London – South of the Thames : Chapter VII

This is a digitised copy of the book “London – South of the Thames” by Sir Walter Besant
Published in London by Adam & Charles Black (1912)

CHAPTER VII
WALWORTH

This manor, mentioned in Domesday Book as Walearde, and then comprising some 500 acres, was given to the monks of Canterbury in the reign of King Edward the Confessor, but in 1540 Henry YIII. replaced the prior and monks with a dean and twelve prebendaries, who had this amongst other estates, and who have enjoyed it ever since. In connection with this manor frequent mention is made of the family of Walworth—lessees from the Church—and tradition names Sir William Walworth, the slayer of Wat Tyler, as an inhabitant of this village.

One hundred years ago Walworth was still nearly all fields crossed by haphazard paths which the subsequent street lines followed, resulting in the crooked roads of to-day.

Patches of houses stood here and there on the eastern side of the Walworth Road, the south side of the New Kent Road, and on the northern side of East Street, while to the south the line of the Westmoreland Road crossed the Walworth Common, of 48 acres, then just commencing to be fringed with cottages. South of the New Kent Road were the Lock Fields, a reclaimed swamp, so named from the lazar-house (“le lokes “) established by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital for the care of lepers. To-day all this interesting ground is built over, and such is the demand for more houseroom that tall tenements are being built as the leases of the small houses run out, The northern parish boundary is the New Kent Road, the south side of which from Sayer Street to Rodney Road is for the most part shops, a terrace of old-fashioned houses standing back from the road, with long gardens behind, running east as far as Paragon Crescent. Sayer Street contains a large Board School with public playground, and is entirely built up with high-class model dwellings. This style of tenement is popular here, and Lion Street, Chatteris Square, Gurney Street, Pollock Road, Rodney Place, and the minor streets behind are entirely lined with them. Two enormous blocks, ” The Palatinate,” face the main road and extend from Gurney Street to Rodney Place, and from the absence of signs the flats evidently let well.

To the east, Rodney House, which has given its name to the road and place adjacent, has been rebuilt and stands out from the other old houses adjacent, in the centre of which is St. Mary’s Chapel and Home for Working Girls. The sidewalks here are planted with trees, which, with those in the gardens of the houses, contrast strongly with the narrow and often squalid streets lying behind. Rodney Road, a broad well-kept thoroughfare, with the new Church and Rectory of St. Margaret, is partly residential and partly a business street of old and new buildings, leading at the lower end into a closely built-up district of small streets and poorly-kept houses swarming with children. Board Schools are everywhere—one in Rodney Road, a temporary building amongst the cottages of Hemp Row, large premises at Wadding Street, and more in Flint Street. Still there are others to the south and west — some being enlarged-—a sure index to the crowded condition of the parish.

The Fishmongers Company owns a great deal of property here, the houses, well built and well kept, showing conspicuously by the side of those owned privately.

The smaller turnings off Orb Street are of clean small houses with little patches of gardens, and at the junction with East Street is a large vacant space—to let bounded by tall flat houses. Behind these small streets are many alleys, the abode of costers and labourers, with small shops, chiefly selling provisions and fried fish, with numbers of second-hand and rag shops. East Street is a busy market at its west end, lined with barrows filled with cheap food, but improves towards the Old Kent Road. Off this again are many squalid and dirty alleys blocked with costermongers’ wares and alive with children. The large roads to the south are of a good class, but wherever a narrow street occurs the poor have crowded it from end to end. Manor, Surrey, and Aldridge Streets, the latter especially, are filled with good houses and a better class of people, as in the streets round Surrey Square, in which stands the Church of All Saints, built in 1865.

At the foot of South Street are the extensive buildings of the Newington Workhouse of St. Saviour’s Union, flanked by a large mineral water factory.

Westmoreland and Boyson Roads, with the Church of St. Stephen, Walworth Common, are wide streets lined with large houses. Here are more Board Schools, one at Portland Street and another large one in Trafalgar Street, with a third in Boundary Lane. A large block of dwellings in erection at Faraday and South Streets dwarfs the surrounding small houses. Off Portland Street are many small streets of poor houses, very dirty in places, with small shops here and there, little beer-houses, and alive with dirty children playing in the roads and gutters. The need for small playgrounds for poor children is demonstrated in every one of these narrow and crowded streets, for although a large park may exist within a walk of a quarter of an hour, it is to a great extent useless for young children except on rare occasions.

Boundary Lane, with its small houses and workshops, joins Walworth Road at the busiest part. Lined with good shops, and with stalls at the pavement edge, this road is a busy mart for the crowded district with its throngs of shoppers and never-ending stream of trams and omnibuses. The shops and business houses stretch almost unbrokenly to the Elephant and Castle, and the great volume of trade has lapped over into the side streets through lack of accommodation in the main road. Among the mass of new houses a few of the old ones still remain, some of the best of which are in Queen’s Row. At Liverpool Street in a quiet neighbourhood is the Church of St. Peter, with the rectory adjoining, standing in a large yard laid out at the expense of the Company of Goldsmiths in 1S95 by the National Public Gardens Association, and forming a beautiful garden shaded by fine trees, the only large open space in the parish and therefore greatly appreciated.

Off Trafalgar Road are some poor small streets, tenanted by the lower classes, of which the dirty Bronte Place, a rendezvous of costers, is a type. Crossing East Street, busy and far from clean, with its gutter market in full swing, St. Mark’s Church to the left rises high over the small shops, with a big Board School at King and Queen Street, which curves into York Street. At Morecambe Street is the Robert Browning Hall, with the Clayton Jubilee INIemorial Schools, erected in 1855, and the Schools of St. Mark’s Church. St. John’s Church is opposite in Charleston Street. At the corner of Wansey Street and Walworth Road is the Newington Vestry Hall, and adjoining the Free Public Library, opened in November 1893.

This is a beautiful building with spacious reading rooms, lending and reference library, well stocked and largely used. Forty years ago all this ground, as far as Brandon Street, was still meadow and gardens, which accounts for the better style of streets. The large Walworth Road Chapel and Surrey Tabernacle are in the next block,
and near by is Heygate Street containing the Borough Jewish Schools, built in 1867.

The streets here are small and clean, but the adjoining Brandon Street is not so good, many small poor turnings leading from it. A row of old red-tiled houses with high steps, quite a surprising discovery in Walworth, stands at the foot of Gurney Street, and opposite the fine dwellings erected by the Company of Fishmongers. Gloucester Row and Weymouth Street, also lined with tall flats, lead back to the New Kent Road.