For Open House Day Two I zipped around the capital and visited seven different and quite varied properties. It was a long day. I therefore don't have the time or energy to write about them all, not right now, so instead I've prioritised selecting some good photos and uploading them to Flickr. There are 24 photos over there, not just the seven you can see here.
I will write them all up here eventually, maybe some of them later today, because it's only right to give everything a proper mention. But for the time being you'll have to make do with a couple of sentences and some notes, which will magically transform into proper paragraphs at some later date, which you may or may not want to make the effort to come back and read.
This stack of studios occupies a former veneer factory on the banks of the Hertford Canal in Bow. I made the mistake of going into the gallery first where some sparse buckets are masquerading as an exhibition until September, whereas the actual Open House bit was a warren of artists' hideaways arrayed across three floors upstairs. Notes: A bit like Bow Arts, born in the 1980s, small archive exhibition, long white corridors, buzzing, Kevin Harrison's narrative sculptures, he likes a good title, Sara Heywood's blankety camera obscura, two dance studios, deserted brewery underneath which the council won't/can't transform, long term future uncertain. Photos:three
Open House:City Hall (Royal Docks) The Relocated One
The original City Hall by Tower Bridge was always a good Open House draw with its looping staircase and 9th floor observation gallery, aka London's Living Room. The new City Hall overlooking the Dangleway feels more spacious but certainly wasn't attracting a crowd, which I guess is what happens when you make democracy cheaper. Notes: Security palaver, sorry I forgot my keys, London's Living Room 2, Olympic medal/torch cabinet, 4 low-slung committee rooms, a few moulting trees, recent winner of the Architects' Journal Retrofit & Reuse Award for Fit-out (£2 million and over), timber-edged council chamber, entry via the cafe, bank of raised seating, beats watching on Zoom. Photos:four
Open House:Flanders House (Cavendish Square) The Misjudged One
I don't think this Belgian trade outpost understood the Open House agenda, because reading some boards about modern architecture and watching a 3 minute video loop urging viewers to Invest in Flanders wasn't really worth the effort of turning up. Notes: none Photos: none
Just downstream from Tower Bridge is a four-armed pontoon where 19 historic vessels are moored, creating a houseboat hub with one of the best views in London. Open Weekends are held three times a year, one of which always coincides with Open House and the next should be in March. Notes: Down the ramp, central community room serving tea and cakes, unexpectedly wobbly, characterful wooden-masted barges, wonderful mini-gardens, the Shard lines up between the rigging, evidence of happy tidal living, visiting Dutch sloop with boarding opportunities, unexpected Lancaster bomber overhead. Photos:four
Open House:The Mission (Limehouse) The Centenary One
The British Sailors' Society Mission opened in 1924 on Commercial Road as somewhere for sailors at the London Docks to stay between trips. As trade ceased it inevitably became unnecessary and for the last 30 years it's been repurposed as private housing. A lush blue-tiled staircase climbs to a roof terrace with views of the communal garden and of local landmarks in an unusual alignment. Notes: Big anchor outside, evidence of occasional barbecues, splayed walkways, former chapel also converted to housing, model of the building on the fourth floor landing, maritime mouldings on the roof terrace, a new perspective on the East End. Photos:three
Open House:RSA (Charing Cross) The Self-Congratulatory One
20 years ago, indeed 20 years ago today, I received a letter from the RSA inviting me to become a Fellow of their esteemed 232-year-old organisation. They didn't convince me then, and having now been on an hour-long tour of their labyrinthinely sociable HQ they didn't convince me this time, indeed if this Open House jolly was meant as a recruitment drive they really blew it at the end. Notes: Most popular building of the day, multiple historic rooms, bust of Prince Philip, actual Wedgwood ceiling, gilded roll of honour, 4-sided mural 25 years in the making, all the latest digital modcons, ooh the door they often pretend is 10 Downing Street in TV dramas, Coffee House, modern backstairs, original 18th century cobbled street preserved inside cinema, huge subterranean brick vaults, art exhibition with DJ, bifocal chandelier, stroppy visitor with chip on shoulder, gauche attempt to hide how much membership costs. Photos:six
At the age of 20 Vincent Van Gogh's job brought him to London and he stayed for a year in Stockwell within walking distance of his Covent Garden office. That lodging house has recently been restored as a museum/art/creative space so you can explore inside, stand in the garden and see his bedroom at the top of the house - normally for £7.50 but for Open House it was conveniently free. Notes: Such an innocuous corner of SW9, memorabilia and letters from the time, everyone was young once, she called him "Van Go", winding wooden stairs, a fairly feeble amount of modern art dotted around, nice paint job on the landing, ooh the actual room he stayed in, the view out of the window is now of a school... and it's called Van Gogh Primary. Photos:four
It's that time of year again when hundreds of London properties open their doors to the public if you know where to look. It's also the time of year that I visit lots of places and write about them, so steel yourself. That said I only visited two yesterday, way out in far-flung Havering, having long thought "I'd love to see them but they don't really fit in with anywhere else I'm going." Both were old buildings, both were fascinating, and in both cases the true nature of the owner came as a slow reveal. In good news the more interesting of the two is open again today.
Open House:The Round House (Havering-atte-Bower) The Elliptical One
If you've walked the London Loop you'll have seen this extraordinary building, all round and turrety, as you make a start on section 21.
