It's mid-September so Free Building Visits season is here again. That means London Open House which starts today, but also Heritage Open Days which started yesterday, their two weekends unusually coinciding this year. And because Heritage Open Days also includes a few venues in the capital I've already been out and got my moneysworth, which in this case is no money at all (+£2 donation).
Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice Formerly known as: Bow Street Police Museum Location: 28 Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 7AW [map] Open: 11am-4.30pm (Friday, Saturday, Sunday only) Admission: £8 (+£2 encouraged donation) Website:bowstreetmuseum.org.uk Four word summary: the famous court's cells Time to allow: less than an hour
Welcome to Bow Street, just round the back of the Royal Opera House, where London's first police force coalesced. The instigator was a magistrate called Henry Fielding who moved into number 4 in 1748 and became concerned by the amount of gin-based disorder in the locality. He hired eight constables to pursue criminals in a more civil manner than the usual street-based violence, these becoming known as the Bow Street Runners, and when his brother succeeded him as magistrate the patrol was refined into London's first effective police force.
Bow Street Magistrates Court started out in 1881 with just three magistrates, two days a week, and built up its reputation from there. A separate police station opened alongside under the auspices of the Metropolitan Police, another London first. The dock at Bow Street welcomed such varied defendants as Dr Crippen, the Kray twins, Oscar Wilde and a couple of Pankhursts, also later General Pinochet and Pete Docherty. But by 2006 it was no longer required and the building was sold to a boutique hotel chain, although it took until 2021 before a different boutique hotel finally opened. As part of the deal a teensy strip of the old building became a museum, essentially a corridor of cells from the police station half, and if you want to see the courthouse these days you have to hire the hotel ballroom.
The museum is accessed from a sidestreet up a handful of steps. As a walk-in visitor I was directed to the counter so I could be issued with my £0.00 ticket... although usually it's £8, ideally they'd like you to give £10 and last year it was only £6 so something's on the up. There are only two places to go, the main room or the corridor, also a few shelves of charming gift shop with a law and order bent.
In the main room we have the actual dock from Court number 2, which the curators hope one day you'll be able to stand on but not before some preservation work has been done. It's also not clear which famous accused stood on this board and which were tried in courts 1 or 3 instead. The walls here tell the story of Bow Street's evolution from Henry's home to full-on cop shop. The story's well told and illustrated but the focus is very much on words and pictures, there being very little in the way of artefacts. One cabinet has a lantern, rattle and inkwell from the olden days plus a trundle wheel used to measure the length of a copper's beat, the other shows what a Bow Street Runner might have worn, and then it's back to reading again. Visitors seemed content to peruse at length.
The corridor is a lot more evocative, being original, with six numbered cells leading off the right-hand side. The first has been left as was with a mattress on a wooden plank as a bed, although the toilet wouldn't have had a glass sheet over it back in the day. The other five are now tiny little galleries with more to see and read, one with a video to watch (although it was a bit full in there so I didn't). The displays add background to the main story, particularly about how the police station operated, and I liked the photo of the old canteen that provided underwhelming breakfasts for prisoners who were up before the beak in the early slot.
There's just the one cabinet here, better stuffed, including hats and handcuffs and an invite to the opening of the replacement police station at Charing Cross. Obviously the famous accused get their own gallery, ditto a half-wall nod to women and minorities, although a celebration of the court artist William Hartley felt a little more forced. Down at the far end is The Tank where multiple prisoners could be detained, perhaps after a heavy night in Covent Garden, which is used for temporary exhibitions like the current focus on the Suffragette movement. But again that's almost all text, because your visit effectively involves a lot of reading whilst in an evocative location. I took several photos, went home and essentially read the museum later.
I see why they changed their name in April away from Bow Street Police Museum because it's not really that, but it's not really a Museum of Crime and Justice either. It's more a fascinating historic corridor leftover from a hotel conversion, gamely making the best of what they've got, but I fear they take less in admission in a day than a single guest pays for a night in a king-sized bed nextdoor.
In local Bow bus news, the D8 is being downgraded today from high-frequency to low-frequency. Until yesterday it ran every 12 minutes during the daytime but from today it only runs every 15. So that's bad.
TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the D8 ran every 15 minutes until a frequency increase on 24th May 2008, so all we're doing is going back to how things were 20 years ago.
The D8 is the only route down the A12 dual carriageway, a road with massively more flats than ever existed here 20 years ago, so the frequency cut is particularly baffling.
TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find it was the 108 which followed the A12 20 years ago, that is until the D8 and 108 swapped corridors between Bow and Poplar on 1st October 2016.
This is evil incarnate and for no good reason.
TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find a new contract has been awarded. The previous fleet was nine diesel Geminis and the new fleet is seven electric Volvo BZLs, so TfL are saving on two vehicles here.
It's all to save money, and screw the local population.
TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the previous D8 tender was for £2,088,386 (or £6 a mile) and the new tender is for 2,823,500 (or £10 a mile), so the new electric buses cost a lot more.
I've never understood why the D8 is operated by double deckers anyway, most of the time passenger numbers could easily be accommodated on a cheaper single decker.
TDS Busman: Actually I think you'll find the D8 got double decker vehicles in 2016 "to meet very peaked demand from Bow School". It makes economic sense to cater for peak capacity rather than run special school buses.
Nobody cares that the route's getting new buses and saving the planet, they'd rather have more frequent buses.
One of the downsides of writing a daily blog is that there's also a daily deadline. This means I'm often preoccupied during the day researching, fieldtripping, writing and editing, which can sometimes get in the way of other things.
So yesterday, with a tube strike curtailing travel options, I thought I'd stay in and get a lot of 'other stuff' done. I also decided not to write the usual time-consuming blogpost for publication on Friday as this would maximise focus and avoid procrastination.
Today's post is therefore simply a list of the stuff I got done yesterday, things I otherwise would have put off (again).
