Kennington

Kennington is a district situated in South London, England. It is within Inner London and is mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, although part of the area is within the London Borough of Southwark.

It is the location of the Imperial War Museum, a national museum, and The Oval, an international cricket ground.

Kennington is situated 1.4 miles (2.3 km) south-east of Charing Cross. It is primarily a residential area, and it is a Royal manor of historical significance. Within the London post town, the district postcode for Kennington is SE11. The district is within the 020 London dialling code. Most subscriber numbers begin 77xx.

Three London Borough of Lambeth wards include Kennington: Oval, Prince's and Vassall. One London Borough of Southwark ward includes Kennington: Cathedrals (ward). The Member of Parliament for Kennington (within the Vauxhall borough constituency) is Kate Hoey (Labour Party). The population of Kennington, recorded by the 2011 Census (taking into account Oval and Prince's wards), was 21,287.

For local government administrative purposes, the London Borough of Lambeth treats Kennington as part of the North Lambeth Town Centre, which also embraces Waterloo and Vauxhall.

Early history
The presence of a tumulus, and other significant geographical features locally, point inconclusively towards the theory that the area was regarded in ancient times as a sacred place of assembly.

Kennington appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Chenintune, later Kyning-ton, which may mean "place of the King", or "town of the King". It was held by Teodric (Theodoric) the Goldsmith. It contained: 1 hide and 3 virgates; 3 ploughs, 4 acre of meadow. It rendered £3 annually. The manor of Kennington was divided from the manor of Vauxhall by the River Effra, a tributary of the River Thames which today flows through an underground culvert.

Harthacnut, King of Denmark and King of England, died at Kennington in 1041. It was at Kennington that Harold Godwinson took the Crown the day after the death of Edward the Confessor; he is said to have placed it upon his own head. King Henry III held his court here in 1231; and, according to Matthew Paris, in 1232, Parliament was held at Kennington.

Edward III gave the manor of Kennington to his oldest son Edward, the Black Prince in 1337, and the prince then built a large royal palace between what is now Black Prince Road and Sancroft Street, near to Kennington Cross. In 1376, according to John Stow, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster came to Kennington to escape the fury of the populace of London. Geoffrey Chaucer was employed at Kennington as Clerk of Works in 1389. He was paid 2 shillings. The manor house of Kennington remained a royal palace until the time of Henry VIII of England; Kennington was the occasional residence of Henry IV and Henry VI, and Henry VII was here before his coronation. Catherine of Aragon stayed at Kennington Palace in 1501. In 1531, at the order of King Henry VIII, most of Kennington Palace was dismantled, and the materials were used in the construction of the Palace of Whitehall.

The manor of Kennington continues to be owned by the current monarch's elder son (HRH the Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall: see Dukes of Cornwall). The Duchy of Cornwall maintains a substantial property portfolio within the area.

18th century development
In 1726, the title Earl of Kennington in the Peerage of Great Britain was assumed by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.

In 1746, Francis Towneley and eight men who had taken part in the Jacobite Rising were hanged, drawn and quartered at Kennington Common.

The development of Kennington is attributable to the construction, in 1750, of Westminster Bridge. In 1751, Kennington Road was cut from Kennington Common (as it then was; now Kennington Park) to Westminster Bridge.

On 10 May 1768, at approximately the site of the Imperial War Museum today, the Massacre of St George's Fields took place. A riot started, because of the detention at the King's Bench Prison of the radical, John Wilkes - he had written an article in which he attacked King George III. The Riot Act was read, and soldiers fired upon the crowd, killing seven people.

Several houses forming a terrace on the east side of Kennington Road were constructed in the 1770s.

Cleaver Square (then called Prince's Square) was laid out in 1788. Michael Searles, architect and developer, built semi-detached houses along Kennington Park Road in the 1790s, and is credited with Marlborough House on Kennington Road.

In 1796, a house in West Square became the first station in the optical telegraph, or semaphore line, between the Admiralty in London, and Chatham and Deal in Kent, and during the Napoleonic Wars transmitted messages between Whitehall and the Royal Navy.

A fraudster from Camberwell, by the name Badger, was the last person to be hanged at Kennington Common, in 1799.

19th century
The modern street pattern of Kennington was formed by the early nineteenth century; the village had become a semi-rural suburb with grand terraced houses.



