Sometimes spaces on heavily booked tours suddenly appear overnight, even on the day of the opening, thus I grabbed this one and changed my plans for the day. Richmond is the last lock on the Thames if heading downstream, and the only one owned and operated by the Port of London Authority. It was opened in 1894 to solve a problem created 60 years earlier when the old London Bridge was demolished, speeding up the flow of the river. This meant the upper tidal reaches between Teddington and Richmond became unnavigable for hours either side of low tide, hence an elaborate iron span was constructed with five arches and three rising sluice gates. An Act of Parliament requires river levels to be maintained at or above half-tide level, which is 1.72m, hence government permission has to be sought annually when they open the weir for autumnmaintenance.
The footbridge across the top opens daily but you can't walk underneath, not unless you're a PLA employee. For Open House it was possible to do this on both banks because each end of the structure is supported atop a sturdy lockkeepers cottage and both of these were open. One is still in operational use, complete with big screens, tide tables and a kettle, while the other has been leased to an architectural practice called Astronaut Kawada. The long thin space has been beautifully kitted-out in white with drawings and models on display, plus a well placed mirror to make it look longer. Dean's desk is perfectly placed to have the lock span over his right shoulder, far better than any screensaver, while the view from the entrance is of the weir side-on in perfect symmetry. If you have a small boat you can lug it over the rollers here for free.
The actual lock itself is adjacent to the Surrey bank and is 76m long and 8m wide so can take much larger craft. It's needed when the weir gates are raised, a mechanism you can watch up close from the footbridge roughly two hours before and two hours after high tide. We were instead fortunate enough to be able to watch a boat pass through, admittedly a small one but it wasted the same amount of upstream water all the same. To admit them Mason the lockkeeper pressed a button to open the lock gates, then closed them, then wandered round to the mooring chains carrying a big fishing net. What on earth does he need that for, we thought, and were both amused and surprised when he lowered down a white plastic card reader so the boatowner could pay his contactless toll charge. It costs £5 for non-commercial craft to pass through the lock, down from £12 last year, which also covers a return journey on the same day. I presume the same net method is used to collect notes.
They've had a tough year at Richmond Lock, first with too much water passing through thanks to high winter rainfall, then insufficient water thanks to summer drought. They're still suffering from low flow so the weir's currently raised for longer than normal, also they try to double up boats through the lock which helps maintain the statutory minimum level at all times. Climate change is expected to bring additional challenges, thus managing the lock/weir combo is a lot to keep on top of and not just an open and shut case. I had been hoping the tour would go further than just the dockside (we didn't even get to cross the lock gates), also a lot of what was said was drowned out by regular planes on the Heathrow flightpath directly overhead. But always keep an eye on the Open House listings because sometimes some proper last minute treats pop up.
It's always good to walk round a postwar council estate on a tour led by a resident, so this year I headed to the Central Hill Estate which hugs 17 acres of sloping land near Crystal Palace. It's lovely and woody at the top, rather less so at the bottom, and considered an acclaimed high-densitylow-rise estate. It is however in the London borough of Lambeth and they've historically had a feral bloodlust for redeveloping their older council estates, which must be why the introductory talk didn't start with a potted history but instead a lengthy gripe about the sneaky tactics that had been used to vacate tenants and let the fabric of the estate decline. And yet despite a demolition order passed in 2017 no flats have yet been pulled down, mostly thanks to the dogged stubbornness of the residents, which echoed everything I'd heard on an Open House tour of Cressingham Gardens a few years ago.
The tour of the site lasted almost two hours, much of it pointing out lovely things, pointing out bad things and responding to questions. Look at these gorgeous mature trees, there's no reason for these boarded-up homes to be empty, we had a decent basketball court here but then they built a playground in the middle of it, I had to push to get these bricks replaced, we used to have a community centre but they closed it, this neighbourhood was low-traffic even in the 1960s, imagine what you could use this nuclear bunker for, these modern flats in the corner are pretty shoddy, we first guessed something was up when they chopped down all the trailing ivy, etc etc. Near the end we also got to look inside one of the maisonettes which was fairly spacious for a 3-bedder, even if it didn't have the stunning views across London the upstairs neighbour enjoyed.
Only a miracle it seemed could turn around Lambeth's blinkered purge, and unbelievably that may have happened earlier this year and be consolidated at a council meeting next month. The Green Party took control of Lambeth council in May, ousting a 20-year Labour administration. One of their new councillors was PeteElliott, a former Central Hill resident who's been running the Open House tour for years and been highly outspoken on the subject. He's now the Cabinet member responsible for Housing and suddenly in charge of the process that previously evicted him from his home. Making changes is difficult when you've a restricted budget and inherited debt, but the council is now working with residents rather than against them and it's anticipated demolition status will be reversed. Miracles do happen, but you have to vote for them.
I've been meaning to look inside this utter anomaly for years and it didn't disappoint. First there was Kingswood Lodge, owned by the solicitor who foiled George IV's plan to divorce his wife Caroline of Brunswick. In 1891 John Lawson Johnston moved in, the inventor of Bovril, having spotted that cubes of beef extract were easier to send to market than the cattle themselves. He extended the house and added chunky battlements, also Scottishifying the interior. In 1921 another meat baron took up residence, namely Sir William Vestey (who was responsible for the Dewhurst chain and a massive shipping empire). After WW2 the building's importance slumped when 'Bovril Castle' was turned into a council library, and since 2020 it's become a bookless arts venue with cashflow issues. They told this amazing backstory in far more detail on the tour.
About 50 of us were led jovially round the building, starting in the entrance hall where the house's surviving tapestries haven't quite faded. The Great Hall has true Scottish baronial style, including full wood panelling and an anachronistic minstrels gallery, thus must have been an amazing space to seek out the latest library books. Children instead renewed their Julia Donaldsons in the billiard room. The Jacobean Room is named for its decorative plaster ceiling inlaid with noble symbolism, while the Palm Court is no longer frond-filled but retains a classic airiness. We didn't get upstairs because they were hosting a children's party up there, but that's a working venue for you.
