Between the roar of Clapham and South Lambeth Roads lies a maze of residential streets. Mostly lined with Victorian terraces, they are surprisingly peaceful – especially towards the centre where you will find St Stephen’s Terrace. In 1951, that street’s peace was disrupted by the chanting of a mob. The crowd had gathered outside number […]
‘Whoreterloo’: Prostitutes and Soldiers in North Lambeth in the First World War
Jerry White, Professor of History at London University, writes about the ‘heady mix of soldiers and women’ in the Waterloo area during the First World War.
Why no flowers for Nellie, orchid-painter extraordinaire?
It’s a shame that orchid-lovers cannot leave a bouquet on the precise spot where rests Lambeth’s peerless watercolourist and illustrator Nellie Roberts. Flowers could and should be be left at Nellie’s grave in gratitude for all the beauty that this watercolorist’s brush captured during her 56-year career as an illustrator for the Royal Horticultural Society, […]
Light-up and lift-off at the British Interplanetary Society, Vauxhall’s ‘space station’
It may not be easy to see spacecraft from Vauxhall, but many’s the astronaut that’s been spotted on the South Lambeth Road having a last drag on a cigarette before entering the British Interplanetary Society HQ at Numbers 27–29 on the corner with Langley Lane. Indeed, writes space historian and Fellow of the Society Dr […]
The unstoppable Sidney Lewis, Tooting’s pre-teen Somme machine-gunner
More people, especially school students, now visit the Great War battleground-cemeteries of the French/Belgian border country than at any time since the Armistice a century ago. Many of these youngsters are older than some of the ‘men’ who fought and sometimes died there (write Naomi Clifford and Ross Davies). One of the lucky ‘men’ was […]
Rolfe Judd’s light-touch makeover of a Victorian Chapel
This year the architects and town-planners Rolfe Judd celebrate the 50th anniversary of the practice, and have marked the event by illuminating the façade of Old Church Court, their premises in Claylands Road. Who was the architect of this former Congregational chapel isn’t clear, but according to the edited extract of the Rolfe Judd article […]
Care to help honour Lambeth’s dead of the First World War?
There’s an hour-long get-together at Lambeth Archives on Tuesday 13 March, kick-off 6pm, on what you can do to help restore, research and display some long-unseen Victorian and early 20th century memorials. They came from churches demolished in the 1980s and have languished in the basement of the Carnegie Library ever since. Now there’s Heritage […]
Injury time at Blissets, The Oval, 1960–2015
Curiosity Corner: The first in our occasional series of notes on the odd and the by-the-way in a bustling and historic part of London. An Employee Accident Book dating back half a century has come to light in a corner of a former builder’s yard in Oval.
Saturday 10 February: ‘South Lambeth Road Stories’ guided walk with Sean Creighton
Historian, community activist and blogger, and former project worker in the area Sean Creighton leads South Lambeth Road Stories, a free guided Vauxhall Society/Vauxhall History walk which kicks off from the Tate South Lambeth Library at 180 South Lambeth Rd, Vauxhall, London SW8 1QP at 10.30am on Saturday 10 February. There is the story of […]
The 1836 ‘Royal Vauxhall Balloon’ ascent that set an eight-decade world distance record for manned flight
by David E. Coke Amongst the many extraordinary facts about 19th century London, one stands out as almost unbelievable – an urban myth, you might think. How could the world record for manned-flight distance possibly have been set by a flight from Vauxhall – in 1836, the year before Queen Victoria came to the throne? Yet […]
Why ‘missing’ Vauxhall plaque drives Vauxhall Motors fans up the wall
Hands up anybody who knows where to find the plaque that commemorates the spot in Vauxhall where Vauxhall Motors started? Lifelong Vauxhall car-owner Peter Fitchett didn’t know and, planning to see the plaque on a visit to Vauxhall, the Cheltenham-based fan contacted The Vauxhall Society/Vauxhall History. Today’s plaque, installed in September 2016, is so hard […]
