Time Walk
A Lane Before the Houses Came
This lane already existed long before any of the houses now lining it were built. Lansdowne Way is recorded in its present triangular pattern since at least the mid 17th century, centuries before its terraces and villas went up. Walking it today, the street still splits in two: narrow and shop-fronted at one end, then opening into villas and plane trees further along.
Beneath the brick terraces and the long flank of a bus garage lies common land that was still open pasture into the 19th century. The street carried two earlier names before it became Lansdowne Way — a change the records never explain.
Name Origin
Green Lane, Priory Road, Lansdowne Way
A plan of Vauxhall Manor shows a lane on the line of the present Lansdowne Way, there recorded under the name Green Lane. Separately, local conservation records describe the same stretch — alongside Larkhall Lane and Priory Grove — as having existed since at least the mid 17th century under the name Priory Road. Quite when or why the road came to be called Lansdowne Way is not explained in the sources used here.
History
From Common Land to Terraced Street
For much of its early life Lansdowne Way simply bordered open ground. By 1806 it formed part of the boundary of South Lambeth Common, a three-and-a-half-acre tract also edged by Clapham Road and South Lambeth Road. Edward Shewell of Stockwell was admitted tenant of this ground in 1817, under strict conditions.
That restriction did not last. John Notley, a builder, took on the tenancy in 1838, and by 1843 he had it lifted and covered the common with houses, including Nos. 1–8 Stockwell Terrace. Further along, the twelve-acre Humphrys estate was filled with plain three-storey terraces between 1843 and 1850.
Other parcels reached the street from different directions. A lease of 1802 enclosed two acres of waste land from South Lambeth Common and added them to an adjoining seven-acre plot, giving it, for the first time, a frontage onto what is now Lansdowne Way as well as Clapham Road. Houses built there between 1822 and 1830 matched the estate's general height, bar two pairs of lower houses. The manor boundary itself is thought to have run along this line: the western edge of Stockwell Manor probably followed the southern boundary of Vauxhall Manor along Lansdowne Way and Wandsworth Road.
Institutional buildings followed the houses. At the corner with Wandsworth Road, three houses in the Gothic taste went up around 1843, later numbered 141–149 Lansdowne Way. St. Francis of Sales and St. Gertrude Roman Catholic Church was erected on nearby Larkhall Lane in 1902. Priory Primary and Secondary Schools, designed for the London School Board by E. R. Robson at a tendered cost of £11,675 for 1,200 children, opened on 11 January 1886 on Priory Grove. In the mid 20th century came Stockwell Garage, built in 1950–54 to the designs of Adie, Button and Partners working with Thomas Bilbow, architect to the London Transport Executive.
The ground that Edward Shewell took on in 1817 could only be cultivated, not built on, except for a single gardener's cottage — a condition John Notley overturned just over twenty years later.
People
A Tenant, a Builder, an Architect
Edward Shewell and John Notley, tenant and then builder of the common land bounded by Lansdowne Way, between them turned garden ground into the houses that still stand at the heart of the street.
E. R. Robson designed Priory Primary and Secondary Schools for the London School Board, opened in January 1886 to take 1,200 children. In the 1950s, Thomas Bilbow, architect to the London Transport Executive, worked with Adie, Button and Partners to design Stockwell Garage on Lansdowne Way.
Recent Times
Redrawing the Boundaries
Conservation designations have shifted the street's edges more than once. The Larkhall Conservation Area was designated in June 1981, covering early-mid 19th-century houses along Larkhall Lane, Lansdowne Way and Priory Grove. It was extended in July 1983 to take in the south side of Lansdowne Way between Priory Grove and Wandsworth Road, a run of residential terraces two to four storeys high.
In 2002 a committee decision moved Nos. 141, 143a and 145 Lansdowne Way out of the Larkhall Conservation Area and into the Wandsworth Road Conservation Area. Several buildings on the street — including the Priory Arms public house at No. 83 and a cluster of early-mid 19th-century houses between Nos. 87 and 121 — were added to Lambeth's Local Heritage List in January 2021.
Today
Two Streets in One
Lansdowne Way still reads as two different streets joined at the middle. West of South Lambeth Road it runs past Stockwell Bus Garage; east of the junction it narrows into a close run of two-storey shops. Further west, 19th-century villas and terraces stand behind remnants of their original red brick piers, as at No. 87, while the east end keeps a yellow stock brick wall with the trace of a painted road sign.
At the Wandsworth Road corner, the Gothic range of 1843 still turns into Lansdowne Way among the later terraces. A lane first drawn on a 17th-century plan, it is still, in its uneven way, two centuries of Lambeth's building history laid end to end.
On the Map
Lansdowne Way Then & Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it called Lansdowne Way?
The sources used here do not explain the name. The street is recorded earlier as Green Lane, on a plan of Vauxhall Manor, and separately as Priory Road, a name conservation records trace to at least the mid 17th century.
What is Lansdowne Way known for?
It is known for its mix of early-mid 19th-century villas and terraces, several of them Grade II listed, a Gothic-style corner range of 1843 at Wandsworth Road, and Stockwell Bus Garage, built for London Transport in 1950–54.
How old is Lansdowne Way?
The lane itself appears to date to at least the mid 17th century, long before the houses now lining it. Most of its present buildings were erected between the 1810s and the 1850s, after South Lambeth Common was enclosed.
Is anything listed on Lansdowne Way?
Yes. Several early-mid 19th-century terraces, including Nos. 90–104, 106, 101, 108–110 and 141–145, are Grade II listed, and further buildings such as the Priory Arms at No. 83 appear on Lambeth's Local Heritage List.