Factual Information

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• Advice on living in Lambeth
• Community groups, charities etc.
• Along the South Bank to Tower Bridge
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• Interesting Places and Things to do
• Free Events - Month by Month
• Things to do with Children

History

The Vauxhall/Kennington area has a rich and fascinating history. If this is your first visit to this website, you might like to begin your tour by reading a five page history of the area, and then

• by browsing numerous old maps of the area, and
• The Vauxhall, Nine Elms & Battersea Developments: Background Information & History
• The Vauxhall, Nine Elms & Battersea Development in Photographs

Or maybe you would just like to follow these links to learn how the area became:-

• the site of the first London Bridge,
• the eventual route of the Effra River on its way to the Thames at Vauxhall,
• (although it had originally run into Lambeth Marsh,
• the site of the famous Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (see picture above) and therefore
• the place which gave its name to the Russian word for railway station,
• and led to the creation of 'Vauxhalls' throughout Europe,
• the birthplace of the earliest public museum in England,
• The site of the most famous gathering of the Chartists : "the first working man's party the world ever produced
• the site of a 'Grand Experiment' which proved that Cholera is a water borne disease
• the host of the the first FA Cup Final and the original Ashes test match, both at the Oval,
• the childhood home of Charlie Chaplin ,
• the home of the Lambeth Walk,
• the site of a bust of Basaveschwara (Lord Basava),
• a link in the Admiralty's optical telegraph
• the target for devastating bombing during the Second World War,
• followed by slum clearance,
• and much post-war social housing, including the Aylesbury Estate;
• and subsequently caught up in the 2005 London suicide bombings, and
• the site of one of the few remaining Anderson air raid shelters in London.

History - Cont'd

Vauxhall was the cradle of a number of important manufacturing companies, including

• Vauxhall Motors,
• Doulton Potteries,
• Buckingham's Vauxhall Glassworks, and
• Price's Patent Candles.

Prominent local buildings etc. include:

• Lambeth Palace,
• The Oval Cricket Ground,
• Kennington Park,
  • inc. its use for sports etc. over the years
• St George's Cathedral, and
• The Necropolis Railway, Tube lines and other Railways

If you want to research further, then:-

Lambeth Archives are an excellent source of original data and information, including via a computerised search facility.

There are a number of very good books describing local history in more detail than above. You might start with Hannah Renier's Lambeth Past before turning to Marie Draper's Lambeth's Open Spaces and Sue Mckenzie's Lambeth: The Twentieth Century. These and other books and leaflets are sold at the annual Lambeth Archives open day.

Volumes 23 and 26 of the Survey of London contain a huge amount of detail about the area

The Vauxhall Society website contains a huge amount of detailed historical material, as does that of St John the Divine.

There is a wealth of interesting information about the area south of the Oval on the Oval History website.

There is a more detailed history of Vauxhall on the web site of the Friends of Vauxhall Park.

The website of the Lambeth Endowed Charities contains a fascinating history of the land on either side of the northern end of Kennington Road. A 1667 will left around 7 hectares of land - then mainly given over to market gardening - to a small charity. Subsequent development of the land, and a wise investment strategy, helped create a charity whose income is now around £1 million a year!

And you might like to browse:

• The extensive Lambeth Archives Image Collection
• The Ideal Homes Website created by Greenwich University, Lambeth Council and others, which has historical information, lots of old photos etc. of South London through the ages - including numerous images of the Kennington/Vauxhall area
• The Collage Collection of prints from the Guildhall Library, and
• Censuses from 1841 through to the early 1900s - using "Lambeth" as the place name.