Brixton Market 1936: silk knickers 2½ pence a leg, streaky bacon 3½ pence per pound
‘She’s always here soon after 6.30 [a.m.],’ says Bertie of one customer, ‘to buy her own breakfast. And it’s always the same thing she wants, “One-pound-of-streaky-and-five-sausages.”‘ ‘Here’ is Brixton Street Market, in Mary Benedetta’s 1936 book Street Markets of London (London: John Miles Ltd). Benedetta’s book covers over 30 street markets in Lambeth and beyond, […]
The Doulton fairytale tiles that survived Vauxhall’s Blitz
The Doulton fairytale panels in the South Wing corridor of St Thomas’ Hospital get star billing in issue 22 (2017) of the GIST, the Guy’s and St Thomas’s magazine ‘History Corner’ feature. Margaret Thompson and William Rowe’s panels, made a short walk away at the Doulton factory in Vauxhall, once brightened up the two children’s […]
Walcot Foundation: 350 years of helping ‘the Lambeth poor’
The Walcot Foundation gives away an average of £1.8 million a year ‘for the relief of the Lambeth poor’. The charity has been around for 350 years, established by the 1667 will of a wealthy haberdasher, Edmund Walcott (his surname originally had two ‘t’s), who endowed it with 17 acres of what was then […]
Not even Good Queen Bess could barge up Brixton Hill from Vauxhall for a date with Sir Walter Raleigh – River Effra: London’s Secret Spine by Jon Newman
Jon Newman’s River Effra, South London’s Secret Spine is lavishly-illustrated, deeply-researched and, above all, grippingly-readable – a landmark work, the first detailed and comprehensive account of the Effra.
1877: when Old Father Thames turned on his children – again
A brief history of local inundation.
Somme veterans’ eyewitness accounts surface in Vauxhall
Somme veterans eyewitness accounts have been donated to the Imperial War Museum by supporters of Felix Fund in memory of the former CEO, the late Holly Angharad Davies BEM, a one-time resident of Vauxhall.
Clapham Through Time: Alyson Wilson and Claire Fry’s Clapham then and now
Alyson Wilson tells us about Clapham Through Time, a collection of photographs of Clapham past shown beside the same view shot in 2015 by Claire Fry.
The Tate South Lambeth Library, a much-loved gift that councillors want to grab
The Tate South Lambeth Library, the gift of a Victorian well-wisher, and now a vibrant cultural centre with deep roots in today’s Vauxhall, is the target of repeated threats from Lambeth Councillors
Whatever became of hit-parader Winifred Atwell’s saucy murals?
Fifties hit-parading pianist Winifred Atwell opened a salon in Brixton that may have been the very first for black women in this country. Winifred and her salon are long gone, but what about its saucy murals?
Rifleman Hutson: an only son missing on the Somme and from the Stockwell War Memorial
Vauxhall students in search of a project could do worse than delve into the short life of Arthur Hutson, only son of Arthur and Annie Jane who lived at 28 Hayter Road, Brixton.
Love’s Labours Lost: the Morley College murals of Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden
Vauxhall History brings you an opportunity to rediscover the extraordinary murals at Morley College.
Slum Clearance in Southwark: A personal perspective
Malcolm Green was there in the 60s and 70s when the Council demolished more streets of Victorian terraced houses than the Luftwaffe – all to make way for soulless, isolating high-rise flats, desolate and dangerous open spaces resulting in widespread social breakdown.
1969: The Vauxhall Society Seven ‘resist further intrusions by industry and road traffic’
The establishment of The Vauxhall Society in 1969
Maynard Keynes, Duncan Grant, ‘Bubbles’ and the ‘Lift boy of Vauxhall’
John Maynard Keynes, later Lord Keynes (1883–1946) has the distinction of having a branch of economics named after him. Keynes’ name is sometimes mentioned in another connection, that of his many, many sexual partners, the sculptor and painter Duncan Grant for example. Another partner is identified only (by Keynes himself) as the ‘Lift boy of […]
Oval brick a brac? The Richardsons of Vauxhall and Brunswick Wharf
The Vauxhall branch of the Richardson family brick-making firm made a notable contribution to the foundations of what is now the Kia Oval cricket ground.
