The NUMBER 44 Route

Tooting Station to Victoria

Thursday May 16 2019

Thameslink has obviously been on its mettle since its debacle three weeks ago and not only did I step into the same carriage as Jo we disembarked at Tooting Station,  but we then crossed the road and straight onto a 44 bus.

 Tooting is well endowed with shopping opportunities though this stretch has more of the community facilities: two churches and I think two types of worshipping, a rather lovely restored library and even what looked like a thriving department store – Morleys – in the same small group as the original Brixton store, and its website reminded me to look out for another in Bexleyheath , if ‘we are spared’ to get to the B routes…  Family members will recognise that phrase.

Edward VII always looks a bit surprised to be outside Tooting Underground station and we got across the always busy crossroads and waited at the bottom end of Garratt Lane. I thought maybe he ( the bus driver not Edward VII you understand) was dawdling as this is quite a key stop for people coming out of the station but in fact the drivers were changing. 

 This bus was never busy, the reasons for which I will give you later, but we did have one upstairs passenger.  He must have heard us chatting and then asked what the trees were – he had studied botany in India but did not know about the ubiquitous and tough as old boots London Plane; I also recommended to him the book London’s Street Trees by Peter Wood. He got off at the top of Garratt Lane, which had taken us past the Streatham Cemetery, the Almshouses and small terraced homes that line this undeniable meandering lane. These would have housed light and heavy industry workers and later in the 20^th century many key workers. There is still some light industry along the River Wandle, whose valley this route follows from Earlsfield – the midway point between Tooting and Wandsworth and now a much sought after residential area , especially for families.  Earlsfield Station had had a facelift since we were last here , and named for the toffs who sold their estate and lands to the railways on the understanding the station would acknowledge this.

Also remembered round here is Henry Prince , a Tory housing councillor who believed in social housing and after whom the 1938-built flats (over 200 of them) are named. They front onto Garratt Lane and back onto the Wandle – the flats are generous in size and number of bedrooms and expect large families – our current mayor grew up here as his father was a bus driver, and key workers need local housing, now as then.

Approaching Wandsworth hub and the 1970s-built Southside / Arndale Centre both Jo and I thought we could smell brewing which seemed slightly strange as the Ram Brewery is now the context for a large and long-awaited housing development and brewing ceased in 2006, so were we enjoying some spectral scents?  The development, which has been planned since before the Blog Phase 1, is now nearly complete and the marketing suite was to be seen on Armoury Way from where the 44 pushes on along the Old York Road. This almost feels as though it should be pedestrianised and I suspect the 44 is the only bus allowed along this very gentrified stretch of what was once urban and gritty.

It is now time to confess that it is nearly fifty years since I started life pounding the streets of Wandsworth borough as one of its social workers and this patch used to be one of the smelliest stretches and tucked amongst the gin distillery, the Prices candle factory and even worse Garton’s Glucose was a homeless families unit, long since demolished along with most of the industry.

This part of the route, which more or less follows the curves of the river, is now filled (overfilled?) with densely packed housing blocks, mostly of the private persuasion and all promising luxury and a river view. I could link to numerous glossy websites but you know the kind already. Between the blocks we discovered plans for a new Academy of Dance  It seems they have been established in Battersea for a while but his will offer new opportunities.

‘The Asparagus’ (according to the useful Wetherspoons website) apparently recalls Battersea’s fame as a market garden area renowned for producing this crop presumably before industry arrived.  ‘Cartel’ on the other hand bills itself as modern Mexican but the name conjures up something more sinister. The Latchmere theatre is now well established having started in 1982 and still promotes new writing – some more successful than others.

Less easy to research was the George Blunden – I can’t think the Pub was named after a recent Bank of England manager but other sources elude me?

Continuing pretty much in a straight line, or as straight as the river ever goes, there is a Harris Academy indicating that real people with children who need educating actually live here as opposed to flats for investment. And there’s a library too – the third on this route so some credit due to Wandsworth for retaining them.

And so maintaining an unrushed but steady pace the 44 approaches Chelsea Bridge, leaving the park on the left with even more flats on the river side . The whole ‘Battersea experience’ seemed a strange mixture of past echoes – the Candlemakers Apartments and the pretty alms-houses and the now closed Imperial Laundry which has been re-purposed as a design forum, but overall dominated by rows of living spaces with aspirational names. The blocks actually on the bridge approach look a bit like ships... 

Once over it was quite a relief to see the well- established and very private US owned Lister Hospital in its handsome premises and the range of older housing along Ebury Bridge Road . Inevitably as we approached Victoria there was a slowing down due to volume of traffic and arriving tourists unsure which way to go on emerging from bus, coach and train stations. We know the feeling. We also passed the National Audit Offices in the once Imperial Airways Terminal.

Sadly this is not one of the now few privileged routes allowed into the rather shrunken Victoria Bus Station but squats just short of a ‘bus only’ traffic light and lane some distance away.  The Route 44 offers , in just under an hour, a sweep through what was once solid working class areas of SW London, with few station connections, but three libraries … less industry = fewer passengers?