The repurposed tube map has been a staple ever since artist Simon Patterson took a 1992 copy and replaced station names with famous people. The latest version is the Black History Tube Map, an official collaboration between TfL and the Black Cultural Archives to celebrate Black History Month.
The aim is to celebrate the rich and varied contribution Black people have made to London and the UK from Roman times to the present day. Each line represents a different category from Sports (Bakerloo) to Literary (Victoria) and Trailblazer (District) to LGBTQ+ (Jubilee). Categories do not overlap at interchange stations, so for example Darcus Howe at Moorgate is not a Campaigning Georgian Medic.
The map doesn't mean much without a list of biographies (or a lot of Googling), but TfL accidentally released a few of these last week in a blogpost they've since deleted.
Princess Ademola(Rickmansworth station) Princess Omo-Oba Adenrele Ademola was a Nigerian princess and nurse. She trained as a nurse in London in the 1930s living in Africa Hostel in Camden Town – an important social and political scene for West Africans in Britain. Her nursing career spanned 30 years, including through World War II. She was the subject of a film, Nurse Ademola, made by the Colonial Film Unity. The film was screened across West Africa and said to have inspired many African viewers for the imperial war effort.
The map isn't yet generally available (because everything has to wait for the official sharing of the press release) but can currently be downloaded via a convenient Wordpress link. It looks to be a great way to highlight historic cultural diversity, and you will no doubt read more about it later in the week.
Also note that an additional black spur has appeared on the Northern line. It connects at Nana Bonsu showing that some trains on the Arthur Wharton branch divert off the John Archer extension and terminate at Sam King instead. It may only be present because this is art, but keep your eyes peeled for further information.
Just inside the entrance to Westfield you can pick up issue 2 of the E20 Journal. This is a big glossy publication with bright orange card covers, bespoke cover art and full colour printing across 48 pages. It claimed to be a celebration of 10 years in Stratford, because yes it's that old now, so I carted a copy home.
Naturally it's vacuous brand-obsessed marketing fodder. Over half the content is fashion focused, including eight pages of zoomed-in accessories, and the remainder barely ticks the anniversary box. One double page focuses on sweet treats to graze on, another on "iconic beauty brands and their must-try hero products" and another on how to assemble the perfect cocktail bar at home. It is of course very much not aimed at me, but interestingly I took a copy home whereas the target audience shopper behind me picked up a copy, flicked through and put it straight back.
Which got me thinking. I see Westfield as an extremely convenient shopping mall where I can buy socks, paperbacks and 59p birthday cards. Westfield however sees itself as an upmarket flagship lifestyle destination packed with retail, hospitality and entertaiment opportunities, because for many people these days that's a default day out. And whilst high streets and shopping malls have always partly served this purpose, the 21st century has seen the inexorable rise of commercial enclaves specifically designed to harvest the cream of London's disposable income. I've decided to call them dearstinations.
London's 21st century dearstinations
1)Westfield London: That's the Shepherd's Bush one, the ultimate honey trap, carefully zoned to keep the luxury cluster separate from the plebs. You could walk round in circles for hours, which is entirely the idea. It even includes a capitalist theme park for kids at £30+ a time because they very much saw you coming. 2)The O2: Everything inside the former Millennium Dome costs, unless it's a sponsored attraction by a big name brand hoping you'll like them more after you've been inside. Essentially it's a crescent of restaurants and an underwhelming outlet mall surrounding a big-ticket arena, plus the opportunity to walk over the roof for an additional charge. Hen parties welcomed. Return trip on the Dangleway optional. 3)Westfield Stratford City: As previously discussed. 4)King's Cross: The redeveloped area north of the canal lures you in with its fountains, then nudges you into the screaming void of Coal Drops Yard ("This is boutique shopping at its best") and hopes to retain you in its bars, brasseries and unnecesarily bijou cinema. Not as amazing as it thinks it is. 5)Wembley Park: A latecomer to the party, but they'd really like you to visit their outlet mall (which actually has bargains, unlike North Greenwich), their Boxpark canteen and all the other supposed attractions the developer's marketing team regularly screech about.
• amber list scrapped
• £20 Universal Credit top-up ends
• Wales to introduce vaccine passport
• fiscal meteorite cannot be ignored (PM)
• travel advice eased for 32 countries
• vaccine arrives in Antarctica
• Wales can expect "a more usual Christmas"
• 1 in 14 secondary schoolchildren have virus
• vaccination begins in South Sudan
• 2 million booster jabs given
I'm a firm believer that if you go out for a long enough walk you will always see something interesting. I managed this yesterday in Leyton while walking down Crawley Road, I think for the first time, where I spotted this blue plaque on the side of a building.
Blimey, I thought, Essex County Cricket Club used to be based here... in somewhere that's no longer Essex.
Leyton Cricket Ground is a picturesque spot, or at least it is for Leyton where the scenic bar is not high. Most of the surrounding area is a mesh of Victorian terraces but a large green sporting space has been retained facing the High Road, opening up a brief sylvan vista as you pass by. Across the outfield is an elaborate and enticing cricket pavilion with a first floor verandah and three half-timbered gables topped with a domed cupola. It is precisely the kind of building in which one could laze away a summer's afternoon watching not very much happening not very often whilst within easy walking distance of a bar. And if you wander in from Crawley Road you can see it up close.
Essex County Cricket Club was established in 1876, initially playing in Brentwood, but attendances proved disappointing so ten years later they switched to a new home in Leyton. Essex's first first-class cricket match took place here in May 1894 (a loss to Leicestershire by 68 runs), and the following summer they joined the County Championship. Leyton's finest cricketing summer was in 1897 when Essex were runners-up to Surrey. In 1933 they sold the lease and started playing elsewhere, returning to Leyton between 1957 and 1977 for a week each summer. Chelmsford's County Ground has been the established home ground ever since.
A remarkable fact is that Essex CCC have played more first class cricket matches in Leyton than anywhere else.
