Day out:Manchester England's second city, in stature if not in population, rose to international prominence in the 19th century on the back of the Industrial Revolution. Textile manufacturing brought it riches, until the rest of the world learned to spin cotton cheaper, and the city has since reinvented itself as a hub of innovation and culture. Its centre is very Victorian, but simultaneously very modern, with shiny modern flats shooting up everywhere above a dark brick skyline. And there's tons to see and do, as I tried to discover when I spent ten hours in the city (and the city nextdoor) at the weekend. Here are ten places I managed to fit in, every single one of them with free admission, because Manchester's damned excellent like that.
» Visit Manchester
Piccadilly Gardens
Built on the site of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and just up the road from Manchester Piccadilly station, this is the largest greenspace in the centre of town. It's a fraction bleak, with a slightly featureless lawn and a couple of old monuments thrown in, but some fenced-offregeneration is going on, with the fountain switched off and alongside what looks like a giant crazy golf hole being added with metallic swirl and droplet-splattered hump. A thin silver building divides off the main piazza from Manchester's main road transport hub, where dozens of buses congregate and yellow trams glide in from Didsbury, Eccles and Bury. The tourist information centre in the corner was a disappointment, I've rarely seen one so lightly stocked, but the ladies on duty were charming.
Arndale Centre
It might not be why you'd visit, but most people come to central Manchester to shop. The Arndale Centre is enormous, having taken advantage of the aftermath of the IRA bomb in 1996 to regenerate and renew itself. The biggest bomb to be detonated in Great Britain since World War II was stashed in the back of a van on Corporation Street, killing nobody due to a timely evacuation, but causing massive damage. A postbox close to the epicentre survived and has been reinstated, complete with commemorative plaque, below a replacement bridge (in twisty glass) linking Marks & Spencer to the Centre opposite. Although the surrounding precincts are almost entirely modern, a couple of surprisingly old buildings lurk in Shambles Square, lifted wholesale from their original position 300m to south. One is the half-timbered Old Wellington, the city centre's only surviving Tudor building, while nextdoor is Sinclair's Oyster Bar, an 18th century Punch House now run by Sam Smiths, and a popular pub with the shaven-headed.
Manchester Cathedral
There are more interesting cathedrals, to be frank, but Manchester came late to the diocesan game (circa 1847, if you're asking). Nevertheless the rededicated building is medieval, in perpendicular Gothic, which helps it to blend perfectly with much of the city's later architecture. I think I'd have been more impressed had the centre of the (record-breakingly-wide) nave not been curtained off for renovation work.
Urbis
Let's build a Museum of the City, said the council at the millennium, not just our city but every city, because urbanisation is a fascinating thing. Visitors disagreed, and came in disappointingly small numbers, to journey up the mega-escalator and then wander down through a cascade of galleries inside a wedged-shape façadeof glass. So in 2004 they broadened its appeal to focus instead on British culture, and when even that didn't work they stole the National Football Museum from Preston and shoved that inside instead. I considered actually going inside to "learn more" about the beautiful game, but decided not to sully my memories of visiting in 2003 back when the interior was proper urban.
John Rylands Library
This Neo-Gothic bookstack is a proper treat. Enriqueta Rylands' tribute to her late husband took ten years to build, finally opening in 1900, and better resembles an ornate church than a university library. Entrance is via a modern four-storey extension, with cafe, from which you step inside a dark maze of passages with stone bosses embellishing the ceiling and chambers filled with complete sets of ancient volumes. In one exhibition cabinet is Papyrus P52, which some experts believe is the oldest surviving fragment of New Testament text, ripped from St John's gospel chapter 18. A tall open staircase leads up to a nave-like reading room, where sweaty students with satchels pore over essays on laptops, and visitors wander around in mild awe.
People's History Museum
Appropriately located on a street called Left Bank, this repository of political ephemera started out as the National Museum of Labour History in Limehouse E14. Rescued by Manchester Council and the TUC it's ended up here, in a converted water pumping station, and is described as "a march through time following Britain's struggle for democracy over two centuries." It's unusual to see history represented from a radical viewpoint, never outrageously so, but with a relentless focus on social conditions, reform and protest. Here the key events in British life include strikes and struggle, and several of the items on display are brightly coloured banners. You probably already know whether you'd enjoy looking round, but I found it refreshingly thought-provoking rather than militantly preachy.
St Mary's The Hidden Gem
As its name suggests you have to deliberately hunt this 18th century church down, accessed via two back alleys, or approached via a tented village of rough sleepers beneath a stilted concrete office block. But step inside and an oasis of calm awaits, spacious and ornate with marble pillars. To the left of the high altar is the shrine of Our Lady of Manchester, because such a thing exists, while an acclaimed set of modern-art Stations of The Cross runs along two adjacent walls - Sister Wendy was so very impressed.
Museum of Science and Industry
As a reader of this blog, I can pretty much guarantee you'd like this one. Essentially a collection of local technology, its extensive footprint surrounds the oldest surviving railway station anywhere in the world. That's Manchester Liverpool Road, the eastern terminus of Stephenson's Rocket-driven railway, whose elegant station building is one of those you can explore within the museum. Connected beneath the tracks is the original station warehouse, home to some exhibitions that aren't as exciting as their curators hoped they were, while another old building contains working engines and locomotives to delight anyone with a penchant for grease. Other attractions include the Great Western Warehouse, home to everything you ever wanted to know about the manufacture of textiles, and a reproduction of the world's first computer - something else Manchester is rightly famous for. Across the road is the Air and Space Hall, with exhibits including an Avro Shackleton, a Spitfire and a locally-produced Ford Model T. And all extremely child-friendly, if the number of under-10s I saw grinning their way round were anything to go by.
The Manchester Museum
For the history of the city, try MoSI (above). But for biology and geology, try this redbrick repository (part of Manchester University) located some distance down Oxford Road. Most impressive is the narrow three-floor central gallery of mostly stuffed animals, with a kid-oriented investigative zone on the upper floor and Horniman-esque glass cases intelligently filled below. Children were also loving the live animals in the vivarium (look mummy, a frog!), as well as the prehistoric bones and minerals stacked up in further galleries elsewhere.
