Walworth since 1939
A Lecture Given at the Cuming Museum, November 1st, 2011
The Second World War was the first significant subject in Walworth’s
history from 1939 onwards. Even before the war was formally declared, one major
fact that we associate with it had already begun: evacuation. The London County
Council co-ordinated the removal of children to safer places. A certain number of
adults also moved out of London. And, of course, national service had started
some months before war was declared, leading to many young adults moving to
training camps all over the country. All these emergency wartime provisions led to
a drastic drop in the resident population, not merely for the duration but also
permanently. The census of 1931 recorded 171,695 people in the Metropolitan
Borough of Southwark, but in 1951 there were only 97,221. Many children and
adults who moved out never came back; there are numerous memoirs written by
former child evacuees whose education and later life centred on places far from
Southwark. Many servicemen and women had their horizons hugely widened by
their wartime service and settled elsewhere, sometimes overseas. Finally, a great
many Southwark folk were bombed out and stayed after the war in the places
where they had found refuge. There are two well-known Bermondsey examples
that will serve to illustrate this fact. The prewar M.P. for that area, Alfred Salter,
left his beloved Bermondsey to live in Balham, and died there after the end of the
Far Eastern part of the war, several months after Victory in Europe Day. And the
household of his long-serving successor, Robert Mellish, was also bombed out, and
went to Catford. Throughout the long years of his representing Bermondsey in
Parliament, he lived in Catford, following a number of generations of the family’s
living in Bermondsey.
The bombing of Walworth in the Second World War was severe, but
paradoxically the great majority of old buildings survived. Small areas suffered
disproportionately, such as the Elephant and Castle, where many buildings were
totally destroyed, but for the rest, they usually lost their windows and maybe
suffered further minor damage. If you look at the first set of postwar Ordnance
Survey maps, the 50” or 1:1,250 series of about 1950, you will see that the long
Victorian streets will often have a gap where one or two Victorian houses have
disappeared, or will bear the label, Ruin, marked on a couple of sites. Another
tell-tale sign of destruction is the presence of prefabs. They stand out on maps
because they are oblong buildings within longer oblong sites, and almost always
appeared in groups. They therefore tended to appear in badly-bombed areas. In
general, the vast majority of prewar properties survived. The war by itself did not
change the face of Walworth as drastically as many people seem to think.
The bombing took place chiefly between September, 1940, and May, 1941,
the period which we label the Blitz; and also between the summer of 1944 and
March, 1945, when V1s and V2s landed on London. Raids did take place from
time to time between 1941 and 1944, but on a much lesser scale. At all times there
were unexploded bombs, and sometimes they would explode when they had been
undetected. The Gurney Street bomb in 1942 was a notorious example, which
devastated an area just south of the New Kent Road.
The fall in Walworth’s population due to the Second World War would have
continued after the war even if there had been no widespread redevelopment. In
the previous talk, I mentioned the regular reports in the 1930s in the magazine of
St. Mary’s, Newington, of parishioners moving to Morden. This pre-war trickle
out of Walworth was followed by a vastly bigger tide of people after the war. The
years of ‘You’ve never had it so good’ brought a considerable migration to more
distant suburbs, and beyond. It was written before the war, ‘the main ambition of
everyone living in Walworth is to move elsewhere’, for in a poorer district, dreams
of improvement almost automatically entail moving out. For one thing, it was
difficult to buy properties in Walworth, and then they were old and usually in need
of much repair, in contrast to the more modern semi-detached houses of places
such as Morden. Secondly, much of the older property was constantly under threat
of redevelopment schemes by the borough council or by the London County
Council. So from the 1950s to the 1980s the removal lorry was a common sight on
a Saturday morning, and the population continued to fall throughout that period.
Redevelopment, often referred to as ‘comprehensive’, was only partly the
result of wartime destruction. It did owe something to the widened powers that the
wartime Government had acquired and to a certain inclination to pursue ‘clean
sweeps’. But it was also a prewar attitude, especially on the part of the London
County Council. The great local example is the redevelopment of the Elephant and
Castle. Although the London County Council did not undertake the work in
earnest until the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had been proposed as early as 1930,
and was cancelled then only because of the financial crisis at that time. Even the
plan of 1930 would have seemed outrageous back in, say, 1900: a terrible intrusion
on the part of authority. Immediately after the Second World War, however,
drastic redevelopment was very much tempered by the continuing effects of the
war. Rationing continued for nearly a decade, and this included the use of building
materials. So to begin with, rebuilding was limited to some urgent needs such as
the electricity works in Penrose Street, and to a certain number of housing blocks
that had either been planned before the war or were needed to replace wartime
casualties. Otherwise, bombsites continued for most of the next fifteen years.
