Colville LAUNCH SPECIAL

Tabernacle Powis Square W11 2014 Rachman/Michael X/Mangrove/Carnival Colville photo history exhibition up the stairs

tabernaclew11.com 0207 221 9700 tomvague@gmail.com www.colvillecom.com getting it straight in notting hill gate

Colville 1914/1944/2014

community history project issue 8 June 2014 exhibitions events

Clydesdale/Westbourne Park Road 1944 In the worst local incident of the Second World War, on June 19 1944, 21 people died when a V1 flying bomb hit the junction of Westbourne Park Road (formerly Cornwall Road) and Clydesdale Road, pictured to the left of the Albert pub on the corner of All Saints Road in the 1900s. Above right, All Saints Road from the Clydesdale House V1 site garden in the 1980s. From Notting Hill at War exhibition commemorating the First World War centenary and the 70th anniversary of the Colville V1 at the Tabernacle Powis Square June 23-29 City Living Local Life colvillecom.com tomvague@gmail.com

Electric Cinema 191 Portobello Road 1914 At the outbreak of World War 1 the Electric Cinema became the focus of anti-German riots, as the London and Provincial Electric Theatres company was German-owned. After the war the name was changed to the Imperial for 50 years. The Electric site is pictured above shortly before the building appeared in 1911 and in its hippy arthouse heyday in 1971.

Notting Hill at War exhibition June 23 2014 Tabernacle Powis Square W11 tabernaclew11.com 0207 221 9700

Colville Community History Project tomvague@gmail.com www.vaguerants.org.uk www.colvillecom.com getting it straight in notting hill gate

November 25 2014 will be the 30th of Band Aid recording „Do They Know It‟s Christmas?‟ at the recently closed Basing Street Studios. It ‟s 40 years since the arrival of Richard Branson‟s Virgin record company in Vernon Yard on Portobello, Hawkwind‟s „Hall of the Mountain Grill‟ album named in honour of the café at 275 Portobello Road, and the Cimarons appearing at the Carnival; the 60th of the classic Bert Hardy Picture Post photograph of pre-Teddy boy spivs on Southam Street in Kensal; and the 20th of the All Saints group‟s debut gig in Powis Square during the Carnival.

After the local landlord Peter Rachman became a household name in the 1963 Profumo affair scandal, Michael de Freitas aka Michael X, the ‟black Rachman‟ landlord/Black Power leader, matched his notoriety. Powis Square became the epicentre of community action, counter-culture and the Carnival, documented in The Grove and People’s News newsletters, Hustler, IT and Frendz underground papers, Tony Allen‟s Corrugated Times and Heathcote Williams‟ Ruff Tuff Cream Puff squatting newssheets. From the late 60s to the 90s the Mangrove restaurant at 8 All Saints Road, the original home of the steel band, was the centre of the black community and local police investigation.

The History of Colville exhibition at the Tabernacle, up the stairs, along the ground floor conservatory and back corridor, charts 50 years of local community action in the Powis Square, Portobello and All Saints area from the Rachman slum housing revelations of the early 60s; featuring Michael X, Michael Horovitz, the Mangrove, Notting Hill Carnival, the London Free School, Pink Floyd, All Saints church hall, the Point, the Tabernacle, adventure playgrounds and graffiti pictures from the North Kensington Community Archive, Local Studies, Kensington Central Library, Ishmahil Blagrove‟s Rice‟n‟Peas archive, Alex Bowling, John Hopkins, Charlie Phillips, Geoff Reeve and Geoff Walley.

JFK assassination 50th Notting Hill connection: When Ludovic Kennedy, the author of the 10 Rillington Place book, interviewed US President John F Kennedy, he recalls him being more interested in talking about the Christie murders than his meeting with Khrushchev, saying “Didn‟t you write a book recently about a series of murders at Notting Hill here in London?” JFK also has a Profumo affair link through the madam Mariella Novotny. 2014 is the 50th anniversary of the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, featuring Ringo Starr on All Saints Road and all the Beatles in Notting Dale.

