Clapham Junction’s Rough Sleepers Hub opens for business

Posted on February 9, 2026 by David

It’s been a long project, and a controversial one too. But after one of the most contentious planning applications in the history of the borough, a long building project that’s seen a dilapidated office building comprehensively renewed, and a bold and quite innovative approach to supporting the homeless move from concept to very real plans, Clapham Junction’s new homeless hub has today – the 9th February – opened for business.

The high-risk moment of truth for Wandsworth Council’s flagship project

This is the moment of truth. Will this prove to be the new thinking that rough sleeping has needed for quite some time now – transforming the messy and piecemeal local authority support landscape, that until recently has done very little to help many of the most vulnerable members of our community just when they need it most? The innovation born in Wandsworth, which can show the rest of the country that a quick, pragmatic and comprehensive approach, rather than passing people from pillar to post, can get people who are struggling back on track – and even save taxpayers money?

Or will it be a crime-ridden magnet for junkies and ne’er-do-well’s, that many of its neighbours feared during the chaotic early days of the project, when it was sprung on them by stealth with an unadvertised planning application – just another shambolic night hostel, no matter how it’s branded, that will add to the headaches of residents and traders already struggling to deal with the antisocial behaviour seeping out of an inner city town centre?

We can’t answer that question – yet. None of us can. But we can report on how the project has fared during the last few months. In this in-depth article we also take a look at the long story of how and why this project came about, what the Hub will do and how it will work, how the plans have developed from the chaotic early stages of the project to address a lot of concerns from local residents, and how this bold experiment still leaves a few concerns in its wake. We take a peek behind the scenes, with lots of photos showing how the lengthy makeover of the building behind the hoardings has transformed a tired and run-down Council office to an up-to-date modern facility – and also report from a meeting with the management team on how the hub is going to operate.

The new Homeless Hub at 201-203 Lavender Hill, now with new windows and repaired external brickwork

A new approach to rough sleeping, that no one else has tried

It’s worth looking back to how this all came about. A few years ago, an idea germinated at Wandsworth Council: what if all the Council’s services for those vulnerable to homelessness and rough sleeping, which were scattered all around the borough, could be brought under one roof, to coordinate properly between each other and have prevention and support services on one site? Better still – what if rough sleepers themselves could be temporarily housed right next to those services, rather than in expensively-rented rooms all over London and the south east, to go in early and strong with the support, and make sure rough sleepers get access to everything they need at the same time – right away?

Short-stay rooms (for up to a month) would provide safe, comfortable, welcoming surroundings – while being right on the same site as the Council’s homelessness support workers and housing officers, the SPEAR rough sleeping team who they work with as a partner, and all the other services that can get people back on track. A clinical room would mean medical and mental health support could also be provided on site by appointment. It would all work on the basis that ‘every door is the right door’ – where no matter which bit of the Council and its partners’ services someone first approached for help, they would act as a gateway to support from all the other partners, with no need to go to lots of different people and tell them everything again and again. The aim would be to provide intensive, comprehensive, quick support – to get people to the stage where they can then move to settled longer-term accommodation. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound like rocket science, and you’d think there would be some examples elsewhere to point to – but surprisingly, there aren’t. Wandsworth would be the first Borough in London to have all the relevant services in one building. There are loose similarities with St Mungos’ No second night out outreach scheme (though they are also thought to be turning towards a hub model too).

Hidden corners of Asda’s car parking have been one of the Borough’s more persistent rough sleeping spots

An approach inspired by Wandsworth’s efforts in the 2020 pandemic

The idea was directly inspired by the government’s Everyone In scheme during the early days of the pandemic, which provided all rough sleepers with a place to stay. That scheme was made up within days, and driven by short term need – but it also proved an interesting experiment on whether a more proactive approach to rough sleeping could deliver better results. And sure enough, it does seem that when people were provided with the services and support they needed, many thousands of people who had been out in the streets for many months or years did get back in to stable longer term housing, and just got on with their lives.

Research by Shelter found just under a quarter of the 27,000 people helped by the pandemic scheme across the whole country went on to longer term settled accommodation – but Wandsworth seems to have done rather better than that. They housed 564 rough sleepers as the virus swept around the country, and 244 of them – nearly half – then moved on from those temporary arrangements to settled accommodation. Sometimes they provided ongoing help for those with more complex needs with the skills & support to maintain their tenancies – but in other cases they found that just having a moment of stability and some short-term help to get back on track was all people needed. The Council found that the scheme provided access to a lot of people who wanted to get off the streets, but who hadn’t previously had access to the services to help them do so, and managed to get good results; they regretted that at the end of the trial they lost the space to engage with rough sleepers.

And there are a fair few rough sleepers here, many of whom carefully stay as out-of-sight as possible. A street count in the late autumn found 21 rough sleepers in Wandsworth, and 14 in Richmond; with safety sometimes being found by staying out of the way, chances are the real figures are a bit higher. That may seem a small number – but it’s a very specific subset of the homelessness challenge here; there are far more ‘hidden homeless’ who couch surf and hide away in unoccupied commercial premises, who may also see some support via the Hub’s services, and even more statutory homeless (the Borough has around 4,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation) – but it does reflect those who are arguably the most vulnerable of all.

The triggers for rough sleeping in Wandsworth are often being discharged from a long stay in hospital or prison, the aftermath of a relationship breakdown, and being thrown out of private rented tenancies – the latter often because people have struggled with rent payments – which itself can often be down to unemployment or underemployment, or wider difficulties including substance use, and physical and mental health challenges. There’s also been a recent rise in rough sleeping among non-British nationals who are struggling to find employment as rules and checks have been tightened up. A lot of rough sleepers are local, and have fairly long histories in the area – although there are also people from further afield; Sadiq Khan has recently commented that London in general attracts more people than it can house, being seen as more attractive than the rest of the country – with better access to services and arguably better opportunities for informal employment.

The main reception area, which also houses the 24-hour security team

The project hones in on a conveniently available Council-owned building

There was, conveniently, an available building to try this out: 201-203 Lavender Hill, right opposite Battersea Arts Centre. Owned by Wandsworth, it had become available following the move of the Council’s care leavers service to be closer to other family services in Falcon Groove. It was a distinctly tired property – a loosely-stuck-together pair of four-storey Victorian terraces, with precisely the tatty facilities and run-down ambience you’d expect of something that had been in local authority hands for decades, far away from the Council headquarters and housing an obscure and little-known bit of the Council’s work. But there was enough space to accommodate both a dozen or so bedrooms, as well as a whole floor of offices for staff, and some rooms for appointments and visits.

The Council applied for funding support from central government, to try out this new approach – and someone must have done a decent job of the application because they landed a grant of just under £5 million. The pieces were starting to come together, to try something quite new.

Residents will have a communal living room on the first floor with softer lighting and more comfortable furniture

A botched start to the project annoyed nearly everyone

But things quickly went south – because the start of the process wasn’t handled well at all. A planning application for a change of use of the building, featuring minimal detail and some vague floor plans that seemed to have been sketched out on the back of an envelope, was very quietly submitted by the Council – with hardly any detail on what was being planned. Wandsworth also submitted the plans in a rather sneaky way that framed it all as a trivial ‘change of use’ of the Council building, which meant that even the immediate neighbours whose buildings were connected to the Lavender Hill location, and who were registered to receive planning alerts, weren’t informed.

Whoever did this probably thought they were being very clever and avoiding any of that hasslesome consultation and process that more ordinary residents have to go through if they want to get planning permission. But they hadn’t reckoned with their ever-finicky local community websites. We spotted it buried deep in the database, accidentally while looking for something else, wrote a short and fairly bland article on it… and chaos ensued. This wasn’t surprising – the way it was framed immediately brought up concerns that creating a hostel for two whole London boroughs, to a residential area, would draw in a large population of transient people struggling with all sorts of challenges and addictions – who may or may not then find space overnight, and with knock on impacts on the quiet streets around it, and on local traders who have a tough time at the best of times. For many residents at the eastern end of Lavender Hill, it rekindled difficult memories of the chaotic 120-room St Mungo’s hostel that had, for years, brought mayhem to Cedars Road. That hostel had been questionably managed at the best of times, and while it had a very laudable aim of supporting vulnerable residents with severe drug & alcohol abuse issues, it was hard to escape the feeling that the sheer scale of that hostel tended to make residents’ problems worse, while leaving its neighbours to pick up a lot of the pieces.

A shared kitchen facility has been installed

The timing of Wandsworth’s stealth planning application was also pretty unfortunate: Clapham Junction and Lavender Hill were struggling with a wave of petty crime (and not-so-petty crime too – to the point where we wrote a fairly detailed special report on the serious violence that was plaguing some streets – and we don’t even cover crime as a topic). When it was revealed that this facility would be the main facility for Richmond as well as Wandsworth – and be focussed on those with complex needs – a view quickly took root among many residents and traders that the last thing the area needed was some new hostel to bring two whole borough’s populations of people struggling with addictions and mental health challenges, to what was a mostly residential site on the very edge of a town centre – and one right next to a busy day nursery.

A quick change of approach, as it became a political problem

The dodgy planning application was hastily withdrawn – and a new one was submitted that had far more detail. But by now the cat was well and truly out of the bag, and it saw 500 often detailed objections (as well as a couple of dozen support comments). People across the Council realised that a well-intentioned project had very much got off on the wrong foot. Worse, both what was being done and how it had been done were becoming sore points well beyond its immediate neighbourhood, and potential election risks. The Lavender ward is mostly made up of Conservative councillors, so from Wandsworth’s perspective trouble there is not their problem (although it is marginal and has been a target) – while Shaftesbury has three Labour councillors and is also something of a swing seat. The impact was spreading too, with disquiet rippling across the north east of the Borough. A change of approach was ordered.

Shared bathrooms have been fitted on the two residential floors

A core residents’ concern, that emerged again and again, was about what the facility would be: somewhere that had the management and support to remain true to its objectives of wraparound support to get people on track, or something that degenerated in to a city-centre casual hostel for vagrants that – by not actually being in a city centre – could cause disproportionate risk to neighbours. Recognising this, the Council organised public meetings to try and reassure residents that no, they didn’t want to create something like the old Cedars Road Hostel (or various other dubiously managed ‘bed for the night’ setups that had been nightmares for their neighbours, and in some cases brought a lot of crime and danger close to other vulnerable populations), that the stealth application had been a mix up, and that they did want this to work with the neighbours.

We reported on this part of the Hub’s development in some detail – and in one of the articles we wrote we suggested a middle ground approach, that could address a lot of the local concerns, and get the project off to a good start.

A better thought through approach to the hub

Wandsworth were quite receptive to the concerns raised, and did take a fair bit of the feedback on board. The building plans got tweaked to reflect the concerns and thoughts, with changes made to both the layout of the building and the way it will operate to both make it work better, address some of the obvious design problems with their initial approach and generally do what they could to minimise the impact on the neighbour.

The view from the bedrooms

Councillor Aydin Dikerdem in particular – as the Cabinet member for housing, and who happens to live very close to the site – emerged as a driving force behind the project. To his credit he had not been afraid to discuss and defend it, and also been frank that this is an experiment – not everything will run perfectly from the outset, and there will be hiccups and learning processes.

