45 Squared 41) WINDRUSH SQUARE, SW2
Borough of Lambeth, 110m×50m
Lambeth's premier public space can be found in the centre of Brixton opposite the Town Hall. It's had several different names, the latest of which is Windrush Square, and in 2010 was redeveloped as a fairly sparse piazza sometimes nicknamed Windswept Square. But it is in fact full of stuff, some of which you may never have spotted, so today I bring you...
20 things to see in Windrush Square
1) A streetsign saying Brixton Oval
In the 18th century this was the northern end of a long stripe of grazing land called Rush Common, much of which still exists as protected open land alongside Brixton Hill. Here by the crossroads was a small approximately elliptical pasture which went by the name of Brixton Oval. Sheep grazed here until the 1890s, although they'd have a hard time today because there's no grass, also they'd soon find themselves on the grill of a local takeaway. But the northeastern side of the square is still officially called Brixton Oval, despite the geometrical contradiction, and a street sign on the front of the library confirms this.
2) A philanthropist's public library Sir Henry Tate made his fortune refining sugar and spent much of his wealth on cultural philanthropy. His art collection seeded the Tate Gallery and here in south London he founded several public libraries, one of themhere in Brixton. The Prince of Wales came to open it in 1893, at which point you'd have found the newspaper room inside on the left, the reading room on the right and the lending library at the rear. These days there are computers upstairs and e-books in the catalogue, but as a place to read and study it's still as popular as the Lord of sugar would have hoped.
3) A statue of Sir Henry Tate
After Sir Henry died in 1899 his widow bought Brixton Oval, kicked out the sheep and presented it to the council so that it could become a public space. The Tate Library Garden duly opened in 1905 with raised flower beds and concentric walkways within a rim of iron railings, hugely more attractive than the hard landscaping we see today. A bust of Sir Henry took pride of place in the centre and is pretty much all that remains of the gardens today, its heavily weathered plinth describing him as "BARONET / VPRIGHT MERCHANT / WISE PHILANTHROPIST".
4) The Tate plane
The gardens were paved over in 1965 in favour of benches and a rim of raised beds at a cost of £3,000. But the off-centre plane tree was left alone, already towering above the library, and subsequently survived a more modern relandscaping in 2009. It's been designated one of the Great Trees of London by the charity Trees for Cities, and has a particularly impressive pyramidal canopy which shades a significant portion of the square for a significant portion of the year.
5) The Ritzy cinema
Opened as The Electric Pavilion in 1911, this listed auditorium expanded into the nextdoor Brixton Theatre after it suffered wartime bomb damage. These days it's a five screen warren for the Picturehouse chain, the latest programme helpfully emblazoned in large white letters on the front, and offers the square's sole refreshments even when the screens are dark.
6) Insufficient seating
In lieu of benches the square now has a few dozen chairs at jaunty angles, seemingly shiftable but in fact securely bolted down. They're not much cop for communal socialising in which case youre best bet is the so-called 'granite worm', a huge grey turd of clamberable rock deposited in front of the library.
7) The old public toilets
These were opened in 1929 alongside what was then the end of Rushcroft Road. A big trench was dug, then divided into Ladies and Gentlemen with two sets of stairs up to street level. The conveniences have alas been closed for over 20 years, likely for misuse as well as lack of cash, although the ironwork up top has scrubbed up prettily.
8) The sugar cane ironwork
The entire square was given a significant spruce up in 2009-10 as part of Mayor Boris’s Great Outdoors Programme. It gained the aforementioned lighting, the aforementioned granite worm, the aforementioned bleak emptiness and some interesting surfaces underfoot. The significance of the knobbly cast iron panels in the pavement beside the underground toilets will be missed by most, but it's a sugar cane motif to reference slavery and the West Indies.
9) The old lights
A couple of proper heritage lampstands have been retained, each with two teeny lamps and intermediate metalwork twiddles, but neither of them work. Alternative eco-friendly lighting has been provided instead including tall columns around the perimeter and Hesse indirect columns with ceramic halide metal lamps.
10) The grassy end
The southern half of the square was once the Orange Coachworks, London's first motor coach station, described in 1930 as "a sort of motor-coach Clapham Junction in tangerine, almost as big, and certainly as ugly". A petrol station on the site survived until the mid-1990s when it was all demolished to create a new open space adjacent to Tate Gardens. In 1998 the two spaces were combined under the new name Windrush Square to commemorate the 50th anniversary of thearrival of the first ship bringing Caribbean workers to help rebuild postwar London. This end's now a fairly tepid piece of public realm, mostly a featureless lawn cut through by pathways.
