45 Squared 34) BATTERSEA SQUARE, SW11
Borough of Wandsworth, 60m×60m×50m
The thing about Battersea Square is that it's always been a triangle. That's because it used to be the village green, back when Battersea was a small farming-and-fishing-focused settlement on a bend in the Thames, nowhere near the power station and dogs' home that bear its name today. Archaeologists have even found the remains of a Saxon cottage here, where now you can buy vegan crêpes and fatoush because that's progress for you.
The parish stocks are long gone, as indeed is the grass, in favour of a triangular piazza surrounded by trees and mostly-Victorian buildings. Wandsworth council did their best to keep vehicles out when they repaved the square in 1990, restricting through traffic to the northern side and adding planters and an al fresco dining area to bring the space alive. The project won a Civic Trust commendation at the time and has been much appreciated since by local estate agents, of which there are two right here.
The east side retains its shopfronts, several now occupied by attractively independent restaurants, plus an intriguingly dated dry cleaners on the corner which wouldn't look out of place in a provincial cathedral town. I looked in vain initially for the oldest surviving building on the square, the 17th century Raven Inn, but that's because its Dutch gables are currently sheathed in scaffolding and blue canvas, which can't be helping business at the pizzeria underneath.
On the north side is jaggedy London House, formerly home to a dynasty of linen drapers by the name of Bennett as huge lettering on the upper wall confirms. The west side once fronted a set of granaries, since residentialised, with the smart brick building facing the square originally their office block called Ship House. Alongside was the Cotswold Laundry, also now flats with a mews courtyard paved with original setts behind a buzzered gate. A red Penfold pillarbox aids the throwback illusion, and the neighbouring parcel postbox alas shatters it.
The only chain to have moved in is Gail's, squirreling into number 32 in 2019 to serve Squash & Chipotle Fritters and Pain aux Raisins to the willing wallets of SW11. It's not yet too late in the season to graze at an outdoor table, watching a white van unloading floral arrangements destined for the Indian restaurant opposite while listening to the bells of St Mary's ringing out down by the slipway, calling the faithful to Parish Eucharist With Godly Play. Local residents must be delighted that the rest of London always goes to the wrong Battersea and leaves them to enjoy the delights of their former village triangle.
Is that a whale's tail on the wall at Stratford station? Yes it is.
What's it doing there? It's art.
Who's it by? Ahmet Öğüt.
That's a lot of consecutive accents! He's Turkish.
Where's the artwork? Above Petit Pret, on the mezzanine beside the DLR entrance.
What's the artwork called? Saved by the Whale's Tail, Saved by Art.
You what? In 2020 an empty metro train in Rotterdam overshot the buffers at an elevated terminus, and would have plummeted into the canal below except it ended up safely supported on top of a whale's tail artwork installed at the station 14 years earlier and the train driver walked away with no injuries.
Oh I remember that! It was brieflyquitememorable.
So Öğüt is remembering the whale? Partly, but more exploring the role art plays in everyday life and whether art can cause transformation rather than just represent it.
It's never simple with Art on the Underground is it? They love a verbose rationale.
Specifically? "For Öğüt this surreal and poetic moment became a powerful metaphor for how art - often dismissed as decorative or superfluous - can, quite literally and figuratively, be lifesaving."
Blimey! I know, right?
Is there more to it? Earlier this year Öğüt asked the public for real-life stories about times when art has saved, transformed, or reshaped lives.
Who won? A doctor called Helen Whitley with her story ‘The Bracelet’.
Where can I read her story? It's on the wall beside the DLR entrance.
Anywhere else? It's at the end of the TfL press release.
Anywhere else? It's in a snazzy booklet freely available in a rack downstairs on the lower concourse, along with the runners-ups' stories and a full colour fold-out whale's tail.
Looks expensive! Art on the Underground certainly have a decent budget.
What if I'm not going to Stratford any time soon? You can download the booklet here.
How long's it here for? The artwork's up until the end of next year.
If a DLR train ever overshot platform 4B, would it hit the whale? Yes, but the painting wouldn't save anyone's life.
It does look mighty impressive though! Totally dominates the concourse.
Thanks Ahmet! Swish swish!
It's the BL1, or Bakerloop, and runs between Waterloo and Lewisham in lieu of a properly-funded Bakerloo line extension. How ironic that the Mayor chose the 200th birthday of the railways to launch what's essentially a rail replacement bus.
Route BL1: Waterloo to Lewisham Location: London southeast, inner Length of bus journey: 5½ miles, 35 minutes
If you'd like to read about a journey on the BL1, read the black text.
If you'd like to read about the inadequate provision of information, read the brown text.
The BL1 launches opposite Waterloo station, two stops before the end of the Bakerloo line, so whatever you do don't alight the train early and switch to the bus. It's a busy stop and was all the busier on launch day with large numbers of bus afficionados waiting, generally GCSE-adjacent. It helps that the bus is free for the first week, indeed the first two weekends, to encourage exploratory journeys. Five buses an hour sounds good but is actually less frequent than the number of direct trains from Waterloo East to Lewisham, plus they get there in less than half the time, so if you're in a hurry go by rail.
This is already a Superloop bus stop because the rush hour oddity SL6 stops here every weekday evening. What's unusual is that the bus stop now has two loopy tiles, one saying BAKERLOOP and the other SUPERLOOP, despite the former being a sub-brand of the latter. They've chosen to add PART OF THE SUPERLOOP NETWORK underneath to clarify, then under that in pitifully titchy letters is written EXPRESS BUS SERVICE. I cannot overemphasise how pointlessly tiny this lettering is, like something two rows off the bottom of an optician's chart, so has plainly been added by branding jobsworths rather than anyone with an understanding of accessibility.