A recent meeting of the Local residents’ Forum

Wandsworth also made a lot of commitments on how the Hub would run. This included a proper sustained engagement programme with the site’s neighbours, including committing to having out of hours contact details if there were disturbances (including a neighbours’ phone line that will be open 24 hours), having the CCTV patched through to the Wandsworth joint control centre on Wandsworth High Street, creating a space within the facility that could let residents have a space to relax during the day rather than driving everyone out to side-street hangouts, closing off the already-problematic back alleys behind the site that risked becoming dealing spots, making the windows at the back that face a small childrens’ play area non-openable, and ensuring residents were provided with access to food to not lead to even more theft from the traders along the street.

The project moves in to the construction phase

The reception area at the new Hub.

A couple of years later, having got through the planning process (which saw a lot of changes made, and took far longer than originally expected – we also wrote about the updated planning application that was ultimately approved) and moved to the build stage, the building itself has had a comprehensive makeover.

While the initial thinking had been that a bit of a patch up would do, the usual thing happened when you take on a typical local-authority-owned building that’s been far out and out of mind for the main business of the Council, and which has had the bare minimum done to keep it ticking over for any years – and it turned out that lots and lots of things needed work! There’s been a much more in depth effort at really getting it up to date, as our photos throughout this article – which were mostly taken late last year as the building work headed towards completion – show.

This will be an open plan office area on the top floor, housing Wandsworth’s housing and homeless outreach teams.

What we have now is pretty much a completely new building, in the shell of an old Victorian one. The exterior has seen the brickwork repaired, the stray cables and pipes removed, the roof and flashing repaired, and the parapet repaired and repainted. All the windows have been replaced, to get the building both warmer and far more sound proof than it was before (we can confirm that you can barely hear the traffic from the inside). It has been fully insulated, and had a complete top-to-bottom rewire, with all the services and utilities replaced, and the whole building brought up to modern fire safety standards. The work was led by Medport Global, whose Director Tunde Adewopo is rightly proud of the way this old building has been given a new lease of life.

One of the new short stay bedrooms, nearing completion

The ground floor houses the reception, and a large area that can accommodate appointments with specialists and meetings. There are two doors: one to the reception, and the other giving direct access to the upper floors. The next two floors are the residential bit of the hub: first floor has a living area, a communal kitchen, and some bedrooms, while up another floor there’ are several more bedrooms (the 11 bedrooms are mainly very small single rooms – but there are a handful that could accommodate doubles if needed). The top floor is staff-only, with a mixture of open plan workspaces, meeting rooms and offices; with a capacity of 15 or so it will house Wandsworth’s homelessness and rough sleeping teams.

So what happens now – how will this work? Who will the Hub house?

The way the hub will work is strictly by referral and appointment – both for meetings with support teams and experts (which will run only Monday to Friday between 9 and 5), and for placements in the residential accommodation. It is absolutely not a ‘bed for the night’ general hostel, the sort seen in city centres that offer shelter or a night – which has reassured some neighbours who were understandably concerned that that type of operation can attract far too many challenging characters for typical residential and edge-of-centre locations to be able to deal with. The Hub is a joint venture between Wandsworth and Richmond, with the capacity (and the bill) split in a 7:4 ratio between the two Boroughs; while the Hub will operate as a unified facility, responsibility for ultimate rehousing of – and ongoing support for – the ‘Richmond’ residents falls to Richmond rather than Wandsworth.

It’s also targeted at a pretty specific set of the homeless and rough-sleeper population: people who, with the right support, are ready to move to settled longer term accommodation – which could be in supported accommodation, the private rented sector, private leased provision, or whatever. It’s not aimed at chronic or ‘high need’ rough sleepers with serious drug or alcohol problems, or who are very unwell physically or mentally – to be taken on you need to be capable of moving on with the support the Hub can offer within a typical four-week placement. Put more bluntly, this means it’s not planning to fill up with the belligerent drunks and aggressive beggars readers will have seen thieving and threatening staff in local shops!

As an aside, it’s also not aimed at the women readers will have seen dropped off with near identical cardboard signs every morning on St John’s Hill (and as a side note – as we understand it they are very likely to have been trafficked and be under some duress, but they are not homeless). Undocumented migrants, no matter how vulnerable, are also out of scope: residents need ‘recourse to public funds‘ to be able to receive Hub support, regardless of Wandsworth’s Borough of Sanctuary status.

There might very occasionally be a wider population housed, as the basement can be activated as a short term urgent shelter when temperatures plunge and the Severe Weather Protocol is activated, which requires Councils across the country to find somewhere indoors for everyone to stay no matter what, no questions asked. But the Hub’s basement is a last resort, and far from the best option available – so unlikely to be used for this much.

What happens when someone arrives at the Hub?

It’s a peer-led service : many of those helping its clients have themselves experienced homelessness and mental health challenges, or their impact on their peers. Each resident will have a housing officer to explore suitable options, and a support worker responsible for their welfare. Staff will aim to find long-term housing for residents to move on to, although they could also explore other alternative short-term options like temporary accommodation. If residents need, for example, to see a drug & alcohol worker as part of the process that appointment will be in the Hub rather than seeing them sent off to St John’s Hill or further field. recognising that a lot of the rough sleeping community are already a bit traumatised, the aim is also that they don’t need to repeat the whole of what has happened so far over and over again at each new appointment with four or five different bits of the Council.

Prospective residents will be booked in for assessment – with a check on immigration status / leave to remain / recourse to public funds, then a review of past housing history (have they managed tenancies before? What locations have they been in?) – sometimes with the ability to cross refer between local authorities. The management are well aware that residents will often be coming from complicated and sometimes traumatic situations and wont exactly share everything all at once; these processes are part of a softer chat – to help people feel sufficiently relaxed and comfortable to share what the Hub needs to help people.

As part of the wraparound support to get people back on track and back in the system, support available on site will include the Central London Homeless Inclusion team, as well as part time staff from the NHS rough sleeping and mental health programme (RAMHP) – including nurses and support workers. There will also be a part time consultant psychiatrist, and GP advice and sessions from St Georges NHS Trust.

The ultimate aim is to work out a personal housing plan with the individual. The Council has a maximum of 56 days to decide if there’s a duty to house someone, and there are a mix of options at its disposal – including the options of referral to low, medium, or high-need supported accommodation (the Council has ten sites around the Borough that house 6-8 residents each), nominations to social housing, or to private sector leases (essentially a two-year ‘training flat’ to help people get used to managing all aspects of a tenancy).

High-risk residents won’t be welcome

Part of the initial assessment process is also the Hub undertaking a risk assessment on prospective new residents, and the management have made clear to neighbours that high-risk prison releases, and sex offenders, will not be suitable for the shared living arrangements it can provide. It will be equipped to accommodate people with drug and alcohol challenges, although neither drink nor drugs are allowed on the premises, and – conscious of the risk of these activities being pushed to nearby quiet corners – part of the Hub’s good neighbour agreement, and the good management procedure, will see a prohibition on residents congregating outside the hub. There is a ban on begging, shoplifting, and causing a nuisance in the vicinity, and Hub staff will patrol nearby streets twice a day specifically to check that this rule is being upheld. Obviously there’s always a bit of a challenge in working out what local problems may be related to the Hub and what isn’t; the aim is for a kind of collective ownership on things that may be Hub or wider neighbourhood problems, and the management will try to work out what is most serious and relevant for quick action at the Hub.

There will also be a minimum of two staff on the premises at all times. There’s no curfew for residents – not least as that can lead to people kicking off outside if they are locked out! – instead, the night staff will manage any late night challenges, on the grounds that this is better for both Hub residents and their neighbours.

A high-stakes move, close to Council elections

Wandsworth is committed to hosting a monthly meeting for residents, which Aydin is chairing – made up of housing officers, the street homeless service, adult social services, community safety and public health representatives from Wandsworth, as well as the Hub’s partner agencies – the safer neighbourhood team, SPEAR, St Mungo’s and the NHS Trust. If you are a local resident, business owner, faith or community group, or local media, you’re welcome to join and we suggest you do. The comms have been a little bit wobbly: despite some mail shots aimed at the streets nearby, some people have been missed out, or found out about meetings rather late in the day (the aim is to have four weeks’ notice; at the time of writing the next Forum is scheduled for the 12th February). If you’re one of these, contact thehub@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk to be added to the circulation list for the next meeting. There’s an open offer to neighbours who would be willing to support the Hub with volunteering – including befriending and mentoring Hub residents.

It’s fair to say, a lot of people have been won round by Aydin and the Council since the project’s difficult early days. This was very much in evidence at a recent public forum where views were rather more pragmatic and balanced than previously. Gary Clements, the manager of the Assessment Hub and no stranger to the challenges of homelessness, has also emerged as a reassuringly pragmatic and seasoned hand in charge of the operation, and has clearly inspired a good degree of confidence in the residents forum meetings.

The specific challenge of Mysore Road

Not everyone is convinced. Residents of the small block of flats on Mysore Road, right next to the Hub, have been especially concerned about an uptick in all sorts of antisocial behaviour in the central courtyard, pictured above and below. It’s one of those awkward 1970s-era layouts that was maybe built in more innocent times: it has no gates and is open to anyone – but it’s also almost completely out of sight to passers-by, with lots of hidden away spaces, as well as ground floor flats. This maybe owes something to a determined effort to crack down on some of these behaviours nearer the station, which may have displaced activity towards to the edges of the town centre.

The secluded courtyard at the centre of the flats on Mysore Road

Clearly recent issues here are nothing to do with the only-just-opened-today Hub – but the residents’ fears are very understandable, and they do underline the underlying challenge of being an estate with uncontrolled access to a secluded areas is inherently challenging, with obvious potential to become the quiet out-of-sight area of choice for residents who stick to the ‘no drugs on site’ policy but who still have addictions to deal with. There’s a desire to close the currently unrestricted access to the inner courtyard and parking area, but this is hard to do: it costs money to install and operate, and a clear majority of estate residents need to agree to changes to arrangements. In other words – whether there are problems at Mysore Road or not, may well end up as the real test of how the good neighbour policy works out in practice (and residents – do get in touch to let us know).

The un-gated entrance to the Mysore Road flats

The Hub opens today

The Hub officially opened today, the 9th February, for appointments. It’s a soft launch, and the first full time residents won’t be moving in until next Monday – with phased filling up of the 11 bedrooms. In a few weeks it will be fully in use, and we will start to see how it operates – and within 2-3 months we may start to see some of the results in terms of rough sleepers (hopefully) moving on to more settled accommodation.

Ultimately the Hub approach is a bold move, and an attempt to try and address a really knotty and persistent problem that affects communities all over the country, and help some of the most vulnerable people in the community. And on the face of it, with a committed team behind it, it has a good chance of delivering results – maybe this will be the model that other Councils pivot towards.

And in some regards, things have to go well for the Council – as it’s not long until the local elections, and there are some areas near the Hub that are looking to be tightly fought; if the Council is seen to have unleashed a chaotic mess on Lavender Hill this will be a Big Political Problem! Conservative councillors were unhappy at being bounced on the Hub plans along with everyone else, and while they could by and large see the logic in the plans, felt that the initial process was a complete dog’s breakfast. They are currently broadly supporting the approach, but keeping a close eye on if the Council lives up to its promises and makes this work. Councillor Guy Humphries previously welcomed the planned residents forum so the council can ‘be more proactive in their discussions with the obviously understandably concerned residents and businesses nearby‘, and asked for reassurance the authority is ‘willing to be flexible and moderate or change plans if things aren’t working according to exactly how it is in reality’.

And maybe that’s the art of it: this is a big new project and of course there will be the odd slip up, not every resident will end up happily housed, not everyone will prove able to live with others in the Hub environment, not everyone will manage to keep addictions sufficiently under control. If the Council and management team work with residents and neighbours, adapts the approach where it needs tweaking, recognises where things go right and where they go wrong, and reacts accordingly, we ought to get to a decent place.