11) The Bovril sign
The wall at the end of Rushcroft Road has been emblazoned with a Bovril ad since the 1930s, the current version merely a faded ghostsign left over from the beverage's days of beefy glory. The faded blue and yellow remnant underneath is believed to be an ad for Butlins, once ideally positioned to tempt coach passengers considering a trip 'daily to all coastal resorts'.
12) The African and Caribbean War Memorial
This bespoke memorial to an oft-overlooked military diaspora was designed by Jak Beula in 2014. It proved difficult to place, with proposed alternative sites including the National Arboretum, the South Bank and Tilbury Docks. But it was eventually agreed that Windrush Square was the right location and so it was finally unveiled here in June 2017. The memorial comprises two whinstone obelisks, one resting on the other and inscribed with the name of every regiment from Africa and the Caribbean that served in World War I or II.
13) The Black Cultural Archives
In 1981 Brixton resident Len Garrison started a collection intended to redress the paucity of cultural representation for the black community. It now holds over 10,000 documents, photos and objects relating to the history of people of African descent in Britain, and is housed in a converted Georgian house at number 1 Windrush Square. The building opened in 1824 as Raleigh Hall and in its time has also housed Brixton Liberal Club, a public meeting hall, the Cinema Museum and a furniture workshop. The metal statue in the forecourt is of Claudia Vera Jones, a founder of the West Indian Gazette and the (Notting Hill) Carnival before her premature death at the age of 49.
14) The fountain
The most innovative new feature in 2010 was a so-called fountain, in reality a patch of concentric jets designed to pump a watery mist across the centre of the square. It was controlled by an anemometer perched on one of the new lighting columns so it would automatically deactivate the pumps if the wind grew too strong. Unfortunately the fountain manifested more broadly as a water hazard and the need for a children's stomp-through was not generally required, thus it got turned off and hasn't fired for years. What a waste.
15) The windrushes
At the southern end of the square is a cluster of thin greenish spikes, branching upwards, designed in 2010 by Jane Wernick Associates. They cost £85,000 and are called the Windrush Lights, supposedly because the tops illuminate after dark (although that's hard to confirm during the day). I've seen it said that they represent 'windrushes', although the famous ship was of course named after a Cotswold river so I don't believe such reeds exist.
16) The Sharpeville Memorial
Standing by itself is a stumpy plinth dedicated by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston to commemorate a massacre at an anti-apartheid protest in a South African township in 1960.
17) The old milestone
In amongst all the modern cultural touchpoints is a really old milestone placed beside the Brighton road over 200 years ago. It says "Royal Exchange 4" on two sides and "Whitehall 3½" on another, and also presumably on the fourth side although that's since eroded away and is unreadable. The milestone was originally on the other side of the road but was moved to Windrush Square because these days heritage street furniture just gets in the way.
18) The Cherry Groce pavilion
The most recent addition to the square is a triangular granite slab supported on a single pillar above a stepped plinth, designed by David Adjaye and unveiled in 2021. It's here "in loving memory of Cherry Groce" who was mistakenly shot by the police during a raid in 1985 which triggered two days of rioting. You may not need restorative justice round your way, but here in Brixton they place it front and centre.
19) A man being arrested
My attempts to take photographs of Windrush Square were almost thwarted when I realised police were in the process of making an arrest over by the roadside. Several officers stood round a white van restraining a suspect before driving him away, then two remained behind to interview a witness at length beside the Cherry Groce Pavilion. After about 15 minutes they finally had all they needed, removed an offensive poster from the noticeboard and strode off in the direction of the police station, and I got my photos. Never a dull moment.
20) The absence of obvious Windrushness
Perhaps the strangest thing about Windrush Square is that there's barely any specific reference to why it's called that, nor is its name placed anywhere in a prominent position. I think there used to be an information board where the African and Caribbean War Memorial now stands but that's gone, and a few words inscribed into a couple of limestone slabs don't really cut it. If anything it's testament to the fact that Londoners already know what the SS Windrush was and why it's significant, because sometimes naming things really can embed them in our consciousness.
