45 Squared 41) WINDRUSH SQUARE, SW2
Borough of Lambeth, 110m×50m
Lambeth's premier public space can be found in the centre of Brixton opposite the Town Hall. It's had several different names, the latest of which is Windrush Square, and in 2010 was redeveloped as a fairly sparse piazza sometimes nicknamed Windswept Square. But it is in fact full of stuff, some of which you may never have spotted, so today I bring you...
20 things to see in Windrush Square
1) A streetsign saying Brixton Oval
In the 18th century this was the northern end of a long stripe of grazing land called Rush Common, much of which still exists as protected open land alongside Brixton Hill. Here by the crossroads was a small approximately elliptical pasture which went by the name of Brixton Oval. Sheep grazed here until the 1890s, although they'd have a hard time today because there's no grass, also they'd soon find themselves on the grill of a local takeaway. But the northeastern side of the square is still officially called Brixton Oval, despite the geometrical contradiction, and a street sign on the front of the library confirms this.
2) A philanthropist's public library Sir Henry Tate made his fortune refining sugar and spent much of his wealth on cultural philanthropy. His art collection seeded the Tate Gallery and here in south London he founded several public libraries, one of themhere in Brixton. The Prince of Wales came to open it in 1893, at which point you'd have found the newspaper room inside on the left, the reading room on the right and the lending library at the rear. These days there are computers upstairs and e-books in the catalogue, but as a place to read and study it's still as popular as the Lord of sugar would have hoped.
3) A statue of Sir Henry Tate
After Sir Henry died in 1899 his widow bought Brixton Oval, kicked out the sheep and presented it to the council so that it could become a public space. The Tate Library Garden duly opened in 1905 with raised flower beds and concentric walkways within a rim of iron railings, hugely more attractive than the hard landscaping we see today. A bust of Sir Henry took pride of place in the centre and is pretty much all that remains of the gardens today, its heavily weathered plinth describing him as "BARONET / VPRIGHT MERCHANT / WISE PHILANTHROPIST".
4) The Tate plane
The gardens were paved over in 1965 in favour of benches and a rim of raised beds at a cost of £3,000. But the off-centre plane tree was left alone, already towering above the library, and subsequently survived a more modern relandscaping in 2009. It's been designated one of the Great Trees of London by the charity Trees for Cities, and has a particularly impressive pyramidal canopy which shades a significant portion of the square for a significant portion of the year.
5) The Ritzy cinema
Opened as The Electric Pavilion in 1911, this listed auditorium expanded into the nextdoor Brixton Theatre after it suffered wartime bomb damage. These days it's a five screen warren for the Picturehouse chain, the latest programme helpfully emblazoned in large white letters on the front, and offers the square's sole refreshments even when the screens are dark.
6) Insufficient seating
In lieu of benches the square now has a few dozen chairs at jaunty angles, seemingly shiftable but in fact securely bolted down. They're not much cop for communal socialising in which case youre best bet is the so-called 'granite worm', a huge grey turd of clamberable rock deposited in front of the library.
7) The old public toilets
These were opened in 1929 alongside what was then the end of Rushcroft Road. A big trench was dug, then divided into Ladies and Gentlemen with two sets of stairs up to street level. The conveniences have alas been closed for over 20 years, likely for misuse as well as lack of cash, although the ironwork up top has scrubbed up prettily.
8) The sugar cane ironwork
The entire square was given a significant spruce up in 2009-10 as part of Mayor Boris’s Great Outdoors Programme. It gained the aforementioned lighting, the aforementioned granite worm, the aforementioned bleak emptiness and some interesting surfaces underfoot. The significance of the knobbly cast iron panels in the pavement beside the underground toilets will be missed by most, but it's a sugar cane motif to reference slavery and the West Indies.
9) The old lights
A couple of proper heritage lampstands have been retained, each with two teeny lamps and intermediate metalwork twiddles, but neither of them work. Alternative eco-friendly lighting has been provided instead including tall columns around the perimeter and Hesse indirect columns with ceramic halide metal lamps.
10) The grassy end
The southern half of the square was once the Orange Coachworks, London's first motor coach station, described in 1930 as "a sort of motor-coach Clapham Junction in tangerine, almost as big, and certainly as ugly". A petrol station on the site survived until the mid-1990s when it was all demolished to create a new open space adjacent to Tate Gardens. In 1998 the two spaces were combined under the new name Windrush Square to commemorate the 50th anniversary of thearrival of the first ship bringing Caribbean workers to help rebuild postwar London. This end's now a fairly tepid piece of public realm, mostly a featureless lawn cut through by pathways.