Whitworth Art Gallery
Further still down the Oxford Road, and very much within Student Territory, the revamped Whitworth was the proud winner of the Museum of the Year 2015. Bordering the local park, and taking its inspiration thereof, this Edwardian building has been recarved and extended to create fresh new galleries with a crisp modern touch, and a series of varied exhibitions within. The portraits cluster I enjoyed, the filmset video installation less so, but the true eye-opener was a retrospective of the work of Tibor Reich in the gallery upstairs. This Hungarian textile designer moved to the UK after the war, taking his inspiration from natural textures to introduce vibrant colour schemes to austerity Britain - Concorde's upholstery was one of his - and he was a dab hand at ceramics too. Throw in a galleryful of 1950s and early 60s wallpaper designs nextdoor, and I left beaming.
For years now, the rule on London Underground's escalators has been this.
It's not a general rule elsewhere - you only have to ride an escalator in a suburban shopping mall or at a provincial railway station to see that. And it confuses tourists no end, as they stand willy-nilly wherever they like, or loll with their luggage blocking the wrong half of the step. But it is the rule on the tube, and TfL have put decades of effort into explaining and enforcing that the left hand side of an escalator be left clear for those wishing to walk. They announce it over the tannoy, they write it on blue signs positioned at regular intervals down each bank of escalators, and they've even got round to writing it in capital yellow letters on the vertical treads.
But this morning that rule is being deliberately systematically broken, at one specific station only, for a six month experimental period. Passengers at Holborn station are to be asked to change the habit of a lifetime and stand on either side of the escalator, be that left or right, in an attempt to increase the flow and reduce congestion. You're going to hate it, or love it, depending on whether you're somebody who always walks up an escalator or somebody who hates queueing at the bottom.
TfL ran a brief trial at Holborn last year, in the morning rush hour only, to help convince them that standing on both sides is best. Holborn has a particularly long escalator, rising 23½m to the ticket hall, beaten only by those at Leicester Square (24½m) and Angel (27½m). The height is enough to deter most people from walking up it, especially those who may already have panted up the deeper ascent from the Piccadilly line. So the vast majority of passengers ascending Holborn's main escalators stand, and only a few walk, which it turns out isn't a very efficient use of limited available space. Allowing people to stand on both sides in the trial boosted passenger flow by 30%, thereby preventing the daily build-up of crowds at the foot of the escalator, which is why the experiment is now being rolled out for a much longer period.
The only problem was that people hated it. They didn't see an egalitarian solution helping them to exit the station more quickly, they saw an infringement of civil liberties preventing them from walking as quickly as they'd like. You only have to listen to the tutting behind an ignorant tourist standing in the wrong place to know how much the escalator-walkers value the thirty seconds they shave off their daily commute. A considerable amount of cajoling was therefore required, not all of it successful, to try to make passengers break a rule they'd previously had drummed into them. Hence in the new trial starting today TfL are going to try considerably harder.
Peter McNaught, Operations Director at London Underground, said: 'It may not seem right that you can go quicker by standing still, but our experiments at Holborn have proved that it can be true. This new pilot will help us find out if we can influence customers to stand on both sides in the long term, using just signage and information.
As you can almost see in this photo taken at the weekend, a white box has appeared at the foot of the main escalator, upon which will be placed "a talking projection of a staff member". Projections are cheaper than real staff, and they smile all the time, plus they don't get bored saying the same thing over and over. A variety of messages will be tested, developed with the help of the behavioural science department at the London School of Economics, the most normal of which will be...
• Stand on both sides
• Stand on the left and the right
• Please don't walk on this escalator
The first of these is annoying, because you can't stand on both sides of an escalator, or rather you can but only by standing in the middle and blocking everyone. It's from the same grammatically deficient stable as the regular exhortation to "please use the full length of the platform", something that a crowd can do but not an individual passenger. The second is a little more explicitly collective, and the third potentially the best of all as it clearly conveys the point of the entire trial. But the LSE have also recorded some more oblique messages, and will be deploying these to see if nudging passenger behaviour works any better...
• Standing room only
• Standing? Outstanding!
• United we stand
The first of these isn't technically true, especially at less busy times of day, so rather misses the point. The second is the sort of thing you'd say to a child, so many commuters may it find deeply patronising. And the third only hints at the rationale behind the change (if we all slow down we'll all get out quicker), so may fail to get the message across. Indeed if I was forced to listen to this sort of thing emerging from a grinning artificial body every morning I might feel like giving them a thump... which is another reason that a projection is being used rather than an actual member of staff.
In further tactics, pairs of blue footprints have been stencilled onto the treads of the affected escalators as an additional hint that everybody's expected to stand. On certain other escalators at Holborn, for example those down to the Piccadilly line, only one pair of footprints has been used in the hope that commuters will realise this means 'here you only stand on the right'. I think the idea's too implicit to be effective, but it's all part of the experiment, so we'll see.
In another very recent change the blue signs up the escalator that used to read "Stand on the right" have been covered over by a new vinyl message that reads "Hold the handrail". "Hold the handrail" is TfL's new health and safety mantra of choice, and it's already been rolled out at several stations on signs, on posters and in announcements. It's a well-meaning campaign - escalators and staircases are the location of a high proportion of the Underground's annual casualty total. But there's still something a bit nanny state about urging everyone to hold the handrail all the time, especially if you're standing not walking, and who's to say what nasty bugs and viruses we could pick up from the handrail if everybody chose to hold it.
