There were perhaps a million people living in ‘England’ in 1086, compared with maybe 52 million today. Of that one million in 1086, about one in ten was a slave. In an article for The Vauxhall Society’s online local history archive, the historian Keith Bailey pulls together the tantalisingly little that we know about slavery in ‘Brixton’ – that is, ‘the Brixton Hundred’, in 1086 an administrative unit of NE Surrey.
What chance would an orchard have in today’s Vauxhall Park? We may have a chance to find out. The Friends of Vauxhall Park, a TVS affiliate, are talking to the London Orchard Project about the planting a dozen fruit trees – local apple, as well as greengage, plum, damson and pear – on the ‘mound’, the former dog toilet in the Lawn Lane side of the playground. The project needs volunteers to plant and/or water. Call 07901 855887 Friends...
Thursday 24 (3-8pm) and Friday 25 November (8am-6pm). Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea (VNEB) redevelopments exhibition and information Market Towers1 Nine Elms LaneLondon SW8 5NQ
Friends of Tate South Lambeth Library has invited fellow campaigners and local interest groups – whatever their cause to an informal presentation at Tate South Lambeth Library at which Alasdair Mackenzie from the Parliamentary Outreach Team will explain how campaigners – as groups or as individuals – can use Parliament to further their objectives. The session will take place on Monday 12 December at 7pm. After a brief introduction on how Parliament operates, he will focus on those aspects...
Dr Iain Boulton, Parks Projects Officer (Communities & Education) at Lambeth Council has flagged up a new grant source, known as Grimple’s Green Grants, which was launched in August 2010 by The Green Insurance Company, which encourages green behaviour on our roads through green insurance policies. The Green Grants gives them an opportunity to extend this into communities across the UK. They are looking for green projects across the UK that they can fund and support, and have up...
Digital Tuesdays & The Royal College of Art Design Interactions Department present Propositions For A Future Vauxhall - a presentation by the students of the recent design philanthropy project. Tuesday 22 November 2011 6.30pm-9.00pm Tate South Lambeth Library180 South Lambeth RoadLondon SW8 1QP Exhibition & Demonstrations 6.30pm Presentations 7.15pm Discussion 8.15pm Admittance free – everyone welcome www.digitaltuesdays.co.uk www.interaction.rca.ac.uk
Pedestrians are forced into the road Ian Cameron and his camera have complained to your Vauxhall MP, Kate Hoey, about how little room the developer St George is allowing pedestrians during construction of the 50-storey skyscraper ‘The Tower – One St George Wharf’, where Nine Elms Lane meets the Wandsworth Road, the Vauxhall bus station – and the offices of Lambeth Council’s planning department. The strip of pavement/kerb which pedestrians are now forced to use is ‘tiny’ – 17...
Much More of This, Old Boy…? by Peter Paterson, is the best memoir of a life in print journalism I have read since H. L. Mencken’s rollicking Newspaper Days (1941). Mencken, however, wrote of the reporter’s life in the Baltimore of the early 1900s. Paterson looks back on the Fleet Street of only yesterday. His title refers to the words engraved forever on any old hack’s heart, if he or she has one. Before email (i.e. yesterday), a reporter...
The long-awaited report of the ‘Libraries Commission’ that Lambeth Council set up under its ‘Cabinet member for Culture, Sport and the 2012 Games’ is now published. As the council’s own website says, Lambeth has the lowest usage, highest cost per visit and lowest levels of user satisfaction of any London borough. The commission’s report is tucked away on the council website in the agenda papers for the 21 November council meeting. A key commission recommendation? The council should do...
