OXFORD STREET Colour group: green Purchase price: £300 Rent: £26 Length: 2km Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1
Oxford Street is one of the Roman Empire's most successful roads, at least in terms of retail income. It started out as a key connection west from Londinium, became the final mile for condemned prisoners on their way to the gallows at Tyburn and is now Europe's busiest shopping street. Over the centuries it's been known as Via Trinobantina, Tyburn Road, Uxbridge Road and even Worcester Road, but by the 1720s had settled into being plain Oxford Street. It's also another of those famous streets I could easily blog about for entire week but I won't, I'll just bring you eight condensed bloglets on a variety of themes. Also can I say up front that if it doesn't look like Europe's busiest shopping street in my photos, that's because I turned up early on Sunday morning when almost all its doors were shut.
i) A quick walk along Oxford Street
With your back to Marble Arch head east. This is the less prestigious trafficked end. Hufflepuff scarves and boxfresh trainers are up for grabs. Yes the Christmas lights are up already. The trees outside Selfridges haven't yet shed their leaves. A few buses, a few taxis. Little kiosks selling shawarma, souvlaki and wheelie suitcases. HMV is back. Squat concrete benches provide somewhere to sit. The next Monopoly Street bears off on the right. Jetsetting tourists are wearing prestige brands in beige and grey. Temporary traffic lights are present even here. A new Jack & Jones/JJXX store opens in a fortnight's time. That's a lovely old mosaic of some scissors. Regent Street cuts a canyon across the Circus. Two scuzzy telephone kiosks have no handsets. A streetsweeper gathers little litter. Scaffolding hides a double-height flagship retail opportunity. It all ends on Tottenham Court Road with a lot of variegated brickwork. Clothes and footwear are readily purchased throughout.
ii) Peak Oxford Street
The largest store of all is Selfridges, indeed across the whole of the UK only Harrods is bigger (and that's not on the Monopoly board anyway). It was opened in 1909 after its owner stealthily bought up an entire city block in an attempt to bring American selling methods to the Brits. The church where my great grandparents had married less than 10 years previously was one of the casualties. Harry's aim was that every visit to the store should be 'an event', a sumptuous maze of departments which retains an air of luxurious pizazz to this day. It may look classical but is in fact one of London's first large steel-framed buildings. The clock above the main entrance was added to celebrate the store's 21st birthday and is supported by the Queen of Time standing on the prow of the Ship of Commerce attended by nymphs. Expect a big reveal for the Christmas window displays soon once the frankly drab Canada Goose adverts are taken down.
iii) the other retail behemoths of Oxford Street
Think department stores and you might also conjure up John Lewis, Debenhams and House of Fraser. But post-pandemic only the first of these survives, with Barbara Hepworth's marvellous winged figure on a side wall. Debenhams closed in February 2021 and is currently ensheathed in scaffolding as it evolves into a mostly-office block called The M Building. House of Fraser closed in January 2022 and is similarly undergoing a £132m refurbishment to convert the upper floors to workspace and restaurants and the basement to a gym and swimming pool, all of which will go under the ridiculous brand name Elephant. Top Shop's rebirth as an unlikely IKEA is closer to completion and due to open in the first half of next year. The other largest stores are probably the two Primarks that bookend the street and the two Marks & Spencers, one of which remains listed and one of which controversially now has permission to tear down and rebuild.
iv) old and new on Oxford Street
For an ancient street there's very little in the way of old buildings along its length. The oldest I've manged to find is the former hat factory at 105-109 Oxford Street, currently home to Harmony and Flying Tiger, whose beige terracotta shell was erected in 1887. One of the few other pre-Edwardian properties is at 147, now occupied by Swarovski beneath a Flemish Renaissance redbrick facade. At the newer end of the scale a large number of smaller properties have been merged into large commercial bubbles such as Park House, a glass cocoon near Marble Arch whose ground floor tenants are mostly fashion staples. Zara is also the main tenant at number 61 whose top three storeys are fronted by an extraordinary wave of rippling glass, this shielding a row of luxury duplex apartments. Here as at the garish gold apartments above the Crossrail station, residential property is finally returning to Oxford Street.
v) transport along Oxford Street
Long queues of buses used to be synonymous with Oxford Street, indeed 50 years ago fourteen different routes plied the central section between Orchard Street and Oxford Circus. Today it's only four, with every prospect that even these will be removed when the Mayor takes control and enforces pedestrianisation. Bus shelters have increasingly become superfluous but haven't necessarily been removed, such as the one outside Selfridges whose roadspace has now been given over to taxis, the other prime means of transport hereabouts. The street is long enough to support as many as four tube stations, and has been since 1900, but if you tried using the two deeper-level Crossrail stations to get from one end to the other you'd probably be wasting your time.
vi) nostalgia on Oxford Street
I remember coming to see the Christmas lights when I was little, they were always an event. I remember Stanley Green the Protein man and the Golf Sale placard. I remember being unimpressed by a Wendy burger soon after they first opened in 1980. I remember spending hours browsing through the newly-released cassettes and CDs in Virgin Records before it became Zavvi before it became Primark. I remember catching the nightbus home from the first stop to make sure I would get a seat. I remember traipsing up and down failing to buy my Mum a Christmas present she would never open. I remember walking through the Plaza shopping mall to buy a Radio Times in WH Smiths. I remember standing amid a river of Palestinian flags in that big protest last year. I remember the fire engine blazing its lights outside Bond Street station on Sunday. I'm sure you all have your memories of Oxford Street too.