TfL might be onto a behavioural winner at Holborn if they can keep the message simple. The big problem with what they've chosen to do is that the message isn't going to be simple, because different escalators will be treated in different ways. Having recognised that some commuters will always insist on walking no matter what they're told, one of the up escalators is to remain "walk on the left, stand on the right" for the duration of the trial. And the complication is that precisely which escalator this is will change during the day. Holborn's bank of four escalators provides useful flexibility to match passenger flow, so in the morning peak three of the four escalators are designated 'up' (to help evacuate commuters arriving into Central London) while in the evening peak it's only two. At other times of day whether it's two or three varies, or sometimes one escalator is turned off to save on wear and tear, which is likely to sow the seeds of confusion even further unless explanatory notices are particularly well displayed.
Let's take each of the four escalators in turn, from left to right in the photo below, to help explain.
Escalator 1 (up): From today, this escalator will be standing only at all times. If only it were this simple. Escalator 2 (up): This escalator will be standing only at peak times, when three upward escalators are in operation, but will be the "walking up" escalator at other times of day (for example the evening peak). Escalator 3 (up/down): This escalator changes direction according to what time of day it is. If it's running upwards, then it's the designated "walking up" escalator. If it's running downwards then you can walk down, because you can always walk down the escalators at Holborn, they're not changing that. Escalator 4 (down): This escalator only ever goes down, and retains the "walk on the left, stand on the right" rule.
Escalators 1, 3 and 4 have relatively simple rules - you always stand on escalator 1 and you don't have to stand on escalators 3 and 4. The problem is with escalator 2, where you might be allowed to walk or you might not, and good luck in working out which. You can probably imagine the frustration when somebody fails to work it out correctly and accidentally stands on the one escalator you're still supposed to be able to walk up. At present this happens only infrequently, even with tourists, because the rule is the same everywhere on the tube, so an "excuse me" generally nudges interlopers out of the way. But at Holborn the displacement approach is now less likely to work, even when the person standing on the left is in the wrong, because it's going to be much harder to be certain what 'wrong' actually is.
Another thing that's going to be frustrating, if you're an escalator-walker, is the imposition of the "stand on both sides" rule at all times of the day. At 3pm on a Wednesday or 10pm on a Sunday Holborn station isn't exactly bursting, hence there's plenty of room on the escalators to allow both standing and walking. Indeed even at 8am on a weekday the crowds are manageable enough for the existing arrangements to be perfectly sufficient, the change is only going to be especially useful for the hour or so between half eight and half nine. But to make the new rule stick TfL needs to impose it at all times, even when totally not necessary, so that it becomes a learned behaviour rather than a temporary change.
As a confirmed escalator walker myself, who always travels into the station outside the daily crush, the Holborn experiment is only going to piss me off. I embrace the 23½m climb, it's excellent exercise, and I appreciate being able to get out of the station much quicker than everyone else. But I recognise how few other passengers appear to think the same. According to a recent survey over half of tube passengers said they'd refuse to follow the new instructions if TfL rolled them out across the network. But at Holborn, with its mega-escalators, the reality is that barely 10-20% walk up and everyone else glides patiently because they don't have the urge to climb.
The sacrifice of the few is required to benefit the many. And anyway, the few will always have one escalator to walk up, which might just keep everybody happy. If TfL were feeling less accommodating they could have insisted that all the 'up' escalators would be standing only, it would certainly make for a much simpler rule which passengers might then be able to follow more clearly. As it is, all you need to remember at Holborn for the next six months is this...
• When you arrive at the bottom of the main escalators, you can always walk up the left-most 'up' escalator.
• You can't walk up the other 'up' escalators, you have to stand.
• You can always walk down.
If the trial's successful, it might become permanent. It could also spread to other stations with escalators over 18½m tall (which is the over-accurate number a research paper in 2002 came up with), a decision which might affect Angel, Green Park, Highgate, Hyde Park Corner, Kentish Town, Leicester Square, London Bridge and Marylebone. But implementation at stations with only one 'up' escalator might prove more problematic, there being no spare alternative for those who prefer to walk. And ultimately it could lead to the wholesale collapse of the "walk on the left, stand on the right" rule across the entire network, in the interests of simplicity, as the need to increase capacity trumps personal freedom. Let's hope not. Let's just hope that today's change helps solve an hour or so of daily congestion at a station with a genuine problem, and leave it at that.
Morning rush hour update:
• It isn't working.
• There are no obvious signs at the foot of the escalators other than the grinning projected lady.
• The grinning projected lady repeats a variety of phrases, including "Hold the handrail" and "Please stand on both sides of this escalator" (so isn't necessarily saying something informative when you arrive)
• The phrase "Please stand on both sides of this escalator" isn't helpful when spoken by someone standing inbetween two escalators.
• The blue signs up the edge of the right hand escalator are now electronic, so are being used to display a variety of short messages, including "Hold the handrail", "Stand on both sides" and simply "Stand".
• It would be clearer if the blue electronic signs included arrows, to indicate which of the two escalators to either side they apply to.
• There was no sign on the escalator you were still allowed to walk up to indicate it was the escalator you were still allowed to walk up.
• People were still walking up all three 'up' escalators.
• It isn't working.
Evening rush hour update:
• It turns out there are signs stuck to the floor at the foot of the escalators, but I couldn't see them because people were standing on them.
• The sign at the foot of Escalator 3 says "Stand on the left Walk on the right".
• The signs at the foot of Escalators 1 and 2 both say "Stand on both sides of this escalator".
• In the evening peak, with only two 'up' escalators, no attempt has been made to suggest that one of them can be walked up.
• It wasn't possible to hear what the grinning projected lady was saying, because the concourse was too noisy.
• The messages on the blue electronic signs up the edge of the right-hand escalator include several ridiculously nanny-ish safety messages, including one about watching out for the brushes, as if Mary Poppins did the programming.
• Both 'up' escalators were almost empty when I passed by (because passengers arrive in waves from below).
• In two visits I haven't seen anybody standing on the left of an escalator.
Important update (based on latest press release):
• It appears TfL have changed their mind about always having one escalator to walk up.
What they said in March: One of four escalators will be 'standing only' at all times for six months with another standing only at some times of day What they're saying now: Customers will be asked to stand on both sides of two 'up' escalators for six months.
• To simplify procedures, it appears that escalators will now be either 'walking allowed' or 'standing only', not potentially either.