In 1824, St. Mark's Church was built to the south of Kennington Common, where once there had been gallows. One of the four "Waterloo Churches" of south London — so named following the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo - the church was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The vicar of the church was instrumental in enclosing the Common as a park.



The Royal Surrey Gardens, which occupied 15 acres of land to the east of Kennington Park Road, were created in 1831 by Edward Cross (zoo proprietor). There were separate cages for lions, a rhinoceros, tigers and giraffes. The gardens included a lake of about three acres and contained a variety of exotic trees and plants. In the face of competition from the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, the site was redeveloped in 1856 for the Surrey Music Hall: with a capacity of 12,000 seated spectators, this was the largest building of its kind in London. The music hall was destroyed by fire in 1861, and the site was used temporarily by St. Thomas' Hospital before being sold for residential development in 1877.

Imperial Court, on Kennington Lane, was built in 1836 for the Licensed Victuallers' School, and from 1921 to 1992 it was the headquarters of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI). The first stone was laid by Viscount Melbourne, in the name of King William IV.

The Oval cricket ground was leased to Surrey County Cricket Club from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1845, and the adjacent gasometers (themselves an international sporting landmark) were constructed in 1853.

Dense building and the carving-up of villas for multiple occupation caused Kennington to be "very seriously over-populated in 1859, when diphtheria appeared" (recorded by Karl Marx in Das Kapital).

The church of St John the Divine, Kennington, which was to be described by the poet John Betjeman as "the most magnificent church in South London", was designed by George Edmund Street (architect of the Royal Courts of Justice on Strand, London), and was built between 1871 and 1874.



The Durning Library, at Kennington Cross, was designed in 1889 by S Sidney RJ Smith, architect of the Tate Gallery (as it then was; now Tate Britain), and is a fine example of the Gothic Revival style. The library was a gift to the people of Kennington from Jemina Durning Smith.

Also in 1889, the County of London was created, bringing within the ambit of the London County Council areas, including Kennington, which had theretofore been within the ancient county of Surrey.

Kennington station was opened as "Kennington (New Street)" in 1890 by the City of London and Southwark Subway.

The poverty map of London, created by Charles Booth in 1898-99, identifies a mixture of classifications for the streets of the district; Kennington Park Road, for example, corresponds with the description "Middle class. Well-to-do". Most streets are classified as "Mixed. Some comfortable, others poor". There are also several scattered streets which are considered to be "Poor. 18s. to 21s. a week for a moderate family". The map shows that there existed in the district a great disparity of wealth and comfort between near-neighbours.

Modern history of Kennington
Two social forces were at work in Kennington at different times during the twentieth century: decline, and — later — gentrification. Decline began in the early part of the twentieth century. Middle-class households ceased to employ servants and no longer sought the large houses of Kennington, preferring the suburbs of outer London. Houses in Kennington were suited to multiple occupation and were divided into flats and bedsits, providing cheap lodgings for lower-paid workers. During the Blitz, several buildings were destroyed or damaged by the Luftwaffe, although the area was not so adversely affected as many other districts of inner London.

Kennington ceased to be the administrative centre for the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth (as it then was) in 1908. The Town Hall, built as the Lambeth Vestry Hall (Surrey) for the business of the Parish, in a neoclassical style on Kennington Road, was not large enough for the Council to properly carry out its functions. A new Town Hall was erected in Brixton, and today, the Old Town Hall is the registered office of the Countryside Alliance.



In 1913, Maud Pember Reeves selected Kennington for Round About a Pound a Week, which was a survey of social conditions in the district. She found "respectable but very poor people [who] live over a morass of such intolerable poverty that they unite instinctively to save those known to them from falling into it".

In an initiative to improve the district, between 1913 and 1915, the Duchy of Cornwall set about redeveloping land. Courtenay Square, Courtenay Street, Cardigan Street, Denny Street and Denny Crescent were laid out to a design by architects Stanley Davenport Adshead, Stanley Churchill Ramsay and JD Coleridge, in a Neo-Georgian style.

In 1915, Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham, was published. Philip Carey, the protagonist, finds lodgings in the "vulgar respectability" of Kennington.

