A is for Arments - Walworth A to Z

A is for Arments

2014 marked the centenary of the opening of Emily and Bill Arment’s very first Eel & Pie House at 386 Walworth Road, Camberwell Gate. The family business has supplied pie n’ mash and jellied eels to generation after generation of the people of Walworth. After several different premises its current location in Westmoreland Road is only a matter of thirty metres from where it all began. In a marvelous tribute to the proprietors, a block of flats on the new Aylesbury Estate has been named Arments Court.

Photo: Joel Virgo

B is for Baldwin's - Walworth A to Z

B is for Baldwin’s

Before the creation of the Heygate Estate the thriving retail community in Walworth Road continued right up to the railway bridge. Older folks will remember that Baldwin’s stood on the corner of Elephant Road. When it moved to its present location the wooden shelves and drawers lined with jars full of herbs and spices, the weighing scales, and all the quaint hand painted signage endorsing weird and wonderful concoctions came with it.

One sign promoting a cure-all, reads: “The invalid’s friend. Baldwin’s Small Herb Pills prepared from nature’s remedies of herbs and roots only. For sick headaches, piles, pains in the back & kidneys, impure blood, pimples, dizziness, swimming pains in the head & disorders of the bowels.” The shop had an old-worldly feel. Add to that the exotic fragrances and aromas filling the air and the sarsaparilla on tap, Baldwin’s will always be one of the most evocative places in Walworth. 

George Baldwin opened the doors to London’s longest running herbalists almost 170 years ago providing natural remedies to life’s ailments with his oils, ointments and herbs. The modern revamp and a mail order side brought the store into the 21^st century, attracting even more visitors from far and wide.

No.77 Walworth Road, the junction with Elephant Road.

C is for Charlie Chaplin - Walworth A to Z

C is for Charlie Chaplin

“I was born on 16th April 1889, at eight o’clock at night, in East Lane, Walworth.” Thus begins Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography. Where exactly has always been a matter of speculation, but it was very likely above his grandfather’s shop. In the time spanning the two world wars, Chaplin’s tramp was the most recognised character on the planet. 

Chaplin was lauded ‘the funniest man in the world,’ and Michael Jackson, who recorded a version of ‘Smile’, once visited Freemantle Street just behind East Street, and was photographed dressed in the tramp costume.

D is for Dracula - Walworth A to Z

D is for Dracula

One of the main characters in Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel goes by the name of Jonathan Harker. Stoker, also the manager of the Lyceum Theatre in the Strand, appropriated the surname from his close friend and theatre colleague Joseph Harker. Joseph Harker was one of the most eminent British scenic artists of his time providing backdrops and scenery for numerous West End stage productions. 

 

Joseph Harker and Bram Stoker

During the late Victorian and Edwardian period he designed the sets, vistas and in some cases bill posters for plays starring and produced by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum, or for the Australian actor producer Oscar Asche. When those West End shows became international tours to the USA, Europe or the Commonwealth, 400 cubic tons of Harker’s scenery was also shipped along with the cast. These same backdrops continued to be used for decades after his death. In 1904 Harker designed and painted the auditorium ceiling in the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. In that same year, a two storey purpose-built studio was erected in Queen’s Row, Walworth where Harker continued his prestigious work until his death aged seventy two in 1927. 

Harker's studio - a listed building in Queen's Row

On one occasion at the studio, a few family members and associates painted their signatures onto the brickwork – still there today and protected by a sheet of glass. 

Signatures including Joseph Harker's painted on wall of the former studio

Fittingly, for many years Harker’s Studio has been home to Flint Hire & Supply, one of Walworth’s hidden treasures providing theatrical goods for stage and television. Joseph Harker’s son Gordon features in the 1935 Will Hay movie, Boys Will Be Boys. His granddaughter is actress Polly Adams, and two great granddaughters are the actresses Susannah and Caroline Harker.

E is for East Street Baptist Church - Walworth A to Z

E is for East Street Baptist Church

In September 2013 Timothy Whitton was inducted as the new pastor of the East Street Baptist Church. For many decades the congregation has been worshipping in what was once the Richmond Street Mission – the name engraved in stone can be seen from Portland Street – but the original meeting place was a chapel on the opposite side of the road on the corner of Morecambe Street. Joseph Swain, one its earliest ministers produced a songbook entitled Walworth Hymns, which despite being out of print can be read online in the form of an e-book. For many years Company 168 ran its Boys Brigade from the church, which today continues to run children’s and youth clubs.

 The rear of the building with former name

F is for Faraday - Walworth A to Z

F is for Faraday

Albert Einstein, recognised as one of the world’s greatest scientists, had hanging in his study a portrait of Michael Faraday (1791-1867). To celebrate the bicentenary of the latter’s birth, that same portrait featured on the back of a twenty pound note throughout the 1990s. A devout Christian, an extraordinary scientist and one of Walworth’s most notable sons, we owe Faraday a great debt for his discoveries in the field of electromagnetics. In his honour a local primary school, several blocks of council flats, an electoral ward, a lovely park and a stainless steel electric substation at the Elephant & Castle are named after him.

G is for Gloag & Co. - Walworth A to Z

G is for Gloag & Co.
It is generally accepted that Walworth is where the manufacture of cigarettes in the UK first began. A Scotsman called Robert Peacock Gloag, in his post as a paymaster general in the Crimean War, saw how popular the smoking of roll-ups was among soldiers of all nations. On his return in 1856, and with a large quantity of mild Turkish leaf tobacco, he set up his ‘factory’ in a garden shed at No.12 Boyson Road. 

Very soon after cigarettes were invented the smoke filled room became popular. It was the perfect place to hear loud music especially when accompanied by dim lights.

The location of Gloag's cigarette factory in Boyson Road

After acquiring a few more properties in the same street, Gloag converted them into more workshops to produce his ‘Sweet Threes’ brand. Soon, he had a workforce of a hundred local girls who could each turn out four cigarettes a minute. Despite the anti-smoking lobby’s claim that tobacco was nothing more than “fashionable poison,” the mass production of cigarettes was well and truly on its way. 

Female workers at a cigarette factory