South London special
From chimneys and cats to burgers and basketball
Recently a few people have told us they’d like to see a bit more south London content in the newsletter. So, instead of making a concerted, longterm effort to do that, we’re just going to publish this one-off ‘special’ edition and then go back to our old ways…
… Not really. Although (in our defence) we’ve had quite a few editions recently that have focused on areas south of the river, we admit that the Weekend Roundup can suffer from a little bit of east London bias. So we’re going to try and remedy that a bit with this issue and then keep the trend going.
We’re going to start up by the river. The other week Battersea Power station released images of the glass elevator popping out the top of one of the chimneys (above). When it opens, the Chimney Lift attraction will “offer visitors 360-degree views of London from 109 metres above the ground.”
You wait ages for a south London chimney story and then two come along at once… It looks like the Tate Modern’s chimney needs a bit of work doing to it. According to the SE1 website, the chimney is due to be “covered in scaffolding and netting” for a number of years to allow for “remedial works” to be carried out.
We’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Waterloo. We used to work down there, near Lower Marsh and The Cut and have fond memories of places like Maria’s Cafe and the basement bar under the Old Vic. The Standard’s restaurant critic, David Ellis, doesn’t agree with us though. In his review of Passyunk Avenue, the American dive bar and diner that’s just moved in under the railway arches, he describes the area as “London’s grey-walled nadir, where the culinary highlights include an All Bar One beside a Slug and Lettuce”. That’s way too harsh if you ask us, but at least Ellis is not too snobby when it comes to Passyunk’s menu of cheesesteaks and chicken wings, which is summed up as “filth, but very lovely filth” and “a riot…. daft bits and all.”
Lambeth Council have actually just put the call out for a design team to take on a huge revamp of Waterloo Station that will “exploit its inherent potential as one of the primary transport hubs of the UK” (and make it more like London Bridge and St Pancras). While, just down the road, another station is also getting a bit of an upgrade. The future of the Elephant and Castle station revamp has been in doubt because of the TfL funding nightmares, but this week TfL announced that the work “should be finished by 2027” (the Bakerloo Line extension is still “shelved indefinitely” though).
If you’re after some American grub, but Passyunk sounds a little too ‘AMERICAN!!!’, then maybe try Brix over in London Bridge, which opened last week. It’s from the people behind Brixton’s Chip Shop, who have teamed up with a former Soho House chef to create something inspired by “Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and Brooklyn’s all-day dining scene,” which means a lot of brick walls, leather sofas, surf n’ turf, steaks and burgers.
And while we’re on the subject of burgers, Patty & Bun have announced that they’re opening a site on Clapham’s Northcote Road, which is going to be a ‘stripped back’ affair, but you will be able to get delivery of their sister brand Sidechick as well.
Over in Greenwich, a campaign has begun to try and save the Star and Garter pub. The place is currently owned by the Greenwich Hospital charity but they’re putting the building up for sale after the pub was forced to close last summer when a man was stabbed there. The ‘Save the Star’ campaign hopes to buy and reopen the pub so it can be run “by the people of east Greenwich, for the people of east Greenwich”.
Before we leave the subject of pubs, we should mention that the impressively proficient Gladwin brothers (who most recently opened the Fat Badger in Richmond) are opening a new restaurant in Wimbledon. Moving in to the spot where The White Onion used to be, The Black Sheep will follow the same ‘local and wild’ ethos as the brothers’ other restaurants and is due to open this summer.
If you live near Clapham Common you might have seen that the basketball courts there have been completely renovated recently. The whole thing took three years, and if you want to see why it took so long and just how it was done, there’s an hour long video here which takes you behind the whole process.
Fancy a Brixton-based art jaunt? Brixton Buzz has been to visit the brand new Brixton House theatre to see the show by artist Damilola Odusote called ‘Perception is Reality’, which “explores the relationship between life’s complexity and our inherent need to simplify things in order to understand the world around us” through 150 drawings, paintings, sculptures and other “3D artworks”. It looks great and it’s completely free. Meanwhile, Brixton Blog has been to the Tate Library off Windrush Square, to see the ‘Ballad to reading’ exhibition which comprises of work by 24 artists, all of which “explores and celebrates reading” in some way. Again, totally free.
