The area around Kennington has more green space than almost any inner-London district, with somewhere to get outdoors close to nearly every door. The nearest green space is usually just round the corner. There are close to a hundred within a kilometre. The Thames is a short walk away. There's no countryside, and with that many parks, people don't seem to miss it.
On average, the nearest public green space is about 67 metres from a Kennington home, and there are about 93 green spaces within a kilometre. Most of those are squares, churchyards and estate lawns, with Kennington Park as the big one and Myatt's Fields not far south. Kennington Park started life as one of the Royal Parks and is now run by Lambeth Council.
Water is a little further away. The nearest river, canal or open water is about 550 metres away on average, and there are about 37 bodies of water within a kilometre, with the Thames along Albert Embankment the most obvious. You don't see the river from most Kennington streets, but it is close enough to walk to.
The nearest National Cycle Network route is about 840 metres away on average, and only about 13% of postcodes are close to one. There is no ancient woodland in the area.
The rating list counts 908 business premises in Kennington, and offices make up the largest share at 428. There are also 165 shops, 21 pubs and 11 restaurants. These are rateable premises on the valuation list, so some may be empty or have changed use since. Even so, there are nearly twice as many pubs as restaurants in a district built around the Oval.
Of the 168 food businesses with a hygiene rating, about 57% have the top score and about 7% are at the bottom end of the scale. Eating out locally is mostly safe.
Air quality is a city-wide issue. Lambeth's average fine-particle level was about 9.3 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024, a borough-wide figure that streets near the main roads probably exceed.
The district's character comes from what surrounds it. The Oval anchors the south-west corner, Lambeth Palace and Albert Embankment are at the river end, and Vauxhall Gardens, the Imperial War Museum and Elephant & Castle are all close by. Conservation areas such as Kennington, Kennington Park Road, Albert Square, Eliot's Row and Grosvenor Park keep the Georgian and Victorian streets looking as they always have. Even so, most of the homes here are flats in post-war blocks, so the period terraces are only one part of the picture.
People in Kennington have about 8,000 square metres of private garden for every 1,000 residents. For a district made up almost entirely of flats, that is modest, and most of it belongs to the terraced houses. If you have a flat here, the public squares and parks will be your garden.
None of the landscape designations reach into Kennington. There is no area of outstanding natural beauty, no site of special scientific interest and no ancient woodland. This is a city district, and its green space is the planned kind: parks, squares and churchyards, not countryside.
Green space is one of Kennington's real strengths. Few places this close to Westminster have a park this near most front doors.