London – South of the Thames: Chapter X

Chapter IX London – South of the Thames
by Sir Walter Besantt
Chapter XI

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)

This is in its raw form. Sections will be improved manually on this blog as time goes on.

CHAPTER X
BATTERSEA (EASTERN) AND NINE ELMS

Between the Bridge Road and the Albert Road, near the river, the neighbourhood is made up of small streets with the style and size of both residences and roads improving as the Park is neared, and to the southward, on the river-bank, are located the large cab barns of the Shrewsbury and Talbot Company, a Salvation Army Salvage Wharf, the Imperial Oil Company’s Stores and Wellington’s Refinery, Ransome’s Dock, the Battersea Brass Foundry, with vacant spaces at the Albert Bridge and the great brick flour-mills overlooking all. In the Park Road the houses begin to change, and there have lately sprung up several growing industrial concerns including bakeries and refreshment contractors. On the south side of the road is a little open ground, but building is rapidly going on all round.

Opposite Anhalt Road is the hall of the Church of St. Mary-le-Park, a chapel-ofease to the parish church, of which only a small portion has been erected, with a wooden belfry outside. Here, facing the west side of the Park, are rows of good houses and long terraces of modern flats overlooking the Park. Of these the Albany Mansions, now building, are substantial red-brick structures of recent design.

Battersea Park itself is one of the best of the London open spaces, covering 250 acres of ground, and is laid out as a popular recreation ground. Broad roads beautifully kept and very level encircle the Park, and bicyclists swarm here in the afternoons. There are also bridle paths reserved for equestrians, while a great proportion of the grass land is given over to games. A large lake is supplied by pumping, and near this are the noted semi-tropical gardens where palms and other sub-tropical plants flourish out of doors all the year round. In the summer concerts are given regularly to immense audiences, which mainly come from the crowded neighbourhood to the south of the Park. There are four principal entrances with a
well-built lodge at each, and a steam-boat pier within the grounds.

The Park was made on the site of the notorious Battersea Fields, where, up to the time the Board of Works bought the site, a fair of the worst description was held every Sunday. These lands, originally flooded by the Thames, were reclaimed some three hundred years ago and went to the Lord of the Manor, from whose descendants they were purchased for some £250,000 and laid out between 1852 and 1858 at a cost of £66,273- To raise the surface, over a million cubic yards of earth were shot here, a great deal of which came from the Victoria Docks extension. A famous resort on this tract was the “Red House,” noted for aquatic sports and shooting matches, which stood a little to the west of the south end of the present Victoria Bridge. This was the ” Hurlingham ” of the day and also the winning-post for many Thames rowing races. A ferry from here ran to the White House, another famous house, on the opposite bank. It was in these fields that a noted affair of honour took place in 1829 between the Duke of Wellington and the young Earl of Winchelsea, happily bloodless, but the memory of which was perpetuated in Wellington Road near the Albert Bridge. Fifty yards to the west of the site of the Red House is the site of a ford across the river by which Caesar may have crossed the Thames.

At the south-west corners of the Park there is still some open ground to the Battersea Bridge Road, but this is quickly disappearing. On the southern side the Prince of Wales Road is closely built up as far east as the Macduff Road with four and five-story red-brick residences and flats of the most modern style commanding a fine view toward the river. Behind this, Kersley Street, the Brynmaers Road, and the numerous short cross streets intersecting the latter are all new. Most of the houses are small in size, divided into an upper and lower residence. They are well built and do not lack tenants like their larger neighbours.

