New Kent Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Kent Road is a short road in south London, created in 1751 when the Turnpike Trust upgraded a local footpath. [1] The road starts at Elephant and Castle, and runs eastward for a few hundred yards to a junction with Great Dover Street and Tower Bridge Road (called the Bricklayer's Arms) before being renamed Old Kent Road (the A2).
The road forms part of the London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone. New Kent Road is designated the A201. To the north-west, past the Elephant and Castle, this becomes London Road.
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[edit] South side
[edit] Shopping Centre
The southern side of New Kent Road starts at the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, where there are some market stalls around the ground floor entrance. Just inside the first-floor entrance there is a small grocery kiosk run by and for the area's Ecuadorean community. On Saturdays and Sundays it becomes an informal lunch restaurant and social centre, where very little English is spoken.
At 26 New Kent Road, the pub attached to the Shopping Centre is named after a famous local ex-resident: The Charlie Chaplin. It is said that Chaplin had a martini at the pub during a visit to the area in the 1950s.
[edit] The Coronet to Elephant Road
The Coronet (28) is marked by a flashing neon sign. The site was first occupied by the Theatre Royal, built in 1872 and destroyed by fire only six years later. Rebuilt as the Elephant and Castle Theatre in 1879, Charlie Chaplin performed there. It was converted to an ABC cinema in 1928. After several more name changes, it became the Coronet Cinema in 1981.
The Coronet Cinema closed down in 1999, and reopened as a music, club and film venue following a £2.8-million refurbishment which had restored its Art Deco glory. Following a brief closure in 2003, Oasis, Franz Ferdinand and Justin Timberlake performed low-key gigs there in 2004. The Coronet closed again in 2005, amid rumours of a cash crisis, but some events and live shows have taken place in 2006 and 2007. For the last few years, the Coronet has hosted EuroShame, the latest incarnation of the annual Gay Shame and Lesbian Weakness event run by Amy Lame's Duckie project as a tongue-in-cheek alternative to London's official Gay Pride event.
Just before the railway bridge, there is a small private mews that is locked shut outside business hours and houses several businesses. The El Azteca Mexican catering company closed in 2007.
Elephant Road itself is a short road that connects New Kent Road with the Walworth Road. The railway arches on the west side house businesses including a bike shop, the Corsica Studios art space and several businesses selling Colombian and Ecuadorian goods.
[edit] Elephant Road to Rodney Place
Oakmayne Plaza is under construction at the corner of New Kent Road and Elephant Road. It is being developed by Oakmayne Properties who also built the nearby South Central East residential building on Walworth Road. The site of Oakmayne Plaza was formerly occupied by UK's largest used Volvo showroom and the Elephant Road Industrial Estate, and the new complex will include business and residential units. It is due for completion in 2009.
From Elephant Road to Rodney Place, this side of the New Kent Road is dominated by the Heygate council estate. Completed in 1974, the estate has aged badly and is due for phased demolition by 2011. It will be replaced by low-rise housing. [2]
The multi-coloured spherical lights in the trees next to the Heygate were installed in 2005 by the Elephant Impacts project. The project has repainted and added feature lighting to a number of bridges and buildings in the area, including the adjoining railway bridges on Walworth Road and Newington Causeway, and to London College of Communication and the Metropolitan Tabernacle.
The Crossways United Reform Church is part of the Heygate. Immediately behind the church, in a locked garden, is a sculpture Two Caryatids by Henry Poole, originally created in 1897 for the old Rotherhithe Public Library.
[edit] Beyond the Heygate
At 128 New Kent Road, Watling House, like Tavern Court (see below), is a new development of flats managed by the Landmark Housing Association. Like most of the new housing in the area, both developments are aimed at first-time buyers who cannot afford to buy on the open market. Residents of the Heygate and other social housing, and those on the social housing waiting list, receive priority.
The distinctive Baroque style building at 172-180 is Driscoll House. It was originally built as a women's hostel in 1913 and is now a somewhat dilapidated hostel primarily aimed primarily at international students. The interiors are mostly unchanged since the building opened. It has been sold to property developers, but was saved from closure in March 2006 by a campaign to make it a listed building.
