Along with Woolwich, Battersea has been chosen for a forthcoming volume of the Survey of London in part to redress a long-standing bias within the series in favour of districts north of the Thames. As a riverside parish with a rich industrial history, but an upriver one, it will act as a foil and contrast to the Woolwich volume, and build on expertise amassed by the Survey team over the past two decades in volumes on Poplar and Clerkenwell.
Battersea today is strikingly varied in character. Until the early 19th century there was a small village nucleus around the parish church, which was rebuilt in the 1770s, and a smattering of industry along the Thames. Behind the river lay marshy land, then a mixture of market gardens and small villas stretching back to Clapham and Wandsworth Commons. From about 1840 railways, industry and large-scale housing erupted, taking the population from 4,000 to 120,000 in half a century.
The handsome Battersea Park was laid out just in time to prevent the whole of the area besides the Thames being engulfed by building. Social conditions in the north were severely impoverished, while street after street of better suburban houses rose within reach of the commons after 1870. The criss-cross of different railways and their works was exceptionally tangled, leaving the topography of northern Battersea permanently scarred, though it is still marked by memorable sites such as Battersea Power Station and Clapham Junction. Further south and west the smarter Victorian streets are now fashionable and prized.
The Survey of London is responding to the special challenge of Battersea by departing from its traditional topographical arrangement and tackling the area thematically. Public, municipal, educational buildings, places of worship, places of entertainment and hospitals will each have their own chapter, with introductions bringing out their history, interrelationship and architectural character. The housing will be dealt with more conventionally, but with an eye always to the broad view and the handsome illustrations for which the series is renowned.
