The Pint of Milk Test

 Looks very much like it.....

Except that it isn't. This is the site of St George's  proposed Kew HQ development, just by the bridge in Brentford. Wonder if they know about this? Link.

If you were visiting The Globe Theatre, chances are you'd pass this development on the corner of Park Street and New Globe Walk. The developer, the rather grandly named The Governors & Trustees of St Marylebone School  is planning 25 resi units, 250 sq m office and 500 sq m retail on this prime site. They're calling it The Bear Pit, odd name, odd history.

Dig into the area's past and two names keep cropping up, Edward Alleyn and Philip Henslowe, along with two of the most popular pastimes of the Elizabethan era, the theatre and bear-baiting. 

Edward Alleyn was an actor and in 1594 he bought half of the site, then known as Bear Gardens for the not inconsiderable sum of £200, financially he was doing ok. A couple of years later Henslowe acquired a lease on the rest of the site. The two men went into business together, connected by land as well as marriage, Alleyn having married Henslowe's stepdaughter in 1592.

The Elizabethans loved bear-baiting, when they ran out of bears they'd use bulls instead and on one occasion a pony...with an ape strapped to its back. These were not enlightened times. However, bear-baiting was good business and Alleyn and Henslowe were good businessmen.

In an audacious attempt to control the whole baiting racket south of the river the two tried to get appointed as Masters of the Royal Game of Bulls and Bears after the previous incumbent Ralph Bowes died. They failed to get the top jobs but managed to get appointed as deputies instead, now they could start to develop their property.

In 1613 the baiting pit was demolished and for the sum of £360, carpenter Gilbert Katherens was contracted to build a new theatre on the site to be named The Hope. The decision to build was in no small part influenced by the fact that the Globe theatre next door had (some say conveniently) burnt down a couple of months previously on the 29th of June.

The fact that Alleyn and Henslowe had built a theatre did not mean that their bear-baiting days were over, far from it. As I've said these were not enlightened times, if you were to look at the Hope's weekly programme from 1614 it would read: Tues-Sun, Some Plays; Monday, Bear-Baiting. Theatre at the time was part performance space, part zoo, part slaughterhouse and Tuesdays, after Monday afternoon's carnage, must have been, at least for the actors, a deeply unpleasant experience.

This was to be the last major financial venture that either men embarked on. Henslowe died in 1616, four months before Shakespeare, two years after the Hope's first performance. As for Allen, he outlived his partner by 7 years, shuffling off this mortal coil on Christmas Day, 1623.

Today nothing remains of the baiting pits or The Hope or indeed The Globe. But carry on down Park Street, past the Bear Pit development, and you'll come across this curious door at the bottom of the Rose Court office building:

St James' Queen Mary's Place in Roehampton. The couple in the foreground are not real and neither is the building, the crane and construction works in the background, however, are. This is the southernmost tip of the site known as Belmont Place and it's the only element currently under construction on this 440+ unit development.

2 pictures, 1 scheme, 7 weeks apart, 8 more storeys constructed...fast.

Link

Last Wednesday (despite the tube strike) I went to the Estates Gazette's London Tomorrow conference in the German Gym at King's Cross. It was (despite the tube strike) packed, due in no small part, I suspect, to the fact that the highlight of the day was going to be a tour of Argent's King's Cross site itself; we weren't disappointed, more on that later. Firstly this is what the speakers had to say: 

King's Cross

• 67 acres all under 1 ownership
• Largest consent in London, ever
• Sainsburys to move into offices (almost certainly)
• 9 other parties interested, they are, according to Argent Chief Exec Roger Madelin "big, cuddly and exiting" but no names as yet
• 1^st phase of 200 resi units to start in 2010
• No spec build so completion time "impossible to say" according to Sir David Clementi (Chairman King's Cross Central) but somewhere in the region of 10-14 years
• 10 new streets to be built, last new street was Kingsway in 1906 (so says Roger Madelin)
• All 3 gassomiters to be pulled down (2 down already), packed up and sent up north to be sandblasted, they will then return to King's Cross where they will be re-erected!

