There is no museum that records the diversity of Lambeth’s history. Such a museum was the dream of Charles Woolley (1846–1922), an accountant and businessman, but with a great range of other interests. Woolley was born in Clapham, lived for many years in Brixton and then made his home at 35 Dulwich Road (which he named ‘Verulam’) in Herne Hill, opposite St Jude’s Church. The history of the borough became a particular interest and he collected pottery made in Lambeth, especially ceramics made at the Doulton factory, as well as maps, prints and topographical photographs relating to Lambeth.
Woolley was a committed member of the Church of England and regularly attended St Mary’s, the parish church of Lambeth (now the Museum of Garden History). His involvement in many charitable organisations and his interest in public affairs led to him being elected as a councillor for the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth when this was set up in 1900 and, due to his financial expertise, serving as Chairman of the Finance and ‘Lighting and Watch’ Committees (the latter a term deriving from the Lighting and Watching Act of 1833 that played an important role in the establishment of effective local policing). Woolley became one of the first Aldermen of the Borough in 1906, but disagreed with the Council when it sold (for the sum of £81,000), land known as ‘Pedlar’s Acre’ to the London County Council, part of the site for County Hall, the building of which began in 1912. It seems Woolley thought that the land rightfully belonged to St Mary’s Lambeth and not to the Council.
Two Lambeth Doulton vases by Emily J. Partington c.1890
Woolley's departure from the Council, however, did not deter his decision to donate to the Borough his collection of objects associated with Lambeth. This he did in 1915, the first of our centenaries. His hope was that a Lambeth museum could in time be established and in 1922 he wrote to the Council suggesting that Brockwell House, a building in the park that had been used as research laboratories by the Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company, would be suitable. Sadly, Woolley died a few weeks later, Brockwell House was demolished and the scheme came to nothing. His collection remains in store to this day, part of Lambeth Archives at the Minet Library. When serving on the Council Woolley was a member of the Minet Library Joint Committee, so it is perhaps appropriate that his collection should be housed there, except that the library is now itself under threat due to cuts in local authority funding.
The library was bombed in the last war but rebuilt in the 1950s. Now Lambeth are proposing to dispose of the site and the Borough’s archive and collections face an uncertain future. Surely not the fate that Charles Woolley would have wished.
The second anniversary is neatly linked to the first – though this time a bicentenary. 1815 was not merely the year of Waterloo; it was the year that one of Lambeth’s most successful industries got under way. For in 1815 John Doulton was taken on as a partner in the firm of Watts and Jones, one of the many potteries amidst the multifarious industries that had grown up on the Lambeth side of the Thames.
The old Doulton factory (to the right of the Ship Tavern), photographed from old Lambeth Bridge (photo from Woolley archive)
The business prospered, not least through the production of saltglaze drainage pipes to meet better standards of sanitation and in demand in huge quantities as London grew during the 19th century (from a population of 1 million in 1800 to 6 million at the end of the century). Largely forgotten now are the remarkable buildings that the Doulton company built for its factory and showroom, following the removal of the picturesque jumble of riverside wharves, workshops and warehouses and the building of the Albert Embankment in the 1860s.
The High Victorian Gothic style of the Doulton buildings show the same exuberant self-confidence to be seen in their close contemporary, George Gilbert Scott’s renowned Midland Hotel at St Pancras station. Particularly remarkable is the 233-foot chimney, disguised (it is said at the suggestion of John Ruskin) as a 13th-century bell-tower, in the manner of the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The appearance of these buildings in the 1870s coincided with the decision by Henry Doulton, who had followed his father into the business, to broaden the company’s range of products (which had been largely functional ceramic, terracotta and stoneware) to include art ceramics. It is probably for these ceramics that Lambeth Doulton is today best remembered. One particular feature of the Doulton company was its willingness to employ many women in their production, mainly from the nearby Lambeth Art School. This is commemorated in two beautifully hand-decorated volumes presented by the Doulton women artists to Henry Doulton in 1882, in which they expressed their “obligations to you for the origination of an occupation at once interesting and elevating to so large a number of our sex”, with all the women signing their names alongside their personal maker’s mark.
These two volumes, now in Lambeth Archives, were purchased by the Borough when Doulton finally closed their business in London in 1956 and thereafter maintained all production at Stoke on Trent. Charles Woolley’s collection contained some “high art” pieces with complex colouring, glazing and ornamentation, but his preference seems to have been for much simpler pieces, such as teapots and jugs, that hark back to a much older English vernacular tradition.
Lambeth Doulton teapot from the Woolley collection c.1855
The Doulton buildings were badly damaged in the war and finally demolished in the 1950s (The Times for 14 September 1951, reporting the start of demolition, speaks of complaints about “youths” using the semi-derelict site as a playground at night and throwing stones at passers-by.) Even if not damaged in the war one suspects that the buildings would not have survived far enough into our own times to reach the safety of listed status and the revival of admiration of the High Victorian style. They join a long list of lost splendours of Victorian London. Fortunately, there is a survivor from the Doulton works, the much smaller block on the corner of Lambeth High Street and Black Prince Road, now known as Southbank House. Encrusted with every sort of ornamentation, this Grade 2 listed building, in what has become an area of architectural mediocrity, is an evocative reminder of past glories and Lambeth’s rich industrial heritage.
Henry Doulton died in 1897 and was buried in West Norwood cemetery. His mausoleum, c.1888 probably designed by Robert Stark Wilkinson (the architect of the High Victorian Doulton buildings described above) incorporates carved Doulton details, including the weatherproof terracotta roof tiles that Henry Doulton had invented. Grade II-listed, the memorial has benefited from restoration and stands out amidst the, admittedly sometimes picturesque, ruined state of much of the cemetery. Charles Woolley was also buried at West Norwood, but sadly in the course of cemetery “maintenance” by Lambeth his gravestone disappeared some years ago, surely a fate that this benefactor of the Borough did not deserve.
Laurence Marsh
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