Tabernacle Powis Square W11 2014 Rachman/Michael X/Mangrove/Carnival/Clash Colville photo history exhibition tabernaclew11.com 0207 221 9700 tomvague@gmail.com colvillecom.com getting it straight in notting hill gate

World War 1 Local Heroes

„But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, and see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of the dead, for there is good news to hear and fine things to be seen before we go to paradise by way of Kensal Green.‟ GK Chesterton „The Rolling English Road‟ 1914 On Campden Hill, at Ford Madox Ford and Violet Hunt‟s South Lodge, the Vorticist art revolution prelude to World War 1 of Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound featured the Blast Review of the Great British Vortex. DH Lawrence felt that the „spirit of old London‟ was lost in the war as the city became „a vortex of broken passions, lusts, hopes, fears and horrors.‟ After the war conceptually blasted the Vorticist art movement out of history, and a couple of them literally, Wyndham Lewis returned from the front to continue Blasting and Bombardiering, against the literary establishment from Notting Hill Gate; at first staying with Ford Madox Ford at 20 Campden Hill Gardens, as he was writing his recently televised World War 1 classic Parade’s End. The half-German Ford, the grandson of the painter Ford Madox Brown, had changed his name from Ford Madox Hueffer. In the next war Lewis and Pound would end up on the other side, or at least appear to in the former‟s case, while Ford was taking an anti-Nazi stance. Siegfried Sassoon wrote his Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer at 23 Campden Hill Square, and Wilfred Owen was first published in Edith Sitwell‟s Wheels poetry magazine from Pembridge Mansions. In Notting Dale, from one street 150 men enlisted from 50 houses. CS Donald wrote as their epitaph: „In all those battles and deeds, these boys from the Avernus played their gallant part.‟ The most renowned local hero of World War 1 was the boxer Charlie „Kipper‟ Allum, who lived at 237 Lancaster Road. After serving in the Boer war, Charlie turned professional and in 1905 became the English middleweight champion. He was described in the press as „the popular Notting Hill boxer‟. Sergeant Charles Allum went to France with the Royal Fusiliers in 1915 and was killed in action in the last year of the war. He was awarded the military medal for bravery posthumously and his name is on the war memorial in the cemetery at Ploegsteert in Belgium. On the home front, the Dennis brothers coach builders on Silchester Road constructed horse-drawn ambulances, and the Talbot car factory on Barlby Road worked on proto-tanks. Lloyd George, Lord Kitchener and Winston Churchill came to North Kensington to see a demonstration of an armoured track-laying vehicle at the Talbot works. In the 20s, war veteran street traders and performers became a feature of Portobello market. Any other wartime local family history pictures and reminiscence will be gratefully received and included in the exhibition, please contact tomvague@gmail.com

February 19 1944 Vere Hodgson wrote in her local war diary, Few Eggs and No Oranges (republished by Persephone): „The whole sky light as day, festooned with red star flares which threw amazing colours all over Campden Hill. Shots going for the flares, occasionally little bits of them fell off and dropped like falling stars… a great red glow filled the sky from a fire… In the direction of Portobello Road there was the sound of crackling fire. We knew it was near. Other fires round about. We well deserved pneumonia but could not resist such an amazing sight.‟ In „Portobello‟s bad night‟ several people were killed when a high explosive bomb hit numbers 294 and 296 at the corner of Raddington Road. At the Tavistock Crescent junction, Vere Hodgson saw children storming a burnt out sweetshop, „trying to salvage what they could from the mess. Their school was burnt out, a bonny little girl spoke sadly of the shop.‟ The official bomb damage report for February 19 1944 reads: „Incident number 5 Post 8: Corner Portobello Road and Lancaster Road 1.19 Type of bomb: UXB and Incendiaries. Casualties: 30 people sent to Rest Centre, Lancaster Road. Details of damage: Portobello Road Schools (now the Isaac Newton Centre) damaged by fire, also 228, 246, 258 and 260 Portobello Road (on the eastside between Westbourne Park Road and Acklam Road). Incident number 10 and 11 Post 7: 291, 294, 296, 317 Portobello Road 1.57 Type of bomb: High explosives. Casualties: 10 and 30 homeless. Trapped: 5. Details of damage: Gas main damaged. Hemmings, bakers, shop burnt out.‟ Eddie Adams was a wartime pupil at Colville School on the corner of Portobello and Lonsdale Road. Like Vere Hodgson, he recalls the experience as an exciting adventure. “The school itself had not been bombed but it had suffered from the blast of a bomb falling nearby (on the site of the Portobello Court estate between Lonsdale Road and Westbourne Grove) and many of the windows were shattered. An air-raid shelter was built under the laundry block outside in the playground. At lunchtimes we used to go out to play on the bomb site opposite the school, even though we were told not to because it was dangerous. To us it was a very exciting place and we used to make camps in the derelict houses and collect pieces of shrapnel.” June 19 1944 The first V1 flying bomb to hit Notting Hill killed 20 people along Westbourne Park Road and in Clydesdale Road and Mews (on the site of Clydesdale House), opposite All Saints Road. This was the highest single incident death toll of the war in North Kensington. All Saints Church had a bad war but survived. During the Blitz, on September 26 1940 the church was seriously damaged. On March 27 1944 the vicarage was burnt out; on June 19 the church, hall and vicarage were hit again by the V1; and in July the parish hall was burnt

