d Heaver built 4,419 houses in the area!). You will also notice that all what is now made by the tower blocks of Winstanley estates was originally similar to the terrace houses of Eccles road, lavender Sweep, etc.]
The early housing was mainly for low-income families associated with the local workforce. During the latter quarter of the nineteenth century, though, this changed to more speculative housing. The developer Alfred Heaver made an enormous impact on the Battersea townscape with the construction of some 4,419 houses in the area between 1878 and 1898.
The construction of houses brought with it a demand for goods and services and St. John’s Road, Lavender Hill and St. John’s Hill became thriving commercial areas. By 1885 the commercial importance of the area was such that Arding and Hobbs, the largest department store south of the River Thames, was built. A fire destroyed the building in 1909, which was replaced by the current much grander building.
The burgeoning population also created a demand for leisure and entertainment. The New Grand Palace of Varieties (now The Clapham Grand) opened in 1900. The Shakespeare Theatre was established in Lavender Hill, near the former Town Hall, the Pavilion Cinema, with its grand Triumphal arched frontage was built where now the entrance to ASDA supermarket lies in Lavender Hill. Both buildings were sadly lost in enemy action in the Second World War, the latter being destroyed by a V-2 rocket in 1944. The former horse drawn tram depot in St John’s Hill was turned into Pykes Circuit Cinematograph. Later a cinema was built in St. John’s Hill, on the site of the former Battersea Grammar School, and became known as the Granada Cinema.
Change has been constant in the area. A Freemasons School for Girls in Boutflower Road was opened in 1853, but demolished in the 1930’s to make way for the Peabody housing estate. The bombed site of the former Pavilion Cinema remained vacant until the 1970’s, when a supermarket was constructed for Carrefour (now ASDA). The buildings in Clapham Junction Approach, together with the former Sorting Office, were demolished in the early 1970’s to make way for a new development including the current entrance to the station and shopping centre.
However, many historic buildings remain and at the time of writing, the former Granada Cinema is going through a transition in which the auditorium will become a church and apartments will be constructed above.
Clapham Junction was originally part of the Borough of Battersea, which was incorporated into Wandsworth in 1965.
UPDATE 9/04/2020: Photo of the Chestnuts in 1973 (nowadays only the back of the farm is visible 22 Mossbury Road, and restored to its brick façade)
UPDATE: 1/02/2021: Corrected V-2 rocket instead of V-1, thanks to Julia Matcham who told us: “The V1, which preceded it, was a pilot-less plane with fire coming out of its tail as it chugged across the sky, sounding like a barge, to run out of fuel and fall on some unlucky area.”