REGENT STREET Colour group: green Purchase price: £300 Rent: £26 Length: 1300m Borough:Westminster Postcode: W1/SW1
Welcome the fourth and final side of the Monopoly board. Regent Street is one of the board's younger streets and a rarity for central London in that an architect drew a line across the existing streetscape and said "OK, let's build that". It's unusual in that almost all of it is owned by the King, it being a jewel in the Crown Estate. It's always been showy, much like the Prince Regent was, hence the cohesive facade of Portland stone as it sweeps along the divide between Mayfair and Soho. And these days it brims over with posh brands and flagship stores, proudly promoting itself as "London's distinctive home of fashion, dining, wellness and lifestyle", so it may be world class but it's also a tad insufferable.
Parliament approved the creation of what was then called New Street in 1813 in "An Act for making a more convenient Communication from Mary le Bone Park and the Northern Parts of the Metropolis to Charing Cross". The architect was John Nash and his vision was a broad straight boulevard to rival anything in Paris, ending at the Prince Regent's new London residence at Carlton House. The alignment of the new road approximated to the line of Swallow Street, thus almost entirely wiping it from the map, but then had to bend on the approach to Piccadilly to ensure it didn't extend into St James's Square. By the time the street was finished in 1825 it actually commemorated a King, and Carlton House was demolished only four years later, but Regent Street still carves its unusual hockeystick-shaped course to this day.
What a lot of people don't realise is that Regent Street doesn't start at Oxford Circus, it starts a few streets north. But not so far north that it reaches All Soul's Church and the BBC, that's Langham Place, the correct extremity being the junction with Mortimer Street. The first shop on the first corner is a Farmer J, the 'fieldtray' lunchtime takeaway chain I blogged about last week, followed swiftly by purveyors of coffee, pastries and a useful branch of Boots the Chemist. Somewhere under the scaffolding is the main campus of the University of Westminster, an esteemed establishment since 1838, but Regent Street's first 200 metres aren't the highbrow home of anything, not unless you want to visit "London's first build-your-own cheese box bar" in which case Brityard has you covered.
Oxford Circus is a Nash creation and was originally known as Regent Circus North. The four quadrant buildings which face it were all replaced after their original 99-year leases expired, as were most of the buildings along Regent Street, hence most of what we see today is closer to 100 than 200 years old. Crossing from one side of Regent Street to the other has got easier since the massive X-shaped pedestrian crossing was opened in 2009, although if you turn up early on a Sunday you can pretty much wander across anyway. The steps down to the tube are topped by digital name panels that say OXFORD CIRCUS STATION for four seconds and then CAUTION FLOOR AND STEPS MAY BE SLIPPERY WHEN WET for seven seconds, even on days when no rain is forecast, because TfL are risk-averse obsessives.
Now 'proper' Regent Street begins, and also fundamentally changes. We won't be seeing anything as lowly as a Pret again, or indeed any opportunity for budget refreshment, only prestige brands like Omega, Onitsuka, Lacoste, Kiko Milano and Canada Goose. When you're the Crown Estate with power over every lease, you can do this. Top of the pyramid at this end of the street is the Apple Store, Europe's first when it opened in 2004 and since spruced up with the addition of 12 fig trees and (for what's worth) the world's longest luminous ceiling panel. The splendid mosaic armorials out front are because 235 Regent Street was once the London salesroom of the Venice and Murano Glass and Mosaic Company.
Onwards down the Portland Stone canyon. It's often overflown by a squadron of flags for royal events, Pride or whatever, but I managed to slip in during a quiet phase before the Christmas angels are re-installed. The roadway's not as wide as it once was, now with one lane each way repurposed for cyclists, a parking/loading stripe and extended pavements. The edges are also now littered with jagged wooden planters, 325 of them in total, introduced post-pandemic as a part of a self-congratulatory greening project. As for the paved central reservation, it's not meant for walking along but it does offer a particularly fine perspective when traffic is light. Ooh look there's Hamleys.
Britain's best known toy store has its roots in 18th century Holborn, moving to Regent Street in 1881 and changing premises twice before eventually settling here in 1981. Soft toys still dominate on the ground floor, the home of many a tempting staff demo, with Peppa Pig on 1, Barbie on 2, Monopoly on 3, Pokémon on 4 and Lego on 5. As a sign that things have moved on since you were a child, the current window display promotes an interactive plush toy called Daisy the Yoga Goat.
The middle of the street is peak global brand, with Kate Spade/Hugo Boss/Levi's/Reiss/Calvin Klein consecutively on one side and Furla/Hobbs/Barker/Tumi/Camper/Kipling/Belstaff/Churches/Hackett/Lululemon/Bose on the other, almost as if only one-word brand names are permitted. Strange sights I was treated to here included a convoy of revving Lamborghinis, a group of black-clad youth gathering for a fashion pop-up, a window dresser in culottes giving a mannequin's beige dress a tweak and a wide-eyed child about to board their first ever double decker bus. One group of foreign tourists dressed head to toe in Burberry gazed longingly inside its flagship store, having turned up much too early to do some proper shopping, and it struck me that on a Sunday morning Regent Street serves very little purpose.
The curved section is called The Quadrant and should be architect Norman Shaw's masterwork, except his monumental design ran into red tape, ownership issues and the fact that everyone loved his design except the shopkeepers needed to occupy it. After eight years he exasperatedly threw in the towel and Sir Reginald Blomfield took over, further delayed by WW1, and it was another 14 years before the full upscale arc was complete. The axial arcade is now "a world of wellness and self-care". The alleyway between Jo Malone and Hollister leads to all that's left of Swallow Street. Rough sleepers have bedded down in the empty doorway where Uniqlo used to be. A five course meal at Hotel Cafe Royal will set you back £195, plus drinks and tips, although you do get Kaluga Caviar and Brittany Pigeon for your money.