When Camberwell council took control of Kingswood House in the 1950s they surrounded it with a fairly basic council estate, much to the horror of nearby Dulwich residents. It thus remains a shock to see this battlemented castle sitting incongruously amid municipal blocks opposite a very lowly shopping parade, especially if climbing up out of Sydenham Hill station. Thankfully the arts centre has established itself at the heart of its community with a cafe, classes and wedding availability, also a free meal served every Tuesday evening from 6.30pm should you be feeling lonely and/or hungry. I don't think they serve beef very often, nor is yeast extract on tap, but a fine bunch of volunteers continue to keep Johnston's Bovril-funded creation alive.
Here's London's newest museum, opened just three months ago in a former stately home amid parkland beyond Cockfosters. Trent Park has been a socialite's retreat, a wartime intelligence centre and a university campus, the new museum showcasing only the first two of these. I last went on a tour of the house in 2012 just before Middlesex University sold up and moved out, since when an alternative educational proposition has fallen through and Berkeley Homes have built some stonkingly expensive houses in and around the mansion. But they didn't apartmentalise the lower two floors which have become a £14 visitor attraction, an admission charge kindly waived for Open House. Also our tour guide was the museum's Director whereas normally you just wander round, so even more of a good deal than usual. [50 photos]
You start out on the ground floor in the world of Sir PhilipSassoon, aristocrat, cabinet minister and bon viveur. He bought Trent Park and fashioned it into an elegant country house surrounded by landscaped grounds, inviting a Who's Who of Thirties society to join him there. Charlie Chaplin signed into the visitors book with a comic squiggle (see display case in room two). The museum trust have gone to great lengths to deck out the first four rooms with the correct decor, either the actual items or top quality replicas, and having seen how the university left it (orange plastic chairs stacked in the corner, overhead projector affixed to the wall) have done an excellent job. The Chinese wallpaper in the saloon looks so much better now, almost like no students had ever brushed up against it.
One of the perks of a tour with the Director is that he can break off from the approved route, in this case out onto the back terrace where guests were once entertained. The view'll be better when the huge pile of earth on the former lawn has been turned into something prettier and you can finally see the lake again, which I suspect will especially please the tenants in the upstairs Berkeley apartments. Back inside the house the fourth and final period room is the library, this now laid out to tell the story of the dawn of WW2. Sir Philip missed out by dying three months beforehand, thus Trent Park was immediately available for the government to requisition and turn into a home for prisoners of war. Head through the secret door in the bookcase to find out how.
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kendrick had the brilliant idea of housing captured German generals here in relative luxury, then bugging the entire house so their conversations could be recorded. A team of transcribers worked shifts in the basement, many of them German-speaking Jewish refugees, listening out for careless talk and capturing it (seven minutes at a time) on acetate discs. Additional tricks included sending in fake Nazi sympathisers, sending the officers on fieldtrips and interrogating them really badly in the hope they'd boast about unspilled secrets afterwards. And it worked! Amongst the gamechanging information obtained was an early key to how Enigma machines worked (1940), how the Luftwaffe were targeting munition factories so accurately (1941) and the existence of a new fearsome weapon called the V2 (1943). Without Trent Park these fearsome rockets would have arrived months earlier, whereas instead the RAF were able to bomb the test site and save not just thousands of lives but also oodles of morale.
The second half of the museum is thus a walk back through the basement via a warren of compact spaces, learning the minutiae of the wartime story as you go. The Director abandoned us here to explore at our own pace, partly for reasons of space but also because I suspect he's a tad tired of the sausage factory of showing another 20 polite souls round exactly the same exhibits telling exactly the same story, fabulous story though it is. And after one last chance to take a selfie of yourself cutting a disc it's back up to the gift shop, circuit complete. It is essentially two museums in one which is always good value, plus there's the obligatory well-heeled cafe round the corner if you can't yet face the slog back to the tube station. Just be careful what you gossip about because you never know who's listening.
Open House:WilkinsonEyre (Shoreditch) The Dangleway's One
Another weekend another architects' practice, this time WilkinsonEyre who've recently moved to new premises near the Old Street roundabout. None of that hotdesking nonsense here because everyone gets their own dedicated space, also they've retrofitted with care, also they had members of staff taking visitors on brisk informative walkabouts which is quite the best way to do it. Oh, I thought on several occasions, you're the ones who did that... the Copper Box, Battersea Power Station, 8 Bishopsgate, those stands at Lord's, Stratford Market Depot, King's Cross's gasholders, the Crystal and even Boris's cablecar, and that's just within London. Apparently they have 80 staff right now working on the design for Old Oak Common, a station whose connective purpose hasn't even been agreed yet, but they have at least settled the sinuous form of the platform roof so expect to see a start on that next year.
It wouldn't be Open House without the opportunity to take off your shoes to walk round someone's home, usually an architect, invariably unorthodox. This year my barefoot venue of choice was a teensy shoddily-built Victorian box just round the corner from Arsenal station, known locally as the Blue House. Architect Edward Farleigh-Dastmalchi saw its potential and transformed it into a unique family home, essentially keeping only three wonky brick walls and cramming in an extra bedroom up top. You visit these places to pick up tips - how to create a garden terrace out of nothing, how to hide a washing machine behind your TV, how to source blinds for your skylights, that kind of thing - or else simply to be amazed at the creativity that makes 54m² seem positively spacious. Top tip, minimise your circulation space (or move way out of London, obv).
Open House:Plaistow Hub (Plaistow) The Nuclear One
Here's one of no importance unless you live in E13, in which case it's been transformational. A few small patches of underused land by the tube station have been repurposed by Newham council to create 182 new homes, one-third affordable, plus a range of other previously non-existent amenities. The key building is a 21-storey block of flats somehow squeezed in alongside the railway, now a towering landmark in the neighbourhood. We only got to visit a flat on the 10th floor but that offered fantastic views towards the Dartford Bridge, Canary Wharf and (from a completely different window) West Ham station and the City. I never thought I'd ever consider Plaistow to be scenic but from up here it somehow is. The building also contains an events room (hireable rather than communal) and a large first floor terrace overlooking the street (communal but empty).