But this is not the Round House, it's a water tower erected by the South East Essex Water Company in 1934.
The Round House is a couple of doors down, mostly hidden behind trees, and is considerably older. It's also not round, it's patently elliptical.
The Round House was built in Havering-atte-Bower around 1794 by City lawyer William Sheldon, a man of wealth. It's believed architect John Plaw was invited to design the house which was heavily based on Belle Isle, one of his earlier creations that still sits on an island in the middle of Lake Windermere. What he built here on an Essex hilltop was an elegant oval stucco villa with three floors, plus a sub-basement underneath where the skivvier aspects of the house were hidden. The Italianate roof is shallow-pitched with a copper top and eaves that project a metre above the attic windows. Some of these details would later become the height of fashion but they were rare for the 1790s, hence the Round House merits an asterisked Grade II* listing. And it has quite a history.
Sheldon never lived here, he hired it out before selling it off fairly swiftly in 1807. It then passed through various families by marriage, ending up in the hands of a Romford vicar who used the large field out back to satisfy his passion for breeding roses. During WW2 it was requisitioned by the army and may have been used to house PoWs, before falling into disrepair and being bought up by Mr Heap, the owner of the Hall nextdoor. Weatherproofing proved very expensive, ultimately cripplingly so, and it was 1982 before renovations finally allowed his son to move in along with his wife and young daughter Imogen. The Round House is now Imogen's domain and she opens up every year for Open House, with an exemplary array of introductory refreshments in a yurt on the lawn.
The first part of the tour is around the outside, admiring the sleek curves and the copper top and the clever drainpipes that ran inside the building to stop them freezing in winter. A particularly interesting outbuilding is the old dairy, half squashed by a tree in the Great Storm of 1987, and since repurposed as a cute brick summerhouse. From here a low passage ducks beneath an arch to join up with an elliptical passage around the foot of the building once used by servants to gain access. Anyone important would have entered up the Portland stone steps at the front and been confronted by the central hallway with its curving cantilever staircase. "No photos in the house," said Imogen, "but there's a full visual walkthrough online" (which you can delight in here).
We climbed circuitously to the second floor and admired the modern mural on the oval toplight. We stood in the one place in the bedroom where you can see all the way to the City of London above the tops of the trees. On the first floor we stepped out cautiously onto the narrow copper balcony. We squeezed into the shower room where Imogen had managed to persuade English Heritage to let her strip back the walls to reveal the original layered structure beneath. On the ground floor we admired dazzling paintjobs, also the new kitchen her mother had added because making food in the scullery and hoisting it up by dumb waiter was no longer practical.
And all the time we were thinking "this is not what the inside of a house normally looks like", it having been generously decked out with art rooms and creative opportunities for all-round stimulation, and on the ground floor a music room to make any inventive child squeal with delight. Imogen's plan is not to live here but to create an community of the arts where children and their families can explore and learn beyond the usual curriculum, modus operandi to be confirmed but possibly incorporating blockchain and AI. Only when we reached the basement did the penny finally drop as we were led into a recording studio (the Hideaway) with a modest gesture towards the far shelf "...and those are my Grammys".
Because the Round House is the childhood home and current passion of the musician ImogenHeap, BRIT School alumnus and electropop pioneer, and winner of the Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in 2010. I see now why she called that album Ellipse. She also has a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2016 because she co-wrote and produced the final track on Taylor Swift's seminal album 1989, and is responsible for thescore of the West End play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (both parts). This is not what you expect when you wander in off a farm track past an anonymous Open House banner. I left buzzing, and wishing I was 10 again so I could go back and enjoy the reborn Round House properly.
Open House:Bower House (Havering-atte-Bower) The Country Mansion One
The lofty heights of Havering-atte-Bower were much in demand by moneyed City types in the 18th century, Bower House being founded by Serjeant-at-Law John Baynes in 1729. He hired a young architect called Henry Flitcroft (who'd later be let loose on parts of Woburn Abbey) and he knocked up a two storey redbrick mansion with views across three counties. For the stairwell he invited Sir James Thornhill to paint a mural, he the man most famous for the ceiling of the Painted Hall in Greenwich which likely explains how Bower House got a Grade I listing. You'll find it on Orange Tree Hill just below the Orange Tree pub, and if it's Open House a very polite suited youth will beep the sidegate and let you in.
Black suits and youth appeared to be common to most of the volunteers showing us round, each perking up with explanatory background every time you walked into a fresh room. They wanted to enthuse about the portraits, the panelling and the backstory, for example the sculpted arms of Edward III above the fireplace in the hall which looked too fresh to be genuine, but the original owners had apparently been convinced of its veracity. They're cheerily forceful this lot, I thought, as I tried to make a break for it on the stairs but was told to wait until the end of the recap so I could learn that Inigo Jones designed the plasterwork on the ceiling.
The NW Bedchamber was strange because it had clearly been converted into a bar at some point but wasn't now. It turned out the building had been acquired by the Ford Motor Company in 1970 and was used by management as a training centre, so I suspect many a pint of Double Diamond was pulled behind that counter whereas now it saw nothing worse than the occasional coffee or soft drink. In the library upstairs our host was keen to say it had been the main bedchamber and point out where the fireplace used to be, whereas I was scanning the pristine collection of religious books and magazines and trying to work out who Watchman Nee and Witness Lee might be.