In 1922, Lambeth Hospital on Brook Drive was created by merging the Lambeth Infirmary with the adjacent Renfrew Road Workhouse. Under the control of the London County Council, Lambeth Hospital, which had a capacity of 1,250 patients in 1939, was one of the largest hospitals in London. After the National Health Service was formed, Lambeth Hospital became an acute general hospital. In 1976, the North Wing of St. Thomas' Hospital opened; services transferred there, and Lambeth Hospital was closed. A substantial part of the site has today been redeveloped for apartments, although some buildings are occupied by the Lambeth Community Care Centre. It was in the vicinity of Lambeth Hospital that the music video for the song Come On Eileen, released in 1982 by the pop group Dexys Midnight Runners, was filmed.

Kennington station was substantially remodelled in 1925 to accommodate the Charing Cross branch of the Northern Line. Because tram and bus routes converged at Kennington, in the 1920s St. Mark's became known as the "tramwayman's church", and Kennington was referred to as the "Clapham Junction of the southern roads".

By 1926, construction of the Belgrave Hospital for Children — designed by Henry Percy Adams and Charles Holden - was complete. The hospital was subsumed within the King's College Hospital Group and closed in 1985. Restoration and conversion for use as apartments was undertaken in 1994.

The London County Council erected an estate of seven blocks of flats to the south of Kennings Way and White Hart Street in 1928.

The Duchy of Cornwall, in the 1930s, engaged Louis de Soissons, architect of Welwyn Garden City, to design a number of buildings in Kennington in a Neo-Georgian style.

On 15 October 1940, the large trench air-raid shelter beneath Kennington Park was struck by a 50 lb bomb. The number of people killed remains unknown; it is believed by local historians that 104 people died. 48 bodies were recovered.

In 1945, London Belongs to Me, by Norman Collins, was published. The central setting for the novel is a boarding-house at 10, Dulcimer Street, Kennington.

Scenes from the film Passport to Pimlico were filmed in and around Kennington. The film was released in 1949.

For the United Kingdom general election, 1950, the borough constituency of Kennington — which was created for the United Kingdom general election, 1885 - was abolished.

The Brandon estate was endowed in 1962 by the London County Council with Reclining Figure No. 3: a sculpture by Henry Moore.

In 1969, the first house in St. Agnes Place was squatted. The unit was vacant, in the possession of Lambeth Council, and was to be demolished to extend Kennington Park. Squatters entered the other empty properties in St. Agnes Place and established a Rastafari temple. Lambeth Council moved, unsuccessfully, to evict the squatters in 1977. Pursuant to an Order of the High Court obtained by the Council in 2005, 21 of the houses were demolished after the squatters were evicted from those houses; the Rastafari temple was subsequently demolished in 2007.

Scenes from the 1990 film, The Krays, were shot in Kennington.

In June 1996, a protest took place outside Kennington Police Station. Brian Douglas, who sustained serious brain injury and a fractured skull during police restraint, was placed in a cell at Kennington for fourteen hours before being escorted to St. Thomas' Hospital, where he died.

Lambeth Council designated a substantial part of Kennington a Conservation Area in 1968, the boundary of which was extended in 1979 and in 1997.

A pub, "The Jolly Gardeners", on Black Prince Road, was adopted for Snatch (film) and cast as "The Drowned Trout", in 2000.

In 2001, London Boulevard, by Ken Bruen, was published; Kennington is a setting within the novel, and features in the 2010 film of the same name.

Oval station was the target of one of the four attempted 21 July 2005 London bombings.

The 2011 film Attack the Block was set in Kennington.

21st century gentrification
In recent years, Kennington has experienced gentrification, driven by the advantages of its location and good transport links to the West End and the City of London. In "London: A Social History", Roy Porter describes "Victorian villas in... Kennington, long debased by use as lodging-houses, were transformed into luxury flats for young professionals or snips for first-time buyers — or were repossessed by the class of family for whom they had first been built..."; and "Chambers London Gazetteer" observes the "reuniting of formerly subdivided properties" as "decline is being reversed".

It is difficult to identify one catalyst for this change. The principal factors are location and transport, but other factors which may have contributed include the widening of the corporate-professional employment sector in central London, starting in the 1980s and the effect of rising property prices in districts north of the river, and (more recently), nearby Clapham and Battersea, causing Kennington to be "rediscovered". The good architectural and structural quality of many properties in Kennington — characterised by Georgian and Victorian terraces of yellow London stock brick, typically three storeys or higher, fronting the main roads and squares — has unquestionably contributed to the gentrification of the area, and so has a perception of "good value" - that investment in a property in the district will yield a decent return. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of housing in the area is council-owned, including some council estates adjacent to Kennington Road, leading up to Elephant and Castle, and around the Kennington Park area. The area's varied social texture demonstrates the population mix.