vii) the candy stores of Oxford Street
A couple of years ago I counted the number of candy stores along Oxford Street and there were eleven. This week I've counted again and there are only two. It's an amazingly successful extinguishment given that councillors were increasingly suspicious they might be fronts for nefarious businesses. What's more both the current stores are new additions, the larger being CandyLogo which fills the unit alongside what used to be Candylicious and sells all the usual teeth-rotting treats. Gummylicious at number 399B is much smaller and barely worth a rummage, indeed its candy selection barely fills a single set of shelves. Amazingly there are now more Boots the chemists than American candy stores so we can perhaps lay that trope to rest. Gift and souvenir shops remain in multitudes, I counted 15, and also 21 empty shops that thankfully won't be colonised by Jelly Belly beans and strangely-flavoured cereals.
viii) non-retail on Oxford Street
It's not all shops. A single pub survives at the very eastern end, The Flying Horse, whereas once you'd have found 20. The 100 Club is a classic live music venue, originally a restaurant, where Glenn Miller, the Sex Pistols and Sleaford Mods have played. Various schools for teaching English have premises in part-converted offices, purely because the address helps increase sign-ups overseas. The London College of Fashion skedaddled last year to the Olympic Park. There are still two banks - a Lloyds and an HSBC. The Salvation Army own a 500-seater called the Regent Hall which dates back to the 1880s. The Cumberland, formerly the Hard Rock, has over 800 rooms because every Monopoly property needs a hotel. The TwistMuseum occupies part of what used to be British Home Stores and is essentially a sequence of optical illusions and kaleidoscopic photo opportunities for those with £23 to burn. But Oxford Street is mostly shops, pretty much in its entirety.
Some weeks are consequential.
Here comes a consequential week.
a) Today is the Budget.
It's the first Labour budget since 2010 and the first to be delivered by a female Chancellor. What's consequential about this budget is that it marks a complete shift in direction from "what everybody wants is lower taxes" to "if we want to improve services we're going to have to put taxes up". It is thus unlikely to be popular with those who focus on what they spend and popular with those who focus on what they receive. It's also much easier to moan about increases that affect you directly than to appreciate long-term benefits which may only help others, especially when for a decade and a half the emphasis has been the other way round.
This budget also feels like it's been coming for ages, the General Election being 17 weeks ago, but it takes time to check the nation's finances, develop a plan and balance strategic gains with individual pain. There has thus been endless speculation about what measures will be included and which won't, often based on worst-case scenarios, plus strategic pre-leakage of individual policies. Time was when a Budget came as a complete surprise to all, a big bang of news with instant fallout, but these days it seems the blow has to be endlessly softened by rolling the pitch in advance. I for one am tired of hearing about how awful something that hasn't yet been announced might be, but we seem to have had weeks of it.
Here are the Chancellor's big six policies (a list I won't be populating until this afternoon because we don't know what they are yet)
• Employer NI contributions ↑1.2% (& thresholds raised)
• National Living Wage ↑6.7%
• Capital Gains Tax increased
• VAT on private school fees
• No increase to Income Tax, NI, VAT or fuel duty
• £25bn increase to spending on the NHS
These are likely to set the tone for Labour's period in government, the first policies that truly define important spending priorities and who's going to pay for them. The individual measures are likely to have been forgotten by the time the next election comes round but the gist will linger, and it's important whether more people think "this is helping" than "that's me screwed financially". Get it right today and people might see sunlit uplands, get it wrong and they'll only feel hard done by, and the consequences of that could be significant.
b) In three days' time the Conservative's new leader is announced.
On the face of it who cares? The party's in the wilderness with minimal MPs, the Conservative brand remains trashed in the national psyche and the two remaining candidates are considerably more right wing than the country they one day hope to lead. But there's the consequential thing, that the country will one day choose to ditch Labour in favour of 'change', and it's winner takes all for whoever's in charge when the music stops.
BallotWatch #newToryleader
Kemi Badenoch[renewal2030.org.uk](1-6 fav)
» "This is an existential moment, it’s time to go bold, it’s time to renew", says Kemi.
» "Could start a fight in an empty room", say critics.
Robert Jenrick[joinjenrick.com](6-1)
» "Leave the ECHR, cap migration and win the next election", says Robert.
» "Will say and do anything if it improves his standing", say critics.
Tory MPs perhaps blew it by failing to select James Cleverly, but the party membership likely wouldn't have voted for him even if they had. Instead they get to pick between the identity politics warrior and the isolationalist flagwaver, with all the indications being that Kemi will walk it. Will she end up a footnote to history like Hague and Howard or are we destined to live in her no-nonsense anti-woke fiefdom one day, because that'd be truly consequential.
c) In six days' time the next American president is elected.
It could be Vice President Kamala Harris, now that Joe Biden has sensibly stood aside, or it could be the return of former president Donald Trump. From this side of the Atlantic it seems astonishing that Americans might vote for the criminal narcissist bully, let alone vote for him again, but never underestimate the attraction of demagogy, hope and change. Also never forget the vagaries of the presidential voting system which mean you can easily win the popular vote but still lose out in the electoral college (as indeed is currently predicted). Let's see how the key marginal states are looking one week out from the big vote, according to the site fivethirtyeight.
If Trump wins he's more prepared this time with a playbook of ultra-conservative policies ready to go. He'll trash stuff, drill stuff, destabilise stuff and spout scary gibberish that'll monopolise the world's attention for the next four years. He likely gets to top up the Supreme Court and lock out the liberals for a generation, consigning Roe v Wade to permanent oblivion. Expect him to walk away from Europe and abandon Ukraine to defeat, and who knows what he'll lob into the Middle East. As for climate change he doesn't give a damn and there's every chance he'll help condemn the entire world to a miserable future, not just the USA. A whole range of alternative futures splay out from next week, from slow decline to irreversible dystopia.