It turns out that Bower House is the main UK facility for a Christian charity called the Amana Trust - has been since 2005 - and they use it for seminars and as a residential training centre. Here students can embark on a two-year Bible school course, the Amana Trust being particularly keen on picking apart the holy book in intricate detail. I appreciate that they didn't try to foist any of this on Open House visitors, nor direct everyone out through their bookshop, merely leaving a few free booklets on a table in a single room. I would have stayed for a free cup of tea and a packet of biscuits but the 375 was leaving from outside in a few minutes so I left them to it, eyes opened to what goes on behind yet another normally-closed door.
Birmingham stations quiz
Here are alternative names for 20 stations in Birmingham.
How many can you identify?
1) Cider Pub 2) Fresh Road 3) Valets Path 4) Jump Street 5) Upland Road 6) Student Hub 7) Tree Quartet 8) Stony Mound 9) Wintry Mount 10) Little Common
11) Half Half Ring 12) Perfume Forest 13) Dark Chocolate 14) Pork Substitute 15) Lengthy Crossing 16) Like Heavyweight 17) Emerald Vestibule 18) Crossroads Plus One 19) London Borough Chilly Pasture 20) A Male Chicken's Inexperienced
1)Ozzy the Bull, who you may remember stole the show at the 2022 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, has been relocated to take pride of place at New Street station. To be fair he's been there since last summer but this is the first time I've seen him which is why this is 'news'. When you walk into Grand Central, the shopping mall atop the cavernous station, Ozzy's right there in the middle looking immense and bovine. Even better, every hour from 10:15am to 8:15pm he wakes up and performs, by which I mean his eyes light up and he moves his head from side to side very slowly. A bit of theatrical heavy breathing can be heard from time to time. After six shakes Ozzy goes back into a deep sleep for 57 minutes, but by then everyone who wanted photos or video has their digital content and a smile on their face.
2) The fibreglass animal of choice in Birmingham this summer is the bear. I found Jester in the Piccadilly Arcade, and apparently his themed decoration represents historic exploitation or something. He and his nine fellow bears are on the streets until 1st October, and quite frankly this kind of artificial placemaking trail lost its allure some time ago.
3) It's Cadbury's bicentenary this year, if you count the birth of the company from the day in 1824 when John Cadbury opened a grocer's shop at 93 Bull Street, two of whose products were cocoa and drinking chocolate prepared using a pestle and mortar. You can see a model of the shop made out chocolate at Cadbury World, but I wanted to see where it really was so I went to the original site in the city centre. Being Birmingham the entire block has alas been knocked down and redeveloped, possibly more than once, so there was nothing to see. Address-wise My Hair My Beauty is at 95-96 Bull Street, whereas Cex nextdoor is at 89-90 Bull Street so there isn't even a 93 any more, so basically don't waste your time looking.
4) Last time I was in Birmingham, which was 18 months ago, workmen were finishing off the new tram junction on the corner of Bull Street and Corporation Street in readiness for the Metro's Digbeth extension. They've now finished, as you'd expect, but the tracks go barely 100m before ending up in a mess of roadworks and unfinished rails so the new extension feels as far away as ever. I blame HS2.
5) HS2 has taken over a massive swathe of sort-of central Birmingham, mostly without a lot to see behind the barriers. The old station building on Curzon Street stands empty and pretty much alone, other than the Victorian pub across the road which is very busy on a Friday after work. Beyond all that I saw what looked like three pristine white viaducts, so might be where the platforms are going to go or else where they'll join on. What I learned from staring at these vacant acres is that it's not just Euston and Old Oak Common that are essentially an extremely unfinished railway desert, so is the Birmingham end.
6) Chiltern Railways are running a special promotion on Fridays this month where you can get tickets from London to Birmingham/Oxford for next to nothing. Ian Visits has the details, as ever, but the key thing is you have to book at the start of the week if you want to travel on the Friday. I paid just £6.40 to get to Moor Street (and another £6.40 to get back), and this is why you're reading the news from Birmingham today.
It was a strong Labour performance, taking over half of the votes, although turnout was only 15% so it's not quite as thumping a win as it looks. The Greens leapt into second place, reflecting a recent Green renaissance across this part of London, although their leaflet game was strong with three separate missives landing in my letterbox. The Conservative leaflet arrived so late that I'd already voted.
None of this will affect how Tower Hamlets council is run because we have a Mayoral system so Lutfur Rahman can do what he likes, indeed his Aspire party didn't even bother to put up a candidate. But Bow East's former councillor is now the MP for Westminster and the City, so who knows where Abdi might end up?
2) Bus Stop M still doesn't have a poster saying that route 8 no longer stops here. That's pretty appalling given it's now seven days after the route was curtailed to Old Ford. Meanwhile one of the posters at Bow Church DLR has been ripped off (and the other is heading that way), which is fine because route 8 never stopped there anyway.
Hurrah, it's that time of year again when TfL silently updates its spreadsheet of annual passenger entry/exit totals at every tube station.
To be honest they did this last month, that's how silently the data was updated, but at least this all happened pre-cyberattack.