Kennington Park


Kennington Park, laid out by Victorian architect James Pennethorne, and St Mark's Churchyard now cover the site of Kennington Common. The Park was the first public park in south London, and was created when the Common was enclosed in 1852, and designated one of the Royal Parks of London (today, management of the Park is undertaken by Lambeth Council).

The Park, historically, was a place for executions, a Speakers' Corner for public gatherings for political and religious purposes, and a place for entertainment and sporting events.

In the 1730s, Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield preached to thousands here. In 1746 the Surrey County Gallows at the southern end of the Common was used for the execution of nine leaders of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. The Common was also where the Chartists gathered for their biggest demonstration in 1848. "The Gymnastic Society" met regularly at Kennington Common during the second half of the eighteenth century to play football. The Society — sometimes claimed to be the world's first football club — consisted of London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmorland.

The tradition of political gathering at Kennington Park in advance of marches upon Parliament returned in the 1970s. In 1986, the Park was the location for the Gay Pride march of that year, and for several years thereafter. On March 31, 1990, some 200,000 people amassed at Kennington Park to march upon Trafalgar Square, in protest against the Community Charge. This, during the course of the day, escalated into mass disturbances: the Poll Tax Riots. In April 1997, a march organised by Reclaim the Streets set off from the Park for central London; and in May 2004, the Park was the starting point for a march to the Cannabis Festival at Brockwell Park. In March 2007, the Archbishop of Canterbury preached at Kennington Park to mark the passing of the Slave Trade Act 1807. The Park had been a significant location for important anti-slave trade rallies. In March 2011, the Park was the South London starting point for a feeder march to the 2011 anti-cuts protest in London.

(Fuller details of the Common's history are in the Kennington Park article).

Kennington Oval (The Oval)


The Oval, officially currently known as "The Kia Oval", is the home ground for Surrey County Cricket Club and hosts the final Test match of the English summer season. The Oval was the first ground in the United Kingdom to host Test cricket, was the location for the England v Scotland representative matches (1870-1872), the first ever international football match, the first FA Cup final in 1872, and held the second ever Rugby Union international match between England and Scotland in 1872. England's unfortunate performance against Australia here in 1882 gave rise to The Ashes. The Oval has been labelled with the sobriquet "the Grand Old Lady" in recognition of the significant role the ground has played in the development of modern sport.

Imperial War Museum


The Bethlem Royal Hospital (also known as Bedlam) relocated from Moorfields to St. George's Fields, at the north end of Kennington, in 1815. Buildings were laid out to a design by James Lewis, and in 1846, a cupola was added by Sydney Smirke. In 1930, the Bethlem Royal Hospital moved to Beckenham, in outer London. Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, purchased the old hospital, and had the east and west wings demolished to create space for Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, which was given to the London County Council in memory of his mother. The central wing was retained, and since 1936 has been occupied by the Imperial War Museum.

The nearest London Underground station to the Museum is Lambeth North tube station, on the Bakerloo Line.

Stane Street
Kennington Park Road and Clapham Road is a long and straight stretch of road because it follows the old Roman Stane Street. This ran down from the Roman London Bridge to Chichester via the gap in the North Downs at Box Hill near Dorking. Another Roman road branched off opposite Kennington Road and went through what is now Kennington Park and down the Brixton Road. It carried on through the North Downs near Caterham to Hassocks, just north of the South Downs.

Kennington community
Kennington is essentially a multi-ethnic area with a mixed and varied population, all falling within different geodemographic strands. The area attracts young and affluent incomers who fall within the ABC1 demographic strand of the NRS social grade spectrum, who come to the area in search of its varied and affordable but solid housing stock.



Kennington is within the Division bell zone for the Houses of Parliament, and a number of Members of Parliament and civil servants live within the area. An article in The Sunday Times in 2010 - in connection with David Laws - described Kennington as "the politicians' enclave across the Thames from Westminster"; in 2009, The Times observed that "Kennington...is the suburb that has featured the most in the MPs' expenses scandal. Hazel Blears and Alistair Darling are only two of the ministers with Kennington second homes".

