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Vision: how might life be by the end of the decade?
diamond geezer
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Vision: how might life be by the end of the decade?
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Vision: how might life be by the end of the decade?Sunday, August 31, 2003
And so ends diamond geezer's local history month. I wasn't sure when I started if I'd be able to find thirty-plus places in Bow to write about, or even whether I'd still have any readers left by the time the month was over. I'm relieved to see I needn't have worried on either count. A few people even tried doing the same for the place where they live. I've found it quite fascinating trying to research everything, and to visit parts of my local neighbourhood I didn't even realise existed a month ago. Maybe the local vicar would be interested in publishing it all as one of those spiral-bound booklets they leave at the back of their church for visitors to steal. Hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed putting it together... but if not, don't worry, it's back to normal on here next month. Whatever normal is.
Top E3 weblinks
• Interactive historical map of Bow Road
• History - Bromley-by-Bow, Tower Hamlets, East End
• Photographs - old, and new
• Maps - 1827, 1859, 1862, 1885, poverty in 1899, 2003
• Famous places within 5, 10 and 15 minutes walk of my house
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The best of August within 15 minutes walk of my house
(My monthly arts review has a very local flavour this month, as you might expect)
Album of the month: Boy In Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal. It's nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, it's a hugely acclaimed album, and it's all written by an 18-year-old from just down the road on a Bow housing estate. Dizzee - real name Dylan Mills - was regularly excluded from lessons at nearby Langdon Park school, but good old Mr Smith the music teacher took him under his wing and helped him to develop his talents. And what talents. This debut album defies pigeonholing, not quite hip-hop, not quite dance, not quite garage. I guess it's English rap, more East End than East Side, with DR's frenzied vocals peppering an inspired range of claustrophobic beats. Favourite track is Fix Up Look Sharp, currently number 17 in the charts, but I enjoyed the whole album far more than I expected. Check out some more reviews here, or just go buy a slice of urban E3 for yourself.
Book of the month: Truecrime by Jake Arnott. This is the third book in Arnott's East End crime trilogy, carefully blending realistic fictional characters with real life post-war criminals. This is GeezerLit. Truecrime opens at Ronnie Kray's funeral, backtracks through the orbital rave underworld and climaxes with the shooting of a film that sounds suspiciously like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. There's an uncomfortable encounter in Mile End Park on page 86, a flat in the Roman Road on page 247 - in fact the book probably namechecks half the places I've featured in the last month. It's a darned good story too. Highly recommended.
Another book of the month: Full Dark House by Christopher Fowler. The latest dark thriller from a well-established London author, and one of very few writers whose every novel I rush out and buy on publication. Mr Fowler likes to base most of his books within 15 minutes walk of Mornington Crescent, but his two main characters here are an octogenarian detective duo with the distinctly Bow-inspired names of Bryant and May. This story looks back to the Blitz and an investigation into a series of mysterious theatreland deaths. Good, but not his best book (only because Spanky back in 1994 was sooooo excellent).
Not the book of the month: Dead Air by Iain Banks. This novel opens in a red-brick loft apartment in a unnamed converted eight-storey Victorian factory "in the not-yet fashionable bit of London's East End north of Canary Wharf". Well, if that isn't Bow Quarter (or maybe Spratt's dog biscuit factory) then I'll be mighty surprised. Sadly the book is all froth and no plot, all conversation and no action, and I gave up on it part way through. What this is doing high up the bestseller list is completely beyond me. Prime candidate for disposal I think.
Single of the month: Four Minute Warning by Mark Owen. The end of the world never sounded so good. The former Take That pin-up has penned a supremely catchy ode to Armageddon, with a chorus whose half-life deep inside your brain must be longer than that of uranium. Could have been written, and a hit, at any time during the last twenty years. I didn't mean to love this track, I just do. Is this the end, then?
TV programmes of the month (Channel 4): That'll Teach 'Em (Tuesday); Masters and Servants (Thursday); My New Best Friend (Friday) ... except, ah, sorry, they're all on E4, not in E3.
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Numbers 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15
11) Tredegar Square - Georgian architectural jewel
12) House - Rachel Whiteread's Turner Prize-winning concrete cast
13) The Widow's Son - the pub with the buns
14) Tower Hamlets Cemetery - the dead centre of Bow
15) Spratt's - once the largest dog biscuit factory in the world
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Saturday, August 30, 2003
Number 10 - Mile End Park
It may look yellow from below, but that bridge in the photograph is the famous Green Bridge at Mile End. Underneath - the A11, one of London's busiest trunk roads. Over the top - a millennium-funded tree-topped bridge joining the two halves of Mile End Park. And very close by, slightly to the south, probably the most famous of all the places within 15 minutes of my house...
One particular Friday in June 1381, Mile End was swarming with revolting peasants. They'd come from the villages of Essex and Kent, roughly sixty thousand of them, to protest against the new poll tax and the general unfairness of feudal life. This was people power in action on a massive scale, and London's first ever flash mob. In an attempt to defuse this potentially explosive situation, the teenage king Richard II rode out from the Tower of London to meet the peasants here at Mile End Green. "Oi you lot!" he shouted, "I'm your king." Or some other historic words to that effect. Richard was canny enough to listen and then agree to all their demands, verbally at least. Some of the men were appeased and headed for home, but many could not be bought so easily.
The next day the remaining peasants met the King again, this time at Smithfield just outside the city of London. Their spokesman was Kentish bloke Wat Tyler who presented (and upped) the list of demands. When Wat didn't get his way an argument broke out, quickly escalating to a scuffle in which Tyler was fatally wounded. The crowd rose up and threatened the King, but young Richard bravely raised his hand and agreed to become their leader instead. Clever lad. The mob was shepherded out of town, the Peasants Revolt was over, and Mile End Green went back to being just common.
Violence returned six centuries later when Mile End was hit by London's first ever flying bomb. It was just one week after D-Day when the first V1 rocket appeared in the dawn sky over East London. Local people heard the low drone suddenly splutter to a halt, followed by an eerie silence. This being the very first doodlebug, nobody was prepared for two thousand pounds of explosives to suddenly fall from the sky, killing three people and destroying a railway bridge. So began London's doodlebug summer, with more than 2000 flying bombs launched from occupied France creating sudden havoc and destruction, especially across the south and east of the city.
After the war, East London was pock-marked by desolate bombsites. Government planners saw their chance to clear the remaining slums and rebuild. The Abercrombie plan proposed a massive increase in urban parkland, including a 90 acre strip of land alongside a mile of the Regents Canal. Houses were knocked down and industry removed to make way for the new Mile End Park. Initial enthusiasm floundered over the decades, the park suffering both from lack of facilities and lack of visitors. It took an imaginative £12 million lottery bid to bring the park back to life, the centrepiece of which is the unique Green Bridge, linking the park together at last. Mile End now boasts an open space fit for the 21st century, with themed areas for art, sport, play and ecology, and it's beautifully done. Now an oasis of calm, you'd never believe a king once nearly lost his life here at the hands of an angry mob.
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Friday, August 29, 2003
Number 9 - the Krays' manor
1933: Identical twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray are born ten minutes apart.
1939: The family move from Shoreditch to 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green.
1951: Both twins appear in a middleweight boxing match at the Albert Hall.
1952: The twins desert their National Service on day 1 after decking the NCO.
1953: They buy the Regal, a run-down snooker club in Bethnal Green. The empire begins.
1956: The Kray's manor stretches from Bethnal Green to Bow and from Stepney to Hackney.
1957: When Ronnie is sent to prison, Reggie opens the 'Double R Club' on Bow Road.
1960: When Reggie is sent to prison. Ronnie takes control of a large Knightsbridge casino.
1964: The Daily Mirror retracts claims that Ronnie has been having sex with a Tory peer.
1965: Reggie marries Frances Shea, who two years later takes an overdose and dies.
1966: Ronnie walks into the Blind Beggar pub and shoots George Cornell dead.
1968: Reggie stabs Jack 'The Hat' McVitie to death in a house in Stoke Newington.
1969: Both twins are found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
1995: Ronnie dies and his funeral cortege brings East London to a halt.
2000: Reggie dies and is buried alongside his brother in Chingford cemetery.
For a few years in the late Fifties a club in Bow was at the centre of the Kray brothers' legitimate business empire. Reggie snapped up a cheap derelict shop here while his brother was in prison, determined to open "the finest drinking club the East End’s ever known." Ronnie was not forgotten - the place was named the 'Double R' club. A gym was built on the first floor and Henry Cooper was invited to officially open the premises. It wasn't long before the club was attracting showbiz celebrities seeking an authentic East End atmosphere. Reggie's love affair with the rich and famous began here. He also opened a gambling club just down the road in Wellington Way, behind Bow Police Garage, and the money came rolling in. The Krays were in control.
I think that's the Double R Club in the photograph, the white building on the corner of Mile End Road and Burdett Road. It's proved impossible to do any 100% conclusive research on the club's exact location though, so if you should know any better please let me know.
The club is now split into two halves, with the front and first floor currently occupied by the garagetastic Purple E3 nightclub (previously Benjy's). The entire outside of the building is lit up every night in a disturbingly bright shade of aubergine. Meanwhile at the back can be found the Backstreet leather bar, catering to a rather different clientele. Reggie would no doubt have enjoyed the bling-bling glamour of the upstairs club, while Ronnie would have preferred it round the rear. Allegedly. You have to be so careful round here. Those Kray Brothers are still held in high esteem in this manor. Dead, but by no means forgotten.
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Beyond be-leaf
Since when did autumn start in August? It seems like only a fortnight ago it was high summer - hot sweaty summer - but now all of a sudden it's autumn. How on earth did that happen? It's become almost traditional recently for autumn to be late, not early. Blame global warming or whatever, but trees have been keeping their leaves several days longer, migrating birds hanging around weeks later and lawns still needing cutting in November. Not in 2003. This year looks like being an exception.
The signs have been there for a while. Argos stand accused of switching to their autumn catalogue a number of weeks ago ("You want a sun lounger? Sorry madam, but we can do you an 8ft Inflatable Light-up Snowman instead"). Then last week Tesco sent me a copy of their latest promotional magazine. This glossy publication namechecked 'autumn' eight times in the first four pages, encouraging me to cook with berries, curl up with a mug of hot chocolate, stock up on brown cardigans and generally keep 'warm and cosy'. Given that I was overheating in a t-shirt and shorts on the day it arrived, that went straight into the bin. And now this week I've been sitting at work watching the leaves on the plane trees in Green Park start to change colour. In August? It won't be long before we have to rename the place 'Yellow Park' instead. Maybe it's just the first signs of drought, but it's all very unnatural, I tell you.
Keeping an eye on all these changes is a branch of science called phenology, the study of the dates of annually-recurring natural phenomena. In other words a nationwide band of amateurs who watch the landscape for signs of seasonal change - the first cuckoo, the first frogspawn, the first conker, that sort of thing. Their overall results are anything but amateur, and so it's possible to plot the changing changing seasons across the country. For example, back in 1999 your average UK oak tree was completely brown by October 30th, whereas in 2001 the corresponding date was November 11th instead. 2001 had a particularly late autumn, with horse chestnut leaves not starting to change colour until September 21st and beech leaves not starting to fall until November 4th. See the fascinating full seven-tree four-year database here. Bet all those dates are earlier this year. You could sign up and become a phenologist yourself to help find out. Or just look out of the window and watch the early fall.
