Walworth Through Time A Second Selection

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Walworth, Southwark A historically crowded and socially disadvantaged district situated east of Newington Shown in the photo­graph above,* St Peter’s church in Liverpool Grove was built to a design by Sir John Soane in 1825 to serve the rapidly growing community; over the course of the 19th century, Walworth’s popu­la­tion increased eightfold, reaching 122,200 in1901. St Peters Church built for Church Commissioners as a result of Walworth’s expanding population. Architect: by Sir John Soane (1753-1837). More info A majority of this street overlooking Denmark Hill railway station remained derelict for many years. Architects wisely concluded that the street facades of the buildings make a positive contribution to the conservation area. The front elevations have good quality Victorian features, though the rear elevations were much less intact and had been altered significantly. The rear parts of the buildings were demolished and replaced toprovide the necessary quality of accommodation to meet modern medical use requirements.

Surrey Zoological Gardens opened by Edward Cross (1774-1854) on Lorrimore common (old Walworth Manor) The Labour Party’s head­quar­ters were in Walworth from 1981 to 1997, when it moved to Millbank. Its Walworth Road building was renamed John Smith House, after the party’s former leader. The building has since been converted into a stylish hostel. In 1914 the Wheatley family moved into Clinton House. Their son, Dennis, was 17 at the time. Dennis went on to write more than 70 books (selling over 50 million copies) before his death in 1977. Most of these were thrillers and occult novels. In the 1960s, two of his most popular titles, ‘The Devil Rides Out’ and ‘Uncharted Seas’ (renamed ‘The Lost Continent’) were filmed by Hammer. Shown in the CGI below, the old town hall is presently under­going restora­tion and is due to reopen by the end of 2023 as a “dynamic cultural community and workspace hub.”modern flats and houses built by Church Commissioners to replace slums. Managed by Octavia Hill (1838-1912) who encouraged Church Commissioners to add an open space, Faraday Gardens. A Congregational chapel, the Sutherland Chapel, was built between St. Peter's Church and the Walworth Road. In 1904 the building was closed and was later taken over by the Electric Theatre Company. Henry Coming (1817-1902) left funds in his will to create a public museum to house his family’s collection. The remains of a mammoth have been found under the streets of Walworth and there is evidence of human occu­pa­tion since the Stone Age. Walworth – ‘the enclosed settle­ment of the Britons’ – grew up between what became Kennington Park Road and the Old Kent Road, two of the ancient roads fanning out from London Bridge to the south coast. Canter­bury Cathedral was a large landowner from the late Saxon era onwards.

Their first book – Walworth Through Time – came out in 2010, so four books later prove that his hunch was right.

The houses were built in two stages between the 1860s and 1880s as speculative suburban development to designs by a local builder. The houses were originally occupied as private residences but since the second part of the twentieth century they had been used for medical purposes and as living quarters for nurses at the local Mawdsley Hospital. Most recently they were used as interlinked buildings as a methadone maintenance clinic and medical research facility. As they fell into dereliction they were squatted for a while in the early 2000s. The Cuming Museum, which was located in the old town hall building, was founded on the personal collec­tion of Richard Cuming and his son Henry, and supple­mented by relics unearthed during exca­va­tions in the Southwark area. The building was very badly damaged by a fire in March 2013, probably caused by roofers using a blow torch. Many exhibits were lost but the best of those that survived are on display at the newly built Southwark Heritage Centre and Walworth Library, which also has a fasci­nating Faraday cage. Great areas of Walworth were rebuilt after the Second World War, notably in the form of the massive Heygate and Aylesbury estates, which were planned in the 1960s and completed in the1970s.