Also the route number on the bus stop is unexpectedly brown. On the remainder of the Superloop network it's the background that's coloured but here they've only shaded the text. Presumably someone thought it was a good idea but it doesn't work, the brown just looks faint, thus harder to read than the normal black and yet another unnecessary accessibility own goal.
The brown bus hums into place and absorbs the boarding hordes. Interestingly it's not a new vehicle - the entire fleet's five years old, but they are all battery electric double deckers so the Mayor's eco-credentials remain intact. Not only is the exterior half-brown but the seats are brown too, using the official Bakerloo line moquette, and in better nick than that on the trains themselves. I'd decided against boarding the previous service because it looked like there'd be playground vibes on the upper deck whereas this one was a tad more civilised, still with keen young enthusiasts filling the front two rows but not recording the whole journey for posterity while occasionally whooping in the background.
So where are we going? It would help if there was a map but there isn't. There was a map for the consultation, which is seemingly the only time TfL bother to draw maps these days, but for the actual launch there's only a diagram. What's more it's a godawful diagram designed by an organisation fixated on following rules rather than presenting clear information, because won't you look at the absolute mess at the Lewisham end of this.
The route's fairly simple at the Waterloo end - two stops at Elephant & Castle, two down the Old Kent Road and one outside New Cross Gate station. But in Lewisham the buses terminate one side of the shopping centre and start on the other, looping round out of service, and this has been depicted in as unhelpful a way as possible. Molesworth Street is shown as (southbound only), i.e. it's where the bus terminates, while Lewisham Centre and Lewisham Clock Tower are both shown as (northbound only), i.e the first two stops. This may be factually correct but it's also ridiculously complicated, and could easily have been simplified by bifurcating the far end, or else not being so anal about 'Molesworth Street' which is in fact located immediately alongside an entrance to the Lewisham Centre.
It takes five minutes to reach Elephant & Castle where there are two stops, the first outside the Bakerloo line exit which is impressively convenient positioning. The second is on the far side of the mega-junction, above which tower blocks even uglier than the former shopping centre now loom in a bland dispiriting way. That's two stops close together but the next is over a mile away, where the first station on the Bakerloo line extension isn't. Previously bus passengers had a choice of seven different routes but now there's a faster eighth, non-stop, because that's how transformational the Bakerloop will be. Also on the brown bus you get to ride over the flyover above the Bricklayers Arms roundabout and the views up there are great.
The bus shelters where the BL1 stops all have roundels on the roof but they still say SUPERLOOP, not BAKERLOOP, as if someone can't quite decide which version of the brand to run with. Presumably this was cheaper.
Nowhere in inner London is further from a station than this end of Burgess Park so the arrival of the Bakerloop will be much welcomed. A new station would be better, obviously, but that'll never happen because all the new flats that were going to justify its existence are already being built. As yet we're not attracting many locals but it's early days and they'll work it out soon enough.
According to the timetable back at Waterloo it takes 9 minutes to get to the big Tesco at Dunton Street. But it's taken us 12 and we weren't even especially held up, this because timetables at bus stops are always unhelpfully optimistic. No way are we getting to Lewisham in 24 minutes either.
The only other stop down the Old Kent Road is another mile away, again roughly where the next station would be, so it's quite a ride and we do manage to overtake several of the slower buses. If it wasn't for the endless sequence of traffic lights and the fact our driver didn't seem to be interested in hitting even the lowly 20mph speed limit, we might have got there quicker.
The route diagram on the side of the bus isn't great either, but that's because none of those on the Superloop are. It has six equally spaced blobs, two to represent Lewisham, and irregular notches inbetween to represent unnamed bus stops. The representation of the Old Kent Road is particularly unhelpful because the road is 1¾ miles long so who knows where it stops, and only one stop is labelled Old Kent Road anyway. Admittedly it's a stop called "Old Kent Road/Ilderton Road" but here it's ambiguous and unhelpful, mainly because local neighbourhoods don't have focused names, in part because the road never got any stations.
A bus lane speeds us onwards to New Cross Gate, 15 minutes after leaving Elephant & Castle, although that's considerably slower than a tube train could have managed. My fellow top deck passengers are taking photos of passing Eclipse Geminis, discussing Arsenal cup trivia and sucking on cartons of something fruit-based. We finally hit a short jam heading down the hill into Lewisham, not too ferocious on a Saturday but likely to slow things down considerably in the rush hour midweek. Most people alight at the station, which to be fair is where the Bakerloo line would have terminated too, with only the completists and bargain hunters hanging on for the last short hop to the shops.
Stopping arrangements in Lewisham are complicated, as previously mentioned. Not unusual because several other local routes loop awkwardly, but it'll be a while before everyone local works out where the Bakerloop stops. Again a map would have helped but none of the collateral associated with the launch included one, and online there wasn't even a route diagram. Instead the Bus changes webpage gives a 400 word description of the route, and FFS TfL just employ someone to draw maps rather than copping out every time with endless screeds of text. I managed to knock up a decent map based on the original consultation and its outcomes so why couldn't they have managed that too?
The BL1 terminates round the back of the Lewisham Centre, and if you're keen you can simply walk across the mall and catch it straight back again. There'll be fewer enthusiasts on the bus next week, and maybe fewer passengers the week after when a £1.75 fare is reinstated. But the Bakerloop along the Old Kent Road will undoubtedly be a hit, if only because the tube line it's named after will never be extended this far and the brown bus is the quickest ride local residents will ever get.