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Number 8 - Victoria Park
Victoria Park is the green lung of East London, nearly 300 acres of pleasure sandwiched between Bow, Hackney and Bethnal Green. Laid out in the 1840s and named after the new queen, the park is split into two halves. To the west the ornamental gardens complete with boating lake, all encircled by a lamplit carriage drive. Rather gorgeous. To the east the larger half with bandstand, memorial fountain (pictured) and tons of space to run around in. You can find an excellent interactive map of Victoria Park (then and now) here.
The park was conceived as a healthy open space for the unhealthy residents of Victorian East London. Not that the poor actually needed somewhere to drive a horse-drawn carriage, neither did the rich who owned carriages want to live anywhere near the slums of the East End either. It took 150 years for the middle classes to move in beside the park, attracted by the canalside location and the recent gentrification of glamorous South Hackney. Better late than never. Recent murders don't appear to have put people off, so expect Vicky Park to remain a much-loved destination for many generations of East Enders (and EastEnders) to come.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
The Martian Chronicles
You've never been closer to the planet Mars. Nobody has. Not for more than fifty thousand years, not since the only people on Earth were Neanderthal. The red and blue planets line up with the Sun this morning at 10:51am BST, and it's the closest they've been to one other for exactly 59,619 years. Since 12th September 57,617 BC in fact. That may sound like an unbelievably accurate figure, but it's typical of an exact science like astronomy where computers can warn us to watch out for a doomsday asteroid on Saturday 16th March 2880 and probably predict Jesus's birthday as an encore.
Today Mars is only 34,646,418 miles away from the Earth. Or, to put it another way, a mere 186 light seconds distant. The two planets actually pass fairly close quite often. Both race round the Sun on separate orbits, with the inner Earth catching up with Mars roughly every 26 months. This time, however, the celestial overtaking manoeuvre happens when Mars is almost at its very closest to the Sun (that's tomorrow), so the two planets are especially close together. It's called perihelial opposition. We're also only a few weeks past the Earth's furthest point from the Sun, and this and other wobbles over time in the two orbits make today's approach record-breakingly close. It's all explained here and here if you need the finer details, and here's a map showing the planets in their orbits.
A few facts about Mars. It's the seventh largest planet in the solar system (it's quite small), it's the fourth in line from the Sun, the Romans named it after the god of war, it weighs one tenth as much as the Earth but has roughly the same area of dry land, it has only two known moons, it has a highly elliptical orbit (another reason for today's close approach), it spins on its axis once every 24 hours 37 minutes (about the same as us), it's not full of little green men, it's home to the largest mountain in the solar system, and Gustav Holst wrote a stirring piece of music about it. The first probe to reach Mars flew past in 1964, the Viking lander touched down here in 1976, the ill-fated Mars Explorer of 1992 disappeared without trace wasting $980 million, and British probe Beagle 2 is on its way at the moment, due to arrive on Christmas Day.
Mars should now be visible in the southern sky around midnight, glowing red and brighter than any star. That's so long as there aren't any clouds even nearer to Mars than you are. At magnitude -2.9 this is your best chance to see the red planet for many years. But don't worry if you miss it because Mars will be even closer on Monday 29th August 2287, which is still well before that asteroid hits.
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Number 7 - the old Big Breakfast house
(except I've already written about the old lockkeeper's cottages, here. Now being renovated as a family home, you remember...)
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Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Number 6 - Roman RoadIt'll come as no surprise to you to hear that Roman Road used to be a Roman road. It was the main road from London to Colchester, until Bow Bridge opened in the 1300s and diverted the main road half a mile to the south.
Roman Road is now a prime shopping street, or so I was told by some of my more well-to-do female colleagues when I used to work in Suffolk. On moving to London I was most disappointed to discover instead that the market was merely home to cheap dishcloths, dodgy batteries and pirated videos, much like many other local markets in the area (but still not as awful as Walthamstow). I guess, not being female, I wasn't attracted by Roman Road's bijou collection of swish boutiques selling top fashion castoffs at knockdown prices.
Roman Road boasts a very out-of-place-looking Wetherspoons pub, and also some traditional East End pie and mash shops (though for fresh-baked quality you can't beat Goddard's in Greenwich). And the local library here was recently transformed into an award-winning Idea Store, a primary-coloured palace of lifelong learning. It's an impressive addition to the community, and visitors have trebled in the year that the new library has been open, but alas I suspect that figure has been boosted by the hordes of seven year-olds to be found rampaging round the bookshelves as if the place were an adventure playground.
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e) More than one of these statements is true.
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f) None of these statements are true.
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The 7am puzzle: You are invited to leave a comment next to any true statement(s)...
a) All of these statements are true.
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d) Exactly two of these statements are true.
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c) Less than three of these statements are true.
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b) Exactly four of these statements are true.
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Monday, August 25, 2003
118, got your number
Yesterday the old Directory Enquiries number was finally switched off. RIP 192, hello 118. BT's monopoly is over and there are a whole load of new competitors, all hoping we'll ring them whenever we're stuck for a telephone number... 118 000, 118 099, 118 111, 118 118, 118 119, 118 180, 118 247, 118 404, 118 499, 118 500, 118 511, 118 707, 118 811, 118 866, 118 877, 118 888.
Twice as many digits to remember as before, which is why we've been bombarded by expensive advertising campaigns trying hard to punch each number deep into our subconscious memory. What the adverts aren't so hot at telling us however is how much each service actually costs. There's a bewildering range of connection charges, costs per minute and minimum charges, and I doubt that most people using the new services will have any idea just how much they're being stung for. There's a very useful summary of all the services and charges here. Or why not just check out the diamond geezer consumer guide below?
Cheapest for a 30 second call: 118 247 (Yellow Pages) and 11 88 88 (both 20p)
...and the most expensive: 118 000 (Orange), 118 118 (The Number) (both 49p)
Cheapest for a one minute call: 11 88 88 (20p)
...and the most expensive: 118 118 (The Number) (58p)
Cheapest for a two minute call 118 811 (One) (30p)
...and the most expensive: 118 119, 118 180, 118 499 (all £1.75)
The one number to remember: 11 88 88 (20p per minute), the one with the cartoon superhero digits advert. Best value on all calls up to 1½ minutes.
The one number to avoid: 118 118 (49p + 9p per minute), the one with the 70s hairstyled runners. Probably the most successful ad campaign, but worst value on all calls up to 1 minute 9 seconds.
The most devious con-trick: BT is running two different numbers. It's heavily promoting the expensive 118 500 (30p + 25p per minute) and keeping distinctly quiet about the much cheaper flat-rate 118 707 (35p).
The cheapest alternatives: BT again, this time online where you're allowed ten free directory searches a day on their website. Or, of course, why not use one of those paper-based phone directories you have lying around at home (free).
The extra hidden charge: If you allow the operator to put you straight through to your desired number, it'll cost you more. BT's 118 500 charges 30p a minute for the duration of your new call, and 118 247 (Yellow Pages) as much as 40p a minute. Cheapest this time is 118 118 which charges 'only' 9p a minute.
The biggest rip-off: All of the charges above are for landlines only. If you want to use Directory Enquiries from your mobile (and, to be honest, that's when you're most likely to need to use it) then you may need to remortgage your house. All of the mobile companies have upped the price of calling anything 118 from their networks and are keeping very quiet about how nightmarishly expensive it is. Here's the geezer guide:
O2: The cheapest is 118 811 (One) (25p per minute), but most other services cost 65p per minute.
Vodafone: The cheapest is 118 500 (BT) (40p per minute), but for short calls avoid 118 118 (70p + 20p per minute).
Virgin: The cheapest is 11 88 88 (40p per minute), but both 118 500 and 118 118 will bleed you dry at 75p a minute instead.
T-mobile: No service costs less than 65p a minute (40p per minute), with 118 118 at 75p a minute and 118 000 (Orange) £1 a minute.
Orange: The cheapest is 118 000 (Orange) (surprise surprise) (59p + 30p per minute). Every other service costs at least 60p a minute for monthly contract customers, or £1 a minute if you're on pay-as-you-go.
Is it really worth us all suffering this confusing deregulated rip-off merely so that BT's 192 monopoly can be broken? I think we should all complain to Oftel. Why not ring them now on... erm...
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Number 5 - the Block
This innocent looking building with the blacked-out windows used to be home to The Block, one of London's dodgiest clubs. Adventurous gentlemen would dress up in their finest fetishwear and pop down to Bromley-by-Bow to enjoy an evening of poorly-lit hardcore interactive entertainment. So I'm told. At the end of the night, after they'd had their fill of the place, many of the booted revellers would then nip over the road to the 24-hour Tesco supermarket and frighten the locals.
Last year, acting on a tip-off, the police decided to check out exactly what went on within The Block's darkened rooms (well, what did they expect, it was in all the adverts). No doubt the punters were thrilled by the arrival of a gang of close-cropped men in tight fitting black uniforms wielding handcuffs, but this particular visit was no reason to get excited. The police moved rapidly to close the club down, hell for leather, soon rubber-stamped. The management attempted to limp on with an 'oh no, nobody has sex here honest' policy but the clientele just stopped coming. Within a month the Block was closed for good.
Or so it seemed until last week. All of a sudden there's a flurry of activity here because the decorators are in. Not that they know why the place is being done up (I asked) but it appears that the cellar has a new buyer. I wonder what they're intending to reopen the place as. And I wonder if they'll remember to fix that dodgy lightbulb in the urinals.
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Sunday, August 24, 2003
Salford Quays
That'd be The Lowry1 in the photo, beside the Manchester Ship Canal2, taken from the viewing platform atop the Imperial War Museum3, just round the corner from Old Trafford4.
0) Salford Quays: A thriving Docklands-style redevelopment (i.e. a lot of lottery money, a few designer retail outlets and ever-growing numbers of overpriced apartments).
1) The Lowry: An award-winning new building containing two theatres and some art galleries, one of which is devoted to matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs.
2) Manchester Ship Canal: Historic waterway built in 1894 to link the thriving industrial city of Manchester to the Mersey, thereby avoiding exorbitant harbour taxes in Liverpool.
3) Imperial War Museum: A startling aluminium-clad structure, cleverly telling the story of global 20th century warfare. Once an hour there's a spectacular video show in which images are projected onto the walls and floor of the main gallery. Very well done, recommended, and free.
4) Old Trafford: Home to little known football team currently languishing behind Arsenal in the Premiership.
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Number 4 - the original Big Brother house
(except I've already written about all that's left of the place, here. Now just an empty field, you remember...)
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Saturday, August 23, 2003
1) G-Mex
2) Urbis
3) the Royal Exchange
4) the Town Hall
5) some canals
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Number 3 - Three Mills
There are, of course, two mills at Three Mills. There used to be three in medieval times, but go back to the Domesday Book and there were as many as eight. You'll remember that Bow used to be the bakery of London, so it was here on the tidal part of the River Lea that the most important mills were built to grind the flour for the capital's bread. The mills have also been used for distilling gin and grinding gunpowder. Here's an clever interactive map showing how the area around Three Mills has built up since Norman times.
