It's been a busy weekend.
So, between us, can we fill in this bingo card?
It must be the highlight of your weekend, not just something you also did.
Only one highlight each, obviously.
No more than 20 words, thanks.
First come first served.
20 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in June 2024
1) Whatever 16 members of the public have said, no occurrences of bedbugs have been identified on TfL services over the past two years. 2) London's least busy bus stop is at Dysart Avenue (I blogged about this in some detail). The busiest river pier is at Greenwich. 3) A Harry Kane statue will not be installed on the platform at Chingford station, not least because it might cause a distraction to drivers. 4) Service Status announcements should be made every 4-6 minutes at major tube stations, every 6-10 minutes at sub-surface stations and every 10 minutes at quiet stations beyond zone 2 (and only between 7am and 11pm) 5) In the financial year 2023/24 13,171 cases of fare evasion were convicted in court (down from 29,118 in 2018/19). The total amount of fines issued was £ 3,114,865. 6) 4493 ULEZ-related Penalty Charges Notices were issued to vehicles in Hillingdon in April. This is a 30% decrease on the number of fines issued last September. 7) There are three locations where TfL has formal agreements for bus drivers to use the toilets in licenced premises. These are the Brewers Fayre in Bexleyheath (B13 & B14), Raging Bull Snooker Club in Greenford (E1, E2, E3 & E11) and The Finery PH in Great Castle Street (7, 159, N7 & N137). 8) Last year TfL paid private medical insurance for 5709 staff at a total cost of £1,628,452. £4,114,116 was paid out in claims. 9) TfL’s policy is that first and last buses must run. 10) The five overseas countries whose residents buy the most Visitor Oyster cards are the USA, Germany, Australia, Canada and France. TfL sold 7 cards to Liechtenstein last year. 11) The busiest day at Canary Wharf DLR station so far this century was 28th April 2019 (it was London Marathon day). 12) The section of the DLR with the lowest speed limit is Stratford to Stratford High Street southbound. The speed limit is 55 (units unspecified). 13) Since the start of 2023 there have been nine ocurrences of "wrong side door openings" on the Underground (mostly on the Bakerloo & Piccadilly lines). No passengers were injured. 14) The most popular journey between two tube stations is Liverpool Street to Tottenham Court Road (I blogged about this in some detail) 15) Digital screens on bus shelters can display up to five different adverts. There are 610 such sites (also 759 scrolling posters and 8649 static posters). 16) There are three gender neutral toilets at Underground stations, specifically Hillingdon (e/b platform), Roding Valley (e/b platform) and Ruislip Gardens (ticket hall). 17) The average speed of escalators in Tube stations is either 0.75 m/s (metres per second) or 0.65 m/s. These speeds are in keeping with the European Standard for Escalators EN115. 18) The DLR station where people buy the fewest tickets is Beckton Park. The DLR ticket machine that sells the fewest tickets is at Poplar. 19) Last year 4806 incidents of abuse against staff were recorded on the Underground, the majority classified 'Verbal & Gesture'. This is 12% down on 2022. 20) One London bus, one London Overground train, one engineering locomotive train engine, part of an Elizabeth line train and 10 cable car gondolas are Pride-wrapped.
What have the candidates been up to in my constituency?
Have they sent me any leaflets?
Leaflets yes
• Uma Kumaran(Labour) A letter from Keir with his six pledges, minimal promises. Looks like they sent out millions of these.
• Halima Khan (Workers Party) Roughly-folded and left sticking out of all our letterboxes. Headline 'End Labour Control' (which is odd, because they haven't had control since 2010). Kicks off with photo of her standing next to George Galloway and another next to Jeremy Corbyn). Promises to be "the first MP in British History to establish a service empowering my constituents to decide how I vote on key issues."
• Jeff Evans(Reform) Photo of Tice and Farage, easy-to read ticklists mostly about immigration, link to the party's social media. No photo of Jeff, looks totally nationally generic.
• Joe Hudson-Small(Green) Photo of Joe at Stratford bus station, list of local (council-level) Green successes. Urge to vote Green because the Conservatives are going to lose and Labour won't change much.
• Omar Faruk(Independent) Photo of Omar finger-pointing in front of a Palestinian flag. Logo of 'The Muslim Vote' campaign. Very dry letter ('Dear Resident') which seems to misunderstand the powers an independent MP has.
• Fiona Lali(Independent) A pile of leaflets dumped communally, not posted in individual letterboxes. Beat everybody else by about a week. One side a full-face portrait with hammers and sickles, the other side a fairly angry takedown of Labour, support for Palestine and mention of the Revolutionary Communist Party.
Leaflets no
• Nizam Ali(Independent) (no, really not trying)
• Janey Little(Liberal Democrats) (no, although there are still four more days)
• Kane Blackwell(Conservative) (no, although these leaflets definitely exist)
• Steve Hedley(Independent) (no, although I have seen them being given out outside tube stations)
Campaigning
• Uma Kumaran(Labour) Has been busy all over the constituency, although Central Office would probably rather she'd been stomping round marginals instead. Took some days off campaigning when a) her grandmother died b) she caught Covid. Will still win by a mile.
• Kane Blackwell(Conservative) Some campaigning in the constituency but mostly to be seen in Sittingbourne, Bromsgrove, Chingford & Woodford Green, Colchester and Witham (campaigning for good mate Priti Patel).
• Janey Little(Liberal Democrats) No evidence on Twitter that she's been anywhere in the constituency. Is working behind the scenes for the Young Liberals and has been out doorstepping in Taunton and Brecon & Radnor.
• Joe Hudson-Small(Green) A fair amount of campaigning in the constituency but has also been active in the target seat of Waveney Valley.
• Fiona Lali(Independent) Trying really hard, has posted in-depth reports on local campaigning that make it sound like she's doing great. About 200 supporters attended a rally in Stratford Park yesterday ("One Solution! Revolution!")
• Halima Khan (Workers Party) Really quite angry online. Going all out to highlight Keir Starmer supposedly disrespecting Bangladeshis.