As usual passenger numbers are surveyed for a typical week in autumn then multiplied up to a full year. In good news this is the first year since the pandemic free from any travel restrictions, so we're now back to whatever the new normal is. 2023 was also the first full year of Crossrail operations so what follows has a somewhat purple tinge in places.
London's ten busiest tube stations (2023)(with changes since 2022) 1) King's Cross St Pancras (72m) 2) Waterloo (70m) 3) Victoria (60m) 4) ↑3 Tottenham Court Road (59m) 5) Liverpool Street (57m) 6) ↓2 London Bridge (55m) 7) ↑1 Stratford (54m) 8) ↓2 Oxford Circus (51m) 9) Paddington (49m) 10) ↑3 Farringdon (40m)
It's business as normal at the head of the list where King's Cross, Waterloo and Victoria remain in the top three slots. But Crossrail is making itself felt with Tottenham Court Road climbing to fourth place, indeed half of the tube's Top 10 are also on the Elizabeth line. The spreadsheet confirms that this is gateline data, i.e. passengers entering or exiting the station, so interchanges are not counted and no distinction is being made regarding mode of travel. Oxford Circus remains the busiest tube-only station and Stratford is still the busiest tube station outside zone 1.
The next 10: Bond Street, Bank/Monument, Canary Wharf, Euston, Green Park, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, South Kensington, Moorgate, North Greenwich
London's ten busiest tube stations outside Zone 2 (2023) 1) ↑1 Wembley Park (15.5m) 2) ↑2 Ealing Broadway (15.4m) 3) Barking (15.1m) 4) ↑1 Walthamstow Central (13.3m) 5) ↑1 Tottenham Hale (13.2m) 6) ↑1 Tooting Broadway (12.4m) 7) ↓6 Seven Sisters (12.2m) 8) Wimbledon (11.2m) 9) East Ham (10.8m) 10) Wood Green (9.1m)
Wembley Park scrapes into first place here, its roster of world class events beating the Crossrail influence at Ealing Broadway. Barking is the only other zone 4 station in the Top 10. Seven Sisters tumbles from the top spot, losing a quarter of its gateline numbers compared to 2022. Nevertheless northeast London has a particularly strong showing including two other stations on the Victoria line (Blackhorse Road just misses out in 11th place). If the list were to continue then Harrow-on-the-Hill (8.4m) would be the highest performing station in Zone 5 and Uxbridge (5.4m) the busiest in Zone 6.
London's ten busiest tube stations that are only on one line
Canary Wharf, North Greenwich, Vauxhall, Brixton, Camden Town, Old Street, Knightsbridge, Walthamstow Central, Covent Garden, Tooting Broadway
Tube stations with over 20% more passengers in 2023 than 2022
Richmond, Tufnell Park, Farringdon, Upminster, Chalfont & Latimer, Whitechapel, South Harrow
Tube stations with over 10% fewer passengers in 2023 than 2022
South Ealing, Seven Sisters, South Kenton, Lancaster Gate, Finsbury Park, Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch
This is still my favourite list of the year...
London's 10 least busy tube stations (2023) 1) Roding Valley (268000) 2) Chigwell (332000) 3) Grange Hill (397000) 4) North Ealing (606000) 5) Theydon Bois (734000) 6) ↑2 Ruislip Gardens (807000) 7) ↓1 Moor Park (808000) 8) ↑6 South Kenton (821000) 9) Croxley (838000) 10) ↓3 Upminster Bridge (854000)
Roding Valley remains the least used station on the Underground, just like it always is. The Essex end of the Central line has a very strong showing including all three stops on the Hainault shuttle, as per usual. North Ealing is unusually lightly used for a zone 3 station, but that's because Ealing Broadway and West Acton are close by and more useful. It's worth saying that South Kenton doesn't have a gateline so TfL go along and do a proper manual count, that's how seriously they take this data.
n.b. In this particular set of data Kensington (Olympia) counts as an Overground station, recording 2.3m passengers last year, whereas if you were only to count District line passengers it'd almost certainly beat Roding Valley and be the tube's least used station.
The next 10: Ickenham, Fairlop, Chesham, West Harrow, West Acton, Barkingside, West Ruislip, North Wembley, West Finchley, Hillingdon
The least busy tube station in each zone (2023) zone 1) Regent's Park (2.3m) zone 2) Goldhawk Road (1.8m) zone 3) North Ealing (0.6m) zone 4) Roding Valley (0.3m) zone 5) Ruislip Gardens (0.8m) zone 6) Theydon Bois (0.7m) zone 7) Moor Park (0.8m) zone 8) Chalfont & Latimer (1.6m) zone 9) Chesham (1.0m)
And while we're here...
DLR Top 5: Canary Wharf (12m), Limehouse, Cutty Sark, Lewisham, Woolwich Arsenal
DLR Bottom 5: Beckton Park (0.5m), Stratford High Street, Abbey Road, Elverson Road, Royal Albert
n.b. Tube stations with DLR services don't count, otherwise Bank, Stratford and Canning Town would be in the Top 5.
Beckton Park remains Tumbleweed Central after the neighbouring office development stalled. Pudding Mill Lane spent two decades in the Bottom 5 but thanks to ABBA it's no longer even in the Bottom 10.
n.b. Tube stations with Crossrail services don't count, otherwise every station from Paddington to Whitechapel would beat everything here.