The two mills you can see in the photo (the House Mill on the left and the Clock Mill on the right) date from 1776 and 1817 respectively. The House Mill is the largest tidal mill in the country, stretching 45 feet across four internal mill races and two waterways. Grain arrived by barge or cart and was then lifted by the sack hoist to be stored on the uppermost of the five floors. At high tide a sluice was closed and the water then left to flow back at a controlled rate to operate the mill wheels. Here's a flash illustration of how it all worked, and here's a much better history of the site.
The mills closed over fifty years ago but have recently been restored as a working museum, open to the public on Sunday afternoons in the summer. Here's a slideshow, here's a map, and here's a photo-heavy page showing what you can see on the tour.
On an island in the river here can be found one of London's largest media production facilities - Three Mills Studios - a 20 acre site with 16 film stages. The most famous film produced here was East End classic Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. As for famous TV there's been London's Burning, Bad Girls, Crocodile Shoes, Cold Lazarus, Neverwhere and the first two series of Big Brother...
...and Bugs. The classic mid-90s BBC adventure series Bugs was based here, 40 episodes of hi-tech hokum with location filming all over Docklands. Here are three fine fansites devoted to the series. Ahh, Ed, Ros and Beckett! Oooh, the theme tune! One particular episode ends with Ed trying to escape from a warehouse before it explodes - that warehouse was Clock Mill. Look, here are pictures! And here's the script! Don't you just love what you can find on the internet?
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Looking for the Flash Mob report? Down a bit...
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Friday, August 22, 2003
Looking for the Flash Mob report? Down a bit further...
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Number 2 - the Greenwich meridian
Yes, that is exactly the same photograph of Abbey Mills that appeared here yesterday, snapped from atop the Northern Outfall Sewer. What you won't have spotted yesterday, however, was one of the most important lines in the world slicing the building in two. It's an imaginary line that heads north from here through Stratford bus station, Leyton, Chingford and Cleethorpes, and south through East India station, the Dome, a power station, Peacehaven, Burkina Faso and Ghana. It's the Greenwich meridian.
That imaginary line is a relatively modern invention. Nobody really cared about longitude until it became the key to successful ocean-going trade. Charles II established a royal observatory at Greenwich in 1675, hoping to boost Britain's chances on the high seas by plotting the positions of various heavenly bodies as accurately as possible. Key amongst the equipment here was the transit telescope, angled to move only up and down, and from 1750 it was this telescope that defined Britain's prime meridian. A new transit telescope was built at Greenwich in 1850 by the Astronomer Royal George Airy. It was positioned a short distance away from the original, and this resulted in the Greenwich Meridian being moved nineteen feet eastwards.
Nobody other than seafarers and astronomers would have realised that this line existed, neither did they need to know. Local noon was just whenever the sun was overhead, which was easy because people never travelled very far away from home in those days. Then came the railways, and suddenly it mattered that noon in London was five minutes later than noon in Norwich but nine minutes earlier than noon in Bristol. Railway time soon became Greenwich time, and clocks in towns and villages across Britain were quick to follow suit.
In 1884 the International Meridian Conference was convened in Washington DC. Representatives of 25 countries met to establish a single meridian so that time and dates could be standardised across the globe. Almost everybody supported Greenwich, except for the French who had established their own meridien through Paris. But it was Airy's meridian in Greenwich that was confirmed as the world's official line of zero longitude and the basis of the new International Time Zone system.
In the 21st century global navigation now relies on the satellite technology of GPS. Accurate measurements from space have led to another slight shift of the globe's most important line, and the GPS meridian now lies 102.48 metres east of the old Greenwich meridian. This page has a go at explaining exactly why this difference exists, but it's mighty complicated. (And ah, so that's why my own little GPS device has been giving me what looked like dodgy readings in the Greenwich area).
After dark a green laser beam shines out from the Greenwich observatory along the meridian. It marks a very special line, and yet a completely arbitrary one. This is the benchmark of both time and space, the line from which all days begin and the only line on earth on which local noon is still noon. In the eyes of the world, Greenwich means time.
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Thursday, August 21, 2003
London Flash Mob ##2 - Singing in the rain (click on picture to enlarge)
The sky above Aldwych may have been almost cloudless, but there were a suspicious number of people carrying umbrellas walking the streets in the area earlier this evening. This was the second (official) London flash mob, or at least it was one of them. The organisers had been careful to split us up into at least two different mobs according to starsign and dispersed us around the Embankment. I was in the smaller group, instructed to turn up with an umbrella at one of four pubs off Aldwych by 6:10pm, precisely.
The bar staff in the George IV pub were overwhelmed by brolly-carrying punters. Us potential mobsters stood around waiting to get served, gulped down our drinks and waited for further instructions. At 6:10pm precisely one of the organisers entered the pub and handed out the tiny flyers to everyone carrying an umbrella. On one side, the words to Gene Kelly's classic Singing in the Rain. On the other side was our mission statement. We were to take our umbrellas to the public courtyard of Somerset House by 6:25pm precisely, text someone asking them to ring us at 6:30pm precisely, and click our fingers every (click) time anyone (click) used the letter Y (click).
If you've ever been to Somerset House before (and I have) you'll know that the centre of the courtyard contains 55 water jets which spring from the flagstones. On a hot summer's day it's a damp four year-old's paradise. It's also a lot of fun for a bunch of over 100 twenty-and thirty-somethings armed with umbrellas. At 6:25pm the mobsters from each of the four Aldwych pubs arrived right on time and strode into the middle of the fountains, brollies raised. Just as happened at the last flash mob, everyone suddenly looked at each other as if to say "Are we really doing this? Excellent!" And then we started acting like damp four year-olds.
It soon became apparent that the organisers had omitted one crucial piece of information from their instructions. They hadn't told us what to do when while we were standing in the middle of the fountains. Perhaps it was supposed to be obvious that we should dance round the fountains like famous Hollywood movie stars, but they'd forgotten to tell us that. Eventually one group was brave enough to start singing Singing in the Rain and everyone joined in, but they skipped a chunk of the first verse which sort of threw the rest of us partway through. It still sounded good though.
A number of the mobsters were really enjoying splashing in the water, running through the fountains and getting their suits wet. As the jets shot up into the air sometimes they caught the underside of an umbrella and water shot out across the crowd. Some wished they'd not brought their laptops, videophones and digital cameras with them. Ten minutes we stood there, getting slowly wetter, until at 6:35pm precisely it was time to leave. As we vanished out into the Strand the three security guards stood and watched the departing crowds, scratching their heads and mulling over what it was they might just have witnessed.
There was one last finale, a "Bonus Mob", as our group were then directed to pop up onto nearby Waterloo Bridge and face upstream. There in the distance across the Thames was tonight's other flash mob, spread out across the new Hungerford pedestrian bridge, doing goodness knows what. (Ahh, report here, photos here) We waved. They may have waved back, it was hard to tell. And then, trainers still squelching, it was time for everyone to disperse.
I think Flash Mob ##2 worked rather better than Flash Mob ##1 a fortnight ago, not least because we were in a public place and not apparently hounded by the press. Perhaps the organisers should give up on their fixation with mobile phones and letters of the alphabet, because I have yet to see those ideas work in practice. Just standing in the middle of a fountain with an umbrella was quite surreal enough for most participants. And the chances of there being a successful Flash Mob ##3? Odds on, I reckon.
posted 19:30 : comments ()
Number 1 - Abbey Mills pumping station
(except I've already written about Abbey Mills, here. Raw sewage and Big Brother, you remember...)
posted 09:00 : comments ()
posted 01:30 : comments ()
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Places within 10 minutes walk of my house that people think are famous but in fact aren't
Number 7 - Bow StreetOK, so there isn't a Bow Street within 10 minutes walk of my house, with or without four houses and a hotel. There's just a Bow Road. You've probably got the hang of this fact by now, so tomorrow I'll move on to some places within 15 minutes of here that really are famous. In the meantime, here are ten fascinating facts about the board game of Monopoly.
• Monopoly evolved from The Landlord's Game, the invention of Maryland resident Lizzie Magie. Her game was intended to teach players about the property ownership system, the object being 'to obtain as much wealth or money as possible'. Original 1904 patent here, rules here and board here.
• The game of Monopoly was first patented by Charles Darrow in 1933. Folklore tells how, jobless and destitute, he thought up the rules one night in a flash of inspiration, hand-painted the board on a tablecloth and used old trinkets around the house for game pieces. Rather more likely is that Charles already worked for Parker Brothers and merely nicked the idea from homemade versions of Lizzie's original game. Conspiracy theories abound.
• Darrow, who was from Pennsylvania, based his version of Monopoly on the properties of Atlantic City, New Jersey. This supposedly reminded him of happy family holidays he had spent there before the Great Depression. Or else he stole the idea again. The street names in the American version of the game are still based on Atlantic City, from Mediterranean Avenue ($60) right round to Boardwalk ($400).
• Monopoly remains the best-selling board game in the world, licensed or sold in 80 countries and produced in 26 languages. Over 200 million games have been sold worldwide, containing more than five billion little green houses.
• The most expensive property on the board? In the USA it's Boardwalk, in the UK Mayfair, in France Rue de la Paix, and in Germany Schlossallee.
• The London version of the game was licensed to Waddingtons in 1935. Managing Director Victor Watson and his secretary Marjorie made a special trip from Leeds to London to decide which streets in the capital would be used on the UK board. They concentrated on the West End, with only the light blues located to the north and the cheap old browns to the east. The story of the London board is well told in the book Do Not Pass Go by Tim Moore, a capital travelogue and one of last year's bestsellers.
• Each UK Monopoly set comes with 20 £500 notes (orange), 20 £100 notes (beige), 30 £50 notes (green), 50 £20 notes (blue), 40 £10 notes (yellow), 40 £5 notes (pink) and 40 £1 notes (white). Total amount of money per game = £15,140.
• There are 16 Chance cards, ten of which move you elsewhere, two of which give you money and three of which take money away. There are 16 Community Chest cards, nine of which give you money, four of which take money away and two of which move you elsewhere. Each pack contains one legendary Get out of Jail free card.
• The most landed-on square in Monopoly is the jail, whether you're banged up or just visiting. The best cards in the game to own are the stations, which players tend to land on roughly one in every ten throws. And the best properties to own are the orange set, including good old Bow Street (or St James Place, to American readers). Orange earns the highest rate of return because it lies, on average, exactly one dice throw further round the board than the jail. All the statistics you could ever want here, here, here and here (in the Strategy Wizard in the Tips and Tricks section).