The world's first passenger railway first ran on 27th September 1825, which makes today the 200th birthday of the railways. (other anniversaries are available, but irrelevant today)
Celebrations will be underway all weekend on the former Stockton to Darlington Railway, much of which is still in passenger use. But that's a long way to travel, plus reportage from the events will likely clog YouTube for the rest of the week, so I've chosen to answer a more local question.
What's London's oldest station?
You can't have one oldest station, there have to be at least two. So we're looking for London's oldest passenger railway and then seeing which station the first train set off from on Day One. Which means we're off to the London & Greenwich Railway which opened on 8th February 1836.
The L&GR got the green light from an Act of Parliament in 1833, the intention to build a railway line from Tooley Street (near London Bridge) to London Street in Greenwich. Much of the intermediate land was marshes or market gardens, plus streets nearer town it would have been cumbersome to have crossed with level crossings, so the optimum solution was a viaduct to carry trains high above potential awkwardness. It was 3¾ miles long and about 7 metres high, also remarkably straight because it preceded most other development in the area. The viaduct was supported on 878 brick arches, 29 of which doubled up as road bridges, and is still the longest run of arches anywhere in Britain. It was, and is, amazing.
It was also expensive, so the company building it was soon in danger of running out of money. Crossing Deptford Creek proved particularly taxing because the river had to remain navigable, also two arches near Tooley Street collapsed severing access to the intended city terminus. So they opened what they had, which was a two mile section between Spa Road in Bermondsey and Deptford High Street, charging sixpence for a ticket. And because the very first train departed Deptford at 8am this makes Deptford London's oldest station, and now-non-existent Spa Road merely the second.
Deptford station spans the high street although initially this wasn't the case, bridge construction having been delayed by the late delivery of iron from a foundry in Dudley, hence the first terminus was on the west side of the street. Once complete a wooden screen was added on each side of the bridge lest passing steam trains frighten any horses down below. A ticket hall was added in 1845 along with a domed spiral staircase for access to the London-bound platforms. Then in 1904 a partial rebuild saw the platforms lengthened and widened, extending round what's the first curve on the lengthy run from London Bridge. But the biggest change was probably in 2012 when Deptford station went step-free.
A glass structure now shields a modern staircase and lift on the south side, this the cunning solution for adapting a historic listed building with minimal impact. The Greenwich-bound platform is now accessed through one of the lower arches rather than up a manky staircase from the high street, the locked doors to which are still the location of the station's BR double arrows. It's all become a bit piazza-y at street level, with businesses selling coffee, cocktails, craft beer and flowers in the arches where the early railway maintained its rolling stock. There are still no ticket gates, Southeastern relying on the natural honesty of Deptford residents to tap in and out.
But the finest heritage asset at Deptford, now unique in Britain, is the carriage ramp built to haul locomotives and rolling stock up to viaduct level. It's surprisingly long - a necessity to keep the gradient down - and with a potentially awkward 90 degree bend near the bottom. And it was gloriously restored as part of the most recent upgrade, the ramp so broad they were even able to add flower beds. The arches underneath, originally used for railway storage, now house a selection of boutiques and feta salad merchants, as befits a market-adjacent arcade. Look out for the blue plaque commemorating the revamp, and also the three information boards on platform 1 conveniently detailing the complex history of London's oldest station.
Kickstarting the idea that station names should reference the street they cross rather than the locality, here we are amid the backstreets of Bermondsey. Spa Road wasn't the intended terminus, remember, but the closest the L&GR could get to London Bridge at the time. Initially that meant a wooden staircase up to the viaduct and passengers waiting on the tracks, an obvious recipe for injury, indeed the first fatal accident occurred within a month when a man called Daniel Holmes was run over by a train. Spa Road was never well used after London Bridge opened in the December of that year (becoming London's third railway station), but continued to be rebuilt every time the viaduct was widened as yet another new railway fed in.
This is an extraordinary part of Southwark with the viaduct dominating the neighbourhood at ground level and a number of tall brickarches providing atmospheric access underneath. Spa Road is one of the streets threading through, but over the years staircase access has also been via narrow Marine Street and bendy Dockley Road instead. Every wall contains anonymous locked doorways leading to unseen voids, like some kind of Dungeons & Dragons experience, and I entirely lost track of which was supposed to be the original station entrance and which its 1845 successor. In 1867 Spa Road station was relocated 200m down the line, no longer on its nominal road, but never reopened after WW1 due to lack of previous use. Look out of the window on a passing train and you can still see the tracks bend around the remains of a crumbling overgrown platform.