Gilbert Bayes and the Doulton House frieze
The dramatic rescue of Vauxhall’s Gilbert Bayes Frieze from the demolition of Doulton House…as it happens The Vauxhall Society is grateful to Paul Atterbury for permission to publish his account of the the rescue and subsequent restoration of the Gilbert Bayes ceramic frieze ‘Pottery Through the Ages’ as well as his contemporaneous notes on the […]
The Myer war memorial
This First World War memorial was fixed to the wall on the Myer’s Bedstead Factory in Vauxhall Walk. After being removed for safekeeping it was restored to the building in 2013. The Horatio Myer & Co Great War Memorial To the Memory of those Employees of Horatio Myer & Co. Ltd. who laid down their lives […]
The Young Vic
The Young Vic was the brainchild of Frank Dunlop, who in the late 1960s was Administrative Director with the National Theatre Company then at the Old Vic. He had started his career as director of a young theatre company in Manchester, and subsequently his productions exhibited a liveliness appreciated by youngsters. Dunlop’s concept was to […]
Vauxhall Motors
In 1857 the Vauxhall Iron Works was founded at 90-92 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 by the Scottish engineer Alexander Wilson, who took the Falkes de Breauté’s heraldic griffin as his company badge. Alexander Wilson and Co, as it was originally known, produced engines for Admiralty pinnaces and triple-expansion engines for Thames river tugs and manufactured […]
Trams and tramways
John Prentice has very kindly given permission to use some text, from his excellent and very interesting Tramway Information website. We are also most grateful to Mr Prentice for the permission to use the images taken from his extensive collection of historic tram postcards. Opening of London County Council Electric Tramways (1903) The Prince of […]
Tintagel House
This very rare photograph is of the clearance of a site on Albert Embankment. The site is now occupied by Tintagel House which is a Metropolitan Police building and is the third building from Vauxhall Bridge going towards Lambeth Bridge. Image thanks to Mr H Limes
Edward Thomas
Philip Edward Thomas was born on 3 March 1878 in 10 Upper Lansdowne Road North (now 14 Lansdowne Gardens – where he is remembered with a blue plaque) and died on the battlefields of Arras, France on 9 April 1917. Thomas was educated at St. Paul’s School, London and Oxford University. An unhappy and solitary […]
Taxis in Lambeth
The history of the London taxi dates back to 1639 when the Corporation of Coachmen obtained a licence to ply for hire in London. By 1654 Parliament limited the number of carriages plying for trade in London and Westminster to 300, increased in 1661 to 400 and 700 in 1694. Passenger safety concerns led to […]
Violette Szabo
Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell was born in Paris on 26 June 1921 to an English motor-car dealer from Brixton, and a French mother. She grew up at 18 Burnley Road, Stockwell, and was know to be a fiery daredevil. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion 21 August, 1940. […]
St Thomas’s Hospital
St Thomas’s Hospital was founded in about 1106, probably as part of the Priory of St Mary Overie, Southwark but its name The Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr probably dates after Thomas Beckett was made a cannon in 1173. Around 1210 the Priory was destroyed by fire and the hospitals moved to land near […]
Stockwell Training College
At age 18 Joseph Lancaster opened his first school in a room in his father’s house. Two years later, in 1798, his school moved into new purpose-built premises in Borough Road, Southwark. The new school building initially had 300 pupils but a sign outside read: “All who will may send their children and have them […]
Stockwell War Memorial
Stockwell War Memorial to the dead of the First World War who lived within half a mile of Stockwell Common has 574 names. After the end of the war in 1918 the site – the area known as the Triangle, at the junction of Clapham and South Lambeth Roads, the last vestige of what had […]
Southwestern Hospital
It is now hard to comprehend how badly epidemics hit the population of the UK in the days before the advent of decent housing, clean water, modern sewerage systems and antibiotics. For example measles and whooping cough alone accounted for 50,000 deaths in England and Wales between 1838 and 1840. The first smallpox hospital was […]