• Both escalator 1 and escalator 2 will now always be for standing on both sides.
• If Escalator 3 is running upwards, then you'll be able to walk up it. But if Escalator 3 is running downwards, then there won't be a designated 'walking up' escalator.
• TfL's claim that "The third 'up' escalator is also available for people who still want to walk up" appears to be a lie, at certain times of the day.
• Bastards. (but that's OK, for now, because people are still walking anyway)
Yesterday morning, via Twitter, I spotted a particularly interesting-looking free event taking place yesterday evening. I considered not going, because I needed to be up at stupid o'clock this morning, and because I hadn't anything lined up to post on the blog. And then I thought, don't be so stupid, this is a particularly interesting-looking event, you must go, even if that means getting home late and still going to bed early. So I went, and it was indeed very interesting, and then I set myself the challenge of writing a review of the event on the tube journey home. My phone keyboard kept 'correcting' what I was typing, so I've had to tidy it up a lot afterwards, and add some links, but that's about all. It's very This-Blog-in-2004, but that may not be a bad thing.
On Friday evening I headed to the Royal College of Art, Battersea, for an evening about and inspired by the power station downriver, as part of the Jerwood/FVU Awards programme. First in the presentation was a 15 minute film called Dream City, named after one of the many unrealised projects on this site, in this case several years before the power station was a reality. Alice May Williams' poetic vision invoked the spirit of change over a beautifully shot interplay of historic scenes, current building works and artists impressions. Capturing the unique period with three old chimneys and one new, she reflected eloquently on the area's pre- and post-industrial journey, the building's power now frozen within a high-rise embrace.
Next up to the lectern, architectural critic Owen Hatherley, to deliver an hour long talk on the power station's origins and influences entitled 'Monetising the Ruin'. Having duly referenced the Gilbert Scott dynasty he led us expertly through the decades, from the original two-chimney gothic monolith to the centrepiece of a ghastly crush of boxy apartments. Since the CEGB sold off the building in the early 1980s, a relay of developers have devised ever stranger models for the brick shell's rebirth, including a psychedelic Thirties option with roof space cinemas and a later indoor amusement park resembling a cavernous suburban shopping mall. Was it New Labour's re-embrace of inner city living which led to the conditions for luxury riverside living taking root, allowing the latest Malaysian-backed scheme to finally reach fruition? Owen's talk place-checked several other developments across London and elsewhere, culminating with a slide of the intended nightmarepanorama from Vauxhall round to Battersea, where investors buy boxes in the sky they will rarely live in, and the rest of us live behind, if we're lucky, in better quality older homes. I do enjoy an intelligent polemic.
A rich and animated discussion followed, with many of those contributing having connections to local community groups (and participants battling to be heard above the theatre's automatically wheezing ventilation). If anybody present was looking forward to moving into the new development, or indeed even visiting, they kept very quiet. Also present in the audience was author Peter Watts, who's just finished writing a book about the Power Station and the cavalcade of failed dreams for its redevelopment. It would have been perfect timing had the publication date for Up In Smoke not been in a fortnight's time, as I suspect he'd have shifted several copies on the way out.
London might be a walking-friendly city, but in one important aspect the capital is less well served than anywhere else in the country. In every other part of England and Wales public footpaths are legally protected by their inclusion on a definitive map of public rights of way. But Inner London boroughs are deliberately excluded from this requirement, which means footpaths can be blocked and diverted with little warning. And that's not good.
The specific legislation is the Countryside andRights of Way Act 2000. This confirmed a "right to roam" on certain remote upland areas, and elsewhere defined designated rightsof way on which the public have a legally protected right to travel on foot. Local authorities were charged with compiling special maps to show all of these routes, called Definitive Rights of Way Maps, as a legal record of the public's rights of way. They had until 2008 to comply by publishing their maps, and were also required to prepare a Rights of Way Improvement Plan covering all of their area.
But not in Inner London. The centre of the capital is a special case, there being very little agricultural land, not much woodland, and a minimal amount of undeveloped open space that isn't a public park. Hence an exclusion was made for the 12 Inner London boroughs, plus the City of London, and none of these have to publish a Rights of Way Map.
If you take a look at an Ordnance Survey 1:50000 map, there's clear evidence of this. There are no red dashed lines on the map in Wandsworth, Greenwich or Camden, none whatsoever. But cross the borough boundary into Merton, Bromley or Haringey and there they are, snaking through woods, tracking the banks of rivers and cutting round the backs of houses.
This is not to say there are no public rights of way in inner London, because there clearly are. We're not yet part of a private property-run outdoor dystopia. But without the same legal protection as exists elsewhere in England and Wales, there's a risk that access can be more easily blocked, diverted, even extinguished altogether. What's more, the 2000 legislation decreed that any pre-1949 footpaths not recorded on official maps on 1st January 2026 may cease to carry public rights. That's bad news wherever in the country you live, but potentially much worse in London where no such maps exist, and could lead to that cut-through you use to get to the station being stopped up.
The Ramblers Association launched a campaign in 2010 called "Putting London on the Map", with the aim of encouraging Inner London authorities to create a Definitive Rights of Way Map, but thus far none have done so. But all the boroughs in Outer London have one, they're legally obliged, so I thought I'd trawl through the various borough websites to see what I could find. Here's what I've uncovered, in case you're interested in seeing where all the footpaths are around your way (and your council is willing to tell you).
Clickbait headline attempting to make what follows sound exciting
Photo attached to press release
or
Screengrab from Google Streetview
Exclamation! Outline of the main gist of the press release we received. Link to external sponsor. Why we think this is awesome, in slightly breathless language. Conversational phrase.
Optional central paragraph. Some facts we lifted from the bottom of the press release. Jaunty bon mots. Confirmation that they do this kind of thing in Shoreditch/Peckham/Clapham (delete as applicable).
Space for slow-loading video advert
Some wry observation to differentiate our response from similar-looking posts on other media. Why this sort of thing is really right up our street. Question to which the answer is yes. Exhortation to "see you there".
