankenstein which we naughtily photographed, and books translated for Elizabeth I.  They’re displayed alongside other works related to known and unknown women from the collection (not all religious). And if you can’t get enough there are a selection of free talks about women and books  that  can be booked on the website. 

‘Her booke’ Early Modern Women and their Books at Lambeth Palace Library is on now until 21 November and is totally free. Entering the building is a bit daunting as you need to get buzzed in, but just say you’re going to the exhibit and the guards will merrily show you the way. And don’t miss the quiet lily pond studded lake when you walk up the stairs. And you can have some random fun by scoring some King Charles honey in reception. 

Kennington Park Festival

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Following on from our post on Monday, we’re here to deliver another event this weekend! We’ve usually held off promoting the Kennington Park Festival as it appears to be geared towards kids. But as the organisers have asked us nicely, we’ve reconsidered as there are dancers and lots of local food pop ups involved on board. However, when we asked that question central to the hearts of our – ‘will there be a bar’, they replied ‘no’. Oh well, it is free after all (and we love free).

Free Garden Museum and a Scary Gnome

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In our first instalment of fun things to do this weekend, over at the Garden Museum on Sunday (the 14th) they’re having a Neighbours Day and we think its something that you might just want to get your hands dirty for. There will be workshops on flower arranging and pressing, seed bomb making, face painting, and live music. There is no bar but this might be a good thing given that you’ll be surrounded by sharp gardening implements that could inflict life altering damage.

The best part of the day is that the museum itself will be open for free (usually £15, which we think is a bit steep) and there will be periodic tours of the exhibits and the beautiful decommissioned church in which it is set. For those who haven’t been, the museum encompasses bedding design, implements, seeds, old lawn mowers, FlyMos, and descriptions of how certain plants were brought to the UK. There is also a small art gallery and you can climb the medieval tower. The garden gnome collection is particularly impressive 

Neighbours Day is on Sunday from 11-4 and is totally free. And by ‘neighbours’ we think they’re liberal in their definition. And this will be your chance, and these chances don’t come by very often, to meet a scary garden gnome that looks JUST LIKE TONY BLAIR. 

North Lambeth Parish Fete

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Hosted in collaboration with Daniel Cobb Estate Agents and none other than the Holy Ghost himself, the North Lambeth Parish Fete is coming up this Saturday, and we will certainly be there (we’ve actually never been but more on that later). The Fete is a big event in the Greater Kennington social calendar and very inclusive. It’s now bigger and better than ever, and the weather looks pleasing indeed.

On a very rare occasion we visited the gardens of Lambeth Palace and they’re stunning, extensive and almost never open to the public. The price of a ticket itself (£5) justifies a wander around, and no booking is required.  According to our sources, the Fete is kid friendly but not exclusively, and is known for its dog show and features prizes, including fastest sausage eater and least obedient (we assume these prizes are for the dogs and not humans). There is also a raffle, face painting, St. Anselm’s Junior Choir, and races for the kids. If you don’t have kids there’s a Pimms tent to keep you sane. And if you do have kids there’s a Pimms tent to keep you sane, run by the great Black Prince pub. And there are a number of great local food stalls looking pretty delish on the website. And you even get the chance to watch old white dudes throw serviettes in the air.

We haven’t been to this little Fete before as it always clashes with our team building weekend at Glastonbury. Unfortunately the Runoff Manadarins have called a day on this small kernel of happiness following an incident two years ago in which we asked Phil from accounts to fetch the ciders during Billie Eilish, only to found him two days later face down behind the ‘Sonic Wow’ dance tent. And some excuse about us not remembering anything about team building when we return. Such is the stress of working here. 

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The Brandon Estate

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From the archives, the fifth and next to last of our month of best history posts

If you’ve ever been to the back half of Kennington Park, or indeed if you live there, you would have noticed the large towers that constitute the most vertical part of the fascinating 36 acre Brandon Estate in Walworth.  Visionary Architect and Communist Edward Hollamby was the principal designer and most of the work was underway by 1956, with his brief by the LCC to capitalise on the post war enthusiasm generated by the Festival of Britain on the Southbank. 