South Bank
The article is reproduced from a 1991 booklet Lambeth’s Theatrical Heritage with the kind permission of the Streatham Society. Copies of this very interesting booklet are still available from the Streatham Society website. It was appropriate to hold a festival of self-appraisal in 1951 – a century after the Great Exhibition. It was conceived whilst […]
Felix Slade (1788-1868)
Felix Joseph Slade, the son of a wealthy Surrey Landowner Robert Slade, was born in Lambeth on 6 August 1788. Felix, a rich bachelor, was a passionate collector and purchased many books, engravings and glass objects with which he adorned his home in Walcot Place (Kennington Road). When he died on 29 March 1868, four […]
Peter Schmidt (1931-1980)
Peter Schmidt (1931–1980) was a painter, artist, teacher and composition and colour theorist. His work has been collected by the Tate, who have two of his prints, both called Flowing in the Right Direction. Five works are in the UK Government Art Collection. With his student and later friend Brian Eno, Schmidt developed a process […]
St Stephen’s, South Lambeth
2011 saw the 150th anniversary of St Stephen’s Church, South Lambeth – the angular red brick building on the corner of St Stephen’s Terrace and Wilkinson Street. On 23 April 1861 the original church – built on “a waste piece of ground at the back of Albert Square” – held its first service. According […]
St Peter’s, Vauxhall
St Peter’s Church, located in Kennington Lane on the edge of what was Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (on the site of the Neptune Fountain), was built in 1863-4 by the notable Victorian gothic revival architect John Loughborough Pearson (1817-1897). It has an active and thriving congregation. The following article was published in 1991 by Vauxhall St Peter’s Heritage Centre, which is […]
St Michael’s, Stockwell
St Michael’s Church, Stockwell Park Road, a Grade 2 listed church by W. Rogers, was constructed in 1840-1 in the Gothic Style. The building was originally planned with the sanctuary beneath the spire and the main entrance was from Stockwell Park Crescent. The orientation was changed in 1880 when the altar was moved and the […]
St Andrew’s, Landor Road
Possibly the oldest public building in Stockwell, St Andrew’s Church is a shadow of its first incarnation, a rather attractive chapel first put up in 1767. Extended in 1810 and then remodelled in the Romanesque style, it is now a grubby-looking non-descript building. Here is what the 1956 Survey of London (ed F. H. W. […]
Royal National Theatre
The article is reproduced from a 1991 booklet Lambeth’s Theatrical Heritage with the kind permission of the Streatham Society. Copies of this very interesting booklet are still available from the Streatham Society website. The concept of an English National Theatre was first proposed in 1848 by Effingham Wilson, a London publisher. He conceived its being […]
Rowton House, Bondway
Rownton Houses were a chain of hostels built in London by the Victorian philanthropist Montagu William Lowry (1838–1903) (Lord Rowton) to provide decent accommodation for working men in place of the squalid lodging houses of the time. The first one was established at Bondway, Vauxhall. Rowton had been private secretary to Disraeli and had helped […]
Arthur Rackham
Arthur Rackham was born at 210 South Lambeth Road on 19th September 1867. He came from a big family, his mother Annie having 11 other children though not all survived childhood. He was educated at the City of London School and showed a natural aptitude for art and drawing. In 1884 Arthur became an insurance […]
Printing
On leaving school William Clowes (1779-1847) was apprenticed to a printer at Chichester. Early in 1802, after serving seven years apprenticeship, he moved to London to seek employment as a journeyman printer. He found a job but on 21 October 1803 he set up on his own at 20 Villiers Street (off The Strand). (Charles […]
Oval Cricket Ground
Oval Cricket Ground is the headquarters of the Surrey County Cricket Club (SCCC) and is on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall that was originally a cabbage patch and market garden. The Montpelier Cricket Club of Walworth was granted a lease on the site in 1845 initially for 31 years at £120 per annum. […]
Orphanages
