THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Beverley Brook Worcester Park → New Malden → Barnes (3½ miles)
[Beverley Brook → Thames]
If you've ever read the Ben Aaronovitch Rivers ofLondon novels you'll know Beverley Brook as a sassy mystical character who keeps the lead detective on his toes. In reality, the Beverley Brook is another of London's unlost, unburied, unsung rivers - much less thrilling to write about, but I'll give it a try. The fluvial version flows due north through southwest London, roughly parallel to the River Wandle, from the very edge of the capital to the Thames near Putney. Along the way it forms the western boundary of Wimbledon Common and the eastern edge of Richmond Park, so there are some magnificent stretches, but also some rather lesser bits inbetween. An official walkway follows the middle and lower courses, which I'll get to tomorrow, while today I'm attempting to follow the upper bit. [map][8 photos]
It's probably no coincidence that the Beverley Brook begins less than 100m inside the Greater London boundary. It first appears at the top of Cuddington Recreation Ground, a wedge of fresh-mown green between Stoneleigh and Worcester Park. But it only appears if you know where to look, within a thin treeline strip snaking downslope. At the top end is a brick culvert, flowing even in June, which suggests unseen pipework is gathering water from beneath surrounding avenues. Step within the leafy curtain and you can follow the ditch unseen by neighbouring dog-walkers, meeting instead fallen branches, crisp packets and the odd rat. I rather enjoyed it, at least until the path faded out into a thicket before the fledgling brook vanished back underground.
Note to Ben, in case he's ever thinking of locating a crime scene at the source of the Beverley Brook:
i) The serpentine ditch would be a great place to hide a body - it could easily go unnoticed by Rec users only a few feet away on either side.
ii) According to risk advice posted at the entrance, the most dangerous activities in the Rec are grass cutting, hedge cutting and strimming.
iii) The Rec is patrolled by Sutton's Safer Parks Team, successor body to the tiny Sutton Parks Constabulary disbanded in 2008, and now an outpost of the Met.
The brook's longest culverted section runs under the children's playground and beneath the rows of large semis than characterise much of Worcester Park. A three bedroom-er with decent garden out here in Zone 4 goes for much the same as a shoebox in a new tower in Zone 2, should you be reconsidering your living standards... plus there's a Waitrose, which is the next thing the river flows beneath. Re-emergence comes down by the station, opposite The Brook gastropub - the precise destination of my walk from the centre to the edge of London last month (which, knowing how boundaries and rivers go hand in hand, is probably no coincidence).
For the next half mile the river flows along one side of Green Lane, an echo of the area's rural past, though now hemmed in with housing. Strangest of these are the New England Colonial-style blocks at The Hamptons, whose pristine blue timbers and belltower belie the fact that twenty years ago this was a sewage treatment works. Flooding in the local area used to spread across lawns and Skinners Field, the homeground of Worcester Park FC, so Back Green was recently relandscaped to create natural overspill. It looks lush, and should be accessible to residents down a tarmac ramp, but a 'temporary' fence permanently blocks the path, plus apparently it doesn't work very well and now floods different properties to those affected before.
The river cuts across the back of a primary school and a large paddock full of horses, where you can't see it, then services the trio of gasholders in Motspur Park. If you'd like to see it again, head for the back of the Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Playing Fields into the Sir Joseph Hood Memorial Wood. I bet most of the recreation ground's users don't even know it's there, but a plank bridge behind the play area leads to a triangular woodland planted in the 1860s to screen the railway, and along the hypotenuse runs the Beverley Brook. Now three or four metres wide it flows placidly between wooden boards and gnarled roots, which might sound poetic, but probably isn't unless you catch the light right.
For the next three miles the Beverley Brook forms the boundary between the London boroughs of Kingston and Merton. But you probably won't spot it by the level crossing in Motspur Park, ducking beneath the road beyond the herringbone shopping parade. You won't spot it immediately alongside the edge of West Barnes Lane, unless it's winter and the screen of trees has shed its leaves. You won't spot it up the side of the Motspur Park Horticultural Society's HQ, nor along the back of the playing field at Coombe Boy's School (whose grey corrugated building looks like a retail warehouse but is apparently a Tatler's Good Schools Guide 'Hot Tip'). In fact you'll barely be seeing the brook at all along here, which I suspect is why the official riverside walk doesn't kick off for another mile.
Crossing the A3 is a trial, involving a detour via a severe concrete footbridge. The A3 is rarely far away from the Beverley Brook from this point to the edge of Richmond Park, which suggests that engineers exploited the gentle contouring of its valley when the dual carriageway was driven through. The Kingston Bypass is the ugliest section along the entire river, crossing between Curry's and Carpetright as part of the Shannon Corner Retail Park. Return to suburbia comes via Beverley Road, named after the waterway at the back of the terrace, which you won't see until you reach the footbridge up the end. Mind the scaffolding yard squashed opportunistically beside the river, whose owners appear to spend most of their time attempting to reverse large trucks out of a cul-de-sac. And don't actually follow the river at this point, the footpath's going nowhere helpful.
Which brings us to Beverley Park, known only to the inhabitants of New Malden, which is a park with the Beverley Brook at the bottom of it. It's exactly what you'd hope a park to be, a large expanse of grass with room for picnicking and sport, plus tennis courts and a pavilion (with toilets), though alas the pond is long filled in. In one corner the council gardening team have created a lovely rose garden, currently at peak, while an avenue of tall trees runs down the centre to the river. The only problem is that the river isn't a feature, it's shielded behind an overgrown fence and barely visible, which seems an utter waste. It's also nigh impossible to see the point where its largest tributary - the Pyl Brook - flows in, before the combined waters enter the privacy of a golf course.
To summarise, the first few miles of the Beverley Brook aren't that exciting, indeed they're missable. But the remainder is a different matter, and I wonder if tomorrow I might persuade you to see for yourself.
It's a familiar problem. How to fill the gap at the BBC Radio Theatre between getting the sticker on your ticket and the studio doors opening. There can be almost two hours inbetween, and it would be a shame to waste them.
What a lot of people do, obviously, is peer down over the BBC Newsroom for a few minutes, then buy some drinks from the Media Bar and sit at a table for the remainder of the long wait. Or they head out to dinner somewhere in Fitzrovia, because there's just about enough time to fit in a nice meal if you skip the starter, or dessert.
But I recommend going for a walk up to the top of Regent's Park and back, because that's lovely. Obviously it helps, sky-wise, if a thunderstorm has just rolled across and the sun is coming out.
Strolling up the Boardwalk in the Avenue Gardens you're tracing the precise boundary between Westminster and Camden. The fragrance of the shrubberies is divine at present, and some of the squirrels want nothing more than to be your own personal groupie.