At street level a new Station Square has been created, activated by a coffee shop and a Co-op, plus a brand new connecting staircase down to London Road which I give thanks for every time I pop round to see BestMate. Apparently the gym behind the supermarket has four storeys and is already the busiest in East London, which is perhaps a reflection on how little else there is to do in Plaistow. A separate residential building on the other side of the railway bridge is heavily constrained by the footprint of a passing sewer, and underneath contains a brand new Plaistow Library which should be opening within weeks. A nice touch is the palindromic ironwork on the staircase down to the playground, which is perhaps the maximum amount of whimsy a council-led project can condone. And I came on the tour because I've watched all this go up over the last few years, turning nothing much into a lively new civic focus, and sometimes it's nice to thank the architects first hand.
Open House continues unabated this weekend.
Here's where else I've been over the last week.
Open House:Punchdrunk (Woolwich) The Immersive One
Sometimes something utterly unexpected turns up on the Open House list, and so it was on Thursday evening when an invite to tour secret backstage facilities at Punchdrunk appeared entirely unannounced. I'll have that, I thought. And so it was I joined one of three very small groups invited for a backstage tour inside the immersive theatre company's permanent home at Woolwich Arsenal. We were under strict instructions to take no photos and reveal nothing confidential so I forgive me if I lapse into lorem ipsum every time there's something I shouldn't tell you.
Punchdrunk have been running immersive dramatic experiences since 2000, initially one bloke jumping out from behind a bush with a Walkman and more recently massive costume dramas with interlocking narratives for hundreds to wander round. In 2013 they premiered The Drowned Man in a former Post Office depot in Paddington and in 2023 delivered The Burnt City, a creative representation of the backstreets of Troy, both of which ran in situ for over a year. The set of the latter eget in Woolwich and we got the opportunity to walk its narrow alleyways, exploring tristique senectus and semper placerat. The attention to detail is extraordinary, even down to handwritten notes hidden in books nobody might ever read, also umpteen pairs of stressed underwear representing auctor convallis. It's a bit like the Crystal Maze but with narrative instead of challenges, thus loses something when the actors and fellow participants aren't there.
Punchdrunk have two Arsenal buildings on long term lease, now linked by a black passage where dictum vitae Henry the Hoover. One contains the workshop where all the props and designs are churned out, not just for events in London but around the world, also a second vast room awaiting imaginative transformation. I was last here when this was Firepower, the cannon-heavy museum that closed in 2016, and it certainly looks very different now with condimentum rutrum leo and tape on the floor. There's no word on what Punchdrunk's next show might be, nor when, nor where, but by the looks of the fringilla pretium hanging under the mezzanine and the scelerisque being built I'd say the theme is likely id feugiat felis and the signature colour will be mattis urna. It takes hundreds of craftspeople and imagineers to create a Punchdrunk experience so a ticket doesn't come cheap, but how privileged to have been given the opportunity to look deep behind the scenes at the complex spaces that might one day amet enim at ipsum dictum rhoncus.
So popular were theatre and cinema in the late 1930s that a 4000-seater appeared in Kilburn, the third largest ever to have been built in the UK. Some hint of size comes from the monumental exterior modelled on New York's Empire State Building, then the unnecessarily magnificent entrance hall with its gold-topped marble columns and dripping chandelier. But it's only when you discover the enormous auditorium hidden laterally behind that your jaw drops, first that somewhere so huge was ever needed and secondly that it's still here in undivided form. George Formby and Gracie Fields performed on opening night, Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lee Lewis dropped by later, and bingo didn't take over fully until 1980. That the building survives intact today is down to the Ruach City Church who can still fill the stalls and the lower balcony every Sunday, and also be extremely welcoming to Open House Visitors.
The interior has an Italian Renaissance vibe, dramatic enough to draw the eye if the performance on stage is dragging. The ceiling has a saucer dome surrounded by scrolling arabesque panels, the walls have tall niches, the proscenium arch is coved and I only know all this because the building's Grade II* listed - to the eye it just looks seriously pretty. One rarity is that a Wurlitzer remains in situ, as does the original switch room round the back where the follow spots were lit and counterweights were lowered to raise the scenery. One of the men who operated the switches in the 1960s came back yesterday for a seriously nostalgic visit, assuring us that yes he'd lit the Beatles and indeed met them when he moved on to a job at Elstree.
If you're of a certain age it's seriously evocative to get the run of a Super Cinema, to wander freely round the stalls and up to the very back of the circle. To be reminded of the days when toilets were concealed to the side of the auditorium down sets of stairs, when children might have gathered in the lobby every Saturday before being engrossed by a morning of films, the curtain ready to lift, the partial view from your wood-backed seat, the aisles where ice creams would be sold in the interval and the Fire Exit ready to return you to the street, and you just don't get that at a modern multiplex. Here at Kilburn you can get it all, just once a year, and still Super-sized. [6 photos]
Just off Highgate's high street, past the last house with the R2-D2 gnome, is the entrance to Omved Gardens. Once waste ground it's since been transformed into a sloping garden with weaving paths, eco-structures and wellness opportunities. September's not the best month to see the plants, the sunflowers already wilted, but the sky garden above the kitchen continues to bloom and the tomatoes at the foot of the hill are ready to be harvested in most unusual colours. What sets Omved apart is the arc of wooden buildings added more recently to give the place some biocommercial heft, including an events barn, a greenhouse chicane and a seed library. The latter is crammed with glass jars, the contents of which they like to share with visitors to help spread diverse and unusual species across the community.
It feels like somewhere that should be open to the public full time, right down to the large-ish cafe counter dispensing carrot cake and salad to an audience that generally isn't there. Instead they have open days just once a month (the next on Sunday 11th October) and the rest of the time support themselves with ticketed events like kimchi workshops, honey tastings, live music, supper clubs and meditative sound baths. Highgate is plainly the perfect spot for such an enterprise - it'd never work in Hornchurch - but if plants and seeds are your thing you'd likely appreciate a visit just to wander and explore (inside and out) like we did.