Morning
✔ add empty bottle of Becks and empty cheesecake box to recycling stash; fill another pink bag; take four bags of recycling down to the pavement during allotted two hour period
✔ unfurl new recycling bag and add Heinz beans can that fell out earlier
✔ hang up wedding suit; return suitcase to stash; return swimming shorts to drawer after hot tub excursion ✔ clean out chest of drawers; rationalise tie collection (not sure I still need 50); bin subfusc; return checked 1984 pullover to circulation; retire a dozen work shirts from rail to drawer; bin five shirts and a 90s sweatshirt; shift big jackets into spare room; clean bike leathers; reallocate shirts and jackets to more practical rails; return handkerchiefs to circulation; rediscover all sorts of t-shirts I tucked away last time I rationalised; attempt to work out a better place for the polo shirts to go; bemoan my lack of wardrobes and cupboard space ✔ look up location of nearest clothes recycling bin
✔ open water bill, sigh at water bill, pay water bill
✔ return bus map coins to tubs by door; remove birthday cards and file away; add double issue Radio Times to archive
✔ chuck cable case; chuck unwanted rail tickets
Afternoon
✔ try to communicate with letting agent regarding long-term issue; receive assurance letting agent will ring back; miss phone call four hours later; call back; discover letting agent has gone home for the day
✔ plant tumescent crocosmia bulb using the last of the 20 year-old John Innes compost; water plants just before cloudburst makes watering unnecessary
✔ make a start on sorting out my 'dealt with' paperwork pile; start piles for gas bills, electricity bills, bank statements, etc; spread these out across bedcovers; throw out unnecessary pages; extract at least a dozen letters urging me to get a smart meter; watch piles grow; start new pile for 'one-off letter from mobile phone company'; work down original pile through 2024, ah 2023, oh also 2022, blimey also 2021, sheesh also 2020; realise I haven't attacked this paperwork since the start of lockdown and this is why it's now such a massive task ✔ add sorted paperwork to appropriate files in filing cabinet; remove once-essential now non-essential paperwork from files; close filing cabinet with a feeling of job well done, only took three hours; stare admiringly at empty space on bedroom table ✔ pile of discarded paperwork weighs 3½kg, hell yes
Evening (this feels odd, I should be writing something for tomorrow but I am instead crosslegged on the floor sorting stuff)
✔ take pile of leaflets from places I have visited and sort geographically; bin plenty; realise this pile also goes back five years (although the 2020/2021 contribution is small for pandemic reasons); multitask sorting while watching TV ✔ add remaining leaflets to appropriate shoeboxes with relevant regional label; split 'Midlands' box into 'West Midlands' and 'East Midlands'; stack shoeboxes away ✔ flick through my 'to do' shoebox to see if there's anywhere interesting I could go tomorrow
Just before ten o'clock yesterday morning I positioned myself on the river wall at North Woolwich and waited. I'd been tipped off by the Ian Visits website that a flypast was due, specifically that it'd be overflying Valentines Park (09:59) Woolwich Barracks (10:00) and Petts Wood (10:01). They're pretty precise, these Civil Aviation Authority Notices to Airmen. So precise that I was able to draw a line between the points, spot it crossed the Thames by the Woolwich Ferry and try to stand underneath. I got very close.
It's a bit strange hanging around by a queue for a car ferry in the middle of the morning, especially when nobody else nearby is expecting what's about to happen. Dogwalkers trotted over the river defences, residents of the local block of flats slinked home and two boats docked very slowly at their respective piers. There was still every possibility that rain, wind or low cloud might see the flypast cancelled. At 9:59am nothing had happened, 30 seconds later still bugger all, but at 09:59:35 a smoking formation suddenly appeared from behind the flats and the flypast was on.
I'm not sure if anyone else looked up, I wasn't looking at them, I was staring at the sky. Those on the ferry were probably preoccupied with boarding, those waiting in their cars were obscured by a whopping concrete wall and those out shopping in Woolwich would have had too many buildings in the way. A good thing about being this close to the action was that the pilots had just fired up their coloured smoke so the streams changed from white to red/blue within my field of view. Another good thing about being this close to the action was that all nine trails were distinct and separate in an almost-perfect V.
The aerial spectacle zoomed across the river all too quickly, targeting whatever outdoor event at Woolwich Barracks had merited the costly display. The Armed Forces aren't above spending money to entertain themselves. I see I only managed to take eight photos over the course of what turned out to be nineteen seconds, swivelling round midway to focus on Woolwich rather than the sky. And as the smoke trails slowly dissipated and the estuary went back to normal, the usual scream of planes taking off from City Airport eventually returned. These moments of awe and wonder are rare in any one given location, and to take full advantage it pays to know they're coming.
Yesterday TfL launched a consultation for the introduction of the next Superloop route, the SL13, which will run between Ealing and Hendon via the North Circular.
It's an express bus so it'll be great. It'll link up with existing transport connections and local centres so it'll be great. It'll create a fast orbital connection no train provides so it'll be great. But it'll also affect two bus existing routes, both negatively, including a deliberately unnecessary shafting of Ruislip.
» One end of the SL13 will be at Ealing Broadway station and the other at Hendon War Memorial.
» The War Memorial bit is ignorable, the terminus is essentially Hendon Central station but the bus has to turn round somewhere.
» The SL13 is essentially an express version of route 112 (with the Finchley end lopped off)
» The SL13 will link two existing Superloop routes - the SL8 and SL10.
» The SL13 will be the first all-zone-3 Superloop route (the original orbitals were generally 4/5) Verdict: great
» The single-decker 112 will be shadowed by the new faster SL13, both running at a 12-minute frequency.
» This is a reduction in frequency for the 112, down from every 10 minutes, so if you use any of the intermediate stops you're about to get a worse service. Verdict: expected
...and that would be all were it not for a lack of parking space.
» A lot of bus routes terminate around Haven Green outside Ealing Broadway station and there isn't room for another. This means one of them has to be booted out to make way for the SL13. Sorry Ruislip.
» TfL have chosen to boot out the E7, a route which runs through Greenford to Ruislip. Sorry Ruislip.
» The E7 will therefore be continuing three more stops along the Uxbridge Road, not quite as far as Ealing Common station, so buses can park and turn round. This will take a few minutes longer. Sorry Ruislip.
» The E7 is operated by 11 vehicles. To cope with the extended journey time TfL could pay for another vehicle or they could cut the route's frequency. Because they're skint, they've chosen to cut the route's frequency. Sorry Ruislip.
» The E7 will now run every 15 minutes rather than every 12 minutes, purely to save money. Sorry Ruislip.
