The interior of the Millennium Dome is now (almost) complete. Took long enough.
Ever since 2007, when New Labour's Teflon tent reopened as an entertainment hub, it's only been possible to turn right on entering. A crescent of dining opportunities curved round to the far side of the complex, past numerous restaurants and the occasional cinema, but the only shopping experience on offer was a tiny newsagents which excited nobody. Now suddenly turning left has become an option, with a lengthy shopping mall finally completing the circuit and giving visitors something entirely different to do.
It was going to be a super-casino, back in the Blair era when super-casinos were the thing, so the O2's owners kept 120° of their circumference empty in readiness of planning success. But London's super-casino went to Westfield in Stratford instead, and North Greenwich was left with a hole nobody's got round to filling until now.
It's called Icon, and looks very much like you'd expect a shopping mall to look. Over on the Dome's restaurant boulevard it's impossible to escape the feeling that you're walking through a cavernous tent with boxy infill, but this new addition is overhung by a chain of illuminated ribs which acts as a suspended ceiling, making it feel more like Bluewater, Westfield or Intu Somewhere instead. Ascend the escalators at either end to enter this brave new retail temple.
The arcade nearest the main entrance is solely at first floor level, and lined by narrow-fronted shops on either side. Many of these are already open but many are not, partly because there's a recession on, but mainly because it's still early days. The shops are almost exclusively of a type - slightly upmarket clothes and accessories - including such non-necessities as Calvin Klein undies and Aspinal handbags. If you're wondering why the shops get micro-thin opposite the artisan coffee outlet, it's because the mall has to bend around the ventilation tower for the southbound Blackwall Tunnel. I counted up the shops along this first section and tallied ten units open and seven closed.
Things got even quieter through the central section, the furthest from each entrance - thirteen units open and twelve closed. Temporary frontage and low footfall meant it all felt a bit dead, even for a weekday morning, but on opening weekend the place was no doubt buzzing thanks to numerous 'brand activations'. Hackett were offering complimentary monogramming, GANT were dishing out a free Duffle if you spent £200 or more, and Cath Kidston had installed a flower wall as a prize-winning selfie backdrop. You may already be getting a sense of whether this place is for you.
Eventually the mall reaches a gaping atrium where one of the Dome's big yellow spikes plonks down, and where one of the entrances to the O2's main arena is located. Beyond this the shops continue at ground floor as well as first floor level, although only the upstairs lot are open at present. Ten open and three closed is a better ratio than we've seen thus far, and the clothing emphasis isn't quite so strong, with tea and perfume and smelly candles thrown into the mix. It's also worth noting that the overhead decor's different at this end, here bedecked with a net of floaty white quadrilaterals which reveals more of the actual roof.
The last shop, or the first if you're wandering anti-clockwise, is the only store to brand itself as an outlet. Everything in the Gap Outlet store is 50% off, which is a pretty substantial discount, with handy ready reckoners above the shelves in case you're no good at halving. Even I was thinking "oh, that's not actually a bad price for a shirt", so will be back, relieved I no longer have to trudge over to Wembley Park for something similar. Apparently the whole of Icon is supposed to offer "a variety of premium brands all at accessible outlet prices", but not one single other store has made this obvious - their racks unflashed and their windows unpostered.
Downstairs is odd, even eerie, with the entire run of twenty-odd shops still covered up. That'll be because this is phase 2, opening 2019, as the retail offer ramps up another notch. For now staff are washing piazzas nobody's using, and plugging in amplifiers on a stage nobody will be flocking to, and wondering what anyone's doing down here when there are trainers and chocolate advent calendars on the floor above.
In summary, Icon isn't a must-visit, more somewhere to spend surplus cash on non-essentials if that's what you enjoy. It appears ideally targeted at parties from the Home Counties here to watch U2 or Andrea Bocelli, if only there weren't rules about taking large bags into the auditorium. It's also hoping to attract eager foreign tourists who don't want to have to schlep all the way to Bicester for cheap designer goods, but the overall vibe isn't yet outletty enough for that to succeed. Icon's certainly a more interesting way to pass the time than the restaurants round the other half of the circumference, and has its moments, but has yet to prove it could become a regular hangout for ordinary Londoners.
And Icon is about to be outshone next weekend by a fresh opening at Granary Square - Coal Drops Yard. This former carbon depository and nightclub to the north of King's Cross is reopening as a 'curated' retail experience packed with snobby brands at unreconstructed prices, aiming at sluicing the plastic of warehouse-dwellers and Eurostar travellers. Icon may be one step down the luxury ladder, but it cements the future of the Millennium Dome, and might even contain something you actually want.
This is the area inside which all TfL services run.
Specifically it's the smallest convex polygon encompassing all TfL-operated services. That means the boundary is all straight lines, and none of the angles bend inwards. All of the vertices are either stations or bus stops. You cannot catch a TfL service outside this shape. Here's the map.
This is an entirely unofficial thing, and also inherently meaningless. But I still think it's interesting, so indulge me for a moment.
