On Wednesday, a green plaque will be unveiled on Thessally Road (near Larkhall Park), to Yvonne Carr – former housing Manager for the Patmore Cooperative Estate in Nine Elms, and tireless campaigner for a community centre in an area that was very much lacking one.

Yvonne’s childhood was in a farming community in Jamaica, she came to London aged 16. She was well educated and looking to go in to nursing but at the time the only work was factory positions – so she joined Ponds ‘Cold Cream’ factory, which made moisturiser, in Acton, where she was paid enough for her to rent a room in a house shared by three families. She had two children, and moved around a few jobs including school kitchen assistant and then working at a publishing company, while learning typing and shorthand at night school – as well as teaching herself sewing to save money om her childrens’ clothes. By then a single parent, she was keenly aware of the challenges of raising a family on a tight budget – and ran a sideline making clothes for neighbours and colleagues. She became chairwoman of a local chapter of Gingerbread, an association for one-parent families, and then found work at Brent Council’s housing department. It went well, and she went on to manage around 15,000 properties at Hackney Council, before her final post in Wandsworth where she brought her industrious and enthusiasm to improving the estate and making it the best place to live that she could.

This was to be where she developed the community centre that would one day be named after her. Many former colleagues remember her dedication to her job and the people of Patmore and surrounding estates and her tremendous efforts in getting funding and persuading others of the need for the centre, in the large area of densely-built housing that didn’t have much when she started – which led to her success in securing over a million pounds in funding for the project from sources including Wandsworth and Lambeth Councils, and seeing it through the design and construction stages. Sadly Yvonne died suddenly just weeks before the official opening by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in 2003, although did see the project finished. The plaque in her memory, on the centre that was named after her, will recognise her long commitment to the area and the project.

The centre now hosts a nursery, as well as the Children’s Centre and Family Hub, which offers a huge range of local services for local children and parents – including Stay, Play and Learn sessions, and regular Talk Shop drop-ins with a speech and language therapist. There are parenting courses, help with nursery applications and form-filling, regular housing advice sessions, and a friendly ear to listen.

The plaque to local hero Yvonne will be unveiled on Wednesday 25th February at 2pm at the Yvonne Carr Centre, 2 Thessaly Road, SW8 4HT – full details here. All are welcome! Speakers saying a few words about Yvonne and her legacy will include Councillor Aydin Dikerdem, Marsha de Cordova MP, and representatives from Yvonne Carr Staff and Children’s Services. 

And then on Friday we’ll see another plaque, on Dorothy Road (close to Clapham Junction’s Asda supermarket) – to Hanna and Patrick Barrington. Hanna was an activist, Patrick an artist – and their home was a haven to many. Hanna (nee Hanna Greenwood) was born in Vienna, where she was a communist activist, and was arrested by the Nazis. An old boyfriend helped her escape and make her way to Paris, and she eventually came to Britain. She had many jobs – working in a biscuit factory, as a bus ticket inspector, and as a script-editor for the long-lost early cable television company Rediffusion. She had a lot of Guyanese friends and got involved in Guaynese politics – travelling to Guyana to support Cheddi and Janet Jagan, a pioneering husband-and-wife political team who led the country’s struggle for independence from Britain in the 50s, and who went on to become its Prime Minister & President.

Patrick was born in Guyana, where as a student he joined a Saturday painting group and sold paintings to tourists before taking up a job as an art teacher. He won a scholarship from the Booker Tate sugar company, that allowed him to travel to Britain to study art at what is now Central St Martins. In order to make money he trained as an engineer, mainly working for BT – but he made art throughout his life, exhibiting at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions during the 1970s. Many pieces of his work portrayed life as he was growing up in Guyana and are now in the National Gallery of Guyana – with his best known being a Cubist-style self-portrait.

Hanna and Patrick met in 1958, and married in 1967 – in what was to become a 61-year partnership. In the 1960s Hanna had bought a rundown off-licence in Battersea – at 77 Dorothy Road – where she lived above the business, and from her retirement in 1978 until 1992 she ran the property as a wine bar, the Corkscrew, with resident cats on the bar and prices so low that customers often insisted on paying more, and a reputation for legendary parties that drew a hugely eclectic mix of ‘artists and academics, socialists and socialites of every hue and sexual orientation’ to this corner of Battersea. She didn’t put up with any nonsense though – at one point she famously threw Sarah Ferguson out of the bar for making too much noise, reportedly saying: “I don’t like riff-raff at either end of ze social scale”. She ran the bar well in to her 70s; but after Hanna finally decided it was time to call it a day, and having been a passionate lifelong supporter of LGBT rights, she used the space to host lodgers through the Gay Switchboard telephone helpline. The Guardian published an obituary to Hanna in 2019, and to Patrick in 2020.

The plaque unveiling to this rather extraordinary couple, who came from far afield to make their lives in Battersea and made quite an impact on everyone they met, will be at 77 Dorothy Road SW11 2JJ, on Friday 27th February at 12 noon – details here. All welcome to come and learn more about this extraordinary couple and their loving (if often quarrelsome) partnership. Speakers will include their Hanna’s obituarist Helen Braunholtz Smith and Patrick’s obituarist Sue Balding, several Guyanese and communist friends, and LGBT speaker Nick Collinson.

These two plaques follow one unveiled last week to former MP Shapurji Saklavata, and they’re all part of Wandsworth’s Borough of Culture programme. Again, we’re indebted to Jeanne Rathbone who has been a driving force behind Battersea’s new blue and green plaques – telling the story of people who have made their lives and careers in Battersea (including for her conversation with Yvonne’s daughter Yasmin). You may find our previous article about the inspiring women of Battersea’s early days, including factory developers, social reformers, fearless pilots, celebrated artists, tenacious campaigners and ‘dangerous subversives’, interesting; or the story of the blue plaque at 84 Lavender Sweep. And keep an eye out for the walking tours Jeannie occasionally runs, of the growing cluster of local heroes commemorated in and around Lavender Hill.