11) The Bovril sign
The wall at the end of Rushcroft Road has been emblazoned with a Bovril ad since the 1930s, the current version merely a faded ghostsign left over from the beverage's days of beefy glory. The faded blue and yellow remnant underneath is believed to be an ad for Butlins, once ideally positioned to tempt coach passengers considering a trip 'daily to all coastal resorts'.
12) The African and Caribbean War Memorial
This bespoke memorial to an oft-overlooked military diaspora was designed by Jak Beula in 2014. It proved difficult to place, with proposed alternative sites including the National Arboretum, the South Bank and Tilbury Docks. But it was eventually agreed that Windrush Square was the right location and so it was finally unveiled here in June 2017. The memorial comprises two whinstone obelisks, one resting on the other and inscribed with the name of every regiment from Africa and the Caribbean that served in World War I or II.
13) The Black Cultural Archives
In 1981 Brixton resident Len Garrison started a collection intended to redress the paucity of cultural representation for the black community. It now holds over 10,000 documents, photos and objects relating to the history of people of African descent in Britain, and is housed in a converted Georgian house at number 1 Windrush Square. The building opened in 1824 as Raleigh Hall and in its time has also housed Brixton Liberal Club, a public meeting hall, the Cinema Museum and a furniture workshop. The metal statue in the forecourt is of Claudia Vera Jones, a founder of the West Indian Gazette and the (Notting Hill) Carnival before her premature death at the age of 49.
14) The fountain
The most innovative new feature in 2010 was a so-called fountain, in reality a patch of concentric jets designed to pump a watery mist across the centre of the square. It was controlled by an anemometer perched on one of the new lighting columns so it would automatically deactivate the pumps if the wind grew too strong. Unfortunately the fountain manifested more broadly as a water hazard and the need for a children's stomp-through was not generally required, thus it's rarely switched on and now provides only an intermittent trickle. What a waste.
15) The windrushes
At the southern end of the square is a cluster of thin greenish spikes, branching upwards, designed in 2010 by Jane Wernick Associates. They cost £85,000 and are called the Windrush Lights, supposedly because the tops illuminate after dark (although that's hard to confirm during the day). I've seen it said that they represent 'windrushes', although the famous ship was of course named after a Cotswold river so I don't believe such reeds exist.
16) The Sharpeville Memorial
Standing by itself is a stumpy plinth dedicated by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston to commemorate a massacre at an anti-apartheid protest in a South African township in 1960.
17) The old milestone
In amongst all the modern cultural touchpoints is a really old milestone placed beside the Brighton road over 200 years ago. It says "Royal Exchange 4" on two sides and "Whitehall 3½" on another, and also presumably on the fourth side although that's since eroded away and is unreadable. The milestone was originally on the other side of the road but was moved to Windrush Square because these days heritage street furniture just gets in the way.
18) The Cherry Groce pavilion
The most recent addition to the square is a triangular granite slab supported on a single pillar above a stepped plinth, designed by David Adjaye and unveiled in 2021. It's here "in loving memory of Cherry Groce" who was mistakenly shot by the police during a raid in 1985 which triggered two days of rioting. You may not need restorative justice round your way, but here in Brixton they place it front and centre.
19) A man being arrested
My attempts to take photographs of Windrush Square were almost thwarted when I realised police were in the process of making an arrest over by the roadside. Several officers stood round a white van restraining a suspect before driving him away, then two remained behind to interview a witness at length beside the Cherry Groce Pavilion. After about 15 minutes they finally had all they needed, removed an offensive poster from the noticeboard and strode off in the direction of the police station, and I got my photos. Never a dull moment.
20) The absence of obvious Windrushness
Perhaps the strangest thing about Windrush Square is that there's barely any specific reference to why it's called that, nor is its name placed anywhere in a prominent position. I think there used to be an information board where the African and Caribbean War Memorial now stands but that's gone, and a few words inscribed into a couple of limestone slabs don't really cut it. If anything it's testament to the fact that Londoners already know what the SS Windrush was and why it's significant, because sometimes naming things really can embed them in our consciousness.