We will, as ever, be keeping you posted on how this goes.

The Local Residents Forum meeting on the Rough Sleeping Hub

If you’re coming to this new, the story so far’s here: initial article describing the plans, follow-up article summarising the concerns raised & proposals for how the plan could be improved, and third article reporting on what was shared at the public meeting. Some further posts covered a lull in development, followed by the updated planning application, which more or less led to what has now been built. Don’t hesitate to contact us to let us know your experiences of the Hub; and contact thehub@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk to be added to the circulation list for future meetings of the Residents’ Forum.

Lavender-hill.uk is a community site covering retail, planning and development  and local business issues, and sometimes wider issues like  transport, centered on the Lavender Hill area in Battersea. Recent topics include neverending water leaks, plans to smarten up Queenstown Road, the horribly messy redevelopment of the Westbury Estate near Wandsworth Road station, the barely-known Georgian orangery hiding in plain sight near Clapham Common, and a big investigation in to why Battersea Power Station’s cranes mysteriously disappeared. We sometimes also post more detailed articles on local history.  If you found this interesting you may want to sign up to receive new posts (for free, unsubscribe anytime) by email.

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Thames Water’s leaky Lavender Hill water main: Will the shambles ever end?

Posted on January 25, 2026 by David

Thames Water’s leak-fixing excavations have been a familiar local sight for years – but they’re becoming a much more regular thing in and around Lavender Hill. Every few weeks there’s another burst pipe somewhere along the street – to the point where it’s becoming clear there’s a fundamental problem with this water main. Not long before Christmas the street was dug up three times in a month in the same place in front of Lane Eight Coffee, seemingly because every time the pipe was patched up it weakened the next bit which then also broke.

Then one of the biggest leaks to date saw the pipe snap in two at the junction of Lavender Hill and Rush Hill Road. It almost immediately caused two motorcycle crashes as the flowing water froze most of the sloping bit of the street on one of the coldest nights of the year, and fed a small reservoir’s worth of water in to Tyneham Close’s gardens. The road ended up closed for most of a week because of concerns of subsidence, given how much soil and sand had been washed out from underneath it, with buses sent on a 25-minute diversion via everywhere.

That leak saw high pressure water emerging in lots of little fountains over a wide area that got bigger and bigger over the first day (even, slightly intriguingly, with some fountains as far away as in front of the Co-op supermarket a good forty feet away). All quite pretty, in a way, like a cut-price 1980s municipal water feature – but also bundled with the implication that the water from the burst main was pressing similarly hard against the walls and floors of the adjacent lower ground floor and basement flats; it’s lucky that none of them ended up full to the ceiling.

By now we all know the routine with these leaks: the local WhatsApp groups light up with ‘is it just us or is the water pressure really low’, a few people report it to Thames Water on their (to be fair, fairly good) website and phone line, they say they’ll go and investigate but it takes them days and days to do so, when they do turn up they spray some blue paint on a couple of drains then vanish without trace, the nearest bus stops get closed to make way for the works but no one bothers to put a sign on the stop saying so, barriers and temporary traffic lights turn up and lots of people try to cut through along tiny side streets which are suddenly full of idiots yelling at each other to get out of the way, somewhere or other the water starts pooling and maybe a few ducks and waterfowl take up residence, then at a seemingly random time in the day or night a huge crew with lots of vans rocks up and – with a lot of sawing and digging – tapes up the leak. A hole then sits there for a week gathering all the litter in the neighbourhood until a separate team come and fill the hole, and yet another team repave it.

It works – things do, eventually, get fixed. Though if you have a smaller and less dramatic leak, you’d better not be in a hurry as the repair times are stretching from a few weeks, to many months. The oldest ‘live’ leak in Thames Water’s database on Lavender Hill was apparently first reported on 7th March 2025 and is still waiting to be investigated, despite Thames Water noting on that report that Our technicians aim to be there within the next 24 hours (It may be longer if we’re really busy. In the name of journalistic research we’ve just been to have a look – and can confirm it’s still leaking.

Here’s the pipe that caused all the trouble at Rush Hill Road, after it was patched up. It doesn’t look like much – it’s by no means the biggest water main out there, and if you’re thinking that it looks as though it has been fixed with a load of duck tape, you’re not too far off; it’s Denso Tape – which is a fairly quick and effective way of dealing with leaks, but maybe not an especially long term one for a water main in this condition.

The trouble is – there’s only so far you can get with a team more or constantly in the process of patching up leaks somewhere along the street. Because it’s increasingly clear that this particular water main is entirely ‘life expired’ – it’s worn out – which is maybe not surprising given that more than half of Thames Water’s water mains in London are over 100 years old, with around a third exceeding 150 years – these are Victorian antiques!

These leaks aren’t the result of occasional disturbance, they’re just the pipe itself being too old and corroded to handle the pressure. When bits get dug out in the leaks, they seem to be made up of a mix of rust and embedded rubble, with just enough ‘pipe’ left to hold it all together. If Thames Water wasn’t a financial basketcase, this would all have been replaced years ago. This water main continues along Wandsworth Road, where it was in a similarly rubbish condition – until it was completely replaced about ten years ago. The replacement took months and caused huge traffic delays – but Wandsworth Road has been largely leak-free ever since.

Thames Water can’t afford that sort of large-scale replacement any more. There is a much smaller bit of planned mains-replacement underway, on Acanthus Road about half way along Lavender Hill, which has partially closed the street for 5 weeks. It seems to be a new pipe being installed in parallel to an old one running down the street, and it’s part of a wider project to swap out just under three kilometres of the very worst pipes in the Clapham and Battersea area. There’s also a six year programme of replacements planned between this week, and 2031 in north Vauxhall and east Brixton – again targeting some of the most problematic bits of the old cast iron pipe network, as well as several very leaky housing estates.

But fixes like these are a drop in the ocean: at the current rate of replacement and renewal, it has been estimated that it would take 2,000 years for all Thames Water’s water and sewage pipes to be replaced – the second slowest ‘replacement rate’ of any of England’s water companies (only Severn Trent water is more lackadaisical). The last major investment in local water supply was probably the London Ring Main, which opened in the early 1990s – which takes water from reservoirs on the outskirts of London and feeds it – via some deep and modern tunnels – in to the local pipe network at a pumping station just east of Battersea power station, with another near Brixton prison. The ring main was a clever project, as – by feeding water in at many places around London – it took some of the pressure off other older water mains and let them become more ‘local’ bits of the network, running at lower pressure, but since then everything has been left to decay. Realistically we’re probably stuck with our not-very-solid local water main for the foreseeable future.

And the trouble is that as the leaks get larger and more frequent, they’re causing more and more floods, transport diversions and traffic delays – and posing an increasing threat to homes and businesses. Fortunately we’ve not had anything on the scale of the leak in Shepherds Bush a few days ago, the sinkhole that appeared in Clapham last year, or the regular explosions of the major main running under the A3 in Wandsworth town centre – where the repair process was such a shambles that Council leader Simon Hogg wrote a clearly very frustrated public letter to Thames Water – let alone the devastation of the 2013 Herne Hill burst (which saw Thames Water criticised for hiding behind their legal teams and failing to cover the costs of the damage their dubiously maintained pipes caused).

A week and a half after the diversions and closures at the eastern end of Lavender Hill were lifted, a new set of temporary traffic lights and Thames Water lane closures are back for another leak at the western end by the library. And a new and growing leak has also appeared at the eastern end by the Co-op, which has created a small lake towards the junction with Queenstown Road. There are also a few on the Queenstown Road, and it’s only a matter of time until there’s another on the Shaftesbury Estate. And it goes on… Many of the drains along Lavender Hill still aren’t working from the previous mains burst – because as our photo above shows, the sheer amount of sand and grit that gets washed out from under the road and pavements when there’s a larger leak tends to quickly block them.

It’s costing Wandsworth money too. The Rush Hill leak is a case in point: Thames Water loosely filled the hole where they patched up the pipe, and ignored all the rest of the damage their pipes had caused. The streetscape upgrade that, back in 2018, saw the whole street repaved with good quality new paving materials, and raised pedestrian crossings added along almost all the side roads, has ended up being left in a proper mess.

Lots of sand and earth from under the paving was washed out by the huge water flow – and as a result the paving slabs have subsided, some bricks have been completely washed out and vanished, the footway is all wobbly with gaps. The damage to the carefully installed and far-from-cheap streetscape works is frustrating, as it now needs a long process to get someone to repair it, and it’ll ultimately end up being funded by the Council Tax payers of Wandsworth rather than by Thames Water. And the new trip hazards in the paving will, when someone sprains their ankle on the irregular surface, probably also end up as a liability for Wandsworth rather than Thames Water.

It’s not just leaks that are causing problems. We receive reports of repeated and persistent water pressure issues in some areas of the Shaftesbury estate, we know from direct experience that many of the under-street valves that allow Thames Water to shut off bits of the supply if there are large leaks seem to have seized up and not be fully functional, and don’t even get us started on the localised issues of bent and subsiding manhole covers – the ones that crash and bang at night when things drive over them, much to the frustration of residents near them. Getting those fixed used to be a fairly minor issue of reporting a fault and waiting a few weeks, but now to get Thames Water to act means getting local Councillors on the case, reporting things again and again, and probably still seeing nothing done because sustained noise disturbance doesn’t cut it any more when you have Niagara falls erupting in three other places in the Borough. We’ve heard of residents in some areas taking matters in their own hands and removing and hiding damaged drain covers to force Thames Water in to action (we’d stress – do not do this!). It’s telling that Wandsworth themselves ended up stepping in on a few of the worst cases in the Lavender Hill area under their ‘Seven rings, and in seven days‘ guarantee for repairing the most dangerous street defects – as while these posed only limited danger, they were clearly getting a lot of resident concern.

To be clear: this isn’t a criticism of the Thames Water teams out at all hours making the repairs. In our experience they’ve been committed to doing what they can, and generally making the best of a bad situation. It’s not easy working for a company as widely unpopular as Thames Water, where nothing ever goes right – and where you also have the ever present uncertainty on whether it will still be trading in the coming days or weeks. Thames Water’s back office are also pretty on the case, even though they are clearly heavily overloaded with problems.

No, the problems here run much deeper, and are closer to the top of the organisation. It’s widely known that the company has been raided for cash for years, with the bare minimum spent maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure – it’s already over sixteen billion pounds in debt, it’s only just got enough water to supply the growing city (even if it deals with the leaks) thanks to a similar underinvestment in reservoirs, and the backlog of infrastructure needing repair or – like our water main – outright replacement probably runs to the tens of billions. It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better, and need a lot of money spending along the way. Thames Water looks likely to collapse, sooner or later – at which point some of those who invested in or lent to it may lose out, and the debt mountain may reduce a little. But we’re still stuck with a system that’s falling to pieces, and a need to spend vast sums, and see years and years of large scale repair and replacement work, to get back to having a basically functional water network.

We like to end articles on a positive note, but that’s been a bit hard to do in this story. Maybe for Lavender Hill the saving grace of this tale of failed water companies, creaking Victorian water mains and surprise inundations is in the name. Because when we get a burst main, more often than not it’s at the top of what is – mostly – a hill, which creates temporary rivers that disperse the flow over quite a wide area rather than creating the much-more-damaging deep localised floods (which is what did for low-lying Herne Hill a few years ago). It’s a racing certainty that we’ll see many more leaks, and one day when London’s water supply finally gets back on track we’ll probably also see some huge project to install a new water main – but in the meantime, frustrating as the endless leaks are, at least it’s relatively unlikely that anyone’s house or shop will end up underwater.