Today multiple arches hereabouts are occupied by two dozen small food producers under the umbrella name Spa Terminus. They include granola makers, vinegar distillers, walnut foragers and spice importers, as well as providers of cured meats and small batch chutneys. Come on Fridays or Saturdays and you can eschew Borough Market by going straight to the producers. It says a lot that there was no replacement station nearby until the Jubilee line extension opened in 1999, despite a large local population packed into postwar flats. As it stands all that remains of Spa Road are the words 'Booking Office' above the warehouse of a biodynamic wine importer, because London's second railway station is alas long gone. [full history][old photos]
London's oldest stations 1836: Deptford, Spa Road, London Bridge 1837: Euston, Harrow & Wealdstone 1838: Greenwich; Paddington, Ealing Broadway, Hanwell, West Drayton; Nine Elms, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Surbiton 1839: New Cross Gate, Forest Hill, Sydenham, Penge West, Anerley, Norwood, West Croydon; Stratford, Ilford, Romford; Southall 1840: Bishopsgate, Lea Bridge, Tottenham Hale, Northumberland Road, Angel Road, Ponders End; Forest Gate; Minories, Shadwell, Limehouse, Poplar, West India Docks, Blackwall
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, lots of heritage, proper healthy, world-class views, water features, refreshment opportunities, copious wildlife, globally-renowned, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a circuit round an iconic Royal Park, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
You might think you know St James's Park because it is a bit of a tourist cliché. But there is a reason why so many international visitors flock here, over and above it being a shortcut between Big Ben and Buck House, and that's because it packs a lot to enjoy into a relatively small space. Also it has pelicans.
For my circuit I'm going to start at the northern corner (nearest Admiralty Arch) and walk clockwise, but you can mooch whichever way you prefer.
Well this is nice. Barely three minutes from the official centre of London and here we are in a historic greenspace with shady trees and an impressive lake. The park owes its existence to Henry VIII who bought a plot of marshland adjacent to his new palace at St James and walled it off for hunting. Elizabeth I added the avenue that's now The Mall, James I introduced a small menagerie and Cromwell first permitted entry to non-royals. The park's four timber refreshmentkiosks are late Elizabeth II, each with a sculptural canopy that swells out like a tree's crown and each offering ice creams, Tyrell's crisps, hot dogs and a likely lucrative range of squirty waffles.
Along the first path is the St James's Park weather station often mentioned on the weather forecast, where observations have been recorded continuously since 1903. It looks a tad close to nearby trees for the rain gauge to be entirely reliable, but the undeveloped nature of the local area means temperature trends ought to be long-term reliable. The flower borders up ahead are impeccably maintained thus still in the full flush of late summer, and also help to shield the park offices from general view. And by now you really ought to have met a local squirrel, oh wow how cute is the squirrel, see how it stands up and stares straight at you, have you got an acorn you could give it?
The central lake isn't original, it used to be an 850m long ornamental canal. This was introduced by Charles II who liked to go swimming in or skating on it, weather depending, and also spent hours feeding his collection of water birds. The first pelicans were gifted by the Russian ambassador in 1664. It was John Nash who replaced the canal with a curvaceous lake in the 1820s, now covering 20% of the park, and also turned the formal avenues into winding paths he thought should be opened to the general public. Cheers John! The two mid-lake fountains are more recent, the Tiffany Fountain beside Pelican Rock replacing a previous plume in 2011 and capable of firing eight metres upwards if the wind permits.
Duck Island Cottage is actually two pavilions linked by a tree-trunk colonnade across the water. It was built in 1840 for the Royal Ornithological Society and looks more like a village homestead with its rustic doors, lattice casements and ornamental barge-boards. Out front is a productive cottage garden with labels for Radish 'French Breakfast', Tomato 'Blush Tiger' and an impressive frame of dangling squashes. All that lets down the rural illusion is a ribbed concrete bridge providing vehicular access to the water treatment facilities and pumps concealed on the island, which is otherwise a sacrosanct avian nature reserve.
The park's walkable strip broadens considerably as we continue round the lake towards Birdcage Walk. There are a heck of a lot of wooden benches along the next stretch, each identical with no plaques or other distinguishing features, which must make it difficult for MI5 agents to identify the correct location to sit nonchalantly while awaiting a secret rendezvous. If instead you take the outer path towards Queen Anne's Gate you'll find a small marble statue of a boy, officially called the Boy Statue, atop a four-basined water fountain unveiled in 1863. One of the park's summer-only ice cream kiosks lies close by, where this year's price for a Calippo is £2.95 while a 99 costs £4.
The Blue Bridge across the centre of the lake has been here since 1957 when it replaced an iron suspension bridge erected 100 years earlier. It was designed by Eric Bedford, the Ministry of Works' chief architect who also devised the Post Office Tower, the 'blue' name coming from the colour of the paint on the railings. It's an elegant concrete span, low to the water, and provides the perfect sightline across the lake towards Buckingham Palace and the London Eye. It's also doomed, destined to be replaced by a translucent glass “Unity Bridge” designed by Sir Norman Foster as part of the upcoming Queen Elizabeth II Memorial, so expect several intermediate years of not being able to stand here to enjoy the view.
Stick to the lakeside path and you'll pass a heck of a lot of birdlife, St James's Park having long been populated by an impressive collection of waterfowl. An information board lists 21 different species from black swans to Bahama pintails, also hooded merganser and red-crested pochards. This is a great place to bring a toddler fascinated by geese and ducks, even if the chucking of bread is not allowed. Youngsters can also enjoy the rock-strewn children's playground with its sandpit and climbing frames, even an exclusive toilet block with doors labelled Girls and Boys. Tracking down the park's six pelicans is more of a lottery, but I was fortunate enough to find them on the shoreline rather than hiding away in the middle of the lake.
The lower path round the Buckingham Palace end of the park was added in 1923 following the construction of the Victoria Memorial Gardens above. The lake was shortened to squeeze the path in, which helps explain why there's an isolated fountain on the stone wall feeding what's now a small ornamental pool. More ducks, more flowers, another kiosk, more squirrels... the density of stuff to see is well above the relative sparsity of neighbouring Green Park. If you want some space to yourself walk along the low railings until you find a way round, then walk back along the grass on the other side. Alternatively try visiting on a day when the Changing of the Guard is scheduled (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 11) when the sound of passing brass will spirit away almost every tourist, cleansing the park as if led by the Pied Piper.
