Battersea Longhedge

Post to the north Battersea power, dogs

Post to the south Clapham Common

Post to the east Battersea Wandsworth Road

Alexandra Avenue
Facade of the Spiers and Pond laundry rebuilt here as part of the new block of flats

Alfreda Street
This was Alfred Street before the Second World War. Post war small houses were placed by local authority housing.
Connor Court. This has 120  flats on 11 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970

Austin Road
This street was once a farm track but was Austins Road by 1851 after which it was developed with small houses. It was heavily bombed in the Second World War. It became part of Battersea Council’s Battersea Park Estate from the 1950s.  Austin Street was a late part of the scheme with blocks Atkinson and Telscombe Houses added by M.J.Gleeson in 1959
Shaftesbury Christian Centre.  The Shaftesbury Society is now called Liveability but the organisation has been working in Battersea since the mid 19th. The building dates from 1964 when it was the Welcome Mission Centre.  Wandsworth Food Bank runs from here and they also have a Spanish speaking church section. Some of the building is used for social events.
York Court Care Home. This private facility replaces the local authority owned Longhedge Close Care Home
Park House. This is the tower block on the corner which was built in 1963 as Jay House, named after local Labour MP Douglas Jay and in a lightweight concrete construction. It was sold off and renamed by Wandsworth Council in 1984.
59 Running Horse. This was a beer house replaced by housing in the 1960s
Granatt Chemical and Engineering Co, This company was in the street until the late 1950s. They were barrel finishers.