Still in Haringey but a world away, this urban farm acts collectively to bring horticultural awareness to the masses. The main focus is a row of 1970s greenhouses mostly used for vegetable production, and sufficiently prestigious that Ottolenghi's Soho restaurant Nopi has its very own kitchen garden here. Other plots grow ancestral plants serving the cuisine of the diaspora and generate salad bags anyone can drop in and collect weekly, while a small kitchen on site turns roots into hearty meals for disadvantaged members of the local community. The enthusiasm I experienced while speaking to those who work here was uplifting.
The greenhouse nearest the main road has been turned into a long thin Palm House with spiky growths and a central koi-filled stream, also a pool where several turtles poke their shells out of the water. Half of another greenhouse is packed with cacti, and I believe you can generally wander in and see these every Friday. Poking round the new eco-building at the rear was instead an Open House one-off, and very much the cheaper option if you're looking for an events venue in N22. Wolves Lane reopens for OH on Sunday, or come back for the Autumn Market on 4th October to see how the site really cultivates community value.
I was heading home through Marylebone yesterday when I saw a train in new GBR branding. That's odd, I thought, I didn't think Chiltern had been nationalised yet. And they haven't quite, they transfer on Sunday and this was the DfT PR launch hullaballoo.
You could tell it was an event because platform 1 had been fenced off, ironically with Chiltern-branded barriers. You could tell it was an official event because attendees were wearing suits, sensible shirts and lanyards. You could tell it was a PR event because dozens of bottles of water were sitting on a wall in case anyone wanted one. You could tell it was carefully choreographed because an old Chiltern class 165 had been parked alongside a new red, white and blue class 68. You could tell it was something to be proud of because everyone was lining up for group photos, right down to the last group of underlings. The smell of aftershave was very strong.
A quick check where we are in the nationalisation timetable...
Pre-nationalised: LNER, TPE, Northern, Southeastern Already GBR: SWR, c2c, Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains, Thameslink, Southern, Great Northern GBR from Sunday: Chiltern Not yet GBR: GWR, EMR, Avanti, CrossCountry Won't be GBR: ScotRail, TfW, NI Railways, Caledonian Sleeper, Eurostar, Merseyrail, Heathrow Express, Grand Central, Hull Trains, Lumo
I see the word 'Chiltern' is being retained to describe the route out of Marylebone, when they could have chosen Central, South Central, South Midland or all sorts of other alternatives.
As far as I know the full list of GBR sub-brands is as follows...
Compass points: North, Southern, Southeastern, South Western, North West Modified compass: Great Northern, Great Western; West Midlands, East Midlands; West Coast, East Coast Other: Anglia, Chiltern, CrossCountry, Island Line, Thameslink, TransPennine; High Speed, Sleeper
The inconsistency of that first list niggles me.
An hour later the DfT confirmed this was a GBR launch by firing out a press release claiming "people will benefit from 25 more daily services from December alongside cleaner stations, upgraded trains and better on-board wifi". It also says "public ownership provides a fresh opportunity to deliver East West Rail and its benefits for passengers", which suggests the government has no idea how to finally open the line through Winslow either. Expect a half-hourly service between London and Birmingham from December 13th, which is excellent even if I can't work out where all the cheap services have gone. And come Sunday I wonder if the statue of Adrian Shooter at the end of platform 1 will be weeping stone tears as his pet private railway slips silently back into public ownership after 30 years.
It's now two years since TfL began major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout to prepare it for the opening of the Silvertown Tunnel, and 18 months since they supposedly finished. And yet there's still one part of the new layout THAT HAS NEVER OPENED, and now would you believe THEY'VE STARTED UNDOING IT AGAIN.
The original works did three things... i) they trimmed the edges of the Bow Roundabout, widening it to three lanes on the west side. This works just great. ii) they widened the approach from Stratford High Street from two lanes to three. This is also working fine. iii) they diverted the contraflow from Marshgate Lane underneath the flyover. And this HAS NEVER OPENED.
Initially this was because, a bit late in the day, someone noticed that lorries might hit the Bow Flyover if they passed underneath. Three signs warning of 3.9m headroom were in place but weren't foolproof, and it would only take one unobservant driver to cause significant infrastructural damage. Newham council thus insisted that a steel height restriction gantry be constructed across the westbound contraflow lane, but this turned out to have estimated costs of £250,000 and nobody was up for that.
OK said Newham, we've always wanted an eastbound bus lane between the Bow Roundabout and Marshgate Lane so let's do that instead. It'd mean repurposing the contraflow lane and scrapping the new road under the flyover, but it'd be cheap and we could introduce it on a temporary basis. And they appear to have started because the wedge of raised tarmac that protected entry to the contraflow lane has just been removed. All it needs now is a repaint and two lanes of traffic could head east, not just one.
Simultaneously work has begun on restructuring Bus Stop W at Marshgate Lane. This has been woefullysubstandard ever since Cycle Superhighway 2 was introduced and still provides zero protection for cyclists, so it's about time it was improved. I believe the plan is for a bus stop bypass to be created, with a floating island to ensure buses no longer have to cut across the cycle lane to pick up passengers. A lot of tarmac has been dug up, half a new kerb has already been added and the estimated end of works is 23rd October. Until then eastbound buses will be whizzing past over the flyover, there being nowhere to stop along the High Street for at least half a mile.
Meanwhile the unused lane under the flyover remains obstructed with concrete blocks, its traffic lights intermittently ticking over to no effect whatsoever. Some fool has even added a Road Closed sign to a road THAT HAS NEVER BEEN OPEN and that you couldn't drive down anyway. Everything points towards it never opening at all, despite having been built at great expense, as Stratford High Street gets a permanent eastbound bus lane instead. If only TfL had listened to Newham and prioritised buses over lorries in the first place, a 5-month-long roadworks project could have been simpler, quicker and not included an entirely redundant underpass THAT HAS NEVER OPENED... and seemingly never will.
Open House used to be one weekend, then it was two and now it's increasingly filling in the gap in the middle.
Some properties open midweek as an extra to the weekend and some don't do the weekend at all.