Now heading back east, look out for the permeable shrubberies and the Rose Walk added in honour of the Queen Mother when she hit the relatively young age of 80. The public toilets are close by, well used by tourists in organised parties who appear to spend ten minutes of their tour nipping in and then lingering outside. It's not yet too late in the year to hire a green and white deckchair, laid out round what used to be the bandstand by a patient attendant who'll charge you £4 for an hour or £14 for a full day. For a cheaper seat try the benches facing the lakeside overlooking the Swire Fountain, this the best spot for observing full-on waddling bird action, but always remember 'Do not feed or touch the pelicans'.
If the previous six refreshment opportunities didn't tempt you, maybe the timber-clad St James's Cafe will instead. It's Benugo so hardly cheap, indeed I almost choked when I saw the fish and chips were £21, ditto the chicken pesto gnocchi, but a hot chocolate still comes in under a fiver if you don't want spray cream and syrup. And hey presto we're back again in the corner where we started, near the plane tree Nelson Mandela planted in 1996. You could walk round again, this time sticking to the perimeter to see Horseguards Parade, Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace and The Mall. But sometimes it's better to have walked round the middle of the park instead, past all the great things you may have forgotten have always been here.
Let's answer that question via an unusual method - a collection of tube maps.
You'll have seen Central London Tube Maps on the tube, the DLR, the Overground and the Elizabeth line. They show a large chunk of the transport network to help you plan jour journey once you leave the line you're travelling on. But they're all different, this because the spaces they have to fill aboard the trains are very different sizes.
Comparing them would once have been very time-consuming and involved travelling on all kinds of trains. But those maps have now been bundled up as part of an FoI request so we can all see the full set.
The map above is the version displayed on the Jubilee and Northern lines - the same on each. That's unusual, indeed no other lines share identical maps. Most lines in fact need two different maps, this because the spaces for maps in the carriages have different proportions. Within the FoI files I counted 18 different maps across the TfL estate, which is an awful lot of different kinds of Central London.
This is a very broad Central London, as seen on the Victoria line.
It stretches west as far as Heathrow and east almost to Upminster, but from north to south only manages to include the Victoria line from King's Cross to Vauxhall.
And this is a rather squarer Central London, also seen on the Victoria line.
It stretches north and south far enough to show the entire line, but west no further than Shepherd's Bush and east only as far as the Isle of Dogs.
If you're on the Circle line, Waterloo & City line or DLR you'll be able to see the whole of your journey on the Central London Tube Map. If you're on the Central, District, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly or Elizabeth lines it might well fall off the edge.
I've looked to see where the southern edge is on all 18 maps. On half of them the Northern line stops at Kennington, still in zone 1, but on the other nine maps it goes further. The final station is Oval on the Central line map, Clapham North on the Piccadilly and Victoria maps , Clapham Common on the Bakerloo and DLR maps, and Tooting Bec on the other DLR map. Only on the Overground and Elizabeth line maps does the Northern line appear all the way down to Morden.
Heading east on the District line: As far as Bow Road on two of the maps, East Ham on two, Barking on three, Upney on one, Elm Park on four, Hornchurch on five and all the way to Upminster on just one. Heading north on the Piccadilly line: As far as King's Cross on seven of the maps, Finsbury Park on two, Manor House on two, Turnpike Lane on one, Wood Green on two, Bounds Green on one, Arnos Grove on one and all the way to Cockfosters on just two. Heading west on the Central line: As far as Shepherd's Bush on four of the maps, White City on one, East Acton on five, North Acton on two, Perivale on two and Greenford on four. None of the 18 maps get anywhere near West Ruislip.
It's all remarkably varied and intrinsically inconsistent, this because the maps are subtly different sizes and because each line demands a different focus.
But I can summarise the lot in a potentially useful way by seeing which stations appear on all 18 maps. Identify the overlap and you have the definitive Central London Tube Map.
» The whole of zone 1 appears, as you'd expect.
» The only line to appear in its entirety is the Waterloo & City.
» The Circle line nearly appears in full, but four stations beyond Latimer Road are missing.
» Geographically, the northernmost station on the map is Hackney Downs, the easternmost is Island Gardens, the southernmost is East Putney and the westernmost is Latimer Road.
» Two stations in zone 3 appear - East Putney and Cutty Sark (both in the zone 2/3 overlap)
Urban centres that don't appear include Brixton, Hammersmith, Camden and Stratford. Stratford is perhaps the most surprising omission, but that's because it's missing on the Bakerloo and Victoria lines which go nowhere near and whose maps are squarish.
It's not a perfect representation of central London because it goes too far out in some directions and not quite far enough in others, but it is arguably the most important part of London's rail network because it appears on all 18 Central London Tube Maps.
On Saturday the Science Museum relaunched its Space Gallery.
It's still on the ground floor but now right up the back near the cafe rather than second gallery in. Its old position is currently being done up to create a new 'Tomorrow' gallery, a closure which makes getting around the building temporarily much harder. They haven't moved all the formerexhibits to the new gallery, several have gone to storage in Wiltshire. But they have relocated the Apollo 10 command module away from Making The Modern World leaving a big space, which I guess is kind of appropriate.
Step through to the West Hall, an airy millennial addition to the museum stacked around an IMAX cinema.
