Tag Archives: Kennington Park

Kenny Needs Your Help!

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Tucked away in a discreet corner of Kennington Park we have a proper, retro 1970’s skatepark complete with retro graffiti. Its name is Kenny, and it once saw local kids flipping and flying, but today poor little Kenny is now abandoned and resembles that fun fair from every Scooby Doo * episode and it needs your help.

In between vigorous hand washings in April, 2021 we made time to have a socially distanced meeting with the Friends of Kennington Park. After a lot of work by the Friends, in 2024 Lambeth Council agreed to overhaul the skatepark and open it to the public. You can read about the history of the skatepark and our chat here.

Fast forward to 2025 and Lambeth has decided against restoring the skatepark due to a loss of revenue from central government. The Friends have started a Change.org campaign to restore the funds and they need your help. The petition can be found here.

We’re not taking a position on this, which is unheard of given it involves Lambeth Council.  On the one hand, there’s supposed to be a viewing area at Kenny, so it would be fun for us non skaters to cheer as they fly out of the bowl and almost crack a rib in writing pain  perform gravity defying acts. However, in spite of their foibles, Lambeth needs money to help the most vulnerable in our midst, such a children. The choice is yours, but its even been in ITV!

* Gez Z’s – Scooby Doo was a cartoon from a long time ago.

The History of Kennington Oval and the Pedestrian Craze

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Kennington Common (now Kennington Park) and Kennington Oval cricket ground have a conjoined reputation that extends well beyond our hallowed manner. As the green spaces between the City and Westminster began to evaporate in Georgian London, people had to look further afield to partake in activities such as cricket, football, promenading, mass demonstrations, and or course hanging people. And it was to suburban Kennington they flocked.

In the early Victorian era the Common was shrinking under impinging bricks and roads. Also, watching people being hanged was no longer the family fun that it once was. As cricket requires a great deal of space (so we’re told), the newly formed Surrey Cricket Club had to find new digs, and with a little help from the Prince of Wales (who’s feathers still adorn the Surrey Cricket Badge) in 1845 they were able to take over a nearby market garden, and this was the genesis of the cricket ground that we know to this day.

Six years after the inception of the Oval we meet  an almost forgotten sporting superstar named Richard Manks, who granted it an unexpected publicity coup that would secure its place as the world’s first for profit sports facility. Manks was a master of the equally forgotten sport of pedestrianism, a form of competitive walking which attracted a sort of cult like following in the gambling mad world of Victorian Britain. But this wasn’t a team activity, and in 1851 people descended in their thousands to watch Manks walk for 1000 miles in 100 days to and bet on how long he would last.

Things didn’t start entirely well for  Manks and following an unfortunate bout of diarrhoea he abandoned his mission at the Oval after 129 miles. Undeterred, a few months later he completed the task with a form of assistance not too dissimilar to how we get through a day at the Observer; half hourly rests and  the nutritional aids of beef, ale, and Brandy infused tea. The dusky hues of night time was a particular draw to the 3000 personed audience and it can claim the additional prize of being the first artificially lit sports complex on earth, and the publicity provided by Manks secured this.

For some unknown reason by the end of the 1860’s the thrill of watching people walking in a giant circle diminished. However, the Oval powered on and with its newfound renown hosted the first representative football  match between England and Scotland, in addition to hosting the FA cup for almost 20 years. As its fame grew it was also used for rugby and football and even used for exhibitions of American baseball. While the sport of Manks might be now overlooked, the same can never be said about the world’s first profit making venue that he helped to immortalise.

Kennington’s Lost Tragedy

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From the archives, the fifth of our month of best history posts

We often take for granted living in a society that is peaceful, calm and free of external threat. We’ve all felt vulnerable over the past two years but we also have a great deal to be grateful for. Before we get ensconced in Christmas revelry, we want to share with you a nearly forgotten tragedy that happened in Kennington Park 81 years ago.

At the outbreak of WW2, as now, most of us were vulnerable to events that were beyond our control. To address this, air raid shelters were constructed in Kennington, Vauxhall and Archbishop’s parks for people who were caught in their flats or couldn’t make it into a tube station. In reality these were hastily constructed trenches made of thin concrete slabs. While they were considered ‘bolt holes’ for people caught in the open, often folks had to seek shelter there for upwards of 12 hours. 

