My stroll on Friday 4th August 1989 started at a bus cease on Battersea Bridge Highway roughly reverse the place I had caught a bus on the finish of my earlier stroll
McCarthy Court docket is ready only a few yards again from the highway and I believe this image of it was presumably taken in Bridge Lane. Its two lengthy blocks, one 4-storey and the opposite 2-storey have been constructed for Wandsworth Council in 1978 with an interior backyard between them and so they include 42 one bed room flats and 36 two bed room flats. The property, now with a mixture of council tenants, leaseholders and personal tenants since 2005 has been managed by the McCarthy Court docket Co-operative whose board consists of property residents with one council nominee. I assume McCarthy was the title of some native councillor or officer however maybe somebody within the space can inform me.
It had been deliberate, because the Survey of London recounted in 2013 as part of a a lot bigger growth by the then Conservative authorities, however permission for a lot of this was denied by the Ministry of Housing and Wandsworth was advised the homes over a lot of the location have been sound and might be renovated. Writing about these photos now I usually want that this survey had been accessible after I was photographing the realm, as there have been few printed sources then.
The primary Battersea Bridge was a toll bridge which changed a ferry throughout the River Thames to Chelsea and was opened to pedestrians in 1771 and to horses and carts the next 12 months. Designer Henry Holland had been pressured to chop prices and the bridge was slender and harmful each to customers and river visitors, however with some reinforcement it lasted till 1885, the final picket bridge over the Thames. This bridge was painted by nearly each important British painter of the age together with Turner and Whistler.
Presumably Bridge Lane used to result in the bridge, although it now stops quick, and should in earlier occasions have led the the ferry. These homes on Bridge Lane are presumably Victorian and should have been amongst these saved from demolition by the Minstry of Housing in 1968, although I believe these are what’s now number one and a couple of on the north aspect of the highway, regardless of the quantity 9 in my image and 15 on one of many doorways.
An fascinating use of piles of bricks on high of each rectangular and cylindrical columns on the gate and steps to this home. I don’t suppose these have survived.
Again within the Sixties the Tate Gallery had paid Carl Andre slightly over £2,000 for a pile of bricks, inflicting big controversy over what many thought of a waste of cash. These appeared to me slightly extra fascinating.
Bridge Lane ends at Surrey Lane and I turned west down it after which down Orbel Avenue. The property right here was constructed within the 1870s and 80s, and the northern aspect of Orbel Avenue is lined by semi-detached two storey homes with solely vestigial entrance gardens.
You’ll be able to stil see the quick part of fencing between the 2 doorways of 70 and 72 on the road, unusually ornate for these homes, however the gate and the part fronting the pavement has gone. With the leaves from the shrub behind I felt I might nearly be within the Palm Home at Kew.
Not a medical institution, The Home Hospital at 64 Battersea Excessive Avenue was for me image of the fast and appreciable gentrification of the realm going down because the industries have been shifting out. It provided alternative doorways, at a worth unspecified, fireplace locations, baths, basins, faucets and so on. The positioning at 64-66 had in-built 1975 for the manufacturing facility of Allen and Ernest Lambert, who referred to as themselves the Allen Brothers and made cigars. It later turned a pipe manufacturing facility for Imperial Tobacco till round 1930. In accordance with the Survey of London “within the late Nineteen Fifties they have been occupied by the Ductube Firm Ltd, makers of inflatable tubing for laying ducts in concrete.”
The constructing at proper and the manufacturing facility web site behind has since been redeveloped as ‘Restoration Sq.‘. Quantity 64 and therather boring block at left, Powrie Home, stay.
James Bennett was a linen draper, who named his enterprise premises very visibly ‘London Home’. Initially in a Georgian constructing on the fitting of this image he added to this in an identical style throughout the center and left of my image in 1866. I believe the ground-floor addition of Bennett’s Brasserie is slightly later. The builidng is regionally listed. I believe ‘London’ was maybe a suggestion that he offered effective materials, not the coarser ‘Manchester’ fabric, as Battersea was clearly again then not in London.
Gordon Ramsey took over the Brasserie in 2014 as a restaurant, however this closed in 2022.
Battersea Sq. had roughly disappeared off the maps by the Seventies, however the title was restored and appreciable work carried out on the realm after it was designated as a Conservation Space – the work was roughly full after I made these photos in 1989.
Extra from Battersea in a later put up about this stroll.
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Tags: 1989, 64, Allen Brothers, August 1989, Battersea, Battersea Excessive St, Battersea Sq., Bennett’s Brasserie, Bridge Lane, cigar works, fence, James Bennett, London, London Home, London Pictures, McCarthy Court docket, Orbel St, peter Marshall, Restoration Sq., Shuttleworth Rd, Survey of London, The Home Hospital, tobacco works, Stroll, Wandsworth
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