• As for me, I can't ever remember winning a game of Monopoly. Or finishing one for that matter.
posted 10:00 : comments ()
London Flash Mob ##2: I've just received my instructions for London's second Flash Mob, tomorrow. The organisers appear to be splitting us into three separate mobs according to starsign. One group are to assemble on the South Bank, another in pubs near Charing Cross station and my group in pubs around Aldwych. Where we get sent after that and what we're asked to do is anybody's guess, but all of my group have been asked to bring an umbrella ("and no, you will not be doing anything daft with it"). See you in (blimey) Bow Street, 6:10pm tomorrow...
posted 09:00 : comments ()
Re: Wicked screensaver I've been spam-virused. Re: Your application Over the last twelve hours 115 separate copies of the Sobig F worm have ended up in my inbox. Re: Re: My details My anti-virus software has digested every single one of them, and I'm not infected myself, but I hope I don't have to spend the rest of my life deleting this rubbish from my email. Re: That movie Every six minutes. See the attached file for details.
posted 08:30 : comments ()
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Pure digital
Six months ago my lovely digital radio stopped working. I took it back to Dixons who immediately offered me a full refund, there being no more Pure Evoke Is in stock. Never mind, they said, the super stereo Pure Evoke II will be out soon, maybe you'd like to wait for one of those. So I did. The launch date for the new radio was originally at the end of May, then pushed to the start of July, then the middle of July, then into August. I began to wonder if I'd ever be able to listen to radio free from pirate interference again. But, joy, today the new Pure Evoke II was finally released, and I duly trotted down to Oxford Street to collect mine. First one out of the shop it was too.
I've always suffered from appalling reception in my flat (TV, radio and mobile) but now I can get 39 different digital stations, just so long as I position my new radio the right way round balanced on top of the CD rack beside the television. I can now listen to all 11 BBC stations (that 6Music is a bit of class isn't it, and there are some comedy gems tucked away on BBC7) plus a whole lot of commercial stuff that, rather wonderfully, isn't quite commercial enough to be interrupted by commercials. I can go clubbing, I can go indie, I can vegetate to what appears to be the Simply Red station, and there even appears to be a channel solely devoted to the sound of distant birdsong. Sadly the scrolling text doesn't tell me whether I'm listening to a thrush or a starling.
A few years ago the imminent death of radio was being predicted. Not any more. A whole new world of digital services has opened up, on the telly, on your mobile, online and on demand. Computer-playlisted radio risks becoming very bland indeed, but the mass availability of new digital technology should hopefully lead to a outbreak of innovation and diversity instead. Whatever you want to listen to, it's probably going to be out there somewhere. Or, of course, you could just stick a good CD on...
posted 17:00 : comments ()
Diamond puzzle: Arrange sixteen different playing cards so that each row, column and diagonal contains an Ace, King, Queen and Jack, and also a Club, Diamond, Heart and Spade.
posted 09:00 : comments ()
Number 6 - Bow Street magistrates court
It may be London's premier magistrates court, scene of the legendary trials of Dr Crippen and John Leslie, but alas Bow Street magistrates court isn't here either. This doesn't stop defendants, witnesses and jurors turning up at Bow Road tube by mistake though, and then looking very embarrassed when they discover they should have gone to Covent Garden instead. I try very hard not to smile out loud when this happens.
Bow isn't even home to the significantly less famous Bow County Court, because they moved that up the road to Stratford 20 years ago and forgot to change its name. No, we just have the remarkably dull Thames Magistrates Court instead, pictured here. Footballer Lee Bowyer was once fined £4500 here for being very naughty in McDonalds with a chair. Somehow I suspect Bow Street gets all the good cases.
posted 08:00 : comments ()
Monday, August 18, 2003
Number 5 - Bow Street police station
Bow Street in Covent Garden was home to London's first ever police station and remains the most famous lock-up in the capital. The street had been home to the Bow Street Runners for over a century before the formation of the Metropolitan Police here in 1829 by good old Sir Robert Peel. Historic stuff indeed.
But this isn't Bow Street, it's Bow Road. The police station here (closed Sundays) was built in 1912, just in time for all those Suffragette protests that were about to break out down the road. Sylvia Pankhurst liked smashing the windows of the police station so much that she spent many a night here, but she spent far more nights over at the real Bow Street. So, Bow Road copshop's not really that famous, relatively speaking. They have some nice police horses there though.
posted 20:00 : comments ()
Number 2 - Old Buckenham
Old Buckenham is a picturesque village in South Norfolk hidden far from the well-trodden tourist trails. The monthly village newsletter will tell you all you could ever want to know about local events, including details of the thrilling Country Fayre at the end of the month. But is there any famous local history, you ask? Oh yes.
• Old Buckenham Mere is the site of the earliest archaeological find of the cultivation of cannabis in Britain, dating back to the 5th century AD.
• William d'Albini, butler to William the Conqueror, built a stone castle in the parish in 1146, around which grew up the village of New Buckenham. Only a few ruins remain, but Buckenham Castle keep is the largest in diameter in England.
• All Saints' Church dates back at least 750 years, and is one of only six churches in Norfolk with an octagonal tower.
• Old Buckenham windmill, built in 1818, has the widest tower of any windmill in the country. One of the first owners was James Colman who went on to found the famous mustard business in Norwich. The mill was recently renovated and is open to visitors on the second Sunday of the month.
• The Australian cricketer Lionel Robinson lived at Old Buckenham Hall where he created a unique cricket ground with special Australian turf. In the spring of 1919 ten thousand spectators turned up to watch the Australian national team draw against an English XII (yes, really, this was the only time an Australian team ever played twelve-a-side).
• Old Buckenham Airfield was built in 1942/3 and became home to the 453rd Bomb Group of the US Army Air Force. They flew 259 missions over enemy territory before the end of the war, losing 58 aircraft and 366 crew. Hollywood actor James Stewart was an Executive Officer and flew over 20 missions from 'Old Buck', while Walter Matthau also served here as a sergeant and radioman/gunner.
• The village green is reputed to be the largest in England, covering 40 acres. The sheep seem to like it too.
posted 14:30 : comments ()
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Number 4 - Walford East tube station
Ever wondered where EastEnders is set? Walford E20, sure, but that's merely a fictitious place and postcode. Ever wondered whereabouts in London Walford is really meant to be? Some have said Wanstead, because it sounds a bit similar. Some have said Stratford, because they have an Albert Square there. Even more convincing is the idea that Walford should be a crossing on the river Walbrook, a long lost stream which flowed from Moorgate to the Thames, dividing Roman London in two. But no, it's none of these.
The answer's on the tube map outside Walford East station (and thanks to the Observer for printing a Shane Richie centrefold last weekend to confirm this). Walford East lies on the District Line and it's the station between Bow Road and West Ham, replacing Bromley-by-Bow. Just round the corner from my house then. Not that Bromley-by-Bow looks anything like Albert Square. It's all modern council housing and dual carriageways down there, and one of the most deprived council wards in the entire country. There are some allotments, and there's a Queen Victoria pub across the road, but other than that any illusion of Walford is purely fictional.
Bromley-by-Bow station definitely has more trains than Walford East. We have one every three minutes or so, whereas Albert Square is lucky to see one a year. The EastEnders train is a large model pushed along the viaduct over Bridge Street by stage-hands. It can only go in one direction, and even then the fine details have to be painted in during post-production. We also have less murders and unwanted pregnancies in E3 than they seem to have in E20, and some of us go to work more than 100 yards away from our homes.
The real inspiration for Albert Square isn't in Bow at all, but in Hackney, E8. Fassett Square is a quiet Victorian square tucked away close to Dalston Junction, and it was here that producers Tony Holland and Julia Smith found their inspiration for BBC1's first soap opera. Little did they know when they shot the pilot episode on location here that East 8, as it was nearly called, would soon become one of the biggest programmes in the country.
As you can see, the design of Albert Square owes a lot to the architecture of Fassett Square, pictured right. The terraced houses in Fassett Square were built in the early 1860s, with bay windows on the ground floor and the front door set back behind a decorated arch. In the centre of the square (well, rectangle actually) is a communal garden, still well-kept and tidy in a way that Arthur Fowler would have been proud of.
The BBC considered filming all the exterior shots for EastEnders here in Fassett Square, but eventually decided against. Cost and disruption to residents' lives were the main reasons, but also because there was the most enormous modern wing of the nearby German Hospital on one side of the square and it would have been too difficult to keep it out of shot. The BBC built a permanent outdoor set for EastEnders at Elstree studios instead and left the local residents in peace.
Fassett Square itself has gone upmarket since 1985. Now only the odd soap obsessive intrudes on life there, aiming their digital camera at what looks uncannily like Pauline's house, just round the corner from what must be the Slaters' front door. Now you can visit Walford E8 virtually instead thanks to this tasteful and informative website constructed by games designer and local resident Jonathan Boakes. I bet Dot's already logged in and had a snoop around.
posted 10:10 : comments ()
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Number 3 - Stratford
England is well known across the world for historic Stratford-on-Avon, home of Shakespeare and ye olde genuine tea shoppes. However, I live just down the road from the other Stratford, home of cheap market stalls and a gridlocked ring-road. Stratford E15 could not under any circumstances be described as a cultural centre, a decent retail centre or even a place worth visiting. It's always amusing to discover lost American tourists who've accidentally headed to the wrong location, hunting in vain for Shakespeare's birthplace or Mary Arden's house. Never mind, only 100 miles and 400 years out.
The one thing that Stratford does have is excellent rail connections. Trains run from here to Liverpool Street, Docklands, East Anglia, Neasden, Ruislip and, when the Channel Tunnel Rail Link arrives in 2007, Paris. It may not be the greatest place to live, but it is definitely a great place to travel away from. Property prices round have risen so quickly that, had I bought a flat in Stratford a couple of years ago, I could probably sell it today at a profit exceeding the gross national product of a small African country. Stratford's new Eurostar station is planned to be at the heart of a billion pound regeneration scheme, bringing new homes and a huge metropolitan, business and retail centre to the area. It's got to be a huge improvement on one Woolworths, one Argos and a Pizza Hut, which is as good as it gets at the moment.
Stratford is now the centre of a UK bid for the 2012 Olympics. In nine years time the whole international world of sport and athletics could be arriving on my doorstep, although quite frankly we have a big enough drug problem round here as it is. The Olympics may only last for a fortnight, if they happen here at all, but those two weeks would etch the name of Stratford into global history forever. And who knows, in ten years time maybe it'll be the American tourists who end up in Warwickshire who'll be sightseeing in the wrong location.
posted 18:42 : comments ()
Friday, August 15, 2003
Number 1 - Thorpe End
Thorpe End is a small village on the eastern outskirts of Norwich, probably best described as a three-car-household estate nestling round an Aga shop. It is therefore almost completely devoid of any history whatsoever. I've managed to uncover only the following:
• Thorpe End is home to at least one member of semi-obscure pop band KaitO, who supported the Polyphonic Spree on tour last year. "Me and my brother used to be members of a rabbit club, and when we were getting on well together we'd ride our bikes around Thorpe End, where we grew up in Norfolk, trying to escape the evil weasels."
• A tribe of computer game fanatics hold regular networked battles in Thorpe End Village Hall (illuminating photos of recent event here, next event at the start of September)
• Britain's top ballerina lives here. Well, we have high hopes for my niece, although it's early days yet.
posted 22:48 : comments ()
Number 2 - the Bow Bells pub
So, if that isn't Bow Church in the middle of the road, then this can't be the right Bow Bells pub either. But here it sits all the same, bright orange and unmistakable, just up from the junction of Bow Road and Fairfield Road. Elvis Presley is a regular visitor on karaoke nights if the posters in the window are to be believed, but maybe he's just a lookalike. I've never dared venture in to ask the locals for their opinions, or their beer.
