Just in time, as it turns out, because a few weeks ago two of the five were permanently closed. If you want to cross the Overground between Emerson Park and Upminster you can no longer use a public footpath level crossing, because Network Rail asked to close them for safety reasons and the Secretary of State agreed.
What's astonishing is that Network Rail asked in 2016, and due process for agreeing that request took six years.
This one linked a suburban avenue to a suburban cul-de-sac north of Hornchurch. It crossed a straight stretch of single track with clear sight of the platform at Emerson Park station, but users of the crossing had to negotiate a stile on either side of the railway so it wasn't particularly accessible. Closing the crossing introduces a 750m detour, but in reality most people would just go a slightly different way, either via the station or crossing a former road bridge by St Andrew's Park. Residents of Maybush Close are more likely to be pleased that people won't be walking past their Essex-y piles any more.
The Inspector said: I conclude that the Secretary of State should include Butts Lane within the Order as the footbridge provides existing users of the crossing with a suitable and convenient alternative means of crossing the railway.
This one linked a suburban avenue to a suburban cul-de-sac northeast of Hornchurch. It crossed a cutting via a convoluted zigzag, and not just any cutting, this is the Hornchuch SSSI where the advance of Pleistocene ice sheets ground to a halt. The twisty passage and the chance to walk through a genuine geological anomaly made this my favourite foot crossing in the whole of London, but scientific curiosity cuts no odds and the closure went ahead anyway. Again there's a existing bridge nearby - that's on Wingletye Lane - and only a very immediate resident would ever need to make the full 430m detour. Damned shame though.
The Inspector said: Although users would be deprived of choice as a result of the closure of the crossing, they would be not be inconvenienced by that closure.
But it's not all bad news for Havering's public footpath level crossings. Two were never on the danger list and one was given a reprieve...
This one's on an obscure public footpath near North Ockendon, so obscure that when Network Rail did a 9-day survey in July 2016 they didn't record a single person using it. It was a slightly more useful footpath before the M25 scythed through less than 50m away, so this corner of a field is now more dominated by a thundering embankment than the single track railway to Grays. I got a real sense of "what the hell am I doing here?" when I came to cross it, so circumstance suggests it would have been fine to close this one. But no, because it turns out the alternative detour would have been just over a mile long, would have annoyed a farmer by sending people round two additional sides of his field, would have involved a substantial amount of road walking and would have necessitated the crossing of a dangerous roadbridge on Ockendon Road. It was this "inherently unsafe" bridge that eventually killed the proposal, and so this almost-pointless crossing lives on. The Essex Area Ramblers claim some credit for this.
The Inspector said: Although the proposed alternative would maintain an east/west means of crossing the railway it would be convoluted and counterintuitive to those current users who are likely to be inconvenienced by such a route in addition to that route being unsafe as users would be put at risk of collision with vehicles at the road bridge.
Had the closure of Eve's crossing gone ahead it would also have meant the extinguishing of Havering public footpath 252 but this survives - a decision which brings significant long term expense. The Lower Thames Crossing is due to sweep away from the M25 almost exactly here, so contractors are going to have to build a thin footbridge to lift the footpath over road and railway, obliterating the need for a level crossing at a stroke.
Amusingly the Secretary of State did agree to close the neighbouring Manor Farm public footpath level crossing which was completely severed by the construction of the M25 in 1982 but has never officially been closed... until now, 40 years later.
Other public footpath level crossing closures just outside London:
• Trinity Lane(Herts) - between Waltham Cross and Cheshunt [footbridge provided]
• Cadmore Lane(Herts) - between Waltham Cross and Cheshunt [replaced by footbridge in 2014]
• Whipps Farmers(Essex) - between Upminster and West Horndon [Havering footpath 179 also extinguished]
• No. 131(Thurrock) - north of Purfleet alongside HS1 [700m detour to be provided]
Havering's surviving public footpath level crossings:
» Osbourne Road - between Romford and Emerson Park
» Brickfields - between Upminster and West Horndon
» Eve's - north of Ockendon (see above)
London's five other public footpath level crossings:
» Angerstein(Greenwich) - alleyway across freight line, separately reprieved from closure.
» Trumpers(Ealing) - also across a freight line, see Geoff's video here.
» Golf Links(Enfield) - along a minor footpath up Crews Hill way.
» Lincoln Road(Enfield) - south of Enfield Town, closed to road traffic in 2012.
» Bourneview(Croydon) - almost in Surrey, between Kenley and Whyteleafe.
UNINTERESTING LONDON: Footpath 245 (a series in which I go somewhere mundane in outer London, briefly, and then attempt to make it sound interesting)
Yesterday I walked Footpath 245 in Welling, which is 600m long from Hill View Drive to Wickham Street.
If you get off the bus at the bottom of Shooters Hill outside the We Anchor In Hope pub, then take the second road on the left, that's Hill View Drive. It looks like being a total cul-de-sac, but on the penultimate bend a public footpath bears off and follows the remainder of the road behind green railings. Beyond the last house the path gets quite hemmed in, securely fenced between rolling farmland on one side and a cemetery on the other. The former looks quite alluring but you can't get over there. Three bends follow, including one at the end of Wordsworth Road where they could have created a connecting path through the garages but the residents prefer privacy to access. Instead you have to continue all around the edge of the cemetery until eventually emerging onto Chaucer Road at The Green Man pub, immediately alongside a seafood stall.
