Battersea

AH Dunn, under Creative Commons by Ewan-M. Click pic for link.

Battersea, home of the power station, the dog home, the flower market… These places aren’t really the Battersea I visited – they’re Nine Elms, so full disclosure, I’ve been to the power station but won’t write about it today. I did have a bit of a look at Battersea fairly recently though – it’s a classic case of gentrification (I cite Tim Butler) and is home to a charming housing estate, built for the working classes by well-meaning Victorians, both subjects I have pored over at length. It’s a textbook gentrified inner suburb, for sure, and vies with Crouch End to be the definition of yummy mummy territory – all artisan bakers, Starbucks and pushchairs – christened Nappy Valley by Will Self. And cheese shops; I’m pretty jealous of the cheese shops actually.

As you’d imagine, this is home to a certain type of charity shop. Northcote Road, the centre of Nappy Valley, is the hub of the inner-suburban leisure mum, and here are the more expensive charity shops: Trinity Hospice and a Fara kids’ shop (of course). There’s not a great deal to them though: some expensive tat, a selection of slightly intellectual books, the odd over-priced secondhand pushchair.

For a wider selection, cross the sweeping bar and cafe route of Battersea Rise to the semi-pedestrianised St John’s Road. Here you’ll find British Heart Foundation, Scope, Cancer Research, Traid and the frankly slightly odd Ace of Clubs, which I’ve never come across before. While none yielded any magnificent bounty, a smattering of objets made it a worthwhile diversion, and with that sort of population, you just never know.

Find: Battersea @ Google Maps
Consume with: plenty of options for frothy coffee or artisan fish.
Visit: if you can sneak into the power station somehow, absolutely do.
Overall rating: three coasters

East Sheen

Untitled, by Edgley Cesar, under Creative Commons. Click pic for link.

East Sheen’s a funny kind of place, really, the sort of location you happen across because you happen to be driving along the South Circular, rather than on purpose. It’s something of an infill town, being recognised formerly as some nowhere in the Brixton Hundred of Surrey, then as the eastern part of Sceon/Sheen (now Richmond), or as being an extension of Mortlake – the shops encroach along Sheen Lane to Mortlake Station even now – and later a constituent of the municipal borough of Barnes. Nevertheless, given its nondescript beginnings, there’s plenty to East Sheen, and it’s almost totally concentrated along the A205.

On a long, stretched out main road like an American edge city, the shops in East Sheen radiate out from the central crossroads with Sheen Lane, where you’ll find Waitrose, and the busiest traffic. There’s little to point to East Sheen as anything other than a charity shop or local amenity destination, as with Richmond, Twickenham and Putney within spitting distance, there’s little requirement for boutiques and extensive chain restaurants. There is, however, charity shops, and they perhaps benefit from the proximity of Richmond and its inhabitants: a mixture of vintage, obscure bric-a-brac and a pretty good overall selection.

Octavia, if I recall correctly, is the first one when approaching from the East, a labyrinthine and somewhat vintage-orientated shop with a distinctive aroma. Though there was a few vaguely interesting, but expensive, knick-knacks, this was sadly lacking in general goodness (a pity, as this is a charity I could get behind – it’s a contemporary extension of the fascinating work of Octavia Hill in nineteenth century London). We also have some nice bric-bracery on the crossroads, in Barnardo’s, Fara (two shirts for me), Cancer Research, Mind and the like. Not many stick out, which is strange because overall I’m left with an overwhelmingly positive impression of the place. Perhaps it’s the proximity of Richmond Park (so close, your rotisserie chicken won’t get cold) or the discovery of not only a wicker linen basket, but tapes of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue in Princess Alice Hospice. There was also chunky mirror-based indecision in a shop I can’t find listed, but definitely had something to do with missing people.

Sometimes the most fun in researching a location is not the place itself, but the people (of course it is! I’m a human geography student, what do you expect?), particularly those considered ‘notable’ by the hive mind of Wikipedia. Obviously, a pinch of salt is occasionally required (although Jacques Ranciere has a thing or two to say about the overthrow of expertism by collective knowledge), but there’s a full-on slew of names associated with East Sheen, so I leave you with the highlights:

Tim Berners-Lee Marc Bolan The Moody Blues Rudolph Nureyev Omid Djalili Debbie Harry Tim Henman Andrew Marr Davina McCall Trevor McDonald Roy Kinnear Rob Brydon Phillip Glenister Daniel Craig. Nice.