Clickbait headline attempting to make what follows sound exciting
Photo attached to press release
or
Screengrab from Google Streetview
Exclamation! Outline of the main gist of the press release we received. Link to external sponsor. Why we think this is awesome, in slightly breathless language. Conversational phrase.
Optional central paragraph. Some facts we lifted from the bottom of the press release. Jaunty bon mots. Confirmation that they do this kind of thing in Shoreditch/Peckham/Clapham (delete as applicable).
Space for slow-loading video advert
Some wry observation to differentiate our response from similar-looking posts on other media. Why this sort of thing is really right up our street. Question to which the answer is yes. Exhortation to "see you there".
You came to join us with such high hopes. Wide-eyed and willing, you arrived at our gates keen to do well and get on. It was a big move from where you were before, but you were eager to take on new responsibilities and make your name. We welcomed you and your potential, recognising that special spark we see in those who join us here. But at the end of the day our terms and conditions proved too much, and you can no longer be permitted to remain.
For a while we thought you had it in you to stay. You settled in well, after a shaky start, and soon found your way around our premises. You learned our rules and came to love our traditions, slipping into new ways like a natural. You came to all our meetings, fulfilled all your commitments and paid up all your subs. But more recently you've started to default, and now we can't take the risk of letting you carry on.
You knew it would be tough here, but perhaps not quite how tough that would be. Initially things were fine, indeed you wouldn't have been able to join us otherwise. But then external pressures came to bear, diverting your attention, until there was no longer enough left in your pocket to hand over at the end of the month. And deep down you know it can only get worse.
Our annual subscription fee has been rising for some time, due to circumstances outside our control. Refreshment costs are always bubbling up, our car park charges never drop, and ground rent on the clubhouse has gone through the roof. Our membership now expects much more for its money, especially our more elite partners with their cosmopolitan lifestyles. To accommodate their needs we've had no choice but to hike prices and increase our charges, and it's not our fault if your income is unable to keep up.
The latest uplift is related to accommodation, with monthly payments easily outstripping inflation. We now have far more members attempting to hire a room than we can cope with, which isn't helped by demand considerably exceeding supply. We had hoped to build an extension, but intransigent planning laws were imposed upon us, and it turns out we couldn't have made a dent in the market even if we'd built the lot.
We thought joint membership was going to see you through. Solo membership is always a challenge, there being nobody else to share the financial burden, so twinning up with another attendee can really help. You don't need to be married or anything, we're not prudes, and a relationship of convenience is fine by us. With two salaries coming in your chances of crossing the rental threshold are doubled, but that's no longer necessarily enough, as increasing numbers of our members have started to discover.
Specifically, we've noticed that you've stopped contributing so much to our community. You used to be able to afford a night out and a drink at the bar, and the odd trinket from our weekend craft market, without a second thought. But our escalating membership fees leave you with less to spend on other purchases, so you're no longer sufficiently solvent at the end of the month, and appear to be spending more of your time staying at home instead. And that's no good, we can't continue to support freeloaders, so you'll have to go.
You will have to stay until the break clause in your membership contract kicks in, even if that ends up crippling your finances still further. But if you're honest with yourself, you always knew your time with us was coming to an end. We're not the easy option we used to be, we're more exclusive now, and you're simply no longer the class of clientèle we require.
We think you'll find membership elsewhere more to your liking. You might need to travel a little further away than you'd like, but there's an entirely different world out there, one you could even afford. These other places haven't inflated their fees like we have, indeed you should be able to afford to hire more rooms for less money, and without the need for joint occupation.
Admittedly these other communities aren't as lively and vibrant as we are. We offer cultural opportunities in abundance, and a fully-stocked bar, and a variety of markets to die for. We provide the chance to socialise with the crème de la crème, and we don't shut down at five in the evening. But you can still make your own entertainment out there, millions of people do, it's simply that we have a vastly overrated view of our own importance.
It's been great having you with us, while you could afford it. We've enjoyed having you as a member. Now lower your aspirations a little and go away. Your membership has expired. It's time to leave.
This year the town of Woking is celebrating 150 years since the birth of author HG Wells. He spent less than 18 months living in the town (circa 1895) but wrote some of his most famous works here, including the most famous of all - The War of the Worlds. Originally serialised in 1897, it later became a novel, several movies, a concept double album and the inspiration for a considerable body of science fiction. The laying waste of humanity by a superior intelligence, and the invaders' fortuitous demise, make for a compelling tale. But the story is also thick with geographical detail, as Wells delights in destroying his home town, most of the surrounding countryside and much of north Surrey.