Many of them were turned into gardens in 1951 in connection with the Festival of
Britain. Only towards the end of the 1950s did private rebuilding schemes get
under way, for example, the rebuilding of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
The impediments to redevelopment were removed by the 1960s. In financial
terms, not only had the ordinary voter ‘never had it so good’, but also the public
authorities. And in the background there was a strong disdain for old buildings,
especially Victorian ones, and even for grand symbols such as the Euston Arch. In
that atmosphere, demolition rather than restoration steamrollered along.
So the Victorian houses of the Walworth Common Estate, which could so
easily have been renovated to form a distinct and smart quarter, were ruthlessly
swept away; street after street of them. And for what? The Aylesbury Estate.
Although it has been pointed out that the individual flats offered superior facilities
to those in the houses they replaced, it has generally been agreed that the estate
represents the nadir of Southwark’s postwar changes. It is a prefabricated or
system-built estate according to the 12-M Jespersen system. It has no tower
blocks, but the very long blocks do go up to twelve storeys. The opening
ceremony took place on April 11th, 1970. The Heygate Estate was built
subsequently on the same system and was ready by 1973. Together, these two
estates have dominated the eastern side of Walworth for the past forty years. They
represent extreme examples of what I would call the ‘clearance mentality’, with
not only the old buildings but the old streets swept away.
Canon David Diamond, the late lamented and prominent Rector of St. Paul’s
at Deptford, gave very thoughtful commentaries on redevelopment in South
London which have much moved me. He may not have liked the physical results
of redevelopment, but he dwelt chiefly on the social costs. First of all, there were
the long-drawn-out closures of entire streets or blocks, with many people left
behind for long periods in difficult circumstances. Then there were the break-ups
of settled communities. Neighbours and extended families were dispersed, and
sent to places they would never have had any wish to go to. Maybe they had lived
in their old houses for decades. And often they found themselves isolated, perhaps
at a time of life when they most needed the support of trusted neighbours. In some
cases, this even led to suicide. It was part of the pattern of the Victorian streets of
working-class London that people would stand outside their doors in clement
weather, to chat to their passing neighbours and to watch the world go by in the
street. Blocks of flats removed from proper roads destroyed that pattern. I am
reminded of it by an old man in Penton Place who keeps up the traditional habit.
Postwar redevelopment saw a great culling of tenement blocks, which had
been a notable feature of Walworth since the late 19th century. The majority of
those that were demolished lay in the New Kent Road, at its western end, and in
the streets to the south, towards the old Deacon Street. Many of these buildings
had suffered from changing ownership, and even subdivisions of ownership, plus
20th-century rent restrictions which made it difficult to pay for the inevitable
repairs to large and ageing structures. Some of these buildings were in a very poor
state indeed by the 1960s and were even the subject of public protests, to persuade
Southwark Council to take them over and rehouse the tenants. This was also the
case with tenements in Blendon Row, off the north side of East Street. They
became even more notorious as they appeared in 1972 in the film entitled We Was
All One, complete with a procession of nocturnal rats. As if increasing dereliction
was not enough, some of the larger sets of tenements in the New Kent Road area
additionally suffered the dangers of vandalism as they were gradually emptied;
anyone living there towards the end was in a rather terrible predicament.
The southern half of the Pullen’s Estate on the western side of Walworth
was demolished following Southwark Council’s acquisition of the entire estate in
1977. This had been a well-run estate in the hands of the descendants of James
Matthew Pullen, who had built it between 1886 and 1901. The rest of the estate
was saved principally by a squatting campaign in 1985 and is now highly valued,
both for its flats and for its yards of workshops. The whole estate could have been
kept and improved, and would now be an even more prominent attraction.
One new tenement block has appeared in Walworth, although strictly
speaking it has replaced an older one on the same site. This is Darwin Court in
Barlow Street, which was built for the Peabody Trust in 2003 to replace Darwin
Buildings. It is not merely a block of flats, but has aimed to be a community
centre, with some services offered to non-residents.
One largely forgotten element in the heyday of redevelopment was the new
prefab of the 1960s. This was a smarter building than the type of the 1940s, and
was painted white with black uprights. From a distance, they looked halftimbered. There was a large number of them in Dante Road off Newington Butts,
and some in John Ruskin Street and Hillingdon Street towards Camberwell New
Road. In recent years, some favourable attention has been given to surviving
original examples, but no mention has been made of their grander younger cousins.
