Jimmy Burns - Editor Mike Bates - Production - Battersea Park

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The journalist and historian Tom Pocock died on May 7th 2007, aged 81. Tom started work as the youngest war correspondent of the Second World War before his career blossomed as a naval and foreign correspondent, joining the Daily Mail, then moving to the Times, and later the Daily Express, before settling at the Evening Standard where he spent many years as defence correspondent and for a decade as travel editor. His literary output included books on Nelson and his naval contemporaries, and more modern figures such as the Victorian writer of adventure novels Rider Haggard. Tom lived much of his life near Battersea Park, on the north bank of the River. He edited the Chelsea Magazine, and together with his wife Penny was hugely supportive to the Friends of Battersea Park from its foundation in 1988. As a tribute, we reprint below an edited version of an article he contributed to one of the first issues of this Review nearly twenty years ago. It looks so lush and drowsy on those summer days, that it is difficult to realise that the tranquillity of Battersea Park cannot be taken for granted. Always, it seems, somebody seems to know better than those who planned it as a haven of open air rest and recreation for Londoners, or somebody wants to make money out of it. Sometimes it almost seems as if the real owners of the Park - the people for whom it was designed and built - have been forgotten for the moment. It was built for Londoners and to remember just how deeply it is rooted in the past life of London, it is worth looking back IN MEMORIAM Tom Pocock a little. Of course, there is nobody now who remembers the opening of the Park by the Victorians and probably nobody who remembers the craze for bicycling around it in the 1890s. But some of us can remember a very different Park when, at a time of sharp social stratification, it was crowded with Londoners of every kind. I was born in a flat overlooking the Park in 1925 and my earliest memories are. of being pushed around it in my pram. In those days, middle class families of modest means could afford a nanny for the children, a living-in maid and probably a daily help as well. On summer mornings, the nannies sat on the benches along the south side of the lake, chatting amongst themselves and occasionally wheeling their charges around the pleasures of the Park. These included the Old English Garden, which we still have, and the Sub-tropical Garden. Near the former was the Pheasantry, full of bright-plumed birds, and, beside what was called the Ladies’Lake, sleepy owls perched in a cavern - the artificial rocks are still to be seen - of another aviary. As the children grew older, there was boating on the lake in wooden skiffs - both pairs and sculling boats, some of them built by the Greaves boatyard at Chelsea - and cruises in motor-boats for a penny, one of them a remarkable craft with its prow carved like a swan. There were chats with the park keepers 12 - there seemed to be, and probably were, dozens of keepers in brown trilby hats and old men who sat in the Park all day and fed the birds. I can see across more than half a century the twinkling eyes and waxed moustaches of Keeper Knight (late of the Guards) and the curly beard of Mr.Lawrence, the retired carpet-layer, who fed the pigeons by the bandstand. Of course, the Park was not only for the middle classes. Sometimes in summer an open horse-drawn carriage would sweep around the outer drive and my nanny would say, “Take your cap off, Tommy. It’s the little Princesses.” And Princess Elizabeth and the infant Princess Margaret Rose would whirl past with their nannies, taking the air. Battersea Park offered almost the only recreation available to those Battersea families living in the cramped streets of “the slums” to the south of Battersea Park Road. They were brave, resilient, friendly people and I remember my parents being appalled by the conditions in which they had to live and wondering how they managed to survive and bring up children. On summer Sundays and Bank Holiday they would crowd into the Park and sit on the grass in their thousands, covering the field: where the Festival Gardens were later laid out. They could afford no other entertainment but sat and talked and played on the grass in the open air . In this above all, Battersea Park justified the faith of its founders. It was a beautiful, immaculate park and was said to be the favourite of Queen Mary, who had an eye for gardens. Be- EVERSHED BROTHERS LIMITED FUNERAL DIRECTORS 180 BATTERSEA PARK ROAD BATTERSEA SW11 4ND Tel: 0207 622 4935 24 HOUR SERVICE • PRE PAY FUNERAL PLANS HOME VISITS • HORSE DRAWN HEARSES COMPLETE FUNERALS FROM £700 PLUS FEES CARING FOR YOUR COMMUNITY SINCE 1832