Lavender-hill.uk is a community site covering retail, planning and development  and local business issues, and sometimes on transport and the environment – centered on the Lavender Hill area in Battersea. We don’t tend to cover water infrastructure, unless it’s got to the stage where the issues are hard to ignore! We do sometimes post more detailed articles on local history, which are among our favourite posts, and maybe the water mains belong in that category. If you found this interesting feel free to sign up to receive new posts by email (for free, unsubscribe anytime). If you do spot a leak, it’s good to get on the case quickly as they tend to get bigger – Thames water’s reporting tool is here (and usually works, but at the time of writing even it is broken!) but for leaks that are traffic hazards or risk flooding property, it’s better to call them on 0800 316 9800.

Posted in Business, Environment, Transport, Wandsworth Road | 2 Comments

In pictures: Falcon Road bridge’s transformation

Posted on December 16, 2025 by David

As we wrote way back in 2019, nobody likes the Falcon Road railway bridge. Dark, loud, mucky, and always wet, the need to run the gauntlet of drips and pigeon poo is an unpleasant part of the day for those of us who use it. It’s been splitting Clapham Junction in two from the very beginning, as the railway junction was pretty much the reason a town centre was built here. Over 100 metres long and running under nineteen railway lines in one go, it has reinforced a long running north / south divide in Battersea, condemning those on the north to a rather grim walk to get to the main town centre, and preventing the many businesses on the Falcon Road benefitting from being so close to the crowds of people at Clapham Junction.

But that has changed. Wandsworth Council has been on a push to renew and clean up our town centres, and one thing that emerged time and time again in discussions with residents was Falcon bridge! They decided to go for it – making the most of the ‘neighbourhood improvement’ funding coming from a lot of the big housing developments along the riverside – and kicked off a major project to completely transform the look and feel of the bridge. There would be no half measures here, this was to be a proper effort that would make an impact. And after months of preparation, and three months of building work, the road briefly closed last night to celebrate the completion of the works.

It’s the first time there’s ever been an event actually under the bridge! Even if it had been possible to close the road before, the venue would have been too dirty and unappealing to want to – but this time passers by were surprised to see a full range of entertainment, and the crowd grew quickly. The Falconbrook School Steel Pan Band set the scene, making the most of the acoustics, followed by the Brass Band from World Heart Beat, accompanied by stilt walkers.

As everyone gathered for the opening, it was already clear that the bridge has a very different look and feel. It’s clean, it’s bright, and maybe most surprisingly of all, it’s dry. The entire wall surface has been covered with five hundred enamel panels, whose designs were developed in a serie sof community workshops. They include stylised images of Battersea Bridge, the Price’s Candles factory that once occupied a huge area north of the York Road (and which, even though the last part of the business moved out to Bedford in 2001, remains the largest British owned candle maker), the Peace Pagoda, Arding and Hobbs, Battersea Power Station, cherry trees in Battersea Park, and of course our favourite the lavender of Lavender Hill.

The panels also include daffodils – which (thanks to one of our readers) we know are a nod to the five hundred daffodils planted in Christchurch Gardens by pupils at nearby ChristChurch primary school. The gardens – slightly hidden behind a fruit and veg shop at the other end of Falcon Road – include a relatively little known memorial to those we lost, and flower each spring in memory of the civilian casualties in Battersea during World War II. The planting followed an oral history project interviewing people who were living in Battersea during the war (whose summary includes many eyewitness accounts and can be downloaded here).

The mural also includes lots of Battersea bees. The bee has long been a symbol of Battersea, so much so that many bees feature in the mosaic floors at Battersea Ars Centre, from when it was Battersea Town Hall. It reflects the industrious and community minded people of Battersea – and maybe also the prevalence of bees back when large parts of the low lying area along the riverside were market gardens that were known for their production of quite exotic fruit and vegetables for London’s markets, as well as the Lavender fields up towards Lavender Hill.

One reference that may be less immediately apparent is flowing water, shown on several of the panels – the ones that also show Arding & Hobbs. This isn’t a reference to the ominous drips that used to rained down on pedestrians – rather it’s a nod to the Falconbrook river, which is responsible for the clear dip between Lavender Hill and St John’s Hill. Once a quiet rural river winding its way through the fields from Balham to the Thames, it was buried soon after the station was opened, and it now flows – quietly and unseen – under our feet as we walk through Falcon Bridge, before heading off under the York Road Estate, and under the remaining buildings of the Price’s Candles factory.

It’s not just about the bridge: there used to be scruffy patches of wasteland and unofficial advertising hoardings at each end of the bridge; those have been replaced with new planting and seating more or less following the design in the original competition.

But now it was time for the main event. Kemi Akinola (deputy leader of Wandsworth Council), Marsha de Cordova MP, and Simon Hogg (leader of the Council) spoke about the project. As a key event in Wandsworth’s year as Borough of Culture, this was a chance to celebrate the community and local landmarks, with a design that reflects the cultural identity of Wandsworth.

It was also a chance to finally deal with a bridge that had been deeply unpopular with residents, for being unpleasant and unsafe, and that had split Clapham Junction and Battersea for too long.

Thanks went to 1,000+ residents who had been involved in the consultation and design stages, the design team who had turned ideas in to a reality, the engineering team at Conway who had managed a complicated build, and to project manager Sam Emmett for leading what had been a complex project bringing together lots of different organisations and managing a fair few challenges. But now it was time to dim the main street lighting, and for the big red button…

And Falcon bridge’s lighting was switched on…

And the whole bridge lit up. There are upwards and downward facing lights, all of which are individually controlled. The main roadway lights have also been replaced with new ones that are more directional and pigeon proofed (and thanks to legendary London reporter Ian Mansfield, who was also at the launch, we now know that the lights are brighter in the day than at night – to avoid making the contrast between inside & outside the tunnel too sharp). The Victorians who originally built the first spans of Falcon bridge, as a workaday thoroughfare between the new suburban town centre being laid out to the south and the fields and distant village to the north, would never have expected it to look like this.

The design team at GPAD and POoR Collective was at the launch, to see the way people were reacting to the bridge – as it’s much more real now that it’s built. The bridge, and the lighting, were clearly making an immediate impression on passers by who hadn’t expected to see anything going on on a slightly rainy Monday evening.

So was the team from FM Conway who had done the construction and installation – and who many of us will have seen on site for several months – were also present. It has been quite a complicated project to deliver – with a live railway and road, pedestrians day and night, and the need to keep closures of the road and lanes to a minimum, while also dealing with an old and rather unpredictable underlying structure. It’s not every day that a project gets such a big launch, and they were pleased to see a job well done, and getting so much public attention!

The five hundred wall panels are made of vitreous enamel – maybe better known for its role in sauce pans that last forever, and which is an exceptionally durable surface finish that withstands all the elements, the team at A.J. Wells who made the panels had made the journey to see this in action. They’re well known as the maker of TfL’s signs on the tube, they were pleased to see the way this had made such a local impact – while the project wasn’t technically unusual for someone used to making robust products for complicated sites, there have only been a few cases of enamel being used at such scale under bridges, and Falcon Bridge was already leading to interest elsewhere.

We also spoke to Sam Emmett, who has managed the overall project – and who was able to answer many of the questions we’ve had from readers over the last few months! It was clear this has been a complex project but also a particularly rewarding one, especially as the changes to the bridge have become much more visible in recent weeks. Sam noted that right from the start the design has had to work closely with Network Rail – who own the bridge, and who also need access to the signal cables and structure on an ongoing basis. While that is never a straightforward thing to do, the team were clearly appreciative of Network Rail’s efforts to help the project progress.

What about the pigeons, who used to be the only ones to love the bridge, and who seemed to lurk on the girders in huge numbers? The cable ducts that run above both pavements had notoriously become home to thousands of nesting pigeons over the years; and the project team worked with a wildlife group to re-house them elsewhere, and keep a check on their health in doing so – so that the original perches could be given a deep clean, and then pigeon proofed with grills and deterrent spikes. There will still be occasional pigeons there for three or four months (as they are used to it as a location) – but thanks to thousands of spikes and surface treatments the bridge is now much less attractive, and they are moving elsewhere.

Graffiti is another concern, and featured heavily in the design thought. The secret weapon here is the enamel material used for all of the wall panels. It’s super tough – way more resilient than any paint cold ever be – and is about as graffiti-resistant as it gets. Sam confirmed that there has already been a tag (a green one about a foot wide) and it just wiped off without needing any chemicals or equipment at all.

Handling water and drips was always going to be a particular challenge – with leaks from the tracks above, and the walls also being an especially wet part of the bridge. You can’t realistically treat the original bridge walls to waterproof them: the arches and soil behind them is saturated, they have leaked pretty much from the day they were built, and short of rebuilding the bridge it’s pretty much inevitable that water will continue to seep out.

The solution has been to install the panels in a way that is offset from the wall, with a gap behind where the walls can keep leaking water as they always have – which then flows to ground level and in to drains. The cable ducts above the pavement were a little more complex – and the approach there has been to install a drip tray at the base of the ducts – that’s the dark blue bit in our photo above – which channels water over and behind the panels, instead of it dripping on to the pavement (and the effect is quite noticeable – suddenly the walkway is dry!).

Behind the scenes, there are a fair few different kinds of bridge here – a lot of Victorian girder bridges, some more modern concrete beams of the sort you’ll see on motorways round the country, some grid areas where there are short spaces between bridges, and a section of brick arch shown in our photo above. The latter was especially awkward from a ‘drips on to the pavement’ perspective, so the section of brick arch right above the walkway was treated with a waterproofing system, to keep the most important sections dry.

Asked what he was most proud of about the project, Sam said it was the way everyone involved had pulled together to deliver it. It had been very busy – half a road, eight mobile platforms, three subcontractors, over forty people on the case, electrical work, landscaping, waterproofing, all in a small and constrained area that had to be kept open and accessible pretty much throughout. The teams had made it all come together. And the night before, as they had done a quiet test of the lighting to prepare for the big switch on, it was really good to see people saying “oh wow!” as they walked through.

And we’d agree with that reaction. It’s fair to say that historically the area immediately north of the railway has been a bit neglected – and that the deteriorating state of Falcon Bridge had become an only-too-obvious sign of that neglect. The relaunched bridge is the sort of practical improvement that improves everyone’s experience of our town centre, and helps re-join the communities on the two sides. Wandsworth have done something good here, taking one of the worst features of Clapham Junction, and delivering a proper transformation.

Lavender-hill.uk is a community site covering retail, planning and development  and local business issues, and sometimes posts like this one on transport and the environment – all centered on the Lavender Hill area in Battersea. We sometimes also post more detailed articles on local history. We first wrote about Falcon bridge on sister site Clapham Junction Insider way back in 2019 – What can we do about Falcon Road’s horrible railway bridge? – and reported on the works in progress back in September. If you found this interesting feel free to sign up to receive new posts by email (for free, unsubscribe anytime).

Posted in Environment, Photo stories, Street by street, Transport | 2 Comments

In pictures: Himalayan Salt, a smart new Indian restaurant, opens on Lavender Hill

Posted on December 1, 2025 by David

While the Indian restaurants we have tend to trade for many, many years – it’s surprisingly rare to see a completely new entrant. Lavender Hill’s recently opened Himalayan Salt is maybe the exception: having opened just a couple of months ago, it has already made an impact, and established itself as a popular and busy venue with strong reviews, attracting customers from well beyond the immediate neighbourhood. The menu’s a mix of the classics, and some more unusual options – with a mix of dishes from the Himalayas all the way to the coast, including a wide range from the grill, as well as a respectable set of vegetarian specialities. The restaurant may be new but the team behind it is not, with quite a lot of previous culinary experience brought to the new venture, including at the well-reputed Holy Cow in Putney.

