Walking Class Hero: Doin’ the Lambeth Walk

des-blog Welcome to Walking Class Hero a regular blog about walking and the walking environment. Whether you like walking on your own, with friends or in an organised group this blog will cover it. It’ll embrace walking in cities and towns and villages. Walking in the countryside and along the coast and up hills and down dales. Walking through parks and by rivers and across heath and down and moor. It’ll comment on public rights of way, access to open country, permissive paths, public urban space and countryside protection. Basically if you can walk there it’ll be in this blog.

Doin’ the Lambeth Walk (Tuesday 26 May 2009)

“In England’s green and pleasant land”

At first sight a walk going from Lambeth North to Peckham seems to owe more to Will Self than William Blake but stay with me for a moment and I’ll try to explain.

blake-crop1

William Blake, renowned for writing Jerusalem and quite rightly revered as one of England’s foremost painters and poets, only once journeyed further than a days walk from London. (And people call me London-centric!) Furthermore, he lived in Lambeth across the road from present day Lambeth North tube station, for 10 years between 1790 and1800. So while I’m wholeheartedly in Will Self’s camp in blaming the English Romantic movement (seminal figure – one William Blake) for ‘sanctifying the picturesque’ there’s no getting away from Blake in Lambeth.

A short stroll, or the average ‘arrow of desire’ flight, brings you to Centaur Street and its mosaic display of some of Blake’s better known work located in the railway arch. These many railway arches shape the physical geography round here and just seem to scream ‘sarf Lahndun’ to a Lewisham boy like me. Street art though is a relative new comer with the close-by Leake Street hosting a Banksy exhibition this time last year.

banksy-crop1

Weaving under the railway lines then crossing Lambeth Road brings you to Lambeth Walk. The Lambeth Walk, is the show-stopper from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl, starring Lupino Lane. (Post-war Lambeth street namers missed a trick there didn’t they.) The Nazis used it as an emblem ‘Jewish mischief and animalistic hopping’ while the British countered in 1942 with a propaganda film using footage from Leni Rieffenstahl’s Triumph of the Will of leading Nazis ‘doing the Lambeth Walk’. Oi indeed.

pub-sign-crop1 Lambeth Walk parallels the rail tracks and leads to Vauxhall Walk which leads In turn to Vauxhall Spring Gardens. Home these days to Vauxhall City Farm it was once the site of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Hard to imagine now but from the mid 17th through to the mid 19th centuries this was one of London’s hottest locations for entertainment and in 1817 the Battle of Waterloo was re-enacted here with over 1000 soldiers participating.

Heading towards Kennington you encounter yet more greenery and history when you get to Kennington Park. Formerly known as Kennington Common it was the site of public executions and where the Chartists held their biggest rally in 1848. It’s bounded on one side by St Agnes Place. Once the home of organised London squatting in the 1970’s and 80’s it also housed the Rastafarian temple. Bob Marley visited the temple in 1977 but it seems mostly to play football in the park. Leaving the park you quickly find yourself in the Brandon estate. The 1960’s design is much loved by film crews with many episodes of the Bill and Dr Who shot here.

farm-crop1

Ducking and diving through Camberwell’s back streets you arrive at Burgess Park. This is most definitely not an Edwardian or Victorian London park. It was carved out of a highly built-up but badly bomb damaged part of the city in the aftermath of WW2 with virtually all its land previously comprising of housing, industry or transport infrastructure. The park also often plays host to the ubiquitous film crews with many scenes from Ashes to Ashes episodes filmed here.

The final leg of our journey takes us up the Surrey Linear Canal Park to Peckham. Opened in 1826 as a short branch of the Grand Surrey Canal it was closed (and drained) in the 1970’s and converted to a park. At the top you find Peckham’s new and acclaimed library building. A visit to the local and extremely handy Wetherspoons rounds off a walk that would surely quicken the step of Will Self, and his love of most things urban.

More information
OS Map used – Explorer 161 London South
Pay less when you order this map here: http://www.ramblers.org.uk/fundraising/shop/anquet-map.htm

See the route here: http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/gb/london/917124402355795116

Useful links:
o The Ramblers http://www.ramblers.org.uk/
o Lambrt North station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambeth_North_tube_station
o William Blake http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRblake.htm
o Banksy http://www.banksy.co.uk/
o The Lambeth Walk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lambeth_Walk
o Box Hill http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-boxhill.htm
o Trig pointing http://www.trigpointinguk.com/
o Magnum Ice Creams http://www.mymagnum.co.uk/
o Box Hill School http://www.boxhillschool.com/
o Mole Gap Trail http://www.ruralways.org.uk/walking/routes/detail/164
o Leatherhead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leatherhead