» For three miles between the White Hart Roundabout and Ruislip the E7 is the sole bus route, but local residents of these outer suburbs will now see fewer buses. Sorry Ruislip.
» The SL13 and E7 will not overlap anywhere along their routes, but the introduction of one is screwing the other. Sorry Ruislip. Verdict: unnecessarily poor (sorry Ruislip)
If all goes to plan the SL13 will be introduced in Autumn next year.
For a laugh, here's how all-over-the-place the numbering of the Superloop routes now is.
» TfL have also just published the results of their consultation on Superloop route SL12. This will be introduced next year between Gants Hill and Rainham Ferry Lane. Only one significant change has been agreed, that buses will additionally stop at Rainham Tesco, which is so fundamentally sensible that it should have been part of the original plans. Like I said back in March, "if they don't add an additional stop at Rainham Tesco that would be lunacy".
» The SL11 (North Greenwich - Abbey Wood) is due to start in January.
» The BL1 'Bakerloop' (Waterloo - Lewisham) will be introduced on 27th September.
» Consultations for the SL14 (Stratford - Chingford Hatch) and SL15 (Clapham Junction - Eltham) are expected in the next few months.
What do you do if your town centre has no decent area of public space? In Hammersmith they solved the problem by closing a road and paving it over, creating a rectangular wedge of public realm that hosts markets, air filtration and al fresco eggs Benedict. It's called Lyric Square and it used to be the southern end of Hammersmith Grove, a road which now stops early and filters into the one-way system.
Background: In 2000 Hammersmith and Fulham council launched a competition to create a new £750,000 public square on a closed section of highway, just round the corner from the Circle line terminus. 50 applications were received and the winners were a practice with the dangerously unappealing name of Gross Max Landscape Architects. Lyric Square opened to the public in May 2005 and won the Civic Trust Hard Landscaping Award in 2006. It looks considerably less dazzling 20 years later with the fountains turned off.
The square is a broad paved stripe with geometric designs underfoot, most notably a large central circle with a dark outer rim and three sets of drains where the water feature used to be. One reason it's switched off must be cost, but another is that the circulation space to either side has been invaded by patches of outdoor dining forcing everyone else to walk through the middle. Eight stone cubes provide an unappealing place to perch in what used to be the wet bit, so the best place to sit is a bench around a strange ribbed wooden tower to one side. This is a CityTree, a moss-filled tower which supposedly absorbs polluted air and blows out fresh, which may be worth knowing about should you own a patch of public realm in need of livening up with an eco-gizmo.
Background: The Lyric Theatre wasn't always here, it used to be just round the corner in Bradmore Grove. Opened as the Lyric Opera House it was repeatedly enlarged through the 1890s and had a dazzling Rococo auditorium designed by the incomparable Frank Matcham. Demolition was ordered in the 1960s, despite a public inquiry, but the auditorium was thankfully saved and rebuilt on the current site behind a jarringly modern facade. The entrance was redesigned when Lyric Square opened, including a new cafe at street level.
The cafe currently goes by the name Outsider Tart, but they don't open on Sundays so I can't rate their peanut butter chocolate fudge and M&M’s cookies. I can tell you that Dracula opens tomorrow, a feminist retelling taking to the stage before the theatre stages a 130th birthday singalong gala night next month, then it's Jack and the Beanstalk for Christmas. Outside theatre hours the buzz on the piazza comes from the constant wash of shoppers passing through, also the outdoor seating at Pret A Manger, also the beery tables at the inevitable Wetherspoon which is called The William Morris.
Background: Designer anarchist William Morris is claimed by many London boroughs, but Hammersmith has a strong claim because he lived on the Thames waterfront from 1878 until his death in 1896. A stripe of sunken letters embedded in the pavement outside Pret says "William Morris spoke in this square", which surprised me because the square didn't exist while he was alive, but apparently his diary records an open-air meeting on this site in February 1887. "This audience characteristic of small open air meetings quite mixed, from labourers on their Sunday lounge to ‘respectable’ people coming from church; the latter inclined to grin, the working men listening attentively trying to understand, but mostly failing to do so: a fair cheer when I ended." I doubt Wetherspoons would be William's pub of choice.
To see Lyric Square at its busiest come on Wednesday for the market, or Thursday/Friday for the food market, which again I didn't. The local BID team also run events to chivvy footfall for town centre businesses, anything from big screen films to sponsored yoga, and I assume the enormous #HAMMERSMITH plonked at the northern end of the square is their idea of good branding. Even when the piazza's quiet it's still plainly a better use of space than the original road, so the lesson here is that you can always conjure up a decent bit of public realm if you're not afraid of inconveniencing a few drivers.
I was at Ponders End station last week when I noticed something odd.
You can't get a train to the next station down the line.
The next station is Meridian Water, which opened in 2019 as a replacement for Angel Road.
It gets trains every 30 minutes during the day.
Ponders End also gets trains every 30 minutes during the day.
But none of those trains stop at both stations.
These neighbours aren't directly connected.
Trains serving Ponders End run on the Hertford East line.
Heading north they stop at the next station, Brimsdown, then every station to Hertford East.
But heading south the next stop is Tottenham Hale, skipping Meridian Water and Northumberland Park.
You can go one station north to Brimsdown, but you can't go one station south to Meridian Water.
The issue is that Meridian Water is the terminus for trains from Stratford, so they don't continue north.
Additional trains do stop here during the peaks, but then don't stop again until they've left London.
Meridian Water to Ponders End just isn't doable, not without changing trains.
Technically, if you get up really early two trains do stop at Ponders End then Meridian Water.
Brimsdown 0552 0608
Ponders End 0554 0610
Meridian Water 0557 0613
But that is the entirety of all the connections each weekday.
Two very early trains from Ponders End to Meridian Water.
And no trains whatsoever from Meridian Water to Ponders End.
I wondered, does this happen anywhere else in London?
» Sudbury Hill Harrow and Sudbury & Harrow Road are potential candidates. However that's because Sudbury & Harrow Road only gets four trains a day, and all four northbound trains do in fact stop at both stations.
» In early versions of the TfL Rail timetable no trains stopped at both Acton Main Line and Hanwell. However they fixed that later, also these two stations aren't adjacent so it never counted anyway.