In the previous gallery the exhibits were around the walls and above your head. In the new gallery they're all in the middle for ease of circulation, grouped into just three clusters and backlit with a blue glow. Up front are the two stars of the show, the Soyuz capsule that brought Tim Peake back to Earth and the aforementioned command module, one of only eight craft to have taken a crew round the Moon and back. It's always awe-inspiring to see, given where it's been, indeed further from Earth than any manned vehicle except Apollo 13.
The only other artefacts in this initial display are an Apollo fuel cell, a console simulator, a moon rover prototype and Helen Sharman's spacesuit, a very non-Hollywood affair which took the first Briton into space in 1991. And the only people other than Tim and Helen to be highlighted with a potted biography are the rover's designer and two women key to the mathematics and software design that ensured Apollo 11 reached the Moon. It's perhaps inspiring to focus on those who make space travel happen but also a pivot away from lauding those who undertake it.
The central display is Science on a Sphere, a dangling globe on which are projected the surfaces of the Sun, several planets and the odd moon. In the previous gallery it was somewhat sidelined but here forms a focal point complete with surrounding sofas so you can enjoy the full show in comfort. Jupiter is a bit fuzzy though, suggesting the visuals came from an earthbound telescope rather than a flyby. Alongside is a decent-sized moon rock brought back from Apollo 15, safely secured and well lit, plus a short bio of the astronaut who collected it. But the only nod to anything more distant is a single exoplanet in the projection sequence, indeed the gallery isn't so much Space as Solar System, and generally much more proximate than that.
The final display is essentially satellites and rockets, and no longer the full extent of the latter (because you can't hang anything heavy from the floor above). An angular British satellite from the early 1970s is joined by a prototype probe to Mercury, an American nanosatellite, a Welsh heatshield and what's essentially a plug for an Oxfordshire start-up. The Science Museum seems to be edging towards cutting-edge inventions these days and ousting the historical, which might well inspire young minds but won't please lovers of old stuff.
The far wall features a giant moonscape with a handful of nuggety panels, one of which answers the key question 'How much poo is there on the Moon?' And at one end is a truly disappointing display cabinet with a single exhibit, a teensy satellite docking plate, and if I'm being charitable it means they can add more gizmos later but as it stands what was the point? The gallery may lookstunning but it's a bit sparse, alas more space than Space.
Not all of it, just the half mile from Selfridges to Oxford Circus which isn't even 50% of the full road, but it is where the top shops are. It got very busy.
The plan wasn't just to empty the street of buses and taxis but to fill it with fun stuff to create a day out. You could buy burgers and churros, also line up for a free reading at the Poetry Takeaway, also listen to acts like Natalie Williams Soul Family with full BSL interpretation. The longest queues were for a beauty product wheel of fortune, a mass basketball hoopchuck and the chance to thwack a baseball. The Mayor doesn't usually plug soccer, only American sports he can entice to play over here.
The street was bedecked with flags which can stay up now the entire street's a Mayoral Development Area, also colourful vinyls underfoot whose application was more temporary but allowed journalists to get some really snazzy pictures of the event. There was also facepainting for the kids, live DJs for the youth and branded selfie frames for the egotistical. It wasn't an expensive transformation because a lot of local businesses got involved "to showcase Oxford Street's global fashion and retail identity", but it wouldn't have been cheap to stage either.
To make the point that traffic had been banished several interventions deliberately blocked the street. The most blatant was a 'living green wall' of trees at the Oxford Circus end concealing a Wishing Tree, while a display recounting Oxford Street's history filled multiple Y-shaped boards in the centre. Perhaps the most intrusive was a bar area near Bond Street station which funnelled passers-by onto narrow pavements, despite hardly anybody taking advantage of the canned spirits or £7 pints available within.
The event certainly brought out the crowds and seemed to be keeping them occupied too. But with all the throngs and obstructions it was actually much harder to walk down Oxford Street than usual, so perhaps an own goal key-messagewise. The real test will come when they kick out the buses and taxis for good, and then we'll discover if the existing shops are as much of a draw as one-off freebies and pop-up entertainment.
If you've ever walked through Orpington's ornamental Priory Gardens and seen the medieval-looking building in the corner called The Priory, you might have assumed it was once a priory. If you've ever been shown round the building by members of the Orpington and District Archaeological Society you'll know this was not the case, indeed had it drummed into you in a reassuringly authoritative way. It was at best a rectory and most of the time not really even that, more a base for ecclesiastical overlords from Canterbury to stay when surveying their properties in Surrey and west Kent. A few 13th century features survive, also several later medieval expansions, not to mention the unsympatheticpublic library bolted onto the side in 1959. 'Complex' doesn't even begin to cut it.
It was easier to visit The Priory when it was home to Bromley Museum, but this was closed in 2015 to save money and a weedier unstaffedcollection opened in Bromley Central Library instead. Orpington's shell has since been leased to an arts collective who hire out historic rooms as studios, so for example the upper storey is now a tour-resistant yoga stronghold and the Garden Room hosts an upright piano for practice and recordings. That meant there wasn't a lot to see on Saturday, the one day a year the building's open to a wider public, although there was a vastly undervisited craft sales opportunity inside Seely & Paget's controversial library. Local people on the tour tutted at the extension's very existence.