• Jeff Evans(Reform) No, but retweeting Nigel Farage a lot.
• Nizam Ali(Independent) Now up to 33 followers on TikTok.
Yesterday I went to the Becontree estate to take some photos of its churches. Then I added those photos to yesterday's post about churches on estates. I didn't add this photo, even though it was my favourite.
This is St Cedd's in Becontree. It has a lovely postwar copper roof and that was the problem, it wasn't built at the same time as the other churches on the estate, it's a 1964 replacement of a 1930s original. I did add photos of four other churches to my post, but it was late in the day by the time I added them so I was probably wasting my time.
To try to ensure my trip wasn't a complete waste of time I thought I'd show you 15 of my non-church photos, in a feature I like to call...
The news from Barking and Dagenham
• I didn't see any political posters on the Becontree estate but I did see a lot of England flags. They know their priorities out here - Euros not Elections. This wasn't the largest St George's flag I saw but it was the most decorated house. Note the presence of a white van topped with ladders in the front garden - classic B&D.
• A lot of the intermittent grassy patches around Becontree are lightly fenced to deter dog-wandering and kickabouting. How ironic on an estate that loves its football to have erected so many signs saying No Ball Games.
• But on Valance Wood Road I spotted a sign where the 'No' had been scrubbed out with dribbly black paint. I'm not convinced the grassy patch would have supported a game on any meaningful scale, but such is the mindset of the local rebel.
• Here's another rebel parked on Marlborough Road with a similar penchant for black obfuscation. This Audi driver has stuck black tape over the last three letters of their registration plate, supplemented by a separate layer of padding to ensure they're entirely undiscernible. I assume this is an anti-ULEZ ploy and probably works like a dream, right up to the moment the police nab them under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 and impose a £100 on-the-spot fine.
• How joyful to find a Rossi's ice cream van parked up on Charlecote Road. Of all the vans you'd want tinkling at the end of your street, Southend's royal Rossi's must be at the top of the pile. That said, this van falls foul of ULEZ every time it travels so the owner needs to sell at least five cornets before breaking even.
• Meanwhile, down by Rippleside Cemetery, this car wash claims to be 'The world's favourite car wash'. A likely story, I thought, the world has no idea this squirty spot by the Ford showroom even exists. But I checked and apparently it's the brand that's most favourite - IMO have a dozen outlets in London, another 250 in the UK and 600 more across Europe, Australia and the USA, more than any other chain.
• This is utter bolx at Beam Park though. Beam Park is definitely not East London's Brightest New Address, not unless you're a masochist who likes living in a box far away from anywhere useful. There's just one shop, a Sainsbury's Local up the far end, and the long-promised railway station is no nearer ever becoming reality so you're stuck with buses, Ubers and your car.
• There is however now a proper park, if you count a 2.5 hectare dip of landscaped grass as proper. It's called Central Park because it's in the centre of the estate, and exists mainly because building stacks of flats immediately beside the River Beam would be unwise. It opened four weeks ago and has of course already been described by MyLondon as "London's newest park with a river running through it that many residents didn't know exists".
• I walked some of the new streets and they're very very unBecontree, all big brown blocks with gardens for cars and whopping fines from private contractors if you dare park on the yellow lines. And the estate still has a long way to grow because most of the site still looks like demolished Ford processing plant, such is the arterial ambience of East London's Brightest New Address.
• Meanwhile Barking Riverside continues to spread across a hump of reclaimed landfill. It's finally reached the stage where the area around the station looks pretty because what used to be a building site is covered with wild flowers, but the buzz of human activity is still outdone by the bees.
• Up on the 'hill' several new residential streets have recently opened up. A mass of flats (and a few tall narrow houses) have been crowded in, creating interlocking brick-faced canyons, and with every new street the amount of daylight for those who moved in first decreases.
• The People Who Name Streets have had a lot of fun finding famous B&D residents to name the newest streets after. Frogley Park is nothing amphibian, it's for William Holmes Frogley, the unsung illustrator of a unique manuscript illuminating the everyday side of Victorian Barking. As for Amies Terrace that's for dress designer Hardy Amies, Huggett Road is for the suffragette who inspired the upcoming Overground renaming and I confess Podd Street has me baffled.
• These adverts with a grinning David Beckham are everywhere at the moment, I suspect across the country. They're for AliExpress, a Chinese e-commerce portal attempting to break Europe by being an official Euros sponsor, having already won over Russia and Brazil. Looking at the weird tat on their site I'm unconvinced, it's more mass-produced Etsy or Primark on acid, but if you want a Green Donkey Animal Cosplay Zip Hoodie or an 86p stainless steel nose ring, perhaps it's for you.
• This banner outside Ted Ball Memorial Hall spoke to me, given I'm over 55 and therefore target audience. But I'm not sure I'm yet ready to spend 10 hours a week playing "bingo/darts or even bowls", nor am I seeking seaside trips in company, plus I see they've had to scrub their art classes. Here in Bow of course we have The Geezers, see top blog in sidebar, but I'm not ready for that level of social immersion either.
• I thought two things when I saw this street sign in Becontree, firstly "aha, yet another outdated reference to a renamed borough" and secondly "aha! Christmas content potential". But Canonsleigh Road is so quintessentially Becontree (nigh uninterrupted pebbledash) that you can rest easy, I won't be blogging it in December.
When did they stop building churches on housing estates?
Housing estates of a decent size tend to be built with a nucleus of necessary services - something retail, something educational, something medical, something recreational. But no longer churches.
Time was when even the smallest village had a church, such was the domination of religion in our society. As towns and suburbs grew they too were always built with churches, often of multiple denominations, these an essential part of the social fabric satisfying an innate spiritual need. But those needs faded and modern housing estates no longer include places of worship as a matter of course... shops yes, schools yes, surgeries yes, parks yes, but churches no.
And I wondered when that changed.
Here's an attempted answer using evidence from east and south London.