Apart from Elvis, another ghostly appearance here was the 'phantom flusher' reported in 1974. Women using the pub's toilets were startled by sudden inexplicable flushing and by a strange mist rising from the floor. They held a seance to solve the mystery, but this merely caused the cubicle door to swing open violently and smash some frosted glass. So the local paper said, anyway. Must be true then.
posted 22:48 : comments ()
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Number 1 - Bow Church
'I do not know says the Great Bell at Bow'.
As everyone knows, to be a true Cockney you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells. What most people don't seem to know is that Bow Bells aren't in Bow. Which is a pity. Bow Bells are in fact the bells of St. Mary Le Bow, Cheapside, in the City of London. Nothing to do with the East End at all (apart from the fact that they were cast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry).
Back in the 14th century the bells of St Mary-le-Bow rang out a curfew across central London at 9 o'clock to warn the locals that it was time for bed. The church was burnt to the ground in the Great Fire of London and then rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. The BBC used the peal of Bow Bells at the start of every broadcast to occupied Europe during World War II, but that didn't stop the bells being destroyed again in the Blitz of 1941. Recent research has suggested that, given the right atmospheric conditions and an absence of traffic noise, the sound of Bow Bells could have been heard up to five miles away from Cheapside. That would include Bow, just about, so maybe we are really Cockneys out here after all.
Which brings us back to St Mary's church in Bow, 'that church in the middle of the road'. It may not be the official home of Bow Bells, but the local campanologists sure try to make up for that on a Tuesday night. A church was founded here in the time of Edward III to save the locals from having to walk to Stepney every Sunday. The main tower structure is 15th century, the font dates from Henry V's time and the organ from 1551. The upper part of the tower was rebuilt about 1829, being finished with battlements, an octagonal turret and two illuminated clocks. The tower suffered severe bomb damage in May 1941, as did everywhere around here it seems, and so the tower had to be rebuilt yet again. Old Victorian views of the church can be seen here, here and here, a fine modern photo is here, and take a 360° look around inside the church here.
In 1648 the Civil War came to Bow, which found itself sandwiched between Cavalier forces camped at Stratford and opposing Roundheads at Mile End. The people of Bow took sides against the crown, ill-advisedly as it turned out, and were forced to retreat inside Bow Church. Surrounded on all sides by soldiers the frightened civilians eventually caved in, and were forced to take an oath that they would never fight against the king's men again.
St Mary's church now stands alone in the middle of the A11, isolated on a small island, surrounded on all sides by a sea of traffic. Once the heart of a bustling medieval village, Bow Church has been swallowed whole by the road that created the village in the first place.
posted 14:00 : comments ()
I'm off up the A11 to Norfolk for a bit. I'm told they have the internet up there, in rudimentary form at least. You'll know that's true if I manage to keep on posting...
posted 14:00 : comments ()
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Ringing up the profits
I'm quietly gobsmacked by the news that sales of mobile phone ringtones are set to overtake sales of CD singles in the UK. OK, so 2003 hasn't exactly been a golden year for singles (barely even silver in fact), but to be outdone by ringtones? It's shameful. And here's 20 reasons why...
Ringtones sound nothing like the singles they are supposed to mimic1. Monophonic ringtones sound like they're being played on a Stylophone circa 19732, while the more modern polyphonic ringtones sound like James Last let loose on a Casio keyboard3. It's mobile musak of the worst kind, just like you'd be forced to endure whilst waiting on-hold4. There are no lyrics5, and you only get 20 seconds of the hook for your money, not even the whole tune6. Most ringtone owners are so embarrassed by their selection that they scramble to answer their phone in public before everyone turns to look on them with pity in their eyes7, and well before anyone's had a chance to work out what tune that bleepy noise is actually supposed to represent8. The more gullible rush to update their ringtone weekly, before it gets 'boring', wasting the £2.50 they spent last week9 and providing huge profit margins10 for fat cat predatory download website owners11. Mobiles already come pre-programmed with a wide selection of ringtones (so why buy more?12) although scandalously some no longer come with the ordinary ring-ring option any more13. Mobiles also come with an option to allow you to compose your own ringtones for free, although teenagers appear unable or unwilling to have a go at trying this14. Some annoying people insist on cycling through their entire ringtone selection at maximum volume in a public place, a crime for which they deserve to be shot15. How long before clubs start mixing ringtones instead of vinyl16 or before a commercial radio station starts up purely to showcase the latest ringtones17, or before ITV launch Ringtone Idol to wring a few more million pounds out of their teenage audience18? Much more useful would be the ability to download new percussive 'vibrate' rhythms for your mobile, because they'd feel good deep in your pocket19. And they'd be silent20.
posted 16:00 : comments ()
Numbers 12, 13, 14 and 15
That's about it for famous places within 5 minutes walk of my house. I've been trying to restrict this local history to places that are actually famous, rather than merely historic, so I'm quite pleased to have found so many in such a small area. Matchgirls, Suffragettes, Gandhi and an Olympic village (amongst others) isn't a bad haul for a mere one-fifth of a square mile of East London. I don't know how well you'd get on looking for famous places within a quarter of a mile of your house... (unless you're the Queen, in which case presumably it's quite easy).
Here's a final round-up of a few other vaguely famous places within 5 minutes walk of here, and then tomorrow I'll spread the net wider to 10 minutes.
12) Lord Edmund Sheffield, who used to live a few doors down from me, captained the huge galleon The Bear against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
13) King James I had a hunting lodge in Bromley-by-Bow, called the Old Palace. The ornate state room on the ground floor, complete with Jacobean oak panelling and moulded ceiling, was rescued when the building was demolished three centuries later and can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
14) In 1686 King James II established a May fair in central London. You can probably guess where. The revels lasted a full fortnight, complete with boxing, copious amounts of food and alcohol, prostitution and fighting. In 1765, as Mayfair moved upmarket, this drunken fair was moved instead to a new site in Bow, in what is now Fairfield Road. Crime, vice and violence flourished, until Bow moved upmarket too and the fair was closed forever in the 1820s. (More here)
15) The Black Swan pub, on the corner of Bow Road and Bromley High Street, was one of the first buildings in the UK to be destroyed in an air raid. In 1916 the pub was hit by a 100kg bomb dropped from a Zeppelin, killing four people. The landlord's two dead daughters, Cissy and Sylvia, are said to have come back to haunt the pub after it was rebuilt.
posted 09:00 : comments ()
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Dear DG
Here is your next Nectar points update. In the last quarter you collected 14 Nectar points. What could you get with them?
Well, Nectar, I've checked, thank you very much...
• 7p off my shopping at Sainsbury's
• 280 metres towards Paris by Eurostar
• 1½ minutes watching Terminator 3 at an Odeon cinema
• 2 minutes watching the animals at London Zoo
• 10 French Fries from a McDonalds Medium Extra Value Meal
• Half a photo developed with Kodak Express
• ¾ of a second at the controls of a helicopter
• 5 minutes staying at Butlins in Bognor Regis
To be honest, I think I'll pass.
Couldn't you just scrap this stupid scheme and lower your prices instead?
posted 15:00 : comments ()
Number 11 - Crossrail
This unassuming and unused bridge straddling Bow Road will one day be home to London's newest rail project, Crossrail. In 10 years time sleek new trains will sail over this bridge from the commuter suburbs of Essex, plunging underground just a few hundred metres south of here to speed under Central London and then out again the other side. But I've written about Crossrail before, here, so enough about that.
Bow's first railway arrived in 1843, the Eastern Counties Railway heading through on its way to Norwich, followed soon afterwards by the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway heading instead for the Essex coast. These two parallel lines were connected by the Blackwall Extension Railway, a curved viaduct crossing Bow Road over the railway bridge pictured here. Meanwhile, not to be outdone, the North London Railway carved yet another line underneath Bow Road to link the docks at Blackwall with the cities of the Midlands via the mainline at Camden. Victorian Bow was trainspotter heaven.
A first-class murder took place on the North London Railway in 1864, somewhere between Bow and Hackney stations. An otherwise empty carriage was found splattered with blood on the train's arrival in Hackney, and the body of chief clerk Thomas Briggs was discovered sprawled across the tracks a short distance back. The murderer, a German tailor, was soon identified and later arrested after fleeing across the Atlantic to New York.
The head seemed to have been battered in by some sharp instrument; the clothes were covered in blood; and the broken link or hook of a watch-chain hung to a buttonhole of the waistcoat, the rest of the chain and the watch being missing. On the left side of the head, just over the ear, which was torn away, was found a deep wound; the skull was fractured and the bone driven in. On the base of the skull there were four or five lacerated wounds; there were more wounds on other parts of the head. (Illustrated London News, 16 July 1864)
In 1902 the Underground came to Bow (see my previous rant here), at which point there were three competing stations located along a mere 300 yard stretch of Bow Road. Of these only the tube station still remains. Bow station on the North London Line closed in 1949, although this stretch of line was reborn as part of the Docklands Light Railway in 1987 and automated trains now stop at Bow Church station on the opposite side of the road. As for the old Bow Road station on the Blackwall Extension Railway, that's long since gone to rack and ruin, and the old ticket hall is now a betting shop. Sadly there are no plans to reopen the old station when Crossrail arrives, but maybe we have enough railways around here already.
posted 10:00 : comments ()
Monday, August 11, 2003
River quiz: Can you name these 20 UK rivers?
All have now been guessed. Answers in the comments box.
1) bonnie partner
2) mast he rebuilt
3) golf equipment
4)
5) arrow
6) GCSE
7)
8) Blakes 7 antihero
9) wise men's gift, look
10) second personal pronoun11) paradise
12) much slime
13) ...lose some
14) coarse fabric
15) carry clothing
16) 78% N, 21% O
17) bone on male cow
18) letter of the alphabet
19) letter of the alphabet
20) letter of the alphabet
posted 15:00 : comments ()
Number 10 - the River Lea (or Lee)
The River Lea flows through Bow, tracing a path 58 miles from its source at Leagrave (near Luton) to join the Thames at Canning Town, just south of here. The river is navigable for much of its length, and has been for many centuries. It's still debatable whether the correct modern spelling is Lea or Lee, although the historic spelling is in fact Ley. The river used to form the boundary between Middlesex and Essex, until the Essex county boundary was shifted much further out past Upminster in 1963. I spent six months too many of my life living in Essex, and it's unnerving to discover that I still live less than 5 minutes walk away from the place, historically at least.
In the late 9th century the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how an invading Danish fleet sailed up the river Lea to make camp at Ware near Hertford, then a more important town than London. King Alfred the Great is said to have responded by building weirs and embankments on the river to lower the water-level, so stranding the Danish fleet upstream.
The Lower Lea Valley gradually became heavily industrialised, the river providing a plentiful supply of energy and a useful means of transport. By 1588 large barges capable of carrying five tons were navigating the Lea, transporting local grain and beer upriver from Bow Bridge to Ware in just twelve hours. In the 18th and 19th centuries Bow's traditional mills and breweries were slowly replaced by messier, smellier industries such as soap-making, lime-burning and the odd distillery. Most famous of all was the Bow Porcelain factory, established in the late 1740s, which replicated the popular Chinese crockery of the day using bone ash from local knackers yards.
