Battersea Municipal Mecca

I did a Battersea Municipal Mecca Walk starting at Battersea Town Hall and ending at The Falcon at Clapham Junction down Lavender Hill. I am grateful to Mark from Spectacle Media for videoing it and releasing seven excerpts of it. As usual, I tried to pack in too much information. I was glad of the help I got from Sandra as she showed my images. The lower photo is of a group of us protesting about the Trump visit outside Battersea Arts Centre.

Battersea became a London borough in 1900 and was subsumed into Wandsworth in the Greater London Council reorganisation into 32 boroughs in 1965, including 12 inner boroughs that constituted the ILEA – education authority. Surprisingly, the City of London isn’t a borough – and operates in a slightly different way and they have their own Lord Mayor. Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London and was a former Wandsworth Councillor and Tooting MP.

On the walk I will mention some of the early progressive politicians and activists. I have written separate blogs on them. When we were celebrating the centenary of some women getting the vote in 2018 I discovered that of the seventeen English Heritage /LCC plaques none were to women. This fuelled my determination to celebrate Inspiring Women of Battersea which became a booklet published by the Battersea Society and in commemorating them with plaques as the Battersea Society has its own plaque scheme. We also encourage others providers and collaborate with them, eg the one to singer, cabaret performer and actor Evelyn Dove 1902-1987 who was the first black woman to sing on BBC radio in 1925 was a joint enterprise with Nubian Jak. We now have ten plaques with more coming this year as we have a lot of catching up to do. Most of them feature in my book.

Jeanie Nassau Senior 1828-1877, first female civil servant, born Jane Hughes brother of Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Appointed by Local Government Board as Inspector of Workhouses reporting on the education of “pauper girls” lived at Elm House on the site of Battersea Town Hall. She died aged 48. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2018/04/26/jeanie-nassau-senior-first-women-civil-servant/

Olive Morris 1952-1979 came to Battersea from Jamaica in 1962, attended Lavender Hill Girls’s School, active anti-racist Black Panthers, co-founded Brixton Black Womens Group, co-founded with Liz Obi 121 Railton Road squat. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/olive-morris-black-activist/

Catherine Gurney OBE 1848-1930, born Normanby House Lavender Hill, non-conformist family, stenographers to Parliament. Via a bible class in Wandsworth Prison initiated the Christian Police Association, Police convalescent homes and orphanages in Brighton and Harrogate. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/catherine-gurney-obe-1848-1930-a-notable-woman-of-lavender-hill/

Charlotte Despard  1844-1939 funded Battersea Labour Party HQ where her plaque is sited at 177 Lavender Hill. Her biography tagged ‘An Unhusbanded  Life’- Suffragette Socialist and Sinn Feiner.  She wrote 10 novels, after she waswidowed moved to Nine Elms Battersea, provided welfare facilities, suffragette with Women’s Freedom League, Labour candidate Battersea North. 1918.https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/charlotte-despard-batterseas-socialist-suffragette/

Caroline Ganley CBE 1879-1966 came to Battersea 1901, pacifist, active in suffrage campaigns. 1919 elected Battersea councillor, appointed JP, represented Battersea on LCC, first woman president of the London Co-op Society,  MP for Battersea South 1945-51. Battersea Society plaque on her home at 5 Thirsk Road https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/tag/caroline-ganley-mp/

Deaconess Isabella Gilmore 1842-1923, Gilmore House 113 Clapham Common Northside when widowed trained as a nurse in Guys Hospital, asked by Bishop of Rochester to start a deaconate. Deaconesses were  “a curiously effective combination of nurse, social worker and amateur policemen”. addressed the needs of the poor through working with girls and women. Her brother William Morris said whilst he preached socialism, she practised it. There is a plaque to her in Southwark Cathedral. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2018/03/12/deaconess-isabella-gilmore/

Marie Spartali 1844 -1923 The Shrubbery Lavender Gardens.Pre-Raphaelite painter, During a sixty-year career, she produced 170 works, contributing regularly to exhibitions in the UK and the US. She studied drawing and painting under Ford Madox Brown. Painted by DG Rossetti, Burne Jones, photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron.https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2018/05/04/marie-spartali-pre-raphaelite-artist/

Laura Barker 1819-1905, composer and violinist Lavender Sweep House with husband Tom Taylor playwright and Punch editor.https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/laura-barker-1819-1905/ and https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/tom-taylor-dramatist-editor-of-punch/

Diederichs Duval suffrage family lived at 97 Lavender Sweep. Emily and her children Elsie, Victor, Norah and Barbara were active and imprisioned. Emily 1861-1924 became Battersea Councillor Elsie WSPU,worked for Men’s Political Union for Women’s Enfranchisement founded by her brother Victor. Tragically, Elsie, Barbara and Winifred died in the flu epidemic. Now got WBC plaque https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/duval-suffrage-family-of-lavender-sweep/?preview=true

Edith, known as Biddy Lanchester 1871-1966, lived at 27 Leathwaite Social Democratic Federation, by  father, two brothers and psychiatrist hauled her off to the Priory Asylum. The supposed cause of her insanity was ‘over education’. She was a teacher and later secretary to Eleanor Marx