1930s: Becontree
They were still building churches in the 1930s. Several were built to serve the Becontree estate - then the world's largest - including St Vincent's, St Elisabeth's, St John's and St Mary's, the latter being Grade II listed. Religion wasn't initially high on the LCC's priority list, with concerns expressed in local papers that churches weren't being built to suit the speed at which tenants were moving in. But multiple sites were selected, multiple denominations were catered for and the estate is still well provisioned religiousbuildingwise.
1950s: Lansbury
This estate in Poplar was famously redeveloped as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951. Arguably its places of worship were replacements for previous churches destroyed in the war, for example the Trinity Independent Chapel on East India Dock Road, rebuilt after a V1 strike. But you can't look at the copper-topped Roman Catholic church dominating the top of Grundy Street and conclude the that provision of churches wasn't important here. Still at the very heart of the community.
1950s: New Addington
Parishioners didn't initially need a new church at the lower end of the estate because 11th century St Mary's in Addington Village was quite close enough, but at the top end St Edward's on Central Parade was added in 1957. Additional churches were sprinkled lower later, for example Good Shepherd on Dunley Drive in 1962. Further evidence of the importance of churches during this postwar period can be found in Hainault, at Harold Hill and out in London's first new towns for example Harlow and Stevenage.
1950s/1960s: Abbey Wood
Before there was Thamesmead there was the Abbey Estate - thousands of homes built on former MoD land to the northwest of the railway station between 1956 and 1959. It took until the mid-1960s to add its main church, that's William Temple on Eynsham Road, but it ticks all the postwar architectural boxes. Reinforced concrete frame, pyramidal roof, copper topping - perfect. What's more a short walk through the Memorial Garden takes you to its Roman Catholic counterpart, St David's, a striking but functional building of a similar age. This was originally meant to be a two-storey church hall but during construction plans changed. One wall contains thousands of coloured glass tiles, the saintly relief out front is fibreglass, and these are precisely the kind ofdelights you don't find any more on modern estates.
1960s/1970s: Thamesmead
Thamesmead proper is a much larger estate but planned religion plays a smaller role. On the Bexley side of the divide the sole provision was the Church of the Cross, a slope-roofed building which very much resembles a hall or community centre with a wooden cross out front. It was built in the early 70s at the end of Overton Road on the faultline between interwar semis and progressive flats, and supports ecumenical worship embracing Anglican, Methodist and United Reformed. A more explicit example of building-sharing is St Paul's, the chief church for everyone living north of the main road which was built in 1978. It contains one room for Anglican worship and another for Roman Catholic, separated only by a corridor, with the Catholic half presenting a stark polygonal brick face towards the street. The architects had high hopes of the building also being a community hub, which admittedly haven't quite worked out but at least they were still trying. A separate small Baptist church hides away on Titmuss Avenue, and later evangelical missions fit in wherever they can.
1980s: Beckton
As a mostly private estate, developers were more interested in providing homes than services. But they still added a church to serve this far-Docklands community, just the one, as part of the library/school/healthcentre cluster behind Asda. It's called St Mark's and like Thamesmead acts as home to both Anglican and Catholic congregations, but this time in the same space. Come at 9.45am on a Sunday and you get something CofE, then at 11.15 that turfs out and the Catholic priest hears confessions before a proper Mass at noon. The interior architecture is still church-focused with a crucifix and altar but elsewhere in the building are independent community centre activities, and this much more efficient use of available resources feels like a nod to the declining role of church provision.
1990s: Britannia Village
This pioneering estate in West Silvertown, home to many hundreds of owner occupiers and social tenants, was built without a church. People still worship here every Sunday but they go to the Village Hall, a building devoid of religious intent.
2000s/2010s: Greenwich Peninsula
North Greenwich's former gasworks gained its first flats at the start of the millennium and these continue to extend inexorably across an enormous area of land. They've built shops and schools and surgeries but nobody's specifically built a church, nor is there any intention to do so, despite an upcoming population running into many tens of thousands.
2010s/2020s: Olympic Park
And they're not building churches here either. In part this is because the Lower Lea Valley rubs up against multiple much older suburbs with pre-existing churches whose celebrants are only too eager to welcome Sunday migrants from adjacent flats, but mainly it's because there's no money in it.
People don't go to churches in the numbers they once did, and those that do often make do with halls and warehouses because giving praise is more important than what the walls look like. This is convenient because developers would much rather build a slew of homes than some sacred facility a few inhabitants might unprofitably use. There are already far too many churches, an imbalance that can be partially corrected by not building new ones.
When did they stop building churches on new housing estates? I'd say approximately 30-40 years ago, when social housing started to be replaced by private development, and they were already on the endangered list before that.
The City Wall at Vine Street Location: Vine Street, EC3N 2HT [map] Open: 9am - 6pm (bank holidays excepted) Admission: free Seven word summary: a very old wall and some rubbish Website:citywallvinestreet.org Time to set aside: half an hour
This Vine Street is in the City of London squished innocuously between Jewry Street and Minories, precisely where you wouldn't think to look. It's very quiet, in part because the central section's been pedestrianised but mainly because it sits adrift amid a sea of anonymous office blocks. And one of those blocks has an unexpected surprise in the basement, a chunky relic from the first millennium presented in a manner that's both exceptional and jarring. If you haven't been yet you should visit.
The premise: In Roman times Londinium was surrounded by a thick stone wall intended to keep marauders out, which gradually fell into disrepair after the Romans left and in many places became absorbed into the fabric of the city. Parts of it are still visible, most famously near the Barbican and the Tower of London. What we have here is a 10m-long section in good nick including the base of an original defensive bastion (all surviving bastions elsewhere being medieval rebuilds). It was recently re-excavated by archaeologists during the construction of upmarket student accommodation and has been incorporated into the new block as a visitable attraction which opened last year.