Despite its fictional obliteration, a series of commemorative events are planned in Woking this year, culminating with the unveiling of a statue on the 150th anniversary in September. The Wells in Woking Festival has a busy website, with a Twitter feed here, a full event diary here, and a particularly impressive souvenir programme can be downloaded here. I chose to walk the Heritage Trail, a well-documented four mile circuit round the town and adjacent Horsell Common, passing many points of WotW-ian interest. And it made for a very pleasant half-day out. [16 photos]
• Maybury Road: Woking station is dead easy to get to from central London, about half an hour out, with very regular trains. Maybury Road runs east from the station immediately alongside the tracks, residential on one side only, and HG Wells lived up the far end at number 141. You can see his semi from the train, four buildings along from the hockey shop, identified by a small blue plaque between the uPVC windows. It's a shame he didn't live nextdoor, because that's still got the original brickwork and a porch draped with evergreen foliage, whereas 141 has been plastered and paved so looks considerably less inspirational. But it was from here that Herbert rode out on his bike to reconnoitre the local area, and to here that he returned to write another fact-packed chapter of his alien saga. [photo]
• Maybury Hill: The Trail doesn't actually go this way, but I diverted under the railway to see the shallow incline where HG's unnamed narrator must have lived. Wells' house in Maybury Road was too low down to have been under threat from a heat ray based on Horsell Common, whereas houses on the hill had sufficient elevation to be in direct sight, once Woking's Oriental College had been blasted away. This splendid building was originally the Royal Dramatic College, a retirement home for ex-actors, before being taken over in 1884 by a Hungarian Muslim scholar. He built Britain's first mosque nextdoor, the striking Shah Jahan, whose jade green minarets are also easily seen from the train. It still thrives, as I discovered when I turned up at prayer time, so only managed to snatch an appreciative side view from the car park. As for the Oriental College, this alas has been demolished far more comprehensively than the Martians managed, and is now the warehouselike Lion Retail Estate (Asda, Argos, Halfords, etc). [photo]
• Horsell Common: The Trail crosses the Basingstoke Canal, the same route the narrator would have taken when news of the first cylinder's landing first broke, to enter Horsell Common. This extensive area of acid heathland abuts the town and neighbouring villages, or rather is all that's left of the original landscape after suburbia took several nibbles. It's also a marvellous place to walk, as Woking's residents (and their dogs) seemingly know well. I enjoyed taking backwoods paths I'd never have found without the map, passing through a thick landscape of silver birch, holly and pine, plus (in certain more open quarters) gorse bushes bursting with spring yellow. There's also a pub halfway round, if this kind of thing is important to you when going for a ramble. [2 photos]
• Muslim Burial Ground: Located in the southeast corner of the common, nearest to the mosque, this square walled enclosure was laid out after WW1 as the final resting place for 19 Muslim soldiers who died in Britain from their wartime injuries. A handful more were buried here after WW2, but vandalism in the 1960s led to their bodies being moved to a cemetery elsewhere. The monument was later restored thanks to a donation from a local resident, a certain Mr Paul Weller, and within the last six months has been remodelled as a Peace Memorial Garden. Each soldier is now remembered by a freshly-planted tree, in two lines either side of a perfectly symmetrical water feature, creating an impressively serene place for reflection (if you can ignore the small pylon alongside). [photo]
• The Sandpits: This is what the trail has been aiming for, this is science fiction nirvana, ever since HG Wells selected the sandpits in the centre of the common as the landing place of the first Martian cylinder. A long sandy beach wraps around a pond in the bottom of a shallow depression, evidence of several centuries of manmade extraction, with twisted roots revealed where the surrounding land has fallen away. The existence of water draws all the dog owners on the common to this point, taking the opportunity for a fetch and a splash, and to play boisterously with all the other four-legged friends present. Enticed by Wells' prose I hung around for fifteen minutes on the bench overlooking the scene, reading the very chapters based on the landscape in front of me, and at no time was the pool or its golden beach ever canine-free. [3 photos]
• The Lightbox: It's an enjoyable mile and a half back to town, carefully following the route on the trail map via some of the common's lesser-used tracks. Recrossing the canal the first building is The Lightbox, one of those early 21st century lottery-funded art-sheds, housing a broad collection of cultural artefacts. One gallery contains the town's museum (free), two others host temporary exhibitions (paid for), plus there's a decent-looking cafe to help entice shoppers inside. This month there's also a small exhibition of War Of the Worlds-inspired prints and artworks, some of them particularly appealing, other perhaps a little obtuse... but worth a look. [photo]
• The Martian: The Trail ends by threading through the town centre, specifically to pass one of the most unusual public sculptures in the South East. A seven-metre-high three-legged silver Martian strides across the top of Crown Square, tentacles gleaming... and the people of Woking generally ignore it. This lofty creation been here since 1998, when it was unveiled by Carol Vorderman, so the incongruity of death stalking a shopping precinct is a bit passé these days. A little further down the Chobham Road is a partner piece, a metal cylinder embedded obliquely in the pavement, and look out for mosaics depicting Earth's all-conquering bacteria alongside. If you've enjoyed the circuit you might end your walk in one of two themed pubs - the local Wetherspoons is called The Herbert George Wells, while a freehouse up the road has been named The Ogilvy after the astronomer who first identified the craft. And raise a glass to the town's total destruction, a fictional triumph which has placed Woking firmly on the map. [5 photos]
Something unusual is happening on London's railway network next month. A new station is opening. It's not on the tube - no brand new station has opened on the tube since 2008. It's not on the Overground - no brand new stations have opened on the Overground since 2010. It's not on the DLR - no brand new stations have opened on the DLR since 2011. It's on the 'ordinary' railway, where no brand new station has opened since Stratford International limped into existence in 2009. And officially it's not really a new station at all, simply the reopening of a very old station which closed in 1985. It's Lea Bridge, and residents of west Leyton will be pleased to have it back.
The Lea Bridge Road runs from Clapton to Whipps Cross, once part of the main northeastern egress from the capital, three miles without a single station to its name. There are two bridges across the Lea, one the main river (in the vicinity of the Princess of Wales pub), and the other simply the Flood Relief Channel. The former Northern and Eastern Railway runs close to the latter, and roughly parallel, before heading north across Walthamstow Marshes. The combination of rail and water creates a considerable disconnect, so getting around isn't as easy as it could be, even for those on foot or a bike, so the addition of a new station will really help.
Except the railway line in question isn't quite the useful link it might be. It's the line from Stratford to Tottenham Hale, also closed in 1985 but resuscitated in 2005 without its former intermediate station. If you live on the Lea Bridge Road and want to get to Tottenham, Harlow or Stansted, then great. If you fancy shopping at Westfield or a trip to the Olympic Park then ideal. But if it's central London you're after, then some deft changing of trains will be required, and you might have been better off taking the bus.
At the time of its closure, Lea Bridge was an unstaffed halt with two staircases rising to a bleak timber shelter. A burst of arson saw to that, and for the last umpteen years the entrance to the station has been blocked by two large billboards, with weeds overrunning the platforms below. It hasn't taken long to knock things back into shape. Works started less than a year ago, and everything's already pretty much ready to go. The platforms have been scrubbed up and made health and safety-ready, with shelters and loudspeakers and more CCTV cameras than would seem truly necessary. Some lighting still needs to go in, and the station name signs but they'll presumably be amongst the last things to be added.
