Oval

This is the 11th station I have visited on the Northern Line. The name of this underground station will be familiar to all those cricket lovers out there. The station opened as the Kennington Oval in 1890 and was named after The Oval cricket ground which it serves. The station building was rebuilt in the 1920s when the line was modernised and renamed Oval station. 

During 2007 the ticket hall was refurbished and new tiling installed reflecting its proximity to the cricket ground.

The large, white corner frontage of Oval station

The station is just a couple of minutes walk from the Oval cricket ground. Currently called the Kia Oval for sponsorship reasons. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club since it opened in 1845. It was the first ground in England to host international test cricket in September 1880. The final Test match of the English season is traditionally played here. The Oval is built on part of the former Kennington Common where cricket matches had been played since the early 1700s. Kennington Common was eventually enclosed in the mid 19th century and the club was able to lease land from the Duchy of Cornwall to create a purpose built cricket ground. Sunday morning crowds were beginning to gather for a match between Surrey and Essex. I was tempted to go in but there was a slight drizzle so there might be quite a wait for the match to start. I have been in the ground on numerous occasions in my capacity as a cricket coach when I was teaching. There are excellent indoor facilities here and much is done to promote the game.

These two plaques are on either side of the entrance into the ground. This one commemorates the first Test Match. In 1868, 20,000 spectators watched the first game of the 1868 Aboriginal cricket tour of England, the first tour of any foreign team. The first Test Match in England took place here in 1880 between England and Australia. This was the second ground to stage a Test match with Melbourne being the first in 1877.

 

The second plaque honours The Ashes.  In 1882, Australia won the Test by seven runs. The Sporting Times printed a mock obituary for English cricket which led to the Ashes trophy.

For old times sake I decided to do a circuit of the ground. At the end of the 2002 cricket season Surrey demolished the old north stands and created a new grandstand in their place.

I caught a glimpse of the ground through one of the gates. At the other side of the ground you can see this large Victorian gasometer which is sited less than 50m from the stadium wall. It was built in 1892. In recent years there has been public pressure to keep some of these gas holders as a nod to our industrial history. Although long disused it was only decommissioned in 2014 with plans to demolish all the gas holders on the site. With much public support the largest of the gas holders was given Grade II listing in 2016,  giving  it official protected status.

The redevelopment of the old Oval gas works site is part of the Oval and Kennington Development area. The listed gas holder will have a new block of flats built within its frame. This has been done before as I posted photos of the Kings Cross gasometer. I'm not sure it will be a popular decision. It just won't look the same as the iron skeleton.

  These are the refurbished gasometers at Kings Cross. They were dismantled, cleaned and re-erected . Two had a block of flats built within them and the third was transformed into a small green area with seating.

In the shadow of the gasometer is Gasworks. Established in 1994, it is a non-profit making contemporary art organisation providing studios for London based artists.

Thomas Tenison, an educationalist and later Archbishop of Canterbury founded several schools in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The boys' grammar school was founded in 1685 in the crypt of St Martin's in the Fields church in Trafalgar Square. In 1871 it relocated to Leicester Square and then in 1928 to this site opposite The Oval.  The building was opened by the Prince of Wales who later became (for a brief period) King Edward VIII.

The original school was just a room in the church crypt to provide free education for poor boys to prepare them for trades, employment and further education. Parishioners and private benefactors paid for the books, salaries, food and clothing for the boys. By the time the new school had been built for them here near the Oval, it had become a private school. Most pupils had to pay fees (payable in advance) and parents had to agree to keep the boys at school until the age of 16. The school still provided some free places.  In the 1980s the school became a non fee-paying local authority  comprehensive school. In 2019 it converted to academy status but was deemed 'inadequate' and closed in the summer of 2023. The building is now up for sale  with a number of restrictions on its usage.

This small hall didn't look anything special and then I noticed this unusual plaque embedded in the wall.

I had never heard of the St Mark's Tramway Brotherhood. It sounded a strange name. It turns out the Tramway Brotherhood was formed in the early 20th century by Dr Darlington, a former vicar of St Mark's church which is across the road from the tube station. The brotherhood held bible reading groups in tram depots and campaigned for better working conditions.

A little further on from the hall is this boarded up house known as Oval House which is a Grade II listed building. I think it has been listed for its historical  significance being the birthplace of Field Marshall Lord Montgomery.

Next to the white Oval house was the Ovalhouse theatre which moved to Brixton in 2020. The two buildings have been bought by Surrey County Cricket Club for conversion into hotel accommodation for cricket players at the Oval. The Ovalhouse theatre will be demolished whilst the Oval House will be refurbished in keeping with its listed status.