Tottenham Hale's ticket hall is emblazoned with red signs warning airport-bound passengers not to touch in with Oyster or a contactless card. Nevertheless many do, and then discover when they reach the airport that they can't touch out so get whacked by a £100 penalty fare. But that's due to change on Sunday 14th December as Stansted finally gets contactless, as do 49 other southeastern railway stations. It's the second stage of what's known in the trade as Project Oval, long delayed, and will spread the availability of tap-in tap-out even further beyond the Oyster boundary.
The new zone extends to Dorking, Reigate and East Grinstead on Southern, to Witham and Southend on Greater Anglia, to Harlington and Baldock on Thameslink and to Aylesbury on Chiltern. The DfT have produced a minimalist map to show the 50 new stations, and also produced a similar map to show the last 53, but there isn't yet a combined map to show where the full contactless zone will be. Expect the South East Rail Services map to be updated next month, but in the meantime here's my rough attempt so you can get the gist.
The longest contactless journey on a single train looks like it'll be East Grinstead to Harlington, which is over 100km. The most expensive contactless journey may be Gatwick to Stansted at £56.70. The closest stations to London without contactless will be Esher and Hinchley Wood in Surrey, and Stone Crossing in Kent.
But if you do rely on contactless to travel to Stansted, now without the need to pay up front, you may be surprised how much you get charged. From December it's £23 single, i.e. £46 return, which could be more than your basic Easyjet flight. Airport travel can be expensive if you simply tap and go...
Heathrow Express: £25 (but half that on the Elizabeth line)
Gatwick Express: £24 (or less than half that on other trains)
Stansted Express: £23 (or £22 from Tottenham Hale)
Luton: £16.60 (plus £4.90 for the DART shuttle)
Southend: £20.10
Fares to these 50 new stations are being adjusted on 7th December, a week before contactless goes live, which folk in the comments will be only too happy to explain the downsides of.
But this time there's bad news for owners of electric vehicles who've previously enjoyed a 100% Cleaner Vehicle Discount. EVs now make up 20% of the traffic in the Congestion Zone and if numbers continue to grow then central London risks getting congested again. Thus from January electric vans will only merit a 50% discount and electric cars just 25%, i.e. EV car drivers go from paying nothing to paying 75%. The discounts are destined to halve from 2030, i.e. everyone'll be paying almost everything. Alternatively keep out of central London and it won't cost a penny extra, your choice.
3) London's new shortest bus route
The 424 is a seriously twiddly bus route, introduced in 2001 to wind round several unserved backstreets in Fulham and Putney. It's also notoriously unreliable due to narrow streets and congestion, so TfL have just launched a consultation to chop it in two. The majority becomes a new route, the 454, meandering the long way from Craven Cottage to Putney Bridge station. The south-of-the river bit becomes a teensy shuttle from Putney station to Putney Heath and retains the number 424. No overlap will exist, this because Putney's bridge and high street have the worst congestion so they're being omitted.
The bus currently runs every 35 minutes, an annoyingly unmemorable frequency, but this is proposed to change. The shortened 424 would run every 45 minutes, making it even more of a pain to wait for, and the new 454 would run either every 30 or every 45 depending on the consultation. What's more route 424 would now be less than two miles long, a pathetic runt of a service, making it the shortest (non-circular) route in London. The current title-holder is the 209 (1.9 miles), but a separate consultation proposes extending that to 6 miles to replace the 533.
The consultation screams of frustrated desperation, breaking a malfunctioning route to create two less useful ones, and if it goes ahead should create not just London's shortest route but also one of its least used.
4) DangleChristmas
It's almost Christmas so it's time to tell you about this year's festive upselling on London's most mercenary cablecar.
For the Standard Christmas Experience (£15.50) children get...
• A standard round trip
• Meet and Greet with Santa
• Gift from Santa
• Colouring-in activity
Pay £3 more for the Premium Christmas Experience to also get...
• London Cable Car Kids Pack
Pay another £3 for the Ultimate Christmas Experience to also get...
• A Fast Track round trip
• A Winters hot chocolate
If that's your Ultimate Christmas Experience then you're doing December wrong.
5) 2026's heritage bus days
This year the London Bus Museum organised three heritage vehicle days based around routes 19, 418 and 54. And they've just announced next year's chosen three, so add these to your diary if you want to be sure of a chuggy ride.