Queen Mary's Gardens, within the Inner Circle, are a landscaping triumph with Japanese Garden, lake and cascade. Swans glide and a heron stalks, just across the formal lawns from the Open Air Theatre.
The Rose Garden is London's largest collection of roses and boasts 85 different single variety beds. Not only are they free to inspect, but these colourful blooms are at their very best in early June, which is damned convenient.
The northern half of the park is mostly sports pitches, thus full of kickers in shorts and batters in whites. The Hub looks like a flying saucer has landed, but the cafe atop the mound conceals toilets and changing facilities below.
And if you manage to make it right up to the far end, it's possible to see into some of the enclosures at London Zoo for nothing. I watched the porcupines being fed, and the camels enjoying the unseasonal heat, before turning back.
If you come next week, watch out for the fenced-off area with the marquees on Marylebone Green. Pay a small fortune to get inside for the privilege of spending even more money buying taster portions of signature dishes. ATMs will be provided.
Time your park walk right and you'll get back to Broadcasting House just before the guests of the production staff are waved through and general stickered entry begins. Others may be impressed by your flushed face and healthy tan as they throw their collection of bottles in the recycling.
And hopefully you'll enjoy the show. I enjoyed laughing along to the pilot episode of a Radio 4 sci-fi comedy about a smoking robot, a chugger and a man with a spanner up his nose. John Finnemore played a dead dog, very convincingly, and David Mitchell was clearly born to be the boss of an evil self-storage empire. We laughed a lot, which must be a good sign, and you could sense the joyful relief on the face of the lead actor, whose first radio sitcom as an author this is.
Listen out for Time Spanner on your radio sometime. Or get down to Regent's Park this month because it's gorgeous.
When your broadband blips out, you expect it to come back. Mine didn't. It completely vanished two weeks ago, suddenly and without warning. So I called an engineer.
• Engineer number 1 came promptly, and poked around, before deducing he couldn't go any further until a communal cupboard was unlocked. Pah.
• Engineer number 2 came the following day, but nobody communal had managed to locate the relevant key, so he had an entirely wasted visit. Meh.
• Engineer number 3 never rang the bell, he did all his work in the street, so assumed he'd fixed everything when in fact he hadn't. Grrrr.
• Engineer number 4 turned up yesterday and spent an hour doing something in the unlocked cupboard, which eventually solved the problem. Hurrah!
It wasn't quite as bad as being sent back to 1996 - we have smartphones these days, and I managed to latch onto some unsecured wifi leaking out from an anonymous neighbour. But I don't recommend the experience, and I'm hugely relieved to be back in normality again.
The least used station in... Berkshire MIDGHAM (Annual passenger usage: 33996)
Having visited several of the least used stations in London, I thought I'd cast my net wider and visit the least used stations in the surrounding area. Not all of them, because that would be a mammoth task, but specifically the least used station in each county. I'm going to stick to the Home Counties, however they're defined, and I'm considering traditional counties, none of this post-1998 unitary borough stuff. Having drawn up a potential list of places to visit, I'm then going to visit them in decreasing order of busyness, over the next few months or however long it takes, which might be a very long time. And I'm starting with Berkshire. [10 photos]
Midgham station is in West Berkshire, about ten miles west of Reading, on the line out to Hungerford and the southwest. If you've ever taken the InterCity to Exeter or Penzance you've probably rushed straight through, although rather fewer services stop. On weekdays an hourly shuttle runs between Newbury and Reading, while on Sundays there's a direct link to Paddington, but only every two hours. I checked the timetables very carefully, and headed down in one hour flat.
Thestation's nothing special but, given that the entire point of this feature is to visit it, I'll do my best with a description. There are two platforms, with a level crossing at one end the only way to pass from one to the other. Both platforms have a shelter, the eastbound a proper brick hut and the westbound more of a slouching space, complete with an abandoned half bottle of Australian Shiraz which I hope someone's cleared away by now. Arriving from Reading you head down a short ramp to the main road, which isn't terribly main at all, while on the opposite side access is via a not very big car park. There's nothing much here of any antiquity, nor anything jarringly over-modern. And it's very quiet here after the train has gone - a sentence I suspect I'll be writing quite a lot as this feature progresses.
Midgham station has a proper peculiarity in that it's in the middle of a village, but that village isn't called Midgham. The houses round about and up the road are part of Woolhampton, a linear cluster on the Bath Road, better known today as the A4. The station was originally called Woolhampton, but the story goes that the stationmaster grew tired of receiving packages which were meant to go to Wolverhampton and so the name was changed to Midgham instead. There is a village of Midgham, but it's a mile away, and rather smaller, and an entirely illogical name for the station unless the mispronunciation fable is actually true.
Woolhampton's rather nice, as you'd expect in this well-to-do part of Berkshire, with a mix of housing old and new, and several large piles shielded off country lanes. Only one of the former coaching inns survives, that's The Angel, a sturdy beast with daily carvery and monthly jazz night. Queen Victoria is commemorated by a Diamond Jubilee drinking fountain at the top of the road from the station, with the devoted inscription "Righteousness Exalteth A Nation", while the former Working Men's Club is of similar Gothic antiquity, but now a detached home.
If you discount the BP garage then the village supports two shops, one of them The OldCorner Shop, which genuinely is old - its half-timbered frame dates back to 1560. The contents were rather more modern, however, with a window display of brightly coloured handbags, raffia bowls and flamingo-print textiles suggesting this was a place where local ladies come to buy things other local ladies don't have. For more everyday essentials I can recommend the Woolhampton Village Shop, an impressively-stacked resource, particularly the counter blessed with pies, pasties, scotch eggs and other freshly-baked specialities. Non bog-standard coffees and teas were also served - damned good for a village of less than a thousand people - while the table piled with Timeses, Telegraphs and Mails hinted heavily at the clientèle.
The village has a companion up the hill, that's Upper Woolhampton, which is essentially an independent school, the parish church and a monastery strung out along a lane. Now I come to write that sentence it sounds particularly interesting, and I probably should have gone to take a look, particularly at Douai Abbey, an extensive monastery which started out in Paris in 1615 and arrived here three centuries later. But instead I was intent on heading to Midgham, simply because the station was named after it, and that was probably a mistake.
The direct route from Woolhampton to Midgham, if you can call it that, rises up a quiet country lane before making a break for fields and parkland. I crossed the first two fields without trouble, but the third was full of cows, who on closer inspection didn't have udders so weren't cows at all. Bullocks. As I stood by the gate wondering how suicidal it would be to unlatch it they turned slowly to face me, all two dozen of them, then wandered purposefully across to collectively stare me out. I was forced to retreat, which meant a dull detour along the A4, four times longer than the cross-country path would have been. But I was getting the hang of the locale, the kind of place where the largest landowner deploys inappropriate farm animals to block the only public right of way.
