We are working with the Cross River Partnership through their Mayor’s Air Quality Funded programme Clean Air Better Business (CABB) to deliver air quality improvements and encourage active travel for workers, residents and visitors to the area.

WATERLOO GUIDED WALKS

Waterloo is a historic and a fascinating neighbourhood, full of surprises, which can be discovered on these self-guided

walks. Choose one or two routes through this historic part of South London, or add all four together to make one big

circuit. Each section takes about 30 minutes without stops.

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Britain’s largest railway station was completed in 1848, though most of what you see today dates to the 1920s. Look on the wall above the mezzanine balcony at the letters ‘L&SWR’ (London & South Western Railway) and note the many classical details: this style is Imperial Baroque and the mood is sombre but victorious after the Great War.

When the rebuilt station opened in 1922, this gate was dedicated to the 585 men who died in the theatres of war listed in the stone roundels. At the top of the arch, Victory’s head is fl anked by allegorical fi gures of War (1914) and Peace (1918), and far above sits Britannia with a fl aming torch in one hand and her trident in the other.

Waterloo Station

2 The Victory Arch

With your back to the departure boards walk left to the end of the station. Exit via the corner archway, between bronze Rolls of Honour for station personnel who fell in the Great War. Descend the steps and stop by the railings to look back at the entrance.

With your back to the arch cross the approach roads. Walk through the viaduct, bearing right as you exit, and use the crossings behind the bus shelters to reach the church visible across Waterloo Road (there’s a view of the Shard to its right).

3 Church of St John the Evangelist, WaterlooThis is a ‘Waterloo’ or ‘Million Pound’ Church built in the 1820s following Wellington’s defeat of Napoleon, hence its grand columns and laurel wreaths. The Church, seizing on the nation’s jubilant mood to boost attendance fi gures, spent a million pounds on new churches. St John’s was restored after wartime bombing and its lovingly tended garden houses community-based Southbank Mosaics and many examples of its work.

VICTORIAN WATERLOOIn medieval times this area was desolate Lambeth Marsh, which only really came to life with the completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750. Then around a century later the first railways arrived, running above ground level on mighty brick viaducts.Start in Waterloo Station, under the four-faced clock suspended from the roof at the centre of the concourse, a popular meeting spot for travellers for almost 80 years.

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This is one of London’s most atmospheric quarters, much fi lmed, with its nineteenth-century terraces, elegant streetlamps and steeply pitched roofs. The gallery on the corner of Theed Street was once a cello factory and the musical motif continues as you walk: the gate signed ‘The Warehouse’ is home to the London Festival Orchestra, which became independent in the 1980s and performs at major venues and festivals.

Theed Street, Windmill Walk and Roupell Street

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In the 1860s this was Blackfriars Bridge Station on the London, Chatham & Dover Railway that linked the capital with the coast and Continent. Only the legs remain of the bridge that carried the trains over the river. The viaducts were built using Kent bricks and the labour of mainly Irish ‘navvies’. You can see wartime shrapnel damage on the tiles. The colourful building across the road is Palestra, which houses surface transport control centres for Transport for London (Tfl ) and the Metropolitan Police

Old Blackfriars Station

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Look up at the circular ceiling and oculus of glass bricks, a nod to the 1930s designs of legendary station architect Charles Holden. Southwark opened in 1999 as one of 11 new stations on the much-delayed Jubilee Line Extension, its platforms running under the Victorian viaduct. It was designed by MJP Architects and in the lower concourse a 40-metre curved wall of 660 blue glass triangles illuminates the subterranean space.

Southwark Underground Station

5 Peabody Stamford Street EstateGeorge Peabody, an American philanthropist horrifi ed by the plight of London’s poor, set out to build affordable housing with light, plumbing and space for children to play in. He opened his fi rst estate in 1864 in East London and the layout you see here is fairly typical. Today Peabody is a charitable housing trust with over 80,000 tenants in 27,000 homes across the capital. It also commissions innovative new architecture.