Battersea Park Road
147 Nine Elms Police Station. This was built in 1925 and is now in other use.
149 Newton ‘Prep’ School. This is a co-educational fee paying private ‘prep’ school. It is in the buildings of Raywood Street School built by the London County Council in 1926. This was a replacement for a London School Board School – free for all London children, built in 1881–2 and rebuilt because of noise issues. It was later used as an annexe to Battersea Secondary School and later was part of Clapham College
151-153 The Three Bridges built in 1868. This is now closed. It was previously The Rock House and later the Havelock Arms,
169 Masons Arms. Built in 1863 with a small statue of a mason  right up near the roof.
Battersea Park Station. This station lies between Victoria and Clapham Junction on Southern Rail Brighton Lane  and from Wandsworth Road on London Overground South London Line (only one train a day).   It is actually at the junction of the South London Line and the Brighton Main Line.  It was opened in 1867 and called York Road. .There is a complex history of stations in the area all with very similar names. These include an 1860 station at the end of Grosvenor Bridge and a station slightly to the east of the current station opened in 1867 by The London Brighton and South Coast Railway.  The station has a grand polychrome brick Venetian Gothic facade but Access to the platforms is via steep wooden staircases, Platform 1 is made entirely of wood and is not use.  A timber passageway runs the whole length of the station carried on timber support and truss girders. The façade and the booking hall were restored in 1986. The 1867 platform staircases and the ironwork survive.
Railway bridges. The road passes under a series of overbridges which carry lines in and out of Victoria and some running to depots and goods areas,
32 Life Tabernacle United Pentecostal church. This was originally the lecture hall of Battersea Park Tabernacle, designed and built in 1869-70 by builder William Higgs of Lambeth.  Originally a church was built in front of it in 1883-84.  This was demolished in the 1970s and it is now the car park.
181 Paya and Horse.  Pub with Serbian food. This was previously called The Chelsea Reach. It was built as an estate pub.
231 The Magic Garden. This was previously The Eagle and dates from at least the 1870s.
Kingsway Square. Flats on the site of what was Battersea Polytechnic converted in 2006 by the St, James Group.
Battersea Polytechnic., This was the first purpose built London polytechnic designed by E. W. Mountford in 1892–4 following a competition. Expanding the polytechnic movement was an objective of the Charity Commission, and South London was then weak in facilities for training artisans, was a focus. It opened in 1894 sited on part of the gardens of Albert Palace. Inside separate activities were grouped and linked by long corridors, and there was a gymnasium, swimming bath and hall as well as a smaller women’s gymnasium. There were ten statues of worthy subjects along the front and lots of putti in the entrance hall. The polytechnic was managed by the London County Council and soon expanded in technical subjects while losing some of its recreational facilities. There were other later extensions. In 1956 it was designated a ‘college of advanced technology’ and in 1962 it transferred to Ministry of Education from the London County Council. In 1962it was decided to abandon Battersea for Guildford which led to the college becoming the University of Surrey in 1966.
Library. This was an addition to the Polytechnic in 1909–10. It was a donation by Edwin Tate, Sir Henry’s son. It was designed by F. Dare Clapham and was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury with John Burns, then a cabinet minister. Stained glass windows by Shrigley & Hunt featured Literature. It is now an art gallery
Westminster Technical College. The Polytechnic buildings were taken over and reconfigured by the Greater London Council architects in 1973–7.It was sold in 2005 to St James Homes, part of the Berkeley Group
278 Tonicos. This was The Grove Pub which was built as an estate pub
309 Battersea Park Library. Local Council library
Park Court., This has 109 flats on 13 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constrrcted by Laing 1970
317 The Cricketers. This pub was later called the Halo Bar. It  has since been demolished.
339 Lost & Co. this was The Lost Angel. Before 2009 this was the Prince of Wales Pub which dated from the 1870s.
140 this was the site of an early steam laundry from 1879 for the caterers and hoteliers Spiers & Pond. It catered primarily for their own establishments, but also took in linen from the local area. It was ckosed after the Second World War and became laborarory. It was demolished in 2006 and redeveloped for housing called. ‘The Quadrangle’.
142 This was Propert’s blacking factory. They moved here from South Audley Street in the 1870s. The building was designed by George Ashby Lean and it has a two-storey Gothic stock-brick façade. Propert’s continued here until the Second World War.
Mandeville Close. This is a conversion of the Proberts blacking factory into offices.
154 Old Imperial Laundry. This was the London & Provincial Steam Laundry Company Ltd said to be the largest laundry of its type in the world when built in 1880  by Scrivener & Co. to the designs of Ernest Turne. A 400ft-deep well in the drying and bleaching yard provided a 15,000 gallons a day. It was taken over in 1966 by the Marie Blanche Laundry Company. The wors closed in 1983, and the buildings converted to offices for arts and design businesses.
St Saviour’s. The church was built in 1870-and designed by C. Robins and G. R. Roper.  The parish was created from part of the old Christ Church Parish. The vicarage house was built in 1880. In the 1980's the church was converted to provide meeting rooms and a smaller church.

Bewick Street
Victorian Heights. Flats in the buildings of what was Tennyson Street School. The original three-storey school was built in 1875–7, facing Bewick Street with a date plaque on the facade. It was designed by E. R. Robson but in the 1890s it was partly rebuilt and new blocs added including a two-storey special school. the school closed in 1968, when the main building became the the Battersea Studios, Inner London Education Authority’s television centre. This continued until 1999 when the buildings were to housing.

Birley Street
This is a street on the Shaftesbury Estate built by the Artisans, Labourers and General Dwellings Company, a housing co-operative founded in 1867 by William Austin. This was their first estate completed between 1873 and 1877.  Most properties on the estate are now managed by the Peabody Trust.

Broughton Street
Part of Park Town Estate Plain grey brick terraces of the 1860s remain in the main kite-shaped area of the estate around the ornament, of a lushly gross kind
Ridley Hall, Evangelical Christian Church. Homily on the building, originally built in 1884 and rebuilt in 1977 with minister’s house attached.
1a-1e King’s Bread and Biscuit Company’s works of 1882–3. It later became the Army and Navy Co-operative Bread Company, renamed the A1 Bread Company and added to in 1888. This site is now a series of trading units although one very large unit remains.
29 London Stone Business Estate. Trading units in the space between railway lines, but with a postal address in Broughton Street. An gap between houses leads under a rail line and into the estate. Subsequent development was by the British Rail Property Board in the 1980s.
Cayless Brothers Tower Works. Cayless’s wooden stairs, ladders and related items are now collectors’ pieces. A ladder factory is shown in the 1950s on a site to the north of the street which may have been Cayless.