Access: Getting in is harder than it should be and easier than I feared. This is because the owners have adopted the new petty paradigm, increasingly popular since the pandemic, of expecting you to pre-book. "Advanced booking is essential" says the website, which drills you to select a half-hour slot on a day of your choice before you turn up. This is not how I roll, mainly because I don't know in advance precisely when I'll arrive and have no intention of constraining my schedule to fit a needless restriction, so I ignored it. If absolutely none of your sessions are 'sold out', I thought, hopefully you'll just let me in.
The way in, it turns out, is mid-building along an alleyway so glassy you can look down and see most of what you're about to see. I found the right door and could immediately tell I wasn't going to get on with whichever procedural curmudgeon had designed the entry procedures. "To see our opening hours please scan here" said a sticker beside a QR code, while another over-expectantly read "Please scan this to book your free visit". I have no intention of stooping to that level just to pass through a door, I thought. The door warned me it was automatic and shouldn't be pushed but I could see no obvious button to press. It's possible the button had been covered over by the final notice, "Please wait patiently with your booking so staff can give you access", so I waited patiently but nothing happened. I thought I could see a desk through the glass but it was empty, and only when it became occupied did a member of staff notice me and let me in.
I progressed across an elevated walkway through one of those little perspex gates normally operated by office workers with lanyards. "Do you have a booking?" asked the member of staff and I had to confess I didn't. I worried that he was going to demand I jumped through smartphone hoops like they do at the Science Museum, but thankfully it swiftly became apparent this wasn't going to be required. He did however want a name to enter onto his tablet because the Procedural Curmudgeon had deemed it necessary. It's fun on such occasions to claim your name is Arpeggio McSyzygy, or some other ridiculously complex tongue twister, but I was feeling generous and offered a fiction that was very easy to spell. It was also tempting to ask "Why do you need a name anyway, is this a museum or a police state?", but I suspect the answer would have been "Because the Procedural Curmudgeon won't let this transaction proceed until I enter something" so it wouldn't have been helpful.
The guide gave a short spiel about what to expect and also how to get out again, because the Procedural Curmudgeon hadn't made that simple either. I felt a bit sorry for the guide repeating this spiel over and over, along with registering bookings and waiting around a lot for people to arrive. I could tell he did a lot of waiting because no other visitors were present, a hunch confirmed later when I looked at the paucity of comments in the Visitors Book. I also made the mistake of trotting down the stairs far too quickly, as directed, whereas one of the best views of the City Wall is from the admin walkway which is why I don't have any photos of that. The view's not quite so good downstairs so all I can offer is this shot of the back of the wall with no floating cafe in the background.
The experience: The thing about Roman street level is it's beneath our current street level, hence the wall is in the basement. This is partly what helped preserve it, first rediscovered in 1905 during the demolition of the Metropolitan Bonded Warehouse. What you can see today is a 2m-thick wall made of Kentish ragstone blocks, intermittently layered with red tiles for strength, all supported on brick piles added in 1905 for stability. Below all that are steel jacks inserted during construction of the current building and steel props added afterwards, because nobody takes any risks with a Scheduled Monument. Also just behind you is a pointless set of lockers for storage purposes, presumably added by the Procedural Curmudgeon because the entire attraction is in one room and there's nothing your bag could bash into anyway.
It's not all about the wall, otherwise the wow factor might fade quite quickly. It's also about the archaeological remains found alongside, most of it thrown away by its original owners who might have been Roman soldiers, Tudor cooks or Georgian publicans. They found a heck of a lot of rubbish and a lot of that is displayed here along an entire wall, deftly arrayed and labelled. The Roman remains are perhaps the most special - denarii! amphorae! tesserae! - but the more plentiful later detritus is fascinating too. Also whoever wrote the labels underneath is particularly good at their job, mixing facts with exposition and empathy, and also capable of referencing the iniquities of the slave trade without getting patronisingly didactic. Pride of place goes to the contents of two cesspits found backing onto the wall, likely filled by neighbouring tradesmen in the 1760s, and don't be surprised if you spend more time looking at the rubbish than at the wall.
The wall is splendid though, especially once you've passed round to the front (moving in a few steps from just inside Londinium to just outside). The visual impact is aided by the protrusion out front, this the chalk foundation of the original Roman tower built around 360AD and the oldest bit of bastion in the city. What struck me is how incredibly clean it all looks, as opposed to your usual Roman remains exposed to the elements for centuries. The information panels are again comprehensive and non-intrusive, and so up-to-date they recommend you go discover more about Roman London in the London Museum, which hasn't yet opened. Alongside the bastion is a mini-cinema where a looping film runs through two millennia of London's history, sometimes focusing on the local site but more generally a catalogue of marauders, plague, great fires and V1 bombs. The Curation Overlord has done a very good job.
Exit: The Procedural Curmudgeon has one more trick to play which is not adding a sign to show the way out. You don't go out the way you came in, you're supposed to pass out up a set of steps on the far side which leads to another set of swishy perspex gates whose one-way functionality is only explicit from up close. And this leads you to the most surreal part of the experience which is the open-sided cafe terrace which overlooks the entire chamber. Here patrons who haven't been to the museum (and can't gain access to it) chat over hot drinks and pastries whilst generally ignoring the Scheduled Monument. I have rarely seen such a neutrally decorated coffee shop, in this case occupied by neutrally-dressed city workers and anodyne students whose parents probably paid a small fortune so their offspring could live in one of the hutches upstairs.
Conclusion: As an Australian recently wrote in the visitors book, I Came To See Old Walls I Was Not Disappointed. I also agree with the Welsh visitor who said Needs To Be Better Known! because even a year after opening it really isn't. Hundreds of people should be filing through each day, not an intermittent trickle, especially given the free admission and incredibly convenient opening hours which span nine hours daily. Come test your mettle against the Procedural Curmudgeon and enjoy this astonishinghistoricrelicbeautifullypreserved in a pristine basement surrounded by old rubbish.
