Sylvia Pankhurst isn't the most well known member of her family. Her mother Emmeline and her sister Christabel both led the Suffragette movement in their time, so their place in history is assured. But Sylvia was no less a campaigner, and far more of a militant, and her story is less well known. She began her campaign work in Bow, drawn here by the poverty of the East End and a desire to help put that right. And she began her work a stone's throw from my front door, which is highly appropriate given the events of 100 years ago today.
Sylvia Pankhurst first came to Bow in October 1912 to campaign for the local MP, George Lansbury. He'd taken the unusual step of resigning to fight a by-election on the issue of votes for women, so Sylvia arrived as a representative of the Women's Social and Political Union. She rented an empty baker's shop at 198 Bow Road, and painted "VOTES FOR WOMEN" in letters of gold across the front. The only picture I can find of that shop is here, with Sylvia addressing the crowd outside atop a precarious-looking wooden tower. Her oratory did no good - Lansbury lost the election to his Conservative challenger - but it brought Sylvia to see the hardship of the locals first hand, and so she stayed.
That baker's shop is long gone, as are all the shops along Bow Road along the southern side of St Mary's Church. The London County Council demolished the lot in 1933, removing what had been the heart of the medieval village, replacing slums and alleyways with the brick apartment blocks of the Bow Bridge Estate. These have survived, but Sylvia wouldn't be pleased to hear that the tenants remain amongst the poorest in London, the very people she came to save. To find the site of 198 Bow Road walk to the tip of the churchyard, closest to the flyover, and turn to face Canterbury House. The shop would have been where the railings make way for a soundproofing wall - the latter covered with greenery and used to screen a communal garden from the roar of traffic. Nobody's ever thought to commemorate the site, even though there's a thick brick post on which a plaque could easily be erected. I've passed the site hundreds of times, but I still can't picture Sylvia's shop nor the bustling parade it sat in, so comprehensively has the former heart of Bow been erased.
Likewise Bromley High Street, the entrance to which is a hundred yards up the road, and which has been transformed beyond recognition over the years. Post-war redevelopment created Stroudley Walk, a retail piazza that never lived up to expectations, with space for a hundred market stalls where today there's usually only one. The post office is a gloomy tomb, there's usually an alcoholic or three outside the betting shop, and I'm never convinced that the fish in the chippie is genuinely cod. The only building Sylvia would recognise is the Rose and Crown pub, although that closed a few years ago and it's now a halal-friendly shop (four roosters cost £9.99, and a whole sheep sells for less than three quid a kilo). 100 years ago today she made her campaigning speech atop a cart outside the LCC school, which was located behind the dry cleaners where a tower block now stands. In 1913 this was a genuine high street, an important local centre, but it's absolutely not today.
Sylvia's hurled flint struck Selby & Sons, the undertakers on the corner of Bow Road. That's long gone too, replaced by a modern block of flats called St Mary's Court, but the business has moved into a building up the road, which ironically used to be the local police station. Nextdoor is Bromley Public Hall, now the Tower Hamlets Register Office, where I often see under-dressed wedding parties spilling out onto the street. Here Sylvia's emancipation campaign held many of its meetings, and its window was smashed by George Lansbury's son Willie on that freezing Monday afternoon a century ago. All this wanton destruction ended up with a group of five protesters locked away in the cells at Bow Road's brand new police station, a building I blogged about last month. Sylvia was sentenced to two months hard labour in Holloway and here she began a lengthy hunger strike to draw further attention to the cause.
By now Sylvia's Bow base had shifted to number 321 Roman Road, a campaign office decorated with green and white flags above the door. From here Sylvia published her own polemic newspaper called the Women's Dreadnought, initially with a print run of ten thousand, later rather less. Now ejected from the national Suffragette movement, she set up the independent East London Federation of Suffragettes and continued the battle. On her 32nd birthday she opened The Women's Hall at 400 Old Ford Road, now demolished, but nextdoor to the Lord Morpeth pub. Wholesome fibre-rich meals were served at the locally affordable price of tuppence, although not everyone appreciated the dried beans and (heavens) potatoes with their skins on. Meanwhile at 45 Norman Grove she opened a small toy factory to provide Bow's women with sustainable employment, and made sure there was a creche and nursery to keep them in work. Practical and forward-looking, Sylvia had created a welfare bubble where it was most required.
The world changed in 1914, and the national Suffragette movement quickly evolved into a patriotic organisation supporting the troops. Sylvia was having none of it, continuing to fight against poverty and towards universal suffrage. Her organisation edged more towards communism, straining relations with her mother, who disowned her entirely when she gave birth but refused to marry the child's father. Sylvia moved with her non-husband from Bow to Woodford, where she lived for the rest of his life. They lived first at Vine Cottage, which Sylvia renamed Red Cottage, in Woodford Wells opposite the Horse and Well pub. In 1935, deeply concerned by the legalisation of aerial warfare, she commissioned a stone carving of a bomb which she erected on a concrete plinth in her front garden and unveiled with some ceremony. Red Cottage was demolished in 1939 but this peculiar monumentlives on, semi-hidden at the back of a muddy verge overshadowed by chestnut trees.
Sylvia's penultimate move was to West Dene, a larger Edwardian house on Charteris Road close to Woodford station. Again this no longer stands, having been replaced by flats, but Redbridge council have named a nearby wedge of open space Pankhurst Green in Sylvia's honour, complete with commemorative sign and mosaic. And finally in 1956 she emigrated to Ethiopia, subject of her latest political grand project, where Emperor Haile Selassie gave her a state funeral. From a chucked stone in Bow to a grave in pride of place outside Addis Ababa's cathedral, Sylvia Pankhurst's life was anything but forgettable.
In 1913 the Suffragette movement spread across Britain, fighting tirelessly for "Votes For Women". The battle was particularly intense in the East End, where Sylvia Pankhurst had set up a campaign shop at 198 Bow Road. In Sylvia's own words, this is what happened here in Bow 100 years ago.
On February 14th 1913, a week after the shop was opened, we held a meeting in the Bromley Public Hall, Bow Road, and from it led a procession round the district. Some stones were solemnly thrown at the window of a bank. My stone missed, but someone else managed to send one through the glass. To make sure of imprisonment, I broke a window in the police station, and was convicted for this and the bank window. Daisy Lansbury was accused of catching a policeman by the belt, but the charge was dismissed. Zelie Emerson and I went to prison for six weeks on Friday, and began the hunger and thirst strike, but Mrs. Pankhurst had our fines paid anonymously, and we were released at noon on Saturday. We rushed back to the shop and found it crowded with members, scrubbing the tables and arranging to march to Holloway prison to cheer us next day.
On the following Monday, February 17th, we held a meeting at the Obelisk, a mean-looking monument in a dreary, almost unlighted open space near Bow Church.
Our platform, a high, uncovered cart, was pitched against the dark wall of a dismal council school in the teeth of a bitter wind. Already a little knot of people had gathered; women holding their dark garments closely about them, shivering and talking of the cold, four or five police constables and a couple of Inspectors. We climbed into the cart and watched the crowd growing, the men and women turning from the footpaths to join the mass. One of the Inspectors stretched up to ask me in a whisper whether I intended to form a procession. I answered "No." Zelie Emerson spoke first, witty and engaging. I sat beside her, half numbed by the cold, thinking of many things in a dull way, and wondering how the damp cold would affect my throat, which had been troubling me of late, and whether I should be able to make myself well heard when my turn came.
As she stopped I was suddenly all alert. My voice rang out loud and very clear. I felt the tense expectancy about me; the thrill of sympathy responding to my words. In concluding I said I knew it to be a hard thing for men and women to risk imprisonment in such a neighbourhood, where most of them were labouring under the steepest economic pressure, yet I pleaded for some of the women of Bow to join us in showing themselves prepared to make a sacrifice to secure enfranchisement. Then amid a stunned surprise that I had said no more, for the people expected a call to action, I got down from the cart, slow and stumbling, for my feet were stiff with cold.
