It samples the documentary We Are The North West Kennington Boys. It’s taken from the album West Kennington & I which is reissued tomorrow. Could Spring-Heeled Jim by Morrissey be the most Kennington song of all-time?
http://youtu.be/0AzZls49cts
Category Archives: North West Kennington
Fashion & Gardens at the Garden Museum?
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.
The top ten best restaurants in Kennington – numbers 4 to 2
4. Aobaba
pros: top quality Vietnamese food and loads of choice – who needs Kingsland Road?
cons: it’s a brightly lit cafeteria on the side of an Oriental supermarket so don’t come here for the ambiance
hygiene rating: 4
3. The Ragged Canteen at Beaconsfield
pros: super tasty vegetarian food and organic Monmouth coffee
cons: it’s not open that often (they serve hot food Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays from noon, last orders 2.25pm; at other times it’s drinks and cakes)
hygiene rating: 4
2. Brunswick House
pros: totally unique setting amidst LASSCO’s antiques, plus top quality seasonal food
cons: the staff can be rude, and if you want to buy the chair you’re sitting on, be prepared to remortgage your house first
hygiene rating: 3
the winner will be revealed on Wednesday
Brunswick House
Lambeth Walk
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?):
what part of Kennington should you live in?
What could you eat forever?
- A) coconut and tamarind fish curry
- B) double Ginger Pig-bred cheeseburger in a brioche bun
- C) ceviche
- D) lemongrass sesame pork rice vermicelli
- E) quinoa and camargue red rice salad
- F) spicy hot beef and okra stew on injera
- G) McDonald’s happy meal
What is your jam?
- A) Heaven Is A Place On Earth by Belinda Carlisle
- B) Slave To The Rhythm by Grace Jones
- C) Windowlicker by Aphex Twin
- D) Pass Out by Tinie Tempah
- E) Vindaloo by Fat Les
- F) You Got The Love by Florence & The Machine
- G) Timber by Pitbull feat. Ke$ha
Which is your favourite Kevin Spacey?
- A) House of Cards Kevin Spacey
- B) LA Confidential Kevin Spacey
- C) The Usual Suspects Kevin Spacey
- D) Seven Kevin Spacey
- E) Late night dog walking Kevin Spacey
- F) American Beauty Kevin Spacey
- G) K-PAX Kevin Spacey
What’s on the top of your Kennington bucket list?
- A) watching Florence from Florence & The Machine do an impromptu drunken covers set at a tiki bar
- B) dancing till the sun comes up then comes down again
- C) going to Radiohead’s Boiler Room takeover at Corsica Studios
- D) exploring urban forests and soaking up ruin porn before it’s too late
- E) attending a private view at Damien Hirst’s new gallery
- F) going to a test match
- G) watching Millwall play at home
How did you score?
Mostly A’s – you should live in Central Kennington
Mostly B’s – you should live in West Kennington (formerly known as Vauxhall)
Mostly C’s – you should live in North Kennington (formerly known as Elephant & Castle)
Mostly D’s – you should live in East Kennington (formerly known as Walworth)
Mostly E’s – you should live in North West Kennington (formerly known as Lambeth)
Mostly F’s – you should live in South Kennington (formerly known as Oval)
Mostly G’s – you should not live in Kennington; would suggest Fallujah, or Clapham
Kennington predictions for 2014
An exciting year for North West Kennington with the opening of Damien Hirst’s gallery and the new Buddhist centre in the Beaufoy Institute.
Sally White will dramatically expand their range of food, open in the evenings, and provide mindfulness training for all staff.
Kernel Brewery will open their first pub in the site next to the Old Red Lion.
Waitrose will take over Tesco’s Kennington “superstore”, The People’s Supermarket will take over Tesco on Kennington Park Road, The Super Store on Kennington Lane will take over Tesco on Kennington Road, and no new Tescos will open anywhere in Kennington.
Ace Hotel will open their second London hotel in the former Days Inn on Kennington Road.
The Imperial War Museum will reopen with catering from Ottolenghi.
Lambeth Palace will open to visitors all year round.
Russell Brand will perform at Always Be Comedy.
Dirty Burger will introduce a veggie burger.
The revitalisation of North Kennington will continue with the Elephant & Castle shopping centre being listed, a Curzon cinema replacing the bingo hall, and a bunch of exciting new bars and restaurants moving in on the Brixton Village model (thanks to Oliver Dee for the suggestions).
Florence Welch will launch her guest column for Kennington Runoff by performing Addicted To Love at the Kennington Runoff pop up shop.
The heroic Mr Kennington People On Bikes will be named London’s new Cycling Superczar. His first action in this new role will be to implement fully segregated cycle lanes (with a physical barrier between car and bike) along all Kennington’s main arteries, which then spread out to Hyde Park, the City and beyond. By summer 2014. If they can build a cable car across the Thames in less than a year, then this is but a moment’s work.
LASSCO will realise the decimal point has been in the wrong place all this time and will start selling their beautiful items for one hundredth of the price.
Kennington Runoff is dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones we used to know
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.
The Three Stags – Kennington’s most ethical and Charlie Chaplin-ish pub
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 International Maritime Organisation
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.
Make Space Studios
Make Space Studios is a complex of arts and craft studios run by the people behind Studio 180. If you want to see handbags made out of recycled material, screen printing of posters for leading alternative bands, and savagely accurate parodies of twee middle class consumerist products, get along to their Christmas open evening today tomorrow, Thursday, from 4pm to 9pm (sorry we got the date wrong initially). There will be mince pies, mulled wine and special magic punch*.
Make Space runs alongside the railway lines going in to Waterloo Station, while the entrance is on Newnham Terrace in North Kennington, opposite Lambeth North Tube. They also have an art gallery, The Simulator Gallery.
Follow the pink bannister below to enter and on no account allow yourself to be diverted into CP Hart, the world’s largest and therefore most terrifying bathroom showroom.
* we can’t be sure but it seems like that kind of place