The brand sequence has descended to the levels of Nespresso and Whittards by the time we reach Regent Circus South, or Piccadilly Circus as it's now known. This is the third time the Monopoly board has brought us here, previously via the two yellows of Coventry Street and Piccadilly. Close by are the two oranges of Vine Street and Marlborough Street, one concealed behind the Quadrant, the other bearing off back at Liberty. Also aligned are the green of Oxford Street and then an entire edge of blue Mayfair, which perhaps makes Regent Street the Monopoly-iest property of all. If only it stretched south to pink Pall Mall it really would be full house but alas it stops 100m short.
Here's an oddity. Regent Street also extends three blocks south of Piccadilly Circus, or at least it did for a couple of centuries until 2014 when lower Regent Street was renamed. It's now officially Regent Street St James's, a tweak activated in the hope "that the renamed section of street will turn the area into a distinctive destination in its own right"... and the fact you've likely never heard of it suggests this didn't work. The Crown Estate would point at Osprey, Aspinal and Smeg as evidence of exclusivity, whereas I would point at Tesco Express, Ryman and a Post Office as evidence that perhaps it isn't. Perhaps it'll look nicer once a lot of the current scaffolding comes down. And perhaps best stick to the swish section between the Circuses.
I've been to see some art.
And, unexpectedly, an artist.
Tate Modern
★★★☆☆ Mire Lee: Open Wound (until 16 March)
Time was when a new Turbine Hall commission was big news, but this year's seems to have slipped out last week mostly unheralded. So what have we got? A giant metal motor hanging in mid-air, slowly turning, over which are draped strips of fabric soaked in some manky viscous liquid. This drips gradually into a metal tray underneath, turning a series of fabric skins a mucky shade of brown. These are then laid out to dry before being hung from the ceiling on chains, the idea being that the Turbine Hall gradually fills over the next five months. According to the artist it's an "industrial womb" and also symbolic of systematic decline, which feels particularly appropriate in the setting of a former power station. I like that there's actually something to watch this year, and indeed listen to as the water splashes down, though it won't detain you long. It may well be worth seeing early and then seeing again later once the number of grubby aerial skins has increased. In the 25 year span of Turbine Hall commissions this one's middling, which after a fewrecent duffers is a good thing.
White Cube, Bermondsey
★★★★☆ Tracey Emin: I followed you to the end (until 10 November)
Dame Tracey's latest exhibition is an especially raw outburst of recent work, reflecting emotional and medical trauma in bold impulsive brushstrokes, mostly red. Men have not been good to her, as you can tell from the heartfelt angry scrawl below some of the pieces, and her body has behaved arguably worse. Tracey's sprawled body appears in the majority of the works, usually in one of her trademark beds, generally unclad. Everything's rough enough that intimate body parts are generally only hinted at, that is unless you go into the video room for a 1-minute bleeding loop that bears witness to the aftermath of major surgery. The largest gallery also contains a huge humanoid bronze raised on pained haunches, which like the canvases exudes deep frustrated anguish. Once again Dame Tracey excels in revealing herself, if you're fortunate enough to look.
Serpentine North Gallery
★★★★☆ Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call (until 2 February)
This is utterly refreshingly different - an exhibition of choral singing powered by AI. It's in three sections, all backed up with actual singing sessions recorded at 15 locations across the UK which were used to train the AI model. I'm still a bit mystified by what I heard in the first two chambers, and that's after reading the 24 page glossy booklet twice, but I don't think the AI does any of the singing, only maybe a lot of the composing. It still sounded magnificently cathedral-like echoing around the gallery. The real gamechanger is the third chamber where small groups (not exceeding four) approach a microphone, sing and the AI essentially joins in. It's been a while since I've sung in public so I started out tentatively, then extemporised more boldly, then threw in the Wombling Song to see how it coped. It was hard to hear fully because when I stopped it stopped, but I worry that one day these models won't require further human input and everyone'll love the output anyway. Expect queues at weekends.
Serpentine South Gallery
★★★☆☆ Lauren Halsey: emajendat (until 2 March)
The LA artist invites you to step round an immersive ‘Funk garden’ brimming with iconography you might see in a black urban neighbourhood. It's culturally dazzling, even underfoot, if a bit brief.
White Cube, Mason's Yard
★☆☆☆☆ Danh Vo (until 16 November)
I can't believe I made a special effort to see this. Some boxed statuary ("charged with restless histories"). Some plywood walls ("temporary spatial interventions to shape corridors of light and shadow"). A couple of open suitcases ("wry commentary on value paradigms"). Two floors of mostly empty space ("an exploration of power structures and their influence on both personal and collective identity"). Sometimes you should take the hint from the online spiel and not bother.
Barbican, The Curve
★★☆☆☆
Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum: It Will End In Tears (until 5 January)
I love the idea, which is to present a walkthrough sequence of painted stills from a film noir about a femme fatale. Follow the ramps and walkways round the curve (she arrives!) stepping through various plywood film sets (a knife glints!) and it's up to you to determine what you reckon the plot might be (the jury decides!). I suspect I'd have got more out of it if I'd walked through again.
Nunnery Gallery, Bow Road
★★★★☆ In the footsteps of the East London Group (until 22 December)
The most successful exhibition my local gallery ever put on was a retrospective of works by the East London Group, a working class collective who met in the late 1920s at a Bethnal Green evening class. Now those beloved canvases are back but - here's the twist - accompanied by contemporary streetscapes in approximately parallel locations. A sepia wharf then, the Olympic Park now. A railway bridge then, a graffitied corner now. Some of the newbies like Doreen Fletcher take an appealingly traditional approach (her 2019 retrospective was another local favourite). Others have a penchant for council estates or are more geometrically suspect, but the contrast is always appealing. A particular favourite was Ferha Farooqui's Lost Highway, a depiction of Stratford High Street cleverly combining now and then, lifted from her Disappearing landmarks series. If you do come don't come this Saturday because it's closed for a symposium, but if you like non-faffy art do come.
Newport Street Gallery
★★☆☆☆ Wes Lang: The Black Paintings (until 9 March)
What's on at Damien Hirst's place is an exhibition devoted to the American artist Wes Lang, never previously displayed in this country. They're an acquired taste. The cast of characters is somewhat restrictive, mostly featuring a skeletal noble posing in front of a black background in some kind of fantastical setting, intermittently accompanied by a bluebird and/or bony acolytes. I was thinking voodoo heavy metal album covers but apparently it's more about Taoist positivity. If nothing else the image of a red devil flying off with a church under its wing will remain with me.