At 20:05 on 15 October, 1940 part of the Kennington Park shelter suffered a direct hit from a 50lb. bomb. A survivor from a nearby trench recalls the roof being lifted off followed by an eerie silence. Local rescue workers laboured desperately in what must have been extremely precarious circumstances to recover as many survivors and bodies as possible, but erosion and mud make their task insurmountable. No official death toll was announced at the time but the figure is now believed to be 104 fatalities. 50  bodies were recovered and this remains the official death count. Most of them were buried in Lambeth Cemetery; the remainder still lie, unidentified, beneath the park. 

As you can imagine, the government didn’t want to impact this and other civilian disasters for fear that it would adversely affect wartime morale. In the years following the incident was largely forgotten until researchers began to put the pieces together from scant news reports and by speaking to survivors a few years ago. Today a stone with an inscription by Maya Angelou stands in the park as a poignant and subtle reminder of the tragedy.  So when you next stroll through Kennington Park or have a kickabout,  spare a thought for your fellow, former Kenningtonians and just how much we have to be grateful for today in spite of external threats.

From the aerial shot below of the south field in Kennington Park you can still clearly see the outlines of the former trenches. 

The Great Stink(pipe) of Kennington

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From the 2020 archives, the first of our month of best history posts

Do you wake up at night thinking ‘will the Runoff EVER do a feature on sewage and foul smells’? Well dear reader, if so your time HAS COME as we’re here to reveal the purpose of that black crowned column in Kennington Cross.

The Victorians gave London many architectural gems; the Houses of Parliament and St. Pancras to name a few. In Kennington they endowed us with probably London’s most attractive example of a  Stinkpipe, and that is what we see in Kennington Cross. If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, the Victorians solved many problems but struggled with sewage for years. This was called The Great Stink of London and resulted in some radical methods to solve it. Stinkpipes were one such concept and were installed around London to divert the smell of poo and their more noxious byproducts. The concept was to elevate the odours from sewers and subterranean rivers above sensitive Victorian noses.

January 2025 update – Fans have also made us aware that this Stinkpipe might have also been used to release fumes from the toilets below. We know you relish such detail.

So while the Great Stink might have been deplorable, it realised great advancements later in the industrial age, such the creation of the Embankment and most recently the mighty Thames Super Sewer. And such is the preoccupation with Stinkpipes that someone with apparently a great deal of time on their hands has mapped them all out.

If you share this interest and also have time on your hands you’ll notice more examples of Stinkpipes in the middle of Vauxhall and in a tiny pocket of Kennington Park, below.

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

Collective in Kennington Park

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With a sense of unencumbered shock we recently realised that it’s been over four years since KR visited the pizza and cake establishment Collective, which occupies the lovely cottage at the back of Kennington Park and owned by three locals. So we recently made another trip in order to see how they size up to the increasingly competitive Greater Kennington pizza market.  

The day in question was ‘stapling day’ for Karen from Finance, so we asked her to join us to break up the tedium and avoid RSI. . She chose the Tuxford Tommi blue, perhaps the most indulgent pizza on the menu featuring tomato sauce, quality mozzarella, Napoli salami, Tuxford Tommi blue cheese, garlic and Bee Urban (which is behind Collective) rosemary. Organic, sustainable and free range are all buzzy words for Collective so you can tell the focus is in ingredients, and we found that to be true with the pizzas that we enjoyed

Your scribe ordered the Napolitana, which was an umami kick of anchovies, capers and black olives, augmented by mozzarella and tomato.  It was a proper, thin Neapolitan crust with raised blistered edges, almost to the level of Theo’s, which KR adore. All ingredients were good quality and this creative combination worked very well, provided you like a pizza with a bit of punch and salt. 

We also ordered a Caprese salad. It was very generously sized and one could be shared. It offered abundant segments of tomato, combined with torn buffalo mozzarella pieces, basil and olive oil. The tomatoes were slightly, lets say ‘Tescoesque’ (even if organic) and the buffalo mozzarella less creamy than some, but overall with the basil and olive oil it hit most of the right notes and was good alongside the top notch pizza. 

Collective if you are reading this (and why wouldn’t you?) we love your, well, collective nature as its nice to see a place where folks can easily work on their laptops, catch up with friends, and where dogs are celebrated. However, what we don’t love is your lack of recycling bins. We were compelled to schlep our recyclables back to Runoff towers, but others were just chucking their cans in the bin. So we’re wagging our oily, pizza engorged finger at you! 

Collective is open daily and until 20:00, so is a viable dinner option. The pizzas are midsized, mostly individual affairs, so Karen and I could have our own. And of course, if you don’t fancy pizza they also have a keen looking selection of pastries. 

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).