And the station entrance has moved. It used to be up on the main road, where the pavement's quite narrow, but now it's been shifted down to one side to allow for level access. This is the part of the station that's still under construction, or rather being finished off, behind barriers and a freshly tarmacked path. The relocation is good news if you're catching a train towards Stratford, but less good for travellers going the other way who'll need to go up and over the new metal footbridge to reach the other side. And that's annoying because the footbridge passes the former station entrance on the main road, but seemingly with no access, which could feel like a tedious detour.
The station is scheduled to open on Sunday 15th May, with the first train (unusually) at eighteen minutes past eight in the evening (due to planned engineering works). Normally there'll be two trains an hour, shuttling from Stratford to Hertford East on Sundays and Stratford to Bishops Stortford for the rest of the week, and it'll be interesting to see how busy the new services will be. On paper not very many people live close by, with most of the land to the west of the station essentially the flood plain of the River Lea, but there's a lot of industry nearby (up Argall Way) and an excellent bus service to feed in punters from the upper reaches of Leyton. If nothing else it's refreshing to see a station being added to an existing railway line because it can be, rather than to feed the pockets of housing developers... or at least, we'll see.
TfL line & station openings 2005: DLR opens from Canning Town to King George V 2006: (nothing) 2007: London Overground launched, Langdon Park station opens 2008: Heathrow Terminal 5 station opens, Wood Lane station opens, Shepherds Bush station opens 2009: DLR extends from King George V to Woolwich Arsenal, Imperial Wharf station opens 2010: East London Line reopens as part of the Overground 2011: East London Line extends to Highbury & Islington, DLR opens from Stratford International to Canning Town 2012: Cablecar opens, Overground extends from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction 2013: (nothing) 2014: (nothing) 2015: Overground takes over Greater Anglia lines, TfL Rail takes over Shenfield line 2016: (nothing) 2017: (nothing) 2018: Crossrail opens from Heathrow to Abbey Wood 2019: Crossrail fully open 2020: Northern line extended to Battersea (probably), Croxley Rail Link opens (maybe) 2021: London Overground extends to Barking Riverside (hopefully)
Last week TfL applied for planning permission to build a station in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Nobody lives nearby, a vast disused power station looms across the road, and the only bus service to the area was scrapped three years ago. Few locations in London are more desolate and more unwelcoming. The station in question is Barking Riverside, a proposed extension of the London Overground, pencilled in for completion in 2021. And if anybody's ever going to want to live around here, on the brownfield banks of the Thames estuary, it's of crucial importance that the station gets built.
The grimmest corner of Barking & Dagenham lies to the south of the A13, between the railway and the river. The former marshes have been colonised by the kinds of businesses nobody else wants, from waste management and scrapyards round Creekmouth to distribution depots and oil storage nearer Dagenham Dock. Also here is the Thames View Estate, built in the 1950s by Barking Borough Council, and badly named because its residents live much too far back to have any chance of seeing the river. It's not quite a linear slum but certainly a challenging place to live, partly in terms of architectural quality but also in terms of accessibility. And to the south of that, currently even harder to get to, sits Barking Riverside.
The Barking Riverside project has a long and lacklustre history dating back decades. The opportunity arose when Barking Power Station closed in 1981, and was sequentially demolished, its footprint deemed ripe for development. Bellway Homes bought up a vast tract of land in 1994, obtaining planning permission for 10800 homes, with just one catch. No more than 1200 homes could be built until public transport was improved, and public transport still hasn't been improved sufficiently to unlock the remaining potential. The first 900 homes (then called Barking Reach) were laid out by the turn of the century, creating a kind of mini-Beckton laid out in brick cul-de-sacs named with a maritime theme. But nobody got round to building any services for the local population, not even a shop, hence most of those who live around here rely on the one or two cars parked up outside.
It's only recently that the first phase of Barking Riverside proper has been brought to fruition. And you only have to stand by the bus turning circle at the edge of the previous development to see that it's of a very different kind. Gone are the lowrise small-scale flats and Essex-style semis, and instead a series of taller blockier designs predominate. That's not always good news, with the buildings along Minter Road typical of the bland brown cuboidal design that today's architects churn out with depressing regularity. But the dark-timbered terraces to the north are more appealing, tall and narrow with steep solar-panelled roofs, and of a good size that a large family might enjoy.
Just don't mention the pylons. These stalk through the heart of the development, courtesy of the former power station at the end of the road, creating a broad strip along which no houses can be built. In an attempt to distract the eye, the developers have dug a balancing pond, surrounded by a wooden boardwalk and lined by bullrushes. From the right angle it looks gorgeous, which no doubt helps the online sales brochures, and up one backwater creek I disturbed a heron, so all's not as sanitised as it seems. What's more the residents now have a primary school, a community centre and a church, plus (at last) a Morrisons, not that the feeling of disconnect has entirely gone away.
Only a handful more blocks will be built here over the next few years, while developers wait for the London Overground extension to arrive. This'll veer off from the c2c line just before High Speed 1 rears up from underneath, following the pylon corridor down to a spot a couple of hundred metres from the estuary's edge. And sheesh it's bleak. I know I hinted at this earlier, but the bend where potholed River Road meets fenced-in Renwick Road is a godforsaken post-industrial backwater... unless it's Sunday in which case the Dagenham Sunday Market pulls in hundreds of punters who park all down the street. Beyond the coils and cables of the defunct power station is the Ripple Nature Reserve, laid out by the National Grid on a dump of reclaimed fuel ash, rich with rabbits and (allegedly) orchids, which I explored more in trepidation than joy. Elsewhere the only temporary residents were some Lithuanian lorry drivers parked up and pissing through the fence, and a lone security guard sitting at the entrance to what will one day be B&D's largest building site.