At the eastern Lorrimore Road end of the Estate, Hollamby tried to preserve the pre war Victorian street pattern and keep the few homes that survived, while filling in the holes with modern three bedroom properties. In Forsyth Gardens he created a new square lined with four story maisonettes with a central garden intended as a ‘revival of Georgian town planning traditions’. 

  • Napier Tower

On the other side of Cook’s Road the Estate took on a more striking and risque modernist form. Napier Tower was at the threshold of the foot friendly shopping precinct and beyond it the signature 18 storey blocks nestled into Kennington Park, and in 1957 they were the tallest the LCC had built. As you walk around the Brandon Estate today you’ll notice that it is a very early example of the ‘mixed use’ development. It provided a range of housing options for different kinds of families at different stages of their lives interspersed with shopping for people who don’t drive. 

If you watched ‘Doctor Who’ from 2005 – 2010, you might recognise the Estate as one of the most iconic locations of those series. The Estate, known as the ‘Powell Estate’ in the show, was home to Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and her mum. The poor courtyard in front of their flat witnessed a TARDIS crash landing, a cyber ghost invasion, and even the Tenth Doctor’s (David Tennant) regeneration.

The Estate is also home to a beautiful Henry Moore statue which we wrote about in 2020

The Great Volcano of Walworth

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Are the proud residents of Walworth aware that you once in your very midst had a Vesuvius like, spewing cauldron of a volcano? It was part of the Surrey Zoological Gardens and we wrote about the gardens and the poor critters who lived there over the summer. 

Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831 and situated roughly where Pasley Park currently resides. There are interesting signs in the park detailing the brief but exciting existence of its previous inhabitants and well worth a casual visit. At one side of the vast garden landscape (this was primarily farmland at the time) was a large lake with paddling boats. To get in the punters, the proprietor commissioned a painted illustration of Vesuvius and the city of Naples at the back of the lake, and due to demand later pimped this up with a much bigger landscape, requiring 7000 yards of canvas. This created the illusion that boaters were in a palm fringed Bay of Naples as opposed to a weedy swamp in south London. 

The competition to attract pleasure seekers in early 19th century London was tough, and the gardens decided to ape reality in another way by making the painting more immersive. At sunset Vesuvius would come to life by erupting with smoke, fire, underground thunder, and even fireworks. This added titillation was a sensation for people at the time and they flocked in their thousands. If punters got bored there were the added attractions of a music hall, food, and a menagerie of exotic but totally misunderstood animals. 

Sadly, the allure of premature death at the hands of fake molten lava and flying rocks grew old, and after 1847 there is no more mention of our enormous painting and the spewing fire behind it.  And several years after the Gardens themselves closed owing to the allure of Crystal Palace further down the road and the libidinal pleasures of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, which itself was in its final days. Proof as it was ever needed that attracting the attention of Londoners is by no means a current undertaking. 

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Feel Good Festival

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Under the guise of us refusing to admit that summer is actually over, we have yet another fun and free festival happening this weekend (2 September) in Embassy Square in Vauxhall, and its called the ‘Feel Good Festival’. Now before your naughty brain gets the wrong idea (we know what you’re like), it is about wellness and not those other things that make us feel good. 

While most festivals we promote on the Runoff involve abusing your body in some form, the Feel Good festival is a whole day celebration of wellness including outdoor pilates, fitness classes, live music, well being workshops, healthy food and drink (read…no bar), market stalls, and games. While this event is free some of the courses being offered are more labour intensive and there is a fee, and tickets can be scored here

The Feel Good Festival is in Embassy Gardens this coming Saturday from 10:00 to 17:00 and is free, just turn up. If you’ve never heard of Embassy Gardens you can be forgiven because it only came into existence a few years ago, and is behind the US embassy. 

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