» County Ground (Leyton) 407
» County Ground (Chelmsford) 391
» Southchurch Park (Southend) 130
» Castle Park (Colchester) 123
» Valentines Park (Ilford) 116
» Chalkwell Park (Westcliff-on-Sea) 69
» Vista Road Recreation Ground (Clacton) 60
» Old County Ground (Brentwood) 58
» Gidea Park Sports Ground (Romford) 34
» Garrison A Cricket Ground (Colchester) 25
» Garon Park (Southend) 7
» Hoffmann's Sports and Social (Chelmsford) 3
» Harlow Sportcentre (Harlow) 2
Chelmsford is due to take the crown within a couple of years, but as things stand at the end of the 2021 season Leyton remains triumphant. Throw in all the matches played in Ilford and Romford and it turns out that 39% of Essex's first class matches have been played in what's now Greater London, and if you strip out all the Southends a minority have been played within what's currently administratively called Essex.
Retrospectively it looks weird but it made perfect sense at the time. For the first 89 years of the club's existence Greater London hadn't been created and Essex stretched all the way to the River Lea. What's more, and it's easy to forget this, the majority of Essex's population used to be in the Metropolitan boroughs that were taken away in 1965.
In 1921 the dark green area on this map had a population of 925,000 and the rest of Essex only 545,000. The split between urban and rural was already stark. This also helps to explain why Essex holding its first cricket matches in Brentwood didn't pull the crowds whereas Leyton was a lot easier to fill, despite being less than a mile from the county boundary. The pre-eminent district at the time was West Ham (i.e. half of current Newham) whose population was an astonishing 20% of the entire county of Essex. The balance has shifted somewhat in the intervening hundred years, with 'proper' Essex now in the majority, so playing in Chelmsford makes a lot more sense.
Which got me wondering about London's other first class cricket grounds.
• Middlesex CCC was founded in 1864 in the county of Middlesex. They've hosted well over 90% of their first class matches at Lord's, even though it's been in the County of London since 1889.
• Kent CCC have been playing first class cricket since 1842. They've played at several grounds, almost all beyond the Greater London boundary, but since 1965 have played a handful of matches in Blackheath and Beckenham.
• Surrey CCC was established in 1845 when the county stretched all the way to Southwark. They're very much an Oval-based team with over 2000 matches in Kennington, about 100 in Guildford and fewer than 20 elsewhere.
So that's one county which no longer exists but still plays within it, one county that comfortably ignores London and another that hardly ever plays in the county it's named after. Throw in Essex, whose most-played venue is no longer in the county, and Leyton Cricket Ground no longer looks like quite such an outlier. As with so much of cricket, it's all about a boundary.
10 interesting things about Acton Main Line station
1) Last time I turned up in February 2020 the station was an empty shell under construction, still with a side entrance down two sets of old steps. The new station building opened in March 2021 and has ticket barriers, two lifts and an uplifting message on its whiteboard. 2) Acton Main Line may be newly rebuilt but it still has a ticket office because it's a National Rail station, despite having fewer passengers than every single tube station, all of which lost their ticket offices years ago. 3) The ticket office has two windows, just in case a massive crowd ever turns up before 10.40am when it closes for the day.
4) The purple roundel on the front of the station is part concealed by plastic wrapping secured with cable ties, which looks really scrappy (and you can still see through it). This unsightly mess is because it would never do to uncover the eventual royal branding before it's offically introduced, which on the western arm is still over a year away. 5) Objects found outside the entrance includes a See It Say It Sorted sign, another sign urging you not to travel if you feel unwell and a lot of traffic cones because the public realm isn't finished yet. 6) Acton Main Line is served by trains every 30 minutes. This is the lowest frequency of any TfL London station in zones 1, 2, 3 and 4. 7) The Next Train indicator in the ticket hall is so deep that it shows all the trains for the next three hours. When the final service pattern is introduced next year it'll only be the next hour and a half.
8) The old Oyster card reader above the old steps at the old entrance has been covered over with tape reading "New asset not in service", because I guess they didn't have anything else. 9) The Friary Park estate across the road from the station (230 social rent homes) has just been demolished and will arise as a mixed use development (990 flats, 45% affordable) including four tower blocks of up to 24 storeys, because of course it will. 10) You cannot get a direct train from Acton Main Line to any of the other six Acton stations. To reach Acton Central would take at least two changes of train and the best part of an hour (or it's a 15 minute walk).
10 further observations regarding Acton Main Line station 1) Acton Main Line is in zone 3. 2) Previously if you'd arrived with one minute to spare you might have caught your train, but now you won't because there's a long passage to the new footbridge which lands a long way down the platform. 3) Acton station became Acton Main Line in 1949. 4) The old steps down to the platform are now locked at top and bottom. 5) Acton Main Line station has an accessible toilet (beyond the ticket barrier). 6) No rail replacement bus services operate from this station. 7) The empty piazza alongside the station, which is not yet open, can be accessed down six steps. 8) Acton Main Line has a Secure Station accreditation. 9) For historical/operational reasons there is no platform 1. 10) The new Acton Main Line station entrance was built by a company called Graham.
10 less noteworthy things about Acton Main Line station 1) The plastic binbags on the platforms are currently green. 2) The side windows at Acton Main Line each have six panes of glass. 3) Acton Main Line's postcode is W3 9EH. 4) The new tube map is in stock at Acton Main Line. 5) An off-peak journey from Acton Main Line to Neasden costs only £1.60 if you go via Ealing Broadway, Shepherd's Bush, Willesden Junction and West Hampstead. 6) The next building down Horn Lane is Goblin Motorcycles. 7) Acton Main Line gained a Sunday service in May 2019. 8) The zebra crossing outside Acton Main Line has a segregated cycle section. 9) Trains to Penzance always pass through Acton Main Line without stopping. 10) Harry's Cafe opposite the station has a big forked sausage on its roof.