In this year-long feature my aim has been to write just over 1000 words about each of the properties on the Monopoly board. Usually there's far too much to say, these being iconic locations, but the last of the oranges throws up a completely different problem - there's far too little. Vine Street's not a main road, it's a piddly dead end backwater. It's only famous retrospectively for a building which no longer exists. It has no shops or hostelries nor anywhere you can actually visit. But most awkwardly it's only 40 metres long, indeed I walked it end to end in less than 30 seconds, so padding this out to the requisite length is going to be a challenge. Wish me luck.
It's very central, up close to Piccadilly Circus in the tapering wedge of real estate between the eastern ends of Regent Street and Piccadilly. But you won't see it from either, only if you attempt to duck through their Portland facades or filter off along one of two dark alleyways in an attempt to cut the corner. Neighbouring Swallow Street is much more interesting with its premier seafood restaurants, exclusive nightclubs and alfresco dining, but that's not the property on the board. Likewise Air Street is a much more noteworthy connector with its elegant arches, archaic outfitters and gastrodining, but that's not on the Monopoly board either. Vine Street it is, alas.
It wasn't always this runty, it used to be rather longer and pointed a completely different way. Vine Street's origins are in the 1680s, a narrow doglegged street whose main tenants were a brewery on one side and a carpenter's yard on the other. Originally it was called Little Swallow Street but by the mid 18th century it had been renamed after a pub on the corner called The Vine. The architectural whirlwind which severed it was the whim of the Prince Regent around 200 years ago to create a sweeping thoroughfare linking Oxford Street to Piccadilly, designed on a grand scale by the great John Nash. Here's precisely where the heart of the original Vine Street used to be, on the bend in the fanciest part of Regent Street, the Quadrant.
The northern end became a brief stump called Great Vine Street, since lost, and the southern end morphed into a hooked passageway leading to a stubby rump that somehow made it onto the Monopoly board. The chief reason for this is the emergence of Vine Street police station, a central hub which grew from a couple of basement cells in 1786 to a Metropolitan Police District presence in 1829 to reputedly the busiest police station anywhere in the world. At the end of the 19th century it's where the Marquess of Queensbury was charged with libel against Oscar Wilde, an act which didn't end happily, and in 1935 would have been an obvious 'law and order' choice to pick when Victor and Marjory were sorting out the oranges.
The police station closed in 1940 when main operations moved to Savile Row, at which point the street was renamed Piccadilly Place. It reopened in 1971 due to a shortage of space elsewhere, at which point Westminster council agreed to re-rename the street Vine Street, a title it's kept even though the building closed for good in 1995. And what is that police station today? An office block, of course, which at ground level forms the Swallow Street Recycling Hub. It's where over 50 local shops and businesses send their dry mixed recyclables, indeed it arrives in unmarked white electric vans, one of whose drivers reversed incredulously past me while I was attempting to take a photo of the street. It has green bins and a great big pulping machine, also green, and I wouldn't normally relate this level of low key detail but it is what the planet's former premier law enforcement location has become so I feel it's relevant.
The office block which now spans the north side of Vine Street is called 1 Vine Street, this the kind of branding developers love despite the fact Vine Street no longer has a 2, 3, 4 or any other addressable property. Tenants behind the retained facade include Lloyds Bank's Build-to-Let arm, investment bankers, solicitors and something Dutch that monetises chemicals, whose employees all file in past an artwork in the atrium called Vitas vinifera L by Alison Turnbull. Meanwhile the 1950s office block whose backside faces the south side of Vine Street, Airwork House, is in the process of undergoing total demolition. Not only will the replacementoffice block be two storeys taller, it'll also "offer retail on all of its elevations" which should mean you'll finally be able to buy something on Vine Street, even if it is only a overpriced frothy coffee.
Overpriced frothy coffees are currently available along both of the narrow alleyways feeding into Vine Street, that's Piccadilly Place and Man in Moon Passage, the two cafes intriguingly both operated by faux Italian chain Caffe Concerto. Man in Moon Passage is a brilliant name for an alleyway and comes originally from a pub called the Man in the Moon at the southern end, long vanished. Ian Visits has the full MiMP backstory here, the key relevant facts being that a) the passage follows the original northward alignment of Vine Street b) the pub was at number 13. As the closest hostelry to a police station it would have done a roaring trade, and its absence makes attempting a Monopoly themed pub crawl just that little bit less fulfilling.
Which brings me to the enormous building which frames the eastern end of Vine Street, the Piccadilly Hotel. It looks fabulously neo-Baroque from Piccadilly, at least when not half-obscured by scaffolding, and was erected in 1908 amazingly in eighteen months flat. It covers the footprint of St James's Hall, a stack of capacious auditoriums decorated in the Florentine style, which for most of the second half of the 19th century was London's pre-eminent concert venue. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Henry Wood and Charles Dickens all performed here. The subsequent hotel has gone through multiple changes of ownership including Welsh (1920s), Scottish (1960s), French (1980s), English (1990s), Dutch/Singaporean (2010s) and most recently Israeli (2020s), such is the endless capitalist cascade of luxury hospitality assets. The latest lot have rebranded it The Dilly and you are not its target audience.
Alas every hotel has its backside and that's what faces Vine Street, a wall of undistinguished brick emblazoned with pipes, vents and extractor fans. This is the not the view you hope you'll get from your window when allocated a room on an upper floor. But what's most intriguing if you stand here long enough is the endless succession of staff, most of whom look like they work in the kitchens, emerging through the swing doors for a fag break. Out comes a pot-washer, meat-carver or jus-squirter, depending, who then lingers in sullen peace for a few minutes before stubbing out their cigarette on the metal provided and returning to the fray. This end of the street has been carefully divided into smoking and non-smoking zones, I suspect according to what goes on behind the windows.