Tate Britain
★★☆☆☆ Alvaro Barrington: Grace (until 26 January)
This paean to the artist's Caribbean family lines the centre of the gallery, a little self-indulgently. I skated past the covered benches, took a little longer to wheel round the steel drums and ended up by the corrugated shed. Hang on, I thought, that person admiring the shed looks like Robert who does that art podcast with Russell. And then I clocked the person standing next to him and it was definitely Dame Tracey Emin. I felt somewhat unnerved because this was the very person whose intimate art had affected me a few hours earlier, and here she was admiring other people's work like a normal punter. Her real target was the Turner Prize exhibition nextdoor, an award her My Bed was nominated for 25 years ago, and I hope she and Robert enjoyed it. Once again Dame Tracey excels in revealing herself, if you're fortunate enough to look.
Journalists working at various media portals are under increasing pressure to churn out more and more stories because the more they write the more page views they get. Clickbait isn't going away any time soon. But a trope that's sadly gathering more prominence lately is a willingness to promote sponsored superlatives sent to them in a press release. Here's a sample headline from an article I won't be linking to.
It’s official: England’s best private school is in London
It's Westminster School, apparently. But if you read a bit further it says "the list is by Ivo Education, an education company focusing on tuition, and it ranks schools based not just on A-level results but GCSEs, too." In other words there's nothing official about this, it's just the way a marketing department has chosen to rank some data in the hope that their brand name will be prominently displayed. Reporters under pressure, alas, are often all too happy to oblige.
Here's a worse example.
London’s Most Haunted Borough Has Just Been Revealed – And It’s A Surprising One "The house insurance experts over at Alan Bogwell Group conducted a study to determine which borough is the most haunted. The research was based on paranormal encounter reports, the number of cemeteries and memorials, the amount of vacant properties, and how many houses built before 1918 are in each borough."
There's absolutely no reason why this combination of data should generate a definitive 'most haunted' borough, even if you reckon ghosts exist, and yet someone's crunched the numbers anyway and someone else has dutifully megaphoned this bolx to a wider audience. The top slot's taken by Kensington and Chelsea, if you were wondering.
Here are five more examples of the genre, all from the last month, all of which ridiculously claimed that London was the best at something. It may look like I'm including the name of the company whose tosh is being magnified, but I've changed one letter in every brand name so as not to enhance the SEO.
The world’s most ‘picturesque’ cities, ranked "Printfux, a print-on-demand platform, has conducted a study and crunched the numbers on which cities have garnered the most Instagram hashtags to create a ranking of the world’s most ‘picturesque’ cities. Claiming the top spot? It’s none other than London!"
London Has Been Named The Most Popular Christmas Destination In The World (According To Instagram) "Digital marketing agency Henmessy Digital are well-and-truly ready for Santa Claus to come to town, as they’ve just conducted an entire new study to find out where in the world is the most popular Christmas destination."
London Crowned The Best European City For Travelling On A Budget "The booking portal for holiday homes Holido have conducted a study that crowns London as the free attraction champion of Europe."
London Has Been Crowned The Best City In The World For An Autumn Escape "The travel gurus over at SkiParkSecure have crunched the numbers and found that the gorgeous brown leaves that cover the London parks at this time of year make it the place to be in the months of September – November."
London Has Been Crowned The Pizza Capital Of The UK – With 1,454 Hotspots To Choose From "The study was conducted by Gokney, a premium outdoor oven brand, who investigated the number of pizza joints in the most populated British cities, as well as the number of pizza places rated 4 stars or above, and the average yearly search volume for pizza-related terms."
The pizza one is particularly ridiculous. Whoever would have guessed that the location with the most pizza outlets would be the largest city in the UK? More to the point, which fool turned this obvious outcome into a news story?
Then there's the "something in London is officially excellent" sub-genre.
This London Airport Has Been Named As One Of The Most Instagrammable In The Whole World "Travel website Mrs Tourist have crunched the numbers to determine which airports are the ‘most instagrammable’ in the entire world, and an airport in London is right up there!"
(Heathrow is 3rd)
5 London universities are officially the best in the world for 2025 "Timez Higher Education has released its prestigious list of the best universities in the world for 2025. And it’s got us Londoners feeling pretty smug."
(Imperial College is 9th, UCL 22nd, King’s College 36th, LSE 50th and Queen Mary University 141st)
These Two London Trails Have Been Named Among The Most Scenic Running Routes In The Whole UK "Price-comparison site Ideado crunched the numbers in a new study. They gathered the number of TikTok and Instagram posts that used tags including #trailrunning to gather the most popular scenic running routes around the country."
(Epping Forest Main Path is 5th and the Thames Path 9th)
My very favourite ridiculous claim, from earlier this year, is that London was the 8th best UK city from which to see April's full moon.
"A recent study by Bókup, a travel booking management software provider, looked at the UK’s light pollution to find out which city would be the best place to see the moon in all its radiance. They also considered factors such as elevation (the closer you are, the better your view!), cloud cover, and visibility distance. According to this information, Coventry is the very best place to see the ‘Pink Moon’ in the UK. This is due to the second-best level of light pollution and a relatively high elevation compared to other cities."
Secret London merrily parroted this one, as of course did the Coventry Observer, without ever stopping to realise that the moon is visible from anywhere so nobody's going to travel to see it better. What they should really have done was check the weather forecast, not the light pollution, because that particular night in April was pretty much clouded out.
Another disappointing trend in recent output is the increasing misuse of the word 'soon'.
This iconic London stadium could soon get massively expanded
<click> it's the Emirates Stadium but "it’s very early days"
West London could soon get a massive new live music venue
<click> it's an empty site in Hammersmith without planning permission and "it could be up to a year before the plans become a reality"
Parliament Square could soon be completely pedestrianised
<click> the "bold plan" is "still in its ‘conceptual’ stage"
This abandoned London train line could soon be brought back to life
<click> it's the West London Orbital, and "services could start in the early 2030s"
The Elizabeth line could soon be extended to these two locations
<click> "We don’t know yet whether or when these line extensions will take place, but we’ll update you when we find out."
