It’s been closed since March 2017, and at some points we wondered if it would ever return – having seen major building works to add flats on the roof, a distinctly architectural new house built in the yard, and a rather messy planning battle about whether it could become a shop or a flat… but the Queens Arms is clearly a survivor – as it’s returned as a pub!
We’ve written a few previous posts on the Queens Arms – see this one back when it was very uncertain whether it would reopen as a pub at all. Back in June things looked more promising – with a new licensing application (as well as a new house appearing in the old yard) – although while there were rumours of a letting, we didn’t really know what was going on either.
The good news is it’s open again – starting with a quiet soft launch to get things up and running smoothly at the beginning of October, which awkwardly was just a few weeks before a new lockdown…
The pub has spent most of the last few years looking more like a builders’ store room than a pub, but has been given a proper cleanup, with the bar back in more or less the same spot as before, new furniture and fittings throughout – now including table football. At the time of writing, there’s a happy hour 6-7, and quiz nights on Mondays with a bottle of wine for the team that’s placed second from last… A few photos from their facebook show the extent of the works needed to get it back in business!
Beers on tap included (at the time of launch) Camden Hells Lager and Pale Ale, Rosie’s Pig Cloudy Cider, Sharp’s Coaster and DoomBar, accompanied by a light menu of hot foods. Despite all the works to the building, the Queens Arms still has a kitchen (albeit not a huge one) so has a hot food on the menu.
The new team have a solid track record – having previously taken over The Woodman between Earlsfield & Wimbledon (below), and given it a very major makeover, and now running a well-rated neighbourhood pub with a strong food offer.
Readers may notice that we don’t have interior photos of our own with the pub actually open for customers, because the launch was so soft that we didn’t spot it before lockdown! But it’s nonetheless great to see the Queens Arms back, and let’s all make sure we give the new landlord and team a warm welcome and lots of support as soon as we get out of the current restrictions.
The Queens Arms, 139 St Philip Street, Battersea SW8 3SS. Their instagram’s here, facebook’s here, the website’s here, and the number’s 020 7525 9050.
A few weeks ago we reported on proposals by Asda to remove all the trees and plants around their Clapham Junction store, and pave over the green areas with tarmac and a glued gravel finish, seemingly to cut maintenance costs. This horrified many of us – as the last thing the site needs right now, when we’re trying to make our town centres healthier and greener, and coming so soon after work by Wandsworth to create a new planted area on the other side of their car park.
An impressive 98 of you wrote to Wandsworth Council to register objections to the proposals (for which, many thanks!).
The good news is that Asda have clearly realised that they’re not going to get these proposals through – and have submittedupdated proposals that keep most of the greenery.
They now plan to keep all the trees in place, as well as the bushes along the Falcon Road part of the site. They still want to remove the bushes and grass in the section facing Lavender Hill, and replace them with chipped bark base and what they describe as “low maintenance ground cover complete with bark mulch” – which is hopefully a code for un-fussy plants.
This is a much better approach – and makes us wonder why Asda ever made such a ridiculous proposal to chop everything down in the first place, it was hardly going to make the store more attractive to shoppers. This just shows that it’s worth objecting to planning applications when they propose to do scandalous things. So we’ll keep these trees, as well as the greenery further along Falcon Lane. At this stage it’s time to say – well done everyone!
We notice that other parts of the proposals (such as painting the white parts of the building dark grey, which don’t actually need planning permission) have already been done.
It’s a shame that Asda have barely engaged (indeed, our partners at Clapham Junction Action Group have been less than impressed by the way Asda have simply not cared about local opinion, with no-one willing to speak about the plans). But these changes show that even if they weren’t interested in speaking to the locals, someone in Asda realised that they needed to change their plans! Maybe Asda were distracted by changes in the business. Asda was, last week, sold to new owners for a shade under £7 billion. It’s no longer controlled by American retail giant WalMart – it’s instead part of EG Group, maybe better known as the entrepreneurial Issa brothers – a duo from Blackburn who turned a humble chain of petrol stations in to a vast business employing 44,000 people, and who were honoured last week with CBEs in the Queen’s birthday honours list. For the sake of the many of our readers who work and shop there, we’re optimistic that the enthusiastic new owners will create a better culture at the organisation.
It’s been a dramatic year in traffic terms! After a deathly calm early on in the lockdown, there’s no doubt that the traffic on Lavender Hill and some of the residential streets has been pretty busy! We’ve also seen a flurry of experiments as we adapt the ways we move to the new reality of a highly contagious global pandemic – and many of our readers are finding it (at best) confusing, or (at worst) a nightmare.