Walk through the main iron gate (you are welcome to visit or attend a service) and skirt the church to the right, leaving by the gate hidden in the hedge right behind the building. Follow Secker Street left and right, crossing Cornwall Road to Theed Street

Turn right on Windmill Walk and walk down to the King’s Arms pub, turning left on Roupell Street. Continue past a language centre and a clinic on your left, stopping by a cluster of large, yellowish brick apartment blocks set around a central courtyard.

At the end of Roupell Street turn right on Hatfi elds, an area once used to dry beaver pelts for hat making. Walk under the blue bridge and left into pedestrianised Isabella Street, bursting with plants and lined with cafes and bars tucked into the arches. Continue over a small road and up a walkway to a huge brick-and-tile railway arch.

At this point you can use the Jubilee Line to return to Waterloo Underground Station, or continue with Walk 2 in the next page.

Staying on this side, turn right and walk down to the crossroads, stopping on the corner to look diagonally across at a black iron lamppost topped by a dog licking a pot. It’s almost hidden among the traffi c lights, but this is where the young Charles Dickens wrote about passing an ironmonger with a dog-and-pot sign on his daily walk to work. Beside you is Southwark Underground Station. Walk down into the ticket hall.

Waterloo Station

spot for travellers for almost 80 years.

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Leaf through the plays and enjoy the rare atmosphere of this theatrical bookshop, set up in 2002 by John Calder, who has been a publisher for over 65 years and still writes today. Peep through the red velvet curtain at the back to see the diminutive rehearsal space for hire. Around the corner are the English Touring Theatre and Charcoal Blue, theatrical and acoustic consultants, contributing to the feel of a specialist quarter.

The original design of this faux-industrial building was radical in 1970, deliberately so: it grew out of a former bombsite as a low-cost experimental space for young directors, actors and technicians. The company was a spin-off from the Old Vic down the road and big names to appear here include David Tennant, Gillian Anderson and Jude Law. Its bar and café are always buzzing, quite an achievement in a notably foodie district. The current building was opened in 2006 and was designed by Haworth Tomkins Architects.

Calder Bookshop & Theatre

9 Young Vic Theatre

Walk out of the shop and straight across the road to stop in front of the concrete, brick and glass facade of the Young Vic Theatre.

Turn right out of the theatre and right again up Windmill Walk, continuing under the viaduct to turn left on Brad Street. In the last arch on the left is a theatre entrance.

10 Waterloo East Theatre

From 1854, one train a day ran from Waterloo down to Brookwood, carrying coffi ns and relatives. But the station vaults were needed, so in 1900-2 the dead got their own terminus here, with Anglicans and Nonconformists delivered to different parts of the cemetery. There were different classes of burials – fi rst, second and third – and there was a handsome panelled chapel. This section, wide enough for a hearse, is all that remains after wartime bombing and once carried the words ‘Cemetery Railway’.

The London Necropolis Railway

This 1889 institution, funded by textile merchant Samuel Morley, evolved from the Old Vic’s lectures for working people. Its 1930 refectory murals by Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden were bombed, but Bawden returned with Justin Todd to do new ones, still visible today in the fi rst fl oor café. Huge murals by their colleague Martin Froy line the Emma Cons Hall downstairs. The excellent Morley Gallery across the road on King Edward Walk shows work by staff, students and independent artists.

Morley College and Gallery

Here’s a rare thing: an independent, un-funded theatre making its way on ticket sales and donations alone. It has staged over 150 shows since founder Gerald Armin opened it in a disused railway arch in 2009. It seats 100 people and supports new writing, claiming two Off-Broadway transfers and two movie spin-offs thus far.

