Councillor Tony Belton’s Latchmere July Newsletter (# 51)

June highlights

1. The latest update on Grant Road exit from Clapham Junction station and the temporary bus-stop opposite Battersea Park School is that:-
“South West Trains say that the Grant Road entrance is officially open until 1am, although it is thought that in practice it stays open until after the last train at 01.20. The original opening times are shown on the wall of Falcon Road railway bridge” and
“TfL say that they are obtaining a traffic management order for a new bus stop for Beechmore Road, and the road markings should be installed by 10th August, implying that the stop will be reopened around this time.

I may be away around 10th August but it would helpful if any reader of this email affected by this bus stop issue would let me know when it is up and running again. But how long does it take to get something, anything done!

2 As stated last month I did lead a Battersea (at least 50% in Latchmere) history walk on 1st June as part of the Wandsworth Heritage Festival. It went very well and was appreciated by all who went on it. My mention of it in the newsletter meant two of you asked about the next one. Well I need interest from just a few more people but I would be willing to do another, if you are interested, probably in October. It costs £10 per head, kids free, takes about 2 hours at a gentle stroll, and I guarantee that I will teach you something about the neighbourhood that you don’t know. Kids are welcome and, of course, free. We start on the corner of Albert Bridge Road and Battersea Park Road right opposite the Latchmere pub. If you are interested then please email me.

3 I mentioned that we, three councillors, were going to hold a councillors’ surgery in the Falcon Road mosque. We did on Friday, 7th June. It brought us into contact with many “hard cases” who perhaps we wouldn’t normally see at the standard surgeries. One major problem was/is language; particularly for one very elderly couple I had a great deal of difficulty understanding. Their children had got them out of civil war and horrendous barbarism in Mogadishu, Somalia, but they were clearly far too old to adjust to a completely different climate, culture and life. But for most, the problems were just like everyone else’s – mainly about housing.

4 Again there was not a lot to talk about in June’sPlanning Applications Committee on June 6th, though one application was interesting and especially perhaps for Latchmere residents and the area to the north of us. There was an application to build a bicycle and footbridge across the Thames from Lombard Road to Chelsea Harbour. This would run parallel and 50 yards upstream of the railway bridge (the Cremorne Bridge pictured here) and certainly be a fun route to Stamford Bridge! The real problem is though that it might cost £20 million and no one has promised any funding. But the applicants are quite bullish about getting some – watch this space.

5 On Tuesday 12th Wendy Speck and I had a coffee morning with theresidents of Holmleigh Court in Plough Road and on the 20th the residents of the Carey Gardens Pensioners’ Centre. On each occasion we spent a pleasant couple of hours discussing everything under the sun, including the refurbishment of Holmleigh Court’s windows, which are currently being worked on as you can see from this photograph.

6 On 16th June Battersea Labour Party members were at a barbecue to meet the 17 potential candidates to take on Jane Ellison at the next General Election. As you know I don’t talk political party matters in this newsletter but I thought it would be of general interest to everyone, including Jane who I know reads my words with keen interest (Hello Jane), to know that Battersea Labour Party will be making its choice in July. Candidates that many of you will know include Sheila Boswell, currently a Tooting councillor, Sam Heath, formerly a Latchmere councillor and GLA member, and Will Martindale, Martin Linton’s agent in the 2005 General Election.

7 The Housing Committee on the 19th June was packed with long and rather technical papers, which were largely of interest to those who love the minutiae of Committee life. But there were a couple of interesting changes. First the Council is trying to redress the balance in the housing waiting list between “need” and length of time on the list. This is not a simple question – ask yourself whether you think length of time on the waiting list is more important than needing a ground floor flat, say, because you can’t manage the stairs and there is no lift in your block. Well, for good or ill, we decided to give slightly more points than we have done previously for time on the list.