Perhaps the most intriguing sign is the one which says "This is not the delivery entrance for Hawksmoor. It's behind you up the ramp on the right of Man in Moon Passage". And indeed there it is, a grubby white door with keypad, CCTV and intercom, through which all the restaurant's seafood, chateaubriand and Old Spot belly ribs are duly shoved. I watched a wine delivery taking place, a brimming trolley of vintage fizz which proved merely the advance guard from a white van packed with prestige bottles destined to be uncorked in front of jolly punters upstairs in a lounge overlooking Air Street. Poor old Vine Street is merely for lowly staff, for ad hoc waste recycling, for the reversing of delivery vehicles and for an endless cycle of demolition and rebirth, no longer a renowned destination where crimes are solved but a glum back passage living off its past.
Sunday was the 5th best day ever on diamond geezer, visitornumberswise, and came within a smidge of being the 4th. As usual it had nothing to do with something I'd just written, just thousands of people piling onto an old post which just happened to answer a question someone had innocently asked.
This time the bombardment platform was Reddit, specifically the r/london subreddit, and the question was
That photo is of bus stop R at Elephant & Castle station, the first southbound stop on Walworth Road, which has 12 daytime bus routes and 4 nightbus routes, a total of 16.
In that post I pulled apart an FoI response and produced a list of the busiest bus stops based on passenger boarding data from June 2022.
London's busiest bus stops 1)[R] MARBLE ARCH STATION/PARK LANE (s/b) (2 6 13 16 23 36 74 137 148 390 414) 2)[H] WOOD GREEN STATION (n/b) (121 141 184 221 232 329 W4) 3)[A] STRATFORD BUS STATION (n/b) (69 158 257) 4)[R] ELEPHANT & CASTLE STATION (s/b) (12 35 40 45 68 136 148 171 176 343 468 P5) 5)[N] WOOLWICH ARSENAL STATION (n/b) (96 99 122 177 180 472)
I like how that list does indeed include bus stop R at Elephant & Castle station, proving what a good intuitive guess the original questioner made given there are 22000 bus stops to consider.
In my post I also said two bus stops outside Brixton station probably ought to be very high on this list, but TfL had juggled the routes stopping there since the data was produced so it was impossible to be sure.
But that's only part of what the original questioner said. They also said "I can't think of of any stop with more routes" and that's also something I've addressed in a previous post. Unfortunately that post is now 8 years old and umpteen bus routes have since been fiddled with so that list is very much not current. So here's my attempt at an updated version for 2024...
The London bus stops served by the most bus routes
All three of these bus stops are along the Strand.
All are served by 21 bus routes.
I was in central London yesterday evening so I went along to check and took these photos.
As you can see the Southampton Street bus stop has tiles for 21 bus routes - 8 daytime and 13 nightbuses. However the Bedford Street bus stop only has tiles for 20 bus routes - the N26 is missing. This is an error, the N26 definitely stops here. I checked and it's wrong on both sides. And the Savoy Street bus stop only has tiles for 19 bus routes - the N21 are N44 are missing. This is another error, the N21 and N44 definitely stop here.
I checked back eight years and Bedford Street was also missing the N26 then. Savoy Street used to have an N21/N44 tile but this is now missing. These multi-route stops must be a right pain to alter when bus routes change, and it seems the Men Who Change The Tiles have buggered up twice.
These are the only bus stops served by more than 20 routes. There used to be three others across Waterloo Bridge, but TfL have been so successful in culling central London bus routes that those are now down to just 15 routes each.
There are no bus stops with 19 or 20 routes - that's how far ahead the Strand bus stops are.
There are five bus stops with 18 routes.
Museum Street(E) 18 routes: 8 19 38 55 98 188 N1 N8 N19 N25 N38 N41 N55 N68 N98 N171 N207 N242
This stop's just off New Oxford Street near the British Museum. Although it's served by 18 bus routes only six of them are daytime buses so you might think this doesn't properly count. Don't worry, the remaining four stops are all out in the suburbs and have lots of proper daytime buses.
Edgware Station(G) 18 routes: 32 79 107 113 142 186 204 221 240 251 288 292 303 340 384 N5 N32 N113
This stop's immediately alongside Edgware station. However it's for alighting only - you can't catch a bus here. Also 14 of these routes terminate here so you might think this doesn't properly count.
Bromley Civic Centre(T) 18 routes: 61 119 126 138 146 162 208 246 261 314 320 336 352 358 367 SL5 N3 N199
This stop's on the bypass avoiding the pedestrianised section of Bromley High Street, heading south. It beats the northbound stop because the Superloop doesn't stop there, only here.
Hounslow High Street(K) 18 routes: 81 110 111 116 117 120 203 222 235 237 281 423 E8 H22 H28 H32 H98 N9
This stop's just off Hounslow High Street, heading east, and is the penultimate stop for 10 routes terminating at Hounslow bus station. You can board all these routes here, even if it's only for one stop, but you might think this doesn't properly count. It's also one of only two bus stops in London served by as many as 17 daytime bus routes. Here's the other one...
High Street / Orpington War Memorial(R) 18 routes: 51 61 208 353 358 B14 R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 R8 R9 R10 R11 N199
This one's on Orpington High Street, heading north, and scores really highly because all 11 R-prefix buses stop here. The R2 skips the southbound stop opposite, otherwise that'd be in my list too. According to the results of a recent consultation the B14 and R6 will be merging soon, so the number of routes here will be dropping to 17.
There are currently seven bus stops served by 17 bus routes.
•• Horse Guards Parade (N) and (S)
• Westminster Station/Parliament Square (A)
• Bromley Civic Centre (S)
• High Street / Orpington War Memorial (S)
•• Tubbenden Lane (H) and (J) (outside Orpington station)
So, to finally answer all the points in that Reddit post...
Is this London's busiest bus stop?
No, it's 4th busiest (unless any of the southbound stops at Brixton station beat it).
The busiest bus stop is at Marble Arch on Park Lane, heading south (ditto).
I can't think of any stop with more routes.
There are at least 15 bus stops with more than 16 routes.
Bus stops A, J and U on the Strand have the most - 21.
Hounslow High Street (K) and Bromley Civic Centre (T) have the most daytime routes - 17 each.