fore breakfast, my father would take me for a walk and point out the characteristics of the shape, bark and leaves of different trees. In winter, there would be walks before teatime when the sun would be a great red ball setting in the London murk above the lakeside elms to an evening chorus from a massed choir of starlings. The war changed the Park as it changed everything else but it still reflected the life of London. It was taken over by airraid shelters and allotment: for growing vegetables. First barrage balloons were tethered there and later rows of anti aircraft rocket launchers were set up on the running-track field and manned by the Home Guard. A wooden bridge - reminiscent of the first Battersea Bridge - was built across the Thames at the bottom of Royal Hospita Road in Chelsea as an emergency crossing. When those rockets were fired during the “Little Blitz” of 1944, they may not have frightened the Luftwaffe but, by God, they frightened me. The bridge was never used. Peace descended on the Park at the end of the war in more ways than one. The guns went but the allotments remained and, like the rest of London, it seemed curiously empty. Occasionally, on a winter’s night,I would make my way through the fence by a secret route and conduct my courting on a bench by the moonlit lake. Many of us remember the Festival of Britain and the Pleasure Gardens in the Park. In 1951, they seemed rather dashing and I once found myself on a funfair ride next to Noel Coward. But the smart gloss soon tarnished and the end of that cheerful interlude seemed to be marked by the fatal accident of the fanciful Emmett railway. Since then, the Park has had its ups and downs. There has been vandalism and sacrosanct flower-beds and lawns became playgrounds. Even the once¬forbidden heights of the Cascades were worn by scrambling feet. The Park lost much of its magic. With the disbanding of the Greater London Council, which had run the Park for the whole of London, it was taken over by the Borough of Wandsworth. Many 13 early apprehensions proved groundless. Indeed, many aspects have been improved and it is now policed more effectively than for many years. The Council have been responsive to public opinion and so would not countenance a plan to build a gigantic theatre there. But now with the creation of an immense new “leisure complex” at the defunct Battersea Power Station - “The Battersea,” as it is to be called - there are again fears that Wandsworth Council may consider handing over parts of the Park to private management. If this is so, the reasoning is clear. The administration and maintenance of the Park is expensive and Wandsworth must foot the bill for the pleasure it gives to Londoners and their visitors. Surely the solution is simple. Battersea Park is, and always has been, for the benefit of all London and so all London should share the responsibility for its upkeep. With the other parks once run by the GLC, it should be subsidised by all the London boroughs and not remain a burden to just one. Then it will again truly belong to London. NINTH ANNUAL SCULPTURE AWARD The winner of this year’s award is Maxine Schaffer from the Royal College of Art Sculpture School for her work “Buckhorn Plantain” in painted steel. The sculpture will be unveiled and presentation of the award made at the Millennium Arena, East Carriageway, at 7pm on Monday 3 September. Wine and snacks will be served from 6.30pm. All Friends are welcome. The award is the result of collaboration between the Friends of Battersea Park, the Royal College of Art Sculpture School and Wandsworth Council.
Page 1 and 2: Friends of Battersea Park R E V I E
Page 3 and 4: THE POWER STATION Have we been here
Page 5 and 6: PARKWATCH A charming mid summer reh
Page 7 and 8: Unholy action LARGE chunks of grass
Page 9 and 10: FT in the Park PARKWATCH Foreign co
Page 11: In the continuing series of Nature
Page 15 and 16: As a travel journalist, Sophie Camp
Page 17 and 18: The rejuvenated Pump House Gallery
Page 19 and 20: Below, a summary of the Friends acc

Jimmy Burns - Editor Mike Bates - Production - Battersea Park

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