Southall, West Drayton and Acton Main Line all more than doubled their passenger numbers in 2023 compared to 2022, such was the impact of launching cross-London services.
Overground Top 10: Clapham Junction (13m), Liverpool Street, Denmark Hill, Shoreditch High Street, Shepherd's Bush, Hackney Central, Dalston Junction, New Cross Gate, Dalston Kingsland, Surrey Quays Overground Bottom 10: Emerson Park (0.3m), Headstone Lane, South Hampstead, Bushey, Hatch End, Theobalds Grove, Kilburn High Road, Wandsworth Road, South Acton, Barking Riverside
n.b. Tube stations with Overground services don't count.
Barking Riverside being one of the ten least used Overground stations is disappointing given it's the sole station on an extension that cost £327m, but that's because they built the railway before most of the houses.
And as we await the imminent renaming of the Overground lines, here's a final list with a touch of zeitgeist about it.
The least used station on each Overground line (2023) Suffragette line: Barking Riverside (844000) Mildmay line: South Acton (749000) Windrush line: Wandsworth Road (747000) Weaver line: Theobalds Grove (686000) Lioness line: Headstone Lane (459000) Liberty line: Emerson Park (274000)
In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Kempton Park, one stop beyond Hampton on the Shepperton line, a station which exists solely because of the racecourse alongside. Originally trains only stopped on race days, in which case one stop beyond was Sunbury, but in 2006 the station got a spruce up and became a regular part of the rail network. It's still not terribly busy.
None of Britain's 59 racecourses are in London but Kempton Park very nearly is, by a matter of 100m or so. It opened in 1878 after a businessman bought up the grounds of Kempton's ancient manor and turned 200 acres over to jockeying. It has two concentric courses, a larger triangular circuit with jumps used for National Hunt racing and an inner loop used for flat racing, so is a very flexible site. Its biggest race is the King George VI Stakes on Boxing Day, plus several other extravaganzas between September and April, but Monday evening racing seems to be how it ticks over across the year. I dodged that, not least to avoid the dress code which officially says to come “dressed to feel your best” but appears alongside photos of ladies with fascinators and tweedy men in baker boy caps.
On a Wednesday the place is almost deserted, but you can walk into the enormous car park if you want to have a chat with a bloke in a cabin about selling your vehicle. Elsewhere course staff were taking advantage of the inactivity by painting the ticket gates, strimming the topiary and nipping up the floodlights to check the CCTV. As you'd expect you can see very little of the course without paying, only the back of the grandstand and a welcoming lobby, but squint through the gates and a couple of equine statues are visible in the parade ring (one's Desert Orchid and one's Kauto Star) and also a slim distant curve of white rail. I understand things are very different here on Thursdays when "the largest weekday market in the South of England" turns up, so if you fancy fashion, flowers, footwear and food, including cut price deals from the team at Bracknell Meats, that's today.
Kempton Park station is only accessible through the racecourse car park, and from the far end. Passengers arriving from London get to walk straight out, whereas those heading back into town have to hike over a broad lattice footbridge, which can't be easy in high heels after an afternoon on the fizz. This platform is substantially covered by a wooden canopy, all the better to protect a grandstandful of racegoers when the next train could be up to half an hour away. The big news, according to a poster, is that contactless payments are coming to Kempton Park in 10 days time, which might make the ticket machine almost redundant.
It's so quiet here that this would be London's fourth least used station if only it were in the capital, so I wasn't surprised to have the place entirely to myself. I was surprised when I saw what looked like Harry Potter walking over the bridge, but it turned out to be a young cleaner in an SWR tabard carrying a broom. A few genuine London-bound passengers ambled across a short time before the next train was due to leave, but generally Sunbury station is much more convenient so the vast majority of locals head there instead. It's only 600m away and has an identical service, but it gets six times the footfall.
Nobody lives to the north of the station - a land of waterworks and reservoirs and also a rumbly Highways Department depot. The dual carriageway which carves through is the A316, but after barely any distance this is the precise point where the M3 begins and launches itself over the Sunbury Cross roundabout. A footbridge leads across the maelstrom to a giant Costco and a Land Rover showroom, although quite frankly everyone drives, and these are further reasons why the station is so quiet. London begins halfway down the first layby, which is the location (you may remember) of the capital's only addressable location in the TW16 postcode, a painted shipping container with a greasy spoon cafe inside.
For anything vaguely interesting you have to head south into the streets of Lower Sunbury. The interest is admittedly only vague to start with, a slew of attractively anonymous avenues dotted with occasional recreational opportunities. Kempton Cricket Club has a thriving colts section, apparently, and the Sunbury Adult Learning Centre offers tai chi and lipreading for beginners on Tuesdays. Some people own a big pile and look like they've visited the aforementioned Land Rover dealer, others appear to have decorated the front of their homes via a catalogue that fell out of a magazine, but most live somewhere pleasantly normal by Surrey standards, i.e. one rung up from nearby Hounslow.
Houses generally get older the nearer you get to the Thames as befits a riverside settlement with ancient roots. French Street is named after Huguenot refugees who once settled here, and also once housed Gary Wilmot so is patently historic. Alas I can't tell you about the lovely church, the Millennium Embroidery cafe, the Walled Garden or The Three Fishes pub because they're all marginally closer to Sunbury station than to Kempton Park. But I did explore some of the newer properties by the riverside, places where boatlovers who don't mind their gardens being submerged occasionally still want to live. At one point the motley houses break to leave space for a narrow footbridge across to three dozen properties on Sunbury Court Island, and I hate to think how its residents cope on house removals day.