The good news is that a fair bit of what we’re seeing is nothing to do with the coronavirus, or the various traffic changes that have happened as a result – but rather, it’s because Vauxhall bridge is completely closed for works until November, other than to pedestrians & one rather winding and narrow lane for buses. It’s the biggest road through London, and all the diverted traffic is heading across the other bridges – with a strong preference for the Queenstown Road and Chelsea Bridge (as Lambeth bridge is inside the congestion charging zone!), and causing the sort of chaos on our streets that we’re more used to seeing when there are traffic accidents on the Vauxhall gyratory. This will (assuming all goes well with the repair works) end in November, but it’s no fun for residents or traders.
But it’s not just Vauxhall bridge that’s having an impact. Our quick recap of the situation locally –
The speed limit is becoming 20mph across the board. Most of Wandsworth’s roads went to 20 mph some time back, including almost all the side streets to Lavender Hill (hence the profusion of signs on the junctions). Lavender Hill stayed at 30 – despite Wandsworth Road moving down to 20mph. There have subsequently been concerns that the limit would be better if it was consistent, and some felt that 30 was still rather fast for busy shopping and residential street. This week, signs have gone up cutting the speed to 20.
We all know that this won’t suddenly mean that motorcycles drive below the speed limit… but it is expected to slow things down generally. We understand that the effect of this will be monitored, and that once people have had time to get used to the new limits, roads with mean speeds of above 25mph after the signed only limits are introduced are likely to see further traffic calming measures.
Streets in front of our schools are closing at peak times. There’s been an explosion in parents driving their children to schools (notably the older ones, who often go to much more distant schools) – which has not helped the general traffic situation, but which has also caused particular problems outside schools where the combination of socially distanced queuing (designed to let children in to schools in year groups), all mixed up with enormous people carriers struggling to weave down the narrow and child-filled streets, has been causing increasingly dangerous situations.
So these streets are being closed, during school opening and closing times, on an experimental basis. Wandsworth reckon this will cut school-gate congestion and help air quality, as well as gently discouraging parents from driving children short distances. It may also create a calmer environment for schoolchildren and parents. But the major benefit is likely to be to safety – whether by allowing more space for everyone, or reducing the risk of traffic accidents. Here is the scene this morning outside the newly created ‘School street’ zone at the Wix school (with our photo of it in action on the first day above); similar schemes are in place at most schools.
These are officially an experiment, and there are ongoing consultation (links for Wix / Shaftesbury Park) to receive feedback. Chances are this might get pretty fiery (any road closure usually does, even if it’s only for 45-minute periods) – but given the closures still allow drop offs (there’s a loop at either end of this one) we suspect that once people get used to them, these will settle in and be here to stay.
Bus lanes are changing, and cycle lanes are growing. Most bus lanes are now operating full time – with several of the parking spaces that used to be in those bus lanes having been simply eliminated, to speed up buses outside peak hours, and especially to make the bus lanes safer for cyclists. This was really quite controversial at first – although we appreciate that we do now have a pressing need to make it easier and safer to cycle around the Borough and beyond. With social distancing here to stay maybe for a year or two, we need a lot more people to be able to be on bikes, scooters and the like – if London is to survive as a centre of employment.
The Elspeth Road junction has had a particularly complex time – with the lanes being reorganised, and a segregated cycle lane being built heading westbound. It’s worth bearing in mind that this is the spot where we saw the tragic death of a young cyclist who was seemingly caught by merging traffic, so we can see the merits in ensuring that there is only one clearly defined lane of traffic leaving the junction rather than one and a half. Various other changes include adding new cycle lanes along several stretches, and removing some of the remaining bits of pavement railing that cause crowding at pedestrian crossings at the eastern end of Lavender Hill.
All in all – there’s really quite a lot going on, and that’s before we even discuss the Low Traffic Neighbourhood experiments that have attracted so much attention elsewhere in the Borough, and which seem to have become a pitched battle between pro-and anti-traffic campaigners, with added political tension and accusations on all sides!
Things over this side of the Borough are, fortunately, a bit calmer. Ultimately a lot of this change is inevitable given we’ve seen a marked drop in the capacity of the Northern Line, Clapham Junction’s trains and our bus routes to allow social distancing. Even with a lot of people working from home, or not working at all, many buses are running close to their (new, far lower) maximum capacities – so one way or another we have to find alternative ways for people to get around – whether it be cycling, walking or scooters.