» We're looking for skippy timetables on lines that don't have 'all stations' stopping trains, and I can't think of any others.
And I wondered does this happen anywhere else in the UK?
In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Purfleet, one stop beyond Rainham on c2c trains to Grays. Officially the town is Purfleet-on-Thames, and has been since 2020 when Thurrock councillors got unanimously overexcited, hoping they'd become a "destination of choice". This will never happen, as any visit to the estuarineoutpost will confirm, but there are occasional bright spots amongst the patchwork of grey.
Purfleet hugs the Thames at the mouth of the river Mardyke, its historic core atop a chalky hump that minimised the risk of flooding. In the 18th century the navy decided it was an ideal place to store their gunpowder, not least because no other settlements were within exploding distance across the marshes. The Royal Gunpowder Magazine was established here, of which Magazine number 5 survives beside the promenade, since transformed into the Purfleet Garrison Heritage and Military Centre. It only opens Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays so I still haven't been inside, but I got some idea from the row of a dozen silhouetted soldiers looiking down from the promenade, also the Gurkha war memorial alongside which manages to look both enormously respectful and like it was supplied by a corner shop that sells trophies.
The rest of the barracks is long gone, bar a rather splendid gatehouse that now graces the start of a cul-de-sac of bungalows. The site is now a postwar housing estate with a Costcutter at its heart, while the quarry opposite is now a separate whorl of roads with stacked flats and a single point of access. As London commuter boltholes go, it's on the cheaper side. Behind all this is Tank Hill Road, a surprising climb with an enormous fence along one side screening a sheer drop over chalk cliffs and a view of gabled roofs, treetops and Kent. Tank Lane continues high above the railway, the sole connection to an entirely separate chunk of Purfleet cut off behind the bypass. Here lurks the CircusTavern, long-time venue of the PDC World Darts Championship (1994-2007), a building with all the outdated allure of an Essex car showroom.
For natural delights find the footbridge across the mouth of the Mardyke, now bedecked with a concrete hoop bearing a million year timeline of the local area inscribed on the inside. I'm not sure I would have included "1950 - Purfleet identified as a possible Cold War A-Bomb target by the Ministry of Food" amongst the chronological highlights. The bridge leads to Rainham Marshes and a long sea wall where local residents exercise their thuggy dogs. The majority of the marshes is owned by the RSPB whose timber visitor centre stands sentinel at the top of a further ramp. It won architectural prizes in 2006 but looks somewhat shabby today, the interior in particular, because insufficient admissions didn't pay for upkeep. Since 2023 it's been free to get in, if not to park, and a single member of staff oversees the empty viewing platform beside the abandoned cafe.
I went for the full 2½ mile circuit through woodland, across boardwalks and around reedy scrape. Only occasionally does the path nudge up against the water, hence the three hides are the best place to scrutinise various kinds of waterfowl, although I'm pretty sure I spotted a little egret strutting its stuff from just behind the electric fence. At more migratory times of year, the marshes are essentially an airport. At one point you get up close to a fizzy pylon, elsewhere (at Shooting Butts) a former rifle range and nearer the Thames a one-way turnstile used for after hours egress. It is a glorious loop, at its furthest point just 200m from the boundary of Greater London, and an ideal visit for both bird-spotters and train-spotters as High Speed 1 swooshes by on a viaduct along one edge.
Around the world Purfleet may be most famous as the unlikely dwelling place of Count Dracula, who bought a house here midway through chapter 2.
"At Purfleet, on a byroad, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It was surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust. The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass."
Many details are given, alas sufficient to confirm that the house never existed in real life. However it's thought Bram Stoker must have visited, Purfleet being a favoured day-trip for train-going Victorian Londoners who enjoyed climbing Beacon Hill, outdoor bathing and whitebait suppers. None of this is currently available. A green plaque on the High Street installed by Thurrock Heritage claims Carfax was based on Purfleet House, long demolished and replaced by St Stephen's Church, but that's more a big hall and not worth a look either. Across the road The Royal Hotel looks in an even more sorry state, surrounded by scaffolding and with its upper cladding missing, so may no longer be the ideal spot for those completing the final section of the London Loop to celebrate with a beer and a bite.
Purfleet station is a lowly level-crossinged affair along London Road, with a cafe kiosk called Munchspot and a hopper for dispensing Metros to the long-retired. It's planned to be the nexus of a major housing development taking advantage of its capital connections, but unfortunately the developer is bankrupt Thurrock council and the project's stalled embarrassingly at 30 houses rather than 3000. Old graffiti across decaying hoardings tells its own sorry story. The only modern building close by is a red and blocky Harris Academy, whose orange-trimmed students are only permitted three at a time inside the humble general store on Station Terrace. One day more of the near-riverfront may be transformed but for now think brownfield wastes, Esso oil depot and hardstanding to park thousands of imported cars.
The most surprising arrival in modern Purfleet is the Royal Opera House. In 2015 they opened a campus on a ridge facing the river at High House Production Park, the centrepiece being a huge barrel-roofed Production Workshop where sets and scenery are constructed by local craftspeople and creatives. Alongside are a less radical building used to store over 20000 costumes from the ROH repertory and also The Backstage Centre, a studio where film and TV crews can shoot or rehearse. The site is based round a cluster of listed barns and cottages, appropriately adapted, complete with charming walled gardens where you could sit with a coffee had the courtyard cafe not folded. The contrast to the surrounding landscape is extreme - a few interwar cul-de-sacs, a long Edwardian terrace, a vast Tesco Distribution Centre and endless rumbling trucks.
Less than half a mile away is the point where the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge launches across the estuary, its companion tunnel starts to burrow underneath and High Speed 1 threads geometrically between the two. This is prime logistics territory, clogged with warehouses, terminals and other pedestrian-hostile locations, but also no longer technically Purfleet, more West Thurrock. It's also unarguably closer to Chafford Hundred station which is Two Stops Beyond, so I can end my description here and perhaps just recommend the bird reserve instead.
It used to be more seen, more read, more shared, more commented, more searched, more linked, more noticed, more quoted, more known, more relevant. Arguably it used to be more influential, although I mean that in a purely relative sense. And now it's not.
This blog has peaked.