Find: East Sheen @ Google Maps
Consume with: As mentioned, a cooked chicken and fresh bread dinner from Waitrose comes highly recommended. There’s a snack/coffee point at Pembroke Lodge too.
Visit: Richmond Park, of course.
Overall rating: three audiobooks

East Dulwich

shop fronts, under creative commons from fear and boozing in a lost vagueness' photostream. Click pic for link.

I’ve done a lot of work on gentrification in the last four months (see? It didn’t stop there). I can summarise Smith’s rent gap theory, or Ley’s humanistic take; I can waffle at length about Barnsbury (as per Jonathan Raban (who I love more than ever)), Brooklyn Heights, Bilbao, and associated subjects such as global cities or neoliberalism; I can cite writers like Zizek or Foucault with nary a bat of the eyelid. But booksmarts pale into insignificance when faced with an irrefutable measure of gentrification provided by the ever-paternalistic Times property section: the chicken shop test. Presumably the majority of Times readers don’t live in an area where chicken shops proliferate (i.e. where impoverished folk live), because I’m happy to confirm that chicken shops actually don’t correlate with ‘edgy’ either academically or in any other way. And because Lordship Lane in East Dulwich featured three (in 2004), that does not make it a bastion of working class solidarity amidst a rising tide of middle-class colonisation and class repression spilling over into the area.

East Dulwich is, in fact, thoroughly gentrified. House prices quadrupled during the 1990s as fixer-uppers moved in, and today Lordship Lane is awash with organic delis, fancy fish-n-chip shops and four-wheel drive monsters. It’s very pleasant for all that, and placed well, just close enough to the altogether more traditionally salubrious Dulwich Village, just far enough from the less classy Peckham Rye. There’s village greens, larger parks, art galleries – everything except a tube station. It’s reminiscent in some ways of a newly-established Muswell Hill, who pride themselves on not having a station. East Dulwich also fits into a West-East heirarchy: where Muswell Hill wants to be Highgate (which itself wants to be Hampstead), but looks down on Crouch End, which in turn looks down on Harringay and Wood Green, East Dulwich would dearly love to be as classy as Dulwich Village, but has to content itself with Nunhead lingering jealously nearby, and Peckham, who nobody loves.

What it doesn’t excel in is charity shops. It’s difficult to give a high rating to such a clearly well-off locale which sports just the two, fairly average emporia. The better is Mind, on the junction by Goose Green, which did well on DVDs and some nice looking cookware and cake tins, which is always nice. The lesser of the two was a slightly eerie St Christropher’s Hospice shop: large enough, but with the atmosphere of a hospital waiting room, and an odour to match. A few board games and tatty clothes weren’t enough to make it visitable, really.

East Dulwich then: thoroughly middle class, thoroughly modern, but lacking in what makes a day out. Probably a very pleasant place to live.

Find: East Dulwich @ Google Maps
Consume with: plenty of cappucinos and things with pastry at various coffee shops, you needn’t go short 
Visit: Dulwich Picture Gallery is nearby, if art’s your bag, but I’m more tempted by the epic-looking Horniman Museum in nearby Forest Hill.
Overall rating: two little cake tins

Blackheath

Blackheath, picture by waltz4aidan under creative commons. click pic for link.

I’ve skirted around Blackheath once or twice before, but it was good to get stuck in to the shops on this last weekend. I first visited to sample the delights of the Breeders at 4AD’s 25th anniversary bash, and most recently swung by here on the way to lunch on a field trip. That’s an interesting journey, by the way: try navigating your way from the monolithic ferro-concrete towers of the Ferrier estate in Kidbrooke, just the short distance to the leafy, villagey Blackheath: you’ll find it more difficult than you might imagine.