Kennington Road and Kennington Lane, south of Kennington Cross, could properly be described as the "shopping area" of Kennington. This area is identified as a "Local Centre" in the London Plan. There is a range of local shops, restaurants, cafés and estate agents, and there is a Barclays Bank branch and a Post Office. There is a Tesco supermarket on Kennington Lane. The area has a range of pubs and some bars, as well as the only nightclub, the South London Pacific.

There are two theatres in Kennington: the White Bear Theatre and the Oval House Theatre. The Cinema Museum, London, established in 1986, occupies a converted part of the former Lambeth Hospital, off Renfrew Road.

The area has an active residents' association: the Kennington Association.

The Friends of Kennington Park is a local organisation, involved with the promotion of Kennington Park as a valuable resource for the community.

A weekly farmers' market takes place at St. Mark's Church.

The distillery of Beefeater Gin - the only premium gin still distilled in London - is situated in Montford Place, Kennington.

The City and Guilds of London Art School, one of the longest-established art colleges in the country, has been at Kennington Park Road since 1879.

Cactus TV, a television show production company, is situated in Kennington Road.

Kennington is also home of the The Cinema Museum - a popular local venue for watching films and learning about the history of cinema.

Notable residents

 * William Hogarth, artist, lived in Kennington in the early part of the eighteenth century.
 * David Ricardo, the celebrated political economist, lived in Kennington in the 1790s.
 * William Blake, artist and visionary, occupied a house at Hercules Road, at the boundary of Kennington and Lambeth, between 1790 and 1800.
 * Eliza Cook, author, Chartist poet and writer, lived in Kennington in the first half of the nineteenth century.
 * William Bligh, Captain of HMS Bounty, against whom the Mutiny on the Bounty was brought, occupied a house at Lambeth Road, near the Imperial War Museum. He died in 1817, and was buried at St. Mary's, Lambeth.
 * John Alexander Reina Newlands, chemist, was born in West Square in 1837. Newlands prepared the first periodic table of elements arranged in order of relative atomic mass.
 * William Hosking, architect and civil engineer, who claimed to have formed the design for the British Museum Reading Room, and was the first Professor of Architecture at King's College London, occupied a house in Walcot Square in the 1840s.
 * Sir William Chandler Roberts-Austen metallurgist - after whom austenite is named - was born in Kennington in 1843.
 * William Booth, founder and General of The Salvation Army, found work and lodging at a pawnbroker shop in Kennington Park Road in 1849.
 * E. Nesbit, children's author, best known for The Railway Children, was born in Kennington in 1858.
 * Samuel Prout, watercolorist, lived for a time in Kennington Road.
 * Felix Slade - a lawyer and philanthropist, who endowed three Slade Professorships of Fine Art at Oxford University, Cambridge University and University College London, and bequeathed most of his art collection to the British Museum - lived and died in Walcot Place, off Kennington Road. He donated a large fountain to Kennington Park - the Slade Memorial Fountain.
 * Roy Redgrave, actor, and patriarch of the Redgrave acting family, was born in Kennington in 1873.
 * Vincent van Gogh, artist, lived at Ivy Cottage, 395 Kennington Road, from August to October 1874, and from December 1874 to May 1875.
 * Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, was born in Harleyford Street in 1887.
 * Charlie Chaplin, actor, born in 1889, grew up in Kennington, and lived in several different houses at different times, in West Square, Methley Street and Kennington Road.
 * Harry Roberts, who was jailed for life for murdering three policemen in the Massacre of Braybrook Street in 1966, was born in Kennington in 1936. He remains in prison.
 * Don Letts, film director and musician, born in 1956, was educated in Kennington.
 * Bob Marley, Jamaican musician, stayed at a property in St. Agnes Place on occasions in the 1970s.
 * James Callaghan, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1976, insisted that he did not want to inflict upon his wife the "discomforts" of living at 10 Downing Street, and elected to stay at his flat on Kennington Park Road. He was eventually persuaded, in the interests of security, to move to 10 Downing Street.
 * William Tallon, Steward and Page of the Backstairs in the household of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, typically referred to by newspapers as "Backstairs Billy", moved from Clarence House in 2002 to a Duchy of Cornwall flat in Kennington. He died in 2007.
 * David Laws, politician, was involved in a controversy concerning a property which he occupied in Kennington.
 * Lembit Öpik, politician.
 * Kevin Spacey, actor.
 * Sarah Waters, author, who wrote (among other novels) Tipping the Velvet.
 * Martyn Hett and Jamie Sambridge moved into Kennington in 2010, later joined by Kate Feest and Christina Partington 2011. All four are well known amongst the local community and have been dubbed, "The Supremes".
 * Oliver Letwin, Member of Parliament, who was the victim of a confidence trick at his Kennington home.
 * Michael Connarty, Member of Parliament.
 * Jack Straw, Member of Parliament; former Home Secretary; former Foreign Secretary; former Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons; former Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice.
 * Anthony Steen, politician.
 * Stephen Hesford, politician.
 * Alistair Darling, Member of Parliament and former Chancellor of the Exchequer.
 * Hazel Blears, Member of Parliament and former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.
 * Charles Kennedy, Member of Parliament and former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party.
 * Phil Willis, Baron Willis of Knaresborough, politician.
 * Kenneth Clarke, Member of Parliament, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor.
 * Victor Cox, Author |url=http://www.pp.s25.dotnetsql.com/vic.htm