Midgham's not big. Its pub is at the foot of the hill on the main road, that's the Coach and Horses, older than the Angel and a slightly more upmarket proposition. The village hall is a timber shed, where such weighty matters as replacing the glass in the local bus shelter are discussed. St Matthew's church is Midgham's finest feature, its spire dominating the hilltop and a series of corbelled heads along the nave, but still nothing to go out of your way to visit. Some fairly ordinary houses line the single rising street, which if you continue along for a couple of miles you reach Kate Middleton's home village. I think that makes Midgham her family's nearest station, not that I suspect they'll have been among the 33996 passengers last year.
With Woolhampton small and Midgham dull, I spent most of my trip following the area's finest tourist attraction, which is the Kennet and Avon Canal. This river/canal hybrid was famously restored and reopened in 1990, and was being well used by boaters, ramblers and particularly cyclists as I walked along. I started in Midgham and headed east, returning to Woolhampton via a considerably more scenic route past locks and several swingbridges. On the banks of the Kennet, close to the station, The Rowbarge pub proved to be Woolhampton's social hotspot, with a hundred sunbathing souls sprawled on the lawn enjoying beer and grilled meat. If I'd had any sense I would have stopped and joined them.
But no, I was enjoying the canal too much so continued to Aldermaston, where I'd just missed a two hourly train so continued further to Theale. Beneath blue skies and alongside scenic waters, the seven mile stroll was a delight, and I don't think I've ever seen quite so many dragonflies in one place before. You don't need to walk that far, or even in that direction, but a Rowbarge/canal combo would make a decent day out should you ever choose to boost Midgham station's meagre passenger total.
As yet there have been no sightings of the poster-sized tube map (with added trams) at London Underground stations. But the June 2016 paper map does exist, and has apparently been available for over a week in at least one particular Zone 1 ticket hall. So I picked up a copy. And yes, there is a very embarrassing mistake at Morden.
Morden should be in zone 4, but on the latest version of the tube map it's accidentally been sucked into a new grey tram zone where "Special fares apply". Journeys to Morden aren't special, so the printed map is wrong, which makes a mockery of the "Correct at time of going to print" tagline at the bottom.
Either TfL are intending to dish out 12 million such incorrect maps over the course of the rest of the year, in which case you'll be able to hold the error in your hands soon enough. Or they're rapidly reprinting another batch, in line with the corrected version on the TfL website, and my Morden-fail version is going to become an eBay-friendly limited edition. Time will tell.
Ten things that have changed on the new June 2016 tube map
1) There are trams!
Old news by now, I know. But the arrival of the tram network is important, because it confirms TfL's intention to display as many of their services as possible on the map. It's hardly a tube map any more, not when it contains DLR, Overground, cablecar and now trams, but at least they haven't got round to adding river services or Cycle Superhighways or key buses, and I'd best stop there before I give anyone ideas. In total 39 tramstops have been added, 37 of which are at new locations, fitting almost-conveniently into the large tube-free blank space at the foot of the map. As with the Overground there's been no attempt to demarcate the separate lines, so you'll not see any difference between routes 1, 2, 3 and 4. And every tramstop has step-free access... which the cynic in me suspects might be the entire point of the exercise, as it increases the proportion of step-free stations on the tube map from 40% to 45% overnight.
2) Everything's a bit more squashed
You can't squeeze 39 more blobs onto the tube map without shifting everything else around to make room. In some areas the nudging is fractional, and in others rather more severe. The distance from Stockwell to South Wimbledon on the Northern line is now 20% shorter, likewise the Overground from New Cross Gate down to West Croydon. Meanwhile the Central line from Ealing Broadway no longer runs across the exact centre of the map but slightly above, and the first vertical fold no longer passes through South Kensington but instead Gloucester Road. This contraction continues the design's ongoing inexorable degradation - in short, with every update of the tube map it's getting harder to read.
3) Part of the Overground is closing for eight months
This, not the trams, is the reason a June 2016 tube map has been required. The Gospel Oak to Barking branch of the Overground is closing for long-awaited electrification, which will be brilliant when it's completed in February next year. In the meantime before the end of September everything to the east of South Tottenham is closed and everything to the west is open weekdays only, and after the end of September everything is closed. It's a bit complicated and takes some decoding, especially if you're trying to work out whether a particular bit of dotted orange line is open or not. But the two replacement bus services have been given considerable prominence down the right hand side of the map - more than I've ever seen before.
4) More step-free access is available
In excellent news, South Tottenham station now has step free access, installed in April, so appears with a white blob on the map. In less good news, that's just in time for this branch of the London Overground to close for several months. Also in less good news, Vauxhall now has an interchange symbol rather than a blue blob because its step-free access project is running some months behind schedule.
5) The map's key has moved
The key's been at the bottom of the paper map since 2009, but now the tram's arrived it's been kicked out, and now exists at the top of the white information strip down the right hand side. That's a plus because it's better spaced than it used to be, so is a bit easier to read. I notice that the trams have been shoehorned in near the bottom of the list, below the cablecar and TfL Rail, using the label "London Trams", a title I've not seen used elsewhere.
6) The cablecar's name has been extended
For the last four years the cablecar has been labelled on the tube map as the "Emirates Air Line". However it's highly likely that a large number of potential passengers didn't fully understand what this might be, so on the new map an extra description has been added. Now it's the "Emirates Air Line cable car", to clarify the ambiguous brand name and to make it sound more like the tourist attraction it truly is. Two columns further across, the mini-gondola symbol used for the cablecar has also had this extra phrase added, giving even greater prominence to the only sponsored means of transport on the map.
7) There are fewer daggers on the map
Unlike a few years ago, TfL now only sprinkle daggers on the map if there's a genuine reason to "check before you travel". On the last map four stations had a blue dagger because they were closed but now it's only three, with Barbican (shut throughout the autumn) the fresh arrival. Half a dozen further stations get the lesser red dagger, but no further information, because there isn't room. Alas TfL still expect you to Google "TfL stations" to find out what the issue is, despite this being a ridiculous amount of palaver and highly unlikely to work.
8) The index is even more squashed
Until the end of 2014, the index on the back of the map used two columns of information per page, which was relatively legible. Since then we've switched to three columns, and the addition of 37 new tramstops has kicked the list over onto the top part of a third page. Look carefully and you'll also see that the columns nudge up closer to the edge of the page than they did before, confirming what a juggling act this has become. The minuscule font combined with narrow line spacing makes the index depressingly illegible, not helped by the mammoth amount of additional information the index is expected to contain. And these tramstops are making it even worse because they're not in a zone, so TfL have written "Special" in the Zone column rather than using a single number or letter. On the last map there were only four Specials, whereas now there are ten times as many, and still no explanation of what "Special" might mean.