Half the crowd was disappointed that nothing had come of the meeting; half was wondering if something would happen yet. The police too were waiting, and would have prevented what I intended had I spoken of it. I walked slowly away toward the Bow Road, the crowd irresolute, half turning to follow, half waiting to see if someone else would speak. A few of the women pressed round me. At the corner was a brightly-lit undertaker's shop with cheap, showy monuments in its window.
I took a heavy flint from my pocket and hurled it as hard as I could. It broke the glass with a loud report, passing through it as easily as though it had been butter, I thought, recalling my bad shot in St. Stephen's Hall. Three stones went flying from close beside me; they sounded like the firing of guns. I was seized by two policemen; three other women were seized. We were dragged, resisting, along the Bow Road, the crowd cheering and running with us. Suddenly a young man darted forward with a shout: "Votes for Women!" and flung a stone through a window in the Bromley Public Hall. The people applauded: "Bravo! Votes for Women!" The police leapt upon him, wrenching his arms, hauling him along by the collar, a short, thick-set figure, struggling and breathless. It was Willie, George Lansbury's eldest son, who had promised his wife to go to prison instead of her because she had tubercular tendencies and could not leave their little daughter only two years old.
The crowd, always growing in numbers, surging around and ahead of us, roaring its cheers and its epithets, massing around the doors of the big new police station. The police fought their way through and thrust us inside. The Inspector shouted: "File out, you men, and keep them back – and shut the doors!"
There were four others inside with me: Annie Lansbury and her brother Will, pale, delicate Mrs. Watkins, a widow struggling to maintain herself by sweated sewing-machine work, and young Mrs. Moore. A moment later little Zelie Emerson was bundled in, flushed and triumphant – she had broken the window of the Liberal Club.
I looked at the others who were new to this. They all seemed satisfied and glad. Mrs. Moore sat with her fair young face a little raised and lighted by an ecstatic smile.
Yesterday I discussed why the Bakerloo line hasn't been extended south through Southwark. Today I've been to visit the communities who've missed out.
Poor old Camberwell. No Bakerloo line station, no tube station, indeed no station at all. And this is no insignificant location. Camberwell's been an important settlement since the Domesday Book, later home to extensive Georgian estates, now packed with people. They get around courtesy of a better-than-usual bus service, whereas what they'd really like is a station. Annoyingly, they used to have one. Just to the west of the central crossroads is Camberwell Station Road which, as all the clues suggest, used to contain a station. The northern edge of the road runs along the main railway viaduct, whose arches are filled with businesses that do things under the bonnets of cars. One of these used to be the way into Camberwell station, opened on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1862. A most convenient way to travel to Blackfriars and Holborn, at least until wartime operations forced its closure in 1916. And since then there's been no way to catch a train from Camberwell, even though plenty of services speed through mockingly on the tracks above.
Could the station be reopened? Sure it could, if the will were there, and the money. The only real problem is that Loughborough Junction is less than a mile down the road, and that would probably have to close if Camberwell were reopened. There's no room to have two stations so close on this line, apparently, because the priority is not slowing down services to Sutton too much. Apologies to residents of SE5, but stopping to pick you up is on nobody's priority list. In the meantime Camberwell station remains somewhere to get your tyres changed and your panels beaten, and the road is king.
Had the Bakerloo ever come calling, the station would probably have been on Camberwell Green. That sounds like a terrible idea, concreting over a rare patch of grassland at the heart of the community. But Camberwell Green's no sylvan glade, more a cut-through with pigeons, and I dare say a corner could be lost without the world ending. Council cash means the image of this open space is improving, and there's now a Farmers Market to enjoy every Saturday. It's not a big Farmers Market, to be frank, but the fresh produce and bakery goods looked good to me and should draw out discerning consumers who like to shop local. Also present every Saturday are online community SE5 Forum, offering news and advice to take away, including a hard copy of this splendid 90-page guide to Camberwell's delights.
From here I walked north to Burgess Park - the other site hereabouts where a Bakerloo line station isn't going to be built. On my way up Camberwell Road I was stopped outside a parade of shops to be offered 'Enlightenment', in the form of a colour pamphlet promising salvation dispensed from the back of a supermarket trolley. The area is dominated by large housing blocks named after famous poets, as if somehow that might soften their visual impact. But there is one lovely Regency enclave at Addington Square, now surrounded on three sides by park. These are highlydesirableterraces, described by Pevsner as pleasantly irregular, gathered around a rectangular lawn already bursting with crocuses.
The Grand Surrey Canal once terminated at a wharf immediately to the north - another transport link the area has carelessly lost. The canal is now a footpath, and the surrounding land has become Burgess Park, the largest green lung round here. Unusually almost all of its 113 acres used to be housing, until this was wiped away post-war and made a recreation space for surrounding development. A limekiln, library and several former canal bridges survive, mixed in with far more modern services like a tennis club and American football pitches. It's not clear precisely where in the park a station might be located, but I'd guess somewhere near the boxing club and the butterfly mosaic, which is fairly central and already quite built up.
Immediately to the north is a dense residential zone, otherwise known as Walworth. To most Londoners Walworth doesn't exist because it doesn't have a station, although like Camberwell it once did, and the two closed on the same day. Previously when I've walked this way I've followed Thurlow Street, through the heart of the Aylesbury Estate, which is the epitome of 60s urban planning. Long residential blocks dominate the cityscape, laid out in parallel rows like a giant defensive structure. The poorest were moved in to give them a better life, but they just became poorer, perhaps because there wasn't a tube station at the bottom of the street. But on this visit I followed Portland Street, which started out just as bleak but then improved hugely.
The houses here are originals, highly characterful terraces of two or three storeys, some with variegated brick, others with Tudorbethan gables. No planner bulldozed these beauties, and they're now highly desirable in just the way that the Aylesbury's adjacent sky-boxes aren't. To add to the contrast, won't you look at Michael Faraday School? Outstanding both educationally and architecturally, its ribbed ring structure looks like an alien spacecraft has landed, in this case to bring hope. Head deeper into Walworth and you'll cross East Street Market, one of London's longest, and still thriving with bargain hunters. There's no brioche and croissants here, nor anything to cross the capital for, but many a blue plastic bag is carried home laden with fruit and veg or clothes and shoes.
As Elephant & Castle approaches the tone of the road changes until finally it ends at a locked gate beneath a concrete walkway. This is the edge of the Heygate Estate, almost as notorious as the Aylesbury, but considerably more dead. Southwark council have long had plans for regeneration, and a few years ago sold off the site to developers for what might have beentoo low a price. A thousand homes stand empty, their windows sealed with metal, a community dispersed. Until recently it was still possible to traipse the upper walkways and explore a maze of passages, but almost all of the stairways have now been closed off. Only ground level remains accessible, should you fancy a kickabout across an overgrown garden or a dystopian safari with your camera. Eventually something brighter will arise, but only 300 "affordable" rented homes are planned. Those relocated are unlikely to be able to return, with a more mixed crowd moving in as the Elephant heads upmarket. There's a tube station at the end of the road, you see, and that makes all the difference.
It's 100 years since an extension of the Bakerloo line south of Elephant & Castle was first proposed. So how come we still haven't got one? Is there a genuine reason, or is southeast London simply tube-jinxed.
