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Kennington Pubs Open Up, Tonight
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Category Archives: Vauxhall
The Other Dance for Joy in Greater Kennington
Next week we take our biggest leap yet into the realm of semi normality when outdoor dining and pubs open. Over the first week or so we will be exploring several different venues (for purely professional reasons) and will be giving you the lowdown on how the venues are making it work and how safe it feels. We feel that spring is going to herald a new sense of merriment and optimism in Greater Kennington, redolent of a time when this happened before.
For decades Lambeth Walk was arguably the most famous street in London: people sang, strutted and whistled in it’s honour, many without the faintest hint of where it was. Folks in Greater Kennington were ‘doing the Lambeth Walk’ long before the phrase became a nationwide symbol of the proud, working class Londoner.
By the 1860’s Lambeth Walk was home to a major street market, with more than 200 yards selling everything from fish to books to soap. Our ancestors liked a good time, and would often promenade between the stalls, and this became known as ‘The Lambeth Walk’. The silver screen brought our little local strut to international viraldom with a movie adaptation of the musical ‘Me and My Girl’ called, you guessed it ‘The Lambeth Walk’ in 1939, and people copied it from New York to Berlin
While The Lambeth Walk might have been charming the world, the same couid not be said of the street and it was in serious decline. From the1930’s through to the 80’s old buildings were pulled down and replaced with modern blocks. Of course, WW2 hastened this transformation greatly. By the end of this summer we will be in the opposite of decline and perhaps Greater Kenningtonians can create a modern version of The Walk to celebrate all that we’ve lived through.
The Lambeth Walk is an exaggerated rhythmic swagger, with ‘plenty of arm swinging, copious hat-play and elements of slapstick’. This sounds a bit erotic to us, but there you go. For the curious amongst you, or if you’re just bored, here’s a very early clip of people doing the Walk from ‘Me and My Girl’ –
Ragged School in Lambeth
By the second half of the 19th century the rural idyll that was Vauxhall was well and truly over and replaced largely by desperate folks looking for work, and they brought their kids. Ragged schools were charitable organisations that popped up to educate destitute (hence the name ragged) children who were not allowed in traditional schools. A very significant one existed in what is now Newport St.
Local gin/vinegar (that must have been some pretty foul gin) magnate Henry Hanbury Beaufoy funded and founded the school, opening it in 1851 and dedicating it to his wife. Like other Ragged Schools, our Vauxhall branch taught reading writing, bible studies and even ways to emigrate. On the pastoral side, the children were fed and children without parents lived there. A visitor at the time noted –
“The attendance in the winter averages about 400 boys and girls every Sunday evening. The gentlemen who manage the Ragged School do everything they can to instruct and encourage the children in well-doing; they make them presents of Testaments and Bibles and give them occasional tea parties. In fact, everything is done to improve them in the school. The patience of the teachers is surprising. The girls are better behaved than the boys; they are the children of very poor people in the neighbourhood, such as the daughters of people selling fruit in the street, and such like, and found several children of street-beggars there”.
As the Ragged School was built to address the migration of people, the beautiful edifice above also met its fate due to people moving. It was unfortunately flattened just a few decades after its creation as it fell victim of a Vaxuall/Waterloo rail line extension. Curiously, a bit of the building was left standing and is now home to the great but almost never open Beaconsfield Gallery, and its Ragged Café. The school was restablished by Henry’s nephew Mark Beaufoy (the Liberal MP for Kennington at the time) and rechristened as the Beaufoy Institute in Black Prince Road. This building has had many incarnations but it survives.
You might find it intriguing that the handsome Doulton adorned Beaufoy Institute building below wasn’t just turned into luxury flats when a school there closed a number of years ago. This is again the legacy of the Beaufoys. Lambeth respected the Beaufoy wish that at least half of the land be sold to a non profit organisation. So the old car park in the back was sold to Bellway homes, and the institute is now inhabited by the Diamond Way Buddhist Centre.
Getting Classy in Vauxhall
Twelve months ago the most optimistic of you lot said ‘great, I’m going to use this lockdown period to get really fit/do an online course /Run 15 times around Kennington Park’. But even in this era where time seems to be a meaningless concept, you haven’t actually done any of those things. Well here’s your chance to finally tick something off your list……getting into classical music.
‘Classical Vauxhall’ returns on 18 – 21 March and can be streamed for free on these dates. It will of course be virtual this year, and we have trusted colleagues who went to the live events in 2020 and said it was amazing. Festival Director and the brains behind it Fiachra Garvey is joined by artists Jess Gilliam (saxophone), Zeynep Özsuca (piano), Elena Urioste (violin) & Tom Poster (piano), Hanna Hipp (mezzo-soprano) and Emma Abbate (piano). We’ve never actually heard of any of these people -BUT – we have seen some of their work on YouTube and it’s remarkable. Jess and her Sax is here
The press release for this event intriguingly states that the performances will be set in closed venues ‘live in Vauxhall’. That got our grey matter working…where? Perhaps Gentlemen’s Sauna ‘Chariots’ (doubtful as all the water would wreak havoc with the instruments)? Notorious nightclub ‘Fire’ (the acoustics under a railway arch must be awful)? With a bit of research we discovered they will be held in the most more rarefied environments of St. Marks Church and Brunswick house, so easy on the eyes as well.