A dozen points of minor interest 1) They have unusual footpath markers in the London borough of Bexley. 2) The Bexley website has an excellent interactive map of all public rights of way in the borough. Well done Bexley. 3) You only get public rights of way in outer London, there aren't any in the London borough of Greenwich which starts just the other side of the adjacent field. 4) The unusually-named We Anchor In Hope pub launches its Christmas menu on 8th November, which'll include Katsu Chicken, Pulled Smoked Turkey Burger and Cauliflower Burger. 5) The far end of Hill View Drive used to be a school, and after that council offices, before becoming about 50 houses ten years ago. This helps explain why the footpath skips past the houses with no direct access. 6) The fields to the north became Hillview Cemetery in 1995. Thus far it's only half full and contains no graves of note. The footpath used to follow a shorter less roundabout route before the cemetery was added. 7) The hayfields along the western side of the fence belong to WoodlandsFarm, the popular 89 acre city farm. They're celebrating their 25th anniversary with a Family Farm Fun Day this Thursday. 8) Green Chain section 3 passes through Woodlands Farm, or did until 2007 when the farm got all hissy and locked the gates at either end claiming access would lead to vandalism, and it was only a permissive path anyway, and a big rowbroke out between the farm and the Inner London Ramblers. 9) The gates are still locked because the argument didn't end well, and the farm suggests everyone follows footpath 245 instead, which it has to be said is massively less scenic. 10) The Green Man pub at the end of the footpath has a Thai restaurant attached, or does on days when they have enough staff. According to their website the next event is a Valentine's Day meal in 2017. They're marginally more awake on Facebook. 11) What is it with outer London boroughs and seafood stalls? This one's open three days a week, including from 9am on Sundays which seems ridiculously early for cockle-swallowing, but it had customers (plural) even before the pub had opened. 12) A local resident reminisces... <tbc>
If you've long had 1st-7th August pencilled in your diary you'll know that London Hat Week is an annual celebration of milliners and millinery, showcasing the creative industries that help to keep our capital a-head. You may even have participated in the workshops, attended the Suppliers Fair, visited the pop-up shop, dropped into the exhibition, taken advantage of the masterclasses or listened to the podcasts. But the crescendo of the event is always the London Hat Walk, and 2022 was no exception.
Dress Code: Headwear eye-catching enough to stop traffic!
They gathered just before noon outside Morley College on Westminster Bridge Road. This had also been the venue for this year's official London Hat Week Exhibition, held inside Morley Gallery where a curated selection of work from established milliners and emerging talent included contributions from industry associations around the world including the British Hat Guild, the Dutch Hat Association, the Norwegian Hat Association, the Spanish Hat Association and The Worshipful Company of Feltmakers. Essentially it was some rooms brimming of hats.
The gathering must have been all of 50 strong, because what better to do on a summer Sunday than parade around the streets of Lambeth and Southwark in your favourite headgear. There were floral twirls and feathery fascinators. There were bold blue brims and ostentatious pink ribbons. There were pert pillboxes and frothy bonnets. There were hats Margaret Thatcher would have adored and hats resembling red frisbees. There were trilbies unless they were fedoras because I'm no expert on identification. There were hats at jaunty angles and hats so frail they almost weren't there. There were hats you'd wear to Ascot and hats you wouldn't have risked. There was one striped top hat with a windmill on a stick. There was something green and yellow resembling a cushioned snake which looked like it was being worn for a bet. There was a man in what looked like a red velour baseball cap with gold trim and a woman in what looked like a Napoleonic bicorne hat made out of a hessian sack. There was a lady with a bijou red creation wearing a t-shirt saying 'Wear More Hats'. And there was a photographer on hand to capture the moment because every hat is a statement and nobody who wears one is a shrinking violet.
Photos taken, the party set off on their 90 minute stroll. Their first stop was outside Lambeth North tube station, where tourists in matching baseball caps gawped and a bald man carrying shopping bags did a sudden double-take. I'm not sure what those further around the circuit made of the display, social media does not record. But I do know the entourage returned to Morley College at the end of the London Hat Walk to celebrate at the London Hat Week Wrap Party with light refreshments and a glass of bubbles. You're too late to join in this year, but if your creative ego has been tickled then expect plenty of opportunities to engage and celebrate hats together during London Hat Week next August, so best get millining now.
This time last year nobody knew what this skeleton of struts was for.
Today it's a world class tourist attraction, ABBA Voyage, in which thousands gather to watch a concert the 1970s popstars never gave.
And yesterday, as a joyful consequence of old school blogging, I got to step inside the hexagonal theatre on the former Olympic coach park and sing along to all the hits.
As a very local resident I've seen the matinee crowds massing outside the DLR before, but this time I was here to join them. Some had come in frilly sequinned costumes, some had picked out a special vibrant blouse, but most were simply dressed for summer. I imagine the queue for the cloakroom in the winter is going to be brutal. To enter the building all you have to do is pick your queue - A for Seated or B for Dance Floor, as should be written on your ticket (or else just listen to the poor member of staff who has to keep endlessly repeating it).
The security check is no problem so long as you haven't brought a golfing umbrella, glass bottle or bladed weapon. I got to sequentially remove the contents of my pockets (yes phone, yes wallet, yes keys, yes pack of mints) because the wand waver assumed I knew how the process worked, and because I don't keep all my accoutrements in a handbag. The extra step where they dropped my wristband on the floor, then picked it up and wrapped it round my wrist, was an additionally memorable touch.