Charlotte Despard Avenue
Youngs Court. Built as part of the Doddington Estate with 12 foors and 110 flats. Built 1970 by Laing
St Georges House. This has 54 flats on 10 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970
Cromwell House. This has 54 flats on 10 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970
Arthur Court. This has 110 flats on 12 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970

Culvert Place
Long road between rail lines, trading and industrial units. Some of them modern.
Parkside Industrial Estate

Culvert Road
The road is on the line of an old lane through fields.
Wilditch Estate. Built under the London Borough of Wansdworth but designed by its predecessor Battersea Council.
Parkfields Industrial Estate. Developed after 1977 on the site of the Battersea Council depot.
Battersea Vestry Depot. This was between the railway lines and had originally been leased under Wandsworth Board of Works in 1861. Here was sited from the 1880s a 12 cell rubbish destructor supplied by Manlove, Alliott & Co. of Nottingham, which was still burning 20,000 tons of Battersea’s domestic and trade refuse 25 years later. The resulting clinker was used for road making with a hydraulic paving flag-making machine by Musker of Liverpool, which could turn out 600 yards weekly of flags faced with granite chips. At first the site had consisted of stables and workshops in huts and railway arches as well as a large chimney for the destructor.  It was also a base for the Council’s Direct Works section. It closed in 1977
103 The Flag Pub. This was originally called The British Flag. It was built in the late 1930s by Culpin & Son. It has also been called Careys.
105 Culvert Court. Workshops and storage units.
Tunnel. This very narrow and restricted tunnel takes the road under the railway to the Parkfields Industrial Estate.

Dagnell Street
Chesterton Primary School. The school was originally a Board School in Forfar Road.en

Doddington Road
Doddington Estate. This was built as local authority housing in the 1960s, 1967-71 by Emberton, Frank & Tardrew using the Jespersen system.  It was designed by the Metropolitan Borough of Battersea but built by the London Borough of Wandsworth.  Generally it has been seen as a disaster. The district heating scheme was terrible and didn’t work.  There was a lot of crime and vandalism.  Later, under the Tories, a lot of the flats were sold off, and later there were changes and renovation of the flats and the common areas.

Dunston Road
66a this is the old school keeper’s house for John  Burns School with a preserved ‘girls’ entrance beside it.

Forfar Road
Chesterton School. This London School Board building became the Brixton School of Building when Chesterton School moved out. The Brixton School of Building was founded in 1904 and known as the London County Council School of Building until 1943. In 1970 it became part of South Bank University.  The buildings are now flats.

Francis Chichester Way
Named for the yachtsman who became the first man to sail round the world alone.
Landseer House. This has 54 flats on 10 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970
Kennard House. This has 62 flats on 10 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970

Gladstone Terrace
Elm Farm. This was a City Farm Built by local people in 1979 on half an acre of land here, It had sheep, goats, pigs, ducks and chickens and Mary the cow.  Disabled children could ride William the donkey. Volunteers built stables and a wildlife pond. Wandsworth Council evicted the farm so that the site could be used for a car parj for the adjacent private ‘prep’ school. Debts from the resulting court case were attached to one person who has had to clear them personally.
Foundry. By 1916 there was a foundry at the end of the street, later shown as the Globe Motor Factory
.
Heath Road
117-119 Heathbrook Community Hall. This site was originally a parish hall, and before that, in the late 19th, it was a school.
Kingdom Hall, Jehovah’s Witnesses