From Albert Road to Queen’s Road the Battersea Park Road is made up almost equally of houses and shops of all descriptions mixed indiscriminately. Near the Albert Road, on the north side, is a row of twelve small almshouses, named Dovedale Place, with a small garden attached, while to the eastward are a couple of enormous steam laundries separated by a blacking factory, and at the Forfar Road stands a large Board School, recently enlarged. Here, stretching to the Macduff Road, stand the buildings of the Battersea Polytechnic Institute, consisting of the Institute, a technical continuation school for boys, a school of domestic economy for girls, and a teachers’ training school. At the Park end of the Macduff Road building is being pushed vigorously on the west, but the eastern end of the Prince of Wales Road is still vacant almost to the Victoria Road ; and in this vacant lot is to be seen the remains of the Royal Albert Palace, opened in June 1885 and closed in 1888. It was intended as a popular resort for the people, but was not sufficiently patronised to be a lasting success. The grounds extended to the Forfar Road and were tastefully laid out, but nothing now remains of the buildings except part of the southern wall.

All Saints, Battersea Park, a modern red-brick church with a square tower, faces the south-eastern entrance to the Park, and adjoining, at the corner of Lurline Gardens, is the church house, with a branch of the public library and a reading-room in a small low brick building immediately to the westward. At the corner of the main road and Meath Street is the Battersea Tabernacle, and adjacent the Victoria Industrial Dwellings. The Victoria Road, skirting the Park on the east, is a broad thoroughfare leading to the Victoria Bridge, which was opened the same day as the Park. The land on the east side of this road is almost entirely given over to the railway yards, round houses, and viaducts of the London, Chatham and Dover, and London, Brighton and South Coast Railways, whose lines cross the Thames to Victoria Station on what is claimed to be the widest bridge in the world.

At the entrance to the Park Victoria Circus is a very fine open space, and the vicinity has lately been built up, but the eastern corner is still vacant, with gipsy caravans snugly lined up behind the high hoardings. Beyond the arch of the railroad, in an angle completely hemmed in by viaducts, is a large plant of the London Gaslight Company with enormous receivers towering high above the lines. York Road and Battersea Park Stations, both close to one another, offer every facility for getting to and from the Park, while the angle between them is taken up by the Convent of Notre-Dame, the Church, and Roman Catholic Boys’ School of St. Joseph.

Adjoining York Road Station in the east is the Temporary Home for Lost Dogs, and also a boarding-place for cats. The air resounds with the voices of dogs, which are mostly sent here by the police, kept a few days, and if worthless destroyed.

The road rises over the railroad lines, and to the north, across the vast filtering beds of the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, a panorama of the Thames is seen with the Victoria Tower of the Houses of Parliament beyond. The grounds of the Company, with their great reservoirs high above the surface, follow the road as far east as Kirtling Street, but were formerly more extensive, the eastern end at the water-side now being covered with manufactories and wharves for brick, tiles, lead, glass, and steel and iron, A large angle of land on the main road at the corner is vacant and for sale. Passing under a private bridge used for conveying coal from the water-side to the gas-works south of the road the busy Nine Elms Lane is entered, and a Wesleyan Mission institute is noticed at the Mill Pond Bridge, so called from a flour-mill which formerly stood here. Between here and the Manor House Wharf is an old landing-place or stairs, locally said to have been in the grounds of the manor-house. The London County Council owns the next wharf and are busily working on a pumping station in connection with the low-level sewers which tap the south-western district. Extensive works are in progress and the excavations are very large and deep. The tall drying-sheds of a whiting manufactory, stacked full of the finished article, are seen next, and then come the great hay wharves of Allnutt and Underwood, and the Newcastle Wharf piled high with bales that are unloaded continuously from barges alongside. A change from this is the large stone-yards of Holland and Hannen, where busy saws are at work on huge blocks.

The Seaham Wharf of the Marquis of Londonderry with its huge piles of coal towers high up to the eastward, and here busy engines and crowds of coal-heavers are rapidly emptying one of the Company’s large sea-going steamers that now convey the coals direct to this wharf without transhipment into barges as formerly.

From the Nine Elms pier of the London- Steamboat Company the scene along the water-front is changing continually as fresh barges and lighters are warped into the wharves and the smaller craft and steamboats pass up and down.

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