And the first priority has to be safety. We know a lot of us are venturing on to bicycles, scooters and the like, as well as walking and running, for the first time as an alternative to what used to be packed public transport when getting to work, to town centres, or to school. We have to make space for pedestrians, we have to get rid of dangerous pinch points, and we have to prepare for people of all ages and levels of confidence to be trying out new ways to get around.
That’s not to say everything has worked, or indeed will work. We appreciate this is a new situation where things are being done quickly, and the sort of bitter blame games that seem to be erupting in some other parts of London where things haven’t immediately worked perfectly don’t help anyone. It’s maybe not surprising that some of the detail on our streets will need to be improved and refined with time – some of the traffic calming measures have had unintended consequences, and the changes weren’t particularly well publicised before they were introduced, leading to a lot of confusion at first. Things are starting to settle down through and we’ve noticed a lot of traffic counters (picture, right) and we know our local Councillors as well as the Borough’s traffic engineers are keeping a pretty close eye on how this all works. The real test will be when Vauxhall bridge reopens – and we get a chance to compare where we are now, with what it used to be like. But in the meantime keep us posted on your many helpful thoughts & observations, and if you have time, do respond to the consultations on some of these changes – as thoughtful comments and suggestions are always worth sharing.
Last summer we reported on an interesting development being planned for Wixs Lane. It would replace the car park behind Dacres House (a block of flats that faces Cedars Road) with two semi-detached modern houses (one three-bed and one four-bed), and was being taken forward on behalf of the owners of Dacres House.
It struck us as a decent example of a proportionate use of a site – not cramming things in to every possible space, and putting all the parking and servicing in to the ‘underground’ areas to allow as much light and space as possible on the main living floors. It would create two houses, both with outdoor space, and thoughtfully designed for the location, with brick echoing the Victorian houses to the left but a design that echoes the Cedars Road Estate buildings on the right. The living room of one house faces south, and the other north, allowing both a good degree of privacy despite the compact urban site.
And the build now well underway – with a large steel structure being pretty clearly visible from Wixs Lane –
The existing long access ramp that leads from Wixs Lane to the car park will remain in use, as the entrance to the garages and lower floors of the new development – it’s visible in the bottom right hand corner of the artists’ impression below.
We keep an eye on local office and business space developments (see our previous article on the subject here) – because being able to access reasonably local jobs and employment matter more than ever now, and because the office space we do have is under constant pressure from conversion to housing! Which is why it’s good to see that the owners of the Battersea Studios are exploring whether they can add build a new building, to add space to the existing development.
A bit of context – the Battersea Studios premises have a long and complicated history. It was originally built in the 1970’s as a warehouse for BT – but then turned into the ‘Middle East Broadcasting Centre‘, a film studio that transmitted a free-to-air satellite service to a huge audience across the Middle East and further afield. A company called Helical Bar bought it in 2005 for £8 million (in the face of stiff competition from broadcaster Al Jazeera who also wanted a ready-made London studio), and converted the studios to 56,000 square feet of small workspaces (though kept several small TV studios). The property was a success and they had no trouble at all in attracting tenants – so they built a second building with another 50,000 square feet of office space, before selling the whole property in 2005 for £35 million to the Schroder UK Property Fund.
At the time they sold it, the whole complex generated £1.47 million of rent a year. At an average of £21.50 a square foot this is good quality office space at affordable rates. To put this number in context – more high-profile locations like Victoria can run at £75 for high end space and £60 for more rudimentary offices, and even far-flung spots like Stratford run at £30-45 – so it’s not surprising it is popular! It’s especially targeted at more creative businesses (who don’t mind being next to the railway and one of London’s largest concrete batching plants).
The new proposals are at a very early stage – essentially the owners have approached Wandsworth planners for an early steer (a ‘scoping opinion’) on whether they can reasonably hope to build a new ten storey building – with light industrial uses on the ground floor, and offices above. Broadly adding more of the same, given they have not had any real difficulty letting the space they have.
Despite being a tall building proposal, the nature of what is being built and more importantly where it is being built mean this doesn’t seem an especially controversial idea – it won’t overshadow anyone, and it is buried quite deep in the industrial estate, fairly far from any roads or houses. It would go on a back yard corner that houses a small raised platform with satellite dishes on it (serving the studios in the building). The site is already a designated industrial area in both the Borough strategy and local plan & the London planning frameworks – housing a major concrete batching plant (our photo below).