 Stratford, Westfield - Jonathan Daniels, Development Director, Westfield 

• M&S + John Lewis/Wairose under construction
• 1,200 resi units next to the superstores yet to start
• Master-plan yet to come forward
• Development partners yet to be found

Battersea, Nine Elms, American Embassy - William Jackson, Partner, Cushman &  Wakefield 

• 100 sites looked at
• A congressional rule that an American architect be used, 4 in the running at the moment
• 2012 start
• Workforce 80% British

Battersea, The Power Station - Jeremy Castle, Planning Director, Treasury Holdings 

• To protect the views from Westminster Bridge the new plans propose buildings no higher than the base of the chimneys, an area defined as the "Cloak of Invisibility" by starchitect Vinoly
• Development will be 50% open space
• Power station itself could be for offices and will have a £150m repair bill

Croydon 

• Jon Rouse, Chief Exec of Croydon B.C said that the council had missed out on a number of new developments in the past but that now the borough policy will be one driven by potential developer/occupier needs rather than the council. He concluded by saying Croydon was "open for business".

HCA - David Lunts, Regional Director 

• HCA moving to Palestra next month and will be on the same floor as the LDA
• Housing starts down 70% over the 1^st half of 2009
• Kick Start scheme to go nationwide
• HCA will enter into "single conversation" with individual boroughs
• "A rising market floats every boat" but in the future we will need to "get more for less"

London Mayor's Office - Richard Blakeway, Director of Housing 

• The New London Plan will have a "presumption" against garden grab
• No more Hobbit Homes
• New developments to be Parker Morris +10%
• Developers will have no grants for the affordable element unless the new standards are met
• Better marketing for intermediate housing, possibly advertise via estate agents

Continue reading "London Tomorrow last Wednesday" »

The house in which England footballer David Beckham lived and grew up in, is set to go the market. Colin Evans, an author, was researching the Leytonstone area of London for a book he was writing and while doing so, discovered the terraced house where David Beckham grew up - and the garden in which the former England captain may have kicked his first ball. The three-bedroom terraced home would typically be worth around £200,000, but its connection with "Brand Beckham" has made the value skyrocket - with the owner saying he has just been made a serious offer of £750,000 from a French Beckham fan. Mr Evans, when returning from Paris where he met the bidder, insisted the house justifies its hefty price tag. "It's part of history," he said. "That's the place where Beckham grew up. It has a little garden which is where he learned to play football. There are better condition houses in the street going for £250,000. But this one is unique."

...for this on London's South Bank. Starting on 27th May it'll be the venue for a whole load of stuff (limited period, 8 weeks). Details here.

 The void is 6m deep by 18m wide and 10m high...which sounds like the strap line from a low budget horror movie...but it isn't. This void is at the base of Cromwell Tower on the north east edge of the Barbican Estate in the shadow of Frobisher Crescent. The tower was completed in 1973, but the void was never occupied. It may have been intended as a retail unit but no one, including the City of London, is too sure about its original purpose, even the architects drawings are no longer in existence. Over time the void was forgotten, frequented only by the occasional construction worker who used the space for storing bags of concrete, possibly some tools and the odd bit of timber.

Fast forward 36 years to last Tuesday's City of London Planning and Transportation committee, item 9/4a, and there it is, The Void. Normally I wouldn't be all that interested in an application for the conversion to provide a single residential unit, but this one caught my eye simply because of the sheer size of it, 2,626 sq ft gross, for a resi unit in London that's massive. Jamie Fobert Architects who also did the extension to the Tate in St Ives are designing it, should be interesting.

If you were to ask some of the local old timers about the history of the area chances are they'd probably tell you that up until the 1960's it was the site of the Metropolitan Cattle Market, and that's why some of the estate buildings were named after farmyard animals, Tamworth (pigs), Kerry (cattle) and Southdown (sheep). They may even tell you that the clock tower to the east not only contains the original clock but that its workings were the prototype for the capitals most famous time-piece big ben. They could tell you all this but it still wouldn't get you any closer to finding out what the site was originally used for. To do that you'd need to go back to the 18th century.