Secondly the Council is looking to increase the supply of private rented accommodation by helping to fund housing associations to build and provide properties to rent. Not sure exactly what I think about that. Before Mrs Thatcher more or less put a stop to building council houses it would have been unthinkable for Councils to pay others to do it instead of doing it themselves. However, “the times they are a-changing” and this long overdue initiative is better than doing nothing.

8 The main items of interest on the Strategic Planning and Transportation Committee on the 24th were:-
the adoption of a 20 mph speed zone in West Putney, which I suspect is going to lead to similar zones in the rest of the Borough with Little India being a prime candidate;
further added momentum to the now certain development of the Northern Line to Battersea Park – but not yet to Clapham Junction; and
the planned Crossrail2 plans to link Clapham Junction through to North East London via a high gauge underground rail-line – but that will only come in 2030!

9 I was chastised last month for not mentioning the one o’clock clubs, for which apologies. I should point out, however, that I am writing “my” monthly diary as a Latchmere councillor, in which Council events feature highly but I am not writing a complete authorised news coverage of the Council. However, I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that, thanks to the campaigning of many parents, mainly mums of course, with some little support from Labour councillors, much of the one o’clock club service has been saved – but unfortunately not the one in Battersea Park.

10 And finally I went to a friend’s garden party and thought I’d just put in this picture of me and my “grand-daughter” Scarlett.

My Programme for July

1. The Planning Applications Committee on the 3rd July has some interesting items on the agenda but that’s for next month.

2. I have an important Battersea Park School Governors meeting on the 8th of which again much more next month.

3. On the 10th July we have the final Council meeting before the summer break..

4. On 20th July Battersea Labour Party members will be at the York Gardens Library to choose our champion (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate or PCC as they are called in the trade) to oppose Jane Ellison in May, 2015. Do we need a female candidate to oppose a female MP? Or is it actually better to have a man? Or is this old fashioned gender politics and it doesn’t matter just as long as we have the best candidate – that is my position. Well by the end of the month we will know what the local Labour party has decided – Oh, and by the way, just in case you are captivated by the news stories about Falkirk let me assure you that it will be our members and not some outside party (trade union) who will decide.

5. Oh, and I might be away on hols by the end of the month!.

Have you heard of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Tavern?

This pub was popularly believed to have the longest pub name in Britain and it was here in Latchmere ward until quite recently. This picture of shows it as it is today, simply 43 Cabul Road, opposite the back entrance to the Sacred Heart Primary School. But it was a pub well into the 1970s and maybe much later than that.

You may well ask how did we get a pub with a name like that. Well as the expansion of the railways grew apace around about the middle of the nineteenth century, the towns of north and east Kent, places like Ramsgate and Margate, between Chatham and Dover, were concerned that they were being left out of the rail revolution that was linking Brighton, Eastbourne, Folkestone and Hastings to London. They got Parliamentary approval to start building in the late 50s, the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) company became a public entity in 1858, the link to Victoria came in 1860 and Wandsworth Town station was opened in 1861.

Why all the railways bound for the south west should terminate at Waterloo, in south east London, and all the trains for eastern Kent come into Victoria in the south west (though some do go to London Bridge) is I am sure a fascinating study. But in summary, many private railway companies competed for access to London and instead of the tracks being part of a nation-wide plan, they were a random chance of land deals and the availability of sites. The end result was known as the “Battersea Tangle”, a nineteenth century version of our modern Spaghetti Junction on the motorway system, just north of Birmingham.

Although not originally planned, it became necessary to build a junction at the heart of the “Battersea Tangle” and hence we have Battersea Junction, incorrectly known as Clapham Junction, the biggest junction railway station in Europe (it used to be the biggest and busiest in the world but I suspect some Tokyo stations now rival it).

Unsurprisingly Battersea became very much a railway town. Indeed the Chatham, as the LCDR was known, not only ran through Battersea but later developed their major engineering works at Longhedge, near the current Stewart’s Lane Depot. Most of the railway workers lived very close to their jobs and hence it was perhaps not surprising that when a new pub was opened in the late nineteenth century it called itself the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Tavern.