It was on the up for a very long time, right from that very first day in 2002. It didn't take long to get recognised, the blogosphere being a more supportive place in those days, and gradually more and more people became aware of diamond geezer. Since then it's been a mostly upward journey, gaining readers and recognition year on year, and also a growing band of commenters ready to share their thoughts and anecdotes on the matter in hand. I've long been impressed that this blog continues to generate readership and reaction when the wider general direction of travel is decay and silence.
2003 - 250 visitors a day, 3000 comments a year
2008 - 1000 7000
2013 - 1800 8000
2018 - 2400 11000
2023 - 2600 10000
But things aren't as upward as they used to be, not across the board, with indications that numbers are on the turn and people aren't dropping by as often as they did. Then those that do turn up aren't saying as much, and others who might have directed readers in this direction simply aren't there any more. This isn't a complaint, more an observation, a sense that long-form text-based bloggage has had its day and I'm doing well to have retained the interest I still have. Thanks for still being here.
According to my stats packages 2024 was the best year ever for visitors to this blog but 2025 hasn't been as good. Numbers have been in decline since the start of the year, and even the usual post-summer pick-up hasn't happened. Nothing terminal, indeed still frankly miraculous figures by 2015 standards, but a noticeable downward trend all the same. Also I suspect a lot of the supposed increase in recent years has just been bots, crawlers and AI-feeders dropping by to harvest data, and if they're excluded the decline probably started earlier and digs deeper.
Another reason readership is down is that referrals are down. Time was when I'd check the data and think "oh that's nice, I see X has linked to my post on Y". But this hardly happens any more, maybe two or three times a month, and if it wasn't for Ian Visits kindly including me in his weekly rail news round-up it'd be even less. My post on ticket offices brought a fair few extra folk here this week, but I wrote far better stuff than that which only already-regular readers will have noticed. The blogosphere/Substack universe is much smaller than it used to be, and most of what remains is more interested in saying "look at me!" than "look at them".
Jan 2025 - 19,600 clicks from Google
Feb 2025 - 20,200
Mar 2025 - 20,700
Apr 2025 - 18,400
May 2025 - 17,300
Jun 2025 - 16,600
Jul 2025 - 15,800
Aug 2025 - 15,000
Search engines no longer nudge as many readers my way as they once did. Google send me a monthly summary of search engine referrals, usually to confirm that "Where to sit on a Crossrail train" and "Free parking" remain my most popular posts. But since the start of the year they've also shown an inexorable decline in Google clicks, down as much as 25% in the space of just six months. I blame the AI summaries that now appear at the top of many results pages, which many people seem all too happy to read without ever scrolling down or clicking through to see if the unhuman text is actually true.
Other social media services have degraded too. My @diamondgzrblog daily tweet used to get 700 views before Elon Musk destroyed Twitter but these days the tumbleweed service barely registers 200 views, and hardly any of them click through anyway. If you're the kindly soul who insists on plugging all my transport posts on Reddit thanks, but hardly anyone notices, let alone comes to read the full story. When writing what I think might be a damned good post I am increasingly aware that only those who already know I exist will ever see it. It's great to have a loyal audience, but I'm only in this privileged position because I got noticed before the mechanism for noticing people collapsed.
Also my audience is increasingly reading the blog on a phone rather than a laptop. Google's monthly summaries always include data on devices used, as pictured above, so for example five years ago desktop readers still outnumbered smartphone users. The pendulum's now swung very much the other way with smartphone usage more than twice as popular, the changeover point having arrived in December 2021. I can't complain because if you look at the actual figures I have more desktop-clickers than I ever used to, it's just that smartphone-clickers have increased four-fold. But when they arrive they find this anachronistic 2002 template that definitely isn't mobile-friendly, and I do wonder how many people ever read the post they clicked through to, let alone ever come back.
Dec 2024 - 851 comments
Feb 2025 - 764
Apr 2025 - 760
Jun 2025 - 719
Aug 2025 - 699
Also the number of comments on the blog is on the decline. Engagement varies a lot according to topic, also a tiny quiz can easily boost totals by 50 so don't read too much into the individual ups and downs. But I do sometimes sit here and think "from past experience this'll be a 30-something" and it comes in nearer 20, or "people are bound to have comments today" and it limps in at 5. For example my Beachy Head write-ups normally average 16 comments on the first day, based on data from the last ten years, but this year we're down to 12.
There are bloggers out there who'd be thrilled to get 70 comments in a year, let alone 700 in a month, so I'm not complaining about my reduced engagement. But something is discouraging readers from leaving comments as often as they used to, and there may be several factors involved. It might be that the conversation's moved on and now takes place on social media. It might be that bespoke pop-up boxes are too fiddly for my new majority of smartphone readers. It might be that people are reticent to leave a comment for fear of what the reaction might be. It might be I'm writing less interesting subject matter. It might be that commenting is something older people do and I'm not refreshing my audience with younger readers. It might be all sorts of things but it is definitely a thing, whyever it may be.
It remains amazing that a blog started in an idle moment on a Sunday afternoon in 2002 still has readers, engagement and a reputation. I have to be fair put a lot of effort into it, but I've always been fundamentally reassured that more people were discovering it with every passing year. Now it seems the direction of travel is gently downward, thankfully from a high level but downward all the same, and will likely continue that way in the coming years. I have no intention of stopping writing just because not quite so many people are reading or leaving comments, but it's increasingly clear that not quite so many are.
Every two years I walk the best walk in southeast England, which is over the Seven Sisters and across the top of Beachy Head. I did it again yesterday.
This is the tenth time I've done the walk, so exhilarating do I find it. If you've never been, there are several moments where the landscape opens up and you think "seriously? wow!" before striding on across the chalky switchback. If you've never been I also haven't been doing my job properly, because if you're physically able you really should have walked it by now. Look how amazing it is. [14 photos]
This time I walked west to east, starting by the River Cuckmere in Exceat and finishing at Eastbourne Pier. This involves catching the ever-so frequent Coaster bus out and then walking ten miles back. It also means I kept up my record of never walking the same stretch in the same direction as I did last time.
One day I'll start at Seaford again and walk the full six hours, but Seaford actually works better as the end of the extended walk because if you're knackered you can always bail at Exceat and catch the bus.
There's no point describing the walk again, not on my tenth pass, but here are some things that were different this time.