With office space near where people live still in high demand (despite the near term impacts of the Coronavirus) and the spaces we do have locally always under threat of conversion to flats, going upwards is one of the only ways Wandsworth can provide the space needed to house jobs and employment – and we suspect that if this does proceed to a planning application, despite being twice the height of its immediate neighbours, it will see some support.
London is full of little nationality clusters, and the eastern end of Lavender Hill is very much a French one! It’s been helped by the Wix French and bilingual school (a pioneering initiative that’s been running for over a decade), a pair of French / bilingual nurseries, a bilingual English/French stream at the Shaftesbury Park school, and of course ready access to the Lycee in South Kensington…
What was of course missing was a French cafe – which is why we’re pleased to see newly opened French cafe, the Baguette Deli on Lavender Hill. They specialise in fresh baguette sandwiches made to order in the kitchen at the back, and as you would expect they also offer Croques of all descriptions (Monsieur, madame, nordique, mushroom rarebit, quatre fromages), as well as fresh pressed juices and the usual range of coffees.
There are a few tables inside and out (helped by the pavement here being very wide), all well spaced out – and a small assortment of French treats for sale. All well presented and the owner (who has lived in the neighbourhood for many years) are cheerful and clearly very enthusiastic about this new venture. A welcome new arrival to Lavender Hill and the Baguette Deli looks set to do well.
This is the latest in a string of cafe openings on this part of Lavender Hill – and follows the launch of now-very-successful cafe & bakerySweetSmile, who are now also running a hot food menu and are licensed; 2Love who opened their popular second local branch on the end of the street nearer Clapham Junction, Il Molino, who continue to do a brisk trade in coffees, cakes and salads and deli food, and Sendero, one of the first cafes we ever wrote about who have done so well they have also opened a second local branch – in addition to a well established branch of Caffe Nero and of course Maiolica Cafe on Wandsworth Road who despite now focussing primarily on food, still make a good coffee!
Not a good day for someone here – this car crashed in to another parked car at speed, and then slammed in to the wall of the DayLewis pharmacy at the junction of Stormont Road and Lavender Hill. It’s not too clear how they managed to crash backwards at sufficient speed to demolish part of the building… We understand no-one was injured – but the building’s looking to be in quite some trouble, with severe structural damage and a lot of bricks on the move. The car has awkwardly also hit not one but two gas meters (the bent-looking white pipe on the wall). It’s not looking great for the Stormont Road street sign which has been squashed; the other parked car which was also hit has lost its bumper.
Our firefighters were swiftly on hand to disconnect the power & gas and check the building was safe(ish).
The bit of the building that has been destroyed isn’t actually part of the pharmacy, but rather a small one-room office with its own access to the street that is let separately – so with some quick propping up it’s likely the pharmacy could be open again pretty quickly.
Speaking of which – Wandsworth Council have been in touch to let us know that the long-abandoned (and completely destroyed – it’s had quite some accident) back BMW that has been in the car park of the Stormont Road estate for over a year will finally be removed unless it is claimed by its owner. We suspect residents will appreciate having the parking space back, and wherever its owners are, we doubt they want it back…
Monday update: Strong responses and a lot of concerns raised on this one – a lot of you have got in touch, and we see a lot of comments have also gone to Wandsworth on the planning application in the last couple of days since we posted this (it had no comments at all but at the time of writing has 48 objections, and two general comments which look like objections). Fair comments also raised that the current area has issues (drunks and pigeons) – but they’re on the already-paved parts, which won’t be changing – if those areas became vegetation those issues may actually go away… Sometimes we just report on proposals, but when there’s an issue of importance or with a strong common view we feed in a collective view, and that’s what we have done in this case with this letter to Wandsworth planners commenting on Asda / WalMart’s proposals.
Controversial plans have been submitted by Asda to completely destroy the park that surrounds their Lavender Hill store. They want to remove all the vegetation, and pave over it with tarmac and a glued gravel finish. It’s easy to see why they want to do this – looking after the greenery takes time and costs them money, it’d be much easier for them not to have to get someone out every few months to prune the bushes.