10 increasingly desperate things about Acton Main Line station 1) Acton Main Line is in Acton. 2) The original station opened on a Saturday. 3) Acton Main Line is on the A4000. 4) There are no left luggage facilities. 5) Acton Main Line is due south of Elstree Studios. 6) The station is on the 100 foot contour. 7) Officially it's not Acton Mainline. 8) London Zoo is a five mile walk away. 9) Acton Main Line is an anagram of National Mince. 10) Maybe don't bother coming.
In the classic 1976 sitcom The Fall and Riseof Reginald Perrin, every morning at 12 Coleridge Close started with breakfast, the checking of Reggie's suit for fluff and a walk through the Poets Estate to the station. The repetitive nature of the series meant we got to see his walk day after day... down Coleridge Close, right into Tennyson Avenue and right into Wordsworth Drive. The train journey normally involved a crossword and a handkerchief, plus a persistent 11 minute delay, and then it was off to work at Sunshine Desserts.
In episode 1 it was confirmed that Reggie's local station was Norbiton in Kingston, and every subsequent rail excuse confirmed that his journey was through southwest London. But the house used for filming was in fact on the other side of the river, in zone 3 rather than zone 5, because Reginald Perrin actually Fell And Rose in Ealing.
Coleridge Close was in fact Beaufort Close W5, a brief cul-de-sac of a dozen houses on an incline up from Beaufort Road. Reggie lived at number 6 - not the house in the centre of the photo but just to the right in front of the tall tree. It's still recognisably the same house as it was 35 years ago with its Mock Tudor styling, projecting gable, oriel window and half-timbered first floor. The carriage-style garage doors have been upgraded and all the windows have been replaced but there have also been some more significant changes, notably the smart tiled porch over the front door, the paving over of the central flower bed and the erection of a satellite dish. Reggie doesn't live here any more.
It's a lovely cul-de-sac, officially a 'keyhole' close with houses grouped around a turning circle at the top end. All the houses are subtly different within the same Tudorbethan genre and almost everyone's sacrificed their front garden for parking. Houses don't sell very often but the going price would now be comfortably over a million. Number 1 has retained a pair of impressive palm trees out front. Number 11 is seeking planning permission to replace a conservatory with a two-storey extension. The inhabitants of number 4 have asked Google Maps to erase them from StreetView, because they didn't get where they are today by letting all and sundry scrutinise their frontage.
The first backdrop on Reggie's daily commute saw him walking down Coleridge Close. I think this photo shows the same fence, which is to be found along one side of the genuine Beaufort Close, the telltale clue being that it's very much on a slope. Please note that I've Photoshopped a modern street sign onto one panel, roughly where the BBC originally pasted a strip of semi-convincing paper.
I didn't manage to locate the filming location for Tennyson Avenue because a row of bricks with a clipped hedge above it wasn't much of a clue. Also most of the street corners on the estate have been repaved since 1976 to include dropped kerbs, so the original paving slabs are no longer present so there was nothing to go on. Sorry, bit of a cock up on the identification front. I had more luck with Wordsworth Drive.
This photo was taken on the corner of The Ridings and Audley Road, where Reggie regularly swung right while waving his umbrella. The sloping tiles above the ground floor windows were a nice confirmatory touch, but the clincher was the built-in garage which still has exactly the same set of black wooden doors. What's completely vanished is the low wall out front and the pristine clipped hedge, replaced by a single row of bricks and some scrappy plants growing through barely-tended soil. Counting the number of weeds, I can confirm that the current owners are nowhere near as garden-proud as in Reggie's day.
The next stop on Reggie's commute was the station, although in real life Norbiton is eight due miles south. The nearest station to Beaufort Close is actually Park Royal, meaning Reggie should by rights have been a tube and not a rail commuter, but a trip on the Piccadilly line wouldn't have made for such fine comedy. Having attempted to follow Reggie's walk I can confirm that turning right into Audley Road would actually have taken him in the opposite direction, towards North Ealing station instead, because that's what happens when you prioritise good looking filming locations over geographical reality.
By rights Reggie should have walked to West Acton instead and caught the Central line because Sunshine Desserts was located on the Westway Estate near East Acton station. Alas the sleek brick warehouse on Telford Way used for the exterior shots was demolished in 2015 and replaced by some particularly anodyne warehouses so it really wasn't worth making the pilgrimage. I think Reggie would appreciate that one of the bland grey boxes is now occupied by ToolStation. And just for completeness' sake, the beach on which Reggie discarded his clothes and faked his own suicide was at West Bay in Dorset, but that's a bit far for a 2021 day trip.
What I can recommend if you're a lover of interwar architecture is a trip to Beaufort Close and the surrounding streets. This is the Hanger Hill (Haymills) Estate, a commercial concern covering a semicircle of hillside with leafy crescents and spacious homes, built on the former site of Hanger Hill House. A mix of typical Thirties styles is featured, most notably neo-Georgian and Mock Tudor, but interspersed with flat roof clusters and collections of Moderne semis with streamlined windows. It's the variety and quality of homes that makes this patch of North Ealing special, as Conservation Area documentation confirms, and the BBC's location scout did well to find a pitch perfect suburban backdrop at the top of a halftimbered hill. Super! Great!
The first was planned so wasn't too bad. My flat needed some electrical work done which meant turning off the power for a couple of hours, maybe three, the electrician wasn't too sure.
I planned ahead by filling a thermos with tea, piling up a stack of newspapers and charging my phone. I had something to drink, something to read and something to listen to the radio on when every other music-supporting device in my flat went dead. I also had some spreadsheet work to keep me occupied on my laptop, even if I couldn't connect to the outside world because my wi-fi was dead. Had it been December I might have needed an extra jumper because a gas boiler's no use without electricity, but it was October so I was fine.
I kept busy, productive and topped up with hot drinks, and normality returned as intended. It meant going round and resetting a couple of clocks but that was pretty much the worst of it.