The premises were closed for quite some time prior to the grand opening, to allow for a complete makeover of both the front and the back of house – which proved quite an adventure with some of the key components arriving at the eleventh hour! It was clearly worth the wait and the investment though, as for those who remember it as it used to be it’s been quite a change of style. The dining room now has a cosy sophisticated feel, with rich dark green walls, new wooden flooring and banquette seating and seating for around 40; with the salt in the name echoed in the form of table lights. The front has smaller tables around the bar, which has everything you would expect on offer, and Cobra on tap, while the main space – up a few steps and deeper in the building – is flexible to accommodate a good range of table sizes.

For many, many years this was a traditional Portuguese restaurant, Costa do Estoril. Not the tourist style restaurant, but the real deal that you’d find rather out of the way in small towns, not much to look at but highly rated on the food. The team behind Costa do Estoril went on to open Grill on the Hill a few doors down, who are still very much in business, and the original premises then had a brief time (only a year or so) as Moto, a sushi restaurant. The current owners have really worked with the space, to turn it in to something different.

At the back the kitchen (which still has a window to the dining area, preserved from the days when tis was a sushi restaurant) so you can sometimes see preparation underway) has also been modernised and upgraded to the latest standard – which may also have helped Himalayan Salt acquire a 5-star food hygiene rating from the Food Standards Agency at the end of October.

Reviews have quickly come in with a fair few repeat customers – and they’re consistent in recognising the excellent service, and the delicious food – which is widely recognised as being very much a cut above your standard Indian restaurant, full of flavour and beautifully presented. Pricing wise this is outstanding value compared to some of the Northcote Road options, slightly more expensive than nearest neighbour palace Spice, slightly less than Blossom by Khan’s.

One question that can arise in trying a new Indian restaurant is where it sits on the spice-o-meter; we can confirm that this is broadly ‘medium’ – the ingredients in play here are clearly good quality and haven’t been overloaded in spice, to let the underlying flavours and ingredients do the talking. Special marks (which your author can confirm) for the sauces and chutneys accompanying the starters, and some flatbreads that go well above what one might expect. Kulfi and Gulab Jamun are also on offer as a dessert.

Takeaway is of course on offer (and to ensure everything makes it in mint condition sealed containers are used rather than the more traditional plastic boxes), as well as an in-house delivery service, as well as all the usual third party delivery services. But if you’ve not been we’d suggest you visit – to meet the enthusiastic and committed team behind this new venture, and get the full experience as Himalayan Salt establishes itself as a key part of Lavender Hill’s ever growing set of restaurants.

Himalayan Salt is at 117 Lavender Hill, Battersea, London SW11 5QL (between Stormont Road and the Battersea Business Centre), and at the time of writing is open daily from 5pm. Tel. 020 3589 7429. Takeaways available by ordering directly, and also via Deliveroo, Just Eat, and Uber Eats. Lavender-hill.uk posts from time to time on retail developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea, London – with occasional more detailed articles on local history, and other subjects of wider community interest. If you found this interesting you may want to see other recent posts on local retail and on food and drink.

Posted in Business, Food & drink | Leave a comment

A fall from grace: Is there a future for Clapham’s little-known Georgian orangery?

Posted on November 28, 2025 by David

Work your way through the 1950s Notre Dame housing estate at the Clapham High Street corner of Clapham Common, and after going past a load of bins and a few rows of decaying garages, a rather decent children’s play area emerges – with a zip wire, swings galore, small climbing wall, table tennis and even a rarely-seen teqball table. More unusually, at the back of it, stands a Georgian-era colonnade that seems to have walked straight out of a Turner painting.

It’s the Clapham Orangery – and it dates back all the way to Clapham’s long-lost days as a cluster of large country houses scattered around the Common.  Thornton House was a particularly big house whose garden stretched all the way to what’s now Abbeville Road, included the whole of what is now the Notre Dame Estate (and because that includes a load of terraced houses as well as the more recognisable big blocks of flats, that’s a huge garden).  The house was built by John Thornton, a man of considerable means, and Director of the Bank of England, who was said to be the second richest man in Europe.

The house was inherited by his youngest son Robert – also a wealthy man mainly thanks to a huge £40,000 inheritance from his dad (well north of £5 million in today’s money). Robert would become an MP, and director of the East India Company. He was clearly popular wherever he went, described as ‘a most agreeable, lively and pleasant man’ – and he was also known for having a large collection of prints and minerals, and a real love of plants. The huge garden was clearly no accident – the gardens of Thornton House were described at the time as ‘the most expensive gardens in the vicinity’ – including stables, parkland, meadows, a grotto, and woodland. To make a central feature, in 1790 Robert built ‘an exquisite greenhouse’, strategically placed by the side of a long ornamental lake, with grassy banks and overhanging trees either side.

It’s not really a greenhouse as we would imagine them now, more a grand stone orangery that had glazed sides facing south/south west to catch as much sun as possible, with an interior suitable for a variety of exotic plants and trees – including, no doubt, orange trees. Spelt out over the door is HIC VER ASSIDUUM ATQUE ALIENIS MENSIBUS AESTAS, roughly translating as ‘Here is persistent spring, and in months where it should not be, summer’, topped by a floral garland made of locally-developed Coade stone.  It was also a social space: the Thorntons hosted Queen Charlotte at the orangery in 1808.

Robert’s impressive 13-acre garden was a real landmark and the talk of the town, but his business ventures didn’t go so well. He had some early success in investments, but later made some large stock market losses, while his business got tied up in the politics of the time and lost a lot of value. Having gone from being a very wealthy man to being £45,000 in debt; he put the house up for sale by 1810 – the map above shows the way it had been split in to individual lots with the orangery labelled ‘Green House’ in the middle of the blue section, placed in a way to have sweeping views along one of the two lakes in the gardens. Selling the house didn’t end Robert’s financial woes, he ended up bankrupt and fleeing to France in 1814 under a false name to escape his creditors, later moving on to the United States where – still a popular figure with his neighbours, if no longer a wealthy one – he died in 1826.

But his house and gardens mostly carried on: the pink and blue sections stayed in common ownership, with the end further way from Clapham Common split off – with the second lake filled in and becoming part of Abbeville Road. In 1851 most of the estate was sold to a convent of Belgian nuns, the Sisters of Notre Dame, who developed a network of religious schools around the country. They had a clever, and innovative for the time business model of establishing fee-paying day schools (and sometimes boarding schools) for young ladies, which would provide them with an income, and using the income to open separate poor schools or work in established parish elementary schools; they would also develop the Notre Dame school in Battersea. They established the Notre Dame convent and girls’ school on the site. They kept the house, orangery and lake – but added new buildings, playing fields and tennis courts, and the girls could row on the serpentine lake and ride ponies in the grounds.

Thanks to National Libraries of Scotland’s brilliantly structured collection of historic maps we can see the layout of the convent, with one lake still in place and the orangery still standing as the grey building just above the large ‘P’ of Clapham:

The school ran happily for decades, until in 1939 the sisters left – as the whole school was evacuated to the countryside after seeing some damage from German incendiary bombs. We’ve seen reports that the empty accommodation at Thornton House was then requisitioned by various government Ministries, with the Free French Forces, Charles de Gaulle’s resistance government in exile, moving in for several years. By 1945 the once spectacular house and gardens were declining: the glazing on the orangery had been destroyed, and the house had taken blast damage. 

After the war the school returned, but in a different location in Clapham; the nuns sold the property – to the local Council, who had a pressing need to build a lot of new housing in a hurry. This was a time when development was unusually ruthless, and the next years would be brutal for Thornton House: both the house and the later school additions were summarily destroyed, Robert’s prized trees and plants were bulldozed, the winding lake was filled in, and a network of streets were laid out over the gardens. A new housing estate, designed by the borough of Wandsworth (as this was, back then, part of Wandsworth) and named after the Notre Dame convent, was developed – creating 400 houses and flats.

The estate design is, to be frank, not great: the architects’ main aim was to build as many flats as they could, as quickly as possible, while keeping the spend to the bare minimum, and compared to some of the very carefully designed estates Lambeth would build in the following decades (some of which we have reported on) it’s a fairly bare bones affair.  But they did try to elevate it and make it a good place to live – working with what they had -which in this case, led them to save the orangery, and keep an area of land around it free of development, as a feature and as a central green space for the estate. The trashed windows had to go, but the rest was in serviceable condition. No longer within private grounds of the school, it became a more accessible local landmark.

Soon after the estate was developed, the orangery caught the eye of the authorities as a rare survivor of times long gone – and it was made a Grade II listed building in 1955. From then onwards it was a story of little change for decades – and as Lambeth went through its famous years of political activism and financial chaos in the 1980s, a late 1700s orangery was the sort of thing many in the Council really couldn’t care less about. It became very neglected and ended up covered in graffiti, with the drainage and some of the ornamentation falling off, and damp everywhere.

Following a sustained effort by the Clapham Society who have been trying to protect it for decades, a local group called the Clapham Orangery Group brought English heritage on board, proposing a preservation trust and offering funding assistance for repairs – “providing Lambeth demonstrate its commitment to its future and long-term preservation” (it’s clear that English Heritage didn’t have much faith in Lambeth either!). This did lead to the orangery getting repairs and being cleaned up – and Lambeth themselves got back on track, managing the estate as well as could be expected in the circumstances and keeping up with basic maintenance on the orangery.

But it still never had a purpose – so didn’t get much more than the minimum in terms of care and attention. The gradual decline of the structure saw it added to the Heritage at Risk list of buildings whose end may be near – where its condition there is described as ‘fair’, with reported ‘slow decay’ with no solution agreed. 

However things have changed since Historic England’s website was last updated, to rather more rapid decay – as in early August a large part of the roof completely collapsed!  As our photos show, it’s really not looking great – the whole structure has come down, and the top of the walls are now exposed to the winter.  Security fencing has been put up around the building to keep people at a safe distance in case any more of the structure collapses.

The building is owned by Lambeth’s housing department – and they have other priorities. We’ve occasionally reported on the headaches facing Lambeth’s big estates, with looming maintenance nightmares increasingly on the radar as ageing and high-rise properties reach the point where a lot of their infrastructure needs substantial investment to keep things going, let alone bring property up to current standards – our article on the vexed question of what to do with the Westbury Estate, whose phased redevelopment has become severely stuck, and whose towers are increasingly looking to need major works, is here. 

The Notre Dame Estate that completely surrounds the orangery may be another of these headaches – a hastily built complex that delivered a lot of flats on a particularly tight budget, much which – having been built in the late 1940s – is approaching its eightieth birthday! A centralised heating system with exposed pipes and ductwork covers missing, a questionable level of thermal efficiency, mediocre accessibility, and reports of recurring infestations of ants, are a very direct illustration of the financial demands Lambeth is facing with many of its high-density, high-rise buildings. 

Lambeth’s also increasingly struggling to keep its head above water financially – just last week an auditor’s report set an ominous tone on the state of the Borough’s financial affairs, with concerns on almost every element. It may explain how we got to this situation in the first place (a cursory Google maps exploration shows that water has been pooling on top off the roof for some time – never a great sign!) – and none of the financial challenges augur especially well for their ability to get the building repaired any time soon. 