While we’re in Brixton, Architects Journal has had a look at the retrofit of the Contemporary Arts & Learning centre on Railton Road, which is providing a new space for “art, education and activism” as well as a “70% saving in embodied carbon”.
The Peckham Fringe is a new festival that starts at the beginning of May which will see 28 visiting companies take over the Peckham Theatre for five weeks. The line up includes a show about rugby and mental health, the story of a transgender immigrant in the UK, and “a communal South American experience through cooking on stage”.
There’s some fantastic photos of the area around Peckham, Camberwell and the Old Kent Road in this interview with photographer Nico Froehlich about his ongoing project, South of the River, which “celebrates the places and residents of southeast London”.
You might have noticed that we haven’t mentioned Vauxhall or Battersea yet and that’s mainly because a lot of the news coming out of there is just a bit depressing right now (for example, this piece by JJ Charlesworth in the (paywalled) Telegraph, which rightly calls the Vauxhall and Nine Elms development ugly, but bizarrely claims that the ugliness derives from the buildings being ‘environmentally responsible’). But a couple of weeks ago it was announced that Wandsworth and Lambeth councils are “exploring the potential” of extending the ‘Low Line’ through the Nine Elms and Battersea to create a create “a continuous walking and cycling route from Battersea to London Bridge”.
The Speaking Stones project works with writers, actors, musicians, photographers, and poets to give statues, sculptures and street art a voice via Google Maps. They just released a map for Crystal Palace and Penge which includes many of the park’s famous dinosaurs as well as some of the statues that remain from the Palace itself.
Finally, if you’re around Tooting way then please keep an eye out for Toots the Market cat. He’s been missing for around a week now and, despite a few sightings, is still not back home.
News bits
Cressida Dick has announced that her last day in the job will be the end of this week. She announced on Twitter that her last day as Commissioner will be 10th April, saying that “it has been a tremendous honour to serve the people of London and the UK”.
Extinction Rebellion has announced that it will be organising daily “mass participation” protests from Hyde Park. Beginning on April 9, XR has promised that these events will be “more disruptive than ever”.
Following on from our February issue about the battle for the soul of The Wolseley, the Thai hotel group Minor International has announced that they had taken full control of Corbin & King, the restaurant group behind the much-loved institution.
The mayor has said that he will review the controversial plans to demolish the Marks & Spencer’s building on Oxford Street following a backlash that focuses on the argument that knocking the building down would result in higher carbon emissions.
‘Dark kitchen’ startup Growth Kitchen has raised £3m to build out its “smart satellite kitchen network” around London. Some of the money comes from the co-founders of the Gorillas app, who apparently agree with Growth Kitchen’s founders who argue that “we’ve accepted cooking as the norm for too long” and that we need “a step change in how we eat.” For more on this stuff see our issue titled Will London Eat Itself? from last year,.
A different type of food innovation is taking place underneath Clapham. SWLondoner has been to visit Growing Underground who have been sustainably farming a variety of herbs and greens thirty-three metres below street level for over five years now.
A Tube driver who “hit his head on metal steps when he was thrown out of a rotating train station turnstile” is sueing TfL after he suffered “a brain injury, causing a variety of neurological symptoms”.
Just one London walk has made it into Which? magazine’s list of the top 50 walks in the UK. The Tasmin Trail in Richmond Park scraped in at number 49, while the Regent's Canal just missed out, coming in at number 51.
Taron Egerton has pulled out of the production of the play ‘Cock’ at the Ambassadors Theatre “due to personal reasons” (honestly, it was already difficult enough to write about a play called ‘Cock’, without someone ‘pulling out’ of it).
The latest Elizabeth Line moquette merch’ has made it to the London Transport Museum shop, so if you fancy a £165 Elizabeth Line deck chair, then you know what to do.
Most niche article of the week award goes to the FT (paywall alert), which has a report on the collection of antique British barometers amassed by the late Sir Nicholas Goodison, “who was chair of the London Stock Exchange in the run-up to its deregulation in 1986.”