Route 38 Heritage Day: 14 March 2026 Route 213 Heritage Day: 13 June 2026 Route 106 Heritage Day: 3 October 2026
6) Road Safety Week
This week is Road Safety Week, which is both quite important and quite dull. But have you seen TfL's new Highway Code posters which they plugged yesterday on the TfL blog?
They are 6 metres above sea level.
And they are thus higher than the entire state of Tuvalu.
Tuvalu is a Pacific nation composed of three reef islands and six atolls. The highest point is on the island of Niulakita (population 36) and is 4.6m above sea level. The country is thus acutely affected by the threat of cilmate change, and just last week at the Cop30 summit rebuked Donald Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. Hackney Marshes are also floodable although not in such an existential manner.
These are Kew Gardens.
They are 8 metres above sea level.
And they are thus higher than all 26 atolls in the Maldives.
The Maldives are in even greater peril than Tuvalu, sea level wise, because the highest natural point in the islands has an elevation of just 2.4m. There is however one spot on a golf course on Villingili that artificially reaches 5.1m, so technically the Maldives have 50cm leeway over Tuvalu. Kew Gardens is comfortably higher, although should sea level rise ever reach 10m that wouldn't be comfortable at all.
There are a lot of places in London that aren't higher than the Maldives. I wrote a post in 2019 listing all the places I could find on an Ordnance Survey map with a spot height less than 5m. They included Wennington Marshes (1m), 10 Downing Street (2m), Thamesmead (3m) and Parsons Green (4m). We have no reason to be smug about the long-term future of our capital. However we are still higher above sea level than at least 20 sovereign nations, so let's explore...
Hyde Park Corner is 13m above sea level. It is thus higher than the Marshall Islands which only reach 10m. (Buckingham Palace is not higher than the Marshall Islands because it lies below the 10m contour, which crosses the top of the back garden)
West Hampstead is 47m above sea level, as are Uxbridge, Blackheath and Ruislip Lido. They are thus higher than the Cayman Islands which only reach 43m. Most of the country is much flatter but on the easternmost island is a plateau of karstic limestone called The Bluff, and that's where the 43m peak occurs.
King Henry's Mound in Richmond Park is 56m above sea level. It is thus higher than The Gambia which only reaches 51m. This is the first non-island nation on the list, and it's so low because the country essentially hugs the lower reaches of the Gambia River which drains much of the surrounding country of Senegal.
Primrose Hill is 64m above sea level. It is thus higher than The Bahamas which only reach 63m.
Stanmore is 81m above sea level. That's the centre of Stanmore by the shops, not the more elevated heights on the common which easily top 140m. Of a similar height are the centre of Northwood, the centre of Harefield and the centre of Coulsdon. They are all thus higher than Vatican City which only reaches 75m. The Pope's abode is the first land-locked country on our list.
Alexandra Palace is 89m above sea level. It is thus higher than Bermuda which only reaches 79m.
Crystal Palace is 109m above sea level. It is thus higher than Qatar which only reaches 103m. I should say this is the top end of the park where the transmitter stands, and should also confirm that in all today's measurements I'm only considering ground level. If we also counted the transmitter then the top of the mast reaches 330m which is higher than Estonia... although maybe not higher than the tallest building in Estonia, and that's why ground level is the only unambiguous thing to compare.
New Addington is 141m above sea level. It is thus higher than Bahrain which only reaches 135m. And that's only counting the highest spot height on an OS map which is halfway up Queen Elizabeth Drive. Looking at contours I'd say Meridian High School is more like 165m above sea level, thus enough to beat the next two countries, but I'm trying to be precise here.
Charles Darwin's house at Downe and the airfield at RAF Kenley are 169m above sea level. They are thus both higher than Monaco which reaches 162m and also Singapore which reaches 164m.
Biggin Hill airport is 182m above sea level. It is thus higher than Denmark which only reaches 171m. Other locations to beat the whole of Denmark include Box Hill(172m) and Sanderstead Plantation(175m).
The highest point in London is Westerham Heights on the North Downs near Hawley's Corner. It is thus higher than the Micronesian archipelago of Palau whose highest point is Mount Ngerchelchuus (242m).
Other nations to be lower than London are Anguilla, Aruba, Kiribati, Macau, Nauru, Niue and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. That's approximately 20 less-elevated countries altogether.
To beat the next few we need to go beyond Greater London.
» Haddington Hill in the Chilterns (267m) is higher than Malta(253m).
» Leith Hill in Surrey (295m) is higher than Kuwait (291m) and Lithuania(294m).