As the local marshes were drained, so the Bow Back Rivers were formed, a complex set of waterways linking the upper river to its tidal estuary at Bow Creek. These river channels have been restored by dredging and landscaping over the last decade, and the area is now part of the Lee Valley Park, Britain's first ever Regional Park and a haven for wildlife. Bow is also the final destination of the Lea Valley Walk, one of the most varied walking routes in the London area. Major plans are now afoot to completely transform the Lower Lea Valley as the focus of London's 2012 Olympic bid, complete with sports stadia and athletes' village. Welcome though this urban regeneration will be, now is probably your last chance to spot a kingfisher down by Bow Bridge, before the property sharks move in.
posted 09:00 : comments ()
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Heatwatch
• So, today really has been the hottest day ever recorded in the UK, with temperatures nudging 38°C at Heathrow.
• It's the first time ever that the temperature in the UK has reached 100°F, and bookies face a six-figure payout.
• Highest temperature of the day was 38.1°C at Gravesend, a full degree higher than the previous record.
• Britain's previous record temperature of 37.1°C was recorded 13 years and one week ago in Cheltenham.
• For anyone with an anorakky interest in these figures, the Met Office provides meteorological nirvana here.
• Temperature in London: 7am 22°C; 10am 29°C; 1pm 36°C; peak 37.9°C; 4pm 37°C; 7pm 30°C; 10pm 26°C.
posted 16:00 : comments ()
Number 9 - the Little Fire of Bow
I arrived home in the early hours of this morning to discover that the building next to mine was on fire. Not the world's largest fire you understand, no flames leaping majestically into the summer sky, but smoking away happily all the same. A fleet of fire engines had arrived, accompanied by an ambulance and a complete set of police vehicles, and they'd sealed off the entire roadway in front of my house using a flimsy chain of yellow tape. A jobsworth officer told me that I couldn't enter the exclusion zone, despite the fact that I lived here, and turned me away. I had to walk up the Bow flyover (which had also been closed), round 'that church in the middle of the road' and back past the Gladstone statue in order to try my luck at the mobile fire command unit. Whilst waiting I was surprised to see that they'd brought 1000 small bottles of mineral water along to fight the fire, although these turned out to be to quench the firemen's thirst on a hot and sultry night. They offered me a bottle while they continued to fight the fire using more conventional water supplies.
The firemen were training their hoses on the blaze from nearby Grove Hall Park (insert history section: In Tudor times this was the site of a nunnery owned by the Earl of Sheffield, Henry VIII's Lord High Admiral who went down with the Mary Rose. Grove Hall itself was a grand Victorian mansion mentioned by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby, and later re-opened as a reputable lunatic asylum. The nunnery is now used by a collective of local artists and includes a large exhibition space). The fire smoked on, until eventually a fireman was given the all-clear to escort me safely to my door. There was no damage to my property, and seemingly nothing major to the neighbouring building, but the pumps whirred on all the same. Fire had come to Bow on the hottest night of the year, which alas wasn't the best time to have to sleep with my windows closed to keep out the smell of smoke.
posted 12:00 : comments ()
Saturday, August 09, 2003
Flash update
Didn't the London flash mob get a lot of press? OK, so it's August and the silly season for news, but isn't it easy to manipulate the media and get them to cover your event? Or maybe they were manipulating us. Further blog coverage of the sofa-based gathering (in addition to my report below) can be found here, here and here (except that the last site seems to have drowned in an ocean of excess bandwidth). There also are 60 or so photographs of the event here. I was delighted to discover that I appear in only one of them (and even then heavily blurred).
Meanwhile on Thursday New Yorkers were already attending their sixth flash mob, assembling in Toys R Us in Times Square to kneel down and worship a giant animatronic dinosaur. O Mighty Lizard, what is thy command? It looked brilliant on the news, but reports from those who were there (here, here, here and here) tell a slightly more cynical story. Mobs organised in confined spaces don't seem to work as well as those out in the open, where everyone is able to assemble and disperse in a flash, and where there are far more passers-by to be surprised by the whole event. Apparently some people don't seem to be able to set their watches properly and premature mobbing can spoil the intended effect. And then there's the media again, of course.
I've always believed that the presence of a camera at an event, large or small, can change the nature of what is being photographed. A happy birthday party can turn quickly to embarrassment when someone whips out a camera to record the event. A holiday can become reduced merely to a series of photo opportunities, ready to parade in front of bored friends when you return home. And a large crowd at a flash mob taking photographs of themselves at a flash mob is somehow missing the point of being there in the first place, and giving the game away to passers-by that this wasn't a spontaneous event after all.
Alas it's impossible to keep the press and media away from these supposedly top-secret gatherings (they can sign up for information just like everyone else) and it'll be even more impossible after all this recent publicity. There are already copycat plans for flash mobs right across the UK (Nottingham, Cardiff, Milton Keynes, Walthamstow?) but I fear that the bubble may already have peaked. And how long before, say, a sofa-bed manufacturer decides to organise a flash mob under the cloak of anonymity, merely to gain huge amounts of publicity for their store? Actually, come to think of it, that may already have happened...
posted 11:00 : comments ()
Number 8 - the Bow flyover
Probably the most well-known place in modern Bow is the flyover, that gently arching slab of concrete which lifts the A11 over the A12. Perhaps more notorious than famous in fact, as it features in almost as many travel news bulletins as the Hanger Lane gyratory system. One of the most popular times for gridlock is early rush hour on a weekday evening, second only to lunchtime on a sunny summer weekend as everyone in London who owns a car simultaneously decides to head out of the capital for a breath of smog-free air. Many make it no further than the drive-thru McDonalds on the corner before giving up and returning home with a takeaway barbecue.
There's been a crossing over the river Lea here since Roman times, the first crossing being an old ford a short distance to the north. In the 12th century Queen Matilda came riding from London to Barking Forest for a spot of hunting only to get a soaking because the river was in flood, and so she ordered a bridge to be built instead. This first bridge was shaped like a bow, and this is believed to be how the nearby medieval village got its name. The original bridge existed unchanged for centuries, carrying the main highway between London and East Anglia. It was eventually rebuilt with three arches, then replaced in 1835 by a wider structure, and widened further in 1903 as road traffic continued to increase.
In the 1960s a series of new ring roads were planned to ease London's growing traffic congestion. Only small portions of the inner ringway were ever built - one being the Westway and another the East Cross Route, running south from Hackney through Bow to the Blackwall Tunnel. Whole streets and communities were bulldozed for the convenience of the motorist, and a swathe of East London was buried forever beneath concrete and tarmac. The building of the Bow flyover removed all traces of the old bridge, and the River Lea is now barely visible beside the dual carriageway beneath. Some say that the Krays buried the bodies of one of their victims in the foundations, in which case it's highly appropriate that Ronnie's funeral cortege passed over the flyover three decades later.
posted 10:00 : comments ()
Friday, August 08, 2003
Number 7 - where Gandhi stayed
In 1912 Doris and Muriel Lester opened Kingsley Hall, a small nursery school in Bromley-by-Bow. The school gradually expanded its services within the local community until soon a new building was needed, four stories high, complete with clubroom, dining room, kitchen, residential units and a space for worship.
Mahatma Gandhi left India only once during the last 30 years of his life, travelling to London in 1931 to attend the Round Table Conference. He refused to stay in a hotel, preferring to lodge among working people, and so chose to make his home at Kingsley Hall for 12 weeks. Huge crowds greeted his arrival, and Charlie Chaplin and the Pearly Queen and King of East London were amongst his many visitors. Gandhi spoke eloquently at the Conference, an international talking shop to discuss Indian independence, but was outmanouevred by representatives of the British Raj and supporters of the caste system.
"....besides doing his work with the Government, he spent a lot of time with us. He visited the Nursery School and all the children called him Uncle Gandhi. At six o'clock each morning, after his prayers, he took his walk along the canal, talking to workmen on the way.... There was something about him that always lives with the people."
In 1964 the famous psychologist R.D. Laing persuaded the Lester sisters to let him use Kingsley Hall for a unique and radical experiment. He established the Philadelphia Project here, a community in which seriously affected schizophrenics were encouraged to live free from medication or restraint. The experiment was not a success, for the locals at least, who suffered regular smashed windows, faeces pushed through their letter boxes and harassment at local shops. When Laing and his community finally moved out, six years later, Kingsley Hall was left trashed and uninhabitable.
In the early 1980s Richard Attenborough used Kingsley Hall as a set for his film Gandhi. During the filming he worked with local people to raise enough funds to carry out extensive refurbishment, and Kingsley Hall was reopened as a community centre in 1985. The building now houses the offices of the Gandhi Foundation, an organisation which continues to promote the peaceful protest and nonviolent action so successfully advocated by the great man himself, right here, seven decades ago.
In that settlement which represents the poor people of the East End of London I have become one of them. They have accepted me as a member, and as a favoured member of their family. It will be one of the richest treasures that I shall carry with me.
posted 22:00 : comments ()
Thursday, August 07, 2003
London Flash Mob ##1 (click on picture to enlarge)
The first London Flash Mob took place this evening at the Sofas-UK showroom in Tottenham Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Over 200 people turned up, very suddenly. To say that the shop assistant was taken unawares would be an understatement - the shop was closed because he'd locked up ready to go home early. It's normally very quiet round here, you see. Not tonight. Here's the story of what happened (and don't worry, he was persuaded to unlock the door and let us in eventually, although he may have wished he hadn't...)
6pm onwards: Everyone assembled, gradually, at one of three designated pubs near Goodge Street tube station. Being a Pisces I was directed towards the Rising Sun in Tottenham Court Road, which appeared to be unnaturally full for that time of the evening. Rather a lot of, how can I put it, people who probably use computers at work, but not as unphotogenic as that might sound. Buy drink, look casual, wait.
6:17pm: Our top secret instructions were written on tiny pieces of paper left on top of the fruit machine. This was bad news for anybody under 5 foot 4, but we coped. Only now did we learn that our intended destination was factory showroom Sofas-UK, just up the road, where we were to assemble at 6:30 (precisely) and gaze in awe and wonder at the assembled soft furnishings, muttering the words "Oh wow, what a sofa". There were some other instructions about texting a friend at 6:33 (precisely), and not using the letter 'O' while the flash mob was underway, but they seemed somehow secondary. At 6:40 (precisely) the mob was to disperse as quickly as it had appeared. Magic.
6:27pm: Watches synchronised, we left the pub and walked up to nearby Tottenham Street. It still wouldn't have been obvious to any of the passers-by that something big was afoot.
6:30pm: Three groups converged on the sofa shop, just opposite Heal's. Everybody looked at each other as if to say 'blimey, it worked then', then started taking pictures of the crowd (maybe that's why they're called flash mobs) and then turned to look at the sofa shop. It was shut. This rather wrecked all the instructions we'd been given, so we all stood around in the street, smiled a lot at each other, took some more photos and waited.