The second power cut was unplanned. Damn, I thought, when the radio switched off, the router blinked and a little 'disconnected' logo appeared in the corner of my laptop. I checked my new fuse box in case the switch had tripped but it hadn't, so the problem was probably elsewhere. I worried that the issue might be related to Power Cut One, but when two neighbours said they'd experienced the same thing I realised I might be in for the long haul.
Thankfully I'd only just finished making a cup of tea else my morning would have started very badly, but otherwise I was totally unprepared. I considered the situation and decided my best option was to go out for a nine mile walk. Hopefully everything would be sorted by the time I got home. Alas it was not.
I rang the management company who confirmed there was an issue and an electrician was on the way. They also said they'd sent me an email saying there was no electricity, and I told them I hadn't read it because there was no electricity. I would still be powerless for an indeterminate period, which soon ticked through another hour, and then another.
I resigned myself to cold drinks only. I tried not to open the fridge door and hoped very much that the freezer compartment wasn't warming inexorably. I didn't turn on my laptop because I didn't know how long its internal battery would have to last. I had a bit more newspaper to read so busied myself with that. Several elements of my normal daily routine fell by the wayside because they couldn't be performed.
I could have used my phone to play some background music but didn't risk it because I wasn't sure when I'd next get the chance to charge it. We take for granted that our devices can be set back to 100% and that we'll always be able to interact with the wider world whenever, but a lack of power can easily dash that expectation within hours.
What I do have is a wind-up radio purchased with survivalism in mind, so I put that to good use. It kept running out of juice every few minutes because I wasn't winding it up far enough, and when I did I couldn't hear the music beneath the racket, but it was good to have a bit of background noise.
The unnerving thing was not knowing when this precarious situation might end. Might my entire afternoon be neutered, and when would I be able to use my kettle again, and could I knock up a meal that wasn't just peanut butter sandwiches, and what if it was still like this after dark, and could this slip over into another day, and how would I cope if my phone hit 0% before I could charge it.
The power magically tripped back on after six hours, meaning I could finally have my cuppa and the internet returned and the freezer was OK. Best of all I could go back into the bathroom without a torch or guessing roughly where I was aiming.
We have it easy in London because we don't suffer power cuts very often. Our supply is generally guaranteed, not being reliant on a single cable or a chain of wooden poles along a country lane. Also we don't live in a time of fuel shortages, it's not the 1970s any more, so we're not all sitting round with candles at the ready and the expectation of using them.
And of course I was never in genuine jeopardy during my second power cut. Hot drinks are available in many high street locations, BestMate had offered me a sofa within walking distance and phones can easily be recharged outside the home. It was just an inconvenience faced by thousands each day, a random hiatus in routine, not the end of the world.
But one day it might be. One day the power might go out unexpectedly and it won't just be your block or your street, it'll be far more widespread. The kettle won't be coming on again for days (if at all), your chilled food won't be staying that way and your phone will never revive. We rely so wholly on electricity, most of us with no way of generating our own, that everything can fall apart literally at the flick of a switch.
While I was clutching my wind-up radio I imagined that one day it could be my only connection to the outside world. It means if Radio 4's still broadcasting I'll still be able to find out what's going on rather than sitting at home in ignorance or imagining all kinds of worst case scenarios. Most people will lose that factual connection in days or hours, maybe minutes, but a wind-up radio should still function long after the power goes out.
We're all so used to email, social media and two-way communication that not being able to do it ever again may feel like a bereavement. As the riots start, the plague spreads or the mushroom cloud goes up we'll have so many things to say but no way of broadcasting them, nor any way to hear how everyone else is reacting. Emojis will not survive the apocalypse.
It'll probably never happen because society's good at holding itself together. But if it ever does, prepare to live out your last few minutes, hours or days in communicative isolation. You may never know what's causing all this pandemonium and why, nor whether anyone's coming to help, nor will anyone ever see that last witty message you hoped to send. The final power cut will be a lonely affair, however long or short it may be.
I've written far too many posts about the Dangleway, including one last month, one in August and one in July. So today's challenge is to write five more.
1) The perfect way to stay active
TfL's sole remaining Twitter account is a twee emoji-fest these days. Of their nine original tweets so far this month two have been quizzes, two were cutephotos and only one was core transport business (regarding 'leaves on track'). Bafflingly three of the nine tweets featured unusual things riding the cable car, specifically a dog, a DJ and two hire bikes. Any tweet which combines two of TfL's sponsored modes scores the marketing team extra PR points.
Indeed you can take a hire bike on the cable car but you have to go out of your way to do so. The nearest docking station on the north bank is at East India DLR, one full mile away by road, so hardly convenient. Meanwhile the nearest docking station on the south bank is at Canada Water, at least four miles away, more likely five once you've ridden round all the obstacles maritime Greenwich can throw at you, and even if you take a shortcut through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel it's not short. A round trip would be a challenging route, perhaps fun for some but very much not 'perfect'. This is what happens when you force a tweet to tick boxes rather than basing it on real life.
2) Up, up and away
Ridership on the Dangleway is up, because of course it is because it's 2021 and no longer 2020. But this year is also proving better, passengerwise, than the years immediately before the pandemic. A typical week in September 2021 had 28,000 cable car passengers and you have to go back to 2016 to match that, while a typical week in August 2021 had 50,000 passengers and it's been 2014 since numbers were that high. This, I suspect, is what happens when English families aren't able to travel abroad for sun and sand so are having to make do with a brief dangle during a day trip to London.
3) The private cabin scam
TfL are still selling private cabins on the cable car at £60 a time, despite the fact that separate households always travel in separate cabins because of the pandemic and have done for well over a year. Book your ticket now, says the TfL website, not that it mentions the Private Cabin Experience but the landing page very much does. It's the fourth option down, above the upselling options where you get a River Roamer and maybe a trip to the London Transport Museum thrown in.