Take a look a map of the northern half of Southwark, and there's a whopping railway-sized hole at its heart. Such gaps aren't unknown further out, but this is Zone 2 for heaven's sake, and no other part of inner London suffers this fate. The Northern line skirts down the western edge, although not especially close. Thameslink trains run two miles between Elephant & Castle and Loughborough Junction without stopping, which is heartless. And trains departing London Bridge run for three miles non-stop, apart from a branchline halt at South Bermondsey which merits a mere four trains an hour.
The least accessible spot in this transport desert is somewhere on the northern edge of Burgess Park, near that lake you can see on the map. From here it's more than 20 minutes walk to Kennington, more than 20 minutes walk to Denmark Hill and more than 20 minutes walk to South Bermondsey. Again, in the outer suburbs this might not sound too bad, but for a densely packed inner London suburb this is appalling connectivity, and TfL know it. They calculate public transport accessibility on a six point PTAL scale, with 1 being rubbish and 6 being ace. Here's a map ofPTAL contours, a little out of date, but you'll get the idea. Far flung Biggin Hill scores 1, while Trafalgar Square scores 6, even Bow where I live scores 6 too. But Burgess Park scores 2, maybe 1, depending on where precisely in the neighbourhood you are. You might fancy using TfL's Planning Information Database to calculate PTAL values in your neck of the woods.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the neighbourhoods in this transport black hole are among the poorest in London. The Aylesbury Estate, where Tony Blair launched his premiership, is closest to the epicentre, but no progress has been made here transport-wise in the last fifteen years. Plans were on the table for the Cross River Tram to run straight through the area on its way from Camden to Peckham, and that would have helped considerably, but Boris scrapped that for being too expensive. There had been musings that the Northern line could head this way from Kennington, but they've never been much more than a pipedream, and Boris extending the line to Battersea instead has killed that. So it's the Bakerloo or nothing. And alas, nothing looks most likely.
The Bakerloo line still has spare capacity, which is a rarity in rush hour London. To the south of Waterloo there's plenty of room northbound in the mornings and southbound in the evenings, and this could be put to much better use. Stand on the platforms at Elephant & Castle and the tunnels stretch off, brightly lit, in the direction where the extension ought to be. They're only a few hundred metres long, so an illusion, but it's easy to imagine trains rumbling onward to serve the Southwark hinterland.
A ridiculous number of Bakerloo line extensions have been proposed, without any of them actually coming to fruition... 1913: E&C → Camberwell Green → Dulwich → Sydenham Hill → Crystal Palace 1921: E&C → Camberwell Green → Dulwich → Sydenham Hill → Crystal Palace 1922: E&C → Loughborough Junction → Catford → Orpington 1928: E&C → Dulwich → Rushey Green 1931: E&C → Walworth → Camberwell 1947: E&C → Walworth → Camberwell
Those last two proposals were taken the most seriously of all. A third platform would have been added at Elephant & Castle, and the new route would have followed Walworth Road and Camberwell Road south. But no. A northern link from Baker Street to Finchley Road got the attention instead, then the war got in the way. Later it got so busy on the Watford and Stanmore branches that any southbound extension would have been impractical, and anyway cars were the future now so why bother. Later still the need for extra rolling stock bumped up the price too much, as did the cost of adding an extra subterranean platform. Always an excuse, never built.
It's only been in the last half a dozen or so years that a Bakerloo extension's again been taken slightly seriously again. In 2007 TfL's backroom team were asked to scope the possibilities, and came up with three possible options that might have proven workable.
a) E&C → Camberwell Green → Herne Hill → Tulse Hill → and all stations to Streatham Common and Beckenham Junction
That's a hurrah in Camberwell, where a Bakerloo link would be greeted as a revelation. But next stop Herne Hill isn't very adventurous - all this does is provide a second way to get from E&C to HH with very long gaps between the stations. Then we're onto existing National Rail lines, taking the indirect route round to Beckenham, including a last stretch doubling up with Tramlink. The Bakerloo would end up sharing tracks with other services at both its northern and southern ends, and journey times might get unreliable.
b) E&C → Burgess Park → Peckham Rye → Peckham Rye Common → Honor Oak Park → Catford Bridge → and all stations to Beckenham Junction and Hayes
No joy this time in Camberwell, but instead a direct hit on the transport black hole in Burgess Park. Just one station would be built in the big gap, however, before giving Peckham its first non-roundabout route to the West End. There'd follow another new station near the common, then an interchange with the Overground at Honor Oak Park. From Catford onwards the Bakerloo would emerge from underground and entirely take over the Hayes branch line - no sharing of tracks, an efficient solution.
c) E&C → Burgess Park → Old Kent Road → New Cross → Lewisham → and all stations to Beckenham Junction and Hayes
Another vote for Burgess Park, but then continuing east rather than south to bring a new station to the Old Kent Road. Rejoicing would ensue, and no mistake. Thence to New Cross, on the Cinderella branch of the Overground, and a non-stop link to Lewisham. All ten stations on the Hayes branch line would then be taken over, and the Bakerloo would become a proper cross-London line. [more, plus map, from London Reconnections]
The last of these three options got the closest to getting the nod, which alas wasn't very close at all. No proper plans have been made, and no funding is anywhere near being on the table. All three of these potential extensions are expensive combinations of tunnelling and repurposing, far beyond even the wildest dreams of Coalition austerity kickstart funding. It'd take Westfield opening a supermall in Walworth to see any action, because we don't fund rail for aspirational reasons any more, only hard economics. Sorry Southwark, your miserable connectivity looks set to endure for decades.
Starbucks latte*: £500 (one cup daily), £1000 (two cups) Costa espresso*: £350 (one cup daily), £700 (two cups) Tea: £100 (5 cups a day using teabags & kettle, plus milk) * working year = 45 weeks
Inspired by yesterday's post, I wondered how much buying a cup of coffee every day for a year cost. And then I wondered how much making your own tea for a year cost. And then I wondered how much buying lots of other things for a year cost. And then I put together the list above. It's probably wrong. It's definitely subjective. It's often approximate. Much of the evidence I've gathered from other pages on the web (click to view). If you have more convincing evidence, let me know. If I've missed out anything obvious, let me know. But if this doesn't perfectly match your lifestyle, sssh, that's not important.
Every morning, before catching my train, I stop at the kiosk outside the station to buy my newspaper. They sell mostly newspapers but also chewing gum, Red Bull, drinks, that sort of thing. But yesterday I had to queue behind a bloke trying to buy a cup of coffee. And I thought, why the hell is he buying a cup of coffee here? Why isn't he getting his cup of coffee somewhere else?
The kiosk outside the station doesn't do great coffee. I don't drink the stuff myself, but I can tell. When someone asks for a coffee the bloke behind the counter reaches across to this small machine in the corner and presses a button. It's not a fancy machine, nothing that might squirt out something allowing you to swirl a monogram in the froth. It seems to churn out something very ordinary and brown, taking about thirty seconds or so, which is then dispensed in a small cup with a plastic lid on top. It's nothing a discerning coffee drinker would queue for.
But they're queueing for it more and more. A couple of years ago I could wander up to the counter and pay for my paper generally unobstructed. Sometimes someone would be scrabbling to find the coins for their tabloid or trying to buy breakfast in a can, and I'd have to wait, but generally I could just hand over my money and go. And then the coffee machine arrived, and then people started to learn it was there, and suddenly I was waiting more often than not.
I understand that some people like coffee, that's fine. I understand that some people like paying for their coffee, that's fine too. But I don't get why people are paying for not very exciting coffee a few hundred yards from their front door. What's wrong with making their own coffee at home? Is instant coffee really so unacceptable these days?
When I was a child, making coffee for my Dad involved spooning granules into a mug and adding boiling water. He was easy to please, he didn't need a splash of milk, but even that wouldn't have been tough to deliver. I could serve up a perfectly acceptable dose of coffee to kickstart the day, compiled using nothing but a jar of Gold Blend and a kettle. Are today's caffeine addicts so dedicated that only bespoke-pumped artisan-crafted coffee will do? Or do they not have the means to boil water at home, or do they not have the time?
