Clapham Park

Clapham Park is an area in the Borough of Lambeth in London, to the south of central Clapham and west of Brixton.

The original Clapham Park estate was a speculative development by Thomas Cubitt, who bought 229 acres (0.93 km²) of Bleak Hall Farm in 1825, and marked out plots for building around the new broad, tree-lined streets of Kings Avenue, Clarence Avenue, Poynders Road and Atkins Road. It was planned to consist of extremely large detached houses in Cubitt's characteristic Italianate villa style, set in extensive grounds.

However, the ambitions of the developer were never fulfilled, and some plots remained undeveloped at the outbreak of World War I. Cubitt's own residence, Lincoln House, with its vast grounds, was demolished in 1905.

Rodenhurst Road, a street of large double-fronted semi-detached Edwardian houses was laid out on the site of Lincoln House. British statesman Arthur Henderson once lived at number 13 and there is a Blue Plaque on the house indicating this. Because of its leafy layout, Rodenhurst Road is often erroneously assumed to have been an original part of Cubitt's layout. The undivided properties remain among the most expensive in Lambeth.

Severance of the estate

From the 1920s, some of the undeveloped plots on the southern part of the estate were developed with medium-density terraced and semi-detached houses for sale. With the adoption of Poynders Road as the arterial "South Circular" road, this area is now severed from the area further north by traffic, and not generally referred to as part of Clapham Park. The site of one Cubitt villa was donated to the then Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth as a park, and is now known as Agnes Riley Gardens after its benefactor and now incorporates a nursery called Squirrels.

The Clapham Park Estate

The area immediately to the east of the estate had been developed by the London County Council (LCC) in the 1920s as council housing, mostly in characteristic blocks of neo-Georgian brick flats. Following World War II most of the Cubitt houses were demolished and the northern part of the original area was redeveloped by the LCC to a very different Modern Movement style. Most buildings are set on an arbitrary diagonal axis to the existing street line, and visitors to this part of the estate get easily lost. On completion of the scheme by the Greater London Council, the Clapham Park Estate became the largest single council estate within the new London Borough of Lambeth.

Lambeth Council also built flats west of Clarence Avenue, including three tower blocks (Barnsbury, Belgravia and Bloomsbury houses) commemorating Cubitt's more successful developments.

The Clapham Park Estate has had a concentration of social problems, but these were not recognised statistically while the estate was divided between three local government wards. The estate had very few community facilities, and this was exacerbated by Lambeth's closure of the branch library in 2000. The journalist and commentator Polly Toynbee lived in a "hard-to-let" flat on the estate while researching her 2003 book Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain

Clapham Park was selected as a pilot site for New Deal for Communities, which has brought some new education, training, health and community safety projects to the estate. Better management of Lambeth's housing has also alleviated some of the worst elements of physical disrepair of the estate. In 2005, tenants of the estate voted for a "stock transfer" to a housing association, and ownership and management of their homes transferred from the London Borough of Lambeth to Clapham Park Homes, the new community-led housing association, on 27 June 2006. The transfer is closely linked to ambitious and controversial plans for large-scale redevelopment of the estate, which would increase the number of homes, substantially increase housing density and diversify tenure.

Abbeville Village

From the 1880s the area to the west of Cubitt's land holdings between Clapham Common Southside and the site of Lincoln House was developed to more conventional housing designs. This area borrowed the name of Clapham Park, presumably because of its original social cachet, and its streets have predominantly remained in owner occupation. The grid of late Victorian era streets around Abbeville Road is frequently referred to (particularly by estate agents) as Abbeville Village, although many of the independent local shops that gave the area a distinct character until the 1990s have made way for restaurants, cafes and bars, as the street has become the centre of local night life for the professional middle classes, and shop rentals have increased considerably.

External links

• Clapham Park Project

Coordinates: 51°27′14″N 0°08′08″W / 51.45389°N 0.13556°W / 51.45389; -0.13556