To explore Phase 2 of Barking Riverside, walk brazenly past the security guard to follow public footpath number 47. This fortuitous right of way leads down to the waterfront, then follows the edge of the Thames for almost a mile, and is one of my favourite outer London escapes. The developers attempted to close off access last year but local people complained, and now a long metal fence divides the grassy path from the reclaimed expanse inland. I normally enter from the Dagenham Dock end, climbing the landfill ridge alongside a littered creek to enjoy views of theBexley incinerator across the river. What I really love is the lack of a defensive wall, there being nothing to defend, the mighty Thames lapping at the edge of the bank in a way that looks natural but is merely post-artificial. I shared my walk yesterday with a lone fox, several bumble bees and the tinkle of an ice cream van echoing across the estuary from Thamesmead on the opposite shore. Alas it won't be staying this remote for long.
The Overground station will be built within a few metres of the start of footpath 47, before it bends down towards the environmental centre. Trains will arrive on a viaduct, leaving space underneath for retail offerings, at the heart of what will one day be a public square. TfL'splans show a long vertically-slatted building with stainless steel panels, the aim to create a sense of place and a feeling of visual permeability. Cars will drop off passengers on one side, while buses will pull up on the other, with a new neighbourhood shopping centre and huge secondary school thrown in nearby for good measure. A swirl of residential roads will be laid out on the barren land between Choats Road and footpath 47, densely packed for maximum property value, but thankfully not quite spreading right down to the waterfront, which will remain open.
It's only in the final phase of development, nearer 2031, that the Thames-side tower blocks go in. These will be erected to the west, on the current site of Dagenham Sunday Market, and will presumably be marketed as luxury penthouses and the like. By this point it's expected that Barking Riverside's population will be 26000, and the developers will be very rich, as that 1994 land gamble finally pays off. But if you're ever tempted to move in, what with the Overground connection and all, I recommend you visit soon to see your future home as it once was - desolate, derelict and immutably remote.
If you want to catch the most ill-timed exhibition in London you'd better hurry up. Night Shift - London after Dark is currently running at the London Transport Museum, and has been since mid-September. It showcases posters, films and photographs from a century of late evening travel, and was scheduled to coincide with the introduction of the Night Tube. This should have been perfect timing, indeed we should have been enjoying overnight weekend travel for more than six months by now. But plans advanced faster than reality, and the Night Tube still hasn't happened, and so the Night Shift exhibition will close this weekend several months before its inspiration finally dawns. Unfortunate, that.
There are still considerable barriers to the timely introduction of the Night Tube. Amending existing drivers' terms and conditions has proved too taxing, or too presumptuous, so TfL are training up a whole new set of employees ready to run the entire overnight operation. But that's not going to be easy either. Over 6000 people applied for the part-time roles, most of whom weren't up to the grade, which is a perfectly normal attrition rate for the taxing job of a tube operator. Training then takes sixteen weeks, the first half of which is in the classroom and the remainder out in the driver's cab, not that there are necessarily enough driver's cabs to go round. Only when 180 operators have been fully trained can the Night Tube service begin, which is the reason why a phased introduction now looks increasingly likely.
Rumours widely leaked last month suggested that the Night Tube would kick off on the Victoria and Jubilee lines in August, then the Central, Northern and Piccadilly Lines in September. The Evening Standard gave more specific dates, namely August 5th for the Victoria and Jubilee, then September 23rd for the Piccadilly, Central and Northern, reputedly obtained from the ASLEF trade union. It remains unlikely that these dates will be achieved, given the training issues, but we can look for additional clues in the weekend engineering works announced for the upcoming six month period.
When the Night Tube was first due to begin, that's September 12th last year, TfL cleared the decks of engineering works on Night tube lines for several months. There were line closures on the Victoria line two weeks before the Night Tube began, and on the Central line one week beforehand, but then nothing at all until January 16th. TfL deliberately scheduled no weekend closures whatsoever on any Night Tube line for eighteen weeks, in the expectation that overnight passengers wouldn't be disadvantaged during the first four months of operation, I remember reading in some Board papers somewhere. A very sensible plan, and testament to the well-maintained state of the track on the Underground's deep tube lines.
Here's what the latest track closure list looks like during the summer months. I've split the Piccadilly line into Night Tube and non-Night Tube sectrions.
Jun
July
August
September
25
2
9
16
23
30
6
13
20
27
3
10
17
24
Bakerloo
Circle
District
Ham & City
Metropolitan
Piccadilly
Jubilee
Victoria
Central
Northern
Piccadilly
Almost all the closures are on the sub-surface lines, that's the Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan. There's still a lot to do to upgrade these lines for the future, with the upcoming signalling contract destined to take until at least 2023 to complete. There's also at least one closure scheduled on the Bakerloo, which isn't a Night Tube line so needn't concern us, and two more on the Uxbridge branch of the Piccadilly line, which won't be overnighting either.
The only Night Tube lines with any weekend engineering works scheduled in the summer are the Central and Northern lines, and only early on. The Jubilee and Victoria lines are clear of track closures throughout, so could indeed kick off a Night Tube service early, and the other three lines could follow any time from September onwards, without having to awkwardly shut down as soon as the service has started.
Whatever, until all those new train operators are fully trained and an official announcement is made, this is all mere speculation. All that is known is that the Night Shift exhibition closes tomorrow, so if you fancy some overnight ambience before the autumn, best get down fast.
England's second city, in stature if not in population, rose to international prominence in the 19th century on the back of the Industrial Revolution. Textile manufacturing brought it riches, until the rest of the world learned to spin cotton cheaper, and the city has since reinvented itself as a hub of innovation and culture. Its centre is very Victorian, but simultaneously very modern, with shiny modern flats shooting up everywhere above a dark brick skyline. And there's tons to see and do, as I tried to discover when I spent ten hours in the city (and the city nextdoor) at the weekend. Here are ten places I managed to fit in, every single one of them with free admission, because Manchester's damned excellent like that.
But not in Inner London. The centre of the capital is a special case, there being very little agricultural land, not much woodland, and a minimal amount of undeveloped open space that isn't a public park. Hence an exclusion was made for the 12 Inner London boroughs, plus the City of London, and none of these have to publish a Rights of Way Map.
