Old Temperance Billiard Hall, 411 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton

[editor]

I've just posted up a piece about the old hall but was wondering if anyone had any older photos/stories to share?

http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2013/09/the-old-temperance-billiard-hall-on-coldharbour-lane-brixton/

 

[el-ahrairah]

i did not know that was there. i can't even recall if i ever noticed the dome or not. thanks!

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Looks like it may have been designed by the same person / people as the one in Lewisham / Ladywell

(not my photo - from here) - Listing info here

The Brixton one does not appear to be a listed building.

 

[lang rabbie]

The office of Moxley Architects in Clapham High Street is a very well preserved example of a Temperance Billiard Hall - I think in the house style of the rival company to Brixton.

Photo credit: Stephen Craven on Geograph
The Tesco near Streatham Hill station is the wreck of another former Temperance Billiard Hall. It still had the original rooflights until about a decade ago.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

A bit of a side story and I don't know if there are any in the South London area but in the '30s there used to be billiard rooms upstairs from many Burton's clothes shops. My father originally told me about these - he would have been a player at the time. I have found one or two in various towns in the West Country. They have a distinctly Art Deco style about them.

 

[lang rabbie]

And IIRC the venue now known as the Garage at Highbury Corner is a triplet of Brixton and Fulham?

 

[lang rabbie]

A bit of a side story and I don't know if there are any in the South London area but in the '30s there used to be billiard rooms upstairs from many Burton's clothes shops. My father originally told me about these - he would have been a player at the time. I have found one or two in various towns in the West Country. They have a distinctly Art Deco style about them.

The elephant heads "capitals" on the outside of many of those former Montague Burton branches were the only advertisement needed for theses places to misspend your youth. Any schoolboy of the 1930s would have known that billiard balls were traditionally made of ivory.

South London examples include the horribly oversized block that barges into the Georgian buildings at the corner of Nelson Street in Greenwich and the block that is now Pratts & Payne pub in Streatham.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

A bit of a side story and I don't know if there are any in the South London area but in the '30s there used to be billiard rooms upstairs from many Burton's clothes shops. My father originally told me about these - he would have been a player at the time. I have found one or two in various towns in the West Country. They have a distinctly Art Deco style about them.

The former Burtons in Lewisham High Street appears to have a still functioning snooker club upstairs - on Street View here

ditto Catford - here

(ETA - am in discussion as to whether the Catford shop I thought was a Burtons was actually Marks & Spencer)

I've identified from elsewhere on the web that 392/4 Brixton Road was Burtons, but no evidence of a snooker club now.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

The elephant heads "capitals" on the outside of many of those former Montague Burton branches were the only advertisement needed for theses places to misspend your youth. Any schoolboy of the 1930s would have known that billiard balls were traditionally made of ivory.

South London examples include the horribly oversized block that barges into the Georgian buildings at the corner of Nelson Street in Greenwich and the block that is now Pratts & Payne pub in Streatham.

I am not sure that the 'capitals' were meant to depict elephant's heads. To me they appear to be 1930's derivatives of classic Greek Ionic capitals which had first been revived during Victorian times. They differ from place to place.

Apologies, this has become a derail. I will leave the thread now.

 

[lang rabbie]

More about Burtons elephants here

 

[Winot]

There's a temperance hall at the bottom of Battersea Rise too iirc.

My home town used to have a Burton's billiard saloon. The only reason I know this is that it was named on the school rules as being out of bounds, despite having closed decades earlier.

 

[lang rabbie]

There's a temperance hall at the bottom of Battersea Rise too iirc.

Facade only I think, now a pub.

That reminded me of the other Lambeth one - the former Riley's Snooker Club at the far end of Wandsworth Road just before the junction with Queenstown Road.

There's a current planning application in to demolish the large former snooker hall space at the back to build a Premier Inn hotel that would tower over the restored frontage that would remain facing Wandsworth Road. Quite a lot of information that I hadn't seen before in the Historic Environment Assessment and appendices

EDITED TO ADD: Lambeth's crap content management system for planning docs doesn't seem to allow you to run direct links - you may have to go in via application 13/02537/FUL on the Planning Applications database

Former Billiard Hall. 638-640 Wandsworth Road
This attractive and interesting Edwardian building is unfortunately hidden behind unsympathetic modern hoardings. Its street elevation has twogables with painted roughcast panels within, either side of a centrally placed decorated octagonal cupola. To the rear of the main facade the building has a double pitched roof, constructed of redbrick with blue/black brick banding and stone decoration. This section of the building is also unfortunately disfigured by flues and fire escapes.
The building was constructed as a billiard hall in 1909 by Norman Evans, for the Temperance Billiard
Halls Ltd, a company established in order to separate the playing of billiards from public houses and the 'vices of drink'. This building represents an exemplary opportunity to remove the excrescence of the post-war years and restore it to its Edwardian glory

 

[Puddy_Tat]

The 'Goat' pub, Battersea Rise, was a temperance billiards hall

 

[oryx]

That reminded me of the other Lambeth one - the former Riley's Snooker Club at the far end of Wandsworth Road just before the junction with Queenstown Road.

I was going to mention that one and you beat me to it!

I lived round there for years and when I first moved there in 1984, a chain hotel on the site would have been unthinkable - it was a totally different sort of area.

Interesting re the Kings Road one on Brixton Buzz (is that formerly Antiquarius, now Anthropologie?) - didn't know that had been a temperance hall, but it's a lovely building. They all are - I have a feeling I might remember the one on Wandsworth Rd pre-Riley's hoarding, but not sure.

 

[zenie]

The 'Goat' pub, Battersea Rise, was a temperance billiards hall

Yeh I was outside it today whilst sitting in traffic, nice building, horrible name!

 

[lang rabbie]

I have a feeling I might remember the one on Wandsworth Rd pre-Riley's hoarding, but not sure.

Cladding looks to be 1970s. There's a 1967 planning drawing of the building before that "makeover" on the final page of first document I linked to.

 

[oryx]

[/URL].

Rest of the weekend sorted. Thanks, looks really interesting.

 

[oryx]

Not Brixton (or even London), I know, but reading lang rabbie's link has reminded me there is a good example of a temperance hall on Manchester Road in Chorlton, Manchester, if anyone knows the area (I know the building well although it's now a Wetherspoons).

 

[editor]

Great bit of history here

Brixton History – Coldharbour Restaurant inside the old Temperance Billiards Hall, 1947

This fascinating archive photo shows the interior of the London County Council’s Coldharbour Restaurant, which was located at 413 Coldharbour Lane on the first floor of the old Temperance Hal…

www.brixtonbuzz.com

 

[Puddy_Tat]

broadly speaking, the 1951 tory government did not approve of councils trading - doing stuff (such as municipal restaurants) that it considered should be left for the private sector to do.

 

[happyshopper]

Continental Foods had, at least what seemed at the time, an exceptional selection of hot sauces. Talking about the 80’s. Now found in many shops.