Chartist Podcast Walk

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This week marks the 175th anniversary of the Monster Chartist Rally in Kennington Park. Chartism was a working class movement aimed at giving all men (not women unfortunately, that came later) over 21+ the right to vote. They also sought to professionalise Parliament by ensuring that MP’s get paid. This would allow regular working people ( read – men) to become MP’s as opposed to it only being a viable option if you were a property owner and had spare time on your hands during the day.

The Chartists came together on 10 April, 1848 and this so thoroughly freaked out a government who feared a revolution that they called the army to Kennington Park and later recruited thousands of special constables. They even carted off poor old Queen Vic to the Isle of Wight for her own protection.   To commemorate this event, the Friends of Kennington Park have put together a spiffy guided tour complete with podcast that outlines how the day unfolded and what happened afterwards. The whole walk takes only half an hour and like most great things we recommend is free. 

While you’re in Kennington Park building grey matter why not pop over to the History Hut at the southern end of the park? Not to be confused with the nearby Hound Hut (which we once confused for an sex shop) or indeed Pizza Hut, the Hut is full of fascinating factoids about our beloved neck of the woods over the years. 

The Tale of Two Fountains

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Next time you go for your constitutional in Kennington Park, take a moment to inspect two unloved fountains which you’ve probably walked past a thousand times but never taken notice of. Their creation and endurance are interesting reminders of the people and events that have unfolded in our hallowed patch over the years. 

In the southwest corner of the park you can find part of a fountain which was donated by philanthropist Felix Slade in 1861. This is the same Slade who founded the school of art and a number of professorships. Slade lived in Aulton Place, and the story goes that while walking through the park he asked for a glass of water and was handed dirty water in a chipped glass (with Aulton Place only over the road he could have just popped back home but let’s not get stuck on tiny details). When he saw kids playing in the park without access to clean water, Slade to took to the task like a duck to, well, water.  

Slade’s solution for the lack of clean water was laudable but perhaps a bit over the top for a working class Victorian neighbourhood. He funded the erection of an elaborate fountain on a plinth in red Aberdeen granite with brass handles, a large bronze urn, and his own monogram stamped over it, lest people forget who put it there. The handles were nicked shortly thereafter, followed by the urn. When the urn was replaced it was nicked again and then went from being a fountain to a curious oddity and relic of the past.  The ornate base remains and is a reminder of the gulf of understanding and wealth that exists in Greater Kennington to this day.

A bit further up into the park you can see the column which is the remains of Tinworth Fountain. It was created in 1872 in buff terracotta by the Doulton Factory in Vauxhall and was the centrepiece of an ornate sunken garden located where the basketball courts currently reside. It was almost totally destroyed in WWII and put back together without its resplendent and overflowing bowl, which moved and then lost. After being relocated several times it found its current home while still sporting its grand central feature, a sculpture depicting the pilgrimage of life. Sadly the sculpture was knocked over and completely destroyed in 1981. The column that we see today was later used as target practice by local youths. 

Our beaten and bombed column still stands and if you look closely you can see the painstaking efforts made to both restore and destroy it. Some very clever soul even decided to replace some of the unglazed buff terracotta  poured concrete. Nevertheless, Kennington Park has meant many things to many people over the years, and our battered little monuments stand as eternal reminders of that.

Fun at Oval Farmers Market

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We’re not proud of this, but since The Event took hold in March we haven’t darkened the door of Oval Farmer’s Market. After a brief period relegated to a community hall it’s been back in St. Mark’s Churchyard for a while now, and for obvious reasons is much more spread out, basically wrapping around the whole of the church. 

If you haven’t been to the Market in a while all of the old standards are still on offer; olives, biltong, a range of gluten free things, cheese stalls, fresh fish, coffees, organic wine, and meats. The large veg stall that used to be there is no more, but the proliferation of smaller ones compensate for it. There was also a French/Caribbean food stall that looked pretty delicious and had the buzz. 

Even if farmers markets aren’t your cup of chai, it offers folks a safe way to feel somewhat connected to society again and is a nice place to stroll around. For those still a bit queasy about larger crowds the market also provides a click and collect service.

Afterwards we revisited an old favourite,  Mimis Deli, which we reviewed earlier this year after eating a sandwich there the size of a childs’ leg. The former seating area at the back has been converted into a very tempting Italian food market/gift shop scenario, which is more experimental than Italo Vauxhall. We ate our mighty ciabatta wrapped sandwiches snugly in Kennington Park in the company of runners who had obviously never eaten a child leg sized meatball marinara sandwich in their lives.