World War 2 Local Heroes

out. After the war the church was restored and reopened in 1951. The vicar throughout was John Herbert Coate Twisaday. The Clydesdale Mews V1 site behind the church subsequently became an adventure playground and hosted a local bombsite boys‟ Olympics in 1948, recalled by Eddie Adams: „The doodlebug V1 rocket dropped in 1944 on the site bordered by Westbourne Park Road and Clydesdale Road. Behind Westbourne Park Road there was a mews on the west side leading on to Clydesdale Road, this mews was completely obliterated. The houses opposite the mews were badly damaged and eventually pulled down between the now one remaining house and Westbourne Park Road. Before this the local kids including myself played games in them. By 1948 this area was covered with debris. At one end there was a hill of rubble. The Olympics of 1948 caught the imagination of us local children and we decided to stage our own mini-Olympics. This included tossing the hammer, a brick on the end of a piece of rope, throwing the javelin made out of a piece of scrap piping from the hill, and a number of races round the block.‟ July 28 1944 Vere Hodgson heard the V1 that hit the Lyons café on Kensington High Street killing 38 people, the highest single incident death toll in Kensington: „Roar grew louder. We sat on the stairs. It was losing height, but it passed over us. We took a breath, heard the engine stop and then the explosion… The next moment another came roaring over… Had lunch and went out shopping and to see where they had dropped… They were commandeering buses for the ambulances… it was the end of Holland Walk, had devastated Lyons restaurant on the corner of Earl‟s Court Road… crowded with people for lunch.‟ December 12 1944 Vere, on Ladbroke Road, noted a bigger explosion: „Windows seemed to bulge in, whole house shook from stem to stern. It was close… We learned it was the end of Lancaster Road. Streets full of poor people… It is all poor property down there and the devastation is terrific.‟ This seems to have been the V2 rocket that hit Treadgold Street on the site of Lancaster West estate. In the Second World War the Sunbeam Talbot car factory on Barlby Road repaired Spitfire engines. Monica Dickens, Charles‟s great-granddaughter who lived on Chepstow Villas on the Portobello corner, wrote about working there, at some length, in her autobiography An Open Book: „Factory life, like hospital life, did not seem to have much to do with the war. In the relentless monotony of the work, any sense of purpose gradually dwindled in focus down to the weekly pay packet… Every morning when I rode my bicycle through the mean grey streets of North Kensington… I vowed it was the last week that I would work for Sunbeam Talbot.‟ The Bartle iron foundry on Lancaster Road worked on tanks. In 1944 at the time of the V1 and V2 attacks, the local mass murderer John Christie killed his second victim Muriel Eady at 10 Rillington Place, next to the foundry.

Sport Local Heroes

In the Heaven West 11 fantasy football team we have Alan Mullery, Jimmy Bloomfield, Jimmy Hill, Stan Bowles, Dennis Wise, Les Ferdinand and Daniele Dichio. In the 1900s Queen‟s Park Rangers‟ ground was Latimer Road, Notting Hill, and in 1966 the England team brought the World Cup back along Ladbroke Grove from Wembley. Athletics is represented in the area by Daley Thompson and Linford Christie, cricket by the 60s England wicket-keeper John Murray, and rugby by Laurence Dallaglio. The Notting Hill area was defined by sport, as the building development followed the outline of the early 19th century Hippodrome racecourse. The first local football hero Alan Mullery, of Fulham, Tottenham and England, was born and bred in Notting Dale. He appears with a quiff as „Muller‟, the captain of the Walmer Road Rugby Club Juniors in the mid 50s. He made his debut for Fulham in 1958 and succeeded Johnny Haynes as captain. Mullery was capped 35 times and was the first England player to be sent off, in the 1968 European Championship semi-final against Yugoslavia. He won the FA Cup with Spurs in the 67 final v Chelsea, and was on the losing side in the next all-London affair, Fulham v West Ham in 1975. He also won the League Cup and UEFA Cup with Spurs; and went on to manage Brighton, Charlton, Crystal Palace and QPR, and Sky Sports punditry. The most legendary and skilful locally associated footballer is the great 70s flair player Stan Bowles of QPR 72-79, Manchester City, Bury, Crewe, Carlisle, Nottingham Forest, Orient, Brentford and England. The star of the 75-76 QPR team who narrowly missed out on the championship, Stan became equally renowned for gambling. In an extract from his book Stan the Man that used to be framed in the KPH on Ladbroke Grove, he recalls visiting the pub during a gambling session over the road. Whilst at the bar, he heard a commotion outside and went to watch as police raided the club. The tribute was inscribed by Stan with: „To everyone at the KPH, I remember it well, good luck.‟ The greatest sport local hero is the double gold medal winning decathlete Daley Thompson, who was born in Notting Hill in 1958, shortly before the race riots, grew up in Colville Square and attended Colville School. Daley Thompson House on Talbot Road was named in his honour in 1984, as he won his second gold at the Los Angeles Olympics. Daley was described as „the greatest all-round athlete this country has ever produced.‟ He also played football for Mansfield and Stevenage and coached at Wimbledon and Luton. Daley Thompson can only be matched by the locally associated Linford Christie, the 100 metres gold medallist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and all-time most decorated British male athlete. The former West London Stadium on Du Cane Road was renamed after him in 1993.