Officially you can arrive up to two hours before the show starts, but that just hems you into a triangular concourse where pre-Voyage opportunities (and seating) are limited. You can buy food, but don't expect IKEA standard. You can buy drinks at above-pub prices, which in London isn't cheap. Hurrah, they actually had Beck's so I availed myself of a plastic glass of that. You can buy merch, which it's better to get before the performance to avoid the queues afterwards. And you can go to the toilet, which again you should do in advance because the show lasts 90 minutes without a interval. If nothing else they've made the roof much prettier than it needs to be.
When the time comes you head on into the arena. From here on it's no photography, which is excellent because it means nobody'll be waving their phone in the air for an hour and a half and blocking your view. The passageway round the outside of the building is rainbow-lit and surprisingly long, the reason for which becomes evident when you finally enter the auditorium and wow won't you look at the size of that. I've watched this building going up from 'Strut One' to 'Lifting The Roof Into Place', and even I was amazed how spacious it is inside. Dance floor up front, banks of seating behind and massive special effects void above your head. If you've bought a standing ticket be sure to arrive early if you want to be anywhere near the front of the stage (but I was happy to squeeze further back to soak in the full width of the screen).
It's a Scandinavian concert so it starts on time. It takes a few minutes for the band to 'appear' but suddenly there they are and singing away as if it were still 1979. It's uncanny because you know they're not real but when they move they could absolutely be standing there and when they sing it's like they totally are. I spent quite a bit of the opening track thinking 'how are they doing that?' and 'sure it's trickery with light but how can they look solid no matter which way you look?', but by track three I was singing along as if holographic septuagenarians were the most natural performers in the world.
The song choice is mostly bangers but with the odd curveball thrown in, including a couple of hits from the very latest album. ABBA's vast back catalogue means not everything makes the cut, including songs you'll walk out convinced they played except they didn't. And you're not just getting a sanitised recorded performance, a substantial live band is present on stage and occasionally pops up to make more of a fuss of itself. Yes, that is the actual Little Boots on keyboards, contributing to a wall of sound that occasionally overplays itself and blurs into distorty fuzz.
It's a lot more fun being down on the dance floor than up on the seats. There isn't room to gyrate properly but much bobbing and swaying is possible, not to mention mild flinging when some of the more popular numbers emerge. I'd love to know whether it was just our performance that decided to wave collective arms in the air from early on or whether every audience spontaneously does that. I enjoyed being five foot ten because most of the audience were shorter than me so I got a decent view throughout, whereas at most concerts the scattering of five elevens and six footers gets in my way. Sightlines are better from the grandstand but only so long as the row in front of you doesn't stand up, indeed during Dancing Queen you wouldn't have seen a thing if you'd stayed sullenly sitting down.
And it's not just 90 minutes of distant holographics, it's a full-on multi-media show. That means additional screens flipping down with video close-ups of the four singers, impressively 100% synchronised with whatever the figures are doing on stage. A bevy of special effects hangs down from the roof at appropriate moments, sometimes disc shaped and sometimes resembling chains of beads, not to mention a multitude of lasers firing in dazzling unison. This relentless variety keeps the show fresh - ooh this song's on video, ooh this song appears to be accompanying a fantastical cartoon adventure - but also means the four 'performers' are probably only on stage for about half the duration.
I'd say the audience was mostly people who'd been alive in 1974 along with people who wished they had been. Nobody was obviously attending a hen party but that vibe was ever present, including one group of five bubbly laydeez near me who seemed to spend more time bonding than watching the show. They also sent someone out partway to buy more drinks, and surreptitiously filmed themselves (alas without getting caught), and what I'm saying is be careful who you stand near. That said they were probably more fun than some of the husbands in front who weren't getting into the ABBA groove at all, but I wished they'd shut up gassing during the talky bits or even gone to a proper Mamma Mia experience instead.
The band undertake several costume changes during the show, occasionally knowingly, switching from swishy silk to Tron-style catsuits to full-on spangly bacofoil. It is jawdropping to see the effort that's gone into making them look like younger versions of themselves, particularly in close-ups on screen, right down to the individual hairs on the boys' chests and a virtual freckle on Agnetha's skin that's always in the same place. During the performance I even reassessed which one of them I most fancied, so alluring were their youthful avatars, although having later seen the quartet as they are today I suspect I made the correct decision in the 1970s.
The show rises to a choreographed crescendo with a sequence of all the right crowdpleasing songs, then knocks you sideways with one last emotional punch before the lights go up. This brings the realisation that the queues for the toilets are about to be terrible, especially if you're female, and that the refreshment options out front have now closed so it's time to flood away. The container hotel nextdoor, the Snoozebox, has capitalised on this by luring departing punters with portaloos and a bar called Dancing Queens, so you might well end up there. But most skedaddle without hanging around to see what else Pudding Mill Lane has to offer, which quite frankly isn't much, to do their post-ABBA socialising elsewhere.
Voyage is a cracking state-of-the-art experience which redefines what's possible in the staging of popular music. It means the band can live on long after their performance days are over, and without ever needing to turn up in an arena again. It's an easy way of raking in cash for the foreseeable future, because these tickets aren't cheap even if you try booking a midweek performance in six months' time. But it's also a wonderful way to say thankyou to the fans, of whom there are millions, who get to attend a pitch perfect gig they could never have seen 40 years ago. It will live long in the memory.
