Developers seek permission to demolish historic Tearooms building

Is this the end for the building that once housed the famous Tearooms des Artistes?

This entry comes quite soon after the last one, which I hope is not too much of shock to my readership. The reasons for this hasty posting will become clear.

Passing the still intact Tearooms building at 697 Wandsworth Road for the thousandth time since lockdown, I noticed something distinctly sinister.

Tied to a signpost there's a laminated notice, stained by rain and rust, but still legible.

It was one of those Lambeth Council Planning Permission notices which, when you see them, you instantly know another beloved local feature will soon disappear to make way for yet another apartment block. 

The notice looked like it had been there for years, so I thought maybe those developers had had second thoughts.

No such luck. I took photos and read it at home, with a sinking heart. You can read the whole thing on the Lambeth Planning Applications database - including around 100 supplementary documents, as well as 8 comments (all in favour). If you don't have the time, here are a few crucial points:

"20/01227/FUL | Redevelopment of the site, involving refurbishment and extension of the existing building at no: 693-695 and replacement of no : 697 with 3 new storey building to create nine residential units (Use Class C3) and the retention of the Public House at no 693-695 at lower and ground floor levels, together with the provision of cycle and refuse stores, landscaping and courtyards. | 693 - 697 Wandsworth Road London SW8 3JF

To make this clear, the application relates to two buildings. 693-695 Wandsworth Road is the big old pub building on the corner of Wandsworth Road and North Street. 

In its final incarnation it was a nightspot, the Artesian Well, a place which specialised in lavish faux-Bohemian decor and (according to a friend, who went once) a clientele including many public school kids from Surrey who were competing for their Duke of Edinburgh's Award in decadence. But maybe this is unfair. It was certainly extremely popular right up its demise in 2014, seen by many as the interesting face of Clapham nightlife, as opposed to the meat-market reputation of the High Street clubs.

The second building, at 697, was the Tearooms des Artistes, a place which was known and loved by many from the early 80s through to its demise in around 2006, when it became a posher and more pricey bar called Lost Society, which lasted another few years. Since 2014 it's been left in the hands of Lowe property guardians, and looks little changed.  Well, at least it is providing some genuinely affordable housing.

I shared some of my own happy memories of this place a few years ago, and was delighted when several others added comments and  links to more info on this lost gem of south London's alternative hospitality spots.  Some great memories emerge, including the fact that the late Marc Bolan's pink Bentley was parked outside for a long period in the 90s. 

I have to thank Baz for some amazing info, including some history he found on the Wayback Machine web archive, which suggests the building went back to the 16th century, when it was a barn on the Clapham Manor estate (any further info on this would be amazing). Baz also built a site for the Tearooms, and some of his extremely evocative photos - can still be seen on the Wayback Machine, here - including bits of the ancient structure. Surely evidence enough to slap of high-grade listing on this building!

One attempt to redevelop was kicked out by Lambeth council in 2015. The new application, from April 2020, still awaits a decision.

The architects for the developer and would-be demolishers, Marston Properties Limited, are dismissive of the old building. It's useful to quote their reasons at length:

"At ground floor the fascia and shop front has been completely replaced with modern fabric of no visual or architectural merit. In the process, a large steel beam was inserted to open up the shopfront which was used as ‘Regional Tyre Services Ltd’ in the 1960s-70s, which has subsequently resulted in structural damage to the façade.

"There are no features of merit internally.

"At most the building makes a neutral contribution to the character of the conservation area. It’s (sic) relationship within the streetscape is awkward; it lacks connection with the terraces to the west and the former Artesian Well to the east. 

3.28 Given the assessment that the building is at best a neutral contributor with many detracting elements (shop front etc.), Heritage Collective concludes that overall the high-quality replacement building as proposed would represent an enhancement of the Conservation Area. 

Even if the Council remains unconvinced in this regard and retains the stance that the building is a positive contributor, its loss as proposed is acknowledged by the Officers to fall within the less than substantial harm category. 

3.29 In such cases a weighing exercise is required setting on the one hand the less than substantial harm and on the other the public benefits that flow from this scheme. In this case the benefits include the redevelopment of a poor quality redundant site, removal and replacement of harmful features, poor quality windows, railings etc., securing a beneficial and long term future for the site, the re-opening of a community facility (the pub), the provision of nine new high quality homes and the delivery of a highly efficient, sustainable new building..."

And so on, and on, and on. Thus do developers nail all opposition to the floor, thrashing them with fine phrases and vacuous arguments.

Not that the quoted "Heritage Collective" is a consultancy, not to be confused with an official heritage body.

Quite what a "neutral contributor" to the conservation area means is unclear to this writer at least. To us, and anyone who once visited the Tearooms at any point through its various phases, from hippyish vegetarian restaurant/wine bar/club to the après clubbing chill down nest of Sunday best in the 90s and 2000s, the sight of this unique place is a blessed reminder of a more interesting Clapham, before the anodyne clumps of tasteful luxury apartments started popping up like weeds.

The application was still active in January this year, when the architects submitted some modifications to their designs. All of these are available to view on the planning archive. According to the website the application expires on April 15. 

