Councillor Tony Belton’s Battersea, September 2025, Newsletter (# 195)
- OK, I know some of you think I can be a bit verbose; you are probably right. So, this month’s newsletter is going to be brief. Twenty odd years ago, I started writing a history of the London Borough of Wandsworth. In August I have been trying to finish it! I have done nothing else; I didn’t even attend those fun events in the Park – great shame. And Penny and I are going to spend the first two weeks of September editing it. Then it will just be a matter of getting it published; and what a relief that will be.
- I did fit in just a couple of other events. On 6th August, I met with other members of Northcote ward Labour Party to choose our candidates for next May’s Borough Election. They are Clare Fraser, who brings with her eight years of experience as a councillor, and her colleague from Tooting, John Heywood. We have now completed our selections across the borough, and have a great team eager to fight next May’s election.
- But of greater public significance I chaired Wandsworth’s 20th August Planning Applications Committee. This month there were three big applications, all of significance to Battersea. The first was for two ten-storey hotels next to the United States Embassy, between the Embassy and the Waitrose store on Nine Elms Lane. There is likely to be another couple of applications in the area in the next few months. Whether you like Nine Elms Lane as it has turned out, or not, there is no doubt that it is a relief to see it nearing completion, after 40 or so years of dereliction.
- The second application was, at long last, a realistic plan coming forward to proceed to develop both on the derelict site at the corner of Culvert and Battersea Park Roads – and in Dagnall Street. The main site is for student accommodation and the Dagnall Street one is for the sports hall/gym that the Harris School has been expecting for the last 20 years. At 18 storeys it is far too high for my taste, but I got out-voted on that issue years ago, when the Tories were in control – and once permission has been given, it cannot unfortunately be revoked. The key point is that this version looks like getting built – at last and the kids at Harris Academy will have a decent gym/sports hall.
- The third site is the rather difficult site between Armoury Way and the Wandsworth Gasworks site. The application is a large one, for over 400 student accommodation units, which I know is not to everyone’s taste. However, it is squeezed between Armoury Way, the traffic on Wandsworth’s one-way system, and the railway. S the site is not everyone’s ideal for family housing either. I think students will find the environment less difficult than mothers and babies – or even not to be genderists, fathers and babies. I attach some artists’ impressions, on the next page, – I know, they don’t show the site on a foggy/rainy day in November, but they are just what it might look like in June!
- Of course, there were a mass of events in the Park for the London Borough of Culture 2025, including the unfortunate demolition of the Park gate. But many of you will have your own experiences of all that and so I will not comment further. Except to say that the Council will insist a total restoration of the gate in all its old Victorian splendour, as soon as possible.
- On 30th August Pen and I went to a celebration in memory of Mark and Priscilla Cornwall-Jones. Mark and Prill, as we called them, were some people’s definition of an odd couple. Mark was a card-carrying member of the Tory party, who went to the Scottish moors and shot stag for some of his holidays; Priscilla was a card-carrying member of the Labour Party and a Labour councillor representing the then St. Mary Park ward from 1982-90. They met and socialised with both Thatcher and Blair Cabinet members. For twenty years after her death, Mark continued to pay her monthly contributions to the Battersea Labour Party – because he loved her and the memory of her. One day in 1968, Mark & Priscilla saw the classic Battersea, ‘us-and-them’ movie Up the Junction and were so moved by it, that they went home and in the front room of their Albert Bridge Road home, where August’s celebration took place, they devised a plan. So, with Mark’s financial skills and Priscilla’s commitment, Battersea Churches’ Housing Association was created (now Battersea and Chelsea).
- The lead organiser of the great and happy
celebration was the oldest of the kids Kate, with her brothers Adam, Matthew and Jason all in attendance with assorted partners, children and grandchildren as well as a few politicos and church colleagues of Mark’s. For those of you, who may have known them Priscilla is in the front on the left of this 1980s picture with Mark at the back on the right. The others from l to r are (unbelievably) me, John Slater (Roehampton councillor), possibly Mrs Johnstone, Bill Johnstone (St, Mary Park councillor) and Penny.
My September Programme
- I have the Transport Committee on 18th September.
- The Labour councillors are having an Away Day on 20th. That will not be a grand corporate-style awayday in a 5-star hotel, but a hard-working preparation day for next May’s Borough election, held in a church hall – or similar local venue.
- I have the Planning Applications Committee (PAC) on the 25th,
Did you know?
Last month I asked, “Why the Dodd?” I didn’t know the answer to that one, so many thanks to Robert, an assiduous reader from Falconbrook. Robert says that “Henry Hart Davis (who has been described as a “persistent but hapless speculator-builder in Battersea during the 1840s”) owned land in Battersea Fields, including Doddington Lodge, which he named after his birthplace in Somerset. He went bankrupt in 1851 following the failure of the Crown Estate to pay compensation promptly for the land which was purchased from him”.
The public sector was then clearly irresponsible about its commercial obligations – not something anyone would say now. But on the other hand, was the Crown Estate trying its best at land assembly for what was to become Battersea Park? The timing is about right.
Robert went on to say, “I suppose Doddington Lodge was somewhere in the area of the Doddington Estate.” If my surmise about the Park is right, then that is very possibly true.
And this month?
Last month was about the name of the Doddington Estate itself, but this month, can anyone add details about any of the other public names on the Dodd? What was Park Court South called before it was sold off by the council. Why Voltaire Court? Or Turpin House? Why Charlotte Despard and Francis Chichester? Why any of the block names? I can have a stab at a few of those names but I look forward to your replies and hope to learn something new!
Tony Belton
Tony Belton 