Holden Street
Holden Street School. This was built by the School Board 1875–7. It later became known as Shaftesbury Park School. It was built as the main primary school on the Shaftesbury Park estate. It was built to Robson’s three-storey designs and could take 1,104 children. It was reconfigured in 1901 by T. J. Bailey. At first Infants were on the ground floor, Junior Girls in the middle and Junior Boys on the top floor and there were three Headteachers. Eventually the two junior schools merged but there were separate infant and junior schools until l985 when the school became an Infant and Junior Mixed Primary school under one Headteacher.
35a schoolkeeper’s house from 1888.

Ingate Place
Industrial area once called Milford Estate. Although the area has been dominated by Hamptons and their depository  there have been, and are, numerous other industries located here.
Milford Estate – belonged to the builders J. M. Macey & Son and developed from 1878. Macey undertook major construction projects here and other parts of London and had offices in central London.
Hampton’s Depository. The Hampton family had a furniture shop in the west end from the early 19th. They expanded in the 20th and had a range of high end customers. They had a depository in Ingate Pace and in 1926 opened a factory nearby, as Milford Works. The warehouse is curved to follow the railway track and was built in 1900–3 to designs by Robert L. Hesketh and Walter Stokes. In red brick and terracotta. Inside  ferro-concrete columns and floors by L. G. Mouchel & Partners, licensee of the Hennebique patents. Hamptons was closed in 1956.
Decca . They moved into  the Hamptons site and stayed until 1980. Special Products Division Decca Radio and Television 1964 -1978
Safestore. Hampton’s depository is now a secure storage unit.
Workshops. Built for Hamptons between 1924 and 1955. These are now largely individual units for various businesses.
South London Tramways Company depot. This opened in 1881 and was taken over by the London County Council in 1902. It was a depot for horse trams and consisted of timber sheds and stables.
38 Setpoint.  Rolling mill instrumentation. This company was present in the early 1970s but moved to larger premises in Wales in 1977
Streamline Filters Ltd. In the 1940s this was the Hele Shaw works.
British Coated Sheets. Methods of electrogalvanising of steel sheet and strip was developed here by T.Tapp. The firm’s later works was at Ellesmere Port.
Janus Works. This was the works of Archibald Smith who also had a site in Leicester Square in 1868. They were hydraulic and general engineers The Battersea factory was built in 1880 as their manufactures expanded.  In the 1880s they made Hydraulic Passenger Lifts which included a Duplex Pump. One of their lifts was used in the Tower of London.  In 1909 the works were moved to Northampton.
4 this is an entrance to a yard where a number of units are still in place.- this includes Specturm Radio. In the 1950s the path led to an engineering works, a plating works and a car battery factory.

Lockington Road
St Marys Roman Catholic Primary School. A low-rise conventional primary school built to designs by Tomei & Mackley in 1971–2, and since extended. The school is now in federation with another local catholic school and is currently being rebuilt,

Montefiore Street
Montefiore Gardens, This was laid out at the east side of the Parktown Estate on a bombsite which was cleared of prefabs and laid out as gardens. A social services day nursery was built in one quarter which has since been sold and houses built.

Park Town
This was built from 1865 onwards, its street layout planned by Philip Flower and James Thomas Knowles. The land had belonged to Longhedge Farm – a name derived from its northern boundary hedge along what is now Battersea Park Road. Success was limited by the number of railway lines.

Peardon Street
Tun Yard. Trading and office units in what was the rear yard of the Plough Brewery which was based in Wandsworth Road (in the square to the south)

Prairie Street
Queen’s Theatre. Said to be “short-lived local attraction between 1886 and 1896” it does however still appear on maps of the 1920s.

