The stretch of London riverfront between the Elephant & Castle and Oval looks distinctly unpromising territory for an interesting walk. But look past the busy roads and blocks of postwar council flats and you will find an area full of history and contrast. This is radical London, where nineteenth century chartists gathered on Kennington Common demanding the right to vote and twenty first century squatters resisted eviction from council-owned Victorian terraces. Streets of council flats give way to elegant Georgian squares. Secret gardens and a city farm are hidden in quiet back streets.

Highlights

West Square
Walcot Square
The River Thames
Former Royal Doulton office
Harleyford Road Community Garden and Bonnington Square
Spring Gardens (remainder of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens)
Vauxhall City Farm
The Oval cricket ground (site of Kennington Common)
Cleaver Square
Kennington Park
St Agnes Place

Type of walk: linear

Time taken: 2 hours approx

Distance: 4 miles approx

Start: Elephant and Castle tube (northern and bakerloo lines).

Elephant and Castle tube station has different exits depending on which line you are using. Follow signs through the network of subways under the vast ugly Elephant & Castle roundabout to the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication) at the junction of the roundabout and St George's Road. The whole of this area, including the roundabout and the bilious red shopping centre, is set for a £1.5 billion redevelopment with the shopping centre scheduled for demolition in 2010.

Walk up the left hand side of St George's Road with the tower block of the London College of Communication on your left. Turn left into West Square, one of the area's surviving Georgian squares, whose narrow brick houses, pedimented facades and black iron railings up each set of steps make a welcome change from the 1960s concrete blocks round the roundabout. Just visible to the right is the green dome of the Imperial War Museum, once the Bedlam mental hospital.

Turn right and walk round the square, turning right into Austral Street. Cross Brook Road to Sullivan Street and take the first right into Walcot Square. This triangular square of flat fronted 1830s Victorian houses is another unexpected period treat, and the well-proportioned houses are popular with MPs wanting to be close to the House of Commons just across the river. If you are here on the quarter hour, the chimes of Big Ben are clearly audible.

Keep walking ahead with the green on your right and turn left into Bishops Terrace for a look at St Mary's Gardens, a close contemporary of Walcot Square and another haven of peace between the busy traffic interchanges of the Elephant and Castle and Vauxhall. At the end of Bishops Terrace cross over and into Fitzalan Street, taking the opening on the left past green bollards into the small park. Look up and you can see the gold tops of the turrets of St Stephen's Tower at the House of Commons and the curve of the London Eye to its right. Cut diagonally across the park to Lollard Street, turn right and follow the road round to the pedestrianised Lambeth Walk.

This was once a lively market, made famous by the music hall song "Doing the Lambeth Walk". But the combined efforts of the Luftwaffe in the Blitz and planners in the 1960s have reduced it to a row of lifeless and mostly empty shops around a charmless square of red brick council flats. A series of murals in the square commemorate the area's working class history including the music hall and Lambeth Ragged School.

Turn right into Black Prince Road and walk under the railway bridge towards the river. The red brick building on the right with elaborate contrasting terracotta carvings and turrets was once the Royal Doulton pottery company's princilpe office. It is now serviced offices. Inside is Sirena's Italian restaurant, open to the public. Turn left down Albert Embankment and cross the road to walk along the river. The tower block opposite is Millbank, where New Labour developed its successful 1997 election strategy, and to its left is the Tate Gallery. Cross back over Albert Embankment and turn left down Tinworth Street. If you need a break, the Rose on the corner of Albert Embankment and Tinworth Street serves food all day.

At the Victorian industrial building which still has the sign Horatio Myer & Co Ltd Bedstead Manufacturers above the door, turn right into Vauxhall Walk to reach Spring Gardens. This is the only remaining slice of what was once Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, one of three such gardens in London (the others were at Ranelagh, near Chelsea, and Marylebone). Vauxhall Gardens opened in 1661 and offered a heady mixture of music, illuminated fountains and fireworks to the fashionable of the early 1800s. The present day Spring Gardens is a flat, grassy open space popular with dog walkers and others needing relief from the built up streets around.

Where the paths in the middle of the park bisect, turn left and vear right past Vauxhall City Farm, opened in 1977 to give inner city children some contact with animals. You may see children riding one of the farm's four well-kept horses and rabbits, pigs, goats and hens live in pens overlooking Spring Gardens.

Follow Tyers Street (with the farm on your left) and cross Kennington Lane at the pedestrian crossing to continue down Durham Street. At the junction with Harleyford Road, cross and look to your right for an unobtrusive entrance into the Harleyford Road Community Garden. This wonderful secret garden was once wasteland until residents of the Victorian terraces overlooking it started growing vegetables on the land in 1984. Now it has a network of mosaic paths through flowers and trees to secluded tables and benches. Two open doors lead through a terrace of houses to Bonnington Square, where residents have crammed every spare bit of pavement and window sill with a lush display of palm trees and trailing plants. Follow the square round to the left and you will come to Bonnington Square Pleasure Garden, planted with more subtropical foliage, designed and maintained by residents in a deliberate imitation of the Pleasure Gardens principle, as a notice on the gate explains. The garden was once a bombsite and the houses around it squatted and threatened with demolition.

Retrace your steps back to the Harleyford Road Community Garden via the door of no 37 Bonnington Square and turn right out of the gate towards the Oval Cricket Ground. The ground is on the site of what was once part of Kennington Common, where members of the Chartist movement demonstrating for the right to vote gathered for a mass meeting in 1848. Police turned out in force expected up to 500,000 demonstrators but only 15,000 turned up. Turn left down Kennington Oval and left again into Clayton Street.

Cross the main Kennington Road and turn left then right into Milverton Street. This small grid of flat fronted brick Victorian houses used to be a mostly working class area but it ia gentrifying rapidly, the brickwork cleaned up and windows hung with slatted wooden blinds and notices about meetings of the local amenity society. From Milverton Street turn left into Methley Street and continue ahead as this becomes Bowden Road opposite Lambeth County Court. The road opens into Cleaver Square, a treat of Georgian architecture with flat fronted terraces of town houses grouped round a gravel square.

Turn right along Kennington Park Road, cross at the crossing and enter Kennington Park. Continue ahead to two mock Tudor cottages which were built as model housing by Prince Albert for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Head left and leave the park by the gate, turning into St Agnes Place. The end of the road is shut off by a high metal barrier but the remains of half demolished houses are still visible, joists ripped up and upstairs rooms exposed to the elements. These houses belonged to Lambeth Council and were lived in by squatters until November 2005, when squatters were evicted after a two day battle with police. A defiant notice on the metal barrier reads "93 open" with an arrow. Follow the arrow round the back where the remains of the terrace open onto the open space of Kennington Park. The inhabitants of 93 are still squeezing behind the metal barrier to their front door and graffiti on the wall read "Legalise Freedom" and "Don't Panic".

Continue ahead along Bolton Crescent and turn rightalong Camberwell New Road to Oval tube station

Finish: Oval tube (northern line)

Multimedia

Related Internet Links

• Map: print out a map of the Kennington walk

Related Links

• Notting Hill on foot

• Autumn in Hampstead and Highgate

• Why London is one of the world's great walking cities

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