Walworth Through Time A Second Selection

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Walworth, Southwark A historically crowded and socially disadvantaged district situated east of Newington

Edward Yates (1838–1907), a local builder, developed the Georgian residential streets on the western side of the Old Kent Road. Also built on the eastern side, laying out Marcia Road. Yates was leased and built on land owned by the Rolls estate and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in Walworth. Walworth moved from a Georgian suburb to Victorian inner city, with long rows of terraces built speculatively for rental, to house lower middle class and working class residents. By the time of his death, an estate of just over 2,500 houses, a church and school had been built, to match the rise in the population of Walworth. Reverend James Butterworth (1897-1977) advocated ‘ a house for friendship for boys and girls outside any church’. He replaced the Walworth Methodist Chapel on Camberwell Road with a new chapel & Clubland. Designed by Sir Edward Maufe (1882-1974), the architect of Guildford Cathedral. Clubland featured a theatre, gymnasium, tennis court & various club rooms. Opened by Queen Mary on 18th May. Robert Kennedy (1925-1968) made his first public speech at Clubland at the age of 13, when his father was the US Ambassador. Before the Wheatleys moved to Clinton House, it had been the home of Benjamin Pierce Lucas, Managing Director of the Camden Town Palace of Varieties. He appears to have moved to the property around 1898. The house was built in 1884.

The Browning Settlement set up by FH Stead (1857-1928) started at Browning Hall. It was inaugarated with a speech by Herbert Asquith. Newington workhouse built at 182 Westmoreland Road (now Beaconsfield Road) (Newington Lodge in 1930) Surrey Zoological Gardens opened by Edward Cross (1774-1854) on Lorrimore common (old Walworth Manor)

New St Paul’s Church opened on Lorrimore Square . Modernist Grade II-listed building of reinforced concrete designed by Woodroffe Buchanan & Coulter Henry Coming (1817-1902) left funds in his will to create a public museum to house his family’s collection. 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. 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.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. 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.”

Walworth was long a rural area producing fruit and vegeta­bles in abundance; one local nurs­eryman had a list of 320 varieties of goose­ber­ries. In the mid-17th century there were only a few houses along what is today Walworth Road but growing numbers of tradesmen set up shop here as traffic from London increased. St Peters Church built for Church Commissioners as a result of Walworth’s expanding population. Architect: by Sir John Soane (1753-1837). More info 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.

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. A majority of this street overlooking Denmark Hill railway station remained derelict for many years. 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.