Elsa Lanchester 1902-1986, her daughter, trained as a dancer aged ten in Paris with Isadora Duncan, taught dance, set up her own theatre club Cave of Harmony, met and married Charles Laughton, moved to the US. Starred in Bride of Frankenstein(1935), made over a 100 films. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/elsa-lanchester-hollywood-actress-and-notable-woman-of-lavender-hill/

Violet Piercy 1889-1972 lived at 21 Leathwaite Rd. first recorded female marathon runner, 1926, she ran from Windsor to London finishing at Battersea Town Hall at 3 hrs 40 mins.  her record lasted until till Merry Lepper time of 3:37:07 Western Hemisphere Marathon Dec 1963.https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/violet-piercy-marathon-runner-and-notable-woman-of-lavender-hill/a pioneering athlete who did, indeed, run from Windsor to London in 1926 and became famous, speaking out repeatedly for women to engage in sport and take on endurance challenges, and eventually completed at least four marathons.

The three women authors Penelope Fitzgerald, Pamela Hansford Johnson and Ethel Mannin were the subjects of a talk and blog https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2022/04/27/three-battersea-women-authors/

Penelope Fitzgerald 1916- 2000 novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. Somerville College Oxford got a first in 1938, named Woman of the Year, included The Times list of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945”. Her final novel, The The Blue Flower one of “the ten best historical novels’ lived at 25 Almeric Road (where plaque will be) when she wrote Booker prize-winning Offshore about houseboat dwellers in Battersea Reach.

Pamela Hansford Johnson CBE, 1912-1981 born 53 Battersea  Rise, wrote 27 novels. This bed thy Centre, coming-of-age first novel was based in Battersea, commemorated with a Battersea Society plaque. Married CP Snow https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/category/pamela-hansford-johnson-battersea-born-novelist/

Ethel Mannin 1900-1984  born 28 Garfield  Rd, a working class self-educated, prodigious author of a hundred books, including novels, memoirs, travel, childrearing etc. Political maverick, socialist, pacifist, anarchist and ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause. Twice married, had a sexual relationship with Yeats and Bertrand Russell between husbands. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2019/11/18/ethel-mannin-1900-1984/

Hilda Hewlett 1864– 1943 first British woman to earn a pilot’s licence in 1911, ran first flying school and Omnia Works Aircraft factory Vardens Road 1912-14 with Gustav Blondeau. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/hilda-hewlett-first-female-licenced-pilot-and-aeroplane-manufacturer-based-in-battersea-1912-1914ions/

Wilhelmina Stirling 1865-1965author of 20+ books on lives/reminiscences of landed gentry, founder of the De Morgan Centre at her home, Old Battersea House until her death, now at Watts Gallery.

Ida 1904-1986 and Louise Cook 1901–1991 24 Morella Road SW12 were opera loving, civil servants who rescued Jews from Europe during the 1930s, funded mainly by Ida’s writing as Mary Burchill for Mills and Boon, honoured as Righteous among Nations by Yad Vashem.https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/category/opera-loving-sisters-ida-and-louise-cook-civil-servants-who-rescued-29-jewish-refugees-funded-by-idas-earnings-as-a-mills-and-boon-author/

John Burns 1858–1943 MP Trade union organizer and exponent of ‘Lib‐Labism’, born in London, became an engineer, and involved himself in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, an accomplished orator, one of the organizers of the London dock strike of 1889. In 1884 he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and acquired a reputation as a socialist militant. But by the 1890s he had broken both with Marxism and with trade unionism, supporting instead the furtherance of working‐class interests within the Liberal Party. Elected as an independent Labour MP for Battersea in 1892. Opposed Boer War from virulent antisemitism> In 1905 he accepted office as president of the Local Government Board in the Liberal administration. Burns resigned from the government in 1914, apparently in protest against war with Germany, plaque at Alverstroke House Clapham Common Northside. Had suffragettes thrown out of Battersea Town Hall meetings. Charlotte Despard had no time for him!

Walter Rines a tailor was Mayor of Battersea in 1906, was even celebrated in an American newspaper. The San Francisco Call wrote: Although Mayor Rines is a militant democrat in politics, he is an aristocrat in his trade and one would not be surprised to learn that both the King and Joseph Chamberlain had congratulated him on his new won honor, for in his time he has caused both of them to be regarded as the best dressed men in England.