Some do midweek because it's easier, some because they're open anyway and some because they're shameless attention-seekers.
Here are five midweekers I've been to since Monday.
And just for a change I'm writing about places you could visit because they're all open again.
Open House:County Hall (Kingston) The No Longer Anomalous One
One thing I love to visit for Open House is a town hall, be it current or former. This is one step up, the administrative centre for an entire county, if not the right county for much of that time. It made sense in 1893 that Surrey's County Hall should be in Kingston, winning out over competitors like Guildford or Epsom, but in 1965 Kingston was wrenched into Greater London and Surrey's administrative HQ simply stayed put. The anomalous situation somehow lingered until 1st January 2021 when the council shifted to a new home in Reigate, a much more sensible location, and sold the former County Hall to a developer for a paltry £25m. It's now being converted into 292 luxury apartments, a heritage bolthole for the simperingly affluent, at least judging by communal facilities including The Tasting Room, The Games Parlour, The Picture House and The Balance Studio. This was thus the ideal year to let the general public see some of the heritage assets before they end up behind a concierged gateline, starting with the stained-glass window at the foot of an elegant staircase ("No we can't go up there").
First stop the entrance hall beneath the clocktower, its floor beautifully mosaiced and its walls covered by long lists of High Sheriffs and Members of Parliament. Virginia Bottomley gets five namechecks and Michael Gove only three, this because they stopped updating the list after 2015. Upstairs a much grander reception room leads to two key chambers, both listed so unable to be apartmentalised. One is the council chamber where Surrey's councillors met until March 2020, its benches somewhat dusty and with pretty much no individual facilities bar a flip-up wooden tray. The Latin phrase on the clock behind the chair translates as 'Be brief; the hour is passing', which is excellent advice to councillors everywhere. The other chamber is the former county court (operational 1893-1997) where we had free rein to join the jury, stand in the dock and peer down the dusty staircase to the cells, as seen in several TV dramas when this was still an unlikely outpost of Surrey.
Also open Friday 18th (11-4) and Saturday 19th (10-4).
Open House:Resonance FM (Southwark) The 24/7 Eclectic One
Resonance FM operates the ultimate in community radio stations, running round the clock since 2002 with a sequence of niche and arty programmes. You might be listening to the sounds of the Congo one hour, then pensioner news, then live music from a narrowboat and birdsong overnight. It's an astonishing idea, especially as it grew up on FM before an age of streaming and replayability when the content played to a tiny but devoted audience. These days the global reach is over a million and it all comes from a mini studio complex near the South Bank, the latest stop on a journey that started out in a tiny room above Denmark Street. And for Open House they're inviting Londoners inside, but only for an hour in the morning when what's playing out is recorded rather than live. I was still a bit nervous though when I stepped behind the mixing desk in Studio 1 and the red light came on.
It's a tight ship with much to juggle, hence the new second studio really helps. A store cupboard's recently been converted to a 'Green Room', i.e. a small bench surrounded by whiteboards and archive ephemera. Part of this is an exclusive artwork by the artist Bob and Roberta Smith, whose weekly show goes out at 10pm every Sunday, archive here. It was great to get the opportunity to talk with the station's chief audio-juggler and learn how the slots get filled, why most of the equipment is still analogue and how volunteers are always welcome. The station's amazing output is currently put together by just four permanent staff and planned up to six months ahead to make sure you never quite know what you'll get. Do peruse the Resonance schedules (I suspect several readers already have their favourite shows) and if you can't find something interesting to listen to you may be culturally inert.
Also open Thursday 17th (10-11) and Friday 18th (10-11).
Before Netflix, before even television there were 3000-seater places of entertainment on our high streets where high drama and variety captivated nightly. One such was the Streatham Hill Theatre, opened in 1929 with a production of Wake Up and Dream to serve fast-growing audiences in south London. The architect WGR Sprague also designed Wyndham's and the Aldwych in the West End, the Stratford Empire and the Whitstable Hippodrome. The theatre survived until 1962 before being Bingo-ified and is now divided into spaces for slot machines and evangelical worship, the Ruach City Church taking over the larger multi-stacked space. They mostly need the seats and the stage but Open House visitors seemed more interested in the ornate decor, the ornate decor and the ornate decor. It may not hold you for long.
Also open Thursday 17th (11-4)
If mega-theatres float your boat you may be more interested in the 4000-seater Kilburn Gaumont which is opening for one day only (tomorrow, noon til 7).
It's almost obligatory for Open House to visit a church, this one tucked away in the alleyways of Covent Garden immediately behind Operation Mincemeat. It's a Presbyterian Kirk founded in 1719, although the current building's a 1909 rebuild to support a larger congregation, complete with an upper storey of benches overlooking the communion table. Amongst the points of interest are a wall of 34 postwar stained glass windows, the second panel depicting Scottish heroes including John Knox, Robert Bruce and David Livingstone, also a chunky square font believed to be made from the last marble ever quarried on Iona. File under 'I never knew this was here and I like it'.
Also open Saturday 19th (12-3) and Sunday 20th (1-5).
In 1974 down Lots Road, near Chelsea Harbour, two young architects bought a bakery oven factory and converted it into a modular creative workspace. They were way ahead of their time so not only are they still going but they've extended nextdoor and filled up with smart upmarket Chelsea types. Think interior designers, bespoke furniture merchants and wellness therapists. I expected a quick look round the ground floor and a brief exhibition but instead the baffled receptionist pressganged me onto a guided tour run by one of the original founders, and that made the whole thing properly worthwhile. Nothing at Open House beats being shown how a building works by someone who created it, and in this case helped it to evolve into a buzzy frictionless warren where profit margins thrive. Don't come just for the quick look unless you really like polkadot frontage and "& Avo" cafe options.
Also open Thursday 17th (11-5) and Friday 18th (11-5).