On the plus side – the damage is so far limited to the roof having collapsed, and it’s not an especially complicated fix if it can be done fairly soon, before the walls and structure take further damage from their exposure to the elements. The flat roof, while fashionable when the orangery last saw significant works in the 1950s, was always going to be a maintenance headache, and a gently sloping corrugated steel replacement, coupled with a replacement suspended ceiling, is both more in keeping with the way it would have originally been built, and a better long term bet for the structure. The Clapham Society – who are still some of the key people trying to keep our orangery alive – report that Lambeth are seeking external funding to pay for repairs estimated to cost £100,000, and that the London Buildings Preservation Trust is in discussion with Lambeth about using its experience, skills and resource to save the Orangery.

The slightly isolated location of the orangery limits its ability to generate income to pay for its ongoing upkeep – so this isn’t going to see the original glazing between the columns restored and the building up for lease as a cafe any time soon, echoing what (as we reported) happened to the similarly imperilled old building in Clapham Common’s woods, and which could have been a very real option had the orangery been slightly closer to the Common. It used to be open as a play area, and has occasionally been used as a film location – but maybe the key is to find an ongoing use (and we’re interested if any of our readers have ideas that would be compatible with its listed building status).

Robert Thornton’s one-of-a-kind greenhouse has already done well to reach its two hundred and thirty fifth birthday, and we owe the designers of the estate some credit for sparing it from the bulldozer, as well as the team in the 1990s who rescued it. It’s now a lonely, broken and mostly forgotten local landmark, hidden in an ageing housing estate, surrounded by cracked paving and emergency fencing, and in the not-very-caring hands of a cash-strapped local authority. It’s all a far cry from its days as the treasured of a passionate plant collector, when it was surrounded by lush greenery, packed with even more exotic plants, and the talk of the town. Can it fight on, as one of the last reminders of the way Clapham was before it was taken over by London, and as something that makes the Notre Dame Estate a bit special? Or is this the beginning of the end? Fingers crossed a way forward can be found – and we’d encourage you all to do what you can to get this poor building the care and attention it deserves – and as ever, we’ll keep you posted.

Lavender-hill.uk is a community site covering retail, planning and development  and local business issues, centered loosely on the Lavender Hill area in Battersea, with occasional more detailed articles on local history, and other subjects of wider community interest.  If you found this interesting you may want to see recent posts on Battersea Power Station’s mysteriously missing historic cranes, on the story of how one of Clapham Common’s oldest houses was saved, or on the pioneering women of Battersea’s early days. You can also sign up to receive new posts (for free) by email – and if you have tips and leads to share, get in touch. There’s also lots more detail on the orangery, including a rare old photo of it when it still had the windows more or less in place, at the Folly Flaneuse.

Posted in Clapham Common, Curiosities, Local history | 1 Comment

In pictures: The Shelf, a new approach to retail, opens on Lavender Hill

Posted on September 25, 2025 by David

We write a lot about retail! It’s fair to say Clapham Junction’s shops have held up remarkably well over the last few years, despite a pandemic, huge increases to energy costs, a notable growth in theft, increased National Insurance costs, tightening (and costly) environmental standards for business premises, and the ongoing competition with cheap-to-run online operations. That continued local success comes down to a lot of imaginative people running many of our businesses – as well as to this being a relatively rich area, and having a fairly active population who go out and use their town centres rather than driving off to big retail parks.

But retail is very much evolving. We’re seeing more food shops, and the food shops we’re seeing are focussing more on food to go and fresh, now that a portion of their customers are getting the heavier, longer-life stuff delivered. We’ve also seen far more businesses focussed on fitness and beauty – with at least a dozen gyms, from huge luxury options like Third Space to the smaller and more specialised individual training and exercise gyms run by personal trainers at the eastern end of Lavender Hill, and notable growth in coffee shops and cafes.

And something even more innovative has just opened, next to Sendero Coffee at the eastern end of Lavender Hill. The Shelf is the project of local resident Taras, who is putting his dream of having his own community shop in to practice. It’s been beautifully renovated over the last few weeks and is looking very much the part.

The Shelf showcases small independent businesses and individuals, with a range of art, ceramics, homeware, beauty and skincare, and jewellery and accessories, as well as plants, postcards and cards, and candles.

The unusual thing is that this is a shop that is open to anyone to sell in. You can rent a shelf to sell from- with the rates are completely transparent, typically £50 a week for a small shelf & a 10% commission on sales (with discounted rates for longer presence).

The Shelf take care of everything else – the premises, the staff, the rates, the payments, the advertising and the customers.

For sellers, you get a professionally presented retail space in a smartly designed good location, for a fraction of the cost of a full storefront.

The store’s been designed in a way that should make things look good – with a mix of layouts, and all fitted with soft lighting, to give a clean, neutral stage that lets the products stand out.

Their strapline is Rent a shelf, we’ll take care of the rest!. With no long-term leases, no hassle – and with thousands of passers by each week, it gets real visibility from real shoppers.

Traders can rent short-term, test a new product line to see how it sells, or grow into a bigger display as the business expands.

And for us residents – it’s something new and quite unique to Lavender Hill, and a way to discover new brands and support local, perfect for gifts and treats.

Of course you can buy things online – but as the novelty of some of the online retailers well and truly wears off amid a flood of Temu-type rubbish that’s really not worth it, the idea of The Shelf is maybe a way for actual physical retail to work in a modern era – and to serve smaller makers, artists and designers whose products stand up to close inspection.

Because this is somewhere you have a much better feel for the look, feel, and also quality of the products, and it;s a way of doing so in a relatively affordable and simple way.

Our photos give a feel for what was on offer when we visited – but with the mix of people renting space here, this will change, with new products in every week; we have seen this is becoming a bit of a regular stop off for people on their way to and from the likes of Sainsbury’s and Sendero.

The rest of this post gives a feel for what’s on offer. If you’re around – do visit The Shelf; and say hello to Taras and his team.

The Shelf is at 4 Lavender Hill, London SW11 5RW – close to the junction with Wandsworth Rad, Cedars Road and Queenstown Riad. They’re open daily, from 10-6 at the time of writing (web / instagram). Lavender-hill.uk posts from time to time on retail developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea, London – you may want to see our other recent posts on retail and on food and drink in the area, and if you live near The Shelf you may want to read our article on a significant cycle and pedestrian safety upgrade being planned for the nearby bit of Queenstown Road. Do also sign up to receive new posts by email (for free, unsubscribe anytime).

Posted in Business, Retail | 2 Comments

Lavender Hill Police Station is closing – what does it mean for local policing?

Posted on September 19, 2025 by David

The news was leaked long before it became official: Lavender Hill Police Station, which currently has a 24-hour front desk you can visit anytime, is set to close to the public. It’s not the only one: Kensington and Wimbledon are also doomed, as part of a wider plan by the Met Police to roughly halve the number of ‘open’ police stations. Even some of those that will remain open will have reduced service, with just eight open all hours – leading to the rather impressive statistic that London will have an average of well over a million people per 24 hour police station!

We thought we’d already seen the worst of the police cuts – they started to be closed way back in 2014, when we had 140 police stations with public access. A previous cost cutting exercise back in 2017 saw several nearby police stations close, including Wandsworth. At the time Sadiq Khan made a Manifesto pledge to maintain at least one open-all-house police station in each of London’s 32 boroughs – and as we reported at the time Lavender Hill was the survivor in Wandsworth, but with an expectation that the Lavender Hill Police Station would move to somewhere else nearby within three years. That move never happened – but we’ve hit even tougher economic times, and the Home Office (who fund the police) got one of the worst deals in the 2025 government spending review – an outcome so bad that it was widely claimed that Yvette Cooper was on the brink of resigning. London has also suffered from a series of national governments whose attitude to London ranges from mild dislike to outright hostility – and the latest round of cuts to London’s police budget have been particularly savage: the Met needs to find £260 million in savings this financial year.

The best of a bad set of options?

Sadiq Khan put a brave face on these new cuts, saying the closures are ‘pragmatic’. Frankly he doesn’t have a lot of choice in the matter given the budget he’s been handed, which is becoming smaller and smaller in the hands of a government that seems to have a somewhat tense relationship with him – he described the cuts as ‘devastating cuts to policing’. But he has also argued that given that the Met faces a stark financial situation, putting the police counters on the chopping block is the least-worst approach, and will improve safety for Londoners – on the grounds that very few people used the counters and their running costs could be better spent on neighbourhood policing.

And he’s probably right on this front. Staffing up the front desks at all hours, for the relatively small number of people who still go there to make enquiries, report crimes, or meet officers in person is an expensive process: staff need to be employed on late night shifts, and there need to be enough people involved for the building to be safe for those staff to work in. The huge majority of crimes are now reported online or by phone (with just 5% of crimes now being reported in person at the remaining police stations, and 1% of crimes being reported in person at night).

A fair bit of wider police work with residents and businesses is done in other locations – with our local Lavender and Shaftesbury & Queenstown Ward teams holding regular meetings at Lavender Hill’s cafes and sometimes pop up street stalls, as well as the quarterly Ward Panels where you can hear what the police team has been doing, feed in any particular new concerns, and steer what the priority focus of the ward team should be for the next quarter (we’d recommend our readers with an interest join these, they are a good insight in to the work behind the scenes to keep us safe). In a world where a lot of residents are out at work all day, day today contact is increasingly now using the new MetEngage platform, which you can sign up to to receive updates sand alerts.

There’s also plenty of data now published like the monthly crime map – which shows what offences were recorded where in the area, and tracks local trends and patterns in crime.

Technology is changing a lot of how the Met police works. The police station front counters aren’t just for reporting crimes that have just happened, they are also often used as bases where the public could go to make witness statements. This used to be very much a pen and notepaper affair – but is now increasingly being done by videoconference as part of the National Police Digital Strategy – which is probably more convenient and efficient for everyone involved.

Some people will be hit harder by the closure

So yes, the world is maybe moving on from front desks at police stations. However the impact of losing the front desks won’t be felt evenly. Most customers won’t notice the difference if the counter closes, and we doubt any of our readers will. Some residents will clearly feel more confident reporting crime in person, and the police stations do act as a place of safety for people escaping difficult and dangerous situations – there are well documented cases of trafficked people and those trapped in modern slavery, and those fleeing domestic violence, escaping to – and finding refuge in – police stations. The police are designated as ‘first responders’ within the National Referral Mechanism framework, which provides a pathway to support and protection for victims; there are other options like Council offices and hospitals – but the 24-hour and local nature of police stations was particularly useful in some cases.

The savings from closing all these police stations are surprisingly small: 7 million pounds a year. The bigger story is on how all the rest of the savings will be made. You can only get so far with efficiency gains and new technology, before you have to really accept that there will be fewer police, and more crime. The Met Police have said that they are prioritising neighbourhood policing, response policing and public protection – which includes the frontline teams you will see in and around Lavender Hill – while rather vaguely noting that they are “reducing some services and staff numbers”. Some of the areas to be chopped are known – and include police horses, police in schools and parks – but there’s also an expectation that there will be about 2,000 fewer police in London.

Time will tell how significant the wider impact is. We don’t tend to cover crime much on lavender-hill.uk but did publish a special report on local crime last year, at a time when there had been a really noticeable increase in many types of crime that was significantly affecting a lot of traders and residents, and seemed to be spiralling out of control. The controversy on the new rough sleepers hub, and in particular the risk that if it was managed poorly it could increase local crime, was partly offset by the presence of a police station just across the road; clearly that will now not be the case which is likely to reawaken some concerns.

