Memor(andum)| Friday 12 November, 2005 |
The story of the Stockwell Memorial Garden mural is the story of Stockwell itself. The irony over the balmy summer months is that the knobber media whores positioned themselves right in front of the mural, looking for the story of Stockwell but still managing to tell it incorrectly.
Terrorism, Met Police incompetence and moral panics? Mmm. That's only a minor part of the story. Brian the Mural Man tells it like it is with his paintbrush.
And so... those Stockwell Memorial Garden mural images explained in full:
Vincent Van Gough lodged in Stockwell in 1873 when his employment with a Parisian firm of art dealers saw the young artist transferred to London. That lot up the Stockwell Road have long tried to claim our Vincent as a Brixton Boy. Not so - he had his ear close to the ground, so to speak, on the streets of Sunny Stockwell. It is during his SW8 stint that the young Vincent became increasingly interested in religion. The happy clappers that set up shop outside their nuthouse on South Lambeth Road at 9am every Sunday morning (amplified tambourines and all) have had the opposite effect on me.
Stockwell tube station was the first on the network, opened on December 18, 1890 by the then Prince of Wales (later to become King Edward VII.) This begs the question where on earth could you catch a train to? King William Street tube station as it happens, which was only open from 1890 - 1900. A manhole in the basement of an office in Regis Street still leads to the abandoned station. A plaque at the entrance to Stockwell station commemorates this historical first. No mention though of the clothing attire worn by the Victorian gents back in the day. I bet it wasn't a bulky brown leather jacket.
Violette Szabo was a secret agent in occupied France during the Second World War. A long way off from Sunny Stockwell but as a teenager, she lived on Stockwell Road and worked in Woolworths in Brixton. Szabo's specialised in bombing Nazi built bridges. She also played a major role in sabotaging German communication systems in the build up to D-Day. Szabo was captured by German soldiers in 1944 and was executed the following year. The mural image was originally painted with a pistol pointing to her head. This was thought to be a little extreme (yes, even in Stockwell) and was later painted over. Szabo was the first woman to be awarded the George Cross, posthumously in 1946.
The red poppies painted on the mural refer to Remembrance Sunday. The Memorial Garden is the focus for the main ceremony in Stockwell each November. Six hundred poppies have been painted on the mural - one for every local man who lost their life in the two World Wars.
The Empire Windrush image refers to the employment opportunities offered in Stockwell to the first immigrants from the Caribbean who sailed to England in 1948. The Underground, the Bus Garage and the Annie McCall Hospital all recruited Windrush passengers. Two stops down the Northern Line and the Windrush immigrants camped in the shelter similar to the one in the Memorial Gardens at Clap'ham Commone.
Stockwell Bus Garage is one of the few listed buildings in SW8 and is within easy view of onionbagblog HQ. Of particular interest to any architectural types is the magnificent roof structure which has no internal supports, but is held up instead by concrete 'ribs.' Opened in 1952, the Adie, Button and Partners designed building is a fine example of late modernism. It fits in well with much of the building work carried out in post-war London around the time of the Festival of Britain. Garage Spotters (the lowest of the low in the anorak food chain) can often be seen outside my flat admiring the view.
He may have been a crap Bond, but he's OUR crap Bond. Sir Roger Moore was born in Stockwell in 1927. The young Roger perfected his eyebrow action at the Hackford Road Elementary School (now Durand School.) Another SW8 007 connection is Joanna Lumley who first appeared as a Bond girl opposite Sean Connery in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The lovely Joanna can now be seen appearing opposite onionbagblogger most weeks across the till at Nine Elms Sainsbury's. Cat food seems to be the staple diet chez Jo.
And finally...
The most recent addition - a portrait of Jean Charles de Menezes, with a Brazilian flag in the background. This is not the image in which locals want Stockwell to be remembered by, but nevertheless it is still equally important and has found an appropriate home in the Memorial Garden.
Future additions to the Memorial Garden could include the young David Jones who attended Stockwell Infants School (a Hunky Dory education establishment by all accounts), Will Self (who fills his weekly Independent column with SW8 ramblings whenever he can't be arsed to come up with anything original. Um, hang on...) and celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey. But do we really want to remember a knobber media whore?
Plus...
Some more obscure Stockwell images that are on hold until I next catch up with Brian the Mural Man...
Crap Picture Gallery (click on thumbs to see large image)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
technorati: stockwell
