London 1978
Peter MARSHALL
Writing on Wall, Vauxhall City Farm, Lambeth,
1978
14i34: lambeth, vauxhall, city farm, farm, poem, hymn
You can click on the image to go to the next picture
The building at the City
farm was some kind of former school at the back of St Peter's Church which
included the 1861 Lambeth School of Art. We organised some meeting in this
building to which almost nobody came and there was no heating on a desperately
cold winter day and we froze even in our outside coats. The church, Grade
II* listed and consecrated in 1864 though its tower was never built, and
the city farm are both on the site of Vauxhall Gardens, a notorious Georgian
pleasure ground where great festivals took place, along with many amorous
encounters in the darker wooded corners; the church itself was on the site
which once had a Moorish tower built as a firework platform in 1823 which
burnt down 14 years later and a dimly lit 'Lovers Walk', and the art school
on St Ostwald's Place on the site of the Vauxhall Garden's famous Neptune
Foutain, his marine chariot drawn by five horses from whose nostrils water,
steam and even flames would emerge.
Once I went to a service in the church, whose magnificent interior is well
worth a visit and there are regular concerts there. We went to a service
there, a small group of people on chairs in the middle of a large building,
led by a young priest in black leathers.
Make what you can of the writing on the wall, part-hidden by the stacked
wood - and I think left from an earlier event. I think it reads: