With my fresh Travelcard I have continued to visit London boroughs I haven't been to for ages, indeed in the last three weeks I've now visited all 33. Here are some more photos from the great unvisited.
Hounslow: unvisited for 160 days
The first V1 bomb to hit London during WW2 randomly hit a railway bridge in Mile End, whereas the first V2 hit a street in Chiswick. The V2 was a fearsome weapon, the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile and the height of a four storey building. It was also supersonic so unlike the V1 made no warning noise before it landed, and the first to arrive would have been the most unexpected of all. This landed in Staveley Road on the Chiswick Park Estate, a quiet suburban avenue tucked between Chiswick station and Chiswick House, and left a crater 30 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Such was the force of the blast that eleven houses were destroyed and a dozen more seriously damaged, making it abundantly clear that something dangerously new had just arrived. It was twenty to seven on the evening of Friday 8th September 1944, and the rocket had been fired from the Dutch coast just five minutes earlier.
Three people died, including three-year-old Rosemary Clarke who was asleep in a cot in her front bedroom, and nextdoor 68-year-old Ada Harrison who ran three local sweet shops. The final fatality was army engineer Bernard Browning who was on leave at the time and walking to the station to see his girlfriend... wrong time, wrong place. It took 60 years for a memorial to be placed at the site, or rather squeezed into a gap beside an adjacent electricity sub-station because the actual landing spot was in the middle of the road. The site now also has an extremely detailed information board, from which it's possible to transcribe all sorts of useful details in lieu of independent research. All the houses were rebuilt and the road today is a quintessential middle class backwater lined with cherry trees, and my word the magnolia are resplendent, and only a block of granite reminds us that sometimes the horror of war lands in suburbia with no warning.
Hammersmith & Fulham: unvisited for 160 days All Saints Fulham is an ancient church beside the northern approach to Putney Bridge. You may know it as that church whose lightning conductor impaled that actor who played Doctor Who in that seminal horror film The Omen, but I know it best as the church where I was a page boy. It was a Saturday in 1968 and I'd been dressed up in what the happy couple thought was a smart red uniform, but I remember being less convinced. I got to process up the aisle with a bridesmaid I didn't know and then had to stand there throughout the ceremony, except nobody had told me how important it was to stay put. So when I decided I needed a wee so I merrily abandoned my post and trotted back to where my parents were sitting, and my Dad suddenly found himself lumbered with taking me outside. My black trousers hadn't been tailored for convenience so relief was by no means straight-forward, and then I trotted back in as if nothing untoward had happened. Never trust a three year-old to stand still.
This week I saw the church was open so went back inside and revisited the scene of my urinary disgrace. It's a very fine building, if a bit too Gothic to be the original, but quite the backdrop for a wedding all the same. It must also be very expensive to maintain because dozens of notices pleading for donations have been placed around the building, as well as terminals where you can tap a debit card to pay £2, £5 or £10. I walked up the aisle again and stood at the foot of the chancel steps where I once had before, if a lot lower down, then walked back out and tried to spot where I must have relieved myself. The yew avenue would have been a dead cert so long as the trees were as thick then as they are now, otherwise there was this one particular shady tomb, or else god forbid the side of the building. At least my bladder control is better now than it was then.
Barnet: unvisited for 730 days (i.e. exactly two years)
In a bonanza year for London station openings, Brent Cross West should be another. It'll be an intermediate Thameslink stop between Cricklewood and Hendon, and not so very far from the start of the M1 at Staples Corner. Previously there wasn't much call for a station here because the surrounding area was all industrial estate, but Barnet council spotted an opportunity and now everything to the east of the railway has been demolished to provide over 6000 homes. Last time I walked through it was all mothballed sheds, but today it's a massive expanse of earth ringed by yellow hoardings that's being moulded by a fleet of diggers, dumpers and cranes. What's coming are dense stacks of flats with all the charisma of Colindale, and what's open is a small visitor centre with a cafe for making expressions of interest.
The best view is currently from the unredeveloped side, concealed round the back of Decathlon in the horriblest bit of the Edgware Road. The station's still very much a skeleton, with an incomplete footbridge and as yet no way down let alone a welcoming piazza out front. It's nowhere you'd want to hang around, nor did it look like somewhere you could catch a train from in nine months' time, but let's wait and see. The station's much harder to see on the other side where a fenced-off footpath weaves through a building site into the face of full-on construction traffic, but all still at some considerable distance. I can see why they've located the sales office as far away from here as possible bookended by some 1930s semis. Latest drone view here.
Croydon: unvisited for 746 days (i.e. two years and two weeks)
Every time I go back to the Whitgift Centre some more shops have closed, and after a two year gap the difference is really noticeable. It's by no means dead and several big hitters remain, but elsewhere units are sheltering temporary art projects or more likely empty and footfall has definitely decreased. The future of the 60s mall has been in question ever since long-term potential partners Westfield pulled out, and given the council's financial tribulations I doubt anyone else'll be coming on board any time soon. Alas Waterstones didn't have the book I wanted.
Merton: unvisited for 746 days
It turns out you can walk from Mitcham to Mitcham Junction round the backs of gardens beside the tram tracks, pretty much, and I do not recommend it.
Sutton: unvisited for 746 days
I also went to Sutton but I forgot to take a photo. Still, that's the full set.
