Fashion & Gardens at the Garden Museum?

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Kennington Runoff

No, us neither, but it’s worth going to visit the Garden Museum while the Fashion & Gardens exhibition is on (until April 27th) to see floral artist Rebecca Louise Law’s installation called ‘The Flower Garden Display’d’. She has hung over 4,600 flowers from the roof of the museum (a former church), and it’s quite something.

Join Rebecca Louise Law under ‘The Flower Garden Display’d’ for a discussion with photographer Rachel Warne about The Beauty of Decay, dying flowers and the afterlife of gardens, on Tuesday at 6.30pm (tickets £10).

The museum is open every day and admission costs £7.50 for adults, but it’s free if you just want to go to the cafe, which is good and vegetarian, and you’ll walk under ‘The Flower Garden Display’d’ on your way through.

On your way out, you can check out The Garden Museum’s expansion plans, which involve re-creating part of Tradescant’s Ark. Tradescant’s Ark was Britain’s first museum open to the public, started by John Tradescant and his son John Junior, who are buried in what is now the garden of the Garden Museum. The original Tradescant’s Ark was in North West Kennington and featured a stuffed dodo, drums from Africa, weapons from Java, and a series of complaints from Walworth.

London, Westminster and Southwark illustration

Posted on March 30, 2014 by Kennington Runoff

If you get beyond the intimidating entrance of Greengrassi/Corvi-Mora gallery, you’ll see this rather splendid illustration of London, Westminster and Southwark on their wall. Unfortunately we can’t read the date but we’re guessing 1854?

Lambeth Walk

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Kennington Runoff

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?):

Winter Screen

Posted on December 12, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

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

Thursday 12th – Miracle on 34th street (7pm)
Friday 13th – Elf (7pm)
Saturday 14th – A Muppets Christmas Carol (2pm) Scrooged (7pm)
Sunday 15th – Home Alone 1 (2pm) Home Alone 2 (7pm)

MK II:

MK I:

Ticket proceeds are going to ‘Thames Reach’, a charity who operate a local homeless shelter.

Location:

Arch 50

South Lambeth Place opposite Starbucks

London SW8 1SP

Kennington Park

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

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.

Pullens Yards

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

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.

More info here.

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:

For your throat’s sake smoke…

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Above is a ghost sign on Brixton Road in South Kennington – but what is the brand of cigarettes that were so good for the throat? And what’s the penultimate word – “THE WORLD’S PREMIER CO***** CIGARETTE”? Whoever comes first with the answers will be rewarded with a free Durning Library postcard – and we all know the real value of those.

Baldwin’s Kidney & Gravel Pills

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

A West Kennington treasure trove – LASSCO – is selling a series of old prints from an East Kennington treasure trove – Baldwin’s.

Here’s one particularly vivid example:

The Prince of Wales

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Early this year Londonist asked “What’s the best pub in Kennington and South Kennington?“. The Dog House came out top, and it’s certainly the most visited pub in Kennington. The Old Red Lion was second and has a lot going for it, including its garden and its record player. But for lovers of traditional boozers, outside drinking, and boules, there can only be one winner – The Prince of Wales on Cleaver Square.

They offer real ales from “Britain’s oldest brewery”, Kent’s Shepherd Neame. They serve a menu of high end pub classics. If you want to be outside on the square, they will serve your drink in a plastic cup and even loan you a boules set. When you’re inside the pub, you’ll feel like you could be anywhere in the countryside in the south of England, any time in the last 100 years. Their website boasts that the Richardson gang used to hang out there in the 1960s. Nowadays the Countryside Alliance gang would feel more at home there.

Cleaver Square and boules

Posted on October 6, 2013 by Kennington Runoff

Cleaver Square is one of London’s most desirable residential areas – it’s picturesque, architecturally unspoilt, closed to through traffic yet lively thanks to the pub in the corner, and conveniently located close to the throbbing heart of Kennington, between Kennington Park Road and Kennington Cross.

It’s home to leading politicians, award-winning author Sarah Waters, and a large boules pitch in its centre, surrounded by benches for spectators and outdoor drinkers. Players don’t need to invest in a boules set, they can simply lay down a £20 deposit in the very fine Prince of Wales pub and stroll outside for a game of pétanque. But get there early if it’s a warm evening, to beat the throngs of after-work drinkers, former Liberal Democrat leaders, and students from the City & Guilds art school. A couple of years ago, luxury brands all decided to congregate eagerly around pétanque, with Karl Lagerfeld hosting a pétanque party, Chanel and Louis Vuitton creating their own limited edition boules sets, and style supplements a-cooing, dubbing it ‘the trendiest game in London’. We thought the hysteria had died down, and hoped you could once again enjoy a game of boules in Cleaver Square without someone from Pernod Ricard trying to corral you into their pop-up concept event. But Lacoste took over the square recently for precisely that purpose:

The excellent Wikipedia entry on Kennington has information on the history of Cleaver Square which was once called Prince’s Square, but has barely changed for decades as you can see in this photo from 1964 (with thanks to ideal-homes.org.uk/).

Cleaver Square also plays host to the annual Kennington Village Fete.

The Kennington Observer (formerly Kennington Runoff)

Surreptitiously observing Kennington, including the suburbs Vauxhall, Oval, Walworth, and Elephant since 2012

Category Archives: history