Loughborough Road is in Brixton, in the south London Borough of Lambeth. Running between Brixton Road and Loughborough Junction, it has always been mainly residential, but in the past two centuries has included many shops and taverns. [1]
Loughborough Road is in Brixton, in the south London Borough of Lambeth. Running between Brixton Road and Loughborough Junction, it has always been mainly residential, but in the past two centuries has included many shops and taverns. [1]
Loughborough Road was named after the seventeenth century manor house owner, Henry Hastings, first Baron Loughborough. [2] It is a street of two halves. The north end between Brixton Road and Akerman Road, remains largely as it was built in the 1850-60s. However, from Akerman Road down to Coldharbour Lane little remains of the original Victorian housing, which was demolished to make way for the Loughborough Road Estate.
Loughborough Road was not as badly affected as some streets in the area from German air bombing of London in World War II. However many of the older houses towards the Coldharbour Lane end of the street were demolished in projects to meet the huge post-war demand for housing. One project, Iveagh House, was described at its opening in 1952 as the first block of “semi-luxury” flats for single women to be built in South London by the Guinness Trust housing society since the war. [3] while the Loughborough Road Estate, built by the London County Council between 1953 and 1957, was a mixed density development that included nine blocks, each of eleven storeys. [4]
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the street had four pubs: the Angell Arms, the Loughborough Hotel, the Hero of Switzerland, and the White Hart. The Hero of Switzerland, the last surviving pub, rebuilt in the 1960s, closed in 2020. For well over a quarter of a century from the mid-1870s, members of the Brixton Bowling Club used the well-tended green attached to the Hero of Switzerland to hold its championships, and to play against other clubs. It was so closely associated with the site, it renamed itself the Hero of Switzerland Bowling Club. [5] In the early 1880s, the Hero of Switzerland was also the headquarters of the Brixton Ramblers Cycling Club. [6] The Loughborough Hotel, a destination for ‘disco’ and clubbing, closed in the early 2000s. It remains almost legendary in south London for the Mambo Inn, a club with DJs playing a mix of Afro, Latin and Reggae music to packed crowds. [7]
Many residents of Loughborough Road have been associated with the area's vibrant music hall and entertainment industry. They included the trick cyclist Jack Lotto (1856-1944), who would become one of the co-founders of the entertainment industry charitable organisation, the Grand Order of Water Rats; Augusta Carolina Rosaline Wingfield, who in the late 1800s performed as “Alphonsine, Queen of the Spiral”; the funambulist, Ella Zuila (1854-1926) and her acrobat husband George Loyal (1848-1920); and Irish-born “blackface” comedian George Le Clerq and his actor wife, Georgina White. [8]
Other residents included the Percy family whose business operations ranged from feather dressing to taxidermy, [9] and Nelly Roberts (1872-1959), an orchid artist who documented early species brought to Britain from around the world by wealthy collectors. [10]
Addiscombe is an area of south London, England, within the London Borough of Croydon. It is located 9.1 miles (15 km) south of Charing Cross, and is situated north of Coombe and Selsdon, east of Croydon town centre, south of Woodside, and west of Shirley.
Brixton is an area of South London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th century as communications with central London improved.
Coulsdon is a town in south London, England, within the London Borough of Croydon. Coulsdon was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey that included the settlements of Purley and Kenley. It was merged with Sanderstead in 1915 to form the Coulsdon and Purley Urban District and has formed part of Greater London since 1965.
Lambeth is a district in South London, England, in the London Borough of Lambeth. Lambeth was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Charing Cross, across the river from Westminster Palace. The population of the London Borough of Lambeth was 303,086 in 2011. The area experienced some slight growth in the medieval period as part of the manor of Lambeth Palace. By the Victorian era the area had seen significant development as London expanded, with dense industrial, commercial and residential buildings located adjacent to one another. The changes brought by World War II altered much of the fabric of Lambeth. Subsequent development in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has seen an increase in the number of high-rise buildings. The area is home to the International Maritime Organization. Lambeth is home to one of the largest Portuguese-speaking communities in the UK, and Portuguese is the second most commonly spoken language in Lambeth after English.
