The Railway Age
The advent of railway-building in London from the 1830s was to have a dramatic effect on the local landscape, and nowhere more devastatingly so than in Lambeth. The London and South Western Railway's line from London to Southampton opened in 1838 when the line terminated on the edge of Lambeth at Nine Elms. The arrangement suited Queen Victoria as it was handy for Buckingham Palace - a private suite of rooms was maintained at the station until 1902 for visiting dignitaries'. But for most passengers, forced to continue their journey by boat from Windmill pier or by omnibus along the Wandsworth Road, Nine Elms was an inconvenient London terminus. The difficulty was the cost of constructing the line on through densely populated Vauxhall and Lambeth Marsh.
Left: Nine Elms Pier c.1840; Right: Viaduct to Waterloo in Newport Street, 1851
In 1845 approval was obtained and the two mile line through to Waterloo built on a viaduct over 290 arches and six bridges. The destruction of the centre of Lambeth was seen as of little consequence in comparison with the benefit to passengers and LSWR shareholders. Nothing of value had been destroyed as the course of the line had been occupied "to a great extent as hay stalls and cow yards and by dung heaps and similar nuisances". In fact the line snaked its way along the routes of least resistance, carefully avoiding the vested interests of Vauxhall Gardens and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The latter did not want the line encroaching on his palace grounds, but was indifferent to the fate of the poor quality housing he owned that stood between the LSWR and its Waterloo. More buildings went in the successive expansions of the line. Maudslay's engineering works, the Royal Swimming Baths, All Saints church and a myriad of smaller streets and courts were demolished. The Beaufoy's Ragged School was carved up and the Canterbury Music Hall had its theatre separated from its entrance by the railway line - patrons walked through a long arch to reach the auditorium, enlivened by an aquarium en route.
Left: Lambeth Ragged School 1851; Right: Canterbury Music Hall auditorium c.1856
In 1864 the South Eastern Railway extended its London terminus from London Bridge across the river to a new station at Charing Cross. The line ran through the very north of Lambeth and made use of a rebuilt Hungerford Bridge - a pedestrian bridge had opened in 1849. On the south side of the Thames the SER built a new station to link with the LSWR terminus: Waterloo Junction station, now known as Waterloo East. It was this line that drove St Thomas's Hospital, an ancient religious foundation, from the Borough into Lambeth. The governors sold up the site to the SER and relocated on a narrow strip of frontage between the LSWR railway line and the river on the newly built Albert Embankment.
A more unusual addition to the rail network was the Necropolis Railway Company that started operating from Waterloo. The company was trading directly on the effect of the 1852 Metropolitan Burials Act that had closed all London churchyards and required burials to take place in out-of-town cemeteries. The local options were burial in the new parochial Lambeth cemetery in Tooting; the slightly more up-market service provided by the private South Metropolitan Cemetery Company at its cemetery in Norwood; or a one way ticket on the Necropolis Railway. The company provided a discreet funeral service from its private platforms - one for mourners, one for coffins - to its cemetery at Brookwood. When Waterloo station opened it had a modest four lines of track and four platforms. It expanded through the nineteenth century as demand grew until it was the largest London railway terminus by 1885 with 21 platforms approached along a viaduct of eight lines of track. This piece-meal expansion resulted in three separate stations - known as Waterloo Bridge, Cyprus and Khartoum (the curious names commemorated colonial exploits in the years of their construction). The present station was built in 1922 when all the platforms came under one roof.
Left: Waterloo Station platforms 1908; Right: Waterloo Station 1935
The most recent addition has been the construction of the Eurostar terminal on the north side of the station in 1990 to receive direct trains from Brussels and Paris. Occupying over twenty five acres of prime land in Lambeth, Waterloo remains the largest station in London and arguably the most disruptive in the way that it has dominated and destroyed the area and separated the old centre of Lambeth Marsh from the river.
Theatre
Lambeth was known as a metropolitan place of entertainment from the 1660's when the riverside pleasure gardens at Vauxhall opened. First called New Spring Gardens and subsequently known simply as Vauxhall Gardens, their location right on the river provided an easily accessible venue by boat for Londoners who came to walk in the grounds, eat, drink, dance and listen to the orchestra. Vauxhall's popularity increased in the late eighteenth century. On gala nights the approach roads would suffer the Regency equivalent of "gridlock" with the coaches jammed all the way from Westminster Bridge. It was a peculiarly democratic destination catering easily and simultaneously for the Prince Regent, members of the aristocracy, leading politicians and literary figures like Goldsmith and Doctor Johnson as much as for ordinary Londoners.In the nineteenth century it devised more exotic entertainments - firework displays, balloon ascents, military pageants, tightrope walkers and performing troupes of Arabs - to titillate the fickle crowds.
Left: Vauxhall Gardens in 1754 after Wale; Right: Bandstand at Vauxhall Gardens 1809 by Rowlandson.