9) The symbol for Visitor Centres has changed
Not only is the writing in the index tiny, but the symbols are tiny too, so if your eyesight's anything less than excellent you won't be able to make them out. This was particularly the case on the last map for TfL's new Visitor Centres, which were represented by some bleached rectangular design it was nigh impossible to pick out. That problem has been solved by making the symbol bright red, so now you can actually spot it in the index, which is a big improvement.
10) Morden is in the wrong zone
And finally, as we've already mentioned, Morden accidentally appears in the "Special fares apply" zone rather than in zone 4. Trams don't really need a zone, because they're a flat-fare means of travel, but everything on the tube map has to have one so we've ended up with a big grey swathe across the bottom of the map. This along with disjoint slivers of grey and white for zones 4 and 5 near Croydon, plus the grey zone 2/3 overlap added back in January, create a mess it's not at all easy to pick apart. Perhaps it's no surprise that TfL's proof readers failed to spot their Morden error amid this maelstrom. If evidence were needed that the tube map has become too complicated for its own good, the pulping of 12 million copies might well be proof enough.
The latest tube map, the one with added trams. Where is it?
It's on the website, in all its various forms, But it's not yet appeared in stations, and it should have done by now.
This hasn't been a normal tube map introduction, not by a long way. And for this I think we can thank two things - trams, and Londonist.
The sudden appearance of trams on the tube map was always going to be newsworthy, so TfL went out of their way to manage the big reveal, and ensure that the big news didn't simply slip out.
Normally TfL announce something using their press release channel, sending embargoed missives to trusted media and sharing them publicly a little later. In this case they went to Londonist, specifically to Geoff Marshall, and wrapped up the big news in a video interview. Geoff asked TfL's head designer Jon Hunter about the conflicting challenges of assembling the tube map - a not unsubstantial topic - with much discussion about what gets on the map and what doesn't, and the power that making such decisions brings. And in particular he asked about the trams.
Geoff: Why have the trams been added to the tube map now?
Jon: Yes the trams. So, one of the reasons being that we've now added realtime information on the ESUB Boards, the rainbow boards as customers like to call them. Now that gives customers information about disruptions, but there's no point telling a customer there's a disruption potentially on their part of the tram network if they don't know how to replan their journey, so hence one of the reasons why we've now added it onto the tube map.
This is quietly baffling. The tram network attaches to the existing tube map at only two points - Wimbledon and West Croydon. The new tube map is no use whatsoever in replanning a disrupted journey from Mitcham Junction, New Addington or Elmers End; it shows no useful alternative routes in this respect. You'd catch the bus, a mode of transport that's never going to appear on the tube map, or you'd catch a similarly invisible National Rail service. Indeed the new tube map continues to conceal the comprehensive rail network that exists in south London, and which is easily the quickest way from, say, Beckenham to Victoria or Elmers End to Lewisham. You couldn't add all this without vastly disbenefiting the user with information overload, whereas the trams fit cleanly without too much complex overlap.
Equally baffling is the rainbow board argument. Passengers do see rainbow boards at stations, now with a light green strip revealing the current status of the four tram lines. But there are no rainbow boards at tramstops, apart from Wimbledon which has one because it's on the tube, so passengers aren't getting this information in situ. By contrast the cablecar is on the tube map but doesn't appear on rainbow boards, thankfully, so there's no consistent underlying logic here.
Trams have operated in London since 2000, and under TfL's tenure since 2008, so it's possible to argue that the network really should have been added to the tube map either 8 or 16 years ago. South London gets a raw deal on the tube map, and now suddenly Merton and Croydon have a much fairer representation, indeed even Sutton now appears for the very first time (with fractional thanks to Beddington Lane). And yet the tube map addition is locally pointless, because there are no tube maps on the tram network. All the poster frames at tramstops are in portrait format, whereas the tube map is landscape, so there isn't anywhere to pin one up anyway. The only people who'll notice that trams are on the tube map will be those on the tube, DLR or Overground network, at least with respect to paper copies.
Or they would but, as I've already mentioned, no paper copies have yet appeared.
TfL did something else unusual in launching this new tube map which was to announce its arrival a full week in advance. Normally the paper map slips into stations over the course of a weekend and TfL push out a press release on the following Monday, generally focusing on the cover design. But in this case they published their press release as early as Friday 27th May, making the arrival of trams on the map the overall focus. And, more to the point, they confirmed an actual publication date.
It was indeed available to view online on Friday 3rd June, indeed it actually slipped out the day before. But as for seeing the latest tube map in stations, which should have occurred during the seven days leading up to Friday 3rd June, there have been no sightings whatsoever. I've been round 30 different stations over the weekend and in none of them were any of the new paper tube maps available. It can take a while for new stocks to appear, and stations often try to get rid of the old version before dishing out the new. But for 30 stations (and three TfL Visitor Centres) not to have one is unprecedented.
More to the point, no updated large poster maps have appeared on station platforms or in ticket halls. These are usually changed quite quickly, with staff stepping in to replace the poster overnight. But not this time, it appears. Every station I've visited still has the January 2016 map in place, with a gaping grey gap where the trams are going to be, and the Friday 3rd June target has very much not been met. And this is an important omission, because as of Saturday 4th June a not insignificant chunk of the Overground network was closed for the next eight months, and this information urgently needs to be conveyed to passengers.
All of which suggests that a deliberate decision has been taken not to roll out the new map as originally scheduled.
I wonder why.
I wonder if it's Morden.
When the new tube map was first revealed, both at Londonist and in the media frenzy following TfL's first press release, the first thing everybody said was "ooh, trams!" But in amongst the comments and social media response, what the more observant people were saying was "hang on, what's gone wrong with Morden?"
In order to place the tram network on the tube map, a large grey area labelled "Special fares apply" has had to be added at the bottom. West Croydon and Wimbledon were carefully positioned partly inside and partly outside this grey zone, according to which side of the interchange each blob was. But Morden found itself entirely within the new 'special' zone, due to some kind of graphical oversight, whereas it should have appeared in an outpost of zone 4.
It's easy to imagine somebody at TfL going "ah, bugger" when this was pointed out, or perhaps a rather stronger phrase. It doesn't do to suggest that "special fares apply" for travel to Morden, indeed it could be financially misleading, whereas the tube map needs to be a beacon of network accuracy.
The electronic map was quickly tweaked, and when this went up on the TfL website last week Morden had been correctly zoned. But paper maps are another matter, particularly when large numbers have been printed in advance, which likely explains why we've not yet seen any of these in the wild.