There is a small green space next to Driscoll House, and beyond Searles Road there is a larger one called Paragon Gardens, named after the building erected on the site in 1787, designed by Michael Searles. It was demolished in the 1890s and replaced with more modest housing and a school. The school has since been converted into a residential building and also named The Paragon.
There is some ambiguity over where New Kent Road actually ends and becomes Old Kent Road. The London A-Z marks number 240 just before Darwin Street, and 54 Old Kent Road just after Darwin Street, but poor numbering at the junction of the two roads makes it difficult to ascertain the actual physical point at which New Kent Road ends and Old Kent Road begins.
[edit] North side
[edit] Metro Central Heights to Falmouth Road
The first few hundred yards of New Kent Road consist of the Elephant and Castle pub and the Metro Central Heights residential block, although both premises have addresses on Newington Causeway, not New Kent Road. Beyond the railway bridge stands Albert Barnes House, an 18-storey block of council flats owned by the London Borough of Southwark. It was completed in 1964 and contains 99 flats. There was a fire in Albert Barnes House in the early hours of 30 January 2007 and all 250 residents were evacuated. One flat was gutted, and another seriously damaged [3].
At the Meadow Row intersection stands St Matthews at the Elephant, a contemporary Anglican church and community centre rebuilt in 1993 on the site of the old St Matthews church. The church has particularly good acoustics and hosts musical performances as well as community events and services. The main building is built low, with the separate minimalist iron spire at the street entrance suggesting old and new-style church architecture simultaneously.
83 New Kent Road is a residence for students at the nearby London South Bank University, with 81 students living in shared flats.
[edit] Falmouth Road to Harper Road
The small Falmouth Road Park opened in March 2006 [4]. The bench is made from timber from a London plane tree that once stood on the Tower of London Wharf, and features designs created by local children.
Next to the park, Tavern Court (95) is a new six-storey residential building managed by Landmark Housing Association. Tavern Court opened in 2005 on the site of the County Terrace Tavern, a pub that closed in 2003. The Museum of London Archaeology Service surveyed the site in May 2004 and found that "There was no evidence to confirm that this site was occupied until the post medieval period. It appears that this low lying area ... was fields until the development of the County Terrace public house and adjoining properties during the 19th century. A thick layer of top soil containing 18th and 19th century material including broken bricks, clay pipe stems and 19th century pottery was found." [5]
The 1888 red brick church behind Tavern Court is the former Welsh Presbyterian Chapel, a listed building built in mixed Queen Anne and Romanesque revival styles. English Heritage comments that "[the] combination of different features and materials [is] calculated to produce a most variable and picturesque composition. An early instance of the Queen Anne manner applied to a church or chapel" [6]. Since 1991, the church has been the main London home of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, a worldwide church organisation based in Nigeria and led by Olumba Olumba Obu. Worshippers wear distinctive white robes, with women also wearing a wimple-like headdress. Their beliefs have been described as "an interesting offshoot of orthodox Christianity, and combines the beliefs of varying religions, including ancient Indian philosophy and Islamic teachings" [7].
The narrow public garden that runs from the footbridge to Harper Road is called David Copperfields Garden. It is currently closed for re-landscaping, which will be completed in May 2007. A plaque erected in the garden in September 1931 by the Dickens Fellowship explains that this was the place where in the Charles Dickens novel, David Copperfield stopped "in the Kent Road ... at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell". The pond has been filled in as a flower bed, and the small statue has lost both its shell and its head. The newly landscaped gardens will include benches with a design based on the milestones that David Copperfield passed on his fictional journey.
[edit] Beyond Harper Road
A block of shops after Harper Road begins with Pole Position (155-157), a motorcycle workshop and racing team HQ. Counter services at the Post Office (179) were transferred in the spring of 2006 to the Great Dover Street branch of Costcutter, although the shop retains the name. A sign of the multi-cultural nature of the area is that this block of businesses ends with an Indian restaurant, a Polish deli, an Ethiopian restaurant and a Chinese take-away.
The BP petrol station has a FoodStore convenience store attached, which was previously a Safeway. Like all Safeway stores that were taken over by BP, it retains the Safeway instore signage and shopping baskets, and the external signage uses a font and style that mimics Safeway's.
The last building on the north side of New Kent Road is St Saviour's and St Olave's Church of England School. The school opened in 1903 and is for girls aged 11 to 18.