That's 'soon' meaning anything from 'many years away' to 'as yet unplanned' to 'nobody actually knows'. But seeing the word 'soon' makes everyone click and this delivers optimum shareholder value.
Rest assured all the typical clickbait is still there.
London train strikes October 2024: everything you need to know
<click> "No strikes have been officially called"
And finally, to save you a click, here's the latest festive teasing.
🎄 Oxford Street Have Announced The Dazzling Return Of Their Spectacular Christmas Lights <click> (November 5)
🎄 The switch-on date for Regent Street’s 2024 Christmas lights has been revealed <click> (November 7)
🎄 Here’s the exact date Carnaby Street’s Christmas lights will be turned on for 2024 <click> (November 7)
🎄 Here’s the exact date Covent Garden’s Christmas lights will be turned on for 2024 <click> (November 12)
🎄 Marylebone Village Has Just Announced When Its Dazzling Christmas Lights Will Be Switched On This Year <click> (November 13)
🎄 Leadenhall Market Has Already Announced The Switch-On Date For Its Gorgeous Christmas Lights For 2024 <click> (November 14)
I worry sometimes that my content isn't niche enough. Things to do in Wood End. Roadworks at the Bow Roundabout. A walk along the Burnt Oak Brook. So today I'm going all-out niche in an attempt to dampen interest even further. Welcome to Random Bexley Footpath.
All Outer London boroughs have a Definitive Statement of Public Rights of Way and a Definitive Map, ideally up-to-date and hopefully online. Bexley's offering is particularly straightforward to access, clearly defining the locations of footpaths 1 to 254, so I picked one entirely at random and then went and walked it.
Random Bexley Footpath #7: Byway from Abbey Road to St. Augustine's Road (half a mile from Abbey Wood towards Lower Belvedere)
Typical, all those numbers to choose from and the random number generator chooses 7. On the plus side we've got ourselves a Byway and they're rare in Bexley, even if it does mean watching out for traffic. Promisingly it runs along the edge of Lesnes Abbey Woods, kicking off by the recreation ground a tad beyond the abbey ruins. Aha, what we have here is essentially a service road that slinks round the backs of the gardens on Elstree Gardens for residents' vehicles only, which explains the pushbutton lock on the barrier at the Abbey Wood end. The backs of gardens are not pretty, the fences often shabby, occasionally tumbledown. Only one panel is actually missing, revealing piles of rubbish and a discarded trampoline. Not many properties have garages and even fewer look like they're ever used. It's a bit muddy underfoot but my trainers survive generally unscathed.
And all this time what's been lurking to the right of the byway is Lesnes Abbey Woods. It's right there behind a line of low metal railings, a glorious deciduous wanderland brimming with wildlife and interest. Close by is a parallel path along which dogwalkers and merry families stroll, scrunching underfoot, beneath an intermittently yellowing canopy. But that path's not an official public right of way because the entire wood is roamable, so here I am trapped on the dull side with the backs of sheds and fences that haven't been Cuprinoled recently. A squirrel hops up onto the railings with a stray sweet chestnut between its paws, then hops off into the woods as if to taunt me. The mud eases on the final approach to St Augustine's Road, where the shortcut through the car park is no longer accessible because the pub's been demolished.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #162: 115m from Frognal Avenue to Sidcup Bypass Road A20
On the very southern edge of the borough, this one's a shortcut across paddocks round the back of Queen Mary's Hospital. Except I couldn't find it. I walked the stretch of Frognal Avenue where it ought to start, not far from mental health and the lung clinic, but all I found was unbroken hedgerow. I did find a stile a little further up the lane, at the gates where the owner drives in to feed the horses, but the pole beside it didn't have a footpath sign on top even though it looks like it once did. I then walked the long way round to the dual carriageway on the bypass where the path is supposed to emerge but it didn't - the embankment is too high and the fence unbroken. I was thus unwilling to climb over that stile and wander around a paddock in search of an exit that isn't there, so Footpath 162 went unwalked.
I've since checked a Victorian Ordnance Survey map and it turns out there was originally a very sensible footpath here crossing Scadbury Park towards Chislehurst. But that was cut in 1926 when the Sidcup Bypass opened, and properly severed in 1987 when the nearby roundabout was underpassed, so the runty Bexley end no longer makes any sense. It's not officially 'extinguished' but you can't walk it, and what I think my random number generator has uncovered is a footpath anomaly that's past its use-by date.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #210: 70m from Maylands Drive to Cleve Road
Welcome to Albany Park, the interwar suburb served by a lowly station midway between Sidcup and Bexley. Maylands Drive is on the slopes leading down to Footscray Meadows and part of the Royal Park council estate. Footpath 210 begins beside a house which I suspect keeps a 'Lest we forget' poster in the window all year round. It's a cut-through between back gardens. It's fully paved. It slopes downhill. It has two lampposts. The fence is partly overspilled with ivy. Halfway down is the Maylands Avenue electricity sub-station. Someone's left their brown bin out. Also littering the path are a cardboard box that once held ice cubes, some dog food packaging and a tequila beer wrapper. Number 28's hedge is well looked after. Cycling is not permitted but this is only signed at the Cleve Road end. It only takes a minute to walk it. The nearby church looks like an example of copper-based origami, but this is not on Footpath 210 so I shouldn't mention it.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #155: 275m from York Avenue to Old Farm Avenue
Back to Sidcup again but this time west of the station, which will soon prove important. The first stretch off York Avenue is a gravel track with a separate pavement, right up to a barrier liftable by emergency vehicles only. The big building on the left is a care home with a penchant for advertising itself on multiple adjacent fences. The large greenspace on the right is Sidcup's King George V Playing Field, one of 471 nationwide, and much loved by Bexley young'uns who like an organised kickabout. And then the footpath does something annoyingly interesting, it launches across the railway inside a narrow cage-like footbridge. Crossing from one side to the other feels a bit like walking through an aviary at a poorly maintained zoo.