It might not be that bad because we got through four years last time, somehow, and let's not forget Trump may not win anyway. But this week is a hugely consequential week and this time we can only watch.
I worry sometimes that my content isn't niche enough. Things on hills in Hainault. Ex-country lanes in Harrow. Bridges in Norwich. So today I'm going all-out niche in an attempt to dampen interest even further. Welcome to...
Signs of Autumn in Old Malden
Originally there was only Malden, a manorial Saxon settlement by the Hogsmill, but then (as is so often the way) the railways came. The first station hereabouts lured much of the new housing a mile north, which became New Malden, then a century later came a new line with a new station which might better have been named Malden or even Old Malden but instead they called it Malden Manor. Old Malden is now a council ward south of the A3 where the original Malden was, and I have been there looking for signs of autumn rather than nuancing etymology.
This is the finest leafdrop I found in Old Malden, a sycamore dump on Plough Green opposite the shops. Perfect conditions require a mature tree, an approximately symmetrical canopy, a lack of wind so leaves fall downwards and a lack of small children disturbing the resultant coppery circle. Come back in a few days and this won't look anywhere as good. This former village green is named after The Plough, a 15th century inn which is yet another hostelry to claim Dick Turpin once drank here should you be the kind of person who believes that kind of thing. These days it's a Miller & Carter Steakhouse, an upmarket chain who claim their main menu is "perfected for darker nights spent cosying up to a new season of flavours", but I'm not sure their pan-roasted lamb rump is especially autumnal.
These are the early Victorian cottages on Church Road, not officially listed but certifiedlocally as Buildings of Townscape Merit. Originally they were clustered opposite the smithy, which is long gone, but the village pond is still there and is apparently the oldest pond in the borough of Kingston. A consultation on the future of the pond just closed which will hopefully result in the addition of a small viewing platform and two interpretation boards. If you're wondering what the autumnal thing is it's the fruit bulging on the tree outside number 26. Initially I thought they were apples, probably cookers, but on closer look (particularly the long leaves) I reckon they're actually quinces. Right now is peak season for harvesting quince, ideally just after they've turned golden and taking care not to bruise, but don't eat them raw because they're best in jams and jellies.
Hurrah for libraries and hurrah for Kingston who haven't closed any of theirs so still have the same seven they had pre-austerity. Old Malden's is located in a purpose built, low level building of indeterminate postwar origin, with a porch full of leaflets and a main room where Knit & Natter meet every Monday morning. This being half term they're running special autumnal events for children this week, specifically a dreamcatcher workshop on Friday and a Halloween Craft workshop at 11am this morning. I was expecting Old Malden's suburban streets to be a veritable Hallowe'en hotbed but I didn't see a single house decorated out front with spiders' webs or skeletons, nor any shop prominently flogging pumpkins, which is why you have a photo of the library and not a spooky semi-detached masterpiece. Well done Old Malden.
This is not a road sign you see everywhere, indeed when installed in Old Malden in August it was the first official use of the sign anywhere in the UK. Officially it warns road users of hazards due to small mammals in the road ahead, not 'hedgehog crossing', but that didn't stop the wider media going wild for the pricklier interpretation. There are four signs in Old Malden, two on Avondale Avenue, one on Downfield and this one on The Hollands. These aren't even places where hedgehogs are known to cross roads, more a "stronghold" for hedgehog populations according to local activists, but that was enough to persuade the council that a high bar for installation had been crossed. As autumn progresses I'd have thought hedgehogs are increasingly unlikely to be out in the road, but if the sign reminds residents to check their bonfires pre-Firework Night all the better.
St John's is partially Saxon and gets a mention in the Domesday Book. It was mostly rebuilt in 1611 but the lower part of the original flint and stone chancel wall was patched up and retained, including a blocked-up doorway with a telltale triangular head. It sits in a yew-infested churchyard alongside the actual Malden Manor, although the current house is 18th century and "much altered" so looks more like an egotistical Essex pile. The autumnal connection relates to special church services on upcoming Sundays, first the annual memorial for the dead on the 3rd followed by the Remembrance Sunday Parade Service on the 10th, although this year that's at the Baptist Church. It's perhaps worth saying that Worcester Park's high street is absolutely brimming with red poppies attached to every upright pole but as soon as you cross beneath the railway bridge into Old Malden they all vanish, because Sutton venerates Heroes more seriously than Kingston.
No mention of Old Malden is complete without mentioning that the artist John Everett Millais painted'Ophelia' by the banks of the Hogsmill. Some say it was Tolworth, others Ewell, but a local resident did three years of research and claims it was beside Six Acre Meadow in Old Malden so that's where the information board is. As well as confirming the location it points out that Millais added Ophelia to the scene later, not here but in Gower Street WC1, by painting a model called Elizabeth clothed in a bathtub. The riverbank beside the board has been significantly eroded by people stepping down to gaze upon the waters, and because it's autumn it's got very muddy and by the looks of the prints only dogs have risked it recently. The quagmire should ease in the spring.
The final sign of autumn is in the ticket hall at Malden Manor station. It's a poster alerting passengers to autumn timetable changes "because leaves on the tracks can be as slippery as ice". This year's leaf fall timetable runs from 22 September to 14 December and a copy of the leaflet they no longer print can be downloaded here. Intriguingly I've compared the summer and autumn timetables and they appear to be identical, at least for stations on the Chessington branch, so arguably the poster is more an unnecessary worry than practical information. But signs of autumn are everywhere in Old Malden, as I hope I've just demonstrated, so maybe that's why it's here.
