VicLondon-Battersea Clampham
Battersea & Clampham, Southwark
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District Traits
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Notable Locations
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This is still a new district and considered quite ash by the working class. The area is poor, but the quality of the place has been improving as wages increase throughout the end of the century and more middle-class families move in to nd cheaper housing. Nearly all the homes are less than fty years old by the period covered in this book. They are built to ‘row home’ style, with long rows of townhouses connected one after the other down the roads.
The main feature of the area is the massive Battersea Park, near a mile long on each side, with a large pond for boating. There are small islands in the water that are home to ducks and other water fowl that inhabit the park. The Battersea Park Pier allows for transport along the Thames to tie up and deliver passengers, but also provides a landing point for scullers and other pleasure boaters to tie up. There are other piers on the Chelsea side of the river, particularly along Cheyne Walk, and small boats frequently travel back and forth from Chelsea and Battersea for pleasure or to transport workers who have missed the bus or train into the city.
There is a winding drive that circles the park and acts as a middle-class version of Hyde Park’s Rotten Row. Here wealthier middle-class women and men ride in carriages or on horse, and ape the actions of their betters. South Drive, a portion of this circle, provides a view of Albert Palace, which is on the boundary of the park between the busy Battersea Park Road and Prince of Wales Road. The palace is an exposition hall where theatrical engagements are run, but also where educational displays like the Buffalo Bill Cody Western Revues, and Farini’s Earthmen (or Pigmies) can be seen between two and night in the evening for a small price. Albert Bridge and the Chelsea Bridge connect the park to Chelsea at Cheyne Walk and Grosvenor Road.
On the east side of Victoria Road, which bounds the park, the railroads cross the Thames to Victoria Station. There is also the reservoir for Battersea and Lambeth. This storage is to handle the sudden rise in interior plumbing that has accompanied the expansion of the city, and is frequently touted as a marvel of city engineering. Next to the reservoir is the Vauxhall Southwark Waterworks, where the water is directed through underground pipes to the homes in the southern reaches of the metropolitan area, and the waste from the burgeoning number of water closets in homes is received to be treated before being returned to the Thames. (This treatment mostly involves bleaching the water and dropping the stinking mess into the Thames so it can oat toward Whitehall).
As with other poorer neighbourhoods, the high roads see more middle-class housing and business fronts. Lavender Hill Road and Battersea Park Road are buy thoroughfares with department stores, restaurants and public houses, and other shops. Lavender Hill Road near the Clapham Junction is the site of the Freemasons Female School, a public school that accepts daughters of poor freemasons for education. It is one of the better schools for girls in the city. The very poor are crammed into the rookeries and tenements of the district, and most of these are situated near the bevy of railway lines that wind through Battersea and eventually come together at Battersea Station, just a quarter mile down Gwyne Road from the Thames and the rail bridge into Fulham. The worst of the area is between Battersea Road and the tangle of street-level and elevated train lines that string between Clapham Junction, where the rails run south out of the city, or west into Putney, and Queens’ Station, a massive terminal just a few blocks south of Albert Palace. On Home Road, one nds the public baths, which are in frequent use (even though it is normal for most people to bathe once or twice a week).
On the southern side of Lavender Hill Road is Clapham. Here the townhouses line long, arrow-straight streets like The Chase, Cedars Road, or create arcing canyons in quasi-circles like Lavender Sweep. The neighbourhood is almost exclusively middle-class government workers who commute by rail out of Wandsworth Station or by buses. The crime here is mostly burglary or petty crimes, and police coverage is low.