Public transport in Walworth changed after 1939 only in respect of road
vehicles. The electric trams were removed from service in 1952 and petrol buses
took their place. These were the RT vehicles, which had been introduced in 1938
and went through various versions in the early post-war years. They remained in
service until 1978. Routemasters appeared in 1954, but well into the 1960s very
few ran down Walworth Road. For a long time only the old No. 17 route boasted
Routemasters; the rest still had RTs. The Routemasters became universal only in
the 1970s. Trolley-buses never operated in Walworth or in adjoining districts.
Very few Walworth residents would have used local main-line trains. After
the closure of Walworth Station (in John Ruskin Street) during the First World
War, only the station at the Elephant and Castle was available. A much greater
proportion would have used the Underground, again at the Elephant and Castle,
and also at Kennington. What is now the Northern Line had appeared at the
Elephant in 1890, and the Bakerloo Line had followed in 1906. From the 1920s
onwards there had been plans to extend the Bakerloo Line towards Camberwell.
The first such scheme after the Second World War was announced in 1948 to be
undertaken in 1950-53, but it was dropped because the costs were too high. A
further proposal came in 1957-58, but the powers lapsed in 1961. Yet another plan
emerged in 1964, but the eventual verdict was ‘not a task of the first priority’. The
idea was revived yet again in 1969, but by 1974 it was concluded that the case for
the extension was weak. A bombed cinema site at 55 Camberwell Road was
earmarked in the early postwar years for a new Underground station, but it has
long found other uses.
In the last forty years or so, the decline of Walworth’s pubs has been
phenomenal. This is a pattern seen all over London and beyond. A few local
examples are these: John Ruskin Street has lost all its pubs since the 1960s; the
Duke of Clarence in Manor Place and the Faunce Arms in Faunce Street have been
converted into flats; and even Walworth Road, with much older pubs, has lost
almost all of them, including the King’s Head, the Horse and Groom, the Prince
Alfred and the Temple Bar. Council redevelopment swept away many in the
1960s and 1970s, with a new estate often providing only a token pub in an area
where several had previously existed. As many pubs once provided meetingplaces for the community over and above their primary purpose of selling
refreshments, their disappearance has been a blow to local community life.
Shops and markets have likewise declined, and again the local changes have
been parts of a widespread pattern. Corner shops, once very numerous, have
almost entirely disappeared. The streets leading to the Elephant and Castle, which
were all lined with small shops before the Second World War, now boast very few,
partly due to the London County Council’s redevelopment of the junction and later
to the growth of supermarkets. Walworth Road alone has seen commercial life
continue to flourish, but it has shrunk within my memory. The provision of easier
parking is going to be crucial if it is to survive as a main shopping street.
Street markets have similarly shrunk, with only East Street retaining some of
its old vigour. Westmoreland Road, which still had a very lively general market in
the 1960s, has virtually gone, and the smaller groups of market stalls that used to
stand in many further streets have now passed into history. Disapproval and
restriction by public authorities have been their bugbear for generations, but their
popularity is shown by the success of the market on private land around the
Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre.
Cinemas were at their zenith in 1939. Within twenty years, they were very
much on the wane due to the burgeoning of television in the 1950s and to the new
prosperity that brought greater mobility for entertainment. The great Trocadero,
the area’s palace of entertainment, was closed in 1963, and soon demolished.
What a loss that building was! A small replacement of the utmost ugliness, an
Odeon, was opened close by in 1966 but was demolished in turn in 1988.
Subsequently, the Coronet on the other side of New Kent Road (previously the
ABC) was Walworth’s only cinema.
As Walworth’s population had increased during the 19th century, churches,
chapels and missions had proliferated. The single Anglican parish of St. Mary,
Newington, in 1800 had become one of seventeen by 1900. Baptists, Methodists,
Congregationalists and Roman Catholics had also built their own places of
worship. Some of this Victorian inheritance was wrecked in the Second World
War, and was not restored or rebuilt in subsequent years. St. Stephen’s, Walworth
Common (or St. Stephen’s, Villa Street) and St. Andrew’s, New Kent Road, were
both lost in that way. Just beyond the Walworth boundary, St. Mary Magdalen’s in
Massinger Street, the Costermongers’ church, was also permanently removed. A
later removal was that of St. Mark’s, at the Walworth Road end of East Street. On
the western side of the area, St. Paul’s in Lorrimore Square and St. Agnes’s by
Kennington Park were both completely rebuilt and survive today. The original St.
