A period of stability was to follow when, for a little more than a year from early 1973, I shared Giles’s flat in Claverton Street, S.W.1.
This was a rented basement in a Pimlico terrace. The enclosed back yard was a small area of concrete. There was no real sunlight. Nothing grew there. The elderly woman next door, however, enjoyed a wonderful ferny garden in what appeared to be rich soil. One day I asked her how she had soil when we had concrete. “Oh, I’ve got concrete underneath,” she said. “I put the earth on top”. “Where did you get it?”, I responded. “From Battersea Park”. She replied. “How did you get it here?” was my next question. “In my handbag”, was the answer.
This wonderful woman had trekked backwards and forwards – it must have been for years – carting bags of soil trowelled up from this London Park situated on the other side of the River Thames. The journey across Battersea Bridge would have been about a mile and a half each way.
Opposite our flat stands Dolphin Square, ‘a block of private flats with some ground floor business units ….. built between 1935 and 1937. Until the building of Highbury Square, it was the most developed garden square in London built as private housing. At one time, it was home to more than 70 MPs and at least 10 Lords.[1]
At the time of its construction, its 1,250 upmarket flats were billed by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as the “largest self-contained block of flats in Europe”. To an extent, their design has been a model for later municipal developments.[2]‘ (Wikipedia )
Across the river from this block stands
Battersea Power Station. (Pinterest)
‘It was one of many power stations built beside the Thames. Essentially, there were two reasons for siting them beside the river. Firstly, they were initially coal-powered and the coal could be transported by sea and then up the Thames for easy delivery. Secondly, the power stations were built beside the river to provide them with a plentiful source of water cooling. Instead of just dissipating the heat from Battersea Power Station into the Thames, from 1950, the hot water from the power station was piped under the Thames to provide hot water and heating for the flats at Dolphin Square. All that came to an end in 1975 when the power station was decommissioned.’ (https://knowyourlondon.wordpress.com/2021/02/24/dolphin-square/)
A CLICK, WHICH CAN BE REPEATED, WILL ENLARGE ANY IMAGE
Today I scanned a dozen colour slides dated May 2008 from my Streets of London series.
Wikipedia has these snippets to offer on Pelham Place SW7:
Pelham Place is a street of Grade II* listed Georgian terraced houses in South Kensington, London, England. Pelham Place runs north to south from Pelham Place to Pelham Crescent. 2-14 is a circa 1825 terrace.[1] 1-29 is an 1833 terrace, designed by the architect George Basevi.[2] 1-29 is similarly grade II listed.[3] In 1950, the British-born American winemaker Peter Newton met his future wife, Anne St. Aubyn at a party in his house in Pelham Place.[4] Mel Brooks briefly lived in Pelham Place in the 1950s, while working at the BBC on the Sid Caesar show.[5] In 1967, Cecil Beaton photographed the model Twiggy wearing a yellow velvet dress by John Bates for Jean Varon[6] in the residence of 8 Pelham Place, for an editorial for Vogue[7]
A couple of years after I photographed this Chanel Store in Pelham Street, the Swedish fashion store rejoicing in the delightful name of Acne moved in next door. And Chanel is still there!
Kenzo, on the other hand, no longer seems to be resident in Ixworth Place, SW3. Perhaps the scaffolding drove them away.
Strong sunshine has burnt out the name of the street sharing this corner of King’s Road, Chelsea, where the mens’s and women’s clothing chain was having a sale.
You would need a few million pounds to buy one of these houses in Durham Place SW3.
Wikipedia tells us that ‘The Royal Hospital Chelsea is a retirement home and nursing home for some 300 veterans of the British Army. It is a 66-acre site located on Royal Hospital Roadin Chelsea, London. It is an independent charity and relies partly upon donations to cover day-to-day running costs to provide care and accommodation for veterans. Any man or woman who is over the age of 65 and served as a regular soldier may apply to become a Chelsea Pensioner (i.e. a resident), on the basis they have found themselves in a time of need and are “of good character”. They must not, however, have any dependent spouse or family and former Officers must have served at least 12 years in the ranks before receiving a commission.’
‘At a time when the Cold War and the fear of a nuclear attack were escalating the offer of a Peace Pagoda to promote world harmony seemed appropriate. It was offered to the people of London by the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order as part of the 1984 Greater London Council (GLC) Peace Year. Nipponzan Myohoji is a religious movement that emerged from the Nichiren sect of Japanese Buddhism.
They have been constructing Peace Pagodas, as the spiritual focus to unify the movement for peace, since 1947 and they exist all around the world including Europe, Asia and the United States. The pagoda in Battersea was built by monks, nuns and followers of Nipponzan Myohoji at the behest of The Venerable Nichidatsu Fujii (1885-1985), founder of the organisation.’