South of Purley the landscape splits into several steep dry valleys. Some channel main roads, some carry railways, and these are the paths more generally travelled. Other valleys merely form thin tongues of isolated suburbia that eventually fade away into woody countryside, and Old Lodge Lane is one of these. You can follow it aboard the 455 bus, not that you ever would unless you lived here, which is why I never had.
Grid square TQ3159 has quite the cross section, with two high ridges to either side and a deep groove down the centre. I'm going to split it into five parallel stripes and make five separate north-south journeys, each emblematic of a different landscape. High woodland, low bus route, high housing, higher woodland, higher housing. It's properly atypical London.
1) In Wood
Seriously, the wood is called In Wood. Some of it is properly ancient and some is younger infill, with the oldest trees to be found slightly to the south in the delightfully-named Dollypers Hill Nature Reserve. I entered via the footpath at the turning circle, or what looked like a footpath weaving over pebbled earth, dry pebbles, moss and scattered logs. It still looked plausible as the litter lessened and the gradient steepened, until I found myself one short scramble from what I hoped was the summit track. I'm glad nobody saw me struggling to stand upright on the loose chalk, grabbing at branches and quietly yelping when one of my timber handholds dislodged. With backside brushed, I continued along the upper path through glorious woodland, plenty thick enough to block out the golf course to the left and suburbia below me to the right. Note to self: next time follow Canon's Hill, or maybe enter via Old Coulsdon instead.
2) Old Lodge Lane
The 455 bears off from Brighton Road near Reedham station, its purpose to serve the estates up Old Lodge Lane. The Old Lodge in question appears just after the railway bridges and used to mark the entrance to the Asylum for Fatherless Children, later Reedham Orphanage, later Reedham School. My fellow passengers included a gym-going teenager, a Tesco shopper and an old man in a yellow Arsenal shirt with POPS 70 written on the back (which I reckoned was at least a decade out of date). TQ3159 kicks in just before the foot of Lodge Hill, a residential climb with a 14% gradient and a tennis club, because finding somewhere round here flat enough to play football would be difficult. The 455 follows the foot of the valley past smart semis and mid-century detacheds, eventually pulling up by a postwar parade whose sole businesses are Shades salon and a Costcutter/Post Office combo. The remainder of Old Lodge Lane is uninhabited woodland (no footway for 1 mile), and not ever TfL are charitable enough to send a bus down there. Bus consultation update: Route 455 is to be withdrawn, maybe in March 2024, and route 312 extended to cover Old Lodge Lane instead.
3) Reedham Park
The bus takes the low road but the place to live is along the high roads... Haydn Avenue, Wontford Road, Roffey Close. Their homes hug the hillside, below street level on one side and above street level on the other, therefore ideal so long as you don't mind a lot of steps up or down to your door. Some have even placed what's normally patio furniture in their front gardens - a table and chairs for enjoying the view across the valley to In Wood. I spotted several roofs with ridiculously tall TV aerials, because line of sight doesn't get you very far round here. Rest assured it's not as posh at I might have made it sound, more 'comfortable', if you assume the old man I saw walking the streets with a faraway glazed look while clutching a hammer wasn't typical.
4) Unnamed woodland strip
At regular intervals along the highest roads a public footpath climbs between two houses to enter a thin half-mile-long strip of woodland. I've checked old maps and it doesn't seem to have ever had a name, it merely divided fields in Purley from fields in Kenley, and was left alone when the housing developers came. Again you can't see far from within, only trees and the back of an occasional fence, but it must make half of an appealing dogwalking circuit for residents on both sides plus a useful place to swipe holly berries at Christmas. I particularly liked the knobbly tree by the fingerpost at the top of Firs Lane, it felt proper sylvan, although the wood is at its narrowest here so that's mostly an illusion.
5) Hayes Lane
TQ3159's final stripe of housing is the broadest, and flattest, and geographically more Kenley than Purley or Coulsdon. It spreads to either side of Hayes Lane, originally Hays Lane back when it was a weaving rural track past a few cottages and a smithy. The latter survives as a house called The Old Forge, now markedly out of place amid stockbroker boltholes and commuter avenues. Hayes Primary School is a newbuild with an extraordinary silvery frontage formed from metal panels resembling the holes of a cheesegrater. Were you to continue south you'd eventually reach the end of Old Lodge Lane, at that unexpectedly rural pond you meet halfway round London Loop section5 (between the airfield and the observatory), but obviously I've been there already. Bus consultation update: Hayes Lane has never had a bus service, but the already-wiggly 434 is due to be wiggled this way when the Sutton/Croydon bus changes are finally implemented.
And that's my most southerly formerly-unvisited square duly wrapped up.
Guess That Parade(your Friday afternoon quiz)
I'm somewhere in London.
I'm standing outside a parade of five shops.
From left to right those shops are:
???
insurance claims
cafe
pharmacy
post office
salon
Where am I?
5.05pm update: It has been guessed! Well done andy c! And here it is...
10 posts I thought about posting today but didn't write
a) The bottle kiln of Notting Hill b) Bus frequencies in Croxley Green c) London streets with a timely name d) This artistic event sounds like a rip-off e) Why TfL's junk food ad ban isn't that good f) Visiting Barnet Museum's satellite showcase g) 1¾%? Interest rates used to be over 10%! h) The council estate familiar to TV viewers i) A board game cafe is opening in Uxbridge j) Walking the Chohole Gate Path
Candidates supporting Liz(1-12)
• Sajid Javid: "Liz Truss is the best of Thatcher and Reagan."