The Stockwell Orphanage for boys was founded by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle (Elephant and Castle). His church had already supported a number of alms houses and following a prayer meeting at which Spurgeon had stressed the need for an orphanage and an article in The Sword and Trowel in 1866, […]
Vauxhall Station
This photo was probably taken in 1966 and shows the A2 class Locomotive designed by Arthur H. Peppercorn for the LNER and manufactured in 1948. It was originally named The Blue Peter after a famous racehorse, and under Bristish Railways was numbered 60532. Weighing in at over 161 tons this 4-6-2 had 6’2″ driving wheels […]
Victoria Line
Initial plans for a Victoria line were made in 1937 but work on the first new underground line for 61 years began on 20 September 1968. It was built using new techniques including a drum digger (or rotary shield) and completed in record time. The first part (Walthamstow to Highbury and Islington) was opened in […]
Stockwell Station
The text of this page is based on two articles that appeared in the Vauxhall Society’s newsletters during 1983. In previous Newsletters we have described the history and architecture of some tube stations within the Society’s area. But the station at Stockwell, and former railway depot nearby (of which hardly a trace remains) are of […]
Northern Line
The Northern Line was formed out of the City and South London Railway (C&SLR) and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR). The City and South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first deep level tube railway in London as well as the capital’s first electric railway. It ran from Stockwell to the City of […]
Nine Elms: The National Railway Museum now leaving…
By Simon Midgley Imagine if Vauxhall were to become home to a world-class museum. What would that do for the image and prosperity of the area? Well, it turns out, that’s what could have happened. Vauxhall nearly got the National Railway Museum, but it went to York instead and is now the most-visited museum outside […]
Nine Elms Station
Nine Elms Station was designed by Sir William Tite as the London terminus of the London and Southampton Railway and was opened in 1838. Joseph Locke was the chief engineer of the line which was build by Thomas Brassey. Just nine days after the opening, eight special trains ran to Epsom and carried more than […]
Nine Elms
William Lithgow’s Survey of the Civil War defences of London in early May 1643 mentions a fort at ‘Nyne Elmes’. This area was a low swampy district, which was prone to flooding and had some windmills and some willow beds. Despite its swampy setting, the area soon attracted industry with docks for wood and timber […]
Herbert Stanley Morrison
Herbert Stanley Morrison was a British Labour politician, born in Lambeth the son of a police constable. The 1891 census shows the family was living at 240 Ferndale Road, north Brixton. Morrison had little in the way of formal education and left school at 14 to become an errand boy and later a shop assistant. […]
Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976), 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
Bernard Law Montgomery (“Monty”) was born in the Oval House (52-54 Kennington Oval) on 17 November 1887, the son of the Reverend Henry Hutchinson Montgomery, vicar of St Mark’s, Kennington, and his wife Maud Farrar. Bernard was educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst after which he joined the Army in 1908 and served as […]
Archaeology at the MI6 site
The headquarters of MI6 or the British Secret Intelligence Service have been, since 1995, located at 85 Vauxhall Cross, on the Albert Embankment near Vauxhall Bridge. This group of buildings was designed by Terry Farrell. On the evening of 20 September 2000, the building was attacked by the Real IRA using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank […]
Dr Annie McCall
Dr Annie McCall, L.R.Q.C.P. (Ireland) and L.M., MD Berne (1859-1949), was born in Manchester and had an international education – Gottingen Germany, Paris, Berne and Vienna as well as the London School of Medicine for Women. She qualified in 1885 and was one of the first 50 women doctors. Her interests included midwifery and tuberculosis. […]
Lambeth Parish Watch House