Cuckmere
• At my favourite meander, a professional team had turned up to do a photoshoot involving a huge white flapping bedsheet.
• In the field above my favourite meander, a sign on the gate said "BEEF BULL IN FIELD for natural fertilisation of cows". I braved ahead, and thankfully the field was full of sheep instead.
• I was intending to count how many people were going the other way, but the South Coast Ultra Challenge was in full effect and its 2000 competitors would have skewed the statistics somewhat.
• These athletes were sleek breathing machines with sturdy calves, many with walking poles. I was well impressed even before I discovered they were walking/jogging from Eastbourne to Arundel over the course of the weekend, perhaps all 100km in 24 hours.
Seven Sisters(n.b. there are of course eight)
• This section is seriously undulating, thus the most challenging section of the entire walk. Heading west to east the worst climbs are definitely number three and number seven.
• Some favourite sights: a biplane, the shadows of a flock of seagulls skimming across the grassland, the dazzlingwhiteness of exposed chalk, the foundations of a long-vanished hut, hot twins, rabbitholes, milky waves far below.
• The Ultra Challenge crew were keeping well away from the edge, leaving the grassier strip closer to the sheer drop for those of us who didn't want to plough the muscle motorway.
• Underneath hump seven is a very obvious cave, not that I've ever walked along the pebbly beach to see it.
• What I did count this time was how long it took to walk between each of the eight peaks. It always amazes me that it only takes an hour:
Haven Brow (→8min→) Short Brow (→10min→) Rough Brow (→5min→) Brass Point (→10min→) Flagstaff Point (→4min→) Flat Hill (→7min→) Baily's Hill (→8min→) Went Hill Brow
Birling Gap/Belle Tout
• If you arrive just after high tide the beach is a) small b) mostly empty
• A heck of a lot of people merely drive to the car park, walk a fraction of the way up to the lighthouse and then take lots of group selfies with the Seven Sisters behind them.
• Standing here you would definitely count seven humps, not eight, because two of the distant ones fold into one another at this distance.
• Inflation check: Since 2023 the price of a 99 at the Birling Gap ice cream van has increased from £3 to £4, while the price of a Magnum at the Belle Tout kiosk has only risen from £2.60 to £3.
• From here on it's got a lot more safety-conscious since my last visit. The cliff edge is now almost entirely roped off all the way from Birling Gap to Beachy Head.
Beachy Head
• Mass trespass across the rope occurs at certain key points, especially those with a perfect view of the stripy lighthouse. A small chalk platform where I've stood for a great shot on nine previous occasions is now mostly out of bounds.
• The stupidest leg-danglers were the couple sitting on the edge with their dog wandering about on a long lead. "Tugged over the edge by a falling sausage dog" would be a particularly daft way to die.
• I spotted a BT inspection cover and a padlocked access hatch in the grass approximately above where I believe the offshore lighthouse to be.
• One of the kitesurfers by the triangulation point had his left leg in a serious metal brace, which didn't exactly inspire confidence.
Eastbourne
• One joy of walking west to east is that the last hour from Beachy Head to Eastbourne pier is all downhill then all flat.
• It's Steampunk weekend in Eastbourne which meant a lot of feathered goggled folk on the Wishtower Slopes quaffing beer, listening to guitar music and being served tea and biscuits by a lady with a castle on her head.
• The nudist beach by the bandstand ("no clothes or cameras") was vaguely delimited but seemingly empty.
• The chip shop at the start of the pier has closed, ditto The Grill opposite.
• I was back at the station five hours after I arrived... and will be back again in 2027.
It's looking very likely that a four-day tube strike will start on Monday, with disruption rippling into Sunday and Friday morning. The DLR is also pencilled in for two days of concurrent disruption.
Sunday on the tube is "limited services running, complete your journey by 6pm"
Monday-Thursday on the tube is "little to no service running"
Friday on the tube is "no service before 8am, normal by late morning"
These strikes normally get cancelled.
But if this doesn't, it's going to be pretty bad.
Last time this nearly happened, in July 2023, I wrote a post about the worst places to live during a tube strike. If your local tube station closes, who has furthest to go to find an alternative train?
Specifically I asked "which tube stations are furthest away from a non-tube station?" And I made this map.
grey is 'over 1 mile from a non-tube station', yellow over 1½, orange over 2, red over 2½, purple over 4
Only one tube station in zone 1 is more than a mile from a non-tube station and that's South Kensington (1.1 miles from Victoria). In zone 2 there are three - North Greenwich (1.3 miles from Westcombe Park), Stamford Brook (1.2 miles from South Acton) and Ravenscourt Park (1.1 miles from Shepherd's Bush). Zone 3 has eight such stations - Park Royal and Hanger Lane to the west, Neasden, Dollis Hill, Golders Green, Highgate and East Finchley to the north, and Upton Park to the east. Of these East Finchley is by far the remotest, being 2.1 miles from Alexandra Palace.
Heading further out, twelve tube stations are over 2 miles from a non-tube station:
By far the worst place to be during a tube strike is the eastern end of the Central line. No railways compete with the tube in the slice of Outer London between the Weaver line and Crossrail, the Central line having swallowed up the only railway that ever did. Six tube stations here find themselves more than 2½ miles from a rail station, although of these only Hainault is in London and the other five are in Essex. And the really bad places to be are Theydon Bois and Epping because TfL don't run any buses here, only trains, so with only an Oyster card you're completely cut off.
If the DLR isn't running either, then 11 stations are suddenly over a mile from a non-tube/DLR station.
• Devons Road, Bow Church, Bow Road (bugger)
• Mudchute, Island Gardens
• City Airport, King George V, Beckton Park, Cyprus, Gallions Reach, Beckton
Crossrail and the Overground are going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting over the next week, assuming these strikes go ahead, which alas it seems they will.
There are several out-of-date signs around the tube network, but few this prominent. It's above the entrance to the Waterloo & City line at Waterloo station, at the foot of the ramp just before the platform. And it's been wrong for years.
