Pip-pip Tally ho!! Joolz Guides here
With a "you're nicked me old beauty, how's your father, it's a fair cop guv'nor!"
I'm standing outside Wandsworth prison because I'm gonna head over towards Clapham
Or "Claaarm" as Posh people say. It's actually Britain's largest prison
And it was built in 1851 it really looks quite foreboding actually
those Victorians sure knew how to make scary looking lugubrious buildings
I can really imagine this in a Charles Dickens story,
I don't if you ever seen a film called let him have it
It was very sad actually,
around 1952 there was a fellow called Derek Bentley and his accomplice
They were doing a robbery and they were interrupted by a policeman
and Bentley's accomplice, Chris Craig, had a gun
so Bentley said "let him have it, Chris!" and Chris shot the policeman
But he claimed he meant "let him have it" as in "let him have the gun"
So unfortunately Derek Bentley was sent here before he was eventually hanged
Even though he didn't fire the shots
He was over 18 and Chris Craig who did shoot the policeman was let off because he was under 18
They also put Ronald Biggs in here, the famous great train robber
He escaped in 1965 and climbed the wall with a rope ladder
I don't know how he got hold of a rope ladder
Maybe tied some sheets together.You'd think they'd be wise to that old trick
He jumped on top of the laundry van
And I'm absconded to Brazil where he stayed
and recorded his music for the Sex Pistols and stuff
He's in that film "The Great Rock n Roll swindle, isn't he.
They got him eventually though
Can't believe they stuck poor Oscar Wilde in there as well
He did the first six months of his sentence there before they sent him off to Redding jail
Gross indecency was the charge I believe..
This is a Clapham Junction
Clapham Junction used to be a signal box in that eighteen hundreds.Then it just grew to be the most busy
Station in Britain or in the world I think, but I don't think it is anymore
That's probably someplace in Japan or something isn't it I?
I quite like the.... it looks kind of Victorian the architecture and stuff around here
That's lavender Hill up there as in the film the Lavender Hill mob
That debenhams there. It was originally an Arding and Hobbs,
and it still got some some remnants from its original Art deco look
like the ceiling inside, and we removed so many of these things in London
But what I like about Clapham is it still retains a lot of these old buildings
ever been to the Clapham Grand, Simon?
When it was opened up in 1900 it was a music hall for variety acts
Now it's just an occasional nightclub theatre or events venue
Clapham was quite a backwater in those days
And there was a judge who first used the expression "the man on the Clapham omnibus"
to describe a hypothetical reasonable person
against whom the defendant's conduct can be measured
and became kind of legal terminology
And ever since then it's passed into common parlance as meaning
your ordinary bloke in the street - your man on the Clapham omnibus
apparently in those days clapping was a pretty unremarkable place
But I tell you what it isn't anymore. Pretty expensive around here now
funny enough Clapham junction isn't actually in Clapham, it's in Battersea,
so it shouldn't be called Clapham Junction station
But here, interestingly, around the corner just in Barnard's Road
Just behind Marks and Spencers is what looks to be an ordinary boring car park
But this is where MI5 used to get their cars suped up and fixed... so James Bond...
No he was mi6 wasn't he! Anyway they used to get their surveillance equipment and stuff attached their cars
This is where they'd make them invisible. Stuff like that.
I think the Russians discovered that they were doing here, but....
They moved it to a hidden location now, which I'm not aware of but. Yeah, it used to be right in there
This is Claham Common. Clapham originally
I think in anglo-saxon, clap was from clop meaning Hill and Ham meaning village
So it was "village on the hill" and only a hundred people lived here in the year 1100
But after the plague loads of people started to move south because they wanted to escape the disease in the city
I think the most famous person who moved here at the time was Samuel Pepys
and by the 1800s it really started to attract much wealthier people, and they started building all these grand houses
I think that those ones over there
I know that vivienne westwood lives in one I think
and since then lots of other people have moved here like Graham Greene who I see lived in that house over there
Graham Greene who wrote The Third Man... Brighton Rock.... The Quiet American
JK Rowling lives around here somewhere as well
Maybe that's why that street over there was called Severus Street.
