The Dead Pubs of Clapham
After three and a half years, I’m leaving my office on Wandsworth Road for Westminster. Three years of working in a repurposed brewery surrounded by dead pubs. In Clapham… Or was it Battersea?
WelI; I worked on the cusp of both districts. Basically Clapham is south of the Lavender Hill / Wandsworth Road axis whereas Battersea is north, next to the Thames.
It’s wise to be precise. For example, Clapham Junction train station has the motto, The Heart of Battersea above its main door.
Geography aside, what do I remember about this area?
A map showing Battersea / Clapham
Lavender Hill of course; I walked this bugger twice a day for three and a half years! As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, I can probably trace in my head every damn step from Debenhams in the West to Sainsbury’s in the East. This trek is aptly described by one of my favourite writers:-
“It’s approximately 2400 steps from one end of Lavender Hill to another. I walk one way in the morning, and the other in the evening. From Clapham Junction to Wandsworth Road, from Wandsworth Road to Clapham Junction twice a day, five days a week. This is my Lavender Hill. ”
The beginning of Lavender Hill - Photo TR
Though there is bustle and many small shops, Lavender Hill was a place to walk along, to get from A to B without stopping. An exception to this would be that fine piece of Victorianara - Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) housed in the old Town Hall. Here, in the Scratch Bar, over a beer or a wine, I composed some of this very site’s best blogs. Always happy when composing in public, BAC provided a home for my ever-elusive muse for a couple of years.
Many was the night I sat and jockeyed a Mac typing spiteful little blogs, dashing off mean spirited diatribes about the posh twats with their elaborate beards and facial jewellery sat around me talking bollocks about politics. Highlight was probably Second Thoughts a story written about BAC and the online dating scene. A modern classic. What wasn’t a classic is ‘The Dead Pubs of Clapham’ a pig of a short story that I never finished. In fact, it was the title I liked, much, much more so than the actual story itself. Hence me reusing it for this blog celebrating the area. But let me give you a flavour of this deservedly obscure tract:
“A dead pub always makes me sad. There are plenty in Clapham. The dead pubs of Clapham. My journey to the station passes many. VE day. The Coronation. 1966 World Cup. The Falklands. And there they stand, not even with the fig leaf of being converted into a Cheap Fried Chicken outlet or a chichi furniture shop for hipsters to waste a grand on a fucking chair.”
The Artesian Well, The Mist on the Water, The Prince of Wales, The Victoria, The Cedar. All dead. Dead in 2016 and dead in 2019. The Dead Pubs of Clapham.
One amusing side note to Lavender Hill. In my published ode to this urban highway, I mentioned en passent the many oriental massage parlours dotted on the road where you can - allegedly - get a happy ending massage. A small but reliable number of hits to this blog to this day come from Google searches seeking rub and tug merchants on Lavender Hill. And then they click on this blog where I prattle on about fourth century Roman emperors and obscure Stones tracks. Sorry guys, go back to self-service.
But let’s leave Lavender Hill and massages aside. From where I was based, atop Silverthorn Road, my walks could either take me down the hill to Battersea Park or up the hill to Clapham Common. Down was literally down, a bit shit, loads of Harry Brown type estates, a mishmash of railway tracks, car dealers under the arches, grimy off licences, obscure train stations and finally the wondrous urban space that is Battersea Park. I’ll miss it.
From my office window I used to look down on this city scape, an outlook dominated by the ever changing face of Battersea Power Station. It’s now surrounded by tall towers and modern glass investment flats for international money. Soulless, nondescript, anywhereville. The power station itself got buried in these modern intrusions. However, from my new vista in Westminster on the other side of the river, it looks great; the shitty towers and modern embellishments are merely supporting actors not co-leads. I suppose it’s all about angle and perspective which is about as deep as I get, children.
Battersea Power Station - recent past. Doesn’t look like this now.
Up the hill and into Clapham where million pound houses give way to eight million pound houses (gorp at Macauley Road if you want to check them out). What do I remember about this side of the tracks? I didn’t walk on the Common much. Obviously the Trinity Church stands proud on the east side near the tube station. In these days of ignorance and lack of knowledge about British history, the significance of this 18th Century church is lost on most of the present day passers-by. But it was here, of course, where the so-called Clapham Sect used to meet and plot the abolition of slavery. We should celebrate this stuff more.
The Common. The High Street. A wet day.
Talking of churches…
No ramble through Clapham is complete without mentioning Graham Greene and his wartime novel The End of the Affair set in and around Clapham Common. One of the scenes is, of course, set in the church of St Mary’s which dominates the eastern end of the Common. From my window at work for a couple of years I used to gaze at the spire half a mile away. My photo (left) rather inadequately represents this local landmark which survived the Luftwaffe bombing the area but who’s spire got somewhat wrecked by an errant friendly barrage balloon.
Another memory, ever present and ever changing is the schtick of the local Romanian beggars outside the tube and Sainsburys Local down The Pavement. For a while accordions were the fashionable must-have accessory for the enterprising beggar. Tuneless whirly-gigs were played evoking, well what exactly? Smokey Roma camps back home? Belle epoch Champs Elysee? Fuck knows. However, accordions now seems so very 2018. The begging community have reverted to the classic shake and a shimmer with hand outstretched and a single word ‘please’ dragged out pitifully. And who could forget the daily ‘conferences’ on the waste land beside the tube station, where the area’s street workers gathered to compare takings, discuss tactics, and split test new methods of appeals.
Then there are the pubs.
“The Bobbin pub lies hidden on a side street near Old Town in Clapham. The area, suggesting unflashy old money, is flush with inner city mansions, tree lined roads festooned with Land Rovers and X5s, gardens tended by minimum wage labourers, constant daytime building works as the inhabitants add subterranean swimming pools and climate-controlled wine cellars, but quiet at the weekends as the residents retire to their country piles in Wiltshire. There’s an abundance of leonine men of a certain age wearing red trousers sporting trophy wives.
Twats.
”
And there was one barmaid. I’ll miss her. If I asked what her feelings were on my departure I’m sure she’d just smile shyly, push a strand of hair away from her face and say, as she had many times before, “What would you like to drink?”
Literally cannot turn it off. In Clapham. Or Battersea.