Generating a fresh set of large poster maps, with a print run in the low thousands, may not take too long. But to replace a set of pre-printed paper maps would be a massive undertaking. TfL print 12 million copies at a time (I'm indebted to Londonist for that fact), and to run off a new batch might take a while. Imagine the waste in having to throw 12 million Morden-fail copies of the tube map away. More to the point, imagine the cost of having to produce a reprint... or rather don't imagine because it's £100,000 (thanks Londonist again).
One thing is for certain, which is that TfL's design team didn't check their new tube map carefully enough before they released it to a wider audience. And yet that wider audience spotted the error quite quickly. Perhaps it's time to employ one of them as an additional proof reader before the go-ahead is given for a major print run. But I suspect TfL'll be checking more carefully in the future anyway, to avoid any further embarrassing and costly slips.
Hopefully we'll be seeing the corrected tube map in racks and on station walls soon.
A few weeks short of four years since the last Olympics, Stratford's stadium is once again open for business. It has a new name - London Stadium. It likely has another new name waiting in the wings, courtesy of an unexpected sponsor. And the inaugural event wasn't football, nor athletics, nor any other kind of sport - it was AC/DC.
It's taken rather longer than expected to make ready the former Olympic Stadium for West Ham United. Originally the 2014/2015 season was pencilled in, but instead the first match won't be until August 2016, a showcase friendly against Juventus. Floodlights have been lowered, a proper roof has been added to keep fans dry, and retractable seating has been installed so that the athletics track doesn't get in the way. There's also a 15,000ft² retail building, the Stadium Store, inserted around the southern rim of the external concourse. It already has its name and two hammer badges slapped on the front, and soon you'll be able to buy all your favourite claret and blue merchandise once the existing flagship store in Upton Park closes down. E13's loss is E20's gain, or more realistically E20's gain is E13's loss.
But West Ham will only be on the pitch for a contracted handful of days each year. An annual slot from the end of June to the end of July has been safeguarded for athletics, not quite in perpetuity but for the next 50 years, which is near enough. The intention is also to rope in a wide range of other events, as is evident from the London Stadium's intention to become "a superb multi-use venue to bring fans together, closer to music, sport and entertainment". Hence it's no surprise to find a hard rock band like AC/DC headlining the first official show, not least because their late middle-aged fans are likely to be able to afford the £65, £75 and £95 tickets. Seat prices for the 2012 Olympics look positively reasonable by comparison.
If you were on the Park side of Stratford yesterday you'll have spotted the invading army. Most made identification easy by wearing an AC/DC t-shirt, invariably in black, ideally from a past tour to show longevity of devotion. For those unsuitably garbed a series of merchandising stalls had set up, where the official tour t-shirt was proving more popular than the £50 West Ham AC/DC football shirt. The majority of the fans were fifty- or sixty-something, meaning long hair was no longer an option, but several younger folk had turned up, including a significant cross generational strand attending as a father/son combo. They didn't quite swarm, more flock, as the evening concert ticked round. But they did bring a hint of 2012 back to the area, as West Ham's impending presence also will, and a new normality kicks in.
It was instructive to observe how events are to be managed at the stadium, again with echoes of four years ago. The natural river perimeter of Stadium Island was once again put to good use, with access to the inner core available only via five checkpoint bridges. Gates opened at 3pm, which trapped you on the island with only a ring of catering trucks for company, before the stadium itself opened two hours later. The most fortunate ticketholders had been assigned to Bridge 1, immediately opposite the main entrance from Westfield, where they queued for checks and bag searches before being admitted to the inner ring. Next in terms of convenience came Bridge 5, down by the Orbit, incorporating the designated entrance for the media (which explained the relative lack of AC/DC t-shirts in this particular line). But the other bridges are a bit more of a trek away, as many found out to their cost at the Olympics, and more will be finding out in the future.
Bridge 2 is a five minute walk from the main Westfield entrance, heading upriver to the top of the adventure playground, now protected by a row of thick metal bollards to prevent inappropriate vehicular access to the island. Bridge 3 is a few minutes further on, diametrically opposite Bridge 1, although it's easy to get disoriented and not realise how far round you've gone. Bridge 3 is actually over a mile from Stratford station, so if you're ever at an event where this is your designated entrance then Hackney Wick is rather nearer, at a mere half a mile's stroll. As for Bridge 4 this isn't truly a bridge, more a set of steps up to the outer concourse, and was only being used for staff admittance. It's blatantly the backdoor entrance, with access to all the VIP seats, and at two kilometres from Stratford it's furthest away of all, with Pudding Mill Lane DLR the closest station.
It's not yet clear whether the same siege mentality approach will be taken for West Ham matches, or whether the ring of turnstiles will provide an adequate perimeter. One would hope the latter, allowing access to the landscaped slopes of the island, plus various bits of Hammers infrastructure shipped over from Upton Park or installed from fresh. If not, then one complete circuit beyond the edge of the Island takes twenty-five minutes, I've timed it, and I don't recommend you try the same. What was very apparent yesterday were the security personnel, who were everywhere in their hi-vis, both at the entrances to the bridges and at several points roundabout. I can also report that the fountains near the Aquatics Centre, the snaking water feature that visiting kids adore, were turned off to prevent congestion as the AC/DC crowd milled through. The southern Olympic Park isn't quite such a family-friendly destination when a stadium event is underway, so you might want to check beforehand if you're planning on bringing children.
I didn't hang around for theconcert, but I can report that the AC/DC PA was vaguely audible from 1000m away, if entirely unrecognisable. A series of very loud bangs could also be clearly heard, so I'm glad I knew this must be Angus Young's encore and not a dozen explosions of potentially dubious origin. Their timing suggests Newham has imposed a ten thirty curfew, which'll be good news for anybody living rather closer to the stadium, either now or in the future.
London Stadium is such a new concept that they have fewer than 200 followers on Twitter, and the website is presumably equally little troubled. Here we learn that very few events are currently scheduled at the venue, bar some athletics next month and some rugby league in November, and no other rock groups whatsoever. We also discover that blankets, pole-free flags up to 1m², food and fruit for personal consumption, sealed plastic bottles and thermoses, seat cushions and small umbrellas are permitted inside the stadium, but not cans, camcorders or selfie-sticks. And from August you'll also be able to go on a tour of the stadium with multimedia features (including "footage of matches, races and concerts"). I have my doubts that it'll be "the tour of a lifetime", especially having read the job description of a Tour Experience Maker, which is to meet and greet customers arriving for tours, sell tickets, distribute audio handsets, and take/sell commercial photo opportunities.