St Mark's church took two years to build and was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury in June 1824. It was one of the Waterloo churches paid for by a government grant in gratitude for the defeat of Napoleon. Four churches were built in South London and dedicated to the Evangelists. The other three are St John's Waterloo, St Matthew's Brixton and St Luke's Norwood.

Before St Mark's was built this site was all part of Kennington Common. For six months of the year hundreds of sheep and cattle grazed here. Until 1799 this was also the site of a public gallows. In 1746 21 members of the Jacobite Rebellion, captured at Culloden Moor were executed here. 

Kennington park is a large public park close to the station. Originally it was common land used for grazing. It was also a gathering place for demonstrations, protests and speeches because it was outside the jurisdiction and regulations of the City of London. One of the most famous events on the Common was in April 1848 when over 25,000 supporters of the Chartists' movement  campaigned for electoral reforms and more voting rights for the working man. Soon afterwards the Common was abolished and converted into a new public park in 1852 with the introduction of boundary railings.

The park has a number of features including a formally laid out English garden, sports facilities and sculptures.

This is the Slade fountain which was installed in 1861 at the request and expense of Felix Slade, founder of the Slade School of Art. It is now just a marble bowl on a stand but when built it was an ornate fountain based on a design originally exhibited at the Great Exhibition. It used to have a huge bronze vase at its centre, depicting the Old Testament scene of Jacob and Rebecca. This was stolen in 1850.

        

During WW2 there were shallow air raid shelters in the park. On 15th Oct 1940 the shelters took a direct hit during a raid on the docks. 48 bodies were recovered but it is thought that 104 local people died. This was Lambeth's worst civilian incident. At the time details were covered up to avoid negative propaganda. The tragedy was largely forgotten until a memorial service was held at St Mark's church in 2002. The friends of Kennington Park commissioned a memorial stone which was unveiled in 2006.

 

In the flower garden is this commemorative bench in memory of two people who died in the bombing

The skate bowl was built in 1978 and was one of the first in London. It was condemned soon after it opened as people could fall between the rails! Refurbished in 2012 it has since fallen into a bad state and become unrideable. It is one of the last remaining skate bowls from the 70s  and there are long term plans to restore it and make it safe once again.

At the edge of the park is the Prince Consort Lodge.  Originally part of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, the building was intended as a model for working class family homes. It was commissioned by Prince Albert, President of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes. The building had two separate flats on each floor, each one with 3 bedrooms. By the standards of the day it offered spacious, efficient and low cost accommodation that included a sink, rubbish shaft and flushing toilet. The use of innovative products like hollow bricks, ensured dryness, warmth, durability and sound proofing. This combination saw  buildings based on this design appear in various places including The Hague and St Petersburg. 

After the Exhibition, the building was put here to form an entrance to the newly enclosed park. It was converted to house two park rangers on the upper floor with access to the public on the ground floor.

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The lodge is almost completely hidden by trees from this angle. You can just make out a mosaic at the top with Albert and Victoria's intertwined initials.

 It doesn't appear to have any public access now and I think it is used as offices for 2003 Trees for Cities. I would have found it really interesting to have seen the original design and how it became a blueprint for the building of low cost housing for the working classes.

On my way out of the park I came across the Tinworth fountain although it is no longer a fountain. Originally it was a large ornamental fountain made from the same terracotta used by the local pottery company Royal Doulton for making garden ornaments. It has a rather sad history. It was exhibited in 1872 at the International Exhibition in Kensington. At its base was a pond, above which was a bowl with a fountain, a central column with a sculpture at the top of a man carrying a cross with a woman and a child. This was by the sculptor, George Tinworth and was called 'The Pilgrimage of Life'. Tinworth was the resident sculptor at Doulton's Lambeth factory.  It was bomb damaged in WW2 and the bowl was removed and used elsewhere as a jardinière, so it ceased to be a fountain. In 1981 the sculpture was lost to vandalism when it was used as air rifle target practice from the Kennington Park Estate. But after all that, at 150 years old it is still on display.

Outside the park, at the centre of the Oval triangle is 'The Touchstone', a large public sculpture by British artist Peter Randall-Page. It was commissioned by Transport for London as part of the Oval junction improvement scheme. The 27 tonne sculpture is carved from two granite boulders chosen for their natural shape and balance. The artist has carved a repeated interlocking pattern onto the largest boulder.

I turned left  and saw a huge collection of buildings at the junction of Camberwell New Road and Brixton Road 

The striking red and yellow brick and terracotta building was once the headquarters for London's black cabs.