Where the heck are we? The far side of Redbridge, almost in Havering Be more precise: On the southern edge of Hainault Country Park Nearest tube station: Fairlop, but 1½ miles away so hardly near Nearest bus routes: both the 247 and 362 stop by the summit Heights of summits:Hog Hill (65m), Dog Kennel Hill (84m)
Thing 1 on Hog Hill: Redbridge Cycling Centre
Background: When the London 2012 Olympics swallowed the former Eastway cycle circuit, alternative facilities were created here on Hog Hill. The site included a road circuit, BMX bumps and off road tracks, all with rather more contours than Stratford could muster. Tentative plans were made to use Hog Hill for the actual 2012 mountain bike event but the IOC laughed and said it would be too tame so everything relocated to Essex. Redbridge took control of the Centre in 2014. A couple of hours of pedalling will set you back £4.70. Bike hire and kids' coaching are also available.
Experience: I was expecting a lot of happy middle class cyclists but instead I accidentally stumbled upon a British Biathlon Laser-Run & Laser-Rollerski event. They'd set up their laser shoot in the upper car park where helmeted folk with wheels on their feet were firing at targets in small white targets for the admiration of a very small crowd. To reach the pavilion you had to divert onto the road circuit dodging the occasional whoosh, and there didn't appear to be a cafe or spectator area only a reception desk, and it all looked very interesting but it was a bit uncomfortable and I swiftly left. Lesson learned: Check the list of Upcoming Track Bookings (Sunday 27 October – British Biathlon – Full road circuit booked 09.00-17.00) before you visit, and best do that with a bike.
Thing 2 on Hog Hill: Forest Park Cemetery
Background: The population of London is always growing but people keep dying so fresh burial space is always welcome. This hillside plot opened in 2005 and contains the first crematorium to be built in the capital for 40 years. The cemetery is large enough for 60 years use and is mainly, but not exclusively, for Redbridge residents.
Experience: The top of the cemetery has a great view, mainly because you can't see the crematorium at the far end. If you're mostly used to wandering around tumbledown gothic cemeteries this is very different, all upright stones and cosy epitaphs, plus the odd piece of reflective sculpture with glass petals awaiting memories of favourite grandparents. The most recent section is ablaze with floral tributes and quite affecting. Lesson learned: If a mourner arrives in a white van, best get out the way sharpish.
Thing 3 on Hog Hill: Hainault Lodge Local Nature Reserve
Background: In 1725 George I had a royal hunting lodge built at the summit of Hog Hill. It was later replaced by a little mansion, once occupied by the High Sheriff of Essex, and was later used as overspill for Oldchurch Hospital. The lodge was demolished in 1973 and the surrounding hornbeam woodland became a nature reserve, the only one in Redbridge borough.
Experience: I assumed it was all fenced off, the kind of nature reserve permanently reserved for flora and fauna, so even when I found a gap in the fence at the bottom of the hill I kept out. Lesson learned: It turns out there is an entrance, allegedly, somewhere near the cycle centre's lower car park, but I never it saw nor any sign pointing to it. This has annoyed me because I've subsequently found a nature trail leaflet online and it looks lovely and I bet it was entirely empty yesterday, so now I want to go back again to see the overgrown remains of the croquet lawn, the birch trees growing on the tennis courts and the City viewpoint beside the old oak tree.
Thing 1 on Dog Kennel Hill: Footpath to the summit
Background:Dog Kennel Hill is just a hill, I don't know why it's called that. The trig point at the summit is on the edge of a golf course so you can't quite get there without straying.
Experience: I followed Footpath 15 up from the bus stop, a weaving crunchy track through beech woodland which eventually leads to Lambourne End in Essex. Many squirrels were disturbed. It was a glorious autumnal yomp, just a stone's throw from the Country Park car park at the foot of the slope which was rammed, but not a single visitor had made their way up here. Lesson learned: As I stood in a golden brown clearing facing off against a cautious fox, I thought more fool them.
Thing 2 on Dog Kennel Hill: Hainault Golf Club
Background:The golf club opened in 1909 and has two 18 hole courses, one entirely in Redbridge, the other spreading into Havering and with two greens in Essex. If you've walked the London Loop you'll have cut across them both. There's also a Hainault Forest Golf Club nextdoor and I don't fully understand how that's different.
Experience: Not being clubbed up I only got as far as the car park. This has everything a Essexy golfing type might need including buggy hire, a hand car wash, a tandoori shack, a diner, a smokehouse and an Italian restaurant called Linguine. Weekend sorted. Lesson learned: The little green robots that collect the balls at the driving range are quite mesmeric.
Thing 3 on Dog Kennel Hill: Five Oaks Lane
Background: A single lane of backwoods housing used to bear off the main road at the foot of the hill. About ten years ago most of the properties were bought by a developer who created a dense estate called Oaklands Hamlets, half a mile long but only 150m wide so not much room to play with. 425 homes were squeezed in. Any marketing collateral suggesting a) it was in Chigwell b) had "proximity to excellent transport connections" was plainly bolx.
Experience: It's very odd seeing an isolated stripe of modern homes on a hillside in the Green Belt. The only way in is via a long driveway into a thin labyrinth of cul-de-sacs and meandering spine road. It's all nicely done with plenty of intermediate greenspace, although large gardens clearly weren't a priority. The demographic's young and mixed, so quite a few Hallowe'en wreaths on doors but also the kind of playas who buy a Ford Mustang with UR55 LUV plates. At the very far end is a park with a small playground and two new ponds but you can only stare at the surrounding countryside, there are no footpaths out into it because that's living on a private development for you. Lesson learned 1: The free shuttle to Hainault station ceased in 2019 when the company providing it went bust but nobody's removed the special bus stop yet, so move to the middle of nowhere at your peril. Lesson learned 2: As a means of cramming houses into the countryside it shows just how much can be done with a small space, and could perhaps be replicated elsewhere without everyone throwing their hands up in the air and screaming.