Yeah, maybe that's where she got the name Severus Snape, yeah
This is the Holy Trinity Church where William Wilberforce used to worship with a group of
Evangelical Christians and hosted meetings of what was known as the Clapham sect
who were instrumental in getting the slave trade Act passed in 1807 and the abolition of slavery itself in 1833
One of the things I really like about South London is that they've still got quite a lot of this Victorian architecture
I mean a lot of it seems to be red brick buildings that looks like a workhouse from Oliver Twist or something
But you get quite a few of these nice things. This is excellent. You know what this is? This is a stink Pole
Now around the middle of the 19th century we had something called "the great stink"
which was where the sewers were overflowing and the rivers were disgusting and full of detritus
and smelly faeces. Sometimes the sewers would even explode. The one down near the fleet River
there was actually an explosion there near Kings Cross.
So when they developed the Victorian sewage system in the 1850s
they installed a whole bunch of these stink pipes. Actually what they are is ventilation shafts
to let out all the smelly pooey fumes from the sewers and also to release pressure
So they've got no smelly explosions and except the smelly fumes from the sewers all the way out and deliver them
Over above the heads of the Victorian public. I call them pongy poles
Some of them are actually really beautiful and ornate like the one down in Kennington Cross is quite a famous one
But many people must walk past this and not notice it
People just think it's a lamppost ...... a remnant of Victorian England
If you light a match at the top of one you'll probably get a flame.
I just want to say that I do not recommend
lighting your own farts by the way. I mean you can if you like but I take no responsibility for the consequences
I was just talking about him the other day. Look, this bench is in honor of legendary actor Jeremy Brett
"love laughter an immense courage in the face of adversity
inspires us all"
He was Sherlock Holmes
He was also in My Fair Lady. He's the one who sings
I have often walked down the street before
this bandstand was actually built in 1889
They renovated it some great expense
But it's hardly ever used except for kids to play on
And I think that is the one, though, that David Bowie has a nice photograph of himself in the 60s
There's a little churchyard just along the way, used to be Lambeth's finest array
of tombstones, epitaphs, trees, flowers, all that jazz, till the war came along and someone dropped a bomb on the lot.
By Clapham South station is this curious-looking building, and this is excellent
This is a bomb shelter.
They built eight of them during the war all across London. There's definitely one at Belsize Park
There's one near Goodge street. There's a few others dotted around the place. Transport for London do tours
And you can go down and have a look at all the miles of tunnels underneath
And they still got the old graffiti and the old original signs from the 1940s down there. It's amazing actually
They didn't really finish them until 1942
though so that was when the Blitz had already finished
But then again this area was heavily targeted and around 1944
They did have to reopen it and people did use it it could contain
8,000 people down there was a proper bomb shelter
Yeah, Clapham was heavily targeted in the war. Not quite sure what they were trying to hit
The common? The bandstand?
In 1948 the first West Indian immigrants to the UK were housed in here
I think 200 of them or so, they stayed in there for several weeks
whilst accommodation could be found for them, and eventually a lot of them
I think, settled in Brixton, because there was some labor exchange there or something
Which is why there's quite a large West Indian population in in Brixton.
It's hard to comprehend the space of the tunnels that must be underneath us
Well I would go in to show you but I have to be honest, it does cost £38.50 to enter and
I very highly doubt that they'll let me in with my camera because no one ever seems to let me in with my camera
Anyway, for that price you do get free entry into the London transport Museum.
I never thought it wouldn't happen with me and the girl from Clapham, out on a windy Common
that night, I ain't forgotten. You know that song? Up the junction....
by Squeeze
This must be one of those boundary markers. I like stuff like this, but you can't read what it says on it.
Besides being one of the largest green spaces in South London Clapham Common does
also have the dubious honor of being the location and venue of
the first-ever modeling job that I did, which was right here in this lake!
That's Fascinating, Julian!!
How dare you! It's interesting in that you don't have cigarette ads anymore
They're not allowed anymore,
and then I went on to the huge career and success that I'm now enjoying, Simon
You're just jealous to ordinary rice
Extraordinary rise!
According to this that was the largest bandstand in London
As if anyone cares. I didn't realize how many famous people lived here
Benjamin Franklin he pops up all over the place.
What's he doing here? At least there's no Charles Dickens shows up bloody everywhere
I love that they still have these original shop fronts on the news agents down here. They're so characterful.
they got rid of those where I live.
Be really careful if you're drunk on this platform. Speaking of which I could do with a drink, Simon. What about you?
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