A watch house was erected on Lambeth High Street in 1825, for the purpose of holding ‘the drunk and disorderly’. Its site is marked with a stone in Lambeth High Street Recreational Ground. The building was apparently demolished at some point between the wars. There was a second Lambeth Watch House next to St John’s […]
London Fire Brigade Headquarters
The London Fire Brigade Headquarters on the Albert Embankment were opened on the 21 July 1937 by King George VI. The building, designed by the LCC architects, E.P.Wheeler FRIBA and assistant architect, G.Weald FRIBA, was built to replace the old headquarters building in Southwark. The large site is in two sections on either side of […]
The London Eye
The London Eye, erected in 1999, is a giant 135-metre (443ft) tall rotating wheel situated near Jubilee Gardens on the banks of the Thames. The wheel carries 32 sealed and air-conditioned egg-shaped passenger capsules, attached to its external circumference, each capsule representing one of the London boroughs. The Eye was opened to the public on […]
Liza of Lambeth by W. Somerset Maugham
Liza of Lambeth was the first novel by W(illiam) Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), the English author and novelist. Maugham was born in Paris, orphaned when he was only 10 and then brought up by an uncle. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury and after a year at Heidelberg University, he studied medicine at St. Thomas’ […]
Lambeth Walk street market
The following is based on an articles by Peggy Sheath published in The Vauxhall Society’s Newsletter during 1980. A street market was in existence in Lambeth Walk by the 1860s. In a report by the London County Council dated 6 December 1901, from a survey made that year, it is stated: “It is noticeable that […]
Lambeth Walk
Lambeth Walk was the site of two wells, the road to which slowly became lined with houses of one sort or another. By the 1840s ‘The Walk’ had a well-established market and by 1861 it was thriving with 164 costermongers’ stalls. Related links Windmills in Lambeth Lambeth Walk street market Industries in Lambeth Walk Lambeth […]
Lambeth Road, notable inhabitants
The Marine Society, 202 Lambeth Road The following article appeared in The Vauxhall Society’s Newsletter of May 1980. A major contribution to the refurbishing of properties in Lambeth Road has been made in recent time by the Marine Society. In December 1979, HM the Queen officially opened its new headquarters in the former Archbishop William […]
Lambeth School of Art
Lambeth School of Art was established in 1854 by William Gregory, vicar of St Mary the Less Church. St Mary the Less Church was in Princes Road (now called Black Prince Road). It was demolished in the 1960s. At the end of the 1850s, the school was solely a night school. Dean Gregory was Rector, […]
Lambeth North Station
The following article appeared in The Vauxhall Society Newsletter of July 1981. To the casual traveller, the underground station at Lambeth North is pretty unprepossessing. With its clanking lifts and lonely platforms it characterises some of the depression of the inner city. In recent months a modest effort has been made by London Transport to […]
Lambeth Baths
Over the past 150 years at least three local buildings have been called “Lambeth Baths”. The first was run by Lambeth Baths & Washhouses Company Limited and was behind 156 Westminster Bridge Road (between Oakley Street and Lambeth Marsh). At the time of writing we do not know when the baths were built but they […]
Lambeth Workhouse
The text below has been compiled from various websites, particularly Peter Higginbotham’s Workhouse site and England’s Poor Law Commissioners and the Trade in Pauper Lunacy website. Related links Inquest on boy flogged at Lambeth Workhouse ‘A Night in a London Workhouse’ (song) The workhouse system provided basic sustenance for the very poor, infirm and aged, […]
Kennington Park Blitz Tragedy
Friends of Kennington Park have re-published a 12-page booklet by Bob Pateman about the devastating air-raid attack on the Kennington Park shelters on 7 September 1940, in which 104 people lost their lives, as a PDF. See also Bob Pateman writes for the BBC website on the Kennington Park tragedy
Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston (1858-1927)