6:32pm: By this point the solitary shop assistant appeared to have woken up to the fact that he had customers, lots of them, and unlocked the door. The crowd surged inside, in that very British way of just nudging forward very slowly and politely. A TV crew were one of the first through the door, preparing to film the scene inside. The organisers had bungled their choice of venue, not because it had been shut (because it was supposed to be late-opening on Thursdays) but because the showroom only had one narrow door. And it takes a very long time to get more than 200 people inside a showroom, especially when the space just inside the door is already teeming with leatherette. And so we queued.
6:38pm: At last I reached the door to the showroom and managed to squeeze inside. The place was absolutely packed, not least with people taking even more photos to record the event. All thoughts of 'texting a friend' or 'ignoring the letter O' had disappeared, as everyone just stood there and soaked in the sheer incredulity of it all. Some sat on the sofas, some played up for the cameras, but most just smiled. The shop assistant stood by the door, astonished at the number of people taking an sudden interest in his products and at those still trying to enter behind me. "You wait til my boss hears about this," he said. Given the obvious press presence in that shop, I suspect his boss will be hearing a lot more about it, and soon.
6:40pm: There was a spontaneous round of applause, and then it was time for the flash mob to disperse, suddenly. Again, this was nigh impossible given the large crowd now inside the shop and the Knebworth-esque bottleneck by the single exit. Having been one of the last in I managed to be one of the first out, but as I looked behind me it appeared as if many of the mobsters were there for the duration. I followed instructions and left the area immediately, with just a 'goodbye' to a stranger (as requested in Rule 7), but I wonder how many people were still there long after the event was due to finish. And I wonder if Flash Mob ##2, planned for August 22nd, will manage to maintain the momentum of this first instant event, without becoming too popular, too crowded and too overground.
posted 19:40 : comments ()
Number 6 - Sylvia Pankhurst's meeting hall
This is Tower Hamlets Register Office on the Bow Road. Most Saturday mornings you'll find a wedding party here, spilling out onto the pavement, complete with fresh-faced East End geezers who've clearly never squeezed into a Burtons suit before. Previously this building was Bromley Public Hall, a series of halls and meeting rooms for the use of the local community. Back in 1913 you'd probably have found a crowd of angry Suffragettes inside instead, busy planning their next public demonstration. The increasingly violent nature of Sylvia Pankhurst's protests eventually encouraged Poplar council to ban the women from meeting on their premises, not that this stopped the women from meeting on their premises of course. It wasn't long before the local police turned up in force (exactly 90 years ago last week in fact), breaking in to put an end to the regular gatherings once and for all. Sylvia was forced to hide in a nearby stable overnight, before escaping the following morning concealed inside a sack on the back of a woodcart. Mob rule wasn't flash in those days. (Might be tonight though. Maybe see you there? But hopefully not you. Report here later.)
posted 07:00 : comments ()
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Bloggered up: My archives are in a mess. They've been in a mess ever since Blogger decided that 'New Blogger' was an improvement on their old service and therefore I should be 'upgraded' to it. They've completely lost my December, shifted my November and given me two Octobers instead. This is not a good swap. I've not dared to press the republish all archives button since I was switched over to New Blogger because I suspect I'd lose even more complete months that way. My archives are now incomplete, with ads that shouldn't be there on the remaining pages and broken links that no longer lead anywhere. Cheers guys.
This problem has arisen because Blogger thinks my months start at 8am, not at midnight, because that's when months start on Californian time. In a nutshell, everything I post before 8am on the 1st of the month gets shifted into the month before, and the wrong monthly archive gets published as a result. I've emailed Blogger, except they don't read the emails of people who haven't paid to use the service, and I can't pay to use the service because they appear to have removed that option when New Blogger appeared. I suspect I could solve the problem by deleting all the posts I've ever written in the first 8 hours of a month, but some of them are quite good, so I'd rather not. And I can't move my blog to another program like Moveable Type because one of the most important things you have to do before you migrate is to make sure that all your archives are published properly, and mine aren't. So I'm bloggered.
Thankfully I always save a copy of my archives each month, so I've been able to reconstruct December on my own server, even if all the comments have had to go and lots of the links don't work any more. Result, I've updated my sidebar so you can now click back into diamond geezer's complete back catalogue once again. But, Blogger, how lame is this? Don't leave me this way.
posted 19:00 : comments ()
• It may be the hottest day ever recorded in the UK today, with temperatures nudging 100°F. Or it may not, quite.
• Britain's previous record temperature of 37.1°C was recorded 13 years and 3 days ago in Cheltenham.
• Newspapers are celebrating with a series of articles about ice cream, bikinis, vintage wine and nude ramblers.
• Rail companies are celebrating by doubling the time passengers are forced to endure on slowed-down trains.
• It's even hotter in Europe, with Paris reaching 38°C, Germany 40°C and Spain 41°C.
• Temperature in London: 7am 22°C; 10am 27°C; 1pm 33°C; peak 35.7°C; 4pm 35°C; 7pm 34°C; 10pm 28°C.
So the UK record didn't fall, but it has been London's hottest day ever, and nearby Gravesend reached 36.4°C.
Bet the bookies are delighted, assuming they haven't melted.
posted 09:00 : comments ()
Number 5 - Sylvia Pankhurst's first target
Selby's the undertakers used to trade from the dead centre of Bow, a stone's throw away from the nearby village centre. Literally so, as it turned out. In February 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst climbed up on an old cart down Bromley High Street and made her first public speech for the Suffragette cause. It was a freezing day and very few passers-by stopped to pay her any attention. Not being one to be ignored, Sylvia picked up a stone and hurled it through the window of the nearby funeral directors. Most unladylike. Some of her colleagues joined in by smashing windows on buildings nearby, and soon all the protestors were arrested and locked up at nearby Bow police station. Sylvia and two of her colleagues were later sentenced to two months hard labour in Holloway prison, and so began the series of hunger strikes for which the Suffragettes became infamous.
As for Bromley High Street, some miserable post-war redevelopment has left the place more far more dead than centre, but I reckon it's nothing that a few well-aimed rocks couldn't solve.
posted 08:00 : comments ()
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Number 4 - Sylvia Pankhurst's campaign headquarters
100 years ago Britain was still an electorally-backward country. No Y-chromosome, no X. This was a scandalous state of affairs, even if the men in power couldn't see it, and so the Suffragette movement was born. Christabel Pankhurst formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903, seeking equality in the battle for women's suffrage. Christabel's daughter Sylvia (1882-1960) became increasingly involved in the movement, and increasingly political. When her mother started to take the struggle upmarket, seeing the working women of the East End as a lost cause, Sylvia decided to form a breakaway movement instead. And so it was that, in October 1912, Sylvia Pankhurst and her friend Zelie Emerson rented out an old baker's shop at 198 Bow Road, directly opposite 'that church in the middle of the road'. Sylvia painted VOTES FOR WOMEN in giant gold letters on the front, built a wooden platform outside from which to address the passing crowds and set up her campaign headquarters inside.
"I regarded the rousing of the East End as of utmost importance.... The creation of a woman's movement in that great abyss of poverty would be a call and a rallying cry to the rise of similar movements in all parts of the country."
Bow's MP at the time was George Lansbury, who in 1912 shocked Parliament by resigning his seat and standing for re-election solely on the issue of votes for women. Sylvia led the campaign from the old bakery in Bow Road, organising a huge march and rally in nearby Victoria Park. George was narrowly defeated in the by-election and many in the Suffragette movement were disheartened, withdrawing all financial support for the East End project. Sylvia packed up shop in Bow Road but soon restarted her campaign for equality from a house in nearby Roman Road. Marches and demonstrations became increasingly militant, and the Government reacted by clamping down harshly on this civil unrest. Sylvia risked arrest at every public appearance and spent much time in Holloway prison, often on hunger strike.
The outbreak of war in 1914 caused most Suffragettes to regroup behind the war effort, but Sylvia chose to fight on for women's rights from her Bow headquarters. She set up a nursery and mother-and-baby clinic, provided a cost-price canteen for the poor and established her own newspaper - the Woman's Dreadnought. Her persistence eventually paid off. The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave certain "women of property" over the age of 30 the right to vote, although it was to be another ten years until full equality was extended to all women over 21.
Sylvia Pankhurst spent 12 years living amongst the women of Bow before spreading her wings and seeking to further socialism and women's rights elsewhere. Later in her life she became increasingly involved with the anti-fascist movement in Africa, living in Addis Ababa for the last five years of her life, and there she is buried. George Lansbury, meanwhile, was re-elected to Parliament where he became its most prominent pacifist and was leader of the Labour party in opposition between 1931 and 1935. A huge local housing estate specially rebuilt for the Festival of Britain in 1951 is named after him, and yes, his granddaughter really is Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote fame. As for the old bakery at 198 Bow Road, that has long since been replaced by the nondescript block of council housing you see in the photo above. But it would be nice to see the site commemorated by a blue plaque, preferably one with large gold letters.
posted 07:00 : comments ()
Monday, August 04, 2003
Number 3 - the Gladstone statue
William Gladstone (1809-1898) was a very popular Victorian Liberal Prime Minister (think Tony Blair 1997). So popular that in 1882 match magnate Theodore Bryant commissioned a bronze statue of the great man to stand in the middle of Bow Road near the church. Local papers reported that 'the whole of the East End turned out to witness the ceremony.' Gladstone's popularity waned somewhat over the next six years (think Tony Blair 2003), by which time the striking match girls now talked of the statue as if it had been paid for in their blood. Here's how campaigning journalist Annie Besant reported the issue in her ground-breaking article White Slavery in London:
A very bitter memory survives in the factory. Mr Theodore Bryant, to show his admiration of Mr Gladstone and the greatness of his own public spirit, bethought him to erect a statue to that eminent statesman. In order that his workgirls might have the privilege of contributing, he stopped 1s. each out of their wages, and further deprived them of half-a-day's work by closing the factory, "giving them a holiday". ("We don't want no holidays", said one of the girls pathetically, for - needless to say - the poorer employees of such a firm lose their wages when a holiday is "given".) So furious were the girls at this cruel plundering, that many went to the unveiling of the statue with stones and bricks in their pockets, and I was conscious of a wish that some of those bricks had made an impression on Mr Bryant's conscience. Later on they surrounded the statue - "we paid for it" they cried savagely - shouting and yelling, and a gruesome story is told that some cut their arms and let their blood trickle on the marble paid for, in very truth, by their blood.
Gladstone now stands forlorn in the middle of the A11, guarding the approach to the Bow flyover, overseeing a pedestrian crossing and some disused public toilets. The granite pedestal below the statue is still stained by red paint, daubed there in the early 1990s in protest over the conversion of the old match factory to luxury apartments. They still believe in symbolic bloody protest round here. (Further photos of Gladstone's statue here, here and here)
posted 19:30 : comments ()
Flash mobs
If you're in the West End of London this Thursday evening you may be surprised to see a very large group of people suddenly converge on an unsuspecting location, mill around for a few minutes doing something a bit strange, then disperse as suddenly as they appeared. This is the concept of the flash mob, occurring this week in the UK for the very first time. If you're interested in taking part you should check out this information page and then maybe sign up to receive further instructions about exact time and location. An email detailing when and where to assemble duly arrived in my inbox this morning, but the final destination remains top secret. Sounds fun though. Might see you there?