Local crime has fallen back from that peak, due to various factors – notably including some very solid neighbourhood policing by our local police team, tracking down criminal movements in detail and working with affected residents who took the time to report what was going on and ensure that the police had the intelligence and information they needed – as well as some of the most recurrent criminals being moved on from a hostel near the Cedars Road. There have been some high-profile local incidents – but on balance it’s fair to say our local police team deserve significant credit for calming things down. But you’re never really out of the woods in a big city, especially as the area around Clapham Junction is currently the Borough’s hotspot for antisocial behaviour – and there’s always a risk that the severe cuts to London’s policing will unleash a new explosion of trouble.

Will the whole local police operation close alongside the front desk?

Another question is – if the front counter closes – will the police station itself also close, and will our local Ward teams end up based much further away, and maybe more detached from the Wards round Lavender Hill? As our Councillors note, we are already seeing far too many instances of our police being taken out of the area and sent to neighbouring Lambeth and Central London, and this will surely only increase with the closure of the station.

There’s a degree of uncertainty about this at the moment. Lavender Hill police station is relatively small, and it’s not really the kind of building the Met Police especially want to use any more. It used to house custody cells, but these (and a similar set in Tooting) were relocated to a newer and more modern 30-cell facility in Wandsworth town centre back in 2012. Wandsworth police station no longer has any public access – but is still very much in business and being used by the police. It’s considerably larger than the Lavender Hill site, and is home to the investigation teams that make up Wandsworth’s Criminal Investigation Department – and it also has a far larger and easier to use parking area for police cars and vans than the Lavender Hill site. The latest closure round of front counters is partly based on an assessment of ‘how well individual counters are aligned with custody suites and local investigative teams’ – so losing those custody suites back in 2012 has probably in a way fed in to the downfall of our local police station. Fingers crossed this doesn’t happen (but if you have any behind the scenes insight on the long term future of the building – get in touch).

Even if the whole police station closes, it doesn’t mean the government (who own the site) can just sell if off to some developer for a quick buck, as a site for redevelopment. The police building is part of a complex of three interlinked buildings built in th emid-1960s that were originally built as a joint project. The largest of the three is Lavender Hill Magistrates Court. It’s one of the main ones in London – with four courtrooms, and some specialities including traffic offenses and bulk-processing of fare evasion cases, including being the prototype for some innovative approaches to speeding up cases. It’s where the Archbishop of Canterbury was famously fined for speeding – and where Stormzy pleaded guilty to the rather bizarre act of driving a Lamborghini whose windows only let 4% of the light through. The court isn’t going anywhere soon – it’s a fairly up to date premises, and while there is a need for further upgrades in accessibility and facilities, it has had ongoing maintenance and upgrades.

The third bit of the complex is a small office building facing Latchmere Road which houses the London probation Service. The Probation Service’s building isn’t in the best condition, which is fairly typical situation for their properties – which maybe isn’t too surprising given that London’s Probation services have been stumbling from crisis to crisis for some years. Selling part of a wider government building off won’t work especially well for any developer – so we wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the court took over some of the police space.

The campaign to limit the damage

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have both kicked off campaigns to save Lavender Hill’s police station – with the Conservatives noting that they were successful last time round in saving it from the 2017 cuts and optimistic that they can do it again. Council leader Simon Hogg has noted that the closure would be the first time in living memory that there’s no full-time police station open to the public in the Borough, with clear concerns on how trust, visibility and community reassurance will be maintained without a local police station.

Meanwhile for those who do need to visit a police station in person, Lavender Hill’s nearest police station that will be staying in business as a place you can actually go and speak to a police officer looks likely to be in Brixton. There’s some sense to that location being the last one left, with Brixton in general (and Brixton’s Windrush Ward, which that police counter is inside, in particular) being an area with far higher crime levels – but it’s not somewhere that anyone in Wandsworth or Lavender Hill is likely to want to go to late at night to escape from a dangerous situation. While very much support the good work by our Ward policing teams, and it’s hard not to be concerned at what a sharply reduced budget will mean for them in the next few years.

Lavender-hill.uk posts from time to time on developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea. We seldom cover crime – but if you found this interesting you may want to see our detailed special report last year exploring some of the causes and potential fixes for local crime. And if our wider coverage of local issues including retail developments, local businesses, housing projects and local history in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea is of interest, do sign up to receive new posts by email – for free, unsubscribe anytime.

Posted in Crime & security, Politics | 2 Comments

In pictures: Work starts on improving Falcon Road’s horrible bridge

Posted on September 2, 2025 by David

It’s been a long time in the making. As we wrote way back in 2019, nobody likes the Falcon Road railway bridge.  Dark, dirty, loud and with a mysterious tendency to be wet even when it’s not raining, the need to run the gauntlet of drips and pigeon poo discourages anyone who doesn’t live north of the tracks from venturing up the Falcon Road. But like it or not, it’s unavoidable lowlight for many of us. It reinforces a long running north/south divide in Battersea, and prevents the businesses on the Falcon Road benefitting from being so close to Clapham Junction’s town centre. It’s also really just an unpleasant part of the day for anyone who needs to use it.

Its run-down condition is not lost on Wandsworth Council. Back in the early 2000s the lighting was made brighter, the walls were deep cleaned, and some orange & pink feature lighting was added to a few of the girders above.  For a while, the bridge did look better – but it wasn’t maintained, and sadly it wasn’t enough to turn the tide for Falcon Road. To make matters worse, a major rail signalling upgrade then led to two huge cable ducts being installed above the pavement on each side of the road, creating even more space for pigeons and general dirt, and making the space feel even darker and more enclosed.

There has been a bit of a push in the last few years to deal with our shabby local underpasses. Thessaly Road in Nine Elms went first, with a design competition that attracted over 100 entries from ambitious emerging architects, followed by a major makeover (mainly funded by Nine Elms developers) that involved an explosion of colour. It’s quite striking, it definitely changed the feel of the bridge which had previously been relatively clean but distinctly dark and gloomy, and it seems to have lasted well.

Earlsfield also saw a more “heritage” makeover – going for a Victorian railway green with the original station name restored.  Both of these – which also involved some repairs to the bridges themselves – cost around £200k. The far end of the Wandsworth Road saw a much more DIY makeover, really just cleaning and painting it and adding some coloured lights. Some of the more minor underpasses also saw some love: as we’ve reported previously the problematic underpass at Culvert Place has also seen new lights and some fairly rudimentary painting, as part of a bigger scheme to introduce a long-distance pedestrian phase through the tunnel.

Falcon Road probably sees as many pedestrians as these other bridges added together, and has been on the Wandsworth ‘to do’ list for ages – so we were pleased to see things finally get moving. It started, as the more ambitious makeovers tend to, with a design competition, which saw seven proposals shortlisted. These were exhibited, and it was interesting to see both the wide range of approaches taken, and the variation in the extent to which the entries took account of the actual site. Some were led by very local teams who clearly knew the opportunities and headaches of the bridge in detail – like the need to deal with the big ugly cable ducts and the awkward scraps of land either side – while others were clearly a bit more conceptual. There was also a vote on which should be taken forward. The vote was only advisory: the final decision was made by a n expert panel – as in choosing the design team for the project they also needed to take account of various less obvious factors like cost, practicality and technical deliverability.

The Panel chose Beyond the Bridge, presented by design team of GPAD (a Hackney-based architecture & interior design practice), POoR Collective, MRG Studio, Sutton Vane Associates, Cundall, and MDA Consulting – the headline image from their design is shown below.

Proposed features included a Memories of Wandsworth wall of local stories and artwork (mainly on panels attached in front of the existing glazed wall bricks), new seating areas at either end of the bridge with pollinator-friendly plants, smart lighting all the way through that can change colour for different occasions and events, and sound-absorbing panels to reduce noise under the bridge.

Now a ‘competition winning’ design tends not to translate directly to a workable real-world build, especially in a damp and messy working environment with loads of constraints – like the need for Network Rail to get maintenance access, the need to make something that will stay clean, and the need to remain within a realistic budget! So more work then took place to refine the design and prepare it for actual construction.

This included a series of co-design workshops that explored how the designs could reflect the unique identity, culture and history of Clapham Junction, including how locals perceive the area, and the significance of Falcon Road Bridge and its surrounding areas to the community, and what residents want their neighbourhood to be like in the future. The workshops, and a series of drop-in events at Lavender Hill library, Clapham Junction and in and around the bridge itself, also explored more practical issues – with an opportunity to explore the designs and highlight issues with the existing underpass.

The feedback was exactly what would probably have been expected: unsurprisingly was good feedback on the approach of having way more lighting and greenery, and on having a cleaner, safer, and generally nicer walkway, as well as for designs reflecting local heritage and diversity. Pigeons, on the other hand, unsurprisingly dominated the negative feedback – as did the eternal dampness of the area and scope for being splashed by vehicles, and some wise thoughts about the need for long term maintenance and cleaning, and for the planting areas to be looked after.

We now have the more detailed plans – which are reasonably clever. Many of the higher level panels which have lighting and railway signal cables running behind them will have hinges so that Network Rail can still get to the cables behind them without destroying the whole setup.

Given that there’s no way of fully waterproofing a 150-year-old railway structure that has a load of wet earth behind it, the panels have a space behind them to allow for drips and they don’t go right to the ground – so that they can allow any leaking water to still escape from the structure. The existing wall above and below the panels will be painted a dark colour to avoid any muck being too visible.

A lot of thought has gone in to the lighting – where the existing street lights remain in place, but new colour-changing lights are also added that face both upwards to light the ceiling, and down below the big cable ducts to light the pavement. These will need to be of a tough enough design to withstand the wet and somewhat mucky environment of a railway underpass – but are likely to make a big difference to the overall feel of Falcon Bridge.

The ends of the bridge are currently home to rather scruffy patches of wasteland and unofficial advertising hoardings. These will be replaced with planting and seating more or less following the design in the original competition.

The pavement on the station entrance side south of the bridge will be partly covered by new seating and planting, while the curious alcove between Lidl and the bridge will also be planted. A similar approach is being taken at the other end of the bridge, but only on the Banana Park side where there’s enough space.

The bridge will also be properly named – with an illuminated Falcon Bridge sign likely to be added at each end.

These changes needed planning permission – so Wandsworth submitted a proposal for “Alterations including installation of panelling system to tunnel walls, illuminated signage on north and south elevations of bridge, highway and creative lighting and landscaping and seating on southern side of the tunnel“. It’ didn’t prove particularly controversial; the only comment at the time of writing is from the Battersea Society who support the plans – in particular the work to divert rain away from the pavements, to use panels to create a cleaner and dryer surface on the walls, and to tidy up the green spaces at each end of the tunnel – while expressing concerns on whether some aspects of the proposal will be easy to maintain to an adequate standard, and mild surprise that what is actually going to go on the panels remains a mystery at this stage.

Work has, in the meantime, already got going – starting with a pressure wash and complete repaint of the main bridge structure.

It’s all becoming very blue – the concrete bridge sections are being painted directly, while the iron and steel parts have an undercoat followed by the blue.

We understand that the metal parts were found to be in a surprisingly good condition once it got a pressure wash, with the original layers of paint not needing further sandblasting or removal – so this part of the project has advanced quickly.

The photo above shows the pink sections that were painted in the previous effort to improve the underpass in the mid-2000s (which was accompanied by localised coloured lighting, until it got removed to make way for Network Rail’s new signal cables) as well as the new grey undercoat on the steel sections, and the final blue paint on the concrete sections. Some sections were also previously painted orange as visible in the photo below.