But one of the islands is undeveloped and accessible, that's Rivermead Island, and the locals use it like you'd use a local park. Access is over a low bow-shaped footbridge past signs warning no BBQs, no tents, no marquees, no bivouacs, no dog fouling and no fishing without a licence. On the far bank the Thames drifts languidly by, relatively narrowly for those used to Central London widths, with views across to a giant weir fed by a water treatment works. But what's weird is that halfway along this minor island the local authority suddenly switches from Spelthorne to Elmbridge, indeed it used to switch from Middlesex to Surrey, indeed there used to be a coal tax post by the waterside. Whatever's going on?
It turns out this one island used to be two islands but the channel between them silted up. On the far side was Swans Rest Island whose fishing rights were linked to the southern side, hence the administrative disconnect, but today you simply step across through the trees without ever realising. Follow the clearing to the wooded tip, three minutes max, and you emerge opposite a landing stage facing the minor navigation channel behind Sunbury Court Island. I suspect this is a favourite drinking spot for local youth and perhaps not for the very faint hearted, but I think I'd rather be here than at the racing in tweed and a baker boy cap.
Underwhelming London: Pig Farm Alley, Worcester Park
Pig Farm Alley is a long straight path, off limits to traffic, in the London borough of Sutton. It runs from Trafalgar Avenue, off Stonecot Hill, to an edgeland nomansland by the Lower Morden Equestrian Centre. It's about a kilometre in length, all of it immediately alongside the boundary with Merton. It felt quite hemmed in by railings on both sides, with only a couple of exits along the way. This probably has a fascinating backstory, I thought. I may have been wrong.
It looked like it was going to run alongside the Pyl Brook, but that bore off too early. At one point a really tall fork lift truck poked over the highest part of the fence, because local sights include the Garth Road Reuse and Recycling Centre. The only people I saw along the path were cyclists, this no doubt a result of the alley being upgraded to a shared use path in 2014. The graffiti artist @worcesterparksfinest has been colourfully busy along one stretch of wall. A couple of pylons really added to the ambience at the far end.
My interest was piqued when I saw a sign saying this was PROW 1, i.e. Public Right Of Way 1, because Sutton like to use the PROW acronym on their footpath signs. Ooh, I thought, I could run a feature on the lowest numbered footpath in every Outer London borough. But when I checked for Public Rights of Way on Sutton's website all they have is a map with red lines on it, none of them numbered, so my footpath idea fell at the first fence.
What I've since discovered is that Pig Farm Alley was once the southern boundary of Morden Common, ancient grazing lands originally under the control of the Manor of Morden. Part was used for market gardening, including "a strawberry farm, where gooseberries and raspberries as well were grown in abundance". Part became a brickworks with stables, an engine house and moulding sheds, now replaced by the Garth Road industrial estate. Part became a cemetery, but not the big cemetery round here, the smaller one. Merton Historical Society published an excellent 8-page history of Morden Common in 1991 which is available to read here, but that still doesn't make the area especially interesting.
What the booklet doesn't say, because it's on the Sutton side, is that the Worcester ParkSewage Works at the northern end was closed in the 1990s and transformed into New England-style housing. You don't really see that from Pig Farm Alley because of the fencing. And the reason it's called Pig Farm Alley is because before World War Two there used to be a pig farm at the far end, nothing more, nothing less. As Underwhelming London goes, Pig Farm Alley is right up there.
In Motspur Park I saw a newsagent that still has an advert for the Surrey Comet above the awning. Is that still going, I wondered. And yes, it turns out it still publishes, though now as the Epsom & Surrey Comet.
So I wondered what other weeklylocalnewspapers London still has.
Here's my attempt at a list, which will be wrong.
Barnet Borough Times Brent & Kilburn Times Ealing Times Harrow Times Hillingdon & Uxbridge Times Uxbridge Gazette Camden New Journal Hampstead & Highgate Express Enfield Independent Tottenham & Wood Green Independent Westminster Extra
Barking and Dagenham Post Docklands & East London Advertiser Hackney Gazette Islington Gazette Islington Tribune Newham Recorder Ilford Recorder Romford Recorder Wanstead & Woodford Recorder Your Local Guardian
Epsom & Surrey Comet Richmond & Twickenham Times Wimbledon & Wandsworth Times Sutton & Croydon Guardian Croydon Advertiser
Over the weekend TfL withdrew bus route 549, extended route W13 and substantially restructured routes W12 and W14. I wrote about the changes last week, and how TfL's information strategy relied substantially on a very complicated map. I went back yesterday to see how the implementation had gone, and it turned out it had gone bafflingly.
In good news the buses were going to the right places and all the tiles had been successfully changed. That's not always a given. In bad news the apps hadn't picked up the changes yet, there were no timetables anywhere and the very complicated map wasn't really helping. Unsurprisingly passengers were somewhat confused.
I caught the W12 from Woodford Bridge ("hang on, where's the W14 gone?"). I caught the W13 from Leyton Mills ("hang on, where's the W14 gone?"). But my most illustrative ride was when I attempted to catch the new W14 from Snaresbrook Road, so let me run you through that.
