Kennington - Notable Residents

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.
  • 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.

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