The Lambeth Landmark site is full of images from an amazingly pastoral Brixton, like this farm on Coldharbour Lane, above.

The cornfields are sadly vanished from Brixton Hill, although the windmill is still there.



Some of them, like these cattle on the corner of Clapham Park Road, or the sheep grazing in Brockwell Park, really don’t seem that long ago.

Brixton also has a long tradition of theatrical/strange modes of transport: until recently a bright pink tank often used to drive up and down Brixton Road (what happened to that?) and a very striking man with long dreadlocks occasionally rides a white carthorse bareback past my house. But that was nothing compared with music-hall artist Mr Gustav-Grais’s zebra chaise, stabled in Brixton in 1912.