The W12 used to go this way, ran every 30 minutes and turned left at the end of the road. The W14 by contrast runs every 60 minutes and turns right. And the problem with an hourly bus that has no timetables is you have absolutely no idea when it's going to turn up. Normally I'd check the timetable at the bus stop but there wasn't one. Normally I'd then turn to an app but the underlying data hasn't been updated so that was no use. Normally I'd then turn to an online timetable but TfL's webpage hasn't been updated and the message "The stop you selected has now been removed from the route and therefore we cannot show you a timetable. The route page will be updated shortly to reflect these changes" was of no help. Normally I'd then turn to Robert Munster's excellent but unofficial londonbusroutes.net, but even that doesn't have a W14 timetable yet so I was stumped. The next W14 could be along in 1 minute or in 59 minutes and I had no idea which. My saviour came from an unlikely source.
A lady at the neighbouring care home opened the window to the day room and called over "you've just missed one". I think she was happy to have an audience to assist. "They changed it. It's only running every hour now. The next one's at quarter past." She told me all this twice. It turns out that when nobody's bothered to sort any timetables, what you really need is an old lady with time on her hands and a roadside sofa. I came back again at quarter past and she was bang on.
At the first stop in Wanstead High Street a middle-aged lady saw we were a W14 so boarded without thinking and sat absorbed in her smartphone. She didn't notice when we unexpectedly turned left down Nightingale Lane, something the W12 used to do, nor spot anything amiss as we weaved round tightly parked backstreets. Only when we reached South Woodford station ten minutes later did she suddenly twig the W14 had gone "the wrong way". She asked the driver whether he was going to Leytonstone and he shook his head, it being hard to have a conversation through glass, and she alighted somewhat disconsolate. I don't know if she spotted that either the W12 or the W13 would now take her there, but she didn't bother consulting the very complicated map before she left so perhaps she took the tube instead.
On my other bus journeys much of the chatter on board was about where the bus was going, or more often where it wasn't. Even folk with apps or Google on their phones, who aren't used to being confused, were very confused indeed due to the lack of up-to-date data. Are we going to Leyton, one woman asked the driver, and had to ask again because she thought he'd thought she said Leytonstone. It has to be said that having multiple buses heading to multiple places called Woodford Something, and also Leyton, Leytonstone and Loughton, doesn't make for simple exposition. As for the very complicated map, half its coloured lines were now obsolete and irrelevant because what would have been terribly useful wasn't a 'before and after', just an after. But the biggest issue was probably the lack of timetables, both online and at bus stops, making it ridiculously difficult to work out what was going where when.
It may be that TfL's ongoing cyberattack has caused some of these problems, in which case passengers across Redbridge and Waltham Forest are presently suffering in a somewhat unexpected way. Or it may just be an example of piss poor preparation and an institutional expectation that people should be able to work it all out, which it turns out they very much can't.
Roadworks are supposed to have started at the Bow Roundabout but they haven't yet, indeed it's possible they've actually been put back by two weeks. This is somewhat peeving given substantial bus mitigation has already taken place - five routes have had their frequency temporarily reduced and route 8 is now starting and finishing over half a mile away.
In good news there is now a poster saying that route 8 won't be stopping at Bow Church until 5am on a very specific Wednesday in 2025. In bad news the poster has been plonked outside Bow Church station, which isn't somewhere route 8 actually stops, indeed it's over 300m away. There is as yet no poster of any kind at Bus Stop M, only a continuing number of baffled passengers wasting their time waiting for buses that are never coming. If only they'd thought to walk here via the DLR they might have realised, and maybe over the next four months many of them will, but for now the only information provided is in the wrong place so not really helping. Theory: Whoever designed the poster thinks that route 8 stops at Bow Church DLR but it doesn't, and for that matter neither do alternative routes 276 and 488. All three stop at Bow Church instead.
We do have some new roadworks though, necessitating an annoying temporary set of traffic lights installed halfway between Bus Stop M and the Bow Roundabout. A gas company is digging up Payne Road which has entirely cut off the usual access to the McDonalds drivethrough, so cars now have to drive in from the Bow Road end which has been made temporarily two-way. The lights are 3-way to allow traffic from some flats to escape as well as from the restaurant, but generally absolutely nothing's coming out so traffic's queueing unnecessarily on Bow Road, and all squeezed into a single lane. Drivers aiming for McDonalds are generally baffled, and may or may not deduce that the diversion route involves a big loop via Old Ford. Thankfully it's only for a week. The real disruption has yet to begin.
Today I invite you join me on a hill-walking challenge in Kensington. The most well-known hill locally is Notting Hill, but that's a mere bump whereas I'll be tackling a proper summit and taking you to the very top of Campden Hill, a full 42 metres above sea level. Here it is on a topographic map, a raw bruise to the east of Holland Park, entirely untroubled by public transport. [1872 map][2024 map]
Campden Hill rises to the south of Notting Hill Gate, slotted inbetween Holland Park (the park) and Kensington Church Street. It's named after a baronet from Chipping Campden, Baptist Hicks, who built himself a house on open farmland here in the early 17th century. The land was sold off for housing in the 1820s, generally very grand housing with several acres of estate, and has been redeveloped much more densely over the years without ever losing its exclusivity. Thus on today's walk we'll be passing the former houses of poets, philosophers, photographers and detective novelists, even a bouffant Sixties chanteuse, as we climb up to the roof of Kensington.