It is perfectly possible that the folk queueing in front of me are challenged for time. They may not have a spare minute to make coffee in their pressurised morning schedule, let alone the additional minutes need to drink it. It is perfectly possible that they don't have a kettle, that they've been kipping on someone's floor, that they're on shift work or whatever, and the kiosk outside the station is their only opportunity for a caffeine fix. But nobody's stopping here for quality reasons, that's for sure.
Coffee-dispensing opportunities are sorely restricted round my way. Starbucks have never made it to Bow, let alone Costa or Nero, nor any quirky independent coffee shop. There's a Mcdonalds drive-thru by the flyover, and a drinks contraption in the Co-op at the garage, but they're not serious options. We do have a flat white dispensary up the alleyway beside the art gallery, but they're not targeting for the takeaway market because they don't open til 10. First thing in the morning, I guess that squat machine in the corner of the newsagent's shed is the best option there is.
I'm only unsympathetic because I'm a tea drinker and I don't need a fix on the way into work. I'm perfectly capable of dunking a bag of leaves in boiling water at home in the morning, and I don't need someone else to do it for me. Indeed I've rarely seen the point of buying tea in public, unless it's a particularly nice teashop. There's some skill to making 'proper' coffee, whereas handing me a cup containing a slowly stewing teabag is never worth £2 of anybody's money.
If you want to spend hundreds of pounds a year on coffee, that's fine by me. If you can't get an hour into your morning without paying someone to dampen some beans, that's your prerogative. But if the prime focus of your morning commute is acquiring a stream of brown liquid in a plastic cup from a newsagent who's never had barista training in his life, I'd be obliged if you could step to one side while you're waiting and let me buy my newspaper unhindered.
A passer by writes...
Every morning, before catching my train, I stop at the kiosk outside the station to buy my coffee. They sell all sorts of drinks but also chewing gum, chocolate, magazines that sort of thing. But yesterday I had to queue behind a bloke trying to buy a newspaper. And I thought, why the hell is he buying a newspaper here? Why isn't he getting his news somewhere else for nothing?
I've already blogged about a lot of the places the Bakerloo runs through, not least back in 2006 when the line celebrated its centenary. So I thought I'd head further out to an area I don't know well, at what for many trains is the end of the line. To QueensPark, on the border between Westminster and Brent. Which turns out to be two very different places, according to whether you turn left or right outside the station.
Turn left:Queens Park
There is, of course, a park at Queens Park called Queens Park. What's peculiar is that it belongs to and is maintained by the City of London - their sole outpost in this part of town. What's also peculiar is that it owes its existence to the Royal Agricultural Show. This was held in Kilburn, of all places, in 1879, on a 100 acre site bounded by Chamberlayne Road, Salusbury Road and two railways north and south. It rained all week, so the site soon became an unattractive quagmire, but Queen Victoria's visit to see the animals and the latest farm machinery rallied the crowds somewhat. Afterwards there was much pressure to transform the showground into residential land, especially as Queens Park station had just opened that summer, but 30 acres were saved and repurposed as a public park under the direction of landscape gardener Alexander McKenzie. He created an ornate rectangular park with parterre gardens in each corner linked by figure-of-eight paths, plus plenty of space for lawn tennis and cricket. The park opened in 1887, Queen Victoria's Jubilee year, and that's how it got its name. Housing soon encroached on all sides, but they're very nice-looking houses which gives the entire perimeter a pleasant and refined-looking backdrop. Much of Alexander's grand planning lives on, including the octagonal bandstand, although his gymnasium has long been replaced by a children's playground. Only one of the original flowerbeds remains, this in the Quiet Garden (by the wooden Lych Gate that used to be the main entrance, but is now sealed off). At the heart of the park is the Park Cafe, whose notice board has small ads for "nanny share", and where the food isn't necessarily cheap. Elsewhere teenage lads in hoodies hang around the outdoor gym bars, and small children disappear into the petting zoo, and it isn't really the season for miniature golf. Locals who'd like to know more about Queens Park should check out this illustrated 71-page history which is detailed and excellent, which is what you get when the City of London runs your local recreation ground. And next time you see a Bakerloo line train bound for Queens Park, try to imagine this sylvan greenspace at the far end. [photo]
Turn left:Salusbury Road This is the main road through Queens Park, named after a Welsh friend of Henry VIII who owned property, and definitely on the nicer side of the tracks. Some very middle class shops line the middle of the street, including an artisan bakery and one of those food stores that sells the stuff the colour supplements put in their recipes. Starbucks and Costa have made it here, in advance of most other chainstores, with a small independent book shop sandwiched between. Look up outside for one of the strangest sights in Salusbury Road, the Queens Park Panda, a local landmark which appears to be a stuffed toy in a tree. Rest assured that the street's shopping selection's not entirely highbrow, and the fortress-like Kilburn Police station is a reminder that not all's sweetness and light in NW6. The local primary school opens its playground for a Farmers Market every Sunday, voted Farmers Market of the Year 2012 no less. But my favourite shop, if only for its name, is on College Parade at the top of the hill - a very ordinary toilet-rolls-and-beer corner shop called "Singhsbury's Superstore". For the win. [photo]
Turn left:Paddington Old Cemetery
It's not in Paddington, indeed it's nowhere near, but was opened by the Paddington Burial Board who needed a space out of town in 1855. These days it's a large expanse of green, ideal for dogwalking, as well as continuing to squeeze in bodies as a working cemetery. The 24 acres nudge right down into Queens Park, but have an entrance only on the far side near Kilburn, being otherwise surrounded by a brick wall and a flank of housing. At the centre of the cemetery are two small chapels with porte-cochère and central belfry, and somewhere round the edge is a row of beehives producing Tombstone Honey. If you ever saw the Sylvester McCoy Dr Who story Remembrance of the Daleks, a lot of thatwas filmed here, including the burial of the Hand of Omega and the final coffin-bearing scene. It must be the weather but it's particularly squishy underfoot around the cemetery at the moment, especially down at the far end where my great-grandfather is buried. We've never found his grave, it doesn't appear to be marked, but it makes sense that he's buried at the Queens Park end, because that's where he used to live. [photo]
Turn right:Kilburn Lane Until the 19th century wiggling Kilburn Lane was the only road of any status round here, but it's now anything but rural. The land on this side of the railway was developed years before any of the fields to the north were touched, so it's not quite so uniformly attractive over here. Here are the Chicken Cottages, the Lebanese cafes and the launderettes, although also a Bang & Olufsen shop and a Spy Store so it's not all bog-standard. At the eastern end, where the number 36 bus terminates, is a less than exciting gyratory with the entirely inappropriate name of Premier Corner. Further west the lane is lined by small terraced cottages, as befits houses built before anyone realised this was going to be sprawling suburbia. They're rather cosy-looking, especially those along the last dogleg crescent. This is part of the Queens Park Estate, built in the 1870s by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company. I've blogged about them before, and their acreage in Noel Park and Battersea, and this estate is no less splendid. It's housing for the working classes, but in Gothic revival style and with something unusual at the time - gardens. Here William Austin built a grid of yellow brick, two storey cottages but with absolutely no pubs, he believed firmly in temperance. All the houses have embellished porches, and some on the street corners have sharp-pointed turrets. You'd live here (unless you already live somewhere better). The six main streets were numbered one to six, and the others lettered A to P, but the latter have since been given proper names from Alperton to Peach. It was on this estate that QPR's first players used to live... because yes, obviously, Queens Park Rangers originally hail from round here. [photo]
Turn back:Queens Park station
If you arranged London's 270 underground stations into aesthetic order, Queens Park would be in the 200s. It has a particularly tedious frontage, thanks to utilitarian British Rail architecture, and even the roof canopy above the platforms is nothing memorable. But the station does have its problems, and rather more of late, as the main northern terminus for Bakerloo line trains. These roll out of the tunnel into platform 3, where all the passengers aboard have to be turfed out before the train can enter the shed ahead. A dispute is afoot between drivers and management regarding how those passengers should be detrained. TfL want drivers to make announcements, flash the lights a bit and then drive on, whereas drivers aren't happy with this in case some nutcase stays on the train into the sidings. They've taken to working to rule, walking back down the train and checking each carriage, whereas the timetable doesn't allow for that. This protracted turnaround is slowing the service down, which often results in northbound trains queueing to exit the tunnel, and stacked up behind that too. The dispute could be ended by placing additional support staff on the platform, but that would cost, or by the drivers taking a risk when isolating themselves, which they're not willing to do. If you see minor delays on the Bakerloo line caused by "operational issues" - and it's happening more and more recently - the Queens Park shuffle is probably to blame. [photo]
I don't know what you did for National Libraries Day yesterday, but I went to two very different London libraries...