Leake Street and The VaultsWelcome to London’s nether regions: Leake Street is one of its most popular tagging spaces, pungent with spray paint, and The Vaults are creative space for ‘the bold, the fresh and the fearless’ in the creepy tunnels under the station. In the nineteenth century, corpses and coffi ns were stored beneath the station before their fi nal train journey to Brookwood Cemetery. From 2009-13 the space was feted as the cutting-edge Old Vic Tunnels. Now it hosts everything from pop-up opera to life drawing.

This South London matriarch, revived by American actor Kevin Spacey in the 2000s, opened as the Royal Coburg Theatre in 1818. It was later the Royal Victoria Hall & Coffee Tavern (no alcohol) thanks to philanthropist Emma Cons, and in 1912 her niece Lilian Baylis transformed it into a dazzlingly successful theatre. Regulars included John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier helped found the National Theatre here and young Judi Dench trod the boards. The National moved to the river long ago (see Walk 4), but next door is its rehearsal space, the National Theatre Studios. The Old Vic’s basement Penny Bar opens until 1.00am midweek, 2.00am Thursday to Saturday.

11 Old Vic Theatre

Turn left under the viaduct and walk down Cornwall Road back to The Cut. Stop on the pavement to admire the building opposite, with its fi ne portico and Royal coat of arms.

Cross Waterloo Road onto Baylis Road, an extension of The Cut. At the London Underground sign, cross Spur Road, turning right on its far side and walking up the hill and steps to Waterloo Station. At the top, follow the station wall left until you reach a fl ight of downward steps set into the pavement. Take these, turning right at the bottom along the graffi ti-covered subterranean street to the fi rst door on your right.

Walk back past the steps and up the ramp ahead onto Lower Marsh. Turn right and then left at the end of the road, stopping opposite a red and pink terracotta building on the far side at No. 21, with an entry arch labelled ‘Westminster Bridge House.’

To end here, return to Lambeth North. To continue with Walk 3, turn right out of the college and pass the Morley Gallery. At the fi rst set of lights, cross to the island and then right onto St George’s Road, following the walls of the cathedral buildings.

Before Lambeth North Underground Station use the fi rst crossing to the Necropolis side, walking around the corner to Newnham Terrace, where steep stairs lead to the Make Space Studios used by around 60 artists. Signs advertise open studios in summer and at Christmas. Turn back and cross the two big roads. Keeping the church on your right, continue down Westminster Bridge Road, passing some fl ats to reach a yellow brick building studded with tiny vignettes of famous women by Southbank Mosaics.

THEATRICAL WATERLOOBankside had its Elizabethan playhouses, West End theatres boomed in Victorian and Edwardian London, but Waterloo and the South Bank hit their thespian stride in the politicised twentieth century and sustain a vibrant ‘Off West End’ quarter today.Walk out of Southwark Underground Station onto The Cut and cross at the lights, turning right by The Ring pub – a remnant of the area’s boxing history – and passing LESOCO and many shops and restaurants to reach a faded red awning at No. 51.

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Calder Bookshop & Theatre

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This huge Catholic cathedral – in the neighbouring borough of Southwark, which had a reputation for Catholic sympathies - seated 3,000 and was consecrated in 1848 in the wake of the Roman Catholic Relief Act. It was badly bombed and remnants of Augustus Pugin’s original design are on show inside. On nearby St George’s Fields, anti-Catholic protesters mustered before the infamous Gordon Riots of 1780.

This fi ne square is named after the Temple West family, the original landowners, and development began in the late eighteenth century. During the Napoleonic Wars, No. 36 (with a yellow door) was topped by a shutter telegraph, used by the Admiralty as part of a line of communications between Portsmouth, London and the Kent coast.

St George’s Cathedral

West Square

With the Cathedral door behind you, cross to the middle of the Lambeth Road then right to the far side of St George’s Road. Keep walking left, with the green copper dome of the Imperial War Museum on your right, until you see a right turn to West Square. Walk down to see an elegant garden surrounded by Georgian houses.

