The waterfronts along the Thames have always held a fascination for writers, artists and photographers, as well as for Londoners and visitors alike. Along this extended and complex riverside littoral, buildings, people and activities came and went through time – ebbing and flowing just like the tidal Thames itself. Buildings that lined the waterfront could variously present the grand, the humble, the picturesque, and the hotch-potch. Whilst some buildings were uplifting, some were decayed and threatening. The Thames waterfronts could represent different things to different people: ‘minds-eyes’ and ‘meanings’ might vary as much as the buildings themselves; and the ‘real’ might equally mingle with the ‘mythical.’ Seen at any particular point in time, stretches of Thames waterfronts were often the equivalent of the classic antiquarian’s ‘palimpsest’, where words were written on a sheet of re-used parchment, but where ghosts of earlier obscured texts could still be seen through the latest scratched-out and smoothed surface.
Here I look at just one interesting Thameside building as seen at Lambeth, fronting Fore Street, in the early-19th century. The building shown here is reproduced from a small hand coloured aquatint, by the engraver W. Read, that originally appeared (uncoloured) in the London publication La Belle Assemblée, No. 167, in November 1822. La Belle Assemblée or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine Addressed Particularly to the Ladies, to give it its fulsome title, was published between 1806 and May 1832, before it underwent a series of subsequent name changes. La Belle Assemblée was concerned with the provision of contemporary literary material and illustrations that appealed to well educated women of taste and fashion – especially those living in London. Typically, each monthly edition of La Belle Assemblée contained an interesting and lively mix of literary intelligence, stories, poems, book reviews, ballads, music, biographical sketches, historical notes, essays, theatrical reviews, and pieces on contemporary trends in fashion.
Sadly, nothing is really known about the engraver of the Lambeth aquatint or how he came to reproduce it. The editor of La Belle Assemblée, however, claimed that the original image on which the aquatint was based was procured as:
‘…part of a series of very curious drawings, delineating the antiquities of London, which have never been engraved, and are for the most part, totally rased [sic.] to the ground, so that no part now remains, save the designs in his possession.’
The editor of the journal firmly believed that the aquatint depicted the riverside house ‘formerly inhabited by that Conspirator’, Guy Fawkes. He expanded on his very topical decision to include it in the November edition of La Belle Assemblée as follows:
‘As we are nearly upon the eve of the annual commemoration off the gunpowder conspiracy, it is conceived that nothing can be more appropriate, than the insertion of the accompanying plate, being a delineation of part of the mansion, once situated in Lambeth, on the banks of the Thames, and formerly occupied by Guido Fawkes, every vestige of which is now levelled to the ground.’
The editor’s attribution – which was widely followed by other authors – however, was incorrect. Indeed, there is no evidence that Guy Fawkes ever had a house on the Lambeth waterfront – although the leader of the 1605 conspirators, Robert Catesby, did. Even then, there is no clear evidence that the aquatint actually depicts Catesby’s house. Furthermore, Daniel Lysons, writing in 1792, stated that the supposed Guy Fawkes’s house was accidentally burnt down in 1635 (The Environs of London, Volume I, The County of Surrey, page 323).
Putting these myths to one side, what can be learned from a close examination of the aquatint itself? The left-hand side of the façade of the main building retains elements of a relatively modest original Italianate design, executed in the general style of much grander work associated with Inigo Jones. This section has what appear to be brick pilasters, a brick wall, stone door and window casings, and a red tiled roof, with dormers. Below this section of the façade is a four arched jetty. Although these arches spring from the tidal foreshore, they seem too narrow for the structure to have functioned as any sort of boathouse. All this suggests that the original building would have been a small mansion, probably dating to the 1640s. At this time, Lambeth still had many wealthy and aristocratic residents, whose pockets could well have stretched to commissioning a building like this. On the left of the aquatint is a grand pedimented structure, which appears to have been built in stone. This Italianate pavilion sits very oddly in front of the main façade, which suggests that it is a later addition – as does the fact that it seems to have been built of stone, rather than brick. From its style and appearance, the pavilion appears to belong more to the 1740s than the 1640s.
Time, however, had not been kind to this waterfront building. The right-hand side of the main façade had been dramatically altered with the resultant loss of what would have once been an imposing symmetrical riverside frontage. Apart from the survival of what appears to have been a central main stone cased door, the addition of later wooden shiplap has hidden any remnants of the brick structure and its windows. The three visible roof dormers have also had their windows replaced by boarding or louvres. A major shiplap covered wing has also been added. The pavilion is also clearly run-down. Three heavy raked timber baulks appear to have been added to help stabilise its riverside frontage. The end pedimented façade has had its architecture compromised by the addition of an awkward shiplap structure, which appears to be a latrine of some sort. What would probably have originally been stone stairs up to the main door from the river – beneath the central pediment – have been replaced by a mean ladder. These changes to the building façade clearly suggest that multiple adaptions had taken place as part of its journey from posh domestic use to a trade or industrial one. Picturesque as an antiquarian may have regarded the building, it is unlikely that any persons of fashion – readers of La Belle Assemblée included – travelling by watermen’s wherries to nearby Vauxhall Gardens would by then have given it much of a second glance. Indeed, they would probably have been more interested in simply being on the water itself – just like the three men on the cutter rigged yacht, which is of the type built by some Lambeth boatyards.
By the time that Read’s little aquatint was produced, Lambeth’s Fore Street – which ran parallel with the river between St. Mary’s Church, Lambeth, and Vauxhall – was already well established as a location for riverside businesses. Potteries, boatbuilders, barge building yards, coal and other wharfs, a maltings and a large whiting works lined the crowded waterfront and employed many local people. Although the Lambeth waterfront was visually one of the most interesting on London’s river, it had a sting in the tail. Some of the trades and industries that came to the Fore Street area had a far from beneficial environmental impact. The presence of noxious bone processing and soap boiling manufactories – along with the fact that an increasingly fetid river provided both a ready water supply and means of human waste disposal – were widely seen as contributing to the Cholera epidemic of 1848-1849, in which over 1,600 poorer Lambeth riverside residents perished.
The Fore Street waterfront was swept away in the late 1860s for the construction of the Albert Embankment, which incorporated part of Bazalgette’s new London intercepting sewer system. Interestingly – and in complete contradiction to the earlier statement made by the editor of La Belle Assemblée, in 1822 – the supposed Guy Fawkes house actually survived until this time. A photograph of the landward side of the building – taken by William Strudwick, who recorded much of Fore Street and the Lambeth waterfront, around 1865-1870 – shows it in a very derelict state just before its demolition. A note on the Lambeth Archives copy of the photograph states that it was ‘used as combustible storage.’ Despite this obvious pyrotechnic danger, and just like the Gunpowder Plot itself, the old Lambeth house that was often associated with it disappeared not with a bang but something of a whimper!
This article first appeared in the Docklands History Group newsletter, November 2024