» Cleeve Hill in the Cotswolds (330m) is higher than Latvia(312m) and Estonia(318m).
» Hergest Ridge in the Welsh Borders (427m) is higher than Gibraltar(426m).
» Dunkery Beacon in Somerset (519m) is higher than Uruguay(514m).
» Kinder Scout in the Peak District (636m) is higher than Luxembourg(560m).
» Great Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales (704m) is higher than Belgium(694m).
» Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons (886m) is higher than the Netherlands(870m).
» Scafell Pike in the Lake District (978m) is higher than Hong Kong(957m).
» Carnedd Dafydd in Snowdonia (1044m) is higher than Ireland(1039m).
» Snowdon(1085m) is higher than Bangladesh(1063m).
» Ben Nevis(1345m) is higher than Finland(1324m).
And at least 140 countries are higher than the United Kingdom, but let's not go there.
In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Whyteleafe, one stop beyond Kenley on trains to Caterham, and also Upper Warlingham, one stop beyond Riddlesdown on trains to East Grinstead. I'm doing the two together because they're only 250m apart, indeed two of the closest railway stations in Britain. What's more there's another station within half a mile and what's more the edge of Greater London is literally a stone's throw away. For suburban Surrey it's ridiculously well served.
What you can't see on this map are the contours which are seriously humpy hereabouts. The two railway lines run either side of the A22, one along the floor of a dry valley and the other higher up so it can escape the chalk slopes of the North Downs.
Originally the only station was Warlingham, now called Whyteleafe South. In 1884 a new station opened on the higher line, originally called Upper Warlingham and Whyteleafe but now just Upper Warlingham. In 1900 a new station opened on the lower line to better serve the village centre, this simply called Whyteleafe. None of the stations are in Warlingham but three stations called Whyteleafe Something would be silly.
Whyteleafe is a simple two platform affair and the place to go if you want a train to London Bridge. The adjacent level crossing is one of the few places between here and Purley that cars can cross the railway so it's just as well it doesn't flash into action too often. It sits at the foot of a long residential road called Whyteleafe Hill, not far from a coal tax post because that's how borderline this location has always been.
St Luke's church hides round the first bend, screened behind pine trees and a tall thatched lych gate. Stop off at the porch if you want Bubble Church or Knitting Ninjas, or continue through the churchyard to discover the large patch of war graves dedicated to the memory of those who served at RAF Kenley. The airfield's on the common a few minutes up the hill but I didn't like the look of the muddy climb, plus it's in London so I didn't have to go there.
Whyteleafe gained its name from a house beside the Godstone Road called Whyte Leaf, built in 1856 in a field full of whitebeam trees. It grew as a linear village when terraced houses for the benefit of workers at the local chalk pit and lime works spread out along what's now the A22. They're still here, giving Whyteleafe a baseline of relatively affordable housing below the many detacheds that dominate the upper slopes.
The traffic is fairly relentless, however, with pedestrians reduced to a handful of crossings or attempting to nip across during a quiet bit. The central crossroads now boasts a small roundabout to help speed things up and is overlooked by the Whyteleafe Tavern, a smart-ish pub that was forced to close a few months back for what the police politely called licence infractions.
As well as three railway stations Whyteleafe's high street is also served by three TfL buses, plus two Metrobus routes to Reigate or East Grinstead if you fancy a less frequent but more attractive journey. The shops are only half-decent because if you wanted something better you'd go to Caterham, but there are plenty of cafes, a trio of barber shops and a popular micropub called The Radius Arms.
I'm sad to report that Rosemary Ladies Fashion has finally closed down, having offered floral dresses and smart blouses for so long that the signboard out front still claims the telephone number is 'Upp.Warl. 5307'. I was also shocked to see that the price of cod at Salisbury's chippy has now breached the £10 barrier (whereas it's still £9.90 in Sanderstead and £9.50 at Hamsey Green).
Upper Warlingham station is barely a couple of minutes up the hill and the place to go if you want a train to London Victoria. It has a two-storey car park on the footprint of a former goods siding, some bookswap shelves and a better-staffed ticket office than Whyteleafe. Only the London-bound platform is gatelined, but also only the London-bound platform offers coffee-based refreshment because that's the busy one.
