Electric Avenue

Electric Avenue is a street in Brixton, London, built in 1888, and was the first market street to be lit by electric lights. Today it remains a pedestrianised shopping street at the heart of Brixton’s market, where national retail chains sit alongside various local food and housewares retailers, and the street hosts part of Brixton Market, which specialises in selling African, Caribbean, South American, and South Asian products.

1895

Electric Avenue by Baron Corvo, The Sketch, 1895

Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

2009

Electric Avenue SW9

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

B452 — near Electric Avenue

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

Electric Avenue is a pedestrian street in the heart of Brixton's shopping district, and at night, a multicolored neon sign hangs over the street, alerting passersby to its existence. But the neon is modern embellishment; the street’s real fame comes from an act of inspiration born from civil unrest.

This road was the first market street in the world to be lit by electricity in the late 1800s—hence its name. The innovation was the work of Alexander Leslie Fyfe and John Martin, who patented the lighting system that lit up the street, using a coal-fired generator behind one of the shops. Together as the Fyfe-Main Electric Lighting and Construction Company, they had exhibited the lighting system at Crystal Palace in 1882.

The street was the first electrified market in the country with the lamps suspended from the sweeping glazed cast-iron and glass canopies over the pavements in front of the shops. Visitors came to Brixton as much for the sight of those glowing canopies as for the goods sold beneath them. The area became a popular shopping destination due to the lights and covered iron canopy but also the array of shops—including London's first department store: Bon Marché on Brixton Road—and street entertainers.

Brixton Market began in the 1870s as the area was becoming one of London's rapidly expanding Victorian middle-class suburbs following the railway station opening in 1862. When Electric Avenue opened with its electric lights in 1888, the street transformed into a shopping destination that drew crowds across London. Electric Avenue was once a noted shopping destination, famous across London. With its nearby large department stores of Bon Marche and rival drapery store Quin & Axtens complementing the sheltered walkways of Electric Avenue, Brixton was the place to go for shopping, and was reputedly known as the 'Oxford Street of the south' right up until the immediate post-war era.

World War II took its toll, with war damage leaving the street neglected. Later, the introduction of street traders' barrows wore away at the remaining gloss. The last of the canopies was removed in 1989, and Lambeth Council had intended to replace them but miscalculated the costs. What remained was a ghost of Victorian elegance, used by fewer shoppers and remembered by fewer Londoners—until one song changed everything.

Electric Avenue is a song by Guyanese-British musician Eddy Grant, written and produced by Grant, and released on his 1982 studio album Killer on the Rampage. Grant first became aware of the existence of the street during a stint acting at the Black Theatre of Brixton. At the beginning of the 1980s, tensions over unemployment, racism and poverty exacerbated by racist policing culminated in the street events now known as the 1981 Brixton riot. Horrified by what he witnessed, Grant returned to Barbados and wrote "Electric Avenue" as a response to the violence and the conditions that sparked it.

The song brought Electric Avenue to international consciousness—not as a shopping destination, but as a symbol of struggle and resilience. In 2016, Eddy Grant was invited to switch on a new illuminated street sign installed as part of a £1 million refurbishment. Afterwards, Grant was given one of the previous signs as a keepsake. The street that lost its Victorian canopies gained a second life through art.

Alexander Leslie Fyfe and John Martin patented the lighting system that lit up the street, using a coal-fired generator behind one of the shops. Little else is known of these ingenious engineers, yet their innovation transformed a market street into a marvel of Victorian technology. They belong to that history of brilliant makers whose names have dissolved but whose works remain.

Eddy Grant, by contrast, is globally remembered. A musician and producer of Guyanese heritage who had performed in Brixton theatres, Grant witnessed the 1981 riots and channelled his anger and grief into a song. That song reached millions, carrying the name of an obscure South London street into pop history and, more importantly, carrying with it the testimony of a moment of social rupture. Grant's "Electric Avenue" ensured the street would never be forgotten—not for its lights, but for its people.

By the 1990s and 2000s, Electric Avenue had become a casualty of post-war decline and urban change. The Windrush generation (named after the Empire Windrush, the first ship bringing migrants) began arriving from the West Indies in the 1940s, and have since shaped the culture and diversity of the area. The market developed a more notorious reputation towards the 1970s and 80s as Brixton gradually became more impoverished. After the 1981 Brixton Riots, central government put money into the area and matters improved.

By the early 2010s, the street remained a working market, but the glamour of its Victorian origins seemed permanently lost. Then, in 2016, Lambeth Council launched a £1 million refurbishment scheme, including the installation of a striking neon sign and improved street infrastructure. Eddy Grant himself returned to Brixton to ceremonially switch on the new lights—a poetic full circle from the days when the Fyfe brothers first electrified the street.

Electric Avenue is the main outdoor component of a more extensive Brixton Market complex, and the now pedestrianised street is widely recognised as the first street in the UK to get public electric lighting. It is lined with independent shops selling household goods, hair and beauty products and services, cheap clothing, wigs, fishmongers, butchers, and bakers. In the street itself are stalls selling flowers, and a myriad of fresh fruit and vegetables.

The street reflects cultural diversity, though there is a notable African and Caribbean focus due to a local community that has grown from the first influx from the West Indies in the late 1940s. The street no longer glows with Victorian lamps, but it glows with the vitality of a market that continues to serve, adapt, and attract. The song is older now, but it never stops playing.