This September, fascinating but forgotten central London heritage site New River Head opens to the public for the final time ahead of its transformation into the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, opening 2024.
The former waterworks was the hub of one of London’s first major pieces of urban infrastructure. New River Head was integral to the supply of clean water to the capital from 1613 onwards and its operations provided a blueprint for profit-making utility companies.
Public tours of the site’s abandoned 18th- and 19th-century buildings on 8-11 and 15-18 September will explore this history, while models and drawings by award-winning Tim Ronalds Architects will give an insight into future plans for the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. Their scheme will transform the site into a new cultural landmark, repurposing the site’s former industrial buildings to create galleries, public gardens, a shop, a café and studios for drawing and making. Visitors will be invited give their feedback on these plans by contributing to an illustration of the site.
Installations of experimental illustration by the Centre’s illustrators-in-residence will also delve deeper into the site’s history.
In the remains of one of the last remaining windmills in London, illustrator Laura Copsey and designer Philip Crewe will open their fictional museum New River Folk. With objects made using historic craft processes, the museum will tell the stories of real working-class women and men whose lives were changed by profit-making water companies in the 17th-century.
Sharpay Chenyuè Yuán’s epic 25-metre-long drawing Lost Springs, Coming Spring (featured at the top) will take over the site’s 19th-century Coal Stores. Her illustration animates the site’s abandoned buildings with moments from its 400-year history as a natural beauty spot that became a vital industrial site and a target for saboteurs.
Artistic Director Olivia Ahmad says: “New River Head has 400 years of history that resonates with life in London today. It was the hub of a hugely influential scheme to supply much-needed clean water to the city’s growing population from the 1600s. At the same time, it changed the people’s relationship with water: from a resource given freely to a commodity sold for profit. We are excited to invite people to explore this history with tours and installations of new work by Laura Copsey, Philip Crewe and Sharpay Chenyuè Yuán. Their research and combinations of historic fact and speculative fiction makes the site’s hidden stories visible.”
Tours are free and anyone can attend – they can be booked now here www.qbcentre.org.uk/events/centre-in-progress