Prince of Wales Drive
Albert Palace. In May 1885 the Albert Palace was built here e main building fronted Prince of Wales Road and overlooking the lake was of glass with an iron frame. The south side, along what is now Lurline Gardens, was built of brick, faced with Bath stone and Portland stone which had come from the old Law Courts at Westminster, demolished in 1883.  It was built for the Dublin Exhibition of 1872, and re-erected here. Albert Palace was a venue for music, and there was also a picture gallery. It was not a success and in 1886 it changed hands and was demolished in 1894.

Queenstown Road
This road leads to Chelsea Bridge after first crossing Prince of Wales Drive at Queen's Circus and Battersea Par Road.. The name refers to Queen Victoria. Developers were members of a committee of Clapham residents who successfully lobbied for this new road link from Clapham to Battersea Park, and across the river via Chelsea Bridge, built in 1858. The road was financed by the development of the land for housing.  Most of the area had previously been the fields of Longhedge Farm.
174-176 Mineral Water Factory. This was between the railway lines and was built around 1870 as a mineral-water factory for the Pure Water Company Ltd. Until the early 21st the tiled entrance to this company was still extant in Queenstown Road with tiled lettering advertising the Pure Water Co.
220–220  Two red brick structures built in 1889–90 as factories and warehousing by designed by Thomas Massa for builders Holloway Brothers as Queens Road Works for R. Z. Bloomfield & Company, army contractors and outfitters. Penthouse offices, roof gardens, and a connecting high-level bridge, were added in 1988
233–235 this is the remains of the Victoria Works of the Holloway Brothers who were 19th building contractors
Railway bridge – the first bridge south from Battersea Par Road carries Southern trains from Victoria heading through Clapham Junction towards South London, Surrey and the Sussex coast.
Queenstown Road Station.  This opened in 1877 and lies between Clapham Junction and Vauxhall stations on South Western Rail. It was originally opened by the London and South Western Railway and was called as Queen's Road (Battersea). This name still appears over the entrance. A number of other stations in the London area have been called ‘Queens Road’ and it was later renamed Queenstown Road (Battersea) by British Rail.  It was built when approach lines to Waterloo were widened and originally handled trains of both the L.S.W.R's Windsor line services and the L.N.W.R's Willesden service. A third platform and new Booking Hall were added in 1909. This building is in stock brick with a red glazed street front and the Booking Office with ticket windows dates from 1909 and is now painted in the colours of the Southern Railway. The island platform dates from 1877 and is a timber framed structure, with decorative cast iron brackets. When built this was the 'Up Windsor' platform. A third platform remains but is disused.
Railway bridge – the second bridge going south from Battersea Park road carries the main line out of Waterloo, used by South West Trains
255-259 furniture shop in what may have been an old railway building
Long Hedge House. In 1861 the London Chatham and Dover Railway bought land from Long Hedge Farm which include the farmhouse.. This became staff housing for the railway and survived until the 1960s. This was near the junction with Silverthorne Road.
166 The Victoria. This was the Victoria Hotel.
St.Philip. Built in 1870 designed and by Knowles Jun. In the centre of the Estate.  Ragstone, with a short tower with belfry windows and pinnacles. It is now an Ethiopian Orthodox Church – Saint Mary of Debre Tsion