Waterloo and City line ↓
open until 00:30 Monday-Saturday, closed on Sundays
But the Waterloo & City line is closed on Saturdays and has been since 2020. The change was originally pandemic-related, mothballing the entire line for fifteen months, but when it reopened in June2021 there continued to be no trains at weekends. TfL have never expressed an interest in reintroducing Saturday opening, citing data showing that passenger numbers were only ever one-sixth of a normal weekday. But they've never got round to updating the sign at the platform entrance, nor indeed the identical message above a passageway leading from the mainline station.
It should say...
Waterloo and City line ↓
open until 00:30 Monday-Friday, closed at weekends
It wouldn't take much doing, the bottom line is already just a sticker, I believe added when the line had its hours extended to half past midnight in 2013. But instead misleading information has been on display to passengers since June 2021, i.e. more than four years, until someone in the signage department finally notices and does something about it. Which may be soon or may be never.
I don't feel old now I've hit 60, but when I step out onto the street most people do seem to be a lot younger. It doesn't worry me, but I wondered if there was a way to quantify all this.
So I've dug into a population spreadsheet published by the Office for National Statistics to see how relatively old I really am. They publish it every summer so I'm using the latest data, specifically the "mid-2024" estimates of population. These give a precise estimate for the number of people at each age from 0 to 89, then conclude with an amalgamated 90+ column. So for example last summer there were 691,406 21 year-olds in England, 8230 47 year-olds in Leicestershire and 681 86 year-olds in Milton Keynes.
The median age in England was 40.2, i.e. half the population are younger and half are older. If you've passed the age of 40 you are already in the older half of the population. But the most common age in England wasn't 40, it was 33. There were 833,482 33 year-olds in England last summer, marginally ahead of the 34 year-olds and 36-olds, so if you fancy setting up a greetings card company that's where you should focus your efforts.
To investigate this in more depth let's split England's population into ten equal groups, each containing approximately 6 million people. What ages make up each 10% of the population? That's the ages of the youngest 10% of residents, the next 10%, and so on up to the oldest 10%. The figures are for mid-2024 but should still be pretty accurate today. I've highlighted the group I'm in, but you should look down and see which decile you end up in.
England
Age range
Youngest 10%
0-8
11-20%
9-16
21-30%
17-25
31-40%
26-32
41-50%
33-39
51-60%
40-47
61-70%
48-55
71-80%
56-63
81-90%
64-73
Oldest 10%
74-100+
Children occupy the top two slots, i.e. 0-16 year-olds make up the youngest 20% of the country. Pensioners occupy the bottom two slots, near enough, i.e. those aged 64 and over make up the oldest 20% of the country. I'm in the group just above that along with rest of the 1960s baby boom (we're about three-quarters of the way along the English population pyramid). Approximately speaking each 10% band comprises eight years of births, extending somewhat at the oldest end.
I'm encouraged to see I'm not yet in one of the two oldest groups - 60 is not old for England. But if I narrow things down and look closer to home, outcomes change somewhat.
Here's the split for the population of London. Where are you in this one?
London
Age range
Youngest 10%
0-8
11-20%
9-16
21-30%
17-24
31-40%
25-29
41-50%
30-35
51-60%
36-41
61-70%
42-48
71-80%
49-57
81-90%
58-67
Oldest 10%
68-100+
The big difference isn't amongst the youngest - London has as many 0-16 year-olds as the rest of England. The big difference is amongst young adults because the population suddenly bulges for those in their 20s and 30s. A full 40% of London's population are under 30 and half are under 35. The central groups here comprise only five or six different ages, not seven or eight.
Meanwhile the older groups are considerably broader because there are proportionately fewer Londoners over 50. The 70% group ends at age 48, not 55, and as a 60 year-old I now find myself in the penultimate group. More to the point you only have to be over 67 to be amongst the oldest 10% of Londoners! This is one reason why services for pensioners cost less to provide in the capital than across England overall.
What's happening here is a lot of people moving to London in their 20s and 30s, either from the provinces or abroad, mainly for work, and a lot of people moving away later in life, either to realise property assets or to escape rising rents. We also have a lot of students and they skew things lower too. London really is a younger city than the rest of the country.
It turns out I also live in the youngest borough in London, which is Tower Hamlets.
Tower Hamlets
Age range
Youngest 10%
0-9
11-20%
10-18
21-30%
19-23
31-40%
24-26
41-50%
27-30
51-60%
31-34
61-70%
35-39
71-80%
40-46
81-90%
47-57
Oldest 10%
58-100+
The extraordinary thing here is the young adult bulge, which squeezes out both the younger and older ends of the population. Tower Hamlets actually has proportionally fewer children than the rest of the country, whatever you might have assumed about the offspring of a foreign-born population. It's also very very light on older people, indeed only 5% of the population are of pensionable age. No wonder our council has still money to spend - local demands for social care are way below average.
It's incredible to see an age band comprising just three year groups - our 24, 25 and 26 year-olds form a tenth of the population all by themselves. It's also incredible to see that half of Tower Hamlets' population is 30 or under, indeed over a quarter of the borough is in their 20s. The most popular age in Tower Hamlets turns out to be 27, indeed there are three times as many 27 year-olds as 50 year-olds because the population here peaks early.
But what I find really chastening is that at the relatively young age of 60 I find myself in the oldest 10% of the population in Tower Hamlets. I'm not imagining it, I really am quite old for the place where I live.
At the other end of the scale, I've also the looked at the data for the 'oldest' English county, which is Dorset, and the 'oldest' English district, which is North Norfolk.
Median age in Tower Hamlets: 31 Median age in London: 36 Median age in England: 40 Median age in Dorset: 52 Median age in North Norfolk: 56
So skewed is the population of Dorset that if you're 52, half the population are older than you. North Norfolk is even more retirement-friendly, you can be 55 there and still in the younger half of the population.
As for the point at which you enter the oldest quarter of the population, this varies considerably according to where you live. In Tower Hamlets the "oldest quarter" borderline is 43, in London it's 53, in England it's 59, in Dorset it's 68 and in North Norfolk it's 70. If you want to feel relatively young, move to Cromer.
As a final comparison, imagine being 60 in all these places - which of the ten age bands would you fit into?
Tower Hamlets
London
England
Dorset
North Norfolk
Youngest 10%
11-20%
21-30%
31-40%
41-50%
51-60%
56-61
61-70%
59-64
71-80%
56-63
81-90%
58-67
Oldest 10%
58+
So there you go, at 60 I'm not especially old by national standards, and I shall cling to that thought for a few more years. But I am old for where I live and I shall have to get used to that. Maybe someone'll even offer me a seat on the tube this morning.