Horniman Library The Horniman, in Forest Hill, is probably South London's finest museum. Born out of the collections of Victorian philanthropist Frederick John Horniman, it boasts an eclectic collection of anthropological artefacts. The place is packed out on Saturdays, mostly by families with small children, exploring the galleries, the hands-on activities and the cafe. "Look Noah, see the walrus." "That's a funny clarinet, isn't it Esme?" "Ooh, scary masks." But there's one part of the building visitors don't normally gain entrance to. That's the futuristicbuilding to the right of the main entrance, the one with the sloping grass roof and six strange chimneys. That's the library, that is. Normally it opens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment only, but for National Libraries Day it flung its doors wide for a few hours. It's not a big library, or at least the public facing section isn't. A few blocks of shelves and a reading desk, that's all, and a selection of relatively modern arty travelly books. The main body of the collection lies beyond a glass partition, accessible only to staff, because this is a research library. If you fancy finding out about African puppetry or making notes on Icelandic art, this is the place.
Mr Horniman was an avid collector of books, so the collection contains a larger number of older volumes than you might expect. Helen the librarian placed four of these on display yesterday, as a taster of what the archive might contain. One of these was Flora Londinensis, an 18th century partwork published over several years depicting all the wild flowers to be found within a ten-mile radius of London. Foxgloves, scarlet pimpernels, that sort of thing. Each plant was drawn approximately lifesize, where appropriate, and hand-coloured if you paid extra. A lovely book, as was the equally ancient tome of illustrated caterpillars laid out alongside. They've survived well, these two, although most newer (Victorian) books suffer from chemically active binding and require more urgent conservation. That'd be why we weren't allowed to turn the pages of "Travels in Africa", a book which inspired Frederick to tour the continent but whose contents turned out to be fictional. But we could get our hands on a delightful book of Japanese fairy tales, with stories about badgers and hares and berries, whose pages were made from cloth and hence much lighter than a modern paperback. A very friendly little library, should you ever have cause to visit.
Libraries in Lewisham: Two years ago Lewisham funded 12 libraries, but funding cuts have reduced that number to seven. The unlucky five libraries were transferred out of council management in May 2011 and are are now run by community groups. Grove Park, Sydenham and Crofton Park are being run by a computer recycling firm, Blackheath Village library has transferred to nearby charity Age Exchange, and New Cross is being wholly run by volunteers as New Cross People's Library.
Kensal Rise Library This is a sorry story. Kensal Rise Library was opened by Mark Twain in 1900, and is a fine looking redbrick building on a corner plot. The interior was restored in a Neo-Edwardian style in 1994, and the place was well used when I visited a couple of years ago. But council cuts put the library on Brent's closure list, which even a lengthy court case couldn't stop. The battle was lost when council workers sneaked inside in the early hours, emptied the shelves and removed Twain's commemorative plaque. When Brent pulled out the lease reverted to All Souls College Oxford, who'd gifted the reading room in the first place, and a protracted battle between council, users and the landowner ensued. All Souls offered to lease some of the space within for a smaller library, but local residents said it wasn't enough. Brent council then placed the library on its list of community assets, only for the college to claim they'd already sold it on to a developer. They're called Platinum Revolver, and they have their eye on transforming the building into six flats. Contracts were exchanged only last week, apparently, so don't expect this sorry saga to be over just yet.
And yet the library is still, sort of, open. Local campaigners aren't the sort to give up easily, not in the face of offensive officialdom, so they've set up a pop-up library on the pavement outside. It's more a shed really, draped in plastic in case it rains, which yesterday it definitely was. A series of book crates have been turned on their side to create makeshift shelves, five high, with a few extra novels crammed on top of the lowest layer for good measure. Each box is labelled by first letter of author's surname, with A-L at the front and M-Z round the back. If it's non fiction or children's books you want, try the lean-to round the corner in College Road. A volunteer will be able to show you around and check out your borrowings, according to the wipe-clean rota pinned up on the exterior. It's all very homely, there are even pot plants, and a chair for the volunteer to sit on and read if nobody turns up. Nobody turned up while I was there, but like I said it was raining, and this isn't the sort of library you visit for lengthy literary activities any more. [close-up photo]
The people of Kensal Rise are angry about this, as reflected by the number of "Let us run our libraries"posters pinned up in local house and shop windows. It is a hugely impressive commitment to take on a public service like this in the face of council indifference. You could see it as a striking vindication of David Cameron's Big Society philosophy, as citizens step in to provide services in an age of austerity. Or you could see it as the inevitable outcome of top-down enforced budget cuts, decimating cultural necessities and demeaning society. Whatever, we now live in a London where residents loan books from a shack on the pavement because nobody'll let them inside the library building behind. Raise a cheer, and weep.
Libraries in Brent: Two years ago Brent funded 12 libraries, but funding cuts have reduced that number to six. Neasden has closed without trace. Tokyngton's building is due to be sold off shortly. Barham, Preston, Cricklewood and Kensal Rise have all closed, but now have small community pop-up libraries. Barham Library may become a Free School. Meanwhile Willesden Green Library Centre, Brent's largest library, is due to be knocked down later this year and replaced by a smaller library, plus flats.
These are fun. Appearing soon at a tube station near you.
That's not a maze, it's a labyrinth. The distinction is important, because mazes have a choice of route on the way to the centre whereas a labyrinth has only one. Start at the beginning, follow with your finger and you have to reach the middle if you stay on long enough. It's an allegory for a tube journey, that. Which is rather clever.
Labyrinth is part of the latest artwork on the London Underground, being installed across the network to celebrate its 150th anniversary. The plan is to stick a labyrinth on the wall at every one of London's 270 tube stations, and the first batch are already in place. All 270 designs will be different, but you'll always start at the red cross, and you're always trying to get to the middle. Something to do while you're waiting for your train, perhaps.
Each labyrinth will be numbered in the bottom right hand corner, in the same order as the station was visited during a world-record breaking Tube Challenge in 2009. Chesham's labyrinth will be number 1, Heathrow Terminal 5 will have number 270, and number 102 above is St James's Park, nearly halfway through.
The project was commissioned by Art on the Underground, but it's artist Mark Wallinger's idea. Mark grew up with the Central line at the bottom of his garden, out in Chigwell, so has always had an affinity with the tube. I know this because I've watched the five minute video on the Art on the Underground website, which you ought to do too if you want to understand the project a little better. You'll see how the enamel plates are made, by hand, and where they stick the masking tape so the red paint goes on properly. But you won't get the true experience of finding one in a station from a video, press release or deskbound blog.
