Following the Second World War London was subjected to a
campaign of destruction as devastating as the Blitz. Streets of little houses
and close-knit communities were brutally swept aside in the name of progress, to
be replaced by grim and alien tower blocks and bypasses. South London was one
of the worst casualties of this frenzy and even today the names of Elephant and
Castle and Peckham strike terror into the heart, in spite of multiple desperate
regeneration schemes to clean up their image.
But to the south of the Imperial War Museum there survives a remnant of older London, the Dickensian London of little terraced houses, jaunty chimney-pots and blackened brick. Hidden off Kennington Road, itself developed at the turn of the 19th century, is an appealing warren of early Victorian streets and squares. Walcot Square, itself developed between 1837 and 1839, bears the eccentric distinction of being a triangular square. Charles Dickens mentions it in Bleak House, Mr. Guppy declaring that ‘I have some connexion and it lays in the direction of Walcot Square’. Though not the rival of Belgrave Square in grandeur, it still possesses its own modest claim to fame.
Despite suffering some destruction during the Second World War, Walcot Square emerged from the conflict largely intact. And while South London was being torn apart in the post-war era, the Walcot Estate was spared the mutilation of ‘urban regeneration’. In 1968 it was designated a conservation area which was then expanded in 1980. To this day most of the property surrounding the square is owned by the Walcot Foundation, a charitable organisation founded in 1667 on the wishes of deceased haberdasher Edward Walcot.
In one corner of the square are several innocuous garages,
built over the ruins of wartime. But this plot has now been offered up by the
Foundation as a sacrifice to that insatiable deity Development. On its website it
offers the usual trite waffle about commissioning a sensitive design for modern
houses, stating that they ‘specified quality materials, a design that
did justice to the surrounding area and adopts a proportionate scale’.
Rejecting claims that development is merely being pursued to maximise the
square’s profitability, it petulantly argues that being the same Foundation
which laid out the estate in the early 19th century gives the
current administration the authority to dispose of it as it sees fit, the same
way that the descendants of Leonardo da Vinci might claim the right to
incinerate the Mona Lisa.
The website also states that there have been both positive
and negative responses to the designs. But this reeks of disingenuity. Walking
around the square it’s impossible to avoid the posters denouncing the
development. Literally almost every house has been adorned with at least one,
as have the public railings. Residents on Kennington Road backing onto the site
have also decked their houses with leaflets, giving the area an almost festive
quality. It’s obvious that the community is unanimous in its opposition but the
Walcot Foundation seems to be determined to ignore them.
London is no Paris. Unlike the French capital, so lovingly
and carefully maintained over the decades, the former was tossed to ravening
developers and is today a maimed shadow of its former architectural glory.
Those sections which have survived are therefore precious crumbs, all the more
valuable due to their scarcity. From Walcot Square it’s easy to see the
unsightly monstrosities which arose in other areas of Lambeth, a reminder of
the fate which all too easily could have befallen it too. Alas lessons have not
been learnt and development once again ogles this corner of historic London. As
its supposed guardians have abandoned it, let’s hope that its residents can
protect it instead.
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