Despite plans to mark the 50th anniversary of Notting Hill Carnival in 2014, the first modern street procession did in fact take place in 1966, organised by Rhaune Laslett and the London Free School, as clearly reported in their newsletters and the local press. As Jeff Nuttall put it in Bomb Culture: „Ultimately the Free School did nothing but put out a local underground newsletter and organise the two Notting Hill Gate Festivals, which were, admittedly, models of exactly how the arts should operate, festive, friendly, audacious, a little mad and all taking place on demolition sites, in the streets, and in a magnificently institutional church hall.‟ In 1966, when Notting Hill was known as a slum area, the term free school also had a very different meaning. The London Free School was an adult education community project, with a curriculum encompassing housing and immigration, modern history and world power structure, family, children and mental health, current affairs, economics, dance, drama and psychedelia. The Free School group has been described as an „anarchic temporary coalition‟ of housing activists from the Rachman days and the new hippy generatiion; including George Clark, Rhaune and Jim Laslett-O‟Brien, Adam Ritchie, Andre and Barbara Shervington, John Hopkins, Michael X, Pete Jenner, Joe Boyd, Michael Horovitz, Julie Felix, Mike McInnerney, Graham Keen, Neil Oram, Nigel Waymouth, Kate Heliczer, Harvey Matusow, Emily Young, Anjelica Huston and Pink Floyd. John Hopkins has called the London Free School “a scam” and “an idea that really shouldn‟t be inflated with too much content, because there really wasn‟t too much content.” The Pink Floyd manager Pete Jenner says it was either the first “public manifestation of the underground in England,” or little more than “a couple of sessions in some terribly seamy rooming house of Michael X‟s.” The first issue of the Free School news-letter The Gate reported that „the teenage group have been playing folk music and listening to Dylan records.‟ The London Free School building was 26 Powis Terrace (formerly a jazz record shop and a brothel), but by all accounts not much happened there apart from band practices in Dave Tomlin‟s psychedelic basement. The presence of Michael X is said to have scared off any local people. However, through him the Free School received its best publicity: when on May 15 1966 Rhaune Laslett‟s Free School playgroup at 34 Tavistock Crescent was visited by Muhammad Ali (at the time of his second Henry Cooper fight). The LFS adventure playground on the nearby Westway site was inaugurated with a Gustav Metzger auto-destructive art performance.

But the London Free School is primarily notable for launching Notting Hill Carnival, with the first post-war street procession organised by Rhaune Laslett on September 18 1966. The Free School Fayre pageant parade, around the area from 34 Tavistock Crescent (by the railway footbridge), featured people in Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles Dickens‟ character costumes, the London Irish girl pipers, a New Orleans-style trad jazz marching band, Ginger Johnson‟s Afro-Cuban band, and Russell Henderson‟s Trinidadian steel band. During the fayre week, All Saints church hall on Powis Gardens (pictured above) hosted social nights including Dickens amateur dramatics, Alexis Korner, Jeff Nuttall performance art and „old tyme music hall‟. After the fayre, John „Hoppy‟ Hopkins presented „Sound/Light workshops‟ at All Saints hall by Syd Barrett‟s Pink Floyd, during which they developed their psychedelic sound and lightshow. Pink Floyd‟s Free School Sound/Light workshops have been described as proper educational events with questions from the audience afterwards. As well as Notting Hill Carnival, Pink Floyd, adventure playgrounds and psychedelic lightshows, the London Free School launched the hippy underground press; International Times or IT was a continuation of the Free School newsletter The Gate/The Grove.