And when you finally twist down on the far side the houses ahead look like nothing else in the immediate neighbourhood. This is Old Farm Place, the first completed project of BexleyCo, the council's new in-house property development arm, and contains 58 new homes squeezed into a linear site. Normally this might be laudable but in this case they built the houses across half a park, the argument essentially being "well we've got to build some somewhere". This annoyed locals mightily, even after the remaining half of the park was majorly spruced-up. All the new homes have parking spaces, less than half are affordable, and this being Bexley all were marketed as having "access to three motorways". Footpath 155 ends shortly afterwards on an avenue with more traditional, less dense semis.
OK maybe that was too interesting, so I picked another random number and tried again.
Random Bexley Footpath #93: 200m from Parkhill Road to Hurst Road
Hello Old Bexley. Footpath 93 runs just west of St John the Evangelist Church. It starts beside the driveway to the vicarage. Cycling is permitted. The path is initially broad and meandering. Fences outnumber walls. One house's back gate opens onto the path but otherwise there are no intermediate access points. You can see the church but you can't get to it. An electricity substation is located about halfway down. Beyond the substation the path narrows and gets straighter. It emerges between 633 and 635 Hurst Road. 633 has a lot of flint in its walls. Rest assured Footpaths 92 and 94 would have been duller.
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Burnt Oak Brook Mill Hill → Burnt Oak (2 miles)
[Burnt Oak Brook → Silk Stream → Brent → Thames]
London's bountiful supply of unlost rivers continues to provide opportunities for waterside walking if you know where to look. This one flows not far from Edgware and is yet another tributary of the Silk Stream, which is yet another tributary of the Brent. What's unusual about this one is that it spends most of its upper course in pipes and most of its lower course out in the open, which does at least mean proper running water later on. Along the way I can promise you suburban furrows, fancy pastries, municipal daylighting and a direct hit on two stations, one of which is celebrating its centenary later this month.
The Burnt Oak Brook starts on the southern flank of Holcombe Hill, one of the lumpier bits of Mill Hill. Precisely where it starts is a good question, there being at least two feeder streams on the upper slopes, but the first sighting on the ground is a pond in a park called The Mill Field. As recreational spaces go it's quite precipitous so nowhere you'd play football, but the benches along the top path have a decent view across the M1 corridor. The pond is concealed by brambly woodland lower down and isn't currently full enough to spill out along the initial channel, but a thick coil of blue plastic pipe suggests drainage is sometimes a significant issue.
Below the lower field the channel becomes an artificial drain which diverts around the edge of the Chalet Estate, then skirts the grounds of St Joseph's College, a former Roman Catholic seminary. The trainee priests moved out in 2008 and their Gothic pile was used for filming early series of Call The Midwife - the original Nonnatus House! - but it's all luxury retirement flats now. The Middlesex topographer Nick Papadimitriou has christened this particular rill the Mill Stream and has a couple of fine photos of a narrow trickle awash with spring celandine on his website, but it's not so nice in October. Alas I checked on a 150 year-old map and this fork's not on it, only a much straighter stream starting near The Old Forge and running through the fields parallel to Lawrence Street, and this has all the classic hidden river tropes.
At the bottom of The Reddings is a widening stripe of grass called Lawrence Green with an utterly distinct furrow running down the middle. Sit on Joseph Swallow's bench and you can see it really clearly. It's dry these days but a drain cover at the far end, by the dogbins, strongly hints at the continuing passage of underground water.
The next street down is Sunnyfield, a hairpin crescent with an extremely pronounced dip where the Burnt Oak Brook once barrelled through. According to Nick a 14-inch culvert runs between the houses in the bottom's deepest point, so a resident told him, but I only met a Waitrose delivery driver and the postie so was unable to confirm this. By the next street the dented contours remain evident but are less defined, which seems somewhat ironic given this is Uphill Drive but it was actually named after Uphill Farm which once cultivated these brooky slopes.
The first proper view of the Burnt Oak Brook comes at Simmonds Mead Open Space as it spills gently out of a small pipe into an ornamental garden. It then meanders artificially through a wiggly narrow channel and is generally step-across-able, but four teensy footbridges have been provided at strategic locations to make recreational strolling more pleasant. Only one of these currently needs urgent repair. We have the Mill Hill Preservation Society to thank for elevating all this to Village Green status in 2007, and I suspect the special trees commemorating Dennis, Brian, Eileen and Leonard are their doing as well. Then it's all too swiftly back into a pipe because the A1 needs to power through.
We've reached Mill Hill Broadway, the main shopping street, where the Burnt Oak Brook once hugged the southern side. Here today we find a trio of churches, only one of which has been rebuilt to look more like a community centre, and a lot of shops catering for refreshment and grooming needs. Quite the worst name of any business is Joice, where "where joy is a choice", the kind of cafe where if you want hash browns with your cooked breakfast it'll knock the price over £16. From various maps it seems likely that the brook's culvert passes beneath Pizza Express, a frozen yoghurt joint ("where indulgence meets wellness") and the inevitable Gail's bakery before bearing off towards the railway.
Mill Hill Broadway ranks highly in the list of London's fugliest stations, its entrance having been demoted underneath the M1 motorway in the 1960s, and the bus station beneath the carriageways is a proper gloomy turnaround. I stood at the top of the steps and tried to picture the Burnt Oak Brook trickling through, long before the concrete thudded down, but the guy from synagogue security was eyeing me suspiciously so I thought it best to move on. Langley Park, on the other side of the railway, is the last suburban street where the absent stream's indentation can still be seen. But if you make your way across Lyndhurst Park to the dip in the far corner it finally emerges properly from a large pipe, now one metre across, and stays above ground as it wends its way across Burnt Oak.
This is The Meads, a fine example of how interwar planners cleverly incorporated an urban river into a council estate. Two lines of concatenated houses face off across a broad meadow, regularly mown, with the stream in a seemingly natural channel to one side. The banks are deep with greenery, and alas a sprinkling of himalayan balsam, while crabapples bob downstream until trapped by a stray branch or pebbled ripple. Occasionally a road intervenes, then it's back to brambly overhang, reddening shrubbery and even a zigzag meander at one point which I think is a leftover from an old farm pond. Shame about the discarded microwave.