A succession of smaller pleasure gardens set up in Lambeth on the back of Vauxhall's success. Cuper's Gardens, The Apollo Gardens, The Dog and Duck, The Belvedere and The Royal Cumberland Tea Gardens quickly rivalled Vauxhall's reputation as venues for casual prostitution, but were less successful in resisting the magistrates' attempts to shut them down as "disorderly houses".
Left: Plan of Cuper's Garden in 1746; Right: Dog and Duck sign (courtesy Nilu York).
By the beginning of the nineteenth century Lambeth was an entertainment centre. The "Surrey Side" or "Transpontine" London had well known venues catering for metropolitan and local audiences. Astley's Amphitheatre on Westminster Bridge Road and the Surrey Theatre on Blackfriars Road both opened as circuses but by the 1820s had reinvented themselves as theatres. The Royal Coburg Theatre (subsequently the Victoria Theatre and latterly the Old Vic) opened in 1816: the smaller, cheaper Bower Theatre on Stangate in 1838, describing itself as "the only theatre for the working classes". Astley's Amphitheatre began in 1770 as a riding school and circus. It never lost these roots and maintained a reputation for its "hippodramas" - plays performed on horseback. These included British military victories (Agincourt and Waterloo were endlessly staged), low comedy and circus (like the clown on horseback who blew a candle out "not with his mouth") and "equestrian" versions of well known plays (Othello, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Mazeppa), which were often mere vehicles for displays of trick riding in costume. As Andrew Ducrow, the theatre manager in the 1830s, put it, "Cut out the dialect and come to the 'osses". The Surrey Theatre began as a circus rival to Astley's in 1784. By the 1820's under the management of Charles Dibdin it was a successful minor theatre. Ira Aldridge, the first successful black actor appeared here in the 1840s - having first performed in Lambeth at the Royal Coburg in1826 - as did William Henry Lane, the Afro-American dancer known as Master Juba.
Left: Astley's original Riding School, 1770; Centre: Interior of Astley's Amphitheatre, 1843 (courtesy Nilu York); Right: Surrey Theatre c.1850.
Lambeth theatres were restricted as to what they could perform. Before 1843 it was illegal for "minor" theatres to present "legitimate" drama - generally defined as comedy, tragedy and farce. This remained the preserve of the West End "patent" theatres in Drury Lane and Covent Garden. When in 1820 the Royal Coburg invited the West End actor Junius Brutus Booth to perform Shakespeare's Richard III, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane took the Coburg to court and the manager was fined £50. To avoid this a ballet might be inserted into a play, or the plot rewritten, or only a couple of scenes be performed. The Coburg staged "new", re-written dramas - The Lovers of Verona, The Battle of Bosworth Field and The Moor of Venice - as a way of performing Shakespeare. What started as a ruse ended up by creating the amalgam of styles that was south London theatre, combining genres like circus, pantomime, melodrama, song, pageant and acrobatics. London critics were disparaging; one, describing a Surrey performance, commented, "A minor theatre is the proper region of melodrame - an entertainment to which we have no objection provided it be found in its right place". The audiences seemed uncultivated and threatening; the drama was doubtful in quality and frequently inaudible; but most offensive was the undeniable link with prostitution. The streets and public houses adjacent teemed with prostitutes. In 1865 the Magdalen Home had to move out from Blackfriars Road to Streatham, unable to cope with the anomaly of reforming prostitutes next door to the Surrey Theatre where their less penitent sisters conducted business every night. The Victoria Theatre - as the Royal Coburg was now known - was notorious. Charles Kingsley described it as "the licensed pit of darkness, a trap of temptation - profligacy and ruin triumphantly yawning night after night".
Left: Royal Coburg Theatre, 1826; Centre: Opening night of the Royal Coburg, 1818; Right: Scene from 'Nobody's Child', Surrey Theatre 1867.
In 1884 a group of social reformers led by Emma Cons and Samuel Morley, MP acquired it. They had links with the temperance movement and with the National Vigilance Association. The theatre reopened as the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee House where the proceedings now "consisted of music, fun and temperance addresses. The great object of these attractive entertainments is to win people from the public-house." This educational work was transferred to the new Morley College, subsequently on Westminster Bridge Road. The Victoria Hall, under the management of Cons' niece, Lillian Bayliss, reopened as the "Old Vic" in 1916 when it became a theatre dedicated to the serious staging of Shakespeare.
Left: Old Vic Theatre, 1935; Right: Old Vic programme, 1928
The heyday of Lambeth theatres was brief. Vauxhall Gardens had closed by 1859. The Bower was converted to a candle warehouse in 1877; in 1893 Astley's was closed down under fire regulations. From the 1860s local audiences increasingly favoured music halls like the Canterbury, Gatti's and the Metropole. The Surrey underwent a slow decline through music hall and cinema to final closure in the 1930s. The Old Vic is the sole survivor today of that once grand theatre tradition.