Random Bus Stop: Poynders Road (Clarence Avenue)
Clapham Park, Lambeth, SW4 8PL [eastbound]
This is Bus Stop U on Poynders Road, a very typical London bus stop, randomlyselected for the purposes of today's post.
One pole, one shelter.
The stop is served by routes 50 and 355 - ideal if you want to get to Croydon or Brixton. All its timetables are in order. The orange bench is comfortably flat rather than convex, and comfortably seats three. This is not a locality with spider maps so the rear frame contains default generic fare information. The big advert inside the shelter is for mango, carrot and banana yoghurt, which must have been a fun day in the research lab. The big advert outside is for a phone company.
The pavement within the shelter is littered with tiny twigs and an apple core. Chewing gum splatters the slabs like a giant dot to dot. An elderly gentleman walks over and waits outside, until it starts to spit with rain and he swiftly shifts. A second arrival already smells of alcohol, which is good going given it's not yet lunchtime. A middle-aged couple soon follow, she in red boots, he for some reason carrying two bananas. Eventually a convoy of buses approaches, the waiting passengers split into two groups and off they go.
Poynders Road ekes out a dual existence as the South Circular - not the roaring arterial that characterises the North but an apologetic girdle threaded along residential roads. Traffic streams from the tip of Clapham Common to the foot of Streatham Hill, or vice versa, or crawls, depending. Most of it is private cars, but interspersed with vans, refrigerated lorries, tipper trucks, bikes, motorbikes and of course the occasional bus. A white Volkswagen pauses alongside the shelter, held at the lights, blaring out some tune that only the driver is enjoying. In the front seat of a silver van, driven by Dad, a boy on halfterm holiday bites down on a biscuit.
Across the road the view is of a line of trees, half of which are shrouded in pinky white blossom (which is unnervingly premature for mid-February). Behind the screen of branches lies Agnes RileyGardens, one of Lambeth's lesser-known medium-sized parklets. It was bequeathed to the LCC in 1937 by Frederick Riley, owner of one of the last big houses hereabouts, on the pre-condition it was named after his wife. He'd only intended to hand over his garden, but after his death 'Oakfield' was also demolished to help create a larger landscaped mix of shrubbery and recreational features.
Today a broad sweep of grass spreads down towards basketball courts and football pitches, all of which are enjoying half term kickabout action. Smaller offspring clamber over a cluster of damp playground equipment while shivery parents look on. Pensioners with brollies walk once round the perimeter to give their small dogs some exercise. The Rileys' long pond has been marshalled into two much smaller circular pools, one amenable to frogs and the other filled with rocks. Their greenhouses, meanwhile, have been replaced by a community garden, a polytunnel and a bug-friendly orchard. Few public spaces tick quite so many boxes within just four acres.
Bus Stop U sits on the dividing line between two very different flanks of Clapham Park. A few yards to the west is Rodenhurst Road, an exclusive sweep lined by large Edwardian villas, its front gardens flush with magnolia trees and Range Rovers. A few yards to the east is Clarence Avenue which once looked similar, indeed its gardens were significantly bigger, but which was replaced after the war by a heterogeneous council estate. Now this too is being sequentially demolished by a housing collective as part of a regeneration project, with archetypal brick structures slowly devouring the older stock. Those waiting for the bus tend to arrive from the east rather than the west.
Poynders Road was also once lined by big houses, before the Luftwaffe and a desire for densification replaced most of them with unpreposessing blocks of flats. One such intervention was Poynders Parade, intended as the shopping hub for all the additional residents, and built in a long arc across the grounds of what used to be Clarence House. What high hopes there must have been on opening, and what a sad sight it presents sixty years later. Out of a dozen shops only one still trades, the Londis on the corner, and even that has an anachronistic Evening Standard poster stuck outside. Nextdoor is Regal Wines, long shuttered, and further along a dead post office, dead bakery, dead pub and dead chippy.
The signs outside Pantry Snacks and the Poynders Fish Bar still boast 0181 phone numbers, while W. Perry (Hardware, D.I.Y. and National Express Agent) remains firmly frozen in the 01 era. Most decrepit is the very-oddly-named Bank OfSwans, an estate pub with rotting doors, browning curtains and a fading sticker in the window inviting you inside to watch the 2010/11 Premier League. The entire parade was supposed to have been demolished five years ago, but Metropolitan's masterplan is running late after arguments with the council and so the unloved wall of shuttered retail remains.
Back at the bus stop the rain is falling faster now, and traffic flicks up spray as it passes. Droplets of water fall intermittently from the shelter's overhang. The red route markings in the gutter have been submerged. The youngest of a family of four is jumping in a puddle to see how far it'll splash. The park, glimpsed through sodden blossom, has mostly emptied. Too many cars are passing for a pensioner to risk crossing the road, so she has to walk down to the lights before returning bedraggled. Hopefully a dry double decker will be turning the corner shortly and whisking us away.
