The Brighton Road: The Classic Highway to the South

by Charles G. Harper

At this junction of roads, where the Kennington Road, the Kennington Park Road, the Camberwell New Road, and the Brixton Road, all pool their traffic, there stood, in times not so far removed but that some yet living can remember it, Kennington Gate, an important turnpike at any time, and one of very great traffic on Derby Day, when, I fear, the pikeman was freely bilked of his due at the hands of sportsmen, noble and ignoble. There is a view of this gate on such a day drawn by James Pollard, and published in 1839, which gives a very good idea of the amount of traffic and, incidentally, of the curious costumes of the period. You shall also find in the “Comic Almanack” for 1837 an illustration by George Cruikshank of this same place, one would say, although it is not mentioned by name, in which is an immense jostling crowd anxious to pass through, while the pikeman, having apparently been “cheeked” by the occupants of a passing vehicle, is vulgarly engaged, I grieve to state, in “taking a sight” at them. That is to say, he has, according to the poet, “Put his thumb unto his nose and spread his fingers out.”

KENNINGTON GATE

Kennington Gate was swept away, with other purely Metropolitan turnpike gates, October 31st. 1865, and is now to be found in the yard of Clare’s Depository at the crest of Brixton Hill. It was one of nine that barred this route from London to the sea in 1826. The others were at South End, Croydon: Foxley Hatch, or Purley Gate, which stood near Purley Corner, by the twelfth milestone, until 1853; and Frenches, 19 miles 4 furlongs from London—that is to say, just before you come into Redhill streets. Leaving Redhill behind, another gate spanned the road at Salfords, below Earlswood Common, while others were situated at Horley, Ansty Cross, Stonepound, one mile short of Clayton; and at Preston, afterwards removed to Patcham.[6]

Not the most charitable person could lay his hand upon his heart and declare, honestly, that the church of St. Mark, Kennington, which stands at this beginning of the Brixton Road, is other than extremely hideous. Fortunately, its pagan architecture, once fondly thought to revive the glories of old Greece, is largely screened from sight by the thriving trees of its churchyard, and so nervous wayfarers are spared something of the inevitable shock.

The story of Kennington Church does not take us very far back, down the dim alleys of history, for it was built so recently as the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when it was thought possible to emulate the marble beauties of the Parthenon and other triumphs of classic architecture in plebeian brick and stone. Those materials, however, and the architects themselves, were found to be somewhat inferior to their models, and eventually the public taste became so outraged with the appalling ugliness of the pagan temples arising on every hand that at length the Gothic revival of the mid-nineteenth century set in.

But if its history is not long, its site has a horrid kind of historic association, for the building stands on what was a portion of Kennington Common, the exact spot where the unhappy Scottish rebels were executed in 1746, and where Jerry Abershawe, the highwayman, was hanged in 1795. The remains of the gibbet on which the bodies of some of his fellow knights of the road were exposed were actually found when the foundations for the church were being dug out.

The origin of Kennington Church, like that of Brixton, is so singular that it is very well worth while to inquire into it. It was a direct outcome of the Napoleonic wars. England had been so long engaged in those European struggles, and was so wearied and impoverished by them, that Parliament could think of nothing better than to celebrate the peace of 1815 by voting a million and a half of money to the clergy as a “thank-offering.” This sum took the shape of a church-building fund. Wages were low, work was scarce, and bread was so dear that the people were starving. That good paternal Parliament, therefore, when they asked for bread gave them stone and brick, and performed the heroic feat of picking their impoverished pockets as well. It was accomplished in this wise. There was that Lucky Bag, the million and a half sterling of the Thanksgiving Fund; but it could not be dipped into unless you gave an equal sum to that you took out, and then expended the whole on building churches. And yet it has been said that Parliament has no sense of the ridiculous! Why, it was the most stupendous of practical jokes!

KENNINGTON GATE: DERBY DAY, 1839.
From an engraving after J. Pollard.