Waterloo Guided Walks
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WATERLOO GUIDED WALKS Waterloo is a historic and a fascinating neighbourhood, full of surprises, which can be discovered on these self-guided walks. Choose one or two routes through this historic part of South London, or add all four together to make one big circuit. Each section takes about 30 minutes without stops. WWW.WEAREWATERLOO.CO.UK @wearewaterloouk We are working with the Cross River Partnership through their Mayor’s Air Quality Funded programme Clean Air Better Business (CABB) to deliver air quality improvements and encourage active travel for workers, residents and visitors to the area. VICTORIAN WATERLOO Walk through the main iron gate (you are welcome to visit or attend a service) and skirt the church to the right, leaving by the gate hidden in the hedge right behind the building. Follow Secker Street left and right, In medieval times this area was desolate Lambeth Marsh, which only really came to life with the crossing Cornwall Road to Theed Street completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750. Then around a century later the first railways arrived, running above ground level on mighty brick viaducts. Start in Waterloo Station, under the four-faced clock suspended from the roof at the centre of the concourse, a popular meeting 4 spot for travellers for almost 80 years. Theed Street, Windmill Walk and Roupell Street This is one of London’s most atmospheric quarters, much fi lmed, with its nineteenth-century terraces, elegant streetlamps and steeply pitched roofs. The gallery on the corner of Theed Street was once a cello factory and the musical motif continues as you walk: the gate signed ‘The Warehouse’ is home to the London Festival Orchestra, which became independent in the 1980s and performs at major venues and festivals. Turn right on Windmill Walk and walk down to the King’s Arms pub, turning left on Roupell Street. Continue past a language centre and a clinic on your left, stopping by a cluster of large, yellowish brick apartment blocks set around a central courtyard. 5 Peabody Stamford Street Estate George Peabody, an American philanthropist horrifi ed by the plight of London’s poor, set out to build affordable housing with light, plumbing and space for children to play in. He opened his fi rst estate in 1864 in East London and the layout you see here is fairly typical. Today Peabody is a charitable housing trust with over 80,000 tenants in 27,000 homes across the capital. It also commissions innovative new architecture. 1 Waterloo Station At the end of Roupell Street turn right on Hatfi elds, an area once used to dry beaver pelts for hat making. Walk Britain’s largest railway station was completed in 1848, though most of what you see today dates to under the blue bridge and left into pedestrianised Isabella Street, bursting with plants and lined with cafes and the 1920s. Look on the wall above the mezzanine balcony at the letters ‘L&SWR’ (London & South bars tucked into the arches. Continue over a small road and up a walkway to a huge brick-and-tile railway arch. Western Railway) and note the many classical details: this style is Imperial Baroque and the mood is sombre but victorious after the Great War. 6 Old Blackfriars Station With your back to the departure boards walk left to the end of the station. Exit via the corner archway, between bronze Rolls of Honour for station personnel who fell in the Great War. Descend the steps and In the 1860s this was Blackfriars Bridge Station on the London, Chatham & Dover Railway that stop by the railings to look back at the entrance. linked the capital with the coast and Continent. Only the legs remain of the bridge that carried the trains over the river. The viaducts were built using Kent bricks and the labour of mainly Irish 2 ‘navvies’. You can see wartime shrapnel damage on the tiles. The colourful building across the road The Victory Arch is Palestra, which houses surface transport control centres for Transport for London (Tfl ) and the Metropolitan Police When the rebuilt station opened in 1922, this gate was dedicated to the 585 men who died in the theatres of war listed in the stone roundels. At the top of the arch, Victory’s head is fl anked by allegorical fi gures of War (1914) and Peace (1918), and far above sits Britannia with a fl aming torch Staying on this side, turn right and walk down to the crossroads, stopping on the corner to look diagonally across at a black iron lamppost topped by a dog licking a pot. It’s almost hidden among the traffi c lights, but in one hand and her trident in the other. this is where the young Charles