I went out in search of a labyrinth yesterday, only to discover that they're very hard to find. Only ten plaques have been installed so far, with the remainder due to go up over the next few months. All the lucky stations are in central London, places like Baker Street, Green Park and Bank. These stations are very busy, but more importantly they're very big. No clues are being given as to precisely where inside each station the labyrinth has been hung, so it takes effort, persistence and luck to find out where they are.
I tried Tottenham Court Road, but only in passing, and spotted nothing. I think that means I can say it's not in the entrance hall, nor on the escalators, nor on the southbound Northern platform, but even then I might have missed it. I didn't spot anything at Embankment either, but that may be because the place is a warren of platforms and connecting subways so there are far too many places to look. I only popped out quickly at Victoria in case the panel was on the adjacent platform, but seemingly not, so no luck there either. Thankfully I knew I could hit the jackpot at the station next door.
St James's Park is the station beneath TfL HQ, so it's not surprising that one of the first ten plaques has been installed there. And this one's easy to find because there are only two platforms and they're facing each other. I got lucky and stepped off at precisely the right spot, that's on the westbound District line platform near the Broadway exit. There it was on the wall, surrounded by a simple black frame, ready to be traced. I decided against that because it was rush hour and I would have been stared at, but once one's installed at Chigwell you can play with it to your heart's content.
There is going to be a group of people who make it their business to go around hunting some or all of these 270 labyrinths. And my experience suggests that this is going to be quite tricky. While wandering around Embankment looking for the labyrinth I often found myself wandering against the flow, because I was playing hide and seek with a 60cm square plaque rather than deliberately heading somewhere. Not here... check that tunnel... not there..., cross to that platform... nothing... how about back up these steps? This is loitering with intent, which is not something TfL normally likes you to do. How long before some art-inspired explorer gets stopped by a suspicious member of staff and gives the response "but I was only looking for the labyrinth"?
So let's assist your exploration with a list of the ten labyrinths already installed. I know where one of them is, and where three of them aren't, but maybe you can help me fill in the gaps. Just these first ten, though, the remainder you can track down by yourself.
If the Bakerloo line was a game of Monopoly, the stations inbetween Paddington and Queens Park would form a set of three. Each designed by architect Stanley Heaps. Each created in the style of his predecessor Leslie Green. Each very similar, within certain constrained parameters. And each in their own way rather lovely.
There's not much to see of Warwick Avenue (the station) above ground, although Warwick Avenue (the avenue) is massive. All that pokes above the surface is a tall utilitarian ventilation shaft, of the sort you might expect to see at a prisoner of war camp. The spire of St Saviour's Church dominates the scene, with a green cabmen's shelter and some Cycle Hire bikes thrown into the mix for good measure [photo]. Entrance is down some covered steps surrounded by green railings, because green is the highlight colour hereabouts. The columns and doors in the ticket hall are topped with a green and cream chequerboard pattern, though below a suspended ceiling that adds nothing to the atmosphere. The escalators were cutting edge when they were introduced 100 years ago, with this stretch of the Bakerloo line the first to be designed with escalators instead of lifts. Glide down to reach a central arched circulation space, again edged in green, at the end of which sits a veneered timber observation kiosk [photo]. It's topped by a period clock, and would have been the ideal spot for a member of station staff to sit and observe if only there wasn't a CCTV camera mounted to the wall behind doing the job for nothing. And the platforms, they're pleasant and bright, enlivened by stripes of jade green tiles. Nothing too outstanding, but it's hard to find much wrong at Warwick Avenue.
Maida Vale is essentially the same station as Warwick Avenue but with a much nicer entrance [photo]. This time there is a surface building, just one storey, because only stations with lift mechanisms need two storeys. It sits on a street corner behind a mini-roundabout, seamlessly integrated into the parade of shops alongside [photo]. The exterior is clad with deep red tiles, as were so many Leslie Green stations at the start of the 20th century. Each bay has a segmental arched 3-part window, mullioned and transomed, separated by pilaster strips with inset semi-circular pediments at arch level, and yes I am copying this. The original intention was for a grand main entrance, labelled Entrance, and a smaller side exit, labelled Exit. Both are still there but the latter is sealed off, so the segregated staircase beyond is no longer required [photo]. The entrance hall is narrow but deep, with two gorgeous mosaicUndergrounDroundels embedded high in the wall. All the roundels on the network used to look like that, filled in red, and these are some of the very few never to have been updated. Descend past more chequer tiling, down and back and round, to step onto another of those pioneering escalators. The lower hall is very similar to that at Warwick Avenue except there's no kiosk. A modern white Help Point has taken its place, but at least someone's mounted the clock on the rear wall above. Throw in some more cream and green tiled platforms, and this is a little jewel of a station, mostly unspoilt. [Listing details]
To complete the triumvirate, we cross from Westminster into Brent. Kilburn Parkstation's down a sidestreet from the High Road, in a commanding position on the corner with Alpha Place. Here there was room to build, rather than squish, so the station has a commanding six-bay frontage again in deep evocative red [photo]. A shame about the bright blue chemists now occupying the shop unit by the entrance, but presumably colour-matching isn't in the terms of their lease. I love the tiled frieze lettering that reads Kilburn Park along two sides of the building, plus another indication of separate Entrance and Exit. Again this exit's now closed, although I did spot a member of staff kindly pulling back the metal shutters to allow an elderly man to escape without having to walk all the way up through the ticket barriers and back. The ticket hall has more tiled chequerboarding, while the ticket windows boast "pedimented aediculed timber surrounds", whatever they are. Above the escalator is an oval light well, adding a bit of class to an otherwise dull white curved roof [photo]. And you arrive into a central hallway extremely similar to that at the previous two stations, providing a fine touch of architectural cohesiveness. Yes, there is a kiosk, and yes there is a clock on top, but here the interior's been entirely taken over by a screen transmitting CCTV pictures. Once space for a human, now an electronic sentinel. Step onto the platforms and you're at the very last nice bit of the Bakerloo line heading north [photo]. So best head back south, from one Grade II listed station to the next. And all thanks to Stanley Heaps, thanks Stan. [Listing details]
If something's going to drag you to the seaside in February, that something might be art. That and a £10 return rail ticket, courtesy of Mary Portas (available weekends only until the end of the month). It certainly won't be the weather. Margate on Sunday was the very definition of bracing, the sandy beach empty apart from a few stalwart families and dogwalkers [photo]. In not many amusement arcades on the seafront, not many teens were amused [photo]. A few shoppers hung around doorways in the High Street, where nobody yet seems sure what to do with the old Woolworths [photo]. In the Old Town a handful of visitors frequented the handful of boutiques and cafes that had bothered to open up for trading. But on the foreshore by the Harbour Arm, providing respite from the elements, the galleries at the Turner Contemporary were really rather busy.
Carl Andre: Mass & Matter Turner Contemporary, Margate
(1 February - 6 May 2013)
You may not know his name, but you'll know one of his works. That pile of bricks the Tate exhibited in the 70s, that was one of Andre's. Its official name was Equivalent VIII, Carl's eighth attempt at showing how 120 firebricks could be arranged as a cuboid. This controversial piece isn't here in Margate, more's the pity, but a small selection of his other work fills an upper gallery. Don't expect curves, Carl prefers straight lines, repetition and flatness. One of his tiled metal pavements (with the alluring title 4×25 Altstadt Rectangle) can be walked across, but the other two are stashed in the corner and watched over by beady staff. A few artworks break out from the horizontal, for example a pile of large cedar blocks stacked carefully like the start of a game of Jenga. The closest approximation to "those bricks" is a set of triangular tiles laid out to form a prism, sharp point upwards, named 60 x 1 Range Work. You could knock this together yourself in your garage after a quick trip to Wickes, if the fancy took you, the difference being that Andre got there first and called it art. Meanwhile around the walls are several examples of Carl's poetry, if you can call words typed in patterns on typewriters poetry. These were produced in the late 1960s, when manual keybashing was the extent of home-based word-processing, so some of the rows and columns contain mistypes and overtypes it was impossible to delete. Clever, in places, but elsewhere little more than I might have created myself as a child. If you think you might walk out mumbling "well that wasn't proper, was it?", perhaps best not come specially.