My alphabetical quest has finally reached zone 2, because unsung suburbs exist even in inner London. Shacklewell was one of the four hamlets of the ancient parish of Hackney, the others being the better-known Dalston, Kingsland and Newington. For centuries it comprised a quietlinear village along a country lane bearing off the Great Cambridge Road. But housing growth in Victorian times caused everything to merge, and while the names of settlements along the main roads survived poor old Shacklewell mostly lost its identity. It does have a station, near enough, but when they named that Rectory Road in 1872 the battle was mostly lost. I intend to walk the half-mile of Shacklewell Lane to see what's still here and what's new, starting by the Dalston branch of Nando's.
It's not the most uplifting of starts, passing a plant hire yard and a corner shop which claims to be 'the best supermarket in town', in which case London's retail economy must be in freefall. But then comes the most overbearing building on the street, a large redbrick pile which opened as Stoke Newington Synagogue in 1903 but which for the last 50 years has been Shacklewell Lane Mosque, hence the mighty dome plonked on top. On opening it was Britain's first mosque for the Turkish-Cypriot community, this part of Hackney proving a key migrant magnet. Judging by the banners on the gate their current commercial preoccupation is providing appropriate forms of burial "at Shacklewell Lane Mosque or another mosque of your choice", also flogging the products of importers Coffins Direct.
Several of the older industrial buildings along this first stretch have become service industry portals or creative studios, i.e. very New Hackney. 'The Factory' for example is home to Mystique Piercing, a purveyor of vegan scented candles and a bespoke milliner called Woody & Blue Hats. At number 32 are Kemp London, the city's oldest signmaking company who now specialise in all things neon, their clients including Disney, Tiffany, M&M's and Blur. Then it's right back down to earth at number 38 with Jack's Cafe, because there are still classic caffs with plastic tablecloths, squeezy sauce bottles and old gents in football tops putting the world to rights over a Full English. Shacklewell Lane's streetcred never quite recovers.
Follow the bend to the left past the street's finest housing stock which is Foskett Terrace, a long curve of three-storey villas with the Victorian authenticity estate agents dream of. Residents have a very-Hackney choice of educational establishments nearby, starting nextdoor with a nursery school inside the former Public Washing Baths, naturally called Bath House. For primary education they can cross the road to Halley House, opened ten years ago when there was a penchant for founding academies in any old office block. The local secondary option used to be Kingsland, a school deemed failing in 2003 and replaced by a boxier blue campus named after founder Jack Petchey, which now covers most of the south side of the old village.
Here comes the best bit, starting with the village's old pub first recorded as The Green Man in 1760. It's now the Shacklewell Arms, the name written only in faint white paint on the fascia and daubed in small text across the windows. I wondered if it had closed but no, that's just its style, with bands appearing this week including Bag of Cans, Frog and Blousey. The row of shops beyond is much depleted, including a 'newsagent' that no longer sells newspapers and a very lowly hairdressers, but also an organic greengrocer and a super-gentrified yoga retreat. Most of the old parade has been turned into small houses, two of the owners choosing to retain the old signage - specifically butchers JR Brewer at 77 and Eliiot's Dairies at 109. Strangely nowhere here does hot drinks, given Shacklewell had a coffee house as early as 1785.
The most obvious survivor is the village green, now a long thin fenced area bounded by plane trees. These days Shacklewell Green doubles up as a traffic island, the 488 bus passing either side depending, and the only greenspace locally for canine exercise if you don't want to schlep over to Hackney Downs. At its heart is a crucifix-topped war memorial dedicated to 'the men of Shacklewell who made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War', so the area must still have had its own community identity back then. Any vestiges of a rural idyll can however be swept away by looking at the Cotton Lofts across the road, modern flats crammed into a 1930s printworks owned by Henry Hildesley, the company that produced London Transport's postwar posters. The modern flats behind replaced a paper bag factory and a tennis string factory respectively.
The jewel of the Shacklewell Green conservation area is the enclave of workers cottages behind, eliciting a slight gasp when you enter for the first time. These elegant redbrick terraces have recessed porches, Welsh slate roofs and mostly the original sash windows. The finest features are the terracotta plates above each pair of doors featuring a fruity bush and the year of construction, these progressing round the estate from 1881 to 1886. It all looks wonderfully coherent, especially the pedestrianised stretch down Seal Street, while for many the highlight will be the rare sign on April Street featuring the now defunct NE postcode. Meanwhile Shacklewell's sole listed building is almost completely hidden behind, that's St Barnabas Church, a barrel-roofed Byzantine wonder that Ian Nairn considered "the best church of its date in London". I got inside for Open House five years ago but sadly they don't participate any more, just hide out of sight up a locked alleyway.
Shacklewell Road was originally called Wellington Road but was heavily bombed in the war and redeveloped very early afterwards. The architect was Frederick Gibberd who'd later go on to plan the whole of Harlow, but here he cut his teeth of a pioneering development, the Somerford GroveEstate. This was England's first mixed public housing development, combining 3-storey blocks of flats, 2-storey houses and a short run of bungalows, mostly based in L-shapes around grassy 'precincts'. The balconies and multiple playspaces perhaps feel the most forward-looking, also the pedestrianised walkways, and the 1947 build-quality is holding up fairly well. But it's also a tad beyond where the original village was, indeed the entire estate's in N16 (Stoke Newington) whereas everything else was E8 (Hackney), so it's as good a place to say farewell to Shacklewell as any. Now we all know where it is.
Mention Richard Burton and most people think of the great Welsh actor, but to Victorians the name would have conjured up a great moustachioed explorer instead. This Richard lived an astonishing life with some notable firsts, aided by the fact he was a brave soul capable of speaking dozens of different languages. In 1853 he adopted several disguises in order to attend the Hajj in Mecca, an act strictly forbidden to non-Muslims, for the purposes of research. In 1858 while searching for the source of the Nile on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society he became the first European to see Lake Tanganyika. In 1886 he translated The Arabian Nights into English for the first time, and three years later followed this up with the Kama Sutra. And after he died in 1890 his wife Isabel built him a unique mausoleum in Mortlake in the hope his deeds would be long-remembered. This appears to have been successful.