• Tom Tugendhat: "We need a firm leader, and Liz Truss fits the bill."
• Penny Mordaunt: "Liz knows what out nation needs now and it isn't timidity."
• Nadhim Zahawi: "In a time of national emergency we need action not words."
• Suella Braverman: "She’ll cut taxes, deliver Brexit promises and protect free speech."
Candidates supporting Rishi(11-2)
• Jeremy Hunt: "Will face up squarely to the challenges in front of us".
• Grant Shapps: "Has the experience to rise to the huge challenges we face."
• Rehman Chishti: "His merit-based aspirational conservatism ties in with my vision."
Undeclared
• Kemi Badenoch: "absolutely not declaring"
As well as visiting 1km×1km grid squares I've never visited before, I'm also visiting squares I've never set foot in. Usually I've been through them on a bus so they're not entirely unfamiliar, or I've been through on a train so have at least seen them from the window, but now finally I'm alighting to see what I've missed.
Back in June there were 60 such untrodden squares but a bit of judicious travelling has got that total down to 33. Occasionally I've blogged about them, like when I went to Hanworth, Tylers Common, Croham Hurst or to see the Havering Stone. But most of the time I haven't because they weren't that interesting, as I'm about to prove by telling you (briefly) about eight more of them. My apologies if you live in any of these squares because they're about to get really short narrative shrift.
TQ2899: Vault Hill(Enfield) Where is it? Along The Ridgeway between Potters Bar and Botany Bay. (click on the map reference and have a look if you're really interested) How had I been before? Aboard the 313 bus but I never got off. I once got off at the next stop, North Cottage Farm, because that's the northernmost bus stop in Greater London. But I felt bloody stupid this time dinging the bell to get off at 'Windrush' because that's a bus stop named after a single house called Windrush in the middle of nowhere, and I bet its owners drive everywhere anyway. What's here? One road. A lot of fields (gorgeous rolling fields looking down across the valley of the Salmon's Brook towards the Trent Park obelisk). One private school in extensive grounds. Two unwelcoming farms. One outstandingly unwelcoming public footpath (leading to a footbridge over the M25). What did I do here? Waited for the next 313 bus to take me away.
TQ5489: Ardleigh Green(Havering) Where is it? East of Romford, south of Harold Wood. How had I been before? Driving along the A127. Also aboard the 256 and 294 buses. The London Loop gets within 100m, but no cigar. What's here? Deep outer suburban streets. At least five schools and colleges because land was once cheap. What did I do here? Walked up the alley from Wingletye Lane, across Platford Green and up Birch Crescent, thinking "thank goodness I don't have to blog about this".
TQ5481: Wennington(Havering) Where is it? Nearly, but not quite, in the village of Wennington. How had I been before? Actually I'm not sure I had. Maybe it was properly unvisited. My bad. What does Sophie think? She reckons a teensy sliver of the southeast corner of the grid square isn't in London which means I didn't need to visit, but I have anyway just to be sure. What's here? A busy road. Half a Premier Inn. Half a farmhouse. The clubhouse of Ingrebourne Links Golf Course. What did I do here? As little as possible before retreating back to Wennington proper.
TQ0781: Colham Green(Hillingdon) Where is it? Between the Uxbridge Road and Stockley Country Park. How had I been before? Aboard the A10, U1, U2, U3, U4, U5 and/or U7 buses (because this square is ridiculously well served), but the main stops at Hillingdon Hospital are fractionally outside. The London Loop gets within 200m, but no cigar. What's here? I didn't stay long, it looked sort of residential and green but occasionally dual carriageway-ish. Colham Green has a long history so I might come back, but the point of this project is to set foot in the grid square not explore it to death.
Hang on in there, one of these grid squares will eventually be interesting.
TQ2167: New Malden(Kingston) Where is it? Just south of the Fountain at New Malden, encompassing a bit of Motspur Park. How had I been before? Aboard a 213, 265, K1, K5 or X26 bus. What's here? I'm not really sure, it's like a black hole in my London knowledge. I think it's quite desirably residential but the A3 carves through and wrecks some of it. What did I do here? Got off a bus outside the church, walked a few metres towards the roundabout and left the square.
TQ3667: Upper Elmers End(Bromley/Croydon) Where is it? Between Elmers End and Eden Park stations, just north of Monks Orchard. How had I been before? Aboard the 194, 356 or 358 buses, there being no reason to get off. What's here? A school. A sports club. A railway. Elmers Bazaar. Auntie May's Chinese takeaway. Quintessential semis. Odd postwar flats. An impressively unappealing pub called The Orchard whose architect might have modelled it on a prison outbuilding. What did I do here? Walked through to Shirley Oaks, because that was a properly unvisited square I intended to blog about, so I picked this one up as a bonus along the way.