Only if you scroll down to the very bottom of the booking page might you read "All households or groups travel in a cabin of their own to ensure social distancing. By booking a Private Cabin you are skipping the queues." The Dangleway may be relatively busy at weekends these days, but only a gullible, rushed or profligate family group has any need to pay hugely over the odds to jump the queue. The Private Cabin Experience is also prominently advertised outside the northern Dangleway terminal, this time without any helpful smallprint, but I assume the ticketing staff warn you of the potential repercussions if you attempt to pay up.
4) The cable car is folding
If you've ever wanted to make your own Danglecabin out of paper or card, you're in luck. This is part of the latest activity from TfL's Craft Club for children, because of course such a thing exists, following up the success of 'Draw a Monster' and 'Build A London Bus'. The activity sheet kicks off with the perfectly decent idea of sketching a variety of everyday materials, then spins on a sixpence to suggest you can see wood and rock in a photo of the cable car. As contrived shoehorning exercises go, it's a stunner.
Your child's next task is to "draw a picture from the shore of the Thames" beneath the cable car, because the whole point of the exercise is to lure families to take a ride. And then they get to cut out a model (ask a grown-up to help you here) and colour it in.
The entire outside of the cabin is yours to fill in except for the logo. This is because it's crucial to get the sponsor's brand in front of consumers at a very early age, because full-on capitalism has gripped our public services and TfL is not immune. They've slipped up slightly by placing the biggest logo on the bottom where it can't be seen when resting the model on a shelf or bedside table, but the name of the airline remains plainly visible on one side. Best use a dark shade to colour over the top of it, children, before your impressionable mind is imprinted with the desire to fly abroad in a carbon guzzling metal tube. Cut it out.
5) A genuine tourist attraction?
Finally, for a bit of a laugh, I wonder if you've checked the description of the local area on TfL's Dangleway experience webpage.
It starts off well because there's plenty to do in North Greenwich, then displays a shocking misunderstanding of geography. The Cutty Sark and National Maritime Museum are a mile and a half away as the crow flies, which a bend in the Thames makes impossible, instead requiring an unfriendly walk or an end-to-end ride on the 129 bus. The Thames Barrier is a similar distance in the opposite direction, and not a thing you hop off the Dangleway to see.
Newham City Farm is a mile away, closed its gates at the start of the pandemic and (following a Newham council decision last month) will never reopen. The Museum of Docklands is five DLR stops distant, i.e. nowhere near, and ExCeL is a venue which welcomes conference delegates rather than families. The Dangleway basically drops you off on the northern side nowhere terribly thrilling, which'll be why quite so many passengers take non-stop round trips. You can't beat seeing the building site for the Silvertown Tunnel twice.
One stop north of Grantham, halfway between Nottingham and Lincoln, lies the historic market town of Newark. Officially it's Newark-on-Trent, the river being a key feature, and the nearby county boundary places it in Notts rather than Lincs. It's where a Roman road (the Fosse Way) crosses the Great North Road, has its own castle and held considerable strategic importance during the Civil War. Best of all it's kept its heritage heart without significant modern damage, so is actually worth visiting.[12 photos][visit Newark][map]
All roads lead to the Market Place, or rather they don't because the town has sensibly kept most motor vehicles at bay. This is a very large open space, approximately rectangular, filled with rows of red-striped stalls and surrounded on all sides by shops and civic buildings. I was underwhelmed to see just four traders, one selling stacks of DVDs and another old metal toys, but this turned out to be because Thursdays are for "pre-loved and collectors" so I missed the proper stuff. #nerdfact Newark was the first town in England to hold a market on a Wednesday.
Several of the buildings around the rim are very old, including two timber-framed beauties from the 1460s. Slotted into one corner between Boots and Smiths is The OldeWhite Hart, a former coaching inn, whose highly decorated frontage is embellished with tiny figures of saints. It's even older round the back. Opposite Nat West is what must be the oldest Greggs in the country, based inside the Governor's House where Royalist commanders established an HQ during the Civil War. The plaque on the front reads "Prince Rupert stayed here after his quarrel with the King, October 19th 1645", immediately above adverts for Oven Baked Pepperoni Pizza and Pumpkin Spice Latte. However Greggs now have plans to move to larger premises two doors down leaving the Grade I listed building empty, which is already the fate of The Olde White Hart after long term tenants the Nottingham Building Society moved out earlier this year.
The Town Hall is an imposing sight, with its neoclassical facade dating from 1776 when Newark's civic coffers were full. Step up beneath the tetrastyle portico to follow a public walkway through the centre of the building which opens out into a wholly unexpected arcade painted salmon pink and lit with chandeliers. The doors to the town's museum and art gallery are alas firmly locked, and have been since March 2020 while the town council "review its future and relevancy", but it's expected that the period rooms and galleries will reopen at the end of the month. With that pleasure denied I ought instead to have visited the National Civil War Centre on Appletongate, a proper modern three-storey £8-entry attraction, but I hadn't left enough time in my schedule to give that the hour I suspect it deserved.
I also had no luck getting inside the Church of St Mary Magdalene, the town's loftily impressive Norman Gothic church, because I arrived at the same time as a parishioner in a Lincs Co-Op Funeral Services hearse. Instead I was left to walk around the exterior, where I failed to spot the hole in the steeple supposedly made by a musket ball during the Civil War but did find a blue plaque dedicated to Constance Adelaide Smith. It was she who popularised Mothering Sunday in this country in the 1920s, specifically to keep the upstart American invention Mother's Day at bay, and that's why we still send our cards before Easter and not in mid-May.
Newark's retail offering is pretty good, especially for smaller independent shops like jewellers, art suppliers and Vale of Belvoir butchers. It has a branch of Boyes, the northeast's almost-department store, and a short arcade where you can pick up a sewing machine, a rug or a tattoo. The country set seem well catered for but there's also a Wilko and a New Look tucked away mostly out of sight, as befits a town where a 2-bed flat can still be picked up for a five figure sum. One of the most exuberant outlets is the former Ossington Coffee Tavern, a temperance palace built by a Victorian viscountess to encourage non-alcoholic nights out. It was not a success despite its prime riverside setting and closed after just seven years, a fate which has recently befallen the Zizzi's restaurant occupying the ground floor. The message frozen on its chalkboard is "Book Now For Mother's Day", but alas Constance's hospitality bonanza was never realised.