It's made of stone but looks like a tent, even down to the ripples in the canvas. The roof has a gold star above a cross above a row of gold stars and crescents, reflecting Richard's ambivalence to following a single religion. Isabel compounded this by erecting the mausoleum in the graveyard of a Roman Catholic church, one creed he never adopted, hence you can see the exterior round the back of St Mary Magdalen's in Mortlake any day between 9am and 3pm. However the structure was vandalised in the 1950s and has been closed ever since, even to conservators, the only opportunity to peer inside being up a short ladder round the back (through the blank pane where the stained glass window used to be). Now thankfully a lottery grant has facilitated repairs to the structure and the unblocking of the door so it's finally possible to go back inside for the first time in 70 years, as the Open House posters proudly proclaimed.
It's such a small space that the organisers were only able to allow in five at a time, the queue corralled in the church hall with an exhibition and a video. Once fully briefed we stepped inside a space both reverent and joyful, complete with camel bells in the roofspace that used to jangle every time Isabel came to pay her respects. The central shrine is bedecked with candleholders, pictureframes, glass and ceramics of no special import. Some of the lanterns came from the British consulate in Trieste, the Burton's last posting. Encircling the walls is a gold-painted quote from St Luke's gospel ("Stay with us because it is towards evening and the day is far spent"). The ceiling is painted with cherub sunbursts unnervingly resembling the sky above Teletubbyland. And there to either side are the actual coffins of Richard and Isabel, his the more ornate, the repositories of two souls incredibly well-travelled even by modern standards and very much not forgotten.
When St Leonards Court in East Sheen was being built in 1938, the threat of imminent war encouraged the owners to build a private air raid shelter out front. This was accessed through a small hut down a short staircase with one dimly-lit room to either side, all tucked beneath a layer of lawn and concrete. When war broke out privileged residents could come down and sit crammed onto benches waiting for the all clear to sound, while those in the houses opposite had to take their chances at the municipal shelters several streets away. The Blitz led to much longer spells underground so two additional rooms were built with space for 48 very basic bunk beds. No bombs ever landed hereabouts so the shelter was thankfully never tested, and perhaps more surprisingly it's also survived the subsequent 80 years and is occasionally opened up for public visits.
The handrail on the stairs is about the only thing that's new, beyond which is the same musty limewashed space and what's left of the original fittings. Two lightbulbs were all that lit each of the benched rooms, with Gents and Ladies chemical toilets tucked behind a slim partition. Each room had a tiny escape hatch accessed via a dubious ladder, these doubling up as ventilation hatches embedded in the lawn. No bunks survive but a few fragile shelves remain (DO NOT TOUCH), one with a dangling scrap of material that was used as a makeshift lampshade. The passageway still has numbered coat hooks, one room still has a heater, and its these authentic leftovers which helped residents get the shelter listed when developers threatened to replace it with fresh flats.
These days the shelter is only opened to the public once a year but all local schoolchildren get the opportunity to come down, one class at a time, and experience how challenging wartime civilian life might have been. I suspect they're all too young to realise how grim it would have become down here after a night of heavy cigarette smoking, instead aghast at how boring it would have been without wifi. My mind turned to how the wartime generation somehow endured such basic conditions night after night, how inhabitants of Ukraine are coping with something similar right now and how thus far I'd avoided anything so terrible. Some Open House venues are both a treat and a dire warning, even when hidden at the far end of an East Sheen cul-de-sac.
Another Richmond street, another mausoleum containing a rich man and his lover. However this time the man is the 2nd Earl of Kilmorey, an Irish nobleman, and the woman is his much younger mistress Priscilla Hoste. Despite the 30 year age gap she died first and Francis was so disconsolate he had a pink and grey Egyptian-style mausoleum built, then refused to tell anyone who was in it. It started out in Brompton Cemetery, then when the Earl moved to Chertsey he had it moved and installed in his own grounds there. Later he returned to his original house by the river in Twickenham and moved it again, and here his nomadic mausoleum finally rested. Today it remains locked away in a private patch of garden beside St Margarets Road, the bones of a 92 year-old nobleman at rest beside his 31-year-old bit on the side.
The annual Open House opening is a rare opportunity to even see the mausoleum, let alone step inside. This heavily decorated portal resembles the top of a liftshaft to the underworld and is penned off on an octagonal dais. Each of the four sides has a bronze panel which looks like a door but only one opens, unlocked by a unique circular key with umpteen prongs. The interior is rather plainer than at Mortlake, the only decoration being a marble bas-relief of the dying Priscilla on the far wall because this nobleman was obsessed. The orange light is amazing, all of it pouring in through four star-shaped glass panels in the ceiling. But it was again unnerving to be standing between two dead bodies, particularly given neither lead-lined coffin has fared well over the years. Francis probably thought he and Priscilla would be alone together for eternity, yet every year the nosey come looking for four hours on a Sunday afternoon.
All three of these Open House visits were coordinated by a local conservation group called Habitats & Heritage, formed in 2020 by a merger of the Environmental Trust for Richmond upon Thames and the South West London Environmental Network. We should perhaps be glad their name isn't longer. They also maintain the Bazalgette Mausoleum in Wimbledon and Grove Gardens Chapel in Richmond, and if you'd organised your weekend carefully you could have visited all five sites. A shout out too to the Mortlake with East Sheen Society who staffed the air raid shelter opening, and it really is amazing how much outer suburban heritage is looked after (and made presentable) by citizens keeping history alive.
This year it's my 25th Open House, which is quite something.
This year the overall programme felt sparser than usual, or maybe I've simply been to all the good places before.
Alas this year I was in Spain on the crucial day the booking went live, so have only visited places you could simply drop into.
And yes, for the 25th time I am about to blog about lots of special places you can no longer visit.
An Open House staple each year is an architectural practice throwing open its doors so you can see what a lovely building they work in. Latest to the table is Thomas Heatherwick and his team in their new HQ at Making House, a former fashion HQ just south of King's Cross. Hundreds of visitors were welcomed with a smile and a colour map, also an employee obsessively filming the flow of people to confirm officially how well the entire event had gone down. We got to explore the ground floor which is all one long room (plus adjacent workshops) and which had been packed out with even more examples of the practice's work than usual. Just inside the door is the backside of a New Bus For London, artfully chopped off, also a plant-filled hanging garden module from a project in China. Nothing Heatherwick's make is 'normal', indeed avoiding boring architecture is their entire philosophy.