On the seafront, between the Jubilee Clock and the station, once stood the entrance to Dreamland [photo]. When this was Margate's entertainment hub, these coastal acres were packed with rides including the Water Chute, the Cableway, the Haunted Swing and the Meteorite. At its heart was the Scenic Railway, a glorious wooden rollercoaster built in 1920, and until five years ago the oldest surviving working coaster in Britain. Alas a suspicious fire damaged it severely, and what remains now stands alone in the centre of nothing much [photo]. For those of us who remember the glory days and rode the undulating beast, it's a very sorry sight. Thankfully, even surprisingly, there are grand plans to bring Dreamland back. The project's being backed by local cash, national funding and lottery money, and there are hopes that Stage 1 will reopen as early as next year [photo]. That means the refurbishment of the park entrance via the Dreamland Cinema building, the restoration of the Scenic Railway (hurrah) and the installation of a number of other rides, as well as a touch of landscaping to brighten the whole place up. 2014 seems an impossible deadline while peering across a temporary car park at an expanse of featureless tarmac, but what a gamechanger for the local tourist economy if everything takes off. As the rise of the Turner Contemporary shows, dreams can come true.
Subject to Constant Change Turner Contemporary, Margate
(1 February - 6 May 2013)
You're probably not familiar with this Italian-German visual artist either. Rosa likes to toy with the nature of cinema, more particularly "the physical characteristics of film and the structure of cinematic narrative." She's refitted a series of film projectors to spool celluloid in twisting shapes, perhaps nudging large ball bearings on a can, perhaps projecting individually typed letters onto a glass screen. Entire paragraphs of text have been punched out of long strips of felt, projecting their meaning in light on the wall beyond. Two dozen horizontal strips of handwritten celluloid rotate slowly in the gallery nextdoor, although once I'd spotted the misspelling of "dissappear" halfway down I couldn't concentrate on much else. The centrepiece of Rosa's display is a ten minute film of coastal and industrial decay, entitled Subconscious Society. This features aerial shots of snaking saltmarsh and footage shot in and around the Maunsell Forts off the North Kent coast, so I was transfixed. Only afterwards however, when I read the exhibition blurb, did I realise I'd actually been watching "the end of the industrial age in favour of an age of technology". Meanwhile, along the upper corridor, Rosa has curated an entirely different exhibition comprising several of JMW Turner's perspective drawings. These were used as part of a series of lectures at the Royal Academy in the 1830s where Turner was a Professor of Perspective - a job to treasure. Joseph's painted spheres and coloured triangles were only visual aids, but could easily be modern art, and make a surprisingly cohesive presentation.
That baker's shop is long gone, as are all the shops along Bow Road along the southern side of St Mary's Church. The London County Council demolished the lot in 1933, removing what had been the heart of the medieval village, replacing slums and alleyways with the brick apartment blocks of the Bow Bridge Estate. These have survived, but Sylvia wouldn't be pleased to hear that the tenants remain amongst the poorest in London, the very people she came to save. To find the site of 198 Bow Road walk to the tip of the churchyard, closest to the flyover, and turn to face Canterbury House. The shop would have been where the railings make way for a soundproofing wall - the latter covered with greenery and used to screen a communal garden from the roar of traffic. Nobody's ever thought to commemorate the site, even though there's a thick brick post on which a plaque could easily be erected. I've passed the site hundreds of times, but I still can't picture Sylvia's shop nor the bustling parade it sat in, so comprehensively has the former heart of Bow been erased.
The world changed in 1914, and the national Suffragette movement quickly evolved into a patriotic organisation supporting the troops. Sylvia was having none of it, continuing to fight against poverty and towards universal suffrage. Her organisation edged more towards communism, straining relations with her mother, who disowned her entirely when she gave birth but refused to marry the child's father. Sylvia moved with her non-husband from Bow to Woodford, where she lived for the rest of his life. They lived first at Vine Cottage, which Sylvia renamed Red Cottage, in Woodford Wells opposite the Horse and Well pub. In 1935, deeply concerned by the legalisation of aerial warfare, she commissioned a stone carving of a bomb which she erected on a concrete plinth in her front garden and unveiled with some ceremony. Red Cottage was demolished in 1939 but this peculiar monument lives on, semi-hidden at the back of a muddy verge overshadowed by chestnut trees.
On the following Monday, February 17th, we held a meeting at the Obelisk, a mean-looking monument in a dreary, almost unlighted open space near Bow Church.
Half the crowd was disappointed that nothing had come of the meeting; half was wondering if something would happen yet. The police too were waiting, and would have prevented what I intended had I spoken of it. I walked slowly away toward the Bow Road, the crowd irresolute, half turning to follow, half waiting to see if someone else would speak. A few of the women pressed round me. At the corner was a brightly-lit undertaker's shop with cheap, showy monuments in its window.
Poor old Camberwell. No Bakerloo line station, no tube station, indeed no station at all. And this is no insignificant location. Camberwell's been an important settlement since the Domesday Book, later home to extensive Georgian estates, now packed with people. They get around courtesy of a better-than-usual bus service, whereas what they'd really like is a station. Annoyingly, they used to have one. Just to the west of the central crossroads is Camberwell Station Road which, as all the clues suggest, used to contain a station. The northern edge of the road runs along the main railway viaduct, whose arches are filled with businesses that do things under the bonnets of cars. One of these used to be the way into Camberwell station, opened on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1862. A most convenient way to travel to Blackfriars and Holborn, at least until wartime operations forced its closure in 1916. And since then there's been no way to catch a train from Camberwell, even though plenty of services speed through mockingly on the tracks above.
Had the Bakerloo ever come calling, the station would probably have been on Camberwell Green. That sounds like a terrible idea, concreting over a rare patch of grassland at the heart of the community. But Camberwell Green's no sylvan glade, more a cut-through with pigeons, and I dare say a corner could be lost without the world ending. Council cash means the image of this open space is improving, and there's now a Farmers Market to enjoy every Saturday. It's not a big Farmers Market, to be frank, but the fresh produce and bakery goods looked good to me and should draw out discerning consumers who like to shop local. Also present every Saturday are online community SE5 Forum, offering news and advice to take away, including a hard copy of this splendid 90-page guide to Camberwell's delights.
The Grand Surrey Canal once terminated at a wharf immediately to the north - another transport link the area has carelessly lost. The canal is now a footpath, and the surrounding land has become Burgess Park, the largest green lung round here. Unusually almost all of its 113 acres used to be housing, until this was wiped away post-war and made a recreation space for surrounding development. A limekiln, library and several former canal bridges survive, mixed in with far more modern services like a tennis club and American football pitches. It's not clear precisely where in the park a station might be located, but I'd guess somewhere near the boxing club and the butterfly mosaic, which is fairly central and already quite built up.
The houses here are originals, highly characterful terraces of two or three storeys, some with variegated brick, others with Tudorbethan gables. No planner bulldozed these beauties, and they're now highly desirable in just the way that the Aylesbury's adjacent sky-boxes aren't. To add to the contrast, won't you look at Michael Faraday School? Outstanding both educationally and architecturally, its ribbed ring structure looks like an alien spacecraft has landed, in this case to bring hope. Head deeper into Walworth and you'll cross East Street Market, one of London's longest, and still thriving with bargain hunters. There's no brioche and croissants here, nor anything to cross the capital for, but many a blue plastic bag is carried home laden with fruit and veg or clothes and shoes.