It's not every day this blog gets to celebrate an 1100th anniversary, this because not a great deal happened in the London area on verifiable dates in the 10th century. It's also not every day I get to use the Old English character Æ twenty-two times in a blogpost.
But today is the exception. Because today is the 1100th anniversary of King Æthelstan being crowned in Kingston, supposedly just round the back of Pret A Manger.
(that's not Pret A Manager, sorry, that's Kingston Market Place)
King Æthelstan is often credited as being the first King of England. He wasn't in 925 AD because England didn't yet exist, but it would two years later after Æthelstan brought together the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia. But the proud country that now ties red crosses to lampposts has its origins on 4th September 925 when the Archbishop of Canterbury placed a crown atop Æthelstan's head, not a helmet as had been the case for all his predecessors.
Æthelstan was the grandson of Alfred the Great, which is impressive stuff as royal pedigrees go, and was born some time in the mid 890s, prior to the invention of birth certificates. His father was Edward the Elder, a ruler of Wessex who during his reign successfully took over Mercia, thereby gaining control of most of the land south of the Humber. Edward died in July 924, at which point the people of Wessex adopted his son Ælfweard as king whereas Mercia chose Æthelstan. But Ælfweard died just twelve days later (suspicious, what?), after which the people of Wessex moved to embrace Æthelstan too.
(that's not a recent photo, sorry, it has Charles III coronation bunting on it)
Kingston was the perfect location for Æthelstan's coronation because it was on the boundary between the two kingdoms, technically in Wessex but within wading distance of Mercia across the Thames. It was also where his father Edward had been crowned 25 years earlier, setting a precedent that would eventually see seven Saxon Kings crowned in Kingston. Only Westminster Abbey has seen more coronations, because once that was built no monarch was ever going back to riverside Kingston again. Æthelstan was the first to decree that Kingston was a royal town, and this is why Kingston upon Thames is now one of London's three royal boroughs.
The Coronation Stone in Kingston is a sarsen chunk atop a heptagonal stone base surrounded by ornate iron railings. This is not how Æthelstan would have known it - the railings are Victorian and the base includes the names of monarchs not yet born in 925. Legend says that kings sat or knelt on the stone at time of coronation, but legend also says that the coronation took place in the marketplace and was followed by a service inside a wooden Saxon chapel alongside. There's no collaborating evidence that the sarsen stone was present, only that it was retrieved from the ruins of the chapel after it collapsed in 1730, and its royal heritage may simply be supposition by 18th century historians.
(that's not a recent photo either, sorry, the stone's been scrubbed up since 2010)
The Coronation Stone sits in pride of place outside the town hall on the High Street, which is absolutely not where Æthelstan's coronation took place. It was moved here from the Garden of Rest in Church Street in 1936, a far more proximate location, although that was only temporary while building works on the Guildhall were completed. From 1850 to 1935 it had sat in the middle of the High Street, freshly positioned on its heptagonal base by patriotic Victorians looking to capitalise on Kingston's royal past. It had been moved here from an off-road site by the county assizes, prior to which it had been located beside the Elizabethan Market Hall and used as a mounting block, prior to which it had been in a more appropriate location outside All Saints' Church (roughly where the collapsed Saxon chapel had been). Never trust your eyes when it comes to historical locations.
♔ Edward the Elder - 8th June 900
♔ Æthelstan - 4th September 925
♔ Edmund - 940
♔ Edred - 16th August 946
♔ Edwy - January 956
♔ Edward the Martyr - 975
♔ Ethelred The Unready - 14th April 979
The stone base features the names of all seven Saxon kings crowned here, one on each face, with the coronation year in Roman numerals underneath. Æthelstan appears as AÐELSTAN, the "aeth" sound written as að rather than æth for reasons of Old English linguistic nuance. Meanwhile the coronation year appears as DCCCCXXV, whereas these days we'd probably plump for CMXXV rather than go all long-winded. I would show you that in a photograph but I don't have one, despite visiting the stone on several occasions, having seemingly never taken a single photo from the full-on Æthelstan angle.
(this shot's focused on his half-brother Eadmund instead, sorry)
Because look, I haven't been to Kingston to do any research in support of this post, I'm relying on past visits with different foci, be that my random jamjar borough, my walk along London Loop section 8 or a trip to celebrate King Charles's coronation. This is because I wasn't aware of the 1100th anniversary until this afternoon, by which time it was too late to drop everything, cross the capital and take a couple of photos. I choose to blame the Royal Borough of Kingston for not kicking upsufficient fuss that the anniversary was imminent, or else the inexorable decay of London-based websites that used to comprehensively preview What's On in the suburbs. I only noticed when Ian Visits went to see a train.
This morning SWR named a Class 450 train King Athelstan (not Æthelstan because presumably that was deemed too complex). The ceremony at Kingston station involved the historian Tom Holland, the local MP Sir Ed Davey and a group of Saxon reenactors from the Wychwood Warriors. Children from King Athelstan Primary School were also present, wearing cardboard crowns prominently featuring the SWR logo, which is a pretty good way to skive off lessons on only the third day of the new school year. Obviously there were iced cupcakes with an edible picture of the king on top because that's what Æthelstan would have wanted. Ian has all the photos of the event so do go and read that, especially if you prefer railways to history, and to be impressed by how a train company managed to hijack the anniversary and make it all about them on a site that wasn't where the coronation took place either.
(that's just me zooming in on a previous photo, sorry)
Æthelstan had a good start to his reign, unifying the entire country with victory over Northumbria in 927. He was also a wise, learned and pious man, the kind of ideal statesman that a hereditary monarchy delivers all too rarely. Wikipedia has you covered there, assuming your knowledge of Anglo Saxon hegemony isn't up to scratch. The country tottered somewhat after his death in 939 when the people of York plumped for Viking rule instead, but the defeat of Eric Bloodaxe under King Eadred in 954 brought the nation back together and there's been an England ever since.
And it all kicked off in Kingston with the coronation of King Æthelstan 1100 years ago today, not where the Coronation Stone is and definitely not at the railway station.
