Dating back to 1610, Lambeth Palace Library can claim to be the oldest public library in the country. It may be quiet inside but is also buzzing with activity. The entire Lambeth Palace Library collection is being rehoused in a vast new purpose-built centre in the Palace gardens. Due to open in 2020, the new […]
Was Vauxhall’s Prince of Wales as ‘Black’ as the French paint him?
The Duchy of Cornwall owns much of Vauxhall and Kennington, which makes the local landlord HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. One of the royal heir’s other titles is Duke of Cornwall. The first Duke was a Vauxhall resident as well as landlord. This is short-lived warrior Edward of Woodstock (1330–1376), who was invested as Prince […]
Vauxhall
Some Mesolithic (8300-4000 BC) flint blades together with some Neolithic (4000-1800BC) pottery shards were found at an archaeological dig on a site directly opposite Vauxhall Park in South Lambeth Road. The site of a prehistoric bridge dating to between 1750BC and 1285BC has recently found near Vauxhall Bridge, which suggests that the area had a […]
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
The name Stokewell (first recorded in 1197) means the well by the stump or wood and comes from the Old English stocc + wella. There was a Stockwell Wood till the 17th century. The manor of Stockwell was formed in the late 13th century, when King Edward I acquired the manor of South Lambeth and […]
Royal Southwark and Lambeth
The following is the text of a talk given by Dr Graham Dawson, Chairman of the Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society at their symposium held on 26th March 2002. It is reproduced with the kind permission of that Society. I thought it would be a good idea to mark the Queen’s jubilee by looking at […]
The Peasants’ Revolt 1381
During a period when public confidence in the government, and nobility, was especially low, the English peasants became very discontented. Problems started in mid-1381 in the eastern counties (Norfolk south to Kent) when protests against the unpopular poll tax and the often corrupt tax collectors erupted into riots. The leaders in Kent and Essex marched […]
Lambeth
Lambeth has been described as a village between Southwark and Battersea. The name comes from Lamhytha (1088), a ‘Landing-place for lambs’. Lambeth has been spelt in various ways including Lamb-hythe, Lamheth, Lambyth, Lamedh, Lamhees. The area was mostly marsh and fields with scattered villages and hamlets until the 18th century. King Harthacnut owned the Manor […]
Kennington Palace
Until about 1050 Lambeth was one manor, but at about this time it was divided into three, of which the central part, Kennington, was granted by the King to one of his servants, Theodoric the Goldsmith, by whom it was held for about forty years. After many changes of ownership the manor eventually returned to […]
Kennington
This area was once a royal manor, so the name is thought to come from the Saxon kyning-tun, (the town or place of the king). Another possibility is that it was a farmstead associated with a man called Cena. It was called Chenintun or Chenintune at the time of the Domesday Book (1086), which records […]
Duchy of Cornwall
The Duchy of Cornwall estate dates back to 1337 when Edward III granted a Royal Charter to his oldest son, the Black Prince. This charter said that from then on the eldest surviving son of the monarch (and heir to the throne) would also be the Duke of Cornwall. The idea was to provide the […]
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 […]
Cuper’s Gardens
This celebrated pleasure garden, also known as Cupid’s Gardens, was originally part of Lambeth Marsh. In the late medieval period three acres of this meadowland came into the possession of the Earls of Arundel. After passing through other hands, it eventually came back in the form of a large garden to Thomas, Earl of Arundel […]
Carlisle House
In about 1200 a house was built for the Bishop of Rochester on a site between modern day Hercules Road and Carlisle Lane. Some time about 1217 it was rebuilt and called La Place. In 1531 a poisoning attempt was made on John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, by his cook Richard Rouse (Rose). But the […]
Edward, The Black Prince
There had been a royal residence (at Kennington Palace) near the junction of Kennington Lane and Kennington Road as far back as Saxon times. In the 14th century the site became the principal residence of Edward, Prince of Wales (1330-1376), now familiarly known as the Black Prince, a name only given to him in the […]
St Mary’s, Lambeth
St Mary-at-Lambeth Church is mentioned in the Domesday Book as being owned by Countess Goda, sister of Edward the Confessor. The Bishops of Rochester were later given the living, which in 1197 passed to the Archbishops of Canterbury. The church was rebuilt in the 1370s and again in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. […]
Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official residence. The Convent of St Andrew of Rochester sold part of the Manor to Archbishop Haldwin of Canterbury in 1190. Archbishop Hubert Walter bought the rest of the Manor in 1197 and built a house by the river roughly opposite the Palace of Westminster. This house was […]