The TfL Polygon has nine vertices. Clockwise from top left, they are Chesham, Cheshunt, Epping, Shenfield, North Stifford, Bluewater, Chartwell, Dorking and Slough.
The first four vertices in that list - the furthest north - are stations. All the other vertices are bus stops.
To make this exercise worthwhile, we need to look at the TfL Polygon in relation to the boundary of Greater London.
As you can see, the TfL Polygon is larger than Greater London. Specifically it's 70% larger, having an area of 2704km² whereas Greater London covers 1569km². On average, the TfL Polygon runs three or four miles outside Greater London. The greatest distance is seven miles, to Chesham - a legacy of the Metropolitan line stretching way out into Buckinghamshire. A tiny section of Havering, near North Ockendon, lies outside the TfL Polygon, but that's OK because almost nobody lives there, and it probably shouldn't be part of the capital anyway.
It's by no means the case that everywhere inside the TfL Polygon gets a TfL service. There are no buses in the northwest corner, only a tiny handful of stations. There are no TfL stations to the south of Greater London, only a tiny number of unusually long bus routes poking down into Surrey and Kent. In general TfL services creep minimally over the Greater London boundary, because TfL exists to serve its own home area, and the few outliers which define the vertices of the TfL Polygon are very much the exception.
Let's run round the boundary and see what's going on.
Chesham → Cheshunt
This is the longest side of the TfL Polygon, at 25 miles in length. It skirts Rickmansworth and Watford, then runs just north of the M25 from South Mimms eastwards. A year ago there would have been an extra vertex here in Potters Bar, nudging fractionally north, but when TfL cut back route 298 from the Cranborne Road Industrial Estate to the station, that disappeared.
Cheshunt → Epping
Before May 2015, when services to Cheshunt became part of the Overground, this vertex would have been a mile to the south at Waltham Cross bus station instead. Meanwhile the Epping vertex is another legacy of the outer suburban Underground. It would have been considerably further out in Ongar until 1994, and the extent of the TfL Polygon perhaps illustrates the sense in cutting back.
Epping → Shenfield
Shenfield is another May 2015 addition, courtesy of Crossrail. Prior to TfL Rail taking over this end of the line, the corresponding vertex was on Brentwood High Street, served by the number 498 bus. TfL aren't here to serve Hertfordshire and Essex, which is why no London bus routes cross the M25 between Potters Bar and Brentwood, other than dribbling a few hundred metres over the line in Waltham Cross.
Shenfield → North Stifford
Here's the only side of the polygon which passes (very) briefly through Greater London. The redundant part of the capital (near North Ockendon) is mostly fields and a golf course, and home to barely a dozen people. The next vertex at the Davy Down bus stop in North Stifford is only necessary because the 370 bus wiggles into Lakeside shopping centre from the east, otherwise a straight edge direct from Shenfield to Bluewater would have sufficed.
North Stifford → Bluewater
Here's why you shouldn't take the TfL Polygon too seriously. It may only be four miles direct between the bus stops at Davy Down and Bluewater, but to travel between them using TfL services requires heading at least 20 miles upriver to Woolwich and then back again. The journey can be done almost direct using an hourly Thurrock bus service, but crossing the Thames estuary by public transport is an ill-served afterthought.
Bluewater → Chartwell
Once again, this edge of the TfL Polygon closely follows the M25. Chartwell's bus service is a real oddity, a Sundays-only summer extension of route 246 to Winston Churchill's house, now a National Trust property. Once November rolls round, and until March, the Chartwell vertex reverts to the Kent town of Westerham. This reduces the area of the TfL Polygon by 50km².
Chartwell → Dorking
The southern edge of the TfL Polygon is a consequence of three particularly long bus routes stretching well out of London. As well as the 246 to Chartwell there's the 405 to Redhill and the 465 to Dorking. Redhill becomes a vertex of the TfL Polygon in the winter, narrowly, when the 246 retreats to Westerham. The 6½ mile elongation of route 465 into the depths of Surrey is a true anachronism, but Surrey help with funding, so who's complaining?
Dorking → Slough
This edge of the TfL Polygon is 20 miles long, skipping through rural and suburban Surrey. I had to check carefully to make sure we didn't need an extra vertex in Staines, but not quite - the bus station's half a mile inside the specified boundary.
Slough → Chesham
When I say Slough, I mean a bus stop on the High Street by the Queensmere shopping centre, served by route 81. It's TfL's westernmost bus stop, and we've also visited the southernmost (in Dorking), though not the northernmost nor easternmost. And finally it's back to Chesham, marginally skipping Amersham, through a non-TfL hinterland where public transport costs a lot more than £1.50 a journey.
Looking forward...
When Crossrail is complete, on some belated unspecified date, the TfL Polygon will extend considerably to the west. Reading is 17 miles further out than Slough, which adds 750km² to the polygon's internal area, a 25% increase. Only five additional stations lie in the extension zone, again confirming that the TfL Polygon is practically irrelevant to those living within it. But as a measure of TfL's ambitions to extend its influence beyond Greater London, balanced against the realities of a budget forcing it to retreat, it's an intriguing indication of intent.