You see more from outside, that is so long as nobody's parked a silver coffee caravan outside to cater for yoga patrons. The oldest walls are impressively flinty and timbered, and the ODAS guide kindly dished out laminated building plans to all of us to help identify which flanks were built when. I thus know where the oldest Reigate Stone blocks lingers, and also where they're pretty sure an underground passageway once linked the main house to the Tudor kitchens. A third guide led us round the Arts and Craftsgardens added when the house's final owners wanted a better view from their bedroom window than a sloping croquet lawn. Volunteers now try to keep the beds up to scratch, but local people on the tour reminisced about how much nicer it all was when the council had actual money to spend.
ODAS are a fine and intellectual organisation, also so old school that if you want one of their publications by mail you have to send a cheque to an address in Sidcup. They oversee a large domain including Fordcroft Roman Bathhouse and the moated site at Scadbury - open the previous weekend - and certainly had all the answers at The Priory. You don't have to go far from central London for heritage to have a very different feel, almost that of a provincial town, and Orpington & District is all the better for it.
Time was when boroughs had a shining civic presence exemplifying the ethos of their main settlement. The Municipal Borough of Bromley thus built a finetown hall soon after their creation in 1903, then added an Art Deco extension in 1939 as the place expanded. Times are harsher now, indeed the council moved out to Bromley Palace in 1982 and something cheaper at Churchill Court last year. Meanwhile the Old Town Hall has inevitably ended up in the ownership of a shared workplace company who've opened a complex of contemporary serviced offices and added a two-storey boutique hotel on top. The contrast between private wealth and council penny-pinching is severe.
Open House visitors were permitted to wander round the buildings on an intuitive route, generally unstaffed, with occasional information boards getting in the way of all the best photos. The Art Deco opening half was the most impressive, especially the symmetricalcolumned staircase leading to the council chamber (which is now available for board meetings and weddings). Lots of the decisions those Orpingtonians hated were made right here, I thought as I perused the selection of Teapigs herbals.
The original Edwardian council chamber, by contrast, has been converted into a Club Lounge where laptopping deskjockeys can recline on leather sofas while pretending they work for someone posher. It all looks seriously smooth, but it turns out not all the sage-green, biscuit and ombré panelling is original. Connecting corridors have been panelled off into hireable spaces, interrupted at intervals by tiny pods providing privacy for Zoom meetings. We were not permitted into the basement where the council's former Cold War bunker has been transformed into offices, storage, showers and bike racks, nor the overpriced courthouse restaurant because that's already folded. Bromley is not the City, but here it's pretending to be.
After WW2 a substantial bomb-damaged stripe of Pimlico was transformed by Westminster council into a highly original estate, swapping 200 houses for 1000 slotted flats. It was built in three stages, initially in redbrick and concrete and later with additional aluminium panels, with a cunning emphasis on 3D geometrical repetition. In the earlier blocks all the flats are identical but individually tucked back or thrust forward creating a complex stepped frontage, and also necessitating some particularly jagged internal corridors. Densely packed around some impressively spacious areas of greenery, Lillington Gardens looks nothing like a typical 1960s council estate, and that'll be why two-thirds of it is Grade II* listed.
We were fortunate to get the perfect tour guide - an architect who's been a resident on the estate for over 20 years so understood the place inside out and loved it too. She pointed out the difference between the studio units and the three-bedders, explained how the flats cunningly tessellated and mused on the difficulty of persuading modern jobsworths not to replace heritage assets to tick safety boxes. We spotted the join between neighbouring stages, noted the ubiquitous tubular railings and were taken up to the sports pitch on the roof of the electricity substation. And by the end we were probably all thinking it might be great to live here but there'd be constant challenges to maintain everything at its best.
At the heart of the estate, both surrounded and echoed by it, is the Victorian Gothic church of St James the Less. It has a campanile tower that pokes above the flats from key locations and a complex polychromatic interior that demonstrates the visual power of extraordinary brickwork. It'd be even more dazzling had it all been cleaned properly but that's expensive so they're fundraising for a good scrubdown. And all this is tucked away less than 10 minutes from Victoria station, if only you knew it was there, which is one reason why Open House is always such a brilliant eye-opening opportunity every year.
This year's Open House album on Flickr is now up to its final complement of 90 photos from 24 different locations across 14 boroughs, so I encourage you to have one final look to see what you missed, or perhaps also saw.
Yesterday's Open House tally was five.
Here's a quick summary.
• The busy one with 50 on the tour, so you couldn't hang around trying to get the ideal photo because ten other people were trying that too.
• The one where the usual Sunday morning clientele hadn't left yet so I ducked out after 30 seconds.
• The one where large tour groups kept trying to pass each other on entirely inappropriate stairs.
• The one that wasn't anywhere near as old as it looked.
• The one with the grinniest smiliest tour guide ever.
• The one with a free Golden Jubilee badge.
• The two with lovely volunteers doing important things.
The fiefdom of Dulwich College covers an extraordinarily large portion of SE21, the school's turrety silhouette rising in the distance behind acres of sport. But for Open House they unlocked the gates and welcomed allcomers on a lengthy tour, primarily to show off three buildings... which likely wasn't quite what visitors had been expecting.
The spectacular main building was built in the 1860s to replace Edward Alleyn's much older college in Dulwich Village. It was designed by Charles Barry Junior whose father was responsible for the Houses of Parliament, hence the familiar sequence of tower, lantern and clock tower at roof level. There's a lot of terracotta and a lot of fussy detail, all utterly resplendent on a bright sunny morning. Inside is just as imposing with a grand stone staircase climbing to the Great Hall on the first floor, its roof beams carved with wyverns and generations of Oxbridge admissions commemorated in gold leaf on the walls. Pupils get to soak up its Gothic ambience during assemblies, whereas they probably haven't seen Edward Alleyn's original fireplace in the staff library, nor the two murals above which are allegedly from Queen Elizabeth I's royal barge. This way please...