TQ4763: Chelsfield(Bromley) Where is it? Southeast of Orpington, sandwiched between Chelsfield station/Chelsfield village and the A21/ Pratts Bottom. How had I been before? Only ever aboard a train, mostly in a long cutting and then a tunnel on the way to Sevenoaks, this being one of those rare London grid squares without a bus service. What's here? Paddocks. Another golf course. An old house called Julian's Brimstone. Worlds End Lane. A lot of big characterful (some would say ostentatious) detached homes, each in its own precisely parcelled strip of land. You promised something interesting?Court Lodge (in the northeast corner of the square) was once the home of a Mayor of London called Brass Crosby. His father was called Hercules Crosby, so you could argue he got off lightly. Brass was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1725, studied law, moved to London and became Lord Mayor in 1770. The following year he was asked to rule on the case of a printer accused of publishing the content of Parliamentary debates, and let him off. The House was incensed and duly threw him into the Tower of London, but solidarity from the public and other judges got him out, and it's from his steadfast action that we get the phrase "bold as brass". Are you sure? As with many phrases and sayings it's not 100% certain what the derivation of "bold as brass" really is, but it'd be nice if it was Brass Crosby. He's buried in the churchyard nextdoor.
Finally, let me update my graphic that shows you how many of London's 1km×1km grid squares I've been to.
Yellow means I've properly been, green that I've passed through in a vehicle, blue that I've only passed through in a train and red that I've never been. My home square is purple.
It's got to be a grocery, a minimarket, a convenience store, a 'corner shop'... somewhere that sells food and a bit of everything... a chain like Spar or Nisa or a totally independent family business.
But what about a typical parade of two shops?
PARADE 2
groceries
takeaway
I'm going to suggest you'd get a grocery store and a takeaway. Could be Chinese, could be kebabs, could be a chippie, could be any kind of takeaway, but generally speaking somewhere selling hot food alongside somewhere selling packaged food.
But those don't feel like proper parades of shops, they're too short, so what if we increase the number to four?
PARADE 4
groceries
takeaway
salon
cafe
Still a grocery store, still a takeaway, but also somewhere that cuts hair and some kind of cafe. The salon might do women's or men's hair and the cafe could be a posh place, a coffee shop or a greasy spoon. but it's the overall category that counts. I'm pretty happy with my choice of a salon for number three but number four's a little more subjective, because what exactly is a typical parade of shops anyway?
If you live in Kensington a 'typical' parade might include an upmarket bar and a housewares showroom, whereas round my way it'd likely include a grill and somewhere selling halal meat. So for today's post I prefer to imagine a typical parade somewhere more ordinary, say on an outer London estate or in a residential corner of Nuneaton. I've even done a survey at a few parades I've visited recently, so what comes next is based on research as well as a general hunch.
What might be in a typical parade of ten shops?
PARADE 10
groceries
takeaway
salon
cafe
pharmacy
estate agent
(empty)
barber
takeaway
groceries
This was tougher to compile. I had to include a pharmacy, they're commonplace, and it made sense to split the two places for cutting hair. What very much came across from direct research was the importance of food sales on a typical parade, so I've included a second grocery store (which might be ethnic or might be more of an off-licence) and also a second takeaway. And this left only two other gaps, one of which I've filled with an estate agent and one of which (hopefully realistically) I've left empty.
Some of the shops I nearly put in: accountants, bakery, betting shop, dry cleaners, launderette. Some of the shops I didn't put in: bar, funeral director, hardware, minicabs, post office, tattoos.
So that's my take on a 'typical' parade of ten shops. It may not be yours, but I'm amenable to the odd tweak.
Parades of shops looked very different 40 years ago.
When I was a kid growing up in Croxley Green our local parade was known locally as the 'Top Shops', and it's evolved somewhat since then.
295: This used to be Forbuoys newsagent and the Post Office, somewhere to buy my sweets and comics and to get my first day covers stamped, it later became JJ News, then last year the Post Office closed and today it's Greens Essentials, 'hardware for the people of Croxley'. 297: This used to be Wilyman Chemists, somewhere to buy cough syrup and to get my reels of photos developed, and is still Wilyman Chemists to this day, even down to the lovely nostalgic lettering above the door. 299: This used to be a bakery, I can't remember the name, but they had the most gorgeous cream cakes in the window and did a cracking iced bun round, but now it's a unisex salon called we are... Hair For You, and I much preferred it when they did sliced white loaves and cream horns.
301: This used to be Peter Webb, the local grocery store stacked with tins and packets for when you didn't have time to walk down to Budgens on New Road, and it's still a supermarket but without the personal counter service, it's been a Londis for ages. 303: This used to be L & G Meats, a proper butchers with red meat in the window and a man in an apron wielding a big knife, and hell yes even in 80s Hertfordshire we had a deli counter, but eventually Londis took it over to create a double-sized store so it's more chiller cabinet than raw beef these days. 305: This used to be H Willoughby, the local greengrocers, we knew the lady behind the till so Mum was always dropping in for a chat, later it became Roberts Fruit for all your fresh fruit and veg needs, and more recently The Grocer on The Green which is a bit more up itself with prices to match. 307: This used to be P Beckford, a hardware store, you could get anything here, just look at that genuine 80s advert from the village newsletter, whereas these days it's another beauty salon called Bliss Beauty, and although a new hardware store has appeared at the other end of the parade it's not the same. 309: This was and still is The Corner Plaice, a family business that's been known to win national awards for its fish and chips, it's so traditional that the current owner started working here in the early 90s when he was 13, I don't think I ever realised quite how lucky I was to have a chippie like this at the top of the road, proper fried bliss.
It's two weeks since the village of Wennington became the unwilling poster child for UK climate change. On Tuesday morning it was a little-known row of houses on the far edge of the capital. On Wednesday morning it was on all the newspaper front pages burning to the ground.
