Battersea Matters the newsletter of the Battersea Society SPRING 2020 Battersea through your eyes Duncan Parish introduces the Battersea Society’s photography competition hat does How can you enter? Battersea The competition is open now and Wmean to will run until 20 April. Entries can be you? To celebrate the made via the Society’s website at Society’s 55th birthday, batterseasociety.org.uk/mybattersea. that is what we will be Entries should comprise a single asking our members, digital image and be taken in or our friends and those have some connection to Battersea. who live and work here Full terms and conditions are as we launch our first available on the website. ever photo competition, Prizes will be awarded in three on the theme My categories: Age 10 and under Battersea. (£100), 11 to 17 (£150) and 18 and The competition is open to all, over (£250) with a further prize of whether you have honed your eye today; others enjoy Battersea as a £250 for the overall winner. for years setting up those perfect thriving modern borough with new Finalists will receive a framed print Instagram shots, or you just like to and vibrant architecture. For many the of their photo to keep and winners will take photos on your phone. A simple appeal is in our diverse communities also receive a year’s membership of snap could put you in with a chance to and the huge range of cultural events the Battersea Society. win our top prize of £500 and see your on offer; while others love the freedom The Society’s chair, Jenny work feature in our spring exhibition and calm of our open spaces. Sheridan, will be joined on the hosted by the Royal College of Art. And not everything in Battersea judging panel by Hermione Wiltshire, is positive, we understand that. artist and senior tutor in photography Why a photo competition? Whatever your Battersea is we would at the Royal College of Art and Alan First, we wanted something that was like to see it. Burles, photographer, long time accessible to all. Fact: more photos They say a picture paints a Battersea resident and winner of are taken every two minutes than over thousand words and we hope that the 2018 Leica Street Photography the whole of the nineteenth century. seeing people’s photos will give International Award. It is estimated that over 1.2 trillion us a sense of what the borough We are also hugely grateful to the photos were taken in 2017. And over really feels like to those who live Royal College of Art who have agreed 1.8 billion photos are uploaded on and work here. By understanding to exhibit the finalists in each category Facebook, Instagram and other sites more about your Battersea we can at their Dyson Gallery on Battersea every single day. better shape the Society’s work as Bridge Road. Today most people both young we head towards our 60th birthday. The overall winner of the and old carry a smartphone around competition will be announced at Third, we hope it will help everyone with them. We hope that means the opening of our ‘My Battersea’ see a bit of Battersea they might as many people as possible exhibition which will be open to the not have looked at before. The will take the chance to enter. public from 21 to 24 May with a American photographer, Elliott private view for Battersea Society Second, we want to explore what Erwitt, said, ‘to me, photography members on the 20th. Battersea means to those who live is an art of observation. It’s about The competition is open to and work here. finding something interesting in an members and the general public alike, Running the Society’s social media ordinary place’. Far be it for us to so do please encourage your friends, pages over the last year I’ve noticed call Battersea an ordinary place, but family and colleagues to take part. We that Battersea means many different we do believe that even those of us would love to give the judges a real things to different people. Some who have lived here all our lives can challenge! Facebook groups revel in our rich find something new in even familiar Duncan Parish is a trustee of the heritage, still visible in our streetscape places if we just look hard enough. Battersea Society Don’t forget to visit our website: batterseasociety.org.uk for regular updates on Battersea Society news, events and planning matters From the editor former self with, among a few street Amazon, where they were cheaper. food stalls, just one remaining fruit It was no longer possible to run Twenty and vegetable stall. And now one of the business at a loss. The shop years ago, the last independent specialist shops has closed. No more keyboards to Northcote has closed. hire or saxophone reeds to buy, no Road had more quarter-size guitars for budding a small but Expertise musicians or repairs for violinists. No still solid The Northcote Music Shop ended its more in-depth advice on the best remnant of life not, as in previous times, because instrument to suit an enthusiastic its flourishing of a rent increase or high business child. There’s another boarded up street market. rates, but because of the internet. space on the high street. The street was known for its variety of Shoppers would come in, make Amazon pays £1.2 million tax in food and other independent shops. A use of the owner’s expertise (he is a the UK on £2,400 million revenue. professional musician), take photos of decade later, many of the Italian and Jenny Sheridan the instruments they intended to buy, other delis had closed but several [email protected] and then calmly inform the owner independent shops remained. Now 020 7350 2749 the street market is a shadow of its that they were going to buy them on Man on the Battersea Bus are all named after women from history who lived or worked near Mike Roden looks back to a simpler world, and forward to who Tideway’s construction sites, and knows what… Rachel is working tirelessly under our stretch of the river. If you know who the original Rachel was, please let me ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll see my breath visible in the air. As know. begin….’ a kid I often used to walk to school Anyway, it demonstrates that things This well-known phrase first turned pretending to blow out smoke from can get better, and while efforts to up at 1.45pm on 16 January 1950 at one of those sweet cigarettes with the avoid the worst effects of climate the beginning of the first appearance red tipped end you could buy in those change are lacklustre, governments of Listen with Mother on the BBC days. and individuals are starting to wake up Light Programme. It was apparently One of the regular Listen with and take some action. an ad-lib by the presenter and story- Mother songs was Here We Go As a household we try to do reader Julia Lang. Round the Mulberry Bush with the our bit by only travelling on public The sharp-eyed among you last line of each verse – ‘On a cold transport, recycling everything we will have noticed that it’s just over and frosty morning’. As I walked can, and (mindful of the methane seventy years since the programme briskly along I found produced every time a cow aimed at ‘Mothers and children at myself singing it burps) reducing our meat home’ had its first outing. in my head. As consumption. Commerce the earth heats has leapt on that Wireless up how much bandwagon, bringing us The memory conjures up an idealised longer will we have Gregg’s sausage roll, and black and white image of children frosty mornings, I that burger oozing with listening rapt in front of the wireless, wonder? beetroot blood (both of mother busy in the kitchen, and the For much of the which had the excellent man of the house out at work. At 19th and 20th centuries side effect of upsetting Piers its peak, it pulled in over a million there were great advances in Morgan). By themselves they’re listeners, me among them. But my science and engineering. Hopefully no solution of course, but we must daughters never listened to it, and we won’t return to the days of the suppose that every little helps. I’m sure my grandchildren wouldn’t Great Stink with the Thames an open I ought to point out that the earliest abandon their screens for it. By the sewer. Joseph Bazalgette’s massive recorded use of that phrase predates seventies a BBC survey found that sewer improvements held the tide Tesco’s slogan by around 400 years. I half the audience consisted of long back (so to speak) for a very long don’t know if my mum knew that but distance lorry drivers. Clearly the time, and now the Tideway Tunnel her version was ‘Every little helps, as show’s days were numbered, and it project aims to cope with London’s the little boy said as he…’ To avoid was axed in 1982. increasing output of sewage. Four causing offence, I’ll merely state that So why, you ask yourselves, am I giant tunnel-boring machines have the child was standing by the sea at telling you all this? This year on a few already completed almost 9km of the the time.