Carnival 1966 And All That

Colville Community History Project tomvague@gmail.com colvillecom.com getting it straight in notting hill gate

Talbot Tabernacle Notes

„The old tin Tabernacle‟ on Talbot Road in Powis Square was established in 1869, as a „non-sectarian Church of Christ‟ by the Protestant evangelical preacher Gordon Forlong, in opposition to the high church All Saints down the road. On the 1871 Ordnance Survey map there is a row of houses between Powis Gardens and Aston Road (Powis Terrace). But the map was behind the rapid building times and really represents the early 1860s planned development. The Romanesque red brick and terracotta Talbot Tabernacle was completed in 1888. The foundation stone (now on display inside) was laid in 1883 by Lord Shaftesbury, the social reformer Tory MP who brought about the abolition of child labour. The following year he opened the lecture hall, shortly before his death. Other famous figures who appeared at the Tab in the early years were the children's homes founder Dr Barnardo and George Williams who founded the YMCA. The Tabernacle founder Gordon Forlong was a Scottish advocate/barrister-turned-Protestant evangelist, who first appeared in London in 1867 at the Victoria Hall on Archer Street (the 20th Century Theatre on Westbourne Grove). In 1876/7 Forlong emigrated to New Zealand and was succeeded at the Tabernacle by Frank White, and then the Reverend R Wright Hay. 'The old theatre, known as Victoria Hall, in Archer Street, off Westbourne Grove, was rented and preached in every Sunday morning and evening for many months… The divine blessing was so manifestly resting upon this work that Mr and Mrs Forlong, after much prayer and earnest consideration, decided to build. The result was that the Talbot Tabernacle was erected in Talbot Road in the year 1869. To build this Mr and Mrs Forlong used their own money helped out by many smaller contributions from sympathisers and helpers. For eight years he preached in this 'iron church'. 'The whole bible, the inspired word of god' was the foundation of all his preaching to the large congregations that gathered there. 'His sympathies were always with those who took up strong Protestant ground and his platform was often used by the Protestant Evangelical Alliance for its annual meetings. William Murphy, the martyred saint of those times, was on one occasion speaking in the old Talbot Tabernacle. The writer, then a child, remembers in a crowded meeting during Mr Murphy's address the cries of, “Pistols! Where are the pistols?” Mr Murphy stood back, but Mr Forlong quickly stepped forward with raised hand and in a loud, calm voice soon stilled the agitation, saying, “There is no danger, but the policemen at the door are to come forward while we sing.” Perfect order and attention were soon restored and maintained until the meeting closed.' Emilie Snow (the daughter of Gordon Forlong) A King's Champion 1909 William Murphy was an itinerant Protestant lecturer noted for his particularly violent anti-Catholic rhetoric.

In 1973 the Notting Hill People‟s Association staged a „community lock-in‟ at the old All Saints church hall next to the church, known as „The Siege of Notting Hill‟; during which councillors were forced to listen to locals‟ demands, which included opening the Tabernacle as a community centre. The November/December 1973 issue of the Talbot Tabernacle Notes church magazine reported on „The Colville/Tavistock Survey‟: „In our previous issue under this heading we wrote „meanwhile we continue to occupy amidst increasing difficulties‟, but we little knew what was still in store! In October we suffered many frustrations whilst undergoing conversion to natural gas—still not completed—but on November 5 after a firework party in the square opposite the gates of the church, a group of hippy types broke into the Tabernacle, and from 11pm to 3pm a party of over 300 made merry with drinking, dancing and film shows plus amplified music to the annoyance of the neighbours. The leaders of this group told the police they were there with our permission!!!! „Next morning the scene in the church, vestries and lecture hall was indescribable, and for the past fortnight a small band of workers has been busy clearing up the mess and making the large vestry and the hall available for use for services, and Sunday school. This was bad enough, but in addition the major part of our equipment was stolen, including the large communion table, two organs, curtains, cutlery and crockery, to say nothing of the clock in the lecture hall which was wrenched off the wall with the brass memorial tablet to the late Mr Gifford! So far the police have not been able to trace any of the items taken. We understand that negotiations with the Borough Council are proceeding, but in the light of the present national financial position and high interest rates there may be delay in completion. Meanwhile we continue to occupy! In the words of Habakkuk 3.17/19, „Although… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will have joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord is my strength…‟ As the Tabernacle became the focal point of the Afro-Caribbean community in North Kensington in the late 70s and 80s, the music changed from non-conformist Protestant hymns to Ethiopian Orthodox Rastafarian reggae. There wasn't actually that much change in the anti-Vatican sentiments of some of the lyrics, which the Tabernacle founder Gordon Forlong and William Murphy would have appreciated.

Colville Community History Project tomvague@gmail.com colvillecom.com getting it straight in notting hill gate