Take a look a map of the northern half of Southwark, and there's a whopping railway-sized hole at its heart. Such gaps aren't unknown further out, but this is Zone 2 for heaven's sake, and no other part of inner London suffers this fate. The Northern line skirts down the western edge, although not especially close. Thameslink trains run two miles between Elephant & Castle and Loughborough Junction without stopping, which is heartless. And trains departing London Bridge run for three miles non-stop, apart from a branchline halt at South Bermondsey which merits a mere four trains an hour.
The Bakerloo line still has spare capacity, which is a rarity in rush hour London. To the south of Waterloo there's plenty of room northbound in the mornings and southbound in the evenings, and this could be put to much better use. Stand on the platforms at Elephant & Castle and the tunnels stretch off, brightly lit, in the direction where the extension ought to be. They're only a few hundred metres long, so an illusion, but it's easy to imagine trains rumbling onward to serve the Southwark hinterland.
Turn left: Queens Park
This is the main road through Queens Park, named after a Welsh friend of Henry VIII who owned property, and definitely on the nicer side of the tracks. Some very middle class shops line the middle of the street, including an artisan bakery and one of those food stores that sells the stuff the colour supplements put in their recipes. Starbucks and Costa have made it here, in advance of most other chainstores, with a small independent book shop sandwiched between. Look up outside for one of the strangest sights in Salusbury Road, the Queens Park Panda, a local landmark which appears to be a stuffed toy in a tree. Rest assured that the street's shopping selection's not entirely highbrow, and the fortress-like Kilburn Police station is a reminder that not all's sweetness and light in NW6. The local primary school opens its playground for a Farmers Market every Sunday, voted Farmers Market of the Year 2012 no less. But my favourite shop, if only for its name, is on College Parade at the top of the hill - a very ordinary toilet-rolls-and-beer corner shop called "Singhsbury's Superstore". For the win. [photo]
Turn left: Paddington Old Cemetery
Until the 19th century wiggling Kilburn Lane was the only road of any status round here, but it's now anything but rural. The land on this side of the railway was developed years before any of the fields to the north were touched, so it's not quite so uniformly attractive over here. Here are the Chicken Cottages, the Lebanese cafes and the launderettes, although also a Bang & Olufsen shop and a Spy Store so it's not all bog-standard. At the eastern end, where the number 36 bus terminates, is a less than exciting gyratory with the entirely inappropriate name of Premier Corner. Further west the lane is lined by small terraced cottages, as befits houses built before anyone realised this was going to be sprawling suburbia. They're rather cosy-looking, especially those along the last dogleg crescent. This is part of the Queens Park Estate, built in the 1870s by the Artizans, Labourers & General Dwellings Company. I've blogged about them before, and their acreage in Noel Park and Battersea, and this estate is no less splendid. It's housing for the working classes, but in Gothic revival style and with something unusual at the time - gardens. Here William Austin built a grid of yellow brick, two storey cottages but with absolutely no pubs, he believed firmly in temperance. All the houses have embellished porches, and some on the street corners have sharp-pointed turrets. You'd live here (unless you already live somewhere better). The six main streets were numbered one to six, and the others lettered A to P, but the latter have since been given proper names from Alperton to Peach. It was on this estate that QPR's first players used to live... because yes, obviously, Queens Park Rangers originally hail from round here. [photo]
Turn back: Queens Park station
The Horniman, in Forest Hill, is probably South London's finest museum. Born out of the collections of Victorian philanthropist Frederick John Horniman, it boasts an eclectic collection of anthropological artefacts. The place is packed out on Saturdays, mostly by families with small children, exploring the galleries, the hands-on activities and the cafe. "Look Noah, see the walrus." "That's a funny clarinet, isn't it Esme?" "Ooh, scary masks." But there's one part of the building visitors don't normally gain entrance to. That's the futuristic building to the right of the main entrance, the one with the sloping grass roof and six strange chimneys. That's the library, that is. Normally it opens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays by appointment only, but for National Libraries Day it flung its doors wide for a few hours. It's not a big library, or at least the public facing section isn't. A few blocks of shelves and a reading desk, that's all, and a selection of relatively modern arty travelly books. The main body of the collection lies beyond a glass partition, accessible only to staff, because this is a research library. If you fancy finding out about African puppetry or making notes on Icelandic art, this is the place.
This is a sorry story. Kensal Rise Library was opened by Mark Twain in 1900, and is a fine looking redbrick building on a corner plot. The interior was restored in a Neo-Edwardian style in 1994, and the place was well used when I visited a couple of years ago. But council cuts put the library on Brent's closure list, which even a lengthy court case couldn't stop. The battle was lost when council workers sneaked inside in the early hours, emptied the shelves and removed Twain's commemorative plaque. When Brent pulled out the lease reverted to All Souls College Oxford, who'd gifted the reading room in the first place, and a protracted battle between council, users and the landowner ensued. All Souls offered to lease some of the space within for a smaller library, but local residents said it wasn't enough. Brent council then placed the library on its list of community assets, only for the college to claim they'd already sold it on to a developer. They're called Platinum Revolver, and they have their eye on transforming the building into six flats. Contracts were exchanged only last week, apparently, so don't expect this sorry saga to be over just yet.
St James's Park is the station beneath TfL HQ, so it's not surprising that one of the first ten plaques has been installed there. And this one's easy to find because there are only two platforms and they're facing each other. I got lucky and stepped off at precisely the right spot, that's on the westbound District line platform near the Broadway exit. There it was on the wall, surrounded by a simple black frame, ready to be traced. I decided against that because it was rush hour and I would have been stared at, but once one's installed at Chigwell you can play with it to your heart's content.
If something's going to drag you to the seaside in February, that something might be art. That and a £10 return rail ticket, courtesy of Mary Portas (available weekends only until the end of the month). It certainly won't be the weather. Margate on Sunday was the very definition of bracing, the sandy beach empty apart from a few stalwart families and dogwalkers [photo]. In not many amusement arcades on the seafront, not many teens were amused [photo]. A few shoppers hung around doorways in the High Street, where nobody yet seems sure what to do with the old Woolworths [photo]. In the Old Town a handful of visitors frequented the handful of boutiques and cafes that had bothered to open up for trading. But on the foreshore by the Harbour Arm, providing respite from the elements, the galleries at the Turner Contemporary were really rather busy.
On the seafront, between the Jubilee Clock and the station, once stood the entrance to Dreamland [photo]. When this was Margate's entertainment hub, these coastal acres were packed with rides including the Water Chute, the Cableway, the Haunted Swing and the Meteorite. At its heart was the Scenic Railway, a glorious wooden rollercoaster built in 1920, and until five years ago the oldest surviving working coaster in Britain. Alas a suspicious fire damaged it severely, and what remains now stands alone in the centre of nothing much [photo]. For those of us who remember the glory days and rode the undulating beast, it's a very sorry sight. Thankfully, even surprisingly, there are grand plans to bring Dreamland back. The project's being backed by local cash, national funding and lottery money, and there are hopes that Stage 1 will reopen as early as next year [photo]. That means the refurbishment of the park entrance via the Dreamland Cinema building, the restoration of the Scenic Railway (hurrah) and the installation of a number of other rides, as well as a touch of landscaping to brighten the whole place up. 2014 seems an impossible deadline while peering across a temporary car park at an expanse of featureless tarmac, but what a gamechanger for the local tourist economy if everything takes off. As the rise of the Turner Contemporary shows, dreams can come true.