Make a circuit, returning to your entry point but exiting left on Geraldine Street, past a school building emblazoned with the monogram of the 19th-century London School Board or LSB. Follow the road around to the right, turning left between black railings.

WATERLOO WAR & PEACERadical politics were never far away in Waterloo, from anti-Catholic riots to Dissenters such as the poet William Blake, and it was a bombing target in World War II, but it is also full of churches, schools and the works of local communities and philanthropists.

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Two minutes up Hercules Road on the right is a plaque honouring the poet, artist and visionary William Blake. Born in Soho, he lived with his wife Catherine at No 13, now long gone, from 1790 to 1800. Cross into Centaur Street, almost opposite the house (look for the green arrow sign labelled ‘Archbishop’s Park’): along with parallel Virgil Street, its brick arches house 70 images of his poems, also by Southbank Mosaics.

IWM London

Blake Country

In 1852, Florence Nightingale’s wealthy family allowed her to train as a nurse. Two years later she took 38 female nurses to Scutari Hospital during the Crimean War. She became world famous for her work in nursing, nutrition and hygiene, in 1860 founded Britain’s fi rst professional nursing school at St Thomas’s and the School of Midwifery at King’s College Hospital some years later. Among other exhibits see her stuffed owl, an original lantern used at Scutari Hospital and some sobering medical equipment.

Florence Nightingale Museum

This gigantic museum, with its new First World War Galleries and extensive collections of art and objects related to battle, was opened by King George V in 1920 at Crystal Palace. It moved here to the central wing of old Bethlem Hospital (‘Bedlam’) in 1936. It aims not to glorify war, but to show its realities, and its pair of 15” naval guns are a familiar South London landmark. Admission is free, except for temporary exhibitions.

Oasis Farm WaterlooVolunteers and staff are turning this strip of wasteland into a farm where children from nearby schools, as well as local residents, can work the land and be proud of their city. It’s run by the Oasis Church Waterloo, which grew out of the eighteenth-century Surrey Chapel, with kids’ charity Jamie’s Farm. Sharing this corner of the park are studios for artists and entrepreneurs, a café garden and Iklectik, a creative space in an old school building, which stages exhibitions and events in the evenings.

With the guns behind you, walk left, following the wall to exit via the World Garden (or the next-door gate) onto the Lambeth Road. The Blue Plaque over the road at No 100 marks the former home of Captain Bligh, of the Bounty mutiny fame, now a popular b&b. At the lights, cross to the Three Stags pub, then left over the Kennington Road. Turn right and left onto Cosser Street – admiring at the far end a view of Westminster Abbey, half a mile away across the river – then turn right up Hercules Road.

At the far end of Centaur Street, cross Carlisle Street into Archbishop’s Park, once part of the ancient private garden of Lambeth Palace, London home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It became a public park in 1901. Follow the wooden signs to Old Paradise Yard and the City Farm up a narrow lane with fencing on both sides.

Leave the way you came in, turning left and left again onto Royal Street. At the lights, cross Lambeth Palace Road, turning right along the side of St Thomas’s Hospital, or ‘Tommy’s’. Mind the ambulances arriving and leaving as you pass the Accident & Emergency entry and exit, and look for a discreet white museum sign pointing left.

To end here, walk to North Lambeth or Waterloo Underground Stations. To continue with Walk 4, return to the road, turning left and left again onto the Westminster Bridge approach. Walk along to the stone steps opposite a white statue of a lion.

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Turner, Monet, Whistler and Constable all painted Westminster Bridge. This version is Victorian, but the 1750 original was the fi rst new river crossing in centuries, rattling the City (owners of London Bridge) and opening up Lambeth. Across the river are the Houses of Parliament, redesigned by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin after the 1834 fi re, which Turner painted from the south side of the bridge. The lion was made in the eighteenth century by the Coade ceramics manufactory just near the bridge.