Details of previous American flash mobs:
• New York FM1: It all started in Claire's Accessories, with an instant crowd encouraged to assemble and browse through a selection of useless trinkets. Listen to an eye-witness report here.
• New York FM2: 100 people gathered round one particular carpet in the rug department of Macy's department store. Any member of the mob approached by a sales clerk was told to say they all lived together in a warehouse on the outskirts of New York and wanted a love rug to play on. Eye-witness report here.
• New York FM3: 250 people gathered on the mezzanine floor of the Grand Hyatt hotel next to Grand Central Station. At 7:12 precisely the mobsters broke into spontaneous, thunderous applause for 15 seconds, then dispersed. Eye-witness reports here and here.
• New York FM4: The mobsters met in one of four bars, according to birthdate, then converged on fancy shoe shop Otto Tootsi Plohound. Here they remained for exactly five minutes, pretending to be on a coach tour from Maryland. Eye-witness reports report here and here.
• New York FM5: This flash mob assembled on a ledge in Central Park and made animal noises. - first gentle realistic bird calls, then gibbon-like shrieks and finally a crescendo of "Come and get some Nature!" Eye witness reports here, here and here.
• San Francisco FM1: The first West Coast mob assembled at 6:27 by a pedestrian crossing. They then spent the next 10 minutes crossing the street spinning clockwise with their arms outstretched. Eye-witness reports here and here.
Also coming soon: New York FM6 (7th August), Amsterdam FM1 (8th August), San Francisco FM2 (9th August)
Lots more info here and here.
posted 07:00 : comments ()
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Robbiestock (Knebworth, 02/08/03)
Streaming across the fields of Hertfordshire they came, a crowd of biblical proportions, heading for the promised land of Knebworth. For they had heard the call of the chosen one, and his name was Robbie Williams. Verily did his disciples come, and the supporting acts, and the media, and the t-shirt sellers, and the purveyors of greasy food. And the sun did shine upon them, perhaps a bit too strongly, and the heaving throng had a most excellent time. And I was there.
You may have seen me on Channel 4 last night. I was the sixteenth pixel from the left, to the far left of the stage, behind the tree and the X-Box tent. Robbie may only have been about a centimetre tall from there but at least I could see him, some of the time, rather than having to rely on the big screens or waiting until I got home to watch it properly on video. I could also see the towers of Stevenage, glinting in the distance, a reminder of just how far we had to walk back to the station. The crowd was truly enormous, probably too much so for the confined space of the Knebworth arena, but they were present to experience rock music history in the making. Well, that's what it said in the paper anyway.
The gates opened at noon, and a steady stream of people made their way into the arena as the day wore on. Only those with a special yellow wristband were allowed into the large pit around the front of the stage - the rest of us had to make do with whatever space we could find and at whatever distance from the action. Some people queued to buy the official merchandise (sorry Robbie, it wasn't very good), some bought inflatable sofas to sit on, some risked a plastic tray of noodles or tray of plastic chips, everyone queued for very-necessary liquid refreshment, and most turned slowly redder and redder in the blazing sunshine. As people stripped down to the waist a huge number of tattoos were on show - celtic and chinese symbols, dragons, tigers, etc. It struck me that lobsters might have been a better choice.
First on stage, about three, were The Darkness. They announced that they were from Lowestoft and proceeded to strut around the stage in a retro-glam-heavy-rock style. Tellingly, Robbie Williams arrived by helicopter after they'd finished. Next on was Kelly Osbourne, who proved the perfect embodiment of fame over talent, followed later by Ash who stormed the crowd with a rocking set of guitar-power pop. And then, after Ash had left the stage, I made the mistake of going to the toilet. There were no toilets in our corner of the arena so this involved a nightmare 40-minute queueing stalemate to get up to the top of the field and back again. Next time, Knebworth, some crowd control would be appreciated in preference to bladder control. I was back just in time for Moby's hour long set, a marvellous mix of electro, gospel, funk and punk that was over too soon.
Robbie finally took to the stage before sunset, suspended bat-like over the stage. He charmed and transfixed the audience for a full two hours with a mixture of hits and styles old and new, a perfect showman in the Freddie Mercury tradition. We let him entertain us. Few people have established such a singalong back catalogue of hits as our Robbie, and the evening sometimes felt like mass karaoke alongside performance art. He was clearly in his element and just a little overawed by the experience, as were we. He saved Angels for the finale, complete with pyrotechnics to match the raised lighters in the crowd, and the night was topped off with a rocking version of the Take That classic Back for Good.
And then there was getting home. It took 15 minutes to get out of the arena, but more than another hour to walk out of the park thanks to some appallingly mismanaged bottlenecks. No cars were allowed to leave until the pedestrians had cleared, so I was glad to be travelling back by train even if the station was still a 2 mile walk away. It wouldn't surprise me if half the audience was still there, trapped in transport purgatory but probably considering going back in again today to enjoy the whole experience again. Me, I'm just going to rest my aching legs, rub in a bit more sun cream and rewind the video. No regrets.
posted 14:00 : comments ()
Number 2 - where the testimonial fountain used to be
Yet another match-based dispute. This one involved an angry march on Parliament which ended with a brutal battle against the police in Trafalgar Square. They don't mention that on the plaque. You can see the marvellously ornate drinking fountain as it used to be here. It was demolished merely so that Bow Road could be widened. Our loss.
posted 03:33 : comments ()
Saturday, August 02, 2003
Number 1 - the Bryant and May match factoryBack in Victorian times everybody needed matches, and there was a very good chance that those matches would have been made just down the road from me in Bow. The famous Bryant and May match factory on Fairfield Road was opened in 1861 (in a building previously used for making candles and, before that, crinolines). It wasn't a pleasant place to work, and the tinderbox conditions were to be the spark for a social revolution.
The match factory's 1400 workers were mostly young women, many under the age of 15. They worked in appalling conditions for up to 12 hours a day and for a wage of less than five shillings a week. A system of heavy fines was in place for offences such as talking, lateness, dropping matches or going to the toilet without permission. (Sounds much like working in a modern call centre). Many of the women suffered from 'phossy jaw', a particularly nasty form of bone cancer caused by handling the yellow phosphorous used in match production. First your skin turned yellow, then your hair fell out, then the whole side of your face turned green and then black, discharging foul-smelling pus, and finally you died. Workers rights were certainly not top of the management's list of priorities.
In 1888 a journalist called Annie Besant visisted the factory to see conditions for herself. She was appalled by what she saw. She wrote an damning article in her newspaper, The Link, exposing the dreadful conditions in the factory and contrasting these with huge payouts to shareholders. Bryant & May refuted her claims but, when a group of women at the factory refused to back the company, the rebels were immediately sacked. The fiery-tempered matchgirls walked out on strike, and the dispute was aflame.Strike action was almost unheard of in those days, but Annie and the matchgirls were not to be intimidated. They formed a union, held rallies in Bow and the West End, set up a system of strike pay and slowly gained the support of the British public through the national press. Influential people such as the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, Catherine Booth of the Salvation Army and George Bernard Shaw lent their support. Within a fortnight the company had relented and agreed major improvements to conditions of service and the removal of unfair practices. They also (eventually) agreed to move over to using the much-safer red phosphorus in match production. A few well-organised working class girls had fought back against their bosses and had won, and this victory ignited the trade union movement.
The Bryant & May match factory in Fairfield Road was rebuilt in 1911 - an enormous building that still stands today. Production of matches finally ceased in 1979. The building then lay derelict for a few years before property developers moved in and transformed the site into a hugely successful housing development called Bow Quarter. There's now a swimming pool, a sauna, a shop, a restaurant, even an estate agent, but many of the apartments are tiny and overpriced. The new inhabitants of the old match factory live in relatively opulent conditions, safely protected behind high fences and electronic gates. I wonder how many of them are aware that their property was once home to sick phossy-jawed girls working in extreme poverty. And don't mention socialist revolution, it might bring the property prices down.
Local links:
• The story of the matchgirls strike
• All about matches and match-making - from h2g2.
• Socialist Worker! Socialist Worker?
• Annie - the musical (contains such catchy songs as Phosphorus, Cockney sparrers and Look at that hat)
• Life amongst the matchgirls - the Essex Girls of their day.
• Bow Quarter today
posted 08:00 : comments ()
Friday, August 01, 2003
Take a Bow
I live in the small leafy village of Bow, a tiny medieval settlement by the river Lea and one of the original Tower Hamlets. Well, that's what the place was once. However, if you've ever driven through East London you probably know Bow better as that concrete wasteland with a church in the middle of the road. This is rather closer to the truth today, but there's still plenty of evidence around here of the old village and what happened as it grew up to become absorbed into the largest city in Europe.
The old Roman Road from London to Colchester crossed the River Lea here, originally at a fast-flowing ford. A stone bridge was built as a replacement about 900 years ago, and its bow-shape provided the name for the new village of Bow that grew up around it. Close by was St Leonard's Priory, a Benedictine nunnery founded in the time of William the Conqueror, and mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales.
"Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy.
And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly
After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe"
That 'church in the middle of the road' was founded in 1311 and formed the centre of the medieval village. Bow was also home to a number of breweries and riverside flour mills and the village soon became the bakery of London. Fresh loaves were taken by cart into the City each morning and with this prosperity came further growth. Samuel Pepys was a regular visitor to the green fields and great houses of 17th-century Bow, often riding out from inner London to take the clear air.
"It being a mighty fine afternoon; and there we went the first time out of town with our coach and horses, and went as far as Bow, the spring beginning a little now to appear, though the way be dirty; and so, with great pleasure, with the fore-part of our coach up, we spent the afternoon." (diary, March 5th 1669)
Bow grew rapidly during Victorian times, from a population of two thousand in 1801 to more than forty thousand in 1901, as the village was swallowed whole by the ever-expanding city of London. Many fine terraces and squares were built to the north of the main road, but there was also terrible poverty. The railways came, the riverside became heavily industrialised and the whole area tipped slowly into slum conditions along with the rest of the East End. Charles Dickens saw fit to set part of Nicholas Nickleby here, although admittedly not the most exciting of chapters.
`And I think, my dear brother,' said Nicholas's first friend, `that we were to let them that little cottage at Bow which is empty, at something under the usual rent'
There surely never was such a week of discoveries and surprises as the first week of that cottage. Every night when Nicholas came home, something new had been found out. One day it was a grapevine, and another day it was a boiler, and another day it was the key of the front-parlour closet at the bottom of the water-butt.
The Second World War took a heavy toll on Bow's buildings and their occupants, quickening the rebirth of the area as the remaining slums were cleared in a ground-breaking redevelopment scheme. Much of the old village centre round the church was buried forever beneath ugly ill-thought-out concrete, but elsewhere many of the better Victorian terraces have survived. The gentrification of Bow is well underway, and any estate agent will tell you that the area definitely is on the up again. But alas, it's very hard to stand here now and picture rolling fields, lush pastures and Samuel Pepys riding by.
posted 08:00 : comments ()
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