Wennington's an extraordinary village in many respects. Historic enough that it has a 13th century church. Linear enough that everyone lives on a single side of a single street. Peripheral enough that Essex (or rather Thurrock) starts at the end of the road. Remote enough that it's entirely surrounded by nothing much. Estuarine enough that a huge swathe of Thames marshes is named after it. Connected enough that it gets three buses an hour from Hornchurch. Disconnected enough that two railway lines speed straight past. Substantial enough that I wrote seven paragraphs about it in 2014. And strategic enough that the only employer in the village is a fire station, which given what just happened is as ironic as it gets.
I left it a while and took a look.
It's quite shocking to see a row of houses completely burnt out. These are Marine Cottages, or rather were Marine Cottages because all nine are now uninhabitable. The worst affected are at the eastern end of the terrace - charred roofless shells with the entire upstairs missing and a pile of blackened rubble inches deep across the floor. A few are boarded up but others still have mattresses, cables and ash-coated detritus on display and a clear view through empty windows to the marshes beyond.
It's thought the fire started in a compost heap and crept up to Marine Cottages via their back gardens, so most of the frontage retains its pebbledash, its meter cupboards and its ornamental lanterns. Pretty much all the roofs have gone. At the eastern end of the terrace the destruction is marginally less severe, maybe more from water damage but uninhabitable all the same. And as if to demonstrate how some got supremely lucky, the Old Post Office nextdoor appears unscathed and is still very much home to whoever was belting out loud music at the weekend.
This is Kent View, a run of 20 terraced cottages whose backyards look out across the Thames towards the Dartford Marshes. Sixteen of them also got lucky but the wind whipped round the rear of numbers 17-20 and they too burned out. It's jarring to see roofless brick furnaces with freestanding chimneystacks, while a few doors down a thankful resident unloads a week's shopping from their car.
The church of St Mary and St Peter escaped the conflagration but its churchyard wasn't so fortunate. The medieval building is now completely surrounded by charred grass, which is the natural end state of a tinder dry expanse when a heatwave blaze comes visiting. But don't worry unnecessarily, the fire didn't wipe out a mass of graves because this corner of the churchyard was only ever really grass, and the obelisk dedicated to a Huguenot mathematician is still legibly intact.
Laundry Cottages are fine. Halldare Cottages are fine. Almost all of the semis round The Green are fine too. But numbers 19-22 weren't so lucky as yet another tongue of flame approached from behind and took them out. 19 is still recognisably a house but 20 nextdoor has substantially disassembled. You have to feel particularly sorry for the owners of numbers 21 and 22. Set back up a short drive they were a literal stone's throw from the fire station, but also perilously nearer to the marshes which meant even proximity to the emergency services couldn't save them.
Of the 80 or so properties along Wennington Road about 20% were rendered uninhabitable by the fire that broke out on Britain's hottest day. The vast majority of residents got to live another day in the village they call home. But what's made really clear if you walk through the village today is how that destruction acted like a lottery, targeting four separate locations with conflagration and leaving those inbetween untouched.
Before all this happened, the greatest risk to Wennington from climate change looked like being rising sea levels. The main street's barely five metres above the Thames and entirely unprotected by any kind of flood defence, so a storm surge whipped up from a warming sea could ultimately do the place real damage. But what 19th July showed us is that nowhere surrounded by vegetation is truly safe, and it only takes once-rare drought, once-impossible heat and a little bit of wind to lay a village low.
Fri 1: These monthly 'unblogged' posts are getting fewer comments than they used to, so maybe readers are losing interest, but they've had a good four year run.
Sat 2: The first blackberries are ripe. Summer's nearly over. Sun 3: Three things I always whizz past on Instagram: i) adverts; ii) anyone publishing more than 10 stories daily; iii) posts from two days ago which the algorithm insists on keeping at the top of my feed because I haven't looked through all the photos (and never will). Mon 4: I was on the 346 bus when two teenage boys boarded. Only one paid. The other delivered a sob story to the driver until he was allowed on, then smirked broadly as he walked up to his friend on the back seat... where they discussed getting off in the High Street and going to Wimpy. They breed a very different kind of rebel in Upminster. Tue 5: Whenever I visit the Museum of Docklands I like to drop into the Sainsbury Archive on the first floor. On today's sortie I picked up free bookmarks depicting Snax salted crackers and Morning Coffee biscuits, and also admired the model of the North Greenwich eco-Sainsbury's (1999-2015).
Wed 6: I went to collect my prescription from the chemist. Normally they hunt for a slip of paper in a box arranged alphabetically, but a new electronic system has been introduced and it's proving less efficient. They had to ask for more ID details up front, then type them in, then wait because the wifi's rubbish so the search took ages, and all this clogged up the till so nobody else behind the counter could use it and a queue built up. Modernisation is often a regressive step. Thu 7: How many ministerial resignations does it take to bring down a PM? If you're Boris Johnson, 62. Extraordinary times. Although I see he intends to keep collecting his salary for another two months. Fri 8: Inflationwatch A four-pack of Cadbury chocolate bars (e.g. Wispa, Double Decker, Topic, Crunchie) has been 98p for well over a year, and today it's £1.25. Sat 9: I see from the fine clothing on display across the streets of Tower Hamlets that it's Eid again, the other Eid, the bigger one. Again it surprises/saddens me that almost everyone out celebrating and/or heading to the mosque is male, but that's religion for you. Sun 10: I thought Clissold Park looked busy, and at first I assumed a market was taking place but no, the BBC were filming the Antiques Roadshow. I watched several optimists queueing for valuations, but only over the fence so I probably won't be in the background when one of them reacts overexcitedly on camera.