Dickens wrote about passing an ironmonger with a dog-and-pot sign on his daily walk to work. Beside you is Southwark Underground Station. Walk down into the ticket hall. With your back to the arch cross the approach roads. Walk through the viaduct, bearing right as you exit, and use the crossings behind the bus shelters to reach the church visible across Waterloo Road (there’s a 7 view of the Shard to its right). Southwark Underground Station Look up at the circular ceiling and oculus of glass bricks, a nod to the 1930s designs of legendary 3 station architect Charles Holden. Southwark opened in 1999 as one of 11 new stations on the much- Church of St John the Evangelist, Waterloo delayed Jubilee Line Extension, its platforms running under the Victorian viaduct. It was designed by MJP Architects and in the lower concourse a 40-metre curved wall of 660 blue glass triangles This is a ‘Waterloo’ or ‘Million Pound’ Church built in the 1820s following Wellington’s defeat of illuminates the subterranean space. Napoleon, hence its grand columns and laurel wreaths. The Church, seizing on the nation’s jubilant mood to boost attendance fi gures, spent a million pounds on new churches. St John’s was restored At this point you can use the Jubilee Line to return to Waterloo Underground Station, or continue with after wartime bombing and its lovingly tended garden houses community-based Southbank Walk 2 in the next page. Mosaics and many examples of its work. THEATRICAL WATERLOO Turn left under the viaduct and walk down Cornwall Road back to The Cut. Stop on the pavement to admire Bankside had its Elizabethan playhouses, West End theatres boomed in Victorian and Edwardian the building opposite, with its fi ne portico and Royal coat of arms. London, but Waterloo and the South Bank hit their thespian stride in the politicised twentieth century and sustain a vibrant ‘Off West End’ quarter today. 11 Walk out of Southwark Underground Station onto The Cut and cross at the lights, turning right by The Ring pub – a remnant of Old Vic Theatre the area’s boxing history – and passing LESOCO and many shops and restaurants to reach a faded red awning at No. 51. This South London matriarch, revived by American actor Kevin Spacey in the 2000s, opened as the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1818. It was later the Royal Victoria Hall & Coffee Tavern (no alcohol) thanks to philanthropist Emma Cons, and in 1912 her niece Lilian Baylis transformed it into a dazzlingly successful theatre. Regulars included John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier helped found the National Theatre here and young Judi Dench trod the boards. The National moved to the river long ago (see Walk 4), but next door is its rehearsal space, the National Theatre Studios. The Old Vic’s basement Penny Bar opens until 1.00am midweek, 2.00am Thursday to Saturday. Cross Waterloo Road onto Baylis Road, an extension of The Cut. At the London Underground sign, cross Spur Road, turning right on its far side and walking up the hill and steps to Waterloo Station. At the top, follow the station wall left until you reach a fl ight of downward steps set into the pavement. Take these, turning right at the bottom along the graffi ti-covered subterranean street to the fi rst door on your right. 12 Leake Street and The Vaults Welcome to London’s nether regions: Leake Street is one of its most popular tagging spaces, pungent with spray paint, and The Vaults are creative space for ‘the bold, the fresh and the fearless’ in the creepy tunnels under the station. In the nineteenth century, corpses and coffi ns were stored beneath the station before their fi nal train journey to Brookwood Cemetery. From 2009-13 the space was feted as the cutting-edge Old Vic Tunnels. Now it hosts everything from pop-up opera to life drawing. 8 Calder Bookshop & Theatre Walk back past the steps and up the ramp ahead onto Lower Marsh. Turn right and then left at the end of the Leaf through the plays and enjoy the rare atmosphere of this theatrical bookshop, set up in 2002 by road, stopping opposite a red and pink terracotta building on the far side at No. 21, with an entry arch labelled ‘Westminster Bridge House.’ John Calder, who has been a publisher for over 65 years and still writes today. Peep through the red velvet curtain at the back to see the diminutive rehearsal space for hire. Around the corner are the English Touring Theatre and Charcoal Blue, theatrical and acoustic consultants, contributing to the 13 feel of a specialist quarter. The London Necropolis Railway From 1854, one train a day ran from Waterloo down to Brookwood, carrying coffi ns and relatives.