Meanwhile the one big remaining question is what London Stadium will be officially called. The naming rights have already been sold off and an announcement must be imminent, particularly if we're all supposed to be using the sponsor's title by the start of the football season. And while you might be expecting a big name company to step in, all the insider information suggests this won't be the case. An Indian conglomerate called the Mahindra Group are reported to have stumped up £6m a year, less than half what was originally hoped for, in an attempt to raise global awareness of their Mobility/Rural Prosperity/IT/Financial Services/Clean Energy/Business Productivity portfolio. So the Mahindra Stadium, then, an internationally ludicrous commercial imposition?
Or perhaps there is method to this apparent madness. Mahindra have recently launched a new electric car in this country, which they're hoping will be a low-emission gamechanger, and the previous Mayor even contributed upbeat words to the press release as if he knew what was emerging behind the scenes. This pricy hatchback has a top speed of 50mph and a range of 75 miles before you need to plug it back in, so is seen as an urban runabout rather than a full automotive replacement. And its name is the e2o, which if you tweak the typography looks like E20, which is the postcode of the Olympic Park. I'm convinced this is no coincidence, and that the impending title of the post-Olympic arena will be the Mahindra E20 Stadium, or some rearrangement thereof. I'd quite like to be wrong, but if we must have a commercial moniker imposed, at least this is far less ghastly than it could have been.
It's been nine months since I last showcased a selection of inappropriate attempts at marketing outreach which have spluttered into my inbox. So here are a few more, in my continued attempt not to get any more.
Dear Diamond Geezer,
My name's Joanna and I'm the author behind the new blog <name of blog> that can be viewed at <URL>. I write about city walks in London and in <town that isn't London> and also share some of my reflections on life. I thought you may be interested in visiting my blog. Whenever you have a moment, have a look at <URL> and comment on the posts that you enjoyed. If you like something in particular it would be also great if you share it on social media with your followers.
I have commented on all the posts I enjoyed, Joanna, although you may not have noticed.
Dear Diamond Geezer,
We would like to invite you and your friends, family and colleagues to join us in celebrating the brand new look of our renowned British Brasserie, <name of Brasserie> at <Docklands location>. Come and experience our beautiful new surroundings, indulge in our delicious classic canapés and celebrate with our expertly mixed cocktails. All on us!
I promptly unsubscribed from this email stream, so the unnamed PR gnome sent me another identical invite just to rub their freebie in my face.
Hi Diamond Geezer,
I hope you're having an awesome day! I'm Alex, the Affiliate Partnerships Manager at <online estate agency> and I think we can work together. I've noticed that your topics and audience may align with the sorts of customers <online estate agency> typically attracts. We're hoping to establish a long-term partnership where we work with you to co-create content through which you'd would earn on BOTH a CPL and CPA basis as long as the links are live on DG.
My hunch was that you wouldn't enjoy Alex's co-created content, nor sign up and make me rich, so I spurned his CPL and CPA.
Good morning,
How are you?? I thought I would send you below in case it worked for any diary pages or features and, of course, we would love for you to come down on the press launch too.
Lucie's attempt to send me below was entirely unsuccessful.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I work for a media contacts database company called <database company>. We would like your permission for us to list your blog in our database. The database has over 16,000 media outlets and over 40,000 editorial contacts. We are used by PR professionals to create media lists to target influencers with story ideas, event invitations, product samples and other promotional material.
I never sign up for influencer spam, Patrick.
Hi,
Hope you’re well. I’m working with <wireless broadband service> who have just released a video experiment to see how many Londoners would pay unexpected charges from a fake council warden whilst going about their daily lives at <YouTube link>. I think the video would go down really well on the blog.
Of course you do, Mike, but your attempt at viral seeding fell flat when I couldn't be bothered to view your crass video concept in the first place.
Bonjour Diamond Geezer Team
It only took four words for Jasmin's email to end up in the bin.
Dear Diamond Geezer,
I hope you're well. I’m excited to let you know that tomorrow <app company> will be releasing the long-awaited successor to our popular <transport app> app, which has had over 2 million downloads to date. I’m pleased to attach a press release below. I would be most grateful for any coverage you’re able to give this release and please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions.
I asked Lara to unsubscribe me from her marketing communications, to which her response was...
Will do. If you would like to follow us on Twitter instead, our handles are @<app company> and @<transport app>.
...so Lara clearly didn't get the message.
And finally, if you ever click on my email address, top right, the message "Marketing emails not welcome, thanks" will appear in the body of your email. But this didn't stop Linda.
Marketing emails not welcome, thanks
Hi Diamond Geezer,
I’m not sure if you will see this as a marketing email?!! If you do – apologies and please do the equivalent of throwing it in the bin. But just thought you might like to see copies and possibly mention these two books?
Of course it's a marketing email, I told her, and you knew that. Sorry, Linda said. She's not written back since.
So please, if you're a PR intern or marketing professional, please be like Linda. That's "don't write", not "ignore all the clues and send a gauche unwanted commercial proposition anyway". Because I'm never interested. Many thanks.
The arrival of trams on the tube map is great news for south London, parts of which now exist for the first time. We all knew about Wimbledon and Croydon, but it turns out there are other places inbetween which we can all now get to. Even better, some of them might actually be worth visiting. Here are a dozen tramtastic arrivals on London's social scene, easily accessed even by northerners. Who knew?
Phipps Bridge
There isn't actually a bridge at Phipps Bridge, although there would have been once, but not nearby. Instead there's the Phipps Bridge estate on Phipps Bridge Road, named after a crossing on the River Wandle, once a hub of the fledgling textile industry. If that doesn't float your boat, head across the tracks to enter Morden Hall Park, a gorgeous National Trust enclave on the banks of the aforementioned river. In the order given on the sign above the entrance, there's a shop, a cafe, an exhibition centre, craft sales and a natural play area. There's also a waterwheel and some really nice parkland, but they're not mentioned, presumably because the National Trust thought nobody would be interested in the real reason they bought up the land in the first place.
Mitcham
Yes, Mitcham is a suburb of south London, indeed it's a historic locale with a penchant for lavender growing and a 17th century cricket ground. Unfortunately the tramstop isn't near the town centre, it's quite a yomp down London Road, so the capital's foodies and shopaholics won't be flooding in any time yet. If you do come, look out for the Georgian physiotherapy clinic with the sash windows, one of the oldest station buildings in the country, once part of the pioneering Surrey Iron Railway.
Mitcham Junction
In bad news, Mitcham Junction isn't very close to the centre of Mitcham either, more a bus ride away. It's not a junction either, not properly, although it was before Tramlink took over the old single track railway line between Wimbledon and Croydon. What you really want to come here for is golf, or pre-used tyres, which are two good reasons in anybody's book.