The South London line is a railway line in inner south London, England. The initial steam passenger service on the route was established by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) on 1 May 1867 when the central London terminal stations of Victoria and London Bridge were connected to the inner south London suburbs of Battersea, Clapham, Brixton, Camberwell and Peckham. A pioneer of overhead electric traction, most of the line was built on high level viaducts and was marketed as the South London Elevated Electric Railway in the early part of the 20th century. The electric service was popular, with four trains per hour and 12 million passengers in 1920. Between Wandsworth Road and Peckham Rye the route ran parallel to another set of tracks. Prior to 1923, both lines from Wandsworth Road to East Brixton were owned by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) and the lines from East Brixton to Peckham Rye were owned by the LBSCR. The southern Atlantic lines were operated by the LBSCR and the northern Chatham lines were operated by the LCDR.
Loughborough is a market town in the Charnwood Borough of Leicestershire, England; it is the administrative centre of Charnwood Borough Council. At the United Kingdom 2021 census, the town's built-up area had a population of 64,884.
Brixton Market comprises a street market in the centre of Brixton, south London, and the adjacent covered market areas in nearby arcades Reliance Arcade, Market Row and Granville Arcade.
There have been two separate generations of trams in London, from 1860 to 1952 and from 2000 to the present. There were no trams at all in London between 1952 and 2000.
Norbury is an area of south London. It shares the postcode London SW16 with neighbouring Streatham. Norbury is 6.7 miles (10.8 km) south of Charing Cross.
Streatham was a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
The Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS) was a large consumer co-operative based in south east London, England. The co-operative took its name from the Royal Arsenal munitions works in Woolwich and its motto was: "Each for all and all for each". In 1985 it merged into the national Co-operative Wholesale Society.
Brixton Road is a road in the London Borough of Lambeth, leading from the Oval at Kennington to Brixton, where it forms the high street and then forks into Effra Road and Brixton Hill at St Matthew's church at the junction with Acre Lane and Coldharbour Lane. Brixton Market is located in Electric Avenue near Brixton Underground station and in a network of covered arcades adjacent to the two railway viaducts. The market arcades were declared listed buildings in 2009 following controversial proposals by Lambeth Council to replace them with a large US-style mall. The former "Brixton Oval" is at the southern end with Lambeth Town Hall, the Ritzy Cinema, the Brixton Tate Library and St Matthew's church. The space was renamed Windrush Square in 2010, in honour of the area's early Caribbean migrants and the HMT Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought 492 passengers from Jamaica to London.
Brixton was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Brixton district of South London. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post system.
The A215 is an A road in south London, starting at Elephant and Castle and finishing around Shirley. It runs through the London Boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and Croydon.
Loughborough Junction is an area of South London, in the London Borough of Lambeth, which is located equidistant between Brixton, Camberwell and Herne Hill.
Coldharbour Lane is a road in south London, England, that leads south-westwards from Camberwell to Brixton. The road is over 1 mile (1.6 km) long with a mixture of residential, business and retail buildings – the stretch of Coldharbour Lane near Brixton Market contains shops, bars and restaurants. Between the junctions of Coldharbour Lane and Denmark Hill in Camberwell SE5 and Coldharbour Lane and Denmark Road lies part of the boundary between Lambeth and Southwark boroughs. The other end of Coldharbour Lane meets Acre Lane in central Brixton to form the A2217.
East Brixton railway station was a railway station in Brixton, south London. It was opened as Loughborough Park by the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway in 1866. Regular passenger service was the South London line from London Victoria to London Bridge terminal stations in central London. Initially provided with a steam passenger service, competition from electric trams caused a conversion to overhead line electric operation in 1909. The station became part of the Southern Railway in 1923 and overhead line electrification was swapped for third rail in 1928. The station lost patronage after the opening of Brixton Underground station in 1971. There was a fire at the station in 1975 and it was closed by British Rail in January 1976. The station was located next to the rail bridge over Barrington Road, near Coldharbour Lane. Since 2012 London Overground trains pass through the site of the former station without stopping and there has been some campaigning to reopen it.
The Brixton murals are a series of murals by local artists in the Brixton area, in south London. Most of the murals were funded by Lambeth London Borough Council and the Greater London Council after the Brixton riots in 1981.
Coldharbour ward was an administrative division of the London Borough of Lambeth from 2002 to 2022. It is located in Brixton. The ward was replaced in 2022 by Brixton Acre Lane, Brixton Rush Common, Brixton Windrush, Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction, and Brixton North.
Myatt's Fields South is a social housing estate located between Brixton Road and Camberwell New Road in South London. It is on land that once formed part of the Lambeth Wick estate.