It’s all very well living in an area, but we think you should try and get to know it. Here are 10 things you didn’t know about Battersea
Clapham Junction Station is claimed to be the busiest station in the whole of the UK.
The UK’s largest manufacturer of candles, Price’s Candles, used to be situated on York Road. The building was converted into residential flats.
Battersea Power Station was featured on the sleeve art of Pink Floyd’s album Animals.
Battersea takes its name from the village of Battersea, an island settlement on the Thames, now marked by St Mary’s Church.
Before the Industrial Revolution the area specialised in growing lavender on Lavender Hill and breeding pigs on Pig Hill.
In the second half of the 19th century wealthy Londoners built country retreats in Battersea and neighbouring areas.
Battersea’s reputation as a centre of radical politics began in 1881 when Britain’s first organised socialist party, the Social Democratic Federation, was founded by trade unionist John Burns.
A statue of a brown dog and drinking fountain was erected in the Latchmere Recreational Grounds in 1904 by the National Anti-Vivisection Society to commemorate the life of a dog killed by vivisection. The Brown Dog affair was a long-running bone of contention between local residents and medical students. The statue was removed in 1910.
Battersea’s first black mayor, John Archer, was elected in 1913.
In 1979 local residents staged a round the clock vigil to protect Brian Barnes’ mural The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (on the Battersea Bridge Road factory wall) from demolition. Sadly their protest failed.