Mon 11: At Elephant & Castle station they've put up a poster about carrying water in hot weather, but it's the paranoid lockdown version about cleaning your hands before removing your face covering, and I had hoped they'd recycled all those by now. Tue 12: Gladioliwatch: For many years the tub on my balcony has thrown up one stalk of potential gladioli which has delivered seven daily blooms. Last year it threw up two stalks, each with seven daily blooms (yay!). This year it threw up three stalks (ooh!) but only one has bloomed and with only three flowers (bah!). Wed 13: I was on the R4 bus in Orpington and a lady in a mobility scooter boarded, and she had great trouble getting up the ramp and struggled to get her Freedom Pass out to pay and was really bad at steering it and needed about four attempts to negotiate herself into the wheelchair space, and she apologised throughout because it was her very first day in a mobility scooter, and the rest of the passengers were so supportive, and I thought "good for you, today's a humbling watershed in your life, well done for facing it head on". Thu 14: I picked up a copy of the Bromley News Shopper while I was in Orpington and its headline story was about a music festival in Bexley. Worse, two of its Page 2 stories happened in Southwark and only three stories in the entire paper were from anywhere in Bromley. When your back page is "World & UK Sport", local news really is very dead indeed. Fri 15: Remember that post about shopfront telephone numbers I asked you not to comment on? Well a dozen of you couldn't resist, or else couldn't read, and I had to shift all your comments to the next day's post. I do this sometimes, shift a comment to a different post where it's actually relevant, especially if your comment starts "Hey DG, off-topic but..." Sat 16: I have ridden Crossrail, the proper central section, every day since it opened. That's 47 consecutive days (not including the days it's been closed, obviously). And it would have been 50+ except I'm off to Norfolk tomorrow so my run ends there. But hey, beat that.
Sun 17: I dropped by the East End Canal Festival in Mile End Park, and I fear you'll be reading a lot more about the Bow Heritage Trail this autumn. Also you might want to support Reclaim Our River in their excellent campaign to close the gaps in the Thames Path round Tower Hamlets. I also failed to win a prize in the tombola (which, judging by what was on the table, may have been a good thing). Mon 18: When my parents moved into their Norfolk home in 1991 there was a large arable field at the bottom of the garden. Later it became a paddock, then a businessman built a house there, and today I watched two sweaty workmen obliterating another bit of the horizon with a dozen fence panels. Tue 19: I thought I'd be dodging the worst of the heatwave by coming up to Norfolk but no, yesterday's 38°C peak was ten miles away and today has topped that. Utterly astonishing temperatures (and likely harbingers of an increasingly uncomfortable future). Wed 20: The new Co-Op at Barking Riverside opens next month in a grim prefab ten minutes walk from the station, so that's one thing you can do if you ever decide to visit the godforsaken nomansland end of the line. Thu 21: Had a plumber round, and while he was fixing my problem he told me how he owned 23 houses but only had six mortgages, and then he charged me over £100 plus VAT, and after he left it turned out he hadn't fixed the problem after all.
Fri 22: They've opened up the small chamber at Outernet London on Charing Cross Road, complete with swirling multi-screen video effects, but passers-by seem reticent to walk inside so staff are on hand to encourage them in. One told me the really big atrium won't be opening for 'another month or two'. Sat 23: I think I saw the actor Daniel Rigby on platform 14 at Stratford station. I wasn't 100% convinced, but back during lockdown I thought I saw the actor Daniel Rigby in Victoria Park so I'm raising both sightings to 99% convinced. Sun 24: Before I was in Ham or Sandwich I was in Deal, and while I was there I had to take a walk down the concrete pier. This is my favourite photo from the lower deck at the far end.
Mon 25:Programmes I've been enjoying on BBC Sounds this month: i) the eight-part documentary charting Boris Johnson's character over 57 years (it's always been obvious to those who were looking) ii) Alexei Sayle chatting to passengers on long-distance UK train journeys. Tue 26: I went out for drinks with BestMateFromWork to celebrate it being exactly 20 years since Pauline's leaving do when he suggested we went out for drinks afterwards. We still had tons to discuss, not least because I'm the only person he can talk to about archaic annual leave terms and conditions. Wed 27: TfL have launched a book club, which you might think would mean cut price offers on various nerdy transport-related books but no, you pay £4.99 a month and this allows you to pick from a list of three Hodder & Staughton bestsellers, e-books only, and it does feel like something a financially stable TfL wouldn't need to do. Thu 28: The Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Birmingham was a lot of bull (and rather too much expressive dancing). Fri 29: I watched the Neighbours finale despite not having watched an episode this century, and I thought they wrapped it up well, but it was all too obvious that Scott and Charlene turned up on a different day to everyone else. Sat 30: I was waiting for the 347 in Ockendon and the other bloke at the bus stop engaged me in conversation about the trouble he'd been having contacting Argos customer service - they never answered and when they did they always cut him off and it was all foreigners anyway - and I think he assumed I'd nod along, but instead I tried to offer a logical reason for all his woes but he wasn't having it, it was all broken Britain, and I made sure to sit as far away from him on the bus as possible.