A large fee-paying school can always use a third science block, especially if the original was destroyed by a direct hit from a V1 in 1944. The end result is The Laboratory, designed ten years ago by the late Nicholas Grimshaw, a stack of labs faced in glass and terracotta to reflect and echo Barry's original alongside. What's extraordinary is the main circulation space which has a sailing boat in the middle of it, this the actual James Caird from Ernest Shackleton's heroic polarrescue mission to Elephant Island in 1916. Against all the odds everyone survived, the boat eventually ending up at Shackleton's alma mater via yet another convoluted story... which the college tells on free tours every Friday, should you fancy a look.
At this point in the tour the guide switched from a lilac-jacketed ex-schoolmaster to a old boy who's now an architect. His practice had been given the job of rebuilding the Lower School Library so we all trooped down there, past various teaching blocks that might have graced a more ordinary comprehensive. He enthused about the Passivhaus rating and thermally enhanced facades, then led us up the spiral staircase to see the IT labs, and several of those present who'd been anticipating a nosey historical jolly probably questioned how they'd ended up looking at glulam timbers in a year-old corridor. But how fascinating to have seen behind the scenes at a top public school, especially when it might be where the next Prime Minister learned his debating skills.
Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian spiritual scientist who founded a quasi-Christian movement calld Anthroposophy in the early years of the 20th century. Architecturally speaking he was very much against the right angle, hence his Goetheanum HQ in Switzerland was all curves and swooshes with not a square or rectangle in sight. He died in 1925, the same year his followers started work on a similarly-themed homebase just north of Baker Street, now recognised as London's only truly Expressionist building. You get some idea of the rationale from outside - the porthole glass and buxom wooden doorway - but only get the full force from within, most notably the adorably sinuous stairwell.
This climbs four storeys from the foyer to the eurythmy worshop on the top floor, its twisted cream walls drawing you in like entering some kind of organic fairy turret. On the first bend is a triangularish water feature incorporating glassware on damp pebbles, and further up are dangly globe lights to illuminate every asymmetric turn. Handrails weren't especially a feature back then but there is a rickety lift for the unsteady, complete with slamming trellis gates. I was a tad disappointed to discover that the lowest flight was a 1990s extension, but the institute's architects have made several sympathetic additions over the years and successfully maintained the shapely aesthetic at all times.
The most recent extra is a ground floor cafe alongside the bookshop, which I wasn't surprised to hear is the only bookshop in London with the full range of Steiner's 60-odd books. In 2022 management also repurposed their 200-seater hall to become the Marylebone Theatre, already an acclaimed venue with a slew of worthy modern productions. But if you just want to see the stairwell, nothing's stopping you nipping in for a coffee and a bookshop mooch, and perhaps asking nicely if someone'll let you climb past the first voluptuous bend.
There's been a tin tabernacle beside Bowes Park station since the 1890s but not this one. The building passed from a church hall to a Temperance Society then in 1977 to the North London Samaritans, who didn't really have the money to maintain it. In 2011 they planned a replacement building funded by three new flats but locals wouldn't have it so instead they pivoted to rebuilding the original corrugated structure in modern materials and using it as offices and a community hall. A lottery grant helped fund the transformation, which unlike the tempestuous bureaucratic overture was all completed in eight months flat. The end result is a micro-triumph and has been transforming lives since 2018.
The interior is a gabled space with plain walls and arched windows, and is regularly booked out for yoga, pilates and children's parties. The bookings manager reckoned there isn't a youngster locally who hasn't come to a celebratory do at Shaftesbury Hall. Out the back, behind the kitchen and the loos, is a private office for Samaritans staff with three booths for the important work of answering calls, which these days could come from anywhere across the country not just the North London region. The bookings manager has a separate office outside, ensuring confidentiality, in the corner of a fast-maturing garden. For obtuse reasons the nameplate of a Pendolino named Chad Varah is on the wall - he the founder of the Samaritans and the train still operational but no longer under the Virgin brand.
When Alexandra Palace opened in 1873 so did a convenient station alongside, just round the back, as the terminus of a short spur curling off from Highgate through Muswell Hill. The line was only intermittently popular despite serving residential heights, and closed an incredible five times before closing for good in 1954. But the yellowbrickstation building at Ally Pally survived, also the seriously broad staircase that would once have funnelled visitors up towards what are now firmly locked gates on the North Terrace. The building briefly became a British Rail research laboratory before falling into disrepair, then in the mid-1980s was offered to a group of local volunteers called Community Use For the Old Station (or CUFOS for short) who hire it out as a much needed local space.
Children's parties are popular, as evidenced by the pink flamingo and Spiderman helium balloons bobbing at the ceiling, also therapeutic art, phonics classes and kickboxing. London Metropolitan Brass like to rehearse in the L-shaped ticket hall because it's far enough away from local housing that they can play at loud volume before any complaints come in, whereas the Men's Circle tend to hide away in the former waiting room alongside. It's no hi-tech hub but plainly well used and much loved, and all courtesy of the lovely volunteers who keep the whole place ticking over. So much good work is done in small venues around the capital and one of the joys of Open House is the ability to admire, say thankyou and wonder if perhaps you ought to be volunteering more yourself.
This year's Open House album on Flickr is now up to 74 photos.
Anyone else go anywhere interesting for Open House over the weekend?