Thing 4 on Dog Kennel Hill: Gardens of Peace
Background: Muslims need cemeteries too, especially in East London, hence the conversion of 160 acres of brownfield on the near outskirts. Five Oaks opened in 2017 and is already nearly full. Separate men's and women's prayer spaces are provided. No eating, immodest dress, wailing or photography is permitted in the cemetery, so all you can see here is the entrance.
Experience: It makes quite an impact, the sight of rows and rows of identical rounded mounds in all directions, all overlaid with turf. Memorials are small stone tiles laid flat on top. Flowers are not encouraged but that rule isn't strictly applied. The latest burials are in the far corner and have yet to receive their grass covering. Families and individual visitors come to remember, just as in any cemetery, and also to pray both indoors and out. I wasn't the only obvious non-Muslim present. Lesson learned: I wasn't expecting to see any of this yesterday, I just walked in and had my horizons broadened. There's a lot to be said for exploring two hills.
Four tube stations are named after country lanes, the longest of which is Rayners Lane in Harrow. What's more it still follows exactly the same meandering path across two miles of suburbia as it did when everything was fields. So I've walked it.
Everything out here was fields until the 1920s, eight square miles of entirely undeveloped agricultural land between Northolt and Ruislip where the only buildings were a few scattered farmsteads. One of the handful of country lanes threading through was an unhurried backwater running approximately north-south connecting Marsh Road in Pinner to Eastcote Lane in Roxeth (now better known as South Harrow). In the mid 19th century the fields alongside belonged to Daniel Hill, a farmer from Pinner, who built a single set of cottages midway where his labourers could live. George Rayner and his family moved into these buildings in 1841, and being the sole inhabitants hereabouts the lane became known as Rayner's Lane.
The Metropolitan Railway carved through in the early 1900s, initially without stopping, but in 1906 a lonely apostrophe-less halt was built on Rayners Lane. Hardly anyone used it, and when the District line extended from Ealing in 1910 it became known as Pneumonia Junction due to its windswept rural location. Only in the 1930s did Metro-land's developers finally invade with the building of their flagship project Harrow Garden Village, boasting "houses of different types by well-known builders at popular prices", balanced out to the south of the railway by the similarly vast Tudor estate. By the end of the decade passenger numbers had rocketed to four million annually and lowly Rayner's Lane was entirely unrecognisable, but still there.
Here's where it starts, at a mini-roundabout on the main-ish road out of Pinner, alongside an entrance to the very lovely Pinner Village Gardens. The flats on the corner aren't typical and soon make way for chains of broad semis with timbered gables and bay windows, adequate parking and perhaps a well-tended dash of shrubbery. But no single design predominates, true to the developers' original boast of "no stereo-typed layouts", even down to the very occasional interspersed detached. Small crescents of green have been retained as a nod to the rural past, generally encircled by roadways. Also the house numbers here are in the mid 600s, this an indication of quite how long Rayners Lane is going to be, passing into the 500s as the road crosses a low ridge and descends into a very obvious valley.
The river at the bottom of the slope is the Yeading Brook, a lengthy tributary of the Crane, which once lingered awhile in a small pool beside the lane but now passes through in a leafy channel more suitable for the reduction of flood risk. The linear woodland to either side is called Yeading Walk and is overseen by one of the lovely community groups which proliferate in this corner of Harrow. Bring your gloves and secateurs to the main wooden bridge every Saturday to help with horticultural maintenance or buy your £1 Super Draw tickets for a chance to win £25,000 and/or an iPhone. The lane climbs again beyond the sponsored roundabout, as Metro-Landy as ever, where special mention is due to the residents at number 526 who've surrounded their wheelie-bin store with a potted display of pink and white perennials.
This understated crossroads is where George Rayner's farm cottage once stood, roughly on the corner where the bungalows are. The sole clue to its existence is that the street off to the right is called Farm Avenue (and at a stretch, perhaps, that the school behind is called Longfield Primary). It would have taken extraordinary vision back then to picture the mud-splattered lane embellished with lampposts, belisha beacons, electricity substations, junction boxes, 'No Cold Calling' signs, 20mph speed limits and a tiny prep school across the hedge with red-capped boys spilling out into their parents' 4×4s before milking time. As for the presence of a significant shopping centre just to the south with his name attached, George's mind would have boggled.
That's George's cottage on the inn sign outside the Rayners Hotel, later The Rayners public house, a Truman hostelry opened in 1937. It no longer pulls pints having been bought out by Christ The Redeemer College, a place to study Ministry and/or IT and/or Business Studies, but they can't tweak the interior too much because it's listed. The retail mix along the main parade is typically Middlesex/South Asian, so Wetherspoons as well as Shambu's Juice Bar, Wenzels as well as Roti Hut and fried chicken as well as paneer and eggless cakes. A special mention to Harrow council who've already managed to attach a red poppy to every single lamppost hereabouts. An even more special mention to the tube station, one of Charles Holden's trademarkbrickcubes, its waffle-shaped reinforced concrete roof now only visible through pigeon netting. Most lovely.
Alexandra Avenue is the main road south, a key arterial in the developers' overall masterplan, but the original alignment of Rayners Lane still exists as the service road round the back. Turn off down the slope beside what used to be Tonino's diner and prepare to be underimpressed. Round the front is the utterly extraordinary Art Deco-ness of the former Grosvenor Cinema, now headquarters of the Zoroastrian Trust, but all you see back here is an all-brick rear entrance and a grubby car park with a £125 clamping penalty. Alternatively charge your e-moped at Ali Garage, purchase mystery fillets at Super Seller Fishmonger or sign up for cricket and darts behind the conifers at Harrow Town Sports Club (est 1934). It's nigh impossible to imagine this with haycarts and cows.