Now stand back to take in the sheer scale of this Edwardian Baroque building with its crescent facade, started in 1911 but delayed by two world wars, so only completed in 1974. It was London’s local government headquarters for much of the twentieth century, until the Greater London Council (GLC) was dissolved in 1986. It houses The London Dungeon and SEA LIFE London Aquarium, two hotels, restaurants and a resident potter.

Westminster Bridge

County Hall

Go down the steps and turn back on yourself to under the bridge - it looks like a dead end, but it isn’t. Walk through the underpass and onto the South Bank.

Continue along the promenade, turning right into the last door in the building if you want tickets for the London Eye.

23 Coca Cola London EyeNobody knew what to expect in 2000 when a tiny architectural practice called Marks Barfi eld raised London’s 135-metre tall big wheel – the second-largest cantilevered wheel in the world – to celebrate the Millennium. It was meant to be removed after 10 years, but there was a public outcry and it will now stand until the 2020s. Each of the 32 pods can hold up to 25 people and one revolution takes half an hour.

South Bank RiversideThe South Bank, as it is known, flanks one of London’s most vibrant stretches of river, with wonderful views across to the city’s political heartland and a thriving cultural life.

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Lean on the parapet for a view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament across the River Thames, the bridge itself and, to your right, the lugubrious South Bank Lion.

It’s easy to miss this rare survivor of the 1951 Festival of Britain, which was staged to announce the country’s recovery from World War II. It was built fast, using reinforced concrete to insulate it from the noise from road, river, railway and Tube. Its Skylon restaurant, named after one of the Festival’s most famous structures, has great views and there’s always something on, often free. With the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery it forms the Southbank Centre, a popular arts complex.

The Royal Festival Hall

The forbidding 1970s Brutalist exterior of the National Theatre (generally known as ‘the National’) belies the friendly atmosphere and creative energy of the three theatres inside. Exit the main building, following the façade and turning right at the white ‘NT’ sign, to fi nd the Dorfman (formerly Cottesloe) Theatre around the side. Take the stairs from the Dorfman foyer to the Sherling High-Level Walkway to see all the backstage work under way, from prop making to set building and costume design.

This is the perfect rainy-day option in London: it holds the National Film Archive, has a creative fi lm programme (new releases, retrospectives and themed seasons) in four cosy cinemas and the Mediatheque offers free access to 2,500 fi lms and shorts. It has two buzzy bars and cafes, one on the riverfront, one on the National Theatre side.

National Theatre & Sherling High-Level Walkway

BFI Southbank

Waterloo BridgeMost Londoners will tell you this is the best bridge for views, because it sits between the City of Westminster to your left as you walk, with the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, and the City of London to your right, with St Paul’s dome and the skyscrapers of the fi nancial district. The unadorned bridge, built partly with female labour during the War, is famously the subject of the Kinks’ song, Waterloo Sunset.

Keep strolling through the street performers and under the Hungerford Bridge with its white cables, stopping by a row of tapered white poles above steps on your right. Set back behind its own raised restaurant terrace is a 1950s building in concrete and glass.

Continue in the same direction (don’t miss the skateboarders in the dank concrete Undercroft), turning right just after the Queen Elizabeth Hall but before the bridge. Take the stone steps up to Waterloo Bridge. Walk halfway across the river and stop.

When it’s safe, cross the busy two-way road and walk back on the far side, descending the steps to walk behind the red timber temporary theatre and a statue of Laurence Olivier in full fl ow as Hamlet, and walk into the Royal National Theatre to explore.

Leaving by the same door, turn right (away from the river) and right again, passing the elegant Rambert building completed for the eponymous ballet company in 2014. Turn right just before the fl yover and then fi rst left into the British Film Institute, or BFI.

Leave the way you came, crossing the road to follow a downward ramp by the Green Room Restaurant, bearing right to the BFI Imax. Walk either way around the Imax to Exit 1 and follow signs to Waterloo Station. You will emerge beside the Victory Arch.