Beddington Lane
If you alight here, don't go south - it's all industrial estate and sewage works. Instead head north and step into one corner of Mitcham Common, an enormous area of ancient grazing land on Thames gravels, and really rather lovely. This particular corner is The Meads conservation area, a lush woody hideaway with footpaths that weave between branches and blossom, and the occasional dogwalker dangling a grappled plastic bag from their wrist.
Ampere Way
For out of town shopping heaven, come no further. The environs of Purley Way are a byword for retail therapy down Croydon way, and many's the weekend that folk will jump in their cars to join the queues trying to get into B&Q, Matalan or Asda. Best of all there's IKEA, easily spotted thanks to the twin chimneys of the former Croydon Power Station now trimmed with blue and yellow rings up top. The tramstop was even once called IKEA Ampere Way, so important is the flatpack and meatballs merchant hereabouts, but all such unpaid sponsorship has now been excised. Now Tramlink's on the tube map IKEA-hunting Londonders at last have an alternative to catching the Jubilee line to Neasden, but be warned you'll likely be sharing your ride home with punters clutching several large brown boxes.
Waddon Marsh
I presume everyone comes to Waddon Marsh to stare at the gasholder. I know I did.
Wandle Park
The park with the same name is a twelve second walk from the end of the platform, and it's a beaut. A bandstand and a skate park compete for your attention, plus there's a car park because Croydoners wouldn't come otherwise. The river Wandle wiggles through the middle, edged with irises and damselflies, although it's not the proper river, more an artificial channel artfully landscaped to form a drainage basin. Be warned that this is not the Wandle Park in Colliers Wood, because that's been on the tube map for decades, and is only half the size.
Coombe Lane
If you're seeking to get away from it all, in a way the tube map doesn't usually provide, come to Coombe Lane. A few big houses and an independent school intrude, but the remainder of Coombe Woods is a thickly undulating wilderness threaded with footpaths. Avoid the dodgy-looking blokes conspiring in the undergrowth, and head for the unexpected central viewpoint where the land drops away affording panoramic views towards Upper Norwood and half of the Shirley windmill. Perhaps best of all is what looks like an isolated bungalow by the car park, in truth a Chinese restaurant, for all your plush-seated dim sum needs.
New Addington
Of all the places we'd never heard of before the trams came, New Addington is the most outlying. You can even walk to Surrey in fifteen minutes, but only if you think to walk down the unmarked footpath down the side of the recycling centre, which we guess most people never do. New Addington is a local authority estate on a former farmland slope, now home to tens of thousands of people, a swimming pool and Meat Express High Quality Butchers. If you enjoy artisan coffee and cocktail hangouts, best stay away, but if you've ever fancied staring at a London estate agent's window and thinking "blimey, that house looks almost affordable", this could be your kind of place.
Arena
In excellent news, there is an actual arena at Arena. It's the Croydon Sports Arena, a purple and pink confection which during the winter months is home to soccer legends Croydon FC, but from May to August hosts fixtures for the Croydon Harriers Athletics Club. Nextdoor expect to find an academy with the word Arena shoehorned into its name, who this September plan to begin lessons in the brand new building they hoped to open last September. Non-sporty and non-academic types should instead make their way to South Norwood Country Park, a vast wetland'n'meadows nature reserve that was formerly a sewage farm, which looks its best in early summer and may not at other times.
Avenue Road
Unless you live in Penge there are absolutely no reasons to come to Avenue Road, save one, which we think compelling. The author and poet Walter de la Mare moved into 195 Mackenzie Road after he got married, and wrote his early classic Songs From Childhood in an upper room overlooking open fields. The view today would be tramline and more houses, not quite enough to inspire poetry, which may be why Walter moved out and wrote The Listeners a few streets away. But what a thrill to loiter by the hardstanding and gaze up at his blue plaque on the gable, above the speckled net curtains, and reflect on a great life lived herein.
Beckenham Junction
And here's the most amazing discovery on the June tube map, the existence of Beckenham. It had been lurking out here in what used to be Kent for years, but only for those in the know, whereas we can all now reach it by going to Croydon on the Overground and then taking the tram. Unusually the shopping streets are quite nice, almost upmarket in places, from Pierluigi's Italian to Hak's Barbers in the Old Fire Station. Be sure to stop off in Kelsey Park where the ducks always need feeding, and watch out for the milepost outside Nat West which reveals it's only X Miles 2 Furlongs to London Bridge. Congratulations to Beckenham for hitting the bigtime, and how fantastic that a town so clearly named after the inventor of the tube map has finally found its way onto his greatest creation.
47 things Sadiq Khan promised to do in his manifesto (I'll just put this here, and come back to it over the next four years)
Housing
Build thousands more homes for Londoners each year.
Set an ambitious target of 50 per cent of new homes being genuinely affordable.
Provide homes to buy where we can give Londoners first dibs – building on brownfield public land and using the Mayor’s planning powers to their fullest extent.
Oppose building on the Green Belt, which is even more important today than it was when it was created.
Exercise ‘use it or lose it’ powers to make sure developers who have planning permission build homes and do not land-bank.
Provide live-work units as part of the Mayor’s affordable housing programme.
Name and shame rogue landlords and ensure tenants have access to this information online
Bus and tube
Freeze all TfL fares for four years - Londoners won’t pay a penny more for their travel in 2020 than they do today.
Introduce ‘The Hopper’ – a new one-hour bus ticket allowing unlimited changes within an hour, so that a £1.50 single ticket pays for a full journey.
Continue to support both Oyster and contactless payment card methods and ensure fare structures remain equal so that nobody is disadvantaged by choosing either payment method.
Set a target of only buying clean electric or hydrogen buses from 2020
Deliver the Night Tube if Boris Johnson fails to get it up and running by May
Reduce the number of days lost to strike action, by maintaining better industrial relations
Examine the impact of ticket office closures and explore what could be done at key locations to ensure everyone is able to purchase tickets and access the information they need to get around London, while keeping passengers safe
Plan for the long term, securing Crossrail 2, Bakerloo line and London Overground extensions, as well as new river crossings...
...and move on to discussions about Crossrail 3 and new orbital links.
Walking and cycling
Increase the proportion of TfL’s budget spent on cycling.
More segregated cycle routes, action on dangerous junctions, and safer lorries
Freeze all charges for the Mayor’s cycle hire scheme for four years
Pedestrianise Oxford Street
Revive plans to part-pedestrianise Parliament Square.
Open up more walking routes around London, and work with local authorities and TfL to improve the London Loop and Capital Ring walks.
Complete the Thames Path, working with boroughs, landowners and business to complete missing sections and protect access to what is already open.
Work to break down some of the city’s physical barriers, such as by backing the Rotherhithe-Canary Wharf cycle and pedestrian bridge
Driving
Retain the exclusive right of licensed black taxi drivers to use bus lanes and ply for hire.