But the greenery here matters – because it’s one of the very few patches of green left in a very dense urban area, and it shields surrounding restaurants and houses from a rather blank and busy car park. The recent (and expensive) streetscape and paving improvements to Lavender Hill were deliberately designed to enhance the square in front of the Asda entrance, and make the most of the greenery. There’s a reason why the greenery was included in the original planning permissions for the development all those years ago.
We welcome your thoughts on this proposal – and in the interest of fairness we always try to look at all sides of any new proposals – but frankly it’s hard to see this as anything other than a terrible idea! It flies in the fact of efforts to green our town centres and cut carbon emissions, it’s bad for biodiversity, it’s probably bad for rainwater absorption (even if the tarmac is described as ‘porous’), and it will be damaging to the attractiveness of Lavender Hill and the town centre as a whole.
It also suggests a lack of imagination – it’ll make an already dated and not-too-beautiful store look even less attractive to customers (many of whom arrive on foot), and there are plenty of people who could probably look after the gardens on a voluntary basis, if Asda really aren’t interested.
Other changes are also planned, which are uncontroversial – for example Asda plan to repaint the while parts of the building in dark grey, and to refurbish the clock (which has been broken for years), the entrance steps, and the rather worn-out travelator. The trees in the service area to the east of Asda are also proposed for destruction. But the standout part of the plan is definitely the destruction of the park – with all the areas shown in red in the map below planned to be torn up and permanently paved over.
It’s not too late to comment on the planning application – where you can object, make a general comment (or support, if you reckon we’ve got this one all wrong!) – go to the Wandsworth planning website, and search for application number 2020/3073. Local input and concerns can swing the balance on decisions like these – if more than three valid objections are received, for example, decisions get escalated – and if decisions go to appeal, the views of residents can also be important.
But be quick – your author has been too busy with work and has only just spotted this one, and while the Council planning officers are very sensible and do generally do their best to accept late comments (the deadline is tomorrow), they can’t go on forever.
The Coronavirus is changing travel habits – with a steep drop in bus & train use, and a similarly steep increase in journeys by cycle or in cars. And our roads are being adapted to this.
Lavender Hill has always been a popular cycle route – thanks to bus lanes along most of its length that mean cyclists aren’t always dodging cars, and fairly wide lanes that mean it’s fairly safe. But there were several long gaps in the bus lanes, as well several parking bays (that only operated outside of peak travel hours) where cyclists had to steer out to the maion traffic lane.
To makes cycling safer, these issues have now been patched up: a cycle lane has been added along many of the gaps (pictured above), and the parking bays have been removed (pictured below – you can see where the old parking bays have been painted out). Much more of the road now marked with double yellow lines; with single yellows in areas where shops will need to take deliveries.
The bus lanes also now operate at all times – rather than operating part time as normal traffic lanes.
This isn’t exactly a ‘cycle superhighway’, just a bit of paint – but it should hopefully help keep cars away from bikes, and reduce the risk of accidents.
Losing parking places is never popular, and will cause some concern for some traders on the street. That said, these ones were so ‘part time’ that they weren’t used especially heavily. The side streets remain open for parking for shoppers – almost all of it with (unusually for London) modern and fully functional parking meters that take cards & contactless payments.
It’s a difficult time to be in the restaurant trade, whether you’re an independent trader or a large nationwide chain. Amid a painful series of layoffs and closures, it’s maybe not surprising that Pizza Express has been the latest to announce cuts; with plans to close around 67 of their restaurants – about 15% of the total.
They’re one of Lavender Hill’s most prominent tenants, with the big corner unit on the slope down to the station. Reliable quality, a carefully designed customer loyalty programme and helpful staff giving good service mean it’s consistently done a healthy trade, helped along by having established itself as a favourite haunt for children’s parties on weekend mornings. The decor is loosely themed around (of course) the Lavender Hill Mob.
And the good news is that our local branch has been confirmed as being included the first 150 or so restaurants that are reopening – following a successful small trial. It plans to be up and running again on the 6th August.
Both of the Wandsworth branches (Trinity Road & Old York Road) are also included in this first wave of reopenings, although the future of the Battersea Bridge Road branch is more uncertain. It remains closed for now and while it may be in a later waves of openings (there are several hundred more still set to reopen down th eline), it certainly seems that the longer a branch is left closed, the more likely it is that it will be one of those that never reopens.
Lavender Hill for Me is a community website working to support Lavender Hill, a neighbourhood in Battersea, London and a home to about 250 shops, restaurants and small businesses. We take an active interest in developments that could improve Lavender Hill for residents, traders and visitors.