For a couple of hundred metres the Burnt Oak Brook becomes the sole preserve of the Abbotts Road Allotments, a lovingly tended enclave watched over by various flags and two fake flamingos. And then it bursts out into Watling Park, the chief recreational space hereabouts, where it tracks the western edge in an attractive if not overly visible manner. There are thus £1½m-worth of plans to re-align the river, strip back surrounding vegetation, add meanders and bring it further into the park, thereby reducing the flood risk to neighbouring properties.
The largest intervention is the creation of a central wetland area along the alignment of an existing pipe, this currently at the "freshly-dug pools overseen by pristine lifebelts" stage. The fairly grim pergola above the southern outfall is also going, along with umpteen other changes you can read about in detail here, and all should all be finished by the spring.
After that last hurrah the Burnt Oak Brook plunges into one last pipe to duck beneath the lowest point of the shopping parade on Watling Avenue. If you stand at the southeastern tip of the platforms at Burnt Oak tube station (opened 27th October 1924), the Burnt Oak Brook is sluicing under your feet. To see it emerge head behind the shops to Market Lane, where the car repair gangs work, and follow the alleyway at the end to a little-trodden footbridge - voila! The stream's final ten metres pass quietly between trees and a graffitied fence before entering its fluvial parent, the Silk Stream, for a livelier journey down to the Welsh Harp Reservoir.
Four months of major roadworks were supposed to begin at the Bow Roundabout on Monday 30th September. This did not happen. But they are now underway and - spoilers - it's bad news for local road users.
Monday 7th October
The roadworks begin... although all the workmen have done so far is seal off the link road under the eastern end of the flyover, inconveniencing almost nobody. Traffic continues to flow freely.
Tuesday 8th October
Ah, here we go, the cones are out. One lane has been coned off at each of the four entrances to the roundabout and hey presto, queues are building up. The queue on Bow Road stretches almost as far as the DLR station, which is bad. They've also switched off the existing traffic lights, perhaps forever, and switched on the temporary traffic lights they installed last week. There are even temporary cycle lights, temporarily replacing the UK's first low-level cycle lights installed here 10 yearsago.
Intriguingly the temporary traffic lights are running to exactly the same timings as the usual traffic lights. However only half as much traffic can now get onto the roundabout which means multiple vehicles are backing up along the various sliproads. For example on Bow Road well over a dozen vehicles would normally have entered the roundabout during the 12 seconds the lights were green. Now only about 7 vehicles are getting through, and if a bus or massive lorry is in the queue then sometimes it's only 4 or 5. Negotiating the cones isn't helping. There's a lot more honking than there used to be.
However as a pedestrian this is all unexpectedly brilliant. Previously each of the six pedestrian crossings crossed two lanes of traffic but now they only cross one, making it much easier to nip across in a gap when the lights are red. There are also more gaps because traffic is slower and more sparse, so basically it's jaywalker heaven. But for drivers it's not great, and what's more as yet none of this is necessary because no 'proper' roadworks have begun which would require the closure of a lane of traffic.
Wednesday 9th October
Drilling has occurred! Unfortunately it's only occurred on the link road under the flyover so the cones on the roundabout are still entirely superfluous.
The end of the westbound contraflow lane has been coned off, in part so it can be used to park contractors' vehicles but mainly because it's now permanently closed. Traffic entering the contraflow lane at Marshgate Lane is being warned 'Road Closed Ahead' but several vehicles either aren't seeing it or aren't believing it and are gettting caught out. I watched three cars attempt to do a U-turn rather than turn up Cooks Road and go round again, and I hope drivers catch on soon.
In particularly stupid news, westbound buses on Stratford High Street are joining the queue to go round the Bow Roundabout rather than whizzing over the Bow Flyover. This is stupid because there are no longer any bus stops along this section now that the Bow Flyover bus stop has been temporarily closed, so buses might as well go over the flyover. To be fair I only saw buses on routes 25 and 425 in the stupid queue, whereas a driver on route D8 whizzed sensibly over the flyover. Maybe the managers at their bus garage are more astute.
Thursday 10th October
Proper drilling has occurred! It's along the inside kerb of Stratford High Street, just before it reaches the roundabout. I believe this is destined to become an extra lane of traffic so it's a good place to start. It means there is now a reason for one lane of traffic to have been coned off.
However as yet there's no reason for one lane to have been coned off on any of the other three slip roads, and the ensuing traffic queues are still not good. Northbound off the A12 they sometimes stretch back, eek, to Tesco. But Bow Road and Stratford High Street have it worse, this likely as a direct result of 25% of their 'green' time being cyclists only. And Bow Road has it worst of all, I'd say, because the road narrows near Bus Stop M so traffic aiming for the flyover can't always squeeze past.
Friday 10th October
Now that things have bedded in I thought I'd try riding buses past the Bow roundabout to find out how much they've been slowed down. I did this at 10am after the morning rush had died down because I'm not a masochist. First I hopped on a 25 at Bow Church DLR heading east to Stratford. We joined the queue just before Bus Stop M but ultimately it wasn't too dreadful. After five minutes we were through the roundabout and after just 13 minutes we pulled up outside Stratford station. The 25's new temporary timetable allows 26 minutes to get from Bow Church to Stratford but we did it in half that. This suggests that the temporary timetable is ludicrously pessimistic, at least at this time of day.
And then I caught a bus back again which proved most odd. All the westbound buses on route 25 were showing 'Bow Church' as their destination, which was odd because normally they go a lot further. Oddly the display inside the bus said 'City Thameslink Holborn Viaduct' instead, and that was additionally odd because the current western terminus is St Paul's. Things seemed less odd as we trundled dutifully towards the clogged-up roundabout... but this time, hurrah, we dodged it by crossing the flyover instead. Someone's plainly told all the drivers heading west to use the flyover, not just on route 25 but on all the bus routes, and this means avoiding all the queues and all the congestion entirely. Plus there's a great view up there.