Schools in Kennington
There are six primary schools within the Kennington area: Archbishop Sumner School (Church of England); Henry Fawcett Primary School; St. Anne's Primary School (Roman Catholic); St. Mark's Primary School (Church of England); Vauxhall Primary and Walnut Tree Walk Primary School. There are two secondary schools within the Kennington area: Archbishop Tenison's School (admits boys aged 11 – 19; admits girls into the Sixth Form), and Lilian Baylis Technology School (admits boys and girls aged 11 – 16).

Geography
Kennington has no official boundaries, so classifications of which areas fall within the district vary. The modern layout of Kennington reflects development as a linear settlement. The SE11 postcode captures most of the district, although the peripheries of Kennington are within the SE1, SE17, SW8 and SW9 postcodes. The south-western part of the district - Kennington Oval - protrudes towards Vauxhall.



Nearest places:
 * Vauxhall
 * Waterloo
 * Walworth
 * Newington — usually known as Elephant and Castle
 * Stockwell
 * Camberwell
 * Brixton
 * Lambeth North

Transport
Nearest London Underground stations:




 * Kennington tube station: Northern Line, Bank branch and Charing Cross branch interchange.
 * Oval tube station: Northern Line, Bank branch only at off-peak times. Customers travelling at off-peak times must change at Kennington tube station for the Charing Cross branch.
 * Lambeth North tube station: Bakerloo line
 * Vauxhall tube station: Victoria Line

Nearest National Rail stations:


 * Vauxhall: (South West Trains mainline and suburban services to London Waterloo and the south and south-west of England)
 * Elephant & Castle station: (First Capital Connect and Southeastern Trains suburban services to London Blackfriars, City Thameslink, St. Pancras International and north towards Luton, St. Alban's and Bedford; and outer South London and south towards Kent)

"Barclays Cycle Superhighway" and "Barclays Cycle Hire":

"Barclays Cycle Superhighway 7", from Morden to the City of London runs through Kennington, along Kennington Park Road. Kennington is also the southernmost point in the "Barclays Cycle Hire" scheme; there are several docking stations within the area, but there are no docking stations further south.

Congestion Charging Zone:

Part of the area is within the Central London Congestion Charge Zone. Kennington Lane, a constituent road of the Inner Ring Road, marks the boundary of the Zone. South of Kennington Lane is outside the Zone; north of Kennington Lane is inside the Zone.

Bus services (from Kennington Cross and Kennington Oval):

N3 (Night bus), towards Oxford Circus or Bromley North, from Kennington Road;

36 (24-hour service), towards Queen's Park or New Cross Bus Garage, from Harleyford Street;

N109 (Night bus), towards Oxford Circus or Croydon, from Kennington Road;

N133 (Night bus), towards Liverpool Street or Mitcham, from Kennington Park Road;

N136 (Night bus), towards Oxford Circus via Victoria or Chislehurst, from Harleyford Street;

N155 (Night bus), towards Aldwych or Morden, from Kennington Park Road;

159 (24-hour service), towards Paddington Basin (via Parliament Square and Oxford Circus) or Streatham, from Kennington Road.