Now the residential zigzagging begins. The original Rayner's Lane made four right-angled turns to negotiate the edge of a field so today's Rayners Lane does that too, now lined by broad Tudorbethan semis with pronounced gables in vanilla shades. Front gardens are generally two-cars wide (and used for that purpose), but still with sufficient space for Harrow's three coloured bins. The H12 bus rumbles through every 10 minutes in case you live in Stanmore and want to rock down and see all this from a double decker. After the second bend the lane heads noticeably downhill and also forwards in time as the adjacent houses suddenly leap into the 21st century. This patch used to be a fairly miserable postwar council estate but was transferred to a housing association in 2002 who undertook an unusually successful round of 'decant and upgrade'. I still can't work out if the Costcuter supermarket is a spelling error or deliberate avoidance of trademark.
The sports ground on the last corner belongs to the Tithe Farm Social Club, established in 1933 and built on the site of a rifle range which once used to be the only other thing down Rayner's Lane. Today it's home to Rayners Lane FC and Broadfields United, two football teams whose home games alternate (and who yesterday managed a home win and an away draw respectively). If the facilities look relatively well off it's likely because they sold off their tennis courts for housing. Alongside is Newton Farm Ecology Park, a former council depot made good and the source of the little-known Roxbourne river. Their volunteer group meets every Saturday to tidy up and appears to have a particular litter-picking fixation. Much respect to Peter Davies who's filled a noticeboard with the results of his recent month-long beercan survey which revealed that Budweiser (219) was the most-chucked, closely followed by Carlsberg Special Brew (160) and Holsten Pils (129), although he only found a single Kopparberg strawberry and lime.
After all that newness it's time for the semis to return, not quite so appealingly but we're a long way from the station now. At number 44 a chunk of pebbledash has fallen off revealing a pitted blue plaster shell underneath. The main point of interest here is the Roxbourne Complex, a cluster of community health facilities including a GP practice, High Dependency Unit and mental health care centre. This was built on the site of Harrow Isolation Hospital which opened in 1896 for the "reception of cases of scarlet fever, diphtheria, enteric fever and Asiatic cholera", and was only the second building to appear on Rayner's Lane. This ends close by at another small roundabout where it leaks onto Eastcote Lane and Roxeth Green Avenue, the last of which was just a footpath when the hospital opened.
Having walked all two miles I'm still amazed I was precisely following a country lane that George Rayner would have known in the 1840s. I'm perhaps more amazed that an illiterate labourer who lived in poverty ended up giving his name to a road, then a station, then an entire suburb as if he were once a person of importance. There's fame and then there's having your name on every copy of the tube map.
Today I thought I'd dig into my inbox archive and bring you ten emails I was sent in October 2004. Twenty years ago was a different time.
From londonmobs(1/10/04)
The flashmob that was due to take place next week has been cancelled for security reasons. There will be no event taking place next week. Please cancel your plans and await for further details.
(and that was it, no further London flashmobs were organised)
cc-ed from my work address(5/10/04)
A new extractor fan was fitted in my kitchen by your electrician yesterday to meet the requirements of the landlord's annual gas safety certificate.
The extractor fan comes on when I turn my kitchen light on, but then remains on for 45 minutes after I turn my kitchen light off. Even if I just turn the light on for 5 seconds, the extractor fan stays on for 45 minutes before automatically switching off. I would expect an extractor fan to remain on for a few minutes after turning off a kitchen light, but 45 minutes does seem extreme. I know that my new extractor fan is an important safety feature, but I am concerned by the noise pollution and by the electricity costs of running such a fan at least 10 times longer than would appear to be necessary.
May I enquire if the 45 minute switch-off time is part of the specification of my new extractor fan, or whether perhaps the timer mechanism is malfunctioning?
(my extractor fan still stays on for 45 minutes, grrr)
Here are the top phrases searched:
2 for "beer bellies", 2 for "dfs music", 2 for "krays", 1 for "babes", 1 for "belle de jour", 1 for "blue room", 1 for "dfs advert", 1 for "flash mob", 1 for "geezer du jour", 1 for "grannys garden"
(these days the blog gets over 3000 Google searches every week, apparently)
From a reader(10/10/04)
Oh my gawd. How, erm, exciting.
I need you to promise me that you will never volunteer to be the first aid or fire warden at work.
(I have held to this advice to this day)
From United Mileage Plus(12/10/04)
Now is the time to secure your elite status for 2005. Or, if you are within reach of the next level, secure a higher elite status level in the Mileage Plus® programme next year. Enjoy all the privileges and benefits that come with elite status by earning double Elite Qualifying Miles and Segments (EQM/EQS)*.
(I had 40000 Redeemable Miles when they zeroed my total in 2008)
From Mum(20/10/04)
At the bottom of the item... hadn't 'been' possible anywhere else.
Enjoyed reading all this.
(I have just the one parental proof reader these days)
Attached please find details of the characters for next week's murder :)
I'll mail separately re which character you've been 'allocated to'.
We're going to aim to start the game at 7pm, but do turn up anytime after 3pm.
(I was particularly surprised when I turned out to be the murderer)
From another reader(27/10/04)
Hope you're well.
My house mate was watching the National TV Awards last night - obviously I wasn't watching it myself - and David Jason won an award for best actor or some such thing. He wasn't there to collect his award and the person who collected it on his behalf said that David Jason was off on a night shoot for a programme to be broadcast next year called "Diamond Geezer". It seems your reputation has spread. Have you been turned into a series?