In 1905 the General Cab Company operated its 1500 taxis from here. The building included offices and three storey garages for 2000 vehicles as well as a Museum with a collection of restored taxicabs. The building is now a business centre and gym.

I walked back round on to Kennington Park road to look at the Belgrave Hospital for Children. It began as a charitable foundation in Pimlico in 1866. In 1903 it moved to purpose built premises here. It was finally completed in 1926 and by all accounts is a striking Arts and Crafts building. It was just my luck that the building is currently shrouded in scaffolding and blue netting. It remained a children's hospital until 1985 when the new Variety Club Children's Hospital opened at King's College Hospital. The building became derelict and was used as a squat. By the 1990s it was restored and converted into luxury flats.

A close up revealed that the name of the building still exists.

This tiled panel on the side of a very boring looking shop tells us a little about the history of the shop. 

The shop used to be one of Lovibond's bottle shops from at least 1926. During the 1830s John Lovibond was a brewer in Frome, Somerset. Then in 1847 he bought the Nag's Head Brewery in Greenwich. The last brew in Greenwich was in 1959 and then the company changed from a brewery to that of a wine merchant with retail shops. In 1968 the brand was taken over by Wine ways Supermarkets Ltd and then later became Victoria Wine off licences.

It always surprises me that just by turning off the busy main roads you enter into another world.  Claylands Road, off Kennington Park Road was one such place. The residents had transformed their street by extra planting on the pavements as well as in their front gardens. 

On the opposite side of the road is this 1836 Congregational Chapel which has been converted into an architect's office. Prior to a chapel being built here, this was the site of the Clayland Mansion. The mansion and grounds were constructed here by John Fentiman in 1778.

As I walked to the end of the road there was quite a different view. A completely different style of houses with no front gardens with a backdrop of  new developments in the Vauxhall area.

I continued to walk around the streets and came across a large estate of what is now referred to as social housing. In previous years I would have referred to it as a council estate because the properties would have been owned and managed by the council. These days they are usually owned by housing trusts although some of the properties may be privately owned (a legacy of Margaret Thatcher's government which allowed the selling off of council properties to council tenants at greatly reduced prices). This estate was built just before the war in 1938 with most of the buildings still intact.

 

High up on one of the walls is this bas relief entitled 'Mother and Children Playing'. It was completed by Peter Laszlo Peri in 1952. Peri (1899-1967) created three of these architectural reliefs for the London County Council. One features boys playing football and the other one is of children playing. He designed them as a memorial to those children who lost their lives in the Blitz. I couldn't locate the other art works. 

He made the reliefs from coloured concrete which he referred to as 'Pericrete', a mix of concrete with polyester resin and metallic powders. Although the colours have faded over the years you can just about make out the red, tan and yellow colours of this relief.

It was time to make my way back towards the station. It was much more pleasant to meander through these back streets than go back via the main road. This pub looked very inviting but the weather wasn't conducive to sitting outside. The pub is named after John Fentiman, a mid 19th century developer.

These four bricked up windows are worthy of an explanation that goes back to 1696 when a window tax was first imposed in England. The tax was not repealed until 1851 and consequently we still see signs of this tax today. The tax was intended to tax the rich and not the poor. It was aimed at houses with more than ten windows which meant the owners had to pay additional taxes in line with the number of windows. The poorest who were more likely to live in properties with fewer windows paid less in tax. This worked in rural communities but not in the poorer urban areas. This was because the working classes usually shared accommodation in large houses which had been subdivided but in terms of taxation were considered to be one property. As it was the owner of the property that had to pay the tax the windows in these large buildings were often boarded up or bricked over. The interpretation of the law was very strict and any kind of opening was considered to be a window. Not only did landlords pass on the costs of the window tax with increased rents but the residents now had inadequate ventilation. In 1766 the tax was extended to include houses with seven or more windows. A survey at the time showed a reduction by nearly two thirds of houses with exactly seven windows. From early 18th century much was written about the negative impact that lack of ventilation had on health. A sanitary report by Dr D B Reid published in 1845 suggested that cases of typhus, smallpox and cholera increased with the lack of light and ventilation caused by the blocking up of numerous windows.  A national campaign followed against the tax until it was finally repealed in 1951.

I walked back to the station along Richborne Terrace. What was different about this road, of early Victorian terraced housing, was the planting of flowers around signposts, lamp posts and trees.

 I have enjoyed my walk around the oval station and been surprised by the history that lay behind some of these buildings and green areas. The next station I visit will be a bit of a milestone for me as it will be the 200th station on this epic 'Above the Underground' challenge.