Sir Henry (Harry) Hamilton Johnston was a British botanist, explorer, linguist, writer, painter and colonial administrator. Johnston was born at 4 Newington Terrace, Kennington and attended Stockwell Grammar School before going to study art at the Royal Academy for four years. Starting at age eighteen he travelled in Europe and North Africa studying painting, architecture […]
Imperial War Museum
The Imperial War Museum was established by Act of Parliament in 1920 at Crystal Palace. From 1924 to 1935 it was housed in the former Imperial institute at South Kensington but moved to its present site in Lambeth Road in 1936. James Lewis designed the building back in 1815 as the Bethlem Royal Hospital. The […]
Vauxhall Bridge
The remains of the oldest prehistoric bridge in Britain have been found at Vauxhall about 100m upstream from the outflow from the River Effra. The bridge suggests that their was a significant settlement nearby. The discovery of the two lines of oak posts date to between 1750BC and 1285BC (the middle Bronze Age). It is […]
Lion Brewery
The Lion Brewery, a prominent riverside landmark in Lambeth, just before it was demolished in 1949 for the building of the Royal Festival Hall. The pilastered building was the storehouse, designed in 1836 by Francis Edwards for the Coding family. As the section shows, the storehouse was massively constructed of load-bearing brick with an all-iron […]
Surrey Theatre
The article below is reproduced from a 1991 booklet Lambeth’s Theatrical Heritage with the kind permission of the Streatham Society. Copies of this very interesting booklet are still available from the Streatham Society website With the success of Astley‘s, a former artiste, Charles Hughes, in partnership with Charles Dibden, the songwriter, on 14 November 1782 […]
Old Vic
This article appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Vauxhall Society’s Newsletter. In May last year [1981], our best-known theatre, the Old Vic, went into liquidation with debts of £400,000. The closure was a direct result of the Arts Council’s decision to withdraw its grant (the National Youth Orchestra and D’Oyly Carte Opera were […]
Hydraulic Power Company
This article is adapted from a talk given in November 1979 by Mr Donnachie to the Lambeth and Southwark Archaeological Society. The Victorian age was the age of steam power, not only for steamships and railway engines, but for a multitude of smaller applications where nowadays we would find an electric motor or diesel. Pumps, […]
Horns Tavern
The Horns Tavern, rebuilt several times in its history, stood at the junction of Kennington Road and Kennington Park Road, opposite the Post Office. Not only was it a place of drinking and entertainment but it also acted as a good meeting place and as a lecture hall and exhibition space. The court of the […]
Guinness Trust
In 1890 Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927), great grandson of the founder of the Guinness Brewery gave £250,000 to set up the Guinness Trust. Guinness’s purpose was to help the many people in London and Dublin who found themselves destitute and unable to afford decent homes. The first trustees were concerned with more than just housing […]
Gatti’s Theatre
The article is reproduced from a 1991 booklet Lambeth’s Theatrical Heritage with the kind permission of the Streatham Society. Copies of this booklet are available from the Streatham Society website (£1.80). The Italian Gatti family established a chain of inexpensive restaurants and cafes, which were successful until superceded by the Lyons’ teashops in 1894. The […]
Garden Museum
This text is from The Vauxhall Society’s A Guide to the Church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, London and explains the build-up to the establishment of the Garden Museum. The Tradescant Trust by Rosemary Nicholson The Tradescant Trust was founded as a registered charity in 1977 to establish in the heart of London the Tradescant Centre, a Museum […]
Freemans
The Freemans mail-order business started in 1905 in a gaslit terraced house in the London suburbs. The company was named after Mr H. E. Freeman, one of the four founders. Business was good and after a year the firm moved to a larger site at 215 Lavender Hill. In 1922 it moved into a nearby […]
Flooding
Vauxhall and areas to the south are in the Thames tidal flood plain and the risk of flooding is increasing. The sea level is rising by about 2ft (60cm) every hundred years owing to a number of factors including: higher sea levels greater storminess increased tidal amplitude the tilting of the British Isles Rising ground water […]