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, a bit of a stroll, world class transport connections, dry in all weathers, popular with tourists, moving walkways, duty free opportunities, entirely step-free, won't take long. So here's a brief subterranean trek linking two of the terminals at London's premier airport, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
Heathrow is an inherently hostile environment for pedestrians, 3000 acres of concrete and greenspace sealed off so that air travel can predominate. But there is a tiny island in the middle where the terminals are, linked to the wider world by train and by road, where free roaming is partially permissible. Here a lengthy subway connects flights to transport interchanges, meandering rather more than this graphic suggests, and hardly anyone walks the full length of it. So that's what I did.
Terminal 2, otherwise known as the Queen's Terminal, is actually Heathrow's newest terminal having opened in June 2014. It replaced the original T2 and the Queen's Building, the office block with the much-loved observation deck, and should one day extend across the footprint of Terminal 1 if that's ever demolished. It's high-stacked and glassy, with departures on top of arrivals and a massive swooshy sculpture running the full length designed to resemble the slipstream of a stunt plane. It's the only pretty thing you'll be seeing on the entire walk so make the most of it.
Walking from here to the central bus station is not an option, as you can see if you stare down from the top deck across the drop-off zone and clock the security barrier along the central reservation of the innermost ring road. Additional signs at ground level warn Authorised Staff Only Beyond This Point, so the subway is instead the sole approved route. Reaching it requires queueing patiently by a bank of lifts, of if you don't have luggage taking the single escalator to one side. It's not especially welcoming.
The first section of subway isn't much more appealing, walking between undecorated walls with silvery vents and ducting clearly visible through the slats in the ceiling. You could be heading for a multi-storey car park under a suburban shopping centre rather than taking your first steps into one of the greatest cities on earth. Thankfully the moving walkway then begins, and everything always feels a lot more modern with one of those around. Look carefully and you'll see the surface ducks down slightly before rising again, ever so gently, into the middle distance. The sign overhead which says Beware Restricted Headroom is only likely to be relevant if you're the world's tallest man or you're carrying a surfboard.
The first 'pause' you reach is the exit for the tube station, bus station and coach station. Only the tube station is welcoming, its blue nameplate indicating the way to a bank of ticket machines and the cheapest link to the West End. Not to be outdone a separate information desk shines forth in the subway offering UK Sim cards and a gentle nudge towards the Heathrow Express. If you're in less of a hurry, enjoy the mini-exhibition of travel posters still celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Underground's arrival 47 years ago.
Ploughing on, the next moving walkway feels a lot more futuristic which I put down to the bright blue glow of the lighting alongside (and also the fact the ceiling's properly finished). If you're lucky you can stride ahead unobstructed, but if you're less fortunate you could be stuck behind an obstructive group of passengers outnumbered by their luggage. On reaching the far end a second blue-lit walkway awaits, this I think longer and with a slight uptick in gradient at the far end. The gap between the two is to allow for the interjection of an emergency exit, and also for the more practical reason that the subway bends.
As the blue light fades away the subway becomes static again and starts to provide a choice of exits. The first is for lifts to the short stay car park, where one machine will validate your parking ticket and another wants to sell you a Coke. The second exit is a funnel into the railway station, once for just the Heathrow Express but now also for Crossrail. A purple-waistcoated operative hovers beside the entrance in the hope of selling tourists the more expensive fare, all while standing beside a sign claiming £25 is a special offer. Arrivals from T3 are more likely to fall for this ploy than arrivals from T2.
Not far ahead the passageway splits left for departures and right for arrivals. I picked left and got to enjoy a fourth travelator experience, because this really is a brilliant walk for those who don't like walking. Here at last the walls have adverts, but alas for the Heathrow Express exhorting inbound passengers to 'Transfer at Paddington' for a variety of geographically impractical tourist activities. A yellow sign warns End of Conveyor Keep Clothing Clear before the subway terminates at a bank of lifts, or more directly a final escalator, before disgorging into the piazza in front of Terminal 3.
Terminal 3 is a 1961 building repeatedly upgraded, the latest spruce-up being the canopied forecourt and drop-off zone in 2007. It lacks the architectural wow of T2 and T5, unless perhaps Milton Keynes town centre is your thing, which is fine because most people are only here to check in and pass through security as fast as possible. I struggled even to find a coffee shop and a WH Smiths because they'll be airside, indeed there's very little need ever to visit if you're not flying yourself and even less need to walk here from Terminal 2. But I have... and then I walked back again.
A Nice Walk: Heathrow T3 to T2 (500m)
Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, a bit of a stroll, world class transport connections, mildly adventurous, roadway adjacent, non-claustrophobic, very low footfall, entirely step-free, won't take long. So here's another brief trek linking two of the terminals at London's premier airport, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
But what if you don't go down into the subway, I thought, is there an entirely unsignposted route from T3 to T2 for pedestrians above ground? Are the roads which swirl around the bus station really impassable or is the subway not the only way to do it? It isn't easy to tell on a map, partly because 2D diagrams are poor representations of complex 3D networks and partly because official maps don't like to let on that backway shortcuts exist. I took a chance and walked past the Virgin Atlantic entrance towards the maelstrom of circulatory service roads, and was pleased to discover the pavement continued so kept on walking.
I passed the redbrick boiler house, the last of the original 1950s Central Terminal Area buildings not to fall foul of the wrecker's ball. I crossed the entrance to Control Post 5, one of the key security gateways where official ground staff can drive airside. I followed specific painted walkways, each with a dropped kerb, and beaming faces on billboards welcoming drivers to the airport. And I spotted a proper pushbutton pelican crossing so I crossed that because it looked like it led to the central bus station, and instead ended up here.
This is St George's Interdenominational Chapel, an ecumenical cave designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd to cater to the wider needs of Heathrow's staff and passengers. Outside is an almost plant-free Garden of Remembrance surrounded by plaques and memorials to departed crew and entire passenger lists from crashed planes. It's surprisingly peaceful, inasmuch as a few benches within a ring road close to screeching jet engines allow for contemplation. I hoped to descend the spiralstaircase to the chapel proper but had unfortunately managed to arrive during Sunday's sequence of Adoration, Rosary and Mass so that pleasure'll have to wait.