Maintain the Congestion Charge at its current level.
Aviation
Support new aviation capacity for London, backing a second runway at Gatwick and reviewing Boris Johnson’s decision on London City.
Oppose a third runway at Heathrow and, if the Government chooses to pursue this option, continue to call for a new runway at Gatwick
Fire and police
A review of the resourcing of our fire service
Sell Boris Johnson’s water cannon and spend the receipts on youth projects aimed at decreasing gang crime.
Direct the Met to adopt a strict zero tolerance approach to hate crime
Air quality
Restore London’s air quality to legal and safe levels
Consult on bringing forward the Ultra-Low Emission Zone and expanding it along major arterial routes or a wider section of central London.
Introduce Clean Bus Corridors – prioritising new, clean buses for those services which run on the most polluted roads in the city
Make London the first ‘National Park City’
Other
Create a Business Advisory Board – made up of experts, not of political allies – to provide me with guidance and insight to find the solutions to London’s growth challenges and to provide feedback on my policy.
Put an open data strategy at the heart of London government
Pay all employees of the GLA and its agencies the London Living Wage as a minimum, and require that all contractors and suppliers do the same
Take all possible steps to divest the London Pension Fund Authority of its remaining investments in fossil fuel industries.
Establish a London Borough of Culture, like the European City of Culture, so that every year a different borough is the focus of a celebration of the city’s arts and culture.
Create a Love London Pass, giving Londoners discounts and reductions across the city to exhibitions, galleries, restaurants, shows and concerts.
We fret these days over building on the Green Belt, but if done well, would it be so bad? The catch, of course, is that housing is so infrequently done well.
One place that bucked the trend is New Ash Green, a pioneering postwar village in northwestKent. Its masterplan was devised by domestic architect Eric Lyons of SPAN Developments, who aimed to build ‘a lush green urbanism - the Verdant Village’ on the site of two hilltop farms. Residents would live in one of twenty-four neighbourhoods, each with a separate Twentieth Century design, arranged around a shopping parade and community facilities. All houses would face onto a communal greenspace, with cars banished out of sight, and with a network of footpaths threading through to make connections. Less than half of the 429 acres would be built upon, to enhance desirability, and an ultimate population of about 6000 was envisaged. [neighbourhood map]
Planning permission was initially refused, but a change of government brought a change of heart, and the first residents moved in in 1967. The ensuing economic downturn brought an end to SPAN's best endeavours after only a minority of the neighbourhoods had been completed, so the remainder was completed (to lesser specification) by other builders such as Bovis. But the dream lived on and today New Ash Green is a delightful place to live, or at least it appeared that way when I popped down to take a look.
All the necessary shared facilities were placed in the village centre, with various health services and the library occupying separate buildings across from the main car park. For retail needs a two-storey dogleg of shops was laid out, called TheRow, beneath a clocktower now disfigured by phone masts (and whose clockface is impractically difficult to see). The Co-Op is still well frequented, the bookshop has diversified into partygear, and whoever decided to call the tanning salon Ashtan should perhaps have thought things through. Upstairs there's a gym, round the corner a pub called The Badger, and on the green (called the Minnis) a somewhat angular villagehall. Indeed walking around New Ash Green it swiftly becomes evident how much SPAN's architects loved a steeply-pitched roof, like a thick wedge of brick cheese atop every building, as if this were their signature flourish.
The first few neighbourhoods, closest to the centre, stand out with a Modernist touch. The houses in OverMinnis and PunchCroft (they're great, these names) showcase sheer brick and tile, with slatted timber porches added geometrically at the front. Across the way in Lambardes the houses are larger, specifically wider with deep ground floor windows and an almost luxurious bulge. It's easy to walk past and imagine these residents living in a Sixties timewarp, and the once-futuristic furniture visible inside some suggests this may indeed be the case.
A typical New Ash Green neighbourhood contains around 100 houses arranged in brief irregular terraces, quite densely packed but still with a wealth of greenery all around. Shared lawns are immaculately tended, and somewhere there must be a crack team of landscape contractors providing the shrubbery with everyday loving care. The rural illusion is aided by shielding all vehicles around the back, with parking circles and garages accessed via a separate network of cul-de-sacs, each linked via alleyways to the verdant frontage. In sharp contrast to any modern estate no footpath is a dead end, they always lead somewhere further than a row of front doors, and this inbuilt permeability helps to mesh the community together.
One of the most obvious unifying factors at New Ash Green is a common typeface. It couldn't be more of its era if it tried, with rounded elongated letters individually attached to signs and gateposts, and occasionally flaking off. Originally every house must have had an identical oblong lamp outside its front door, with house number centrally stencilled, but only a few of these remain. Instead the majority of residents have chosen to express some individuality with a replacement lamp and a replacement plate, which I suspect the original architects wouldn't have appreciated. But everyone still has a white door and white window frames, because that's in the regulations, and each cluster of garage doors is painted an officially designated colour, be that green, blue, cream or whatever.
As you move away from the initial neighbourhoods it's possible to discern how the initial SPAN dream slowly faded. Many of the early Bovis-built sectors maintain the same green-facedgroupings, though with less architecturally adventurous stock. Over on the western edge, The Mead features broader detached houses and feels like middle class infill, while Seven Acres to the south could be any generic suburban estate, with cars parked on front drives and a notable absence of interconnecting footpaths. But Redhill Wood at the eastern extreme is as planned, a low-density self-build neighbourhood across forested slopes, scarcely visible from the hilltop opposite.
I don't necessarily recommend a 90 minute wander, there are Neighbourhood Watch signs everywhere, and to meander endlessly between terraces, garages and lawns can feel like an intrusion. But equally I was surprised by how few people I met or passed, given the interconnectedness of the estates and their properties. This even stretched to the roads where, despite this being a multi-vehicle community, almost all were parked up and the only sound of revving engines came from Brands Hatch race circuit across neighbouring fields. The most unlikely absence was children, because New Ash Green provides almost textbook conditions for playing safely outside, but hardly any were doing so. Were they all inside, or elsewhere, or is this simply what happens four decades after a bulge of young families moves in?
For more on New Ash Green check out this excellent website about SPAN, its architects, or delve around the comprehensive information provided by the Village Association. Chapter 6 of Part 2 of Concretopia, which is probably on your bookshelf, explores the everyday foibles of this model village, or if you have 15 minutes to spare settle back and watch this promotional film called The Village on The Hill. It's from the 1980s and it shows, and the focus is more on social activities than architecture, but you'll soon get a good idea of what life was like in this most atypical Kentish community. If you do choose to visit, head to Longfield station (two stops past Swanley) followed by a long walk or short bus ride, or just drive like everybody else, and admire.
The least used station in... Berkshire