Once emerging from the mansions and private roads, Blackheath Village awaits. Named for the black heath (it’s not really black) that sits above it, this really is as ‘urban village’ as one might hope for: enter from the opposite direction, from the A2 (the old Roman Watling Street) and you’ll descend the empty space of the heath until the village church hoves into sight and the shops and houses fill out below. You’d almost believe you’d left the metropolis, but face the other way, into Greenwich Park and you’re staring at the temples of capitalism that now inhabit the Isle of Dogs.

This village is really the South London equivalent of Hampstead: an exclusive countryside retreat that well pre-dates London’s sprawl, but has remained exclusive. Shops here are cared for and cared about, and the very active residents association ensure that every inch of heritage is accounted for. But uniquely for any wealthy enclave in London (that I’ve come across), Blackheath is really quite welcoming. If you look hard enough, there’s even a proper car park (try parking in Hampstead), there’s an attractive train station, and a selection of shops from the useful to the swanky. Plenty of organic cafes and fancy pubs, but also hardware shops and chippies. And charity shops, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing.

Sadly for us, only one was open when we visited: we just missed Cancer Research on Montpelier Row. We did get to Oxfam, however, on the wonderfully named Tranquil Vale. As with almost every Oxfam, it’s worth visiting. The upstairs room is full of books of all sorts: some fancy first editions, as you might imagine, and plenty of others.

While there’s few charity shops here, I’d recommend a poke around Blackheath anyway – it’s one of few reasons to visit South London, and you might just find yourself wistfully for a life in the shires.

Find: Blackheath @ Google Maps
Consume with: The Princess of Wales gives good grub.
Visit: romp over the heath and through the gates to Greenwich Park for a dose of ancient royal hunting ground, then keep going to the Royal Observatory and one of the finest views in London.
Overall rating: three first editions.

Twickenham

Eel Pie, by Kake Pugh (under creative commons)

Whitton

Whitton High Street, Creative Commons from satguru’s photostream

Richmond-upon-Thames

Richmond Bridge, by Jim Linwood

Richmond is money. We’re not quite talking money in the Swingers sense, we’re talking old money: big houses, winding streets, humungous walled parks, boutique charity shops, the lot. This is good, and makes for extensive bargain-hunting potential. Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today, and though they’re giving none away (especially Oxfam…), still we have goodies.

First stop for us is Marie Curie, on Sheen Road. Here I was able to add to my already extensive secondhand jacket collection with a nice tweed Oscar Jacobson number (a gentleman should have at least a jacket for every day of the week, according to Etiquette For Men, purchased not a day ago from Enfield Town), and nearly spent a fractional amount on a ninety quid pair of jeans – alas, my waist did not fit the trousers. I blame the trousers. A nice compact shop, with some artwork for sale and a completely barking salesman, a la Cancer Reseach in Muswell Hill.

Also grouped around the central sections of George Street are a decent Oxfam, and a new one on me, Octavia – a boutique-y kind of arrangement, with some funny looking gift items on sale, and a sprawling collection of classic Britpop. While you’re this side of the river, you can check out the big shops – there’s a John Lewis up here, as well as Marks and Waterstones etc. It’s always ridiculously busy, but fairly pleasant all the same – you can find some treasures tucked off the side. I recommend W & A Houben Booksellers and the cute paper/stationery shop on Sheen Street.

Head over now to the small but packed Cancer Research on the corner of Water Lane, then head up the hill and down to the river and over the bridge for the full Richmond experience. It’s genteel, it’s classy and fancy, and you could see yourself in the countryside for the loveliness of the river view. On the other side you’ll find a further collection of charity shops, including a pretty decent Fara; a stuffed-with-tat Princess Alice Hospice; and a Notting Hill Trust store.

A goodly collection you’ll no doubt agree, and a perfectly lovely way to spend an autumn afternoon. Don’t forget to head off to Richmond Park for some deer spotting – make your way there up Friars Stile Road and you’ll be rewarded with one of the finest views in the whole city.

Find: Richmond @ Google Maps
Transport: Richmond station – District line and London Overground
Consume with: a nice cup of coffee from the tellingly-named Cafe Rich, or the Cedar.
Visit: Richmond Park – it has walls, deer and bracken by the country mile, what more could you wish for?
Overall rating: four chelsea boots