Railway
The square includes a tangle of rail lines and what was a major railway depot. There are two sets of lines – most straightforwardly the east/west lines coming in and out of Waterloo. More complicated are a set of lines coming out of Victoria and passing through several stations – only two of which are still extant in this square -and passing through a number of junctions, some lines heading south and others turning to head west. The vast majority of this layout dates from the mid-19th built by individual railway companies.  These lines also effectively divide the area covered in this square into two halves.
Longhenge Depot. This locomotive and carriage works built by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway  to serve their London terminus at Victoria. In 1860 the company bought land which had been part of the Long Hedge farm and alongside the London and South Western Railway main line. By 1862 there was an erecting shop for twelve locomotives, and a running shed for 26 locomotives. This was a a semi-roundhouse running shed and by 1875/6 it had with 40 tracks around the central turntable, although only half were under cover. Soon after a carriage works was added and other extensions followed. The works was initially mainly used for repair works but from 1869 locomotives were built there. But this work was later moved to Ashford and by 1911 only light repairs were undertaken here. Most of the buildings of Longhedge works were demolished in 1957 to make way for a new depot for servicing electric trains. The site is now partly occupied by the Stewarts Lane Traction Maintenance Depot.
Stewarts Lane Traction Maintenance Depot. This large site is mainly in the square to the east although it includes the eastern areas of the Longhedge works. Following the end of steam traction in the early 1960s it was converted into a Traction Maintenance Depot which is currently operated by DB Schenker. By the 1880s it was generally referred to as Battersea or Longhedge Works although it was officially called Stewarts Lane. Today the depot is used for the Gatwick Express, the Venice Simplon Orient Express and one steam locomotive which operates the from London Victoria.

Rowditch Lane
This appears to have been called Sheepcote Lane until the 1970s.

Silverthorne Road
This road follows the long wall of the Longhedge/Stewarts Lane railway depot on its east side. At its southern end it follows the long wall of the Plough Brewery, based in Wandsworth Road (in the square to the south), on its west side.

St. Philip Square
Part of Park Town Estate.  Plain terraces of the 1860s are a little grander here than in the surrounding streets. However it failed to attract middle class residents. The houses have been converted to flats since the 1890s.
1 was the original vicarage
18 this was set up as a tenant’s club in 1879

St. Philip Street
Part of Park Town Estate

Stanley Grove
Part of Park Town Estate

Strasburg Avenue
Turpin House. Built as part of the Doddington Estate with 86 flats on 13 floors.  Constructed by Laing 1970.
Russell Court. This has 21 flats on 6 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970
Palmerston House. This has 54 flats on 10 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970
Lucas Court. This has 110 flats on 13 floors. It was built as part of the Doddington Estate constructed by Laing 1970

Warriner Gardens
Rear wall of the Spiers amd Pond laundry rebuilt here as part of the new block of flats
Proberts factory buildings here is now used by a private school.

Wickersley Road
Battersea Scout Centre. This was built in 1974 and is the headquarters of scouting in Battersea. It is also hired to a number of other community organisations.

Wycliffe Road,
St Bartholomew’s Church. This is now St Nektarios’s Greek Orthodox Church. It was built in 1900 by G. H. Fellowes Prynne in stock brick. It originally lay between two schools -  Basnett Road and Wycliffe Special Schools.
John Burns Primary School. This School is named for the great John Burns,the local MP who became the first Labour and first working class Cabinet Minister. It was originally is on the site of Basnett Road School which was a three-decker school London School Board School and which was named for John Burns. The original building were demolished  in the early 1970s by the Inner London Education Authoirty and replaced  by a MACE system school.   This  proved to have construction problems and once major repairs were needed to the roof it was demolished  in 1995. The school itself had by then taken over the buildings of Wycliffe Special School, where they remain.
Wycliiffe Special School.  This opened in 1905 and was for boys and run in connection with Basnett Road School which was nearby. In the early 1960s the London County Council replaced the original buildings with a mixed school, undertaken by the Greater London Council’s Architect’s Department . It is a flat-roofed two storey building in which primary and secondary children were in separate areas. In 1993 Wycliffe Special School was closed and the premises used by John Burns School.

Sources
Bartlett School. Survey of London. Battersea. Website
Field. Place Names of London 
Grace’s Guide. Web site
Historic England. Web site
Jackson. London’s Termini
London Borough of Lambeth. Web site
London Borough of Wandsworth. Web site
London Parks and Gardens. Online. Web site
London Railway Record
London Reconnections. Web site
Masons Arms. Web site
National Archive. Web site
Newton Prep School. Web site
Pub History. Web site
Shaftesbury Park School. Web site
Skyscraper News. Web site
Wikipedia. As appropriate