Effra River
This article is based on an article in the Vauxhall Society’s Newsletter of January 1987. The Effra (from the Celtic yfrid – a torrent) rises in the south near Crystal Palace then flows through Norwood Cemetery, parts of Dulwich, Herne Hill, Brockwell Park, Brixton and Kennington before joining the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge. The River […]
Lambeth pottery
We don’t know exactly when pottery was first made on the banks of the Thames in Lambeth but the trade probably started in Roman times. The tradition most likely continued from then through the Middle Ages until Royal Doulton moved its headquarters and works from the area in the mid 20th century. In 1570 two […]
Doulton pottery
John Dwight Doulton, sometimes called the father of English pottery, took out patents in 1671 for stoneware of the type previously imported from Cologne (Cologne ware). He set up a pottery in Fulham, which was then just a small village near London. John Doulton was born in Fulham in 1793 and completed his apprenticeship at […]
Dorset Road gas engines
Gas engines in Dorset Road Engines using town gas were first developed by the Dowson Company, Westerham, Kent, in about 1876. Several other companies became active in this field, including Crossley, National, Andrews and Hornsby, but large engines were also imported from Belgium. The engines in the smaller range were principally used for workshop drives […]
Doing the Lambeth Walk
Lambeth Walk gave its name to a Cockney dance first made popular in 1937 by Lupino Lane. The song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl. (Book and Lyrics by L. Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber, Book revised by Stephen Fry, Music by Noel Gay). The storyline is about a Cockney barrow boy who […]
Crown Works
Among the many well-known business enterprises that have been associated with the Vauxhall area is the building contracting firm of Higgs & Hill which, until 1967, occupied the site now covered by Ebbisham Drive and Bannerman House. Just one hundred years before, in 1867, William Higgs, a successful building contractor whose work had included Chelsea […]
Harry Dobkin
On 17 July 1942 a workman who was helping to demolish the badly bomb-damaged Vauxhall Baptist Chapel in Vauxhall Road, Kennington (now Kennington Lane), prised up a stone slab and found beneath it a mummified body. The immediate assumption was that the remains were either of an air raid victim or had come from the […]
Kenneth Erskine
With grateful thanks to Murder-UK.com for permission to use their text and image. Erskine was a sexual psychopath who preyed on the elderly and became known as the Stockwell Strangler. On 7 April 1987 the body of 78-year-old retired schoolteacher, Miss Eileen Emms, was found in her home. In June there were three more murders, […]
New Covent Garden Market
One of the major developments of recent years, which has profoundly affected the economic and social life of Vauxhall, is the establishment of the New Covent Garden market. It has firmly implanted itself into the local scene, providing numerous jobs and demanding new services in terms of transport, catering and cleaning. Many local residents were […]
Beulah House, 274 South Lambeth Road
Number 274 South Lambeth Road was once known as Beulah House. Despite its apparent neglect this Georgian remnant is Grade II listed (NGR: TQ3042376874): Circa 1800 house of three storeys and basement, five windows. Stock brick. Rusticated stone basement, first floor cill band and mutuled cornice. Gauged flat brick arches to sash windows with glazing […]
Munt’s piano factory
Munt’s piano factory once stood in Wilcox Road. There is a post by a descendent of the family on the UK Piano Page Piano Discussion Forums: My grandfather Cornelius Munt and his brother Norman were the last of the Munt brothers to make pianos at 69 Wilcox road Brixton until 1935 when they sold the factory […]
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin and South London Kennington Cross is the focus of several sites associated with Lambeth’s most famous son, Charlie Chaplin. The Tommyfields bar was formerly the White Hart pub where, sitting on the pavement, Charlie first discovered the joy of music. One of his schools was in Sancroft Street and one of his (many) […]