I'd made this journey from Stratford to Bow Church before the roadworks to get a sense of how long it normally took, and it normally took about 12 minutes. But today it took nine minutes, such are the benefits of closing a bus stop and skipping over the flyover... a much faster bus service. And yet the 25's new temporary timetable allows 29 minutes to get from Stratford to Bow Church, a full 20 minutes longer, suggesting that the westbound temporary timetable is even more ludicrously pessimistic. Even at 6am the temporary timetabler has allocated 21 minutes to get from Stratford to Bow Church, a preposterous number, and this suggests someone ought to rewrite this timetable because it's ballsing up the buses.
So messed up are the schedules that buses really are terminating at Bow Church, then either hanging around or turfing everybody off. My bus duly pulled up outside the DLR station and terminated, at which point a Stagecoach operative dashed up the stairs to tell us all to 'jump on the bus in front please". I did as asked, entering the (rather crowded) bus in front through the middle doors like a criminal. Ridiculously the bus I had been on was despatched just three minutes later, now with 'St Paul's' on the front blind and with just one passenger on board. What's happening here is a customer herding charade, and all because a few men are drilling one kerb near a roundabout.
Perhaps don't catch a bus near the Bow Roundabout any time soon, unless it's one of the temporarily faster buses in which case absolutely do.
n.b. All the photos in this post were taken this week.
The Smudge of Remembrance
Art on the Underground is proud to announce an arresting manifestation of remembrance which will be on display in the run-up to Armistice Day, which is in one month's time. Ghostly poppies have manifested on the front of Tube trains across the Capital, presenting customers with repeated opportunities to reflect and resonate at this important time of the year.
This key project is called The Smudge of Remembrance and has been comprehensively curated to create spectral moments of commemoration firmly rooted in the everyday.
The ghost poppies appear as faint outlines and bleached patches on the front of Tube trains. All are different, the variety of form being the result of diverse artistic choices and complex maintenance histories.
Some iterations are almost complete in shape and remind us of the futility of war but also its underlying strength. Some are less structured and force us to confront the injuries of indiscriminate combat. Others exist only as faint evidence of imperceptible removal, just as the victims of war have been taken from us in cruel and damaging ways. Together they form a cohesive body of art that forces us to come to terms with the sacrifices of the armed forces across a global dimension and senseless loss of life on an unforeseen scale.
One of the best places to see The Smudge of Remembrance is on the front of District line and other sub-surface trains. Sharp grey blotches and grubby blurs have been carefully installed in full public view, halfway between the headlamps and directly beneath the cabin window. Customers waiting on the platform will thus become incrementally aware of the iconic double petal shape as the train approaches, inevitably musing on its deeper significance and perhaps reflecting on how these strange outlines could possibly have been created.
The Smudge of Remembrance is a long-planned art commission and has been undertaken with long-term objectives in mind. Engineers first created a poppy-shaped sticker and affixed it to the front of rolling stock almost one year ago. Their bright red colour often blended in with the front of the train helping to camouflage preparations for the current artwork. The key engineering decision was to use an adhesive that would not fully and conveniently detach from the metallic surface after use, thereby ensuring that scarring and damage to paintwork would be the inevitable result.
Customers wishing to view the Smudge of Remembrance should be aware that it is only visible on select trains on select lines.
Some of the finest deformation can be seen on the Central line where large uneven white fragments were created when the poppy-shaped stickers were removed. "It may look like chemical carelessness," said Alan Bants, TfL's Head of Adhesive-based Detachment. "But in fact we experimented for many sessions to determine the optimal viscosity to create maximum damage on the train's patina and I for one am thrilled by the result."
The ghost poppies on the Piccadilly line are even more numerous, yet simultaneously even more spectral. Initially you might not notice them but look closer and the pallid remnants of the original sticker are always visible, no matter how carefully train maintenance crews may have attempted to remove them. "This is our long-lasting artistic triumph," said Rizwana Hamid, TfL's Head of Sustainable Durability. "Our adhesive has caused such intrinsic damage to the underlying surface that not even a deep clean can completely remove it."
Not all District line trains feature ghost poppies - some have actually been cleaned properly since last year. These roll into stations with a near pristine red frontage demonstrating that The Smudge of Remembrance is not a cultural inevitability, more an institutional choice. But sufficient rolling stock has been insufficiently scrubbed over multiple cleaning opportunities that ghost poppies remain a tangible and ongoing presence across the network, even eleven months after the last Remembrance Day.
"We couldn't have done this without a fundamentally cavalier attitude to exterior train cleansing at an institutional level," said Binky Reynolds, TfL's Head of Budget Optimisation. "One decent scrub since January and all our hard work would have vanished. Instead trains are still rumbling around inadequately cleaned and so our hard-earned ghost poppies remain on view for all to see, delighting and challenging customers in equal measure."
TfL are always keen to slap poppies on the fronts of trains for a lengthy period in October and November because it would be highly disrespectful to our war dead to do otherwise. This focused fervour helped to ensure that last year's stickers were affixed without due thought for how they would be removed, and indeed whether they could be removed, leaving behind visual detritus that lingered long beyond Remembrancetide. A limited cleaning schedule imposed by insufficient resourcing has then retained these leftovers in situ and the Smudge of Remembrance is the result.
Londoners are encouraged to seek out The Smudge of Remembrance over the next few days, and to meditate upon the millions of lives sacrificed to war that these poignant images reflect. Like the original stickers they too were untimely ripped. But best hurry because the next slew of red poppies will no doubt be slapped on soon, covering over the ghostly scars until they too are inadequately removed and the whole messy art project goes round again.
Do you ever look at the front of a bus and think "where the hell is that?"?
Wood End is the epitome of a nondescript place name, two words that could apply to almost anywhere in the country, but is an actual place in actual London. It even has a library, or rather it did but we'll get to that. You'll find it west of Sudbury, north of Greenford, east of Northolt and south of South Harrow, if that helps.
10 Things To See and Do in Wood End(each Thing better than the Thing before it)
1) Grab a service wash at Wood End Launderette
This is bottom of the heap so it's not that exciting. But feel free to bring your mixed cottons and pillowslips to Wood End Laundrette at 123 Wood End Lane, and perhaps even plump for a service wash with post-tumble ironing thrown in. The smell of detergent wafts out across the corner of Russell Road, evocative of washday for anyone of an appropriate age. Had you been here 100 years ago this would have been the entrance to Wood End Green Farm, one of the three farms in the hamlet of Wood End, but that's long been obliterated by suburban development. Yes they do duvets.