(ITV broadcast Diamond Geezer five months later, and Google sent hundreds of viewers to my blog)
From Celebdaq(29/10/04)
Hi ... here's your weekly email update from Celebdaq, the celebrity stock exchange! Who are the top movers and the big losers in this week's market? Which of your shares paid out this week? It's all here...
4000 shares in Bono earned you £1917.24
80 shares in Britney Spears earned you £26.11
5000 shares in David Beckham earned you £18708.50
5000 shares in Matt Lucas earned you £0.00
5000 shares in Prince Charles earned you £43598.50
The second full week of roadworks at the Bow Roundabout has seen drilling continue on the Stratford side, both under and beside the flyover. A third lane is already substantially carved out at the end of Stratford High Street. Below we see a broad curve where grey concrete block paving used to be, but it's been drilled out because that's no longer going to be the edge of the roundabout.
• No works have yet taken place on the other arms, nor round any other part of the actual roundabout, but cones remain in place slimming traffic down from two lanes to one.
• Some buses completing journeys on route 205 are crossing the flyover and then (somehow) crossing back again to reach the bus stand at Bow Church, rather than what they normally do which is go round the roundabout.
• I'd say the traffic queues aren't quite so bad this week, but still definitely bad at times.
It's now two months since the Overground's six lines weren't renamed, and likely another month until the big switcheroo takes place. But every so often another new sign slips into view, its protective vinyl unaccountably removed, and this was the case at Stratford station a couple of weeks ago. A double-sided Mildmay line panel was revealed at one end of platforms 1 and 2 (click to embiggen), while a separate sign directed passengers up to the Mildmay line from the subway. These were all swiftly covered over so don't bother looking there now, but it's interesting to see how coloured tramlines will be used to depict the other Overground lines on interchange diagrams.
In further confirmation that the renaming is running late, all six of Tim Dunn's deep dives into the new line names are now available wherever you normally get your TfL podcasts, rounding off with a Huguenot-esque and moquette-tastic 'Weaver line' special.
Some bus-related QR codes are woefully inadequate
This poster on the platform at Queen's Park station looks promising. It's titled Scan for local bus information, and you might expect that if you scanned it you'd get local bus information. Not so.
The QR code instead takes you to a generic landing page, tfl.gov.uk/maps, from which you're expected to use the Search nearby feature and enter the name of the station. When you try that on a phone you get "We found several results for Queen's Park. Did you mean" and a choice of 11 options. Picking the tube station leads to a list of bus stops, each listed with route numbers, and it takes one more click to get live bus times and maybe a route if you use two fingers and scroll the map. This is a piss poor customer experience.
It wouldn't have taken much effort for the QR code to link directly to the webpage for Queen's Park station, but it seems the workshy sods in the poster production department have created a generic poster they can slap up anywhere, leaving us to do the extra work, rather than making bespoke posters for individual locations. If you're going to use QR codes for customer information, TfL, try linking to the actual information rather than to a lazy top level domain.
The Dangleway has a special Hallowe'en offer
Well of course it does, because upselling seasonal experiences has become part of the cablecar's ongoing raison d'être. This year's special event starts today and involves "a round trip whilst completing a spooky Scavenger Hunt sheet. Upon completion you will receive a Halloween Goodie Bag and the opportunity to decorate a Halloween mask in the Cable Car Experience." I like to think there's an employee somewhere in TfL's Dangleway department whose job it is to come up with the cheapest possible promotion, and who'll hopefully have been rewarded this year for what boils down to a sheet of paper, a bag of tat, a piece of card and some crayons.
Route 205 is up for an annoying change
Route 205 connects Bow Church to Paddington and has done since 2009, conveniently mirroring tube lines across the northern edge of central London. But a new consultation reveals TfL are up for fiddling with it at its western end, not because it needs changing but because another route needs chopping. The lynchpin of the plan is to curtail route 30 from Marble Arch to Euston, a two-mile cut, and then because passengers still want to go that way to divert route 205 to Marble Arch instead. Anyone who still wants a bus to Paddington can always catch a 27, they argue, although they'll need to change and probably wait longer too.
It's not the first time TfL have proposed a seemingly unnecessary change to route 205. During 2022's apocalyptic Central Bus Review they proposed diverting it to run from Mile End to Parliament Hill Fields to make up for the 214 being diverted to make up for the 88 being diverted to make up for the 24 being withdrawn, i.e. it was the last in a chain of consequential dominos. Thankfully they scrapped that idea and hopefully they'll scrap this too, because sometimes "ah but if we change that then we'll need to change that" goes too far.
Taxi fares might go up
TfL are currently running a consultation asking how much taxi fares should go up. They have seven options, each tweaking the minimum fare and four tariffs in different combinations. "Please let us know which option you would prefer by completing our survey", they say, but given one of the options is "no change/fares frozen" it's very hard to imagine anyone opting for anything else.
Another Superloop timetable is lying
I've discovered another pair of bus timetables with ridiculous sets of journey times, at least one of which must be fictional. These are the timetables for routes SL9 and 140 at Northolt Park heading towards Hayes. The SL9 is supposed to be the faster bus, and yet...
» The SL9 gets to Northolt in 4 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 3.
» The SL9 gets to Yeading White Hart Roundabout in 10 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 7.
» The SL9 gets to Yeading Lane in 14 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 11.
» The SL9 gets to The Grapes in 17 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 13.
» The SL9 gets to Hayes Town Centre in 24 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 18.
» The SL9 gets to Hayes & Harlington station in 26 minutes. The slower 140 gets there in 19.
Be aware that timetables are often bolx.
