Venues in Clapham

Clapham is arranged around its Common: 220 acres of open ground that was never enclosed, held as common land since long before the city reached it. The Old Town at the north end is the oldest part, and The Polygon — the triangle of streets laid out in the 1790s — is what was built when the Common’s northern edge became fashionable. Georgian and early Victorian houses run from there along the North Side and Rectory Grove, in a grain the rest of south London mostly lost.

Its national history is written in those houses. The Clapham Sect gathered at Holy Trinity Church on the Common from the 1790s — William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, Zachary Macaulay and their circle — and ran from here the campaign that carried the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and, twenty-six years later, abolition across the empire. The church, built in 1776, still stands on the north side of the Common, and Thornton’s house stood on Battersea Rise beside it.

The event character is the dining room rather than the ballroom. Trinity opened on The Polygon in 2006 under Adam Byatt, holds one Michelin star, and keeps Upstairs above it for private parties; Venn Street holds the Saturday market and the Clapham Picturehouse, and the Old Town gathers the rest. For access, the Northern line calls at Clapham Common and Clapham South, and Clapham Junction — the busiest railway interchange in Britain by train movements — is a short walk west, so the district is ten minutes from Victoria and Waterloo alike.