Up front we wandered through models of objects that have ended up in cities, or in several cases become focal urban neighbourhoods in the Far East. A weird airport, artificial island or business district has every chance of being a Heatherwick. Further back were quirkier structures on a smaller scale, like the model for the Olympic Cauldron, Birmingham City's new Powerhouse Stadium and a non-winning design for the Queen Elizabeth Memorial in St James's Park. I looked in vain for a Garden Bridge but it was in the leaflet so they must still be proud of it. A number of times I went "oh that was one of yours was it", for example when presented with Coal Drops Yard, Google's HQ groundscraper and the new rooftop kerfuffle at Olympia. Straight lines are not generally a main feature if the architects can possibly avoid it.
In the workshop I met an employee adding bushes to the model of a proposed Chinese development, then spraypainting them. To one side another employee tried to get me to embrace the company's campaign to humanise the built environment, maybe even buy the book, then made do with handing me a map highlighting properly characterful buildings around Kings Cross. On more than one occasion I thought 'blimey, would anyone really want to live or work in that?' before reminding myself that a capital city rammed with tedious brick-effect cuboids isn't exactly where you'd want to be either. Later in the day I visited a lowlier architectural practice who design social housing estates and 3D print them in drab white plastic, definitely important work but it reminded me that our built environment really does need more pizazz, just here and there, and Heatherwick is seemingly extremely keen to make it.
Sometimes you think you're getting one thing and you end up getting something far better. I grinned throughout. The Art Workers Guild emerged from the Arts and Crafts Movement in 1884, initially bringing together young architects and designers to celebrate the all things handmade. Today more than 400 craftspeople across 60 creative disciplines still connect and meet to share their skills, their HQ being in Queen Square at the heart of Bloomsbury. I was thus expecting a nice look round a finely-decorated Georgian building, and indeed the swirling glass lampshade hanging above the hallway appeared to confirmed this. Instead I was handed a guide to the Table Top Museum, an annual open day where 30 members bring along a small collection to display, the more eclectic the better. You would have loved it.
The scene was set by a collection of snowglobes depicting scenes from around the world, then a 'Snippy Museum' of diverse pairs of scissors, then a tableful of 150 ceramics (must be small, must be white). The joy isn't just looking, it's interacting with the collector and asking how it all started, what their favourite piece is and how they decide what's in and what's out. Jon's 'Museum of Threaded Things' thus included screws, clamps and hand drills, not needles. Hugh's glass Christmas decorations all had to be Soviet era, hence a lot of cosmonauts and red stars. All Kavel's Coca-Cola cans were flattened by vehicles in Thanet in 2018/19. And Mark's 42 slides all featured animal sperm in close-up, thankfully found in a job lot at a market rather than collected separately. He handed me a postcard so I can now tell the difference between the ejaculate of a rabbit, a hamster and a vole.
It's hard to say which was my favourite but possibly Sally's collection of Salmon map postcards. Over 60 illustrated county maps were drawn by M.F. Peck between 1953 and 1974, starting with her home county of Norfolk. You'd recognise a Peck if you saw one, a line drawing with a green background and handwritten placenames with illustrations of several points of interest. I'd much rather have picked one of these from a holiday rack than a beach scene or bawdy cartoon. Sally says Maisie's designs probably inspired her own artistic style, at least when it comes to drawing map graphics. Participants are barred from bringing a similar collection next year so who knows what you might see laid out at the Art Workers Guild next September. I'm sure I could cover a tabletop with my collection of early 1980s chocolate biscuit wrappers, should anybody ask.
Everyone knows about Joseph Bazalgette's genius project to protect Victorian London from cholera and the Great Stink. But the gently-sloping sewers left the low-lying borough of West Ham with a levelling-up problem, specifically that all their pipes were too low to feed into it. Their solution was a mechanical pumping station built alongside the Northern Outfall Sewer, just off Abbey Road, a chimneyed building I have walked past hundreds of times without ever realising what it was. Twin beam engines pumped away 24 hours a day from 1900 onwards, apparently with the ability to raise 360 bathtubsworth of sludge per minute. Initially the nine boilers also helped generate electricity for the local area, but high population growth (and rapid expansion of the tram network) soon required a better facility elsewhere. Only when a separate pipe was built to Abbey Mills in 1972 did the engines finally fall silent, then the doors were locked shut and the interior was left to rot away.
The rest of the pumping station building has been repurposed as a vocational training centre for apprentices and an evangelical church. Now a separate organisation called the Heritage Engineering Learning Trust has stepped in to protect and restore the engine house, and hopefully to establish a visitor attraction focusing not just on these metal behemoths but also the industrial heritage of the wider Lea Valley. They have an exceptionally long way to go because getting a lottery grant really isn't easy, but thankfully the main fabric of the engine house is in pretty good nick and for Open House they were able to throw open the doors to hundreds of the general public for the first time. I'm impressed so many people turned up given HELT failed to put a sign outside the entrance so a lot of people got lost, also the event was described in the Open House listings as a 'Guilded Tour', and if they want that lottery money sure passion is important but so is attention to detail.
The pumphouse is surprisingly capacious, mainly in an upward direction, with two great big wheels to either side and two mighty pumping arms about halfway up. A crane dangling metal chains sits astride the lot, ready to move whatever maintenance should require. "Please don't all stand in the same place," said our tour guide, the floor panels covering a basement of much rustier pipes and chambers below. After 15 minutes of well-delivered exposition the highlight was the opportunity to climb the metal stairs, just as generations of workers would have done, and explore some of the mechanics from higher up. First to the top of the pistons, the metalwork clearly labelled Lilleshall Shropshire 1897, and then a single steep stair to beamthrust level. Many visitors of a mechanical bent were clearly thrilled by the opportunity. I can see this making a decent visitor attraction but I wonder if London doesn't already have too many preserved beam engines, far more dazzling than this, so it'll all come down to how the local angle plays out.