2) Return a book to Wood End Library
The borough of Ealing ought to have 14 libraries but currently has 13 because Wood End library, beside Wood End Primary School, has closed. More accurately it's been demolished and is being replaced by a stack of 11 flats because Ealing council have housing targets. In good news there'll be a replacement library space on the ground floor, but in bad news it'll be a fifth of the previous size so a far lesser facility. In even worse news the hoardings outside say "due to be completed by late 2023" but all that's visible from the street is a concrete shell awaiting cladding because the construction company went bust, so any borrowed books could be massively overdue by the time it's eventually finished.
3) Visit the split recreation ground
When Wood End's suburban avenues were being laid out in the late 1920s, two arrowhead-shaped gaps were left surrounded by back gardens either side of Russell Road. In February 1928 Ealing Council bought these from Corporate Development Trust Limited and created twin recreation grounds, as can be confirmed by the blurb on the information board in the larger of the two. These days they're called Woodend West and Woodend East, each accessible only by footpath and with a scrap of playground and a patch of grass to enjoy. They form a mundane but most unusual pair, and pigeons may not be fed in either.
4) Catch the train to Islip
Wood End's very own railway station opened in 1926 as a spur to developing housing locally, a catalyst which patently worked. It was initially named ‘South Harrow & Roxeth’ before being changed to ‘Northolt Park’ in 1929 in recognition of a nearby place of interest frequented by tens of thousands of punters, which is Thing Number Nine so I won't reveal it yet. These days it's run by Chiltern who don't bother with anything as posh as station buildings, only a locked shed and a couple of shelters, nor do they bother stopping trains very often either. The least served destination is Islip with just one train on weekdays at 10.49pm, although Marylebone is likely where most locals escape to.
5) Buy one of Wood End's original cottages
Such was the impact of suburbanisation on rural Wood End that all that remains of the original hamlet is a single row of six cottages. These appeared halfway along Wood End Lane in 1906 and were named Wood End Cottages because there was nothing else to confuse them with at the time. Today they find themselves sandwiched between later semis at the widest part of the lane, by the 7-foot width restriction, and are the only homes hereabouts with bin-sized front gardens. The end cottage recently went on the market for £375,000 which feels somewhat excessive for a two-up two-down with less than 50m² floorspace but nothing else locally comes close.
6) Enjoy Curry Club at the Greenwood Hotel
Wood End has only two listed buildings, one of which is a large L-shaped estate pub built by Courage in the late 1930s. According to the Greenwood Hotel's citation the architecture "epitomises the restrained respectability of the suburbs in their inter-war heyday" and "the interior survives very well." Since 2016 it's been a Wetherspoons so most punters care more about the fact it's Curry Club tonight than the fireplaces, cornices and panelling, but at least the place is being looked after and as a public house it has zero competition locally.
7) Shop til you drop at Oldfields Circus
Wood End has a half-decent shopping parade, at least in terms of size and breadth if not necessarily quality. It bears off from half a leafy roundabout, is topped by 30s-style flats and includes one of London's many chippies called The Codfather. The largest shop is a Polish delicatessen, indeed there's an Eastern European flavour to several outlets, but also an Irish butchers, a Turkish takeaway and a Scotch-based off-licence. Morgan's Office Furniture is piled high with upturned chairs on top of other chairs, all the way to the back, while Golden Crust Bakery looks to be a proper throwback of hot buns and filled rolls that thankfully hasn't been Wenzel-ed yet.
8) Enjoy the view from Wood End Wireless Station
By WW2 the whole of Wood End was housing apart from a large patch on the hilltop which had been occupied by an RAF radio station in 1926. Most of that land has since succumbed to become a loop of townhouses but a small park remains in the centre, a greenspace known as Woodend Wireless Station, still with two serious-looking communications towers locked away at the summit. As a place to exercise your dog it's proper unusual. A sign on the compound confirms this is still used by Air Traffic Control and is known as Greenford Tx Comms Station. I suspect it's related to nearby RAF Northolt but from the top of the slope the procession of planes descending into Heathrow is clearly seen so maybe it's of wider strategic importance.
9) Visit the racetrack where George Formby rode Lucky Bert
The UK's first Pony Racing course opened here in 1929, complete with Art Decograndstand and a 1½ mile grass circuit. This looped through the former fields of Wood End Farm but they called it Northolt Park, hence the name of the station back in Thing Number Four. After a slow start it became ridiculously popular, drawing in half a million punters in 1938, some of whom came to see ex-jockey George Formby run an exhibition race, but the owners over-reached and sadly went bankrupt. After WW2 the government requisitioned the land for housing and created the Racecourse Estate, so all you can still see today are two strips of parkland and the original gates at the entrance to Dabbs Hill Lane. I could write more but northoltparkracecourse.wordpress.com has already sewn that up in brilliant detail so read that.
10) See part of St Paul's Cathedral at St Barnabas St Barnabas is Wood End's other listed building, designed pre-WW2 but not completed until 1954 so somewhat of an architectural anachronism. It has a lofty brickbellcote, a polygonal baptistry and "the design is redolent with medievalism", apparently. Best of all the doors were open when I arrived so I went in and hunted for a very specific chunk of marble I'd researched online. I didn't find it but I did meet the vicar emerging from the vestry so I asked him where it was and he didn't know. "It's from St Paul's Cathedral and I read about it on your church website." Still no recognition. "It's in the baptistry set in the wall near the foundation stone." So we went and looked, peeking behind a board dotted with mission posters, and there it was embedded in the wall. Best of all there was a framed letter hanging underneath signed by C. A. Linge, Clerk of Works at St Paul's Cathedral, dated 20th April 1953.
I'm still not sure the vicar was particularly excited to discover he had a block of white marble from St Paul's embedded in his baptistry, but if that isn't the best thing in Wood End I don't know what is.