Agnes’s was a distinguished Victorian design by the younger George Gilbert Scott,
and Sir John Betjeman dedicated his Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish
Churches to its memory. The church of All Saints in Surrey Square was another
complete rebuilding in 1959. But it was closed as an Anglican church within
twenty years and became the home of a West African congregation, the Church of
Our Lord (Aladura). This has been part of a pattern, most obviously illustrated
along the Old Kent Road, in which West African churches have flourished in
formerAnglican and non-Anglican buildings. The one non-Anglican church that
has always flourished is the Metropolitan Tabernacle, the Baptist church at the
Elephant and Castle which was built for Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1859-61 in
succession to smaller, long-gone chapels near London Bridge. The present
Metropolitan Tabernacle is the third to stand on the site, opened in 1958 to replace
the one destroyed in the Blitz. Parts of Spurgeon’s old empire survive elsewhere,
for example, his college on Beulah Hill at Norwood. His original Pastors’ College
stood behind the first Metropolitan Tabernacle. Two further large Baptist churches
stood until the Heygate Estate was built. The Walworth Road Baptist Church
stood across Wansey Street from this museum, on the site of the present petrol
station. It could hold 2,000 people and had an ornate Classical facade similar to
that of Spurgeon’s. It was indeed built at the same time as Spurgeon’s, but served
a completely different congregation. In Wansey Street itself, at the junction with
the former Hewson Street, there stood the Surrey Tabernacle, built in the 1860s for
James Wells, a Strict Baptist preacher who had previously ministered in Borough
Road. This was also a grand Classical building that could hold 2,000 people.
After the Baptists had vacated it in the 1920s, it became the home of the Jewish
congregation that had previously met in Heygate Street. This synagogue was
closed in 1961.
The loss of some important former Nonconformist churches has been very
sad, because Walworth has few old buildings of architectural distinction or with
significant historical connections. The York Street Independent Chapel, later
known as the Browning Hall, was a congregational chapel in which Robert
Browning was baptized in 1812. His family lived a little farther south in what was
then the genteel suburb of north Camberwell. The building survived until the late
1970s, surrounded by its burial ground, in which one monument remained
prominent (and still does today). The building could easily have been restored for
institutional use, with a garden around it. The former Beresford Chapel in John
Ruskin Street, which had been built for Dr. Edward Andrews in 1819, was lost in a
fire in 1997. The Ruskin family worshipped at this chapel in John Ruskin’s
childhood days, when they lived at Herne Hill. Later, it served an Anglican
congregation, and then one belonging to the Open Brethren, before becoming a
factory. Again, it could and should have been restored, and regarded as a valued
prize of the district.
Mention might be made of new almshouses or ‘sheltered housing’: modern
examples of a very worthy old type. The Drapers’ Almshouses at the Elephant and
Castle, in Draper Street, were replaced by Walters Close in Brandon Street in
1960, an unusually attractive development for that date: humane in scale, agreeable
in its architectural features, and providing well-kept and sheltered garden-ground
in contrast to the windy, unkempt wastes that so often surrounded public housing
of the 1960s. The St. Mary Newington Almshouses that stood in Clock Place off
Newington Butts were replaced by St. Mary Newington Close in Surrey Square.
Walworth – or the ancient parish of St. Mary, Newington – had been part of
the Metropolitan Borough of Southwark since 1900. The borough was run from
this building as its Town Hall. In 1965, it was merged with the neighbouring
Boroughs of Bermondsey and Camberwell to form the present London Borough of
Southwark. And so Boundary Lane off Camberwell Road became a mere
historical allusion after hundreds of years of being a firm division in local
administration. Although municipal government has not entirely gone from
Walworth Road, there is the sense that the place has lost much of the civic identity
that it still had in the early 1960s.
Mention must be made of Walworth Garden Farm, which was founded in
Manor Place in 1987. Unlike many urban farms, it has no animals and is intended
to offer training in horticulture. It occupies a site on the edge of the old Surrey
Gardens and of the estate that took its place.
Ever since Walworth ceased to be a quiet, rural area in the 18th century, it
has constantly changed. Its population has risen and fallen, its social character has
been at different times grand and humble, and its physical appearance has seen the
whole spectrum of style, size and type over 200 years. But these changes have
been far more rapid since 1939 and especially since the 1960s. The replacement of
the Aylesbury and Heygate Estates at the present time marks the end of an
extraordinarily short life for so large a proportion of the area’s fabric.
I conclude by recommending the Cuming Museum, in which I have given
these two talks on Walworth. It has existed in the Walworth Road since 1902 but
goes back as a local private collection to 1782, when it was begun by the recentlysettled Cuming family in the early days of the grand Georgian suburb. In all these
changes in the district over more than two and a quarter centuries, it has served to
reflect and record its home, and to educate us all.
Stephen Humphrey.
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