The river crossing carrying the former A1 is called Trent Bridge - not that one - and is rather older than its maximal chain of Roman numerals would suggest. It leads to the lesser side of town where the cattlemarket and enormous sugar factory are located, and also to a decent-sized riverside park. Just upstream is Newark Town Lock, a large cut built for busier times, overlooked by a bloke from the Canal & River Trust on duty in case any craft might perhaps want to pass through. And downstream by Waitrose is the town's second station, the humbler quainter one with hourly trains to Leicester and Grimsby, not capital connections to King's Cross and Edinburgh. It's named after the substantial fortification that overlooks everything in this paragraph, the much transformed Newark Castle.
It's been here since the 12th century, and in the early 13th was the site of a monarch's demise. King John arrived here sick after a calamitous journey across The Wash, his overnight passing traditionally blamed on poisoned plums or a "surfeit of peaches". Newark was besieged three times during the Civil War, after which the Parliamentarians slighted the castle but never finished the job, leaving the gatehouse and a thick curtain wall to rise high above the river. Victorian restoration means what's left looks a lot more complete than it originally was, but the ruins form a most expressive backdrop and can be freely explored during a nice walk in the gardens. The best view is out of the largest bay window looking upstream towards the town lock... Newark, on Trent.
Grantham is a market town straddling the Great North Road, the East Coast mainline and an unspectacular stretch of the River Witham. Numerically it's 100 miles from London with a population of 45,000. Administratively it's in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, as is the rather wow-er Stamford which I visited a couple of weeks back. Retrospectively it's seen a fair few historic figures pass through and dispatched Sir Isaac Newton and Margaret Thatcher into the world. Touristically maybe don't bother, but I did anyway and passed a few interesting hours.[10 photos][visit Grantham][map]
Best start with the parish church, because at 84 metres its spire is the sixth tallest in the country and unmissable across the town. This Norman place of worship is named after St Wulfram, a 7th century French archbishop whose arm was once housed in the crypt. It's very much a building that impresses, perhaps all the more so if you walk in through the front door and see a giant illuminated Earth rotating in the nave. This is Luke Jerram's Gaia, a touring globe which has turned up this weekend as part of the Metanoia Climate Festival, complete with haybales underneath so visitors can look up and ponder. I avoided ticketed entrance by turning up the day before, so enjoyed much the best view. But because volunteers were busy shifting display boards I think I missed two of the finest features, namely the chained library above the south porch and the medieval woodwork in the crypt. If church architecture is your thing, St Wulfrum's is the best reason to come to Grantham.
The other good reason is Sir Isaac Newton, local lad and global game-changer. He was born at Woolsthorpe Manor a few miles to the south, but was educated here in Grantham at The King's School. Boys have studied on the same site since the 1520s, and the Old School building where Isaac was taught (pre-calculus) mathematics still stands across the road from the church. A blue plaque marks the spot, while another on the High Street recalls his schoolday lodgings in an apothecary's house. Newton's chief civic commemoration is a bronze statue outside the Guildhall, unveiled in 1858. Margaret Thatcher's statue is due to be erected on a neighbouring lawn, possibly imminently, so I'm glad I got in before another scientist soured the view.
Grantham's obsession with Sir Isaac extends far and wide. One of the most obvious manifestations is the Sir Isaac Newton Shopping Centre, a morose mall anchored around a Morrisons supermarket. It looked a lot brighter in the early 1980s when all the units were full, but even Poundland have recently departed and now the apple-themed clock looks down on retail deadspace. Apples are very much the go-to symbolism for artists attempting to visualise the great man's oeuvre, hence another fruity appearance in Wyndham Park supported by a wooden hand. Artist Paul Lewthwaite took a more scientific approach in the Market Place with his Orrery depicting Earth, the Moon and Venus lined up with the Sun, aka the Market Cross. And yes, the nightclub immediately behind is called Gravity, should you ever want to feel the force on a night out.
As a town on the main road north, Grantham was once home to several coaching inns. One of these, the Angel & Royal, is the oldest building in town and one of the world's oldest hotels. It started out in 1203 as a hostel built by the Knights Templar, and monarchs who've stayed here since include King John, Edward III, Richard III, Charles I and George IV. The entrance from the High Street is through plate glass swing doors set into a medieval archway, beyond which a long courtyard opens out with hotel rooms to both sides and four converted stables at the far end. Genteel residents are encouraged to drop in for coffee, a bistro meal or Sunday lunch.
The George Inn, much loved by Dickens, has not fared so well. At the end of the 1980s everything behind its Georgian frontage was knocked down and replaced by a shopping mall within a glass atrium, described on an information board as "a bustling and thriving community of stylish shops". Alas the 2021 reality is a deadzone of mostly vacant units with minimal footfall and a lone escalator waiting to carry almost nobody up to nowhere much. Surviving businesses include Tropicana Tan and the Juice-E-Vaporium, plus a jobseekers drop-in, but the general ambience is of a temple to Thatcherite optimism laid low by downtrodden economic reality.
Grantham has several interesting pubs, not least The Beehive, outside which is an actual beehive supported in a tree. It's said to be the only living inn sign in the country, and I can confirm sight of several buzzy occupants flying in and out. For many years the town boasted several 'blue' pubs, including the Blue Bull, Blue Ram, Blue Pig and Blue Man. These were renamed in the 19th century as part of an election campaign by the Duke of Rutland to encourage his Whig supporters to drink in "blue" hostelries. Since the Blue Bull closed in 2015 the Blue Pig has been the last colourful survivor, and is one of the town's handful of Tudor buildings to boot.