The best place to set up base camp is on Kensington High Street, a mere 21m above sea level, where you can stock up on vital provisions before striking out for the summit. The nearest food outlet to the start of the ascent is the Orée boulangerie where a small strawberry tartlet will set you back £6.40, or if you prefer something sturdier for your backpack Holland and Barratt do a varied line in oaty flapjacks. I planned carefully and found Kensington Farmers' Market in full flow beside the Central Library, brimming over with sourdough loaves, shiitake trays and bone broth options, not to mention gourmet delights from the Tiny Fungi Wellness Shop. Come on a Sunday if you want to mingle with the smartly-dressed locals.
The mountain trail we seek is called Campden Hill Road, appropriately enough, and wends half a mile uphill from an access point between Santander and Amazon Fresh. Clues to the relative poverty of the local population can be found in the window of Dexters estate agents where the cheapest property starts at £1½m and weekly rents range from £692 to £8000. The path ahead is clear, a steady climb between three-storey stucco villas and the brick bulwarks of Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, all overshadowed by a line of luscious plane trees. Poet Sir Henry Newbolt is the walk's first recipient of a blue plaque, perhaps best known for "Play up! play up! and play the game!" and less so for dying here in 1938.
The first significant point of interest is a peculiar five-way road junction at the apex of the Phillimore Estate. Several benches have been provided, allowing you to take a well-earned break after six metres of breath-taking ascent, and perhaps to look back down towards the foothills of lower Kensington. Overseeing all this is Campden Hill Court, a cupola-topped redbrick Victorian monster and one of the first steel-framed mansion blocks to be built in central London. It sprawls across the former gardens of Sir James South, a reclusive astronomer who invited Isambard Kingdom Brunel to help supervise the building of a dome to house his twelve-inch telescope, hence named his home Observatory House. After his death the house was replaced by an utterly elegant curve of villas called Observatory Gardens, although in the 1990s everything behind the facade was hollowed out to create luxury flats with underground parking and everyone now has much nicer taps than you've got.
The further you climb the posher it gets. 1 Campden Hill is an Edwardian Arts and Crafts mansion formerly occupied by the Uruguayan ambassador and then put on the market for £75m because, unusually for up here, it has architectural panacheand a huge back garden. Nextdoor to this current building site is the Nigerian High Commission with limos and diplomatic vehicles crammed in out front, and admittedly we are now following the contours of the hill rather than climbing it but if you've never seen infamous comprehensive Holland Park School in the flesh, look there it is. Sheffield Terrace on the hill's eastern flank is also worth a brief visit because Agatha Christie lived at number 58 between 1934 and 1941, tapping away at the manuscript for Death On The Nile in her sparse ground floor workroom. One of her many blue plaques marks it out.
We're nearly at the summit now, the weary climb approaching its end, and as the road finally levels out the housing becomes more diverse. Some are quaint old things, others monstrous thin villas, some modern white confections with squared-off sun terraces and others looks like someone let a bunch of Seventies architects loose. The block of flats where the Grand Junction Waterworks, its reservoir and its chimney used to be is called Kensington Heights, because prosaically that's what this is. Another nod to our lofty elevation is the Windsor Castle pub, supposedly named because it had sight of that royal residence when it was built in 1826, before mass intermediate development concealed Berkshire for good. Feel free to nip in for a beer and a bowl of Timperley Rhubarb & Apple Crumble with vanilla creme anglaise to celebrate your conquest of the hilltop.
But the precise summit is a tad further away along Aubrey Walk, the ridgetop road. This is delightful, or at least the side that wasn't the waterworks is delightful because the other's been infilled with deluxe gated hideaways. What stands out is St George's, a lofty Gothic pile in polychrome brick, which stands pretty much where the Ordnance Survey trig point would be if only there was one. I note they host immersive French lessons for babies on Wednesday mornings, which perhaps says a lot about the disposable income of the local parish. Keep walking and there are late Georgian terraces, cute cottages, repurposed workshops, even a K2 phone kiosk with a ceramic rabbit in it, also the white-fronted townhouse where Dusty Springfield lived at the end of the 60s. It's easy to see why people would pay a fortune to live here - and AubreyHouse at the far end was indeed the most expensive house ever to be sold in London when it was bought by a publisher in 1997.
To end the walk we need to return to the flatlands again, and this is done via a single short descent of Aubrey Road. You could alternatively descend via Campden Hill Square nextdoor, skirting its central verdant rectangle because that's strictly off-limits to mere non-residents, but Aubrey Road'll get you down in just a couple of minutes. Several of its properties are being reimagined by new wealthy owners (one by a company called Basement Force), others boast private parking along a squeezed sliproad, and this is not what you expect to find a stone's throw from busy Holland Park Avenue. At the foot of the hill turn right for Notting Hill Gate, aim straight ahead for Ladbroke Grove or (for the quickest escape by tube) turn left for Holland Park, the lowest of them all. I hesitate to say Campden Hill is hiding in plain sight, but its residents sorely hope ramblers and climbers will never notice it's there.
Birmingham stations quiz