It's too late to submit objections, but I do wonder why the wealth of history associated with these buildings seems to be entirely ignored in this application. I wonder if any archaeologists have ever been there to look for some Tudor era oyster shells....

 

Photographer gets under the skin of Clapham High Street's Jekyll and Hyde character

This uninspiring photo of Clapham High Street is by me: to see this much-maligned thoroughfare in a totally different and much more interesting light, check out Jim Grover's photos on the BBC Online site or better still get along to his exhib-
ition at the Omnibus Arts Centre in Clapham, April 3 - 20

Thanks to photographer Jim Grover, the south London Babylon otherwise known as Clapham High Street is being shown to the world in all its glorious ghastliness - and even a bit of unexpected beauty -  on the BBC website.

 Jim Grover's amazing photo essay has been chosen as this week's  BBC Online"Picture This" feature  - a few days before the photos go on show locally at  Omnibus (the arts centre in the old Clapham Library building on Clapham Common northside).

Jim hit on the brilliant notion of treating his subject, rather like Hieronymous Bosch, in two parts - heaven and hell, and photographing them differently, one in colour, the other black and white.   The division is between night and day - cleverly working on the split personality of this singularly unattractive thoroughfare.

And he works some real alchemy with his camera: sometimes it looks almost beautiful, sometimes as sordid and threatening as a Mean Streets era New York. The real stars of the show, however, are the people, and thankfully there's hardly an upturned-collar rugger shirt in sight.

His daytime shots beautifully capture a suburban world of shoppers, street cleaners, mums, kids, shop keepers, rough sleepers, pensioners, commuters, itinerants; the same old Clapham set. These photos are all in colour, and are all taken on the south side of the street.

The nightlife shots are all black and white and are all taken on the north side of the street, focusing on the true inferno of Infernos, the notoriously tacky night-club, and that strip of bars leading down towards Clapham North. You don't get too much sense of the literal tackiness of this street on a busy summer night, when your shoes can stick to a pavement awash with puked-out Baileys, half-digested kebabs and a mixture of human and canine urine.

Generally he's very kind to Clapham - he doesn't mock or caricature it, and the yuppie-buppie-yummie-mummy-rugger-bugger set don't get too much of a look-in. They tend not to use the thoroughfare that much anyway, in my experience, sticking mostly to the "Old Town" area of max wealth, the plus Venn Street and the pubs around Clapham Common tube station when there are big matches on.

Jim Grover makes gold out of the base metal of this conflicted bit of Lambeth. There are many beautiful photos, even on the BBC site: I am eager to see more at the exhibition.  Favourites so far include some of the long-term shopkeepers and some very atmospheric shots of made-up revellers, and of my favourite bit of the street including the old Greek restaurant (Sappho) and that strange mystical charity shop.

I'm looking forward to seeing these pics at the Omnibus - especially as I have been trying to do something similar in words for years, and failing.

For as long as I can remember the authorities have been trying to clean up and gentrify the high street, to make it more yuppie-friendly. I remember when the Sainsbury's opened on the site of the old bus depot (and later, British Transport museum) - when, for a while, people thought this might be the beginning of an invasion by upmarket retail "brands".

Thank God, it never happened!

Instead it remains as scuzzy as ever, even after the building of that posh new library and health complex with its classy (but vandal-friendly) Andrew Logan artwork spelling out "LIBRARY".

As Jim's photo essay confirms, Clapham High Street remains a real Jekyll and Hyde of a street, a bit down at heel during the day, and an all-out alcohol fuelled war-zone every Friday and Saturday night.

It's rather quaint and old-fashioned in its way. It has nothing to do with the world of cool, arty nightlife so highly prized in places like Shoreditch and Dalston and Deptford and Peckham. It is totally uncool, unfashionable, and un-smart. And yet it remains incredibly popular, mainly it seems, for the kids from the further-out south west London suburbs. In short, it's a rite of passage place for kids with fake IDs.

They come to get hideously drunk in the bars here, they hope to pull, but most seem just to wander up and down in groups, vomiting occasionally, and shouting loudly to each other (I heard one say last week, "Guys, I really have to take a shit right here right now") - before tapping their phones to rustle up some sort of Uber car to take them back to dad's post-divorce black-leather-lined bachelor pad in Putney or Purley.

But, like so many other of London's suburban high streets, the real boss here is the traffic. Like the A23 through Brixton and Streatham, this is a trunk route, combining both the A24 as well as the A3. It is just too big a road to tame.

The pedestrian crossing lights are some of the most ruthless anywhere in London - you get half way across and they start blinking at you. Impatient drivers in their white vans, Audis and Aston Martins - they are  all in such a hurry. You run the last yards and off they go, heading perhaps for lovely gated homes in Nappy Valley, or further out, in Surrey and Hampshire. Heading north, they're looking for posher places to spend their bankers' wad of an evening.

They don't care that they are on Clapham High Street.

But there I go, fantasising again. See the reality of 48 Hours On Clapham High Street in Jim Grover's great exhibition at the Clapham Omnibus, April 3 - 20.