What I had intended to do is trek two miles out of town to visit Belton House, a National Trust property once owned by the Blue Pig's political nemesis. Fortunately just before I started up Manthorpe Road I checked my membership card and unfortunately discovered it expired in April, because during lockdown I'd failed to stick the new one in my wallet. Instead I sighed and invoked my back-up plan which was to climb Hart's Hill instead. I traipsed out to the last bungalows on the eastern edge of town, beyond which a scrappy path rose through scrub to a brambly outcrop from which the entirety of Grantham could be surveyed. My brief battle against the force of gravity had yielded impressive results.
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MargaretThatcher was Britain's first woman Prime Minister and, for better or worse, shaped the country we live in today. She was born in Grantham in 1925 and famously grew up in a grocer's shop, barely a quarter of a mile from the East Coast mainline. I've often looked down across the town and wondered where precisely this epicentre of political change might be, so on this occasion I got off the train and went to have a look.
This is Alfred Roberts' former shop on the corner of North Parade and Broad Street. It's just to the north of the town centre, and in October 1925 would have faced out onto the busy Great North Road. The family lived upstairs in cramped accommodation with no running water, making use of an outside toilet and (unplumbed) bath accessed across the yard. Margaret's father ran the grocery counter and operated the bacon slicer, her mother served customers in the sub post-office, and she and her elder sister Muriel helped out when they could. It was the epitome of a small business making its profit from sheer hard work.
It's not a grocer's shop any more. Grantham Chiropractic Clinic opened here in 1994 and have since rebranded as Living Health following a shift towards holistic natural therapies. Downstairs is now their reception, a welcoming spot where waiting customers can peruse leaflets and featured products, currently with an attractive autumnal window display featuring golden leaves and two squirrels. Upstairs has been transformed into twin treatment suites, so if you've ever fancied a massage or five point acupuncture in the Iron Lady's bedroom that fantasy can be comfortably realised. I'm not sure what she'd have made of her childhood home's shift from selling goods to selling services, but she'd no doubt be pleased that the external fabric of the building remains recognisably in place with a small black commemorative plaque above the front door.
The corner shop is one of the lowlier homes on North Parade, an attractive example of late 18th century linear ribbon development. Margaret's near neighbours lived in three storey red brick houses, some of which now sell for half a million which is exceptional for Grantham. The buildings and the pavement are kept separate from what would once have been a manure-strewn main road by means of a steep grass verge with occasional steps. Immediately across the street is the church of St Mary the Immaculate with its clocktower and cupola, which now has the '1 North Parade' address the Roberts once enjoyed.
What has changed dramatically since the 1930s is the road junction outside the shop, which now the corner of a busy gyratory. Pedestrians are not the priority so get to wait in ever increasing numbers as all the requisite vehicle sequences play out, which would be great for customer footfall if only the shop still sold drinks or sweets. Just beyond the Roberts' back yard is a single bus stop, no doubt only used by those under the age of 30 or who have been a failure in life. And immediately across Barrowby Road is the edge of an enormous Asda car park, not to mention a substantial Lidl - competitors whose joint presence helps explain why a grocers is no longer viable in this location.
When not working in the shop, life for the Roberts revolved around Finkin StreetMethodist Church where Alfred was a lay preacher. As a strict Wesleyan he ensured the family attended church up to four times every Sunday, where Margaret would have sat through hundreds of her father's sermons stressing social responsibility and the Protestant work ethic. The church's stumpy twin towers dominate the backstreets off Castlegate, while a fake falcon perches above the south door to help keep pigeons at bay. Grantham's Conservative Club is located close by, in a building too modern to have been frequented by the Roberts, although I very much doubt its current social offering of snooker, musical events, Luncheon Club and bingo would have appealed.
Margaret's first school was Huntingtower Road Primary which had opened in 1914. It was by no means the nearest to home, being the other side of the town centre and on the opposite side of the railway, but was selected because of a more religious slant to its curriculum. No trace of the original building exists because it's been entirely rebuilt as a colourful jagged fortress and is now known as Huntingtower Academy. The former Education Secretary might well be pleased. Margaret went on to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' Grammar School where she was bookish, hard-working and rose to become Head Girl, if not generally liked by her peers. A scholarship to study Chemistry at Oxford followed, catapulting her out of Grantham and eventually into all our lives.
The town remembers its most famous daughter in its museum (closed 2011 due to cuts, reopened by volunteers, it's what she would have wanted). A large display at the rear of the ground floor covers her early life and rise to power in some detail, with a nod to younger visitors who might need to be reminded how important she was. Exhibits include her bed from North Parade, the Aquascutum suit she wore to Cold War talks in Moscow in 1987 and some assorted silverware donated to the museum after her death. A nice touch is the selection of three 1979 election manifestos laid out in a facsimile living room very much of the time, alongside an invitation to cast your vote again with the benefit of hindsight. The gift shop will satisfy any ardent Thatchophile in need of mugs, bags or aprons.
But Grantham isn'tostentatiouslyproud of its pioneering woman Prime Minister, perhaps in recognition that she very much divides opinion. Other than a few fingerposts pointing towards her birthplace and the tiny plaque above her front door there's nothing, unlike local son Sir Isaac Newton who's plastered absolutely everywhere. Plans are afoot to give a public home to a bronzestatue originally intended for Parliament Square, but the unveiling has been repeatedly delayed and sparked arow earlier this year over the intended cost of the ceremony. Even when it does appear it'll be atop a 3m plinth to avoid vandalism, not that this'll stop the more determined protestor, of whom there will be many. Know the town, know the Iron Lady a little better.
Wed 1: Went to the pub with Work Colleague and discovered he got married quietly earlier in the year. At one point a nearby drinker joined in our conversation, having overheard me talking about Middlesbrough, and he turned out to be a big cheese working for Crossrail. Absolutely inscrutable, couldn't get anything out of him, well played sir. Thu 2: I started writing about Thamesmead, but then ABBA announced their virtual show so the Thamesmead post got put on the backburner for three weeks. Utterly amazed to realise that Benny and Bjorn were giving a press conference half a mile away. Fri 3: Cycle Superhighway 2 through Bow has started to get new signs suggesting it's been rebranded C2, i.e. Cycleway 2, although the paint on the blue lane still says CS2. One day all London's remaining Cycle Superhighways will become Cycleways, as will Quietways (which'll also be renumbered), and I know they're only trying to make the nomenclature simpler but what an unruly mess.