The streams are free and will also give you a change to learn more about music in Vauxhall and the history of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Book here: http://bit.ly/CVaux-2021
Walking, Testing, and Tubes
We don’t usually provide public service announcements as that would make us no better than, say, Time Out. And we’re better than that. However, we’ve recently stumbled on some interesting information which you might find useful. We’ve also stumbled upon a very nifty app called ‘Go Jauntly’ which recommends walks based on your postcode. Put in your own and you might find a historical garden tour in Vauxhall, mutinies and executions in Greater Kennington, and another relating to Banksy and William Blake (don’t see much of a parallel between the two but that could be half the fun). Or you could just stand outside your favourite pub and bang on the door while you burst into tears. The choice is yours.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS!
Successful trial journeys have run along new Tube tunnels between Kennington and Battersea Power Station ahead of the Northern Line Extension opening in 2021.
READ THE STORY
Wandsworth Council has drawn up a draft plan to guide development in Nine Elms and across the borough and is now seeking local people’s views.
READ THE STORY
You can now get a COVID-19 test even if you are not displaying symptoms.
BOOK YOUR TEST
Millicent Fawcett and Vauxhall Park
The research division here at Kennington Runoff have been working overtime (safely, at home) over the festive period to establish and claim feminist writer, politician, trailblazer and suffragette Millicent Fawcett as one of our own, and we think they’ve cracked it. Her many achievements are outlined here and if you’re the attentive sort you’ll be aware that she was the first female honoured with a statue in Parliament square a couple of years ago.
For a number of years Millicent and her equally esteemed husband Henry Fawcett lived in a house in what is now Vauxhall Park. The house included grounds and the couple realised that in an increasingly cramped Vauxhall this was a privilege which they wanted to share with others. Although the genesis of the idea came from Henry, when he died prematurely in 1884 it came down to Millicent and several other people to fashion the reality.
The Fawcett’s home and gardens extended from South Lambeth Road back quite a bit. Although spacious, the gardens weren’t quite large enough to create a promenading style park, so Millicent and another pioneering champion of the underdog, Octavia Hill, set about purchasing buildings to create a solid, square park. The park was opened by Prince Charles in 1890. And before you throw your laptops out the window, as he was the Duchy of Cornwall the ground beneath the park was (and is) technically his.
So, you may be asking yourselves ‘now why isn’t there a memorial to the Fawcetts in Vauxhall Park’? Well this is a great local mystery. There was a very fine stature created by the Vauxhall based Doulton factory of Henry (but not our heroine, go figure) and it lived in the park for 70 years. In a moment of characteristic insanity, Lambeth Council took a sledgehammer to the statue in 1960. Henry Fawcett’s legacy now lives on in the form of Henry Fawcett Primary School in Bowling Green Street. Apparently the bust of Henry in the school is all that remains of the vanquished statue, but this has never been proven. And when you compare a regal bronze statue in Parliament Square to a chipped bust in a primary school corridor, I think we know who ended up with the better deal.
Fawcett’s legacy lives in the form of the Fawcett Society, which is in Black Prince Road. Their mission is to fight sexism and gender inequality through research and campaigns.
Royal Doulton in Vauxhall
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
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?).
A mysterious model village in Vauxhall
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”?
Damien Hirst at Newport St.
Without a great deal of fanfare, on Wednesday Newport Street Gallery reopened with a survey of Damien Hirst’s early work called ‘End of a Century’. The timing of this retrospective might be a coincidence or an intentional and very prescient observation of the world around us in 2020, as Hirst’s early work explored themes of death, healing, life saving medication, infection, and anatomy. We checked out the show on it’s opening day.
In the first gallery we were introduced to one of Hirst’s trademark dissected animals; this one being a baby shark in formaldehyde. Moving into the main galleries you might think you’d just wandered into aisle three at Iceland, as there were several freezers stuffed with frozen cow heads (we asked, and they are real). Also on show were Hirst’s trademark medication cabinets and a variety of medical implements. After an enormous anatomical model we’re left to ponder the slightly humorous ‘Shut Up and Eat Your Fucking Dinner’ (pictured at bottom) which was fashioned as a butcher shop window featuring a variety of meats encased in formaldehyde. Is meat murder?
On the first floor we got to grips with several of Hirst’s spin paintings and dot paintings, with one actually spinning in the room. Surprisingly, there were several cubist inspired collages of found materials which Hirst created before he was a student at Goldsmiths, even then showing his early interest in mortality and resurrection. The most arresting work upstairs was ‘A Hundred Years’, in which a bloody severed cow head is being eaten by maggots who turn into flies who then get executed by an inect-ocutor. We’re not making this up.
Some of these works are almost 30 years old and don’t have the shock value they once possessed. But if your artistic taste embraces decapitated cow heads, meat, pills, blood, dead flies, and medical implements then this show will be right up your street. Vegetarians might want to steer clear. And lest you don’t give your mortality much of a thought during the pandemic, this show is a reminder of the profound fragility of organic matter.
End of a Century is on now and until the end of March, 2021. Tickets are free and can be booked here.