Thomas Brogan JP 1866-1973 son of John Brogan of Ballina, Co. Mayo an evicted Irish tenant farmer, was the first Irish nationalist and Catholic Mayor in London, was mentor to John Archer elected Mayor of Battersea the following year. They both had Irish mothers. Thomas was Chairman of the Workers Institute in Battersea, president of the United Irish League and a familiar and fluent speaker on Irish Home Rule. https://sheelanagigcomedienne.wordpress.com/category/thomas-brogan-irish-nationalist-and-catholic-mayor-battersea-1912/

John Archer 1863-1932, born in Liverpool, first black Mayor of a London Borough as a Progressive, first president of African Progress Union formed in London in 1918. In 1919, he was re-elected as a councillor as a Labour candidate. It was Archer who ensured that, when Shapurji Saklatvala stood in the 1922, 1923, and 1924 elections, he would not have an opposing Labour candidate. In 1931, he was deputy Labour Leader on Battersea council. a governor for Battersea Polytechnic, president of the nine Elms swimming club, and a trustee of the borough charities. His work as a photographer was highly successful https://wandswortharchives.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/john-archers-battersea/

Shapurji Saklatvala1874– 1936) was a communist activist and British politician of Parsi heritage. He was the first person of Indian heritage to become a British MP for the Laboutr Party and among the few members Communist Party of Great Britain. to serve as an MP

Noreen 1910-2003 and Clive Branson 1907-1944 were communist party activists, who came to radical Battersea in the thirties, Clive, an artist, volunteered in Spain and Noreen, grandaughter of Marquis of Sligo became a communist and Labour Research Deptartment historian.

Battersea Borough history. A requirement for a town hall arose in Battersea in 1888, when the Battersea Vestry regained autonomy from the Wandsworth District Board of Works Wandsworth District Board of Works under the Metropolis Management (Battersea and Westminster) Act of 1887. The Wandsworth board had assumed powers of local government of Battersea in 1855 from the Battersea vestry, but prodigious population growth in Battersea over the subsequent 30-years provided a rationale for the reversion to vestry control. (The district was in the part of Surrey that was included in the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

In 1889 the Metropolitan Board of Works area became the County of London and the district board continued as an authority under the London County Council. The Wandsworth board had since 1858 operated locally from the small Georgian property, Mellersh House, at 68A Battersea Rise. In 1900, the London Government Act 1899 divided the County of London into twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs. The parish became the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea.

This is from the splendid website Municipal Dreams which also acknowledges our own Battersea historian Sean Creighton. https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/the-latchmere-estate-battersea-happy-healthy-homes-for-sober-and-industrious-workmen/

The Latchmere Estate, opened in August 1903, was the first council estate in Britain to be built by direct labour – by the Council’s own workforce.  It remains a superb exemplar of the practical idealism of Labour’s first generation of municipal reformers. it safeguarded workers’ pay and conditions, it respected trades union rights and guaranteed better value and higher quality than any that could be delivered by private interest.

At the turn of the last century Battersea had become the ‘Municipal Mecca’ – a bastion of left-wing politics which reflected the powerful local presence and radicalism of the Progressive Alliance.

The radical politicians around at this time I want to mention are John Burns, Charlotte Despard, Caroline Ganley, Emily Diederichs Duval, John Archer, Thomas Brogan Walter Rines and Shapurji Saklatvala.

In 1972 a working group set up to consider a proposal by Councillor Martin Linton, later Battersea’s MP, to adapt the town hall for social, community and artistic purposes came to fruition in 1974, when Hugh Jenkins, Minister for the Arts, opened the centre.

The Shakespeare Theatre built by Charles Gray Hill to the designs of the prolific Theatre Architect W. G. Sprague on a site next to the Battersea Town Hall, opened 1896, bombed in WW11 and demolished. http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Clapham.htm

Sir John Lubbock laid the foundation stone in 1889 of Battersea District Library which opened 1890 The reference library was built by direct labour. The true designer of the outstanding Arts and Crafts reference library was Henry Hyams. Council’s motto ‘ NON MIHI, NON TIBI, SED NOBIS’ is carved over the entrance.

Post Office, Electric House and Pavillion Cinema.

Pavillion Cinema opened 1916, seating 1,500 closed during the Blitz ire-opened December 1940 and was bombed when 14 people died. Electric House very sadly was demolished in 1985 due to electricity privatization by the Thatcherism.

The Globe Cinema is where Wholefoods is at 309 Lavender Hill

Arding and Hobbs built in 1888 burned down Christmas 1909, temporarliy moved to Munts Hall, present building constructed in 1910., owned by United Draperies in 1948 Allders in the 1970s, in administration in 2005, became Debenhams and TK Maxx, 2020, Debenhams shut.

LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01

Clapham Junction Station

Clapham Grand

designed by Ernest Woodrow opened in 1900  Grand Hall of Varieties, consortium headed by Dan Leno, became a cinema bingo hall. Grade 11 listed remained closed until bought by the late lamented powerhouse of music venues and festivals Vince Power of the Mean Fiddler. Weatherspoons were refused a licence, it is now a night club with drag, pink and pride hosting parties, comedy, movie nights and bingo – many different forms of the 21st century night-time economy, with lovely Ally as manager and queues snaking up St John’s Hill past the Territorial Army HQ making the Junction abuzz at weekends. 

I am glad to have lived here for over sixty years through the changes but lament the lack of affordable housing housing. I do take pride in its radical and fascinating history and enjoy sharing my enthusiasm Battersea especially as we now have a Labour Council in Wandsworth and three dynamic Labour women MPs serving in the constituencies of Wandsworth which is set to become the London Borough of Culture for 2025.  This jolly video is by Sandra Munoz.

https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/culture