Sat 4: I think it's now safe to reveal that Location Number Three, my favourite Open House visit, was Lansbury Lawrence Primary School in Poplar, built as an architectural showpiece for the Festival of Britain. Gorgeousbuilding, great staff. And a special hello to the reader who went on Sunday rather than Saturday so just missed me. Sun 5: I was walking down Chatsworth Road E5 when TV chef and Great British Menu presenter Andi Oliver wafted past, and she had real presence just crossing the street. Mon 6: Finally got round to contacting my mobile data provider because they were forcing me to choose a new contract, and yay I managed to wangle a new contract for £8 less per month. That should pay for any future extra roaming charges. Tue 7: Some of the leaves on some of the trees in the London Blossom Garden are already turning red, signalling a seriously premature autumn (which is ridiculous when the temperature's just hit 30° again). Wed 8: Two things I failed to do on my trip to Eastbourne - i) make a short pilgrimage to the A2021 (because it was half a mile in the wrong direction) ii) drop into the Towner Gallery (I only admired the rainbow daubed across the exterior).
Thu 9: BestMate is flying abroad for a short European break, and he texted from City Airport to say he was about to take off, so I waved as he flew over the flat because Flightradar is brilliant. Fri 10: The Big Breakfast one-day reboot with an all-black cast of presenters was joyous nostalgic fun with a sharp modern edge. I walked past Lockkeepers Cottages during the second hour and heard yelping from the garden, but couldn't see anything through the gate because two throwback fans were holding court outside. I bet residents of the brand new flats across the canal are glad it's not a permanent return. Sat 11: We've had so many 9/11 anniversary documentaries over the last fortnight that there are none left to debut today. Some of them were damned good though, in a damned sad way. Sun 12: Something I forgot to mention during a year of writing about random City wards is that over half of them start with the letters B or C. Appropriately my first was a C and my last was a B.
Mon 13: A polar bear on a chunk of iceberg, or at least a model of one, has appeared in the river just north of the Bow roundabout. If the intention is to warn us of global warming, all it made me wonder is if the Lea might ever freeze over. Tue 14: It turns out my new mobile contract comes with free Beats headphones, which were unexpectedly delivered this morning, and why couldn't they have decided to send them six months ago when I really needed some rather than now when I have three spare freebies? Wed 15: To get to Peterborough I caught the LNER Leeds train, and although it was busy I had the entire unclassified carriage to myself, which I suspect speaks volumes about the unaffordability of walk-up tickets. Thu 16: I've decided that Wagon Wheels may be my new nemesis, because that's the second time one has made me swear.
Fri 17: I unintentionally timed my walk along the Royal Docks for the precise moment that UEL's graduation ceremony ended. Hundreds of students and their beaming parents flooded out of the marquee and thronged the waterside, so I had to weave my way very carefully to avoid stepping into dozens of once-in-a-lifetime photos. Sat 18: The upgraded staircases either side of Poplar DLR station are now open, only two years late, so I no longer have to spiral down via the platform to cross from one side to the other. Sun 19: Thanks to Ian for pointing out that a Hurricane and Spitfire were about to fly over central London, because that's why I spotted them from Mile End Park and I don't think anyone else even looked up. Mon 20: Outside Battersea Power Station (the power station, not the station) they've put James Bond's Aston Martin from Goldfinger inside a box branded with retro Corgi packaging, which is not a stunt your local cinema can pull.
Tue 21: One of my guilty BBC Sounds pleasures this month is Radio 2's Sounds of the 21st Century, an hour of hits and news snippets from each year from 2000 to 2010. It's a proper memory jogger because even the recent is now retro. It's also reminding me how I gradually fell out of love with popular music over the decade. If that's not your thing then I highly recommend How To Rebuild A City, a Radio 3 documentary on the evolution of Coventry's post war architecture. Wed 22: Confirming how diverse the East End is, today in Maryland I saw a hearse pulled by two feathery-headdressed horses outside a mosque. Thu 23: The downside of this being the anniversary of me moving into my flat is that all the quarterly, half-yearly and annual bills come at once. Fri 24: The news that Russell T Davies is coming back to take over Doctor Who is excellent and finally something to look forward to, even though (checks calendar) (sighs) it's still 26 months away. Sat 25: I-SPY a queue of 30 vehicles outside the Texaco garage in Bow Road (which normally has no queue at all). As for the queue outside the Tesco garage in Bromley-by-Bow, that could be anywhere between 20 and 80 vehicles depending on how many are merely stuck trying to get into or out of the supermarket car park. Sun 26: I-SPY no queue at all... because No Fuel. Mon 27: Highly improbably, of the 16000 photos I've uploaded to Flickr the two most favourited are of the American Embassy in Nine Elms and the escalators at Battersea Power Station station, which are less than half a mile apart.
Tue 28: ABBA Arena Update - the curved roof has now been raised into place (so is a lot higher than it looked like it was going to be). Wed 29: In November 2019 ago my landlord approved a minor cosmetic change to my kitchen. This morning it was finally completed, after five false starts due to a) ah sorry, pandemic [March 2020] b) ah sorry, factory's closed [June 2020] c) ah sorry, serious backlog of orders [October 2020] d) ah sorry, really serious backlog [March 2021] e) ah sorry, looks like we asked for the wrong size [June 2021]. This morning's job took one hour. I'm so glad that's finished. Thu 30:Five things I saw today: a) a historic Greggs, b) a temperance Coffee Palace, c) a famous Aquascutum suit, d) a nightclub named after a scientist, e) the world in a church