Turpentine Lane and Peabody Avenue SW1 lie in the Peabody Trust’s Pimlico Estate.
Pimlico is one of our oldest estates. The first 26 blocks date from 1876 – and we can learn about the early tenants from the national census taken every 10 years. In 1881 around 2,000 people lived there, many of them working in the nearby Chelsea Barracks. There were also lamplighters, messengers, charwomen, policemen and plumbers, while Charles Sutton, who lived in C Block, was employed as a porter at Buckingham Palace. Pimlico is one of four of our estates to have a plaque commemorating those who died on active service in the First World War. In November 2005 a Channel 4 TV series, entitled Not Forgotten, featured the war memorial. Presenter Ian Hislop interviewed the granddaughter of William Buckland, the first man on the estate to be killed. During the Second World War, the estate received a visit from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who came to see the damage caused by an air raid. New blocks were built on the Pimlico estate in 2011. They were officially opened by HRH the Duke of York in November 2012.’
‘The White Ferry House brings a traditional country pub vibe to the centre of London. The venue is housed in a stunning Victorian ‘flat-iron’ building and comes steeped in history, with a network of passages historically used to smuggle baccy, rum and gunpowder to the river buried below its foundations.’ It stands on the corner of Sutherland Street and Westmoreland Terrace SW1.
the iconic Battersea Power Station, visible across the river from Ebury Bridge SW1, now has a quite different purpose than originally envisaged.
Buckingham Palace Road SW1 runs from the South side of Buckingham Palace towards Chelsea.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s tender heart casserole topped with sauté potatoes; creamy mashed potato; sage and onion stuffing; roasted butternut squash, yellow peppers, and vary-coloured carrots; with crisp cabbage. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and Elizabeth and I drank more of the Rioja.
Being a little more alert and therefore capable of choosing which of the Olympic sports I watched, I confined myself to the rugby sevens.Otherwise I scanned more colour negatives from 1983.
I could not have imagined when I photographed Louisa taking her pushchair for a trip over this bridge in Morden Hall Park, that, almost 30 years later, I would be living in Morden with Jackie, and would engage with another little girl and her mother playing Pooh Sticks from the same refurbished structure.
Sticklebacks on 27th July this year featured the four children fishing in the lake at Richmond Park. In Morden Hall Park the River Wandle was suitably stocked for them to repeat the process.
Here Sam inspects a suitable stick;
Becky has a poke in the river;
and Matthew, closely watched by his younger brother, inspects a catch.
Goodness knows what, also involving Jessica, is being inspected here. It doesn’t look too savoury.
Were we on the River Thames when I made this image of Battersea Power Station? I’m not sure, but, by coincidence, this was the year the structure became empty and the controversies over its future use began. It is now an up-market housing development.
This is the logo of Wandsworth Borough Council.
Further along the Thames lies Putney Bridge under which Matthew walks with a treasured find. This image featured on 23rd May, 2015, but I took that from a print because I had not found the negative.
I trust Messrs Clarke and Knifton will agree that it was a thrush peering at us through the kitchen window as Jackie served up a splendid dinner of pork medallions, boiled potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli with tasty gravy. Neither we nor the thrush imbibed, although the bird did pop down to the Waterboy for a drink. While we ate, our spotted friend kept sliding down the curve of the obelisk upon which she stubbornly perched,
Aaron brought a friend with him this morning, to help him spread the shingle on the back drive. In two hours they neatly laid four tons of material. That they didn’t cover the full extent of the drive was simply because there was not enough gravel. I will need to buy some more.
This afternoon I scanned a batch of colour slides from November 1972. I have not been looking forward to reaching this stage in my archives. This is because two months earlier Jackie and I had, devastatingly, parted. After we each had led rather different lives, it was to be 37 years before we were reunited.
After spending some time with friends Tony and Madeleine, I was given a room in the flat of a work colleague in Blackheath. It was a large room and could accommodate a thick piece of foam rubber measuring 6’6″ x 5’6″ that I had tailor made so that Michael, Matthew, and Becky could share it with me at the weekends. That makeshift mattress was to serve for another 34 years. When I set up home with Jessica I had a wooden bed built around it. Only when I left Lindum House and returned to London, where it was too large to fit into the Hyde Park Square flat, was it replaced.
I was to be even more grateful for the Blackheath room and that mattress before I moved on, because for period of six weeks I suffered my one and only bout of bronchitis and hardly left it for a month.
During the time at Blackheath the children and I visited that village where donkey rides and Guinness were sampled.
Sometimes we went down to the Thames waterfront at Greenwich, which would be unrecognisable today. Smoke still billowed from Battersea Power Station and cranes were still in service.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s scrumptious chilli con carne (recipe) and egg fried rice (recipe). She drank sparkling water and I drank Seashore Isla Negra merlot 2014.