Also the chapel is a dead end, alternatively accessed through a gap in the flyover at the far end of the coach station, and it turns out this is not the way back to Terminal 2. The trick is not to cross the crossing but to stay on the pavement and continue under the flyover. The four roads up there are called Condor Way, Contrail Way, Cloud Way and Cirrus Road while the road you're walking beside is Cosmopolitan Way, this because every road name in central Heathrow begins with C. Also the roads to the north begin with N, to the east with E, to the south with S and to the west with W, but I assume everyone knows this already.
Just beyond the flyover is what I think is the only hotel within the central Heathrow island, the Hilton Garden Inn - ideal for anyone who wants a very short walk to airport check-in and doesn't mind also being closest to the aircraft noise. It really is a short walk, finally properly signposted, straight across Terminal 2's bespoke bus station where coaches and minibuses serve 20 gloomy concrete bus bays. The central crossing deposits you either by the lifts or at the foot of the Slipstream sculpture, and hey presto it had proved surprisingly easy to walk between Terminals 3 and 2 above ground. But only if you know where you're going... which I now do.
It's one of 11 fibreglass models of heritage items scattered across central London. It's the London Heritage Quarter 'Journey Through Time' Summer Trail and it's bolx. It's been organised not to inspire and delight but to drive footfall to four commercial districts. It kicked off last week and runs all summer. It's lowest common denominator art. It's a lazy attempt at placemaking. And I know it's bolx because I've walked it.
The four responsible Business Improvement Districts are Victoria, Victoria Westminster, Whitehall and The Northbank, all joining together as the London Heritage Quarter in an attempt to grow collective commercial awareness. They do something like this every year - last year it was basketwork animals and in 2022 it was jubilee corgis - all in the hope that misguided innocents will come to explore the trail and end up in a restaurant afterwards. Not for nothing does the trail's official map contains 11 artworks and 59 eateries, the imbalance is entirely deliberate.
The trail starts with this painted teapot near Victoria station.
It's a teapot and it's been painted. I could have done that. Twenty years ago a fibreglass elephant with paint on it was novel and exciting, but then we got giraffes and tigers and Paddington Bears and every kind of themed object so there's nothing original about any of this any more. Apparently the teapot is called 'Pour into Yourself as Well as into Others', or so it says on the label to the side, and that's not the worst of the bolx we'll be reading later.
Object number 2 is a telephone box outside Westminster Cathedral. It takes some skill to make a phone box look less photogenic, but Carlos Penalver's white paint job succeeds.
Also, every sculpture promises an 'AR Experience' accessed by unlocking the QR code alongside. I don't normally do these things but I gave this one a go and it was bolx.
I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting a single black and white photograph floating above the piazza. It's a photo of the Pope going past in his Popemobile in 1982, and I don't think you get anything out of seeing a squinty photo in situ rather than printed or embedded elsewhere. I didn't bother trying the AR experience at any of the other locations.
Object 3 is at the Guards Museum on Birdcage Walk, but it turns out to be inside the Guards Museum and that has an £8 admission charge so stuff that. I skipped this one but only once I'd yomped across Victoria, pointlessly as it turned out.
Number 4 is a crown at the Buckingham Palace end of St James's Park. I had high hopes because last month Time Out said it'd be "a gigantic sculpture of a jewelled crown" but it wasn't. They also promised it'd be "an impressive 1.74m tall and 2.44m wide" but it wasn't that either, it wasn't much taller than a five year old. Always take it with a pinch of salt when a media outlet ejaculates over a press release.
I also read the description of the inspiration behind the crown and it was bolx. People who write about art often write vacuous drivel, and this is some of the most vacuous drivel I've ever read.
I don't normally advocate violence, but whoever wrote that should be taken outside and sacked.
My pointless trek continued.
5) A pocket watch outside the QE2 Conference Centre. It sits alongside a leftover corgi from two years ago and that was getting all the attention - the pocket watch rightly none.
6) A multicoloured postbox outside the Supreme Court. Apparently 'the painted colours embody the values of transparency, equity and community engagement", and no, just no, stop the bolx.
7) A pair of wellies alongside the Houses of Parliament. I had to wait my turn here while three ladies with a trail printout took in in turn to photograph themselves in front of it. Poor deluded souls, I thought.
8) A taxi in Trafalgar Square. More artbolx... "The colour palette features red, white and blue - common in world flags - symbolising courage, sacrifice, neutrality, peace, loyalty and freedom'.
9) A top hat in Whitehall Gardens. I'd walked over three miles by this point and wasn't convinced that finding a willow-patterned item of headgear had been worth my while.
10) A teacup in Lower Grosvenor Gardens. Apparently this is a "multifaceted, abstract rendition of the teacup", but it looked like a teacup smeared with paint to me.
After two meandering hours I eventually reached the last sculpture, a double decker bus at Aldwych. It took me over 10 minutes to find it because it wasn't quite where it said it was on the map. Thank heavens that slog's over, I thought, which wasn't quite the "hey let's go to a local eaterie' conclusion the organisers had been hoping for.
Let me say that some of the individual works of art aren't bad, indeed if you stumbled upon them while out doing something else you might well smile and take an interest. What's bolx is the trail aspect, a pointless linkage scattered across an unnecessarily broad area with no thought given to creating a sensible route inbetween. What's bolx is the verbal diarrhoea describing many of the works when shutting up would have been a wiser option. What's bolx is the AR guff added to give context, the floaty photos only semi-visible after a smartphone palaver. But mainly what's bolx is that a business-focused outfit has created a vacuous visitor attraction which you'll only discover is disappointing after you've attempted to follow it, whereas what you really should have done is simply wandered round the West End because it's brilliant.
Next time a commercial entity offers up Painted Fibreglass Orienteering, run a mile.
