Effra Road

The name probably comes from a lost estate, not a bend in the land. "Effra" appears to be a corruption of "Heathrow", the name of a farm or estate recorded here in medieval documents. The road itself ran directly in front of Effra Farm, between Coldharbour Lane and Brixton Water Lane.

The river took the same name, or gave it — the sources used here do not resolve which came first, only that both forms trace back to "Heathrow". The River Effra flows from near Westow Hill, and its culverted course now carries sewers under Croxted Road, Brixton Road and others nearby. The manor itself was later known as the manor of Heathrow, Milkwood and Wickwood.

Effra Road exists because common land was carved up. In 1810 the Lambeth Manor Inclosure Commissioners formed the road to give access to new inclosures on Rush Common and Norwood Common, alongside the parallel St Matthew's Road. Rush Common itself lay in the triangle bounded by Brixton Hill, Effra Road, and a line running south-west from the Effra Road–Water Lane junction, with a narrow spur up the east side of Brixton Hill.

An Act of 1806 had already set the terms: no buildings were to rise "above the Surface of the Earth" within 150 feet of the Brixton turnpike road, or within 200 feet of the old field boundaries that framed the common. An amending Act of 1821 made Effra Road and St Matthew's Road parish highways and relaxed the restriction only to permit a church, burial ground and parsonage — which became St Matthew's, begun in 1822 on a triangular site where Brixton Rise meets Effra Road. Through the 1820s, detached houses of varying size were built along the west side of the road, each set well back from the frontage to satisfy the inclosure rules.

East of the road lay Effra Farm, the roughly 70-acre estate Robert Stone had assembled in four purchases between 1791 and 1806. Stone died in 1820, and his heirs divided and sold the land between 1824 and 1826. Further along, in 1840, Brixton Unitarian Christian Church took a long lease of a site on the east side of the road; the chapel it built there stood until it was destroyed by enemy action in 1940. In 1921 Brixton Synagogue was founded here.

Three places of worship once stood along this stretch within a century of each other: St Matthew's in 1820, the Unitarian chapel in 1840, and the synagogue last, in 1921.

A more irreverent landmark stood at the Brixton Water Lane corner: a pub named for Prime Minister George Canning (1770-1827). It kept his name until the late 1990s, when it became the Hobgoblin, and then the Hootananny in 2008. More recently, when Transport for London consulted on the Cross River Tram, most respondents preferred a route running through Effra Road in Brixton town centre.

Music hall performers lived quietly among the villas. William Govett — known on stage as Will Poluski, one half of the Poluski Brothers — was recorded living at 2 Effra Road in 1911. The Poluski Brothers had begun as circus performers in the 1870s, billed as "eccentric comedians and acrobatic marvels", and became one of the most popular acts of the pre-First World War music hall stage. Poluski died in 1924.

A few doors along, at No. 83, lived Stewart and Delhi, whose main address was given here between 1913 and 1915. Hal Stewart, born John Horace Squires in Lincolnshire in 1887, performed with Delhi — born Pansy Bannerjee in Kashmir in 1892 — in what was billed as a "unique fencing, vocal and dancing act". Stewart died in 1957, Delhi in 1974.

The road's older character is now formally protected. Large parts of Effra Road were included in the Brixton Conservation Area when it was first designated in November 1980, and the area has since been extended three times. The road is also designated an Archaeological Priority Area, in recognition of what may lie beneath it.

The old inclosure rules have left a visible trace. Rush Common's legislation against "erections or buildings above the surface of the earth" still governs the open spaces and front gardens running along Effra Road.

A handful of buildings carry the road's layered past. Raleigh House, built early in the 1800s, is a plain early survival from Rush Common. Nos. 91 and 93 are also early survivals. No. 47 is a symmetrical 1840s villa.

At the gates of St Matthew's Peace Gardens, 19th-century cast-iron parliamentary boundary markers still stand. Beneath it all, unseen, the River Effra that may have given the road its name keeps flowing through its culvert.