Both ends of the bridge have already seen a repaint, which has somewhat improved their appearance (and made them a lot cleaner).

Like a lot of Network Rail’s bridges, these are a prime target for graffiti – we’re hoping that some sort of grill is also installed inside the railing, to make it harder for taggers to reach through or over the parapets and vandalise the newly painted surfaces. Because with schemes like this one, what is actually one sometimes matters less than how it is maintained in the future. The design needs to take quite careful account of how the design can resist future graffiti, pigeons, dirt, leaks and general muck without needing expensive follow up work, and the Council needs to have a cleaning process that keeps a reasonable eye on it. Network Rail – who own the bridge – apparently declined to do any repair work on the leaky tunnel roof, meaning there’s obviously a risk that all the planned improvements quickly become dirty and spoil the impact of the new lighting. The issue of pigeons on the ledges remains a bit TBC – hopefully something can be fitted that prevents them perching all day above the pavement.

The walls either side of the underpass are currently being covered over with galvanised steel battens, which will hold the planned panels right along both sides of the bridge. These will be made of vitreous enamel – a super strong material produced by the same people who make signs for TfL, so we can be fairly confident it will be tough and long-lasting (the planning application includes details of how graffiti is cleaned off this type of panel).

This still has a while to run, and while no amount of lighting and decoration can fully magic away the somewhat unpleasant nature of this underpass, this project is very much good news and is finally progress on something that has been a lowlight of the Clapham Junction town centre for decades. Wandsworth have taken a fairly imaginative approach to developing designs and run a surprisingly large public engagement programme on the details, and seem to be throwing a reasonably large budget at it – fingers crossed the end result lives up to the fairly high expectations.

Lavender-hill.uk is a community site covering retail, planning and development  and local business issues, and sometimes posts like this one on transport and the environment – all centered on the Lavender Hill area in Battersea. We sometimes also post more detailed articles on local history. You may want to see a previous article on the bridge at Clapham Junction Insider, back in 2019 –What can we do about Falcon Road’s horrible railway bridge?. If you found this interesting feel free to sign up to receive new posts by email (for free, unsubscribe anytime). If you want to comment on the planning application on the details of the works, it still seems to be at least theoretically possible even though things have got going – search for case 2025/2192 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning (it technically was open for comments in July, we’re not sure why there has yet to be any decision).

Posted in Crime & security, Environment, Photo stories, Planning, Politics | 3 Comments

In pictures: Lavender Hill’s brand new pottery studio

Posted on August 20, 2025 by David

Nearly two years ago we reported on the opening of Phresh – a new family-run juice bar, coffee shop and deli at 103e Lavender Hill. The business has proved very popular and owners Donna and Steph really appreciated the welcome they saw from the Lavender Hill community – indeed it’s gone so well, that they have been quietly working on a big plan, to grow the business further.

For the last couple of months they have been clearing out and refitting the unit next door (which used to be the Baguette Deli) – and regulars may have spotted a doorway suddenly appearing at the back of the current Cafe, in the area with the big comfy sofa!

We popped in earlier this week for a sneak preview of the works that have been going on – which is about to see Phresh launch its very own ceramics cafe, Phresh Pottery.

It was very much all hands on deck when we took these photos, with the rush to get everything looking perfect underway – but it’s already possible to see the premises taking shape.

Some of the orange colour theme is carrying through – but in contrast with to the cool clean style of Phresh next door, there’s a more hands-on feel here, to allow for things to get a bit messy – no one’s going to panic if some clay or paint ends up on the floor.

A wide range of bisque – unglazed ceramic – is already in place, from animals and fire engines to candle holders, plates and vases – all just waiting to be painted, glazed and fired. There are big and small – with the range starting from a reassuringly affordable £10 to decorate and keep.

The building work has been quite extensive, with the old kitchen and back of house of the Baguette deli swept away and completely re-engineered to a new and more open layout that allows the space to be properly used. The cafe next door hasn’t changed much as part of these works – but its kitchen at the back has been expanded to extend the food on offer, which already includes a mix of cooked all day breakfast options as well as modern classics, pastries, porridges and pancakes.

Firing ceramics in a way that brings out the colours and makes them watertight needs powerful specialist kiln equipment – so readers won’t be surprised to hear the electrics in the new premises have had a complete replacement. The kiln itself was still in a transport depot at the other end of the country at the time of our visit but it’s definitely on the way!

And there’s plenty of room here, with capacity for about 28 people with generous levels of space and comfort. Conscious that this is somewhere that will be perfect for birthday parties and gatherings, capacity can be nudged up to 36 or so in slightly more compact layouts. And this is where a key advantage of the space also comes in to play – that with a well established cafe directly connected to the venue, you can always escape from the kids’ party to next door for a while and have a quality coffee or light lunch!

The plan is for Phresh and Phresh Ceramics to run as linked but parallel venues – so the cafe and deli will carry on just as it does now – but if you’re visiting the ceramics next door you’ll be very welcome to have something to eat or drink from the cafe before or after, or get a nice drink to have while you paint. The only tip is that it’s best not to take plates of food through to the ceramics side (as any greasy fingerprints tend to cause chaos with the glazes).

Speaking of glazes, the whole range is starting to appear – with everything from Pink Poodle and Caramel Swirl to Tomato and Lime. One of the big moments of painting pottery is always how the colours work out – as in our experience the firing and glazing tends to turn even the most unpromising artwork in to something interesting.

Te aim os for thsi to be a fun, hands-on creative space where everyone can unwind and express themselves through pottery painting. Bookings are welcome and can be made straight away – but this very much isn’t just a place for groups and pre-booked events, and walk-in customers are also very welcome. At least once a month, they will run a baby and toddler session where you can make hand and foot prints in clay, and fire them to create a personal treasure. The team will then carefully glaze and fire items in the kiln to make sure they are finished beautifully and ready to take home.

The target audience is very much grown ups as well as children – all ages and levels of experience are covered, with lots of quite sophisticated options for decorating places and making very personal creations. You’ll of course have proper help and guidance. The brushes available include tough child-friendly ones, but also more complex and sophisticated tools aimed more at an adult audience. There are also a wide variety of carved sponges to make prints and shapes – like the stars on the plate below.

Having had a good dig through the various options our favourite is definitely the guinea pig! He definitely wants a mix of pink poodle, caramel swirl, white, black, and maybe some fine fur texture.

The soft launch is tomorrow (Thursday the 21st) – with pottery painting, baby hand and feet clay prints, a free drink with every painted piece and giveaways. Some of the equipment is still arriving so things will continue to build up over the next couple of weeks.

It’s good to see this independent mother-and-daughter business doing so well, and this looks set to bring something very new to Lavender Hill – they’d love to show everyone round, so do visit just to see what has been done over the last couple of months if you have the opportunity – and maybe try your hand at a ceramic masterpiece!

pHresh Pottery, 103f Lavender hill, Battersea SW11 5QL (web / facebook) – attached to Phresh Cafe at 103e. Booking for Phresh Pottery is available here; walk-in customers also welcome. Latest details are on their Google profile. Lavender-hill.uk posts from time to time on developments in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea – if you found this of interest you may want to see our other recent posts on food and drink and retail in the area, or our wider articles on business, environment, planning and housing issues – as well as some of our favourite articles on local history. You can also sign up to receive new posts (for free, unsubscribe anytime) by email.

Posted in Business, Food & drink, Photo stories | 1 Comment

Queenstown Road’s most special tree gains protected status

Posted on August 19, 2025 by David

When we think of rare and protected landmark trees, we’re probably imagining some giant and ancient landmark – the giant redwoods of California, the giant plane trees in some of London’s major squares, or the sadly-felled Sycamore on Hadrian’s Wall. But Battersea’s now got one all of its own – and it’s just a few metres high, about forty years old, and one that only our most observant readers will have noticed.

Towards the southern end of Queenstown Road – just after the last of the small stretch of shops – is a very leafy tree in a tiny front garden, which stretches out in to the road. It’s green all year aound and it seems to be thriving – but your author didn’t pay it all that much attention until a few years ago when we realised that the grapefruits we kept seeing on the pavement weren’t the result of repeated burst-shopping-bag disasters, but were actually growing on the tree. Because it’s one of the tiny handful of grapefruit trees that is growing outdors in the UK outside of Kew Gardens.

It was planted by Marline Calliste Anderson, who moved to the UK in the 1980s from Grenada. She hid the tree, which was then a little seedling, in her suitcase for the journey as a reminder of home. It nearly got confiscated at customs, but the staff apparently smelled its leaves and recognised it as something ‘citrus’ and low-risk so let it through. In Battersea Marline planted it in the tiny little front garden area and tended to it for years – leading to the happy tree we have now.

In a way she was also lucky, as the location – just at the foot of the slope in the road, in a very sheltered spot near the middle of town, well away from any biting winds or severe frosts – and also in a location that has extremely good soil just under the surface thanks to being on the edge of the old Thames floodplain (which we’ve written about in a post way back on the Heathwall river that flows almost underneath the spot) – was pretty good one for a grapefruit tree.

Marline died in June, and Marline’s family, friends and neighbours have since added a small plaque to the gate post by the tree – saying “In loving memory of Marline Calliste Anderson, 19th January 1948-11th June 2025. She planted this grapefruit tree with love in the 1980s. A gift from her homeland, Grenada. It bears fruit year-round, her essence lives on in its roots”.

Marline had become friends over the years with Lior Berman, a chef who also lived in the street – and after Marline died Lior contacted the council to try to get a tree preservation order to help make sure Marline’s tree could stay in place for future residents and neighbours to enjoy. And the order, London Borough of Wandsworth Tree Preservation (No. 510) Order 2025, was agreed by the Council.

At the point of the order being made, Deputy Leader of Wandsworth Council Kemi Akinola said ‘We were very pleased to grant the Tree Preservation Order and ensure that this beloved local landmark stands for generations to come. Marline was much-loved by her neighbours and we’re proud to have listened to the wishes of the community. In our year as London Borough of Culture, it’s great to recognise the contribution that people of African and Caribbean heritage have made to Wandsworth.‘ The Order, which we have posted an extract of below, specifies the tree as ‘Grapefruit (Citrus x paradisi)‘.

Our tree has found a bit of fame in the last few weeks – the BBC visited, with reporter Anna O’Neill trying the grapefruits (‘I was given one and ate it for breakfast on Wednesday and it was delicious‘), and local community radio station Riverside Radio also visiting the site and recording a short report and also an interview with Marline’s friend Lior who led the work to get the Tree Preservation order. If you’re in the Queenstown Road area – do try a grapefruit (though go for the ones that are ripe and have fallen off the tree, not the ones still attached) and spare a thought for Marline’s public-spirited contribution to Queenstown Road back in the 1980s.

We post on a somewhat eclectic mix of local topics in the Lavender Hill area of Battersea, London. To receive new posts by e-mail sign up here (for free, unsubscribe anytime). Some of our favourite local history articles are here; including on how this bit of Battersea was where the UK aviation industry started, on the pioneering women of Battersea’s early days (who included factory developers, social reformers, fearless pilots, celebrated artists, tenacious campaigners and ‘dangerous subversives’), and on the grand plans that could have seen a much smarter and more expensive bit of London built along the Queenstown Road. If you live near Queenstown road you’ll also want to see our recent article on a significant cycle and pedestrian safety upgrade being planned for this stretch of the street.

Posted in Environment, Local history, Street by street | 1 Comment