Easter line closures announced
If you're planning ahead you'll be interested to know what line closures are proposed over the Easter weekend in April 2025. The following will be shut for all four days...
• DLR: Bank/Tower Gateway to Canary Wharf/Canning Town; Stratford to West India Quay
• Piccadilly: Acton Town to Uxbridge
• Windrush: Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction
• Crossrail: Trains will not call at Acton Main Line, Hanwell and West Ealing
...and this pair shut from Saturday to Easter Monday...
• Bakerloo: Stonebridge Park to Harrow & Wealdstone
• Lioness: Euston to Watford Junction
Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned? Spoilers - really very bad indeed.
n.b. while the Sainsbury Wing is closed the main entrance to the National Gallery is up the steps at the front.
I turned up on the north terrace of Trafalgar Square yesterday morning (midweek, mid-autumn, not yet half term, hardly peak period). Things were already looking grim with a queue all the way along the front of the building and around the corner, almost as far as the National Portrait Gallery's restaurant. On closer inspection this turned out to be three queues but that still wasn't particularly reassuring given that none of them appeared to be moving.
My first issue was to work out which queue to join given that they weren't clearly labelled. I hung around the back of all three and found zero information, just a lot of patient folk occasionally shuffling forwards. I hoped to get more information at the front, below the central staircase, but didn't see anything there either. I walked up to the only obvious member of staff nearby, a bouncer-looking type with a diamond earring, and asked which queue to join. "The Van Gogh's over there," he said, mis-guessing why I was here. I explained I just wanted to join the normal queue and he pointed to the left, which I was pleasantly surprised to see was the shortest of the three. I bet it moves really slowly, I thought.
It did. I joined the back of the queue, just beyond the bollards, just as a homeless chap walked over and quietly harangued us for cash. The sound of Hallelujah drifted over from a nearby busker, followed later by Hotel California, Get Lucky and something by Ed Sheeran. We moved forwards in spits and spurts, not very far, not very often. The family in front of me had a ticklist of places they planned to visit today, starting with Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, now stalling somewhat as they attempted to enter the National Gallery. The family behind me suddenly asked if this was the 1145 queue and I said I didn't know there was such a thing, so one of them walked off to look and it turned out there was, so they left and joined it. We moved no more quickly after that.
It turned out the three queues were as follows:
• General entry: left of steps, 60m
• Members & pre-booked: right of steps, 90m
• Van Gogh exhibition: via accessible entrance, 90m
It took a very tedious 35 minutes to reach the foot of the steps where two of the queues met. Here I finally found the sole signage explaining which queue was which, but on small pink boards displayed at shoulder height where they were easily blocked. At 10am no doubt they're very legible but once a queue develops people's bodies swiftly hide them from view. A single member of staff was checking punters on the pre-booked side, either QR codes displayed on phones or printouts proffered on sheets of paper. Unsurprisingly he was also having to deal with regular questions from members of the public baffled by which queue was which, and you could see them weighing up whether seeing the lovely art was worth the obvious wait. Two smart looking gentlemen, seemingly queuejumping, took some persuading that they couldn't simply walk in like it was last Wednesday or something.
Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.
From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50% longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master. I felt particularly bad for the Van Gogh queue, most of whom were cultured and elderly but still expected to queue for well over half an hour without anywhere to sit, all the time serenaded by X-Factor level bleating. Perhaps don't visit any time soon.
And yet obviously the art was a brilliant as ever, and with fewer people milling about even easier to admire. I can't normally get a shot of Bathers at Asnières without any people standing in front but yesterday I took one almost straight away. I loved the small room reminiscing about David Hockney's love for Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ and how he sneaked it into a couple of his paintings. On a larger scale the new Constable exhibition is stimulatingly excellent, focused around The Hay Wain (unglued version) but also featuring preparatory sketches and other similarly rural works. It's free to enter and open until 2nd February so you have plenty of time to get here, and also to hope they either scrap this infuriating liquids ban or find a much more efficient way of enforcing it. We shouldn't have to wait out in the cold for an hour while a paltry number of guards rummage around the deeper recesses of rucksacks and handbags looking for something that shouldn't be there.
For comparison I also went to five other museums and galleries to see how faffy their current entry procedures are.
Science Museum: The online pre-booking procedure for free admission tickets is still eight pages long, which the administrative curmudgeons try to insist you complete on your phone before entering. I ignored that and walked up to the queueless desk where there are now only three questions (Have you been here before? Name? Would you like to donate?) and was entering the museum with my paper ticket less than a minute later. Natural History Museum: I used the side entrance on Exhibition Road to skip the line out front and it paid dividends. "Is it OK if I hold you here, just to say you’ve queued?" asked the steward, somewhat suspiciously, and again I was barely there for a minute. Victoria & Albert Museum: no bag, no questions, straight in. National Portrait Gallery: no bag, no questions, straight in. British Museum: I went to the front where you normally enter, only to find a sign saying that's now for "pre-booked tickets only" and ticket-free visitors have to enter round the back on Montague Place. Grrr. It took me eight minutes to walk to the rear entrance, then just two to pass through the security cabin where my non-existent bag didn't have to be checked. Ten minutes total, so easily the faffiest of this fivesome but still nowhere near as miserable as the National Gallery suddenly is.
Update: I've been back one week later and the queueing system has changed...
• General entry: left of steps, 110m
• Members: right of steps, no queue
• Van Gogh exhibition: via accessible entrance, no queue
Advance booking is no longer available so all walk-up visitors join the same queue. This is much longer than before but moves faster because the number of bag checkers has been increased from three to five. It took me 30 minutes to gain entry, much better than last week's 55 minutes but still a lengthy queueing marathon. The gallery was noticeably busier.
