London 1978

Peter MARSHALL


Writing on Wall, Vauxhall City Farm, Lambeth, 1978
14i34: lambeth, vauxhall, city farm, farm, poem, hymn

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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:
 
HYMN

LAUGHING MAN
MEGALITH
  ----
BEATING DANCE
CANDLE
  ----
FIRE
AWAKENING
MAKING OF TALISMAN
DISPLAY OF TALISMAN-ARK
GROWTH
TOKEN
FOOD
SPACE
PROCESSION
MIND
RELEASE