Just north of the station is an arched viaduct just wide enough for two lanes of traffic to pass through, and behind that the joys of Whyteleafe Recreation Ground, a broad swoosh of grass rising sharply into a rim of depleted trees. There isn't a flat surface anywhere so the football pitch has had to be fitted into the least curved dip, but the view from the playground is well worth the ascent. I would have climbed further but the skyline was muted by low mist so best not.
To the east of the railway a handful of residential roads climb steeply, spaced far enough apart that everyone must have a massive back garden. Succomb's Hill is by far the steepest, hitting 1 in 4 near its upper bend, but that's closest to Whyteleafe South station so beyond the remit of today's post. Most of the houses up here were built between the wars, with some later cul-de-sac infill where meadows were originally skipped.
None of the roads go direct and if you attempt to wander off piste only the occasional inclined footpath links top to bottom, so walking anywhere from the station is basically knackering. I slogged up Hillbury Road past a lengthy chain of mega-semis, also the detached fortress where reggae singer Smiley Culture lived (and mysteriously died during a police raid in 2011).
The heart of Warlingham is clustered round the old village green, and a much older settlement. Ye Olde White Lion is 15th century and still looks charmingly flinty, whereas ye Olde Leather Bottle is 18th century and has recently transformed into a shisha-friendly Turkish grill. For proper ancient try All Saints Church, most of which is 13th century, although I refuse to believe that the big yew tree in the churchyard is 2400 years old even if David Bellamy once signed a certificate saying it definitely was.
Where I went wrong was arriving on the day the Christmas lights were being switched on, which meant the Green and surrounding spaces were full of fairgroundfolk erecting stalls, bungee leaps and teacup rides. The illuminations looked fairly paltry but entrepreneurial locals had set up a gazebo to convert boxed merlot into mulled wine by the urnful, so hopefully by 5pm everyone was sloshed enough to be impressed.
What I learnt from all this is that Upper Warlingham station really should be called Lower Warlingham, being a mile downhill from the main action... or even better Upper Whyteleafe, if that's not even more overkill than already exists.
What's the longest tube journey where the station names keep getting longer?
Let's have a look at some maps.
For example...
Edgware (7 letters)
Burnt Oak (8 letters)
Colindale (9 letters)
Hendon Central (13 letters)
...but it all goes wrong at the next station, Brent Cross, because that's only 10 letters.
So that's a chain of four stations.
The top of the Jubilee line is even shorter because Canons Park and Queensbury both have 10 letters so that halts any increasing chain.
You might expect the longest chain to start at Bank, a four-letter tube station in zone 1 that's on several different tube lines. So let's have a look.
The Central line west gets no further than Chancery Lane (because Holborn is much shorter).
The Central line east halts at Liverpool Street (a dead end in all directions).
The Northern line stutters only as far as Old Street or London Bridge.
If you're willing to accept that Bank and Monument are separate stations then we can get a chain of 5.
Bank (4) → Monument (8) → Tower Hill (9) → Aldgate East (11) → Liverpool Street (15)
The trick is to hop on the Waterloo & City line to Waterloo and continue from there. There are several 4s.
Bank (4) → Waterloo (8) → Southwark (9) → London Bridge (12)
Bank (4) → Waterloo (8) → Kennington (10) → Elephant & Castle (15)
Bank (4) → Waterloo (8) → Lambeth North (12) → Elephant & Castle (15)
Bank (4) → Waterloo (8) → Westminster (11) → St James's Park (12)
But if we head north on the Northern line we can hit 6.
What we have here, topologically, is a network of one-way arcs.
There's no predictability to the arrows, it's almost like tossing a coin for each to see which way it points.
Also some of the links can't be traversed (for example Oxford Circus, Warren Street and Goodge Street all have 12 letters so you can't pass between them).
Looking at the arrowed map I think I've found the longest route and I believe it starts here.
There is a 5 here by going south...
Pimlico (7) → Vauxhall (8) → Stockwell (9) → Clapham North (12) → Clapham Common (13)
...but it's best to go north.
Take the Victoria line from Pimlico(7) to Victoria(8) and on to Green Park(9).
Then change to the Jubilee line through Bond Street (10) to Baker Street (11).
St John's Wood is also 11 so we can't go there. But if we switch to the Metropolitan line we can bypass it to Finchley Road (12), then switch back to the Jubilee for one more stop to West Hampstead (13).
What's particularly brilliant about this longest route is that it increases by one letter each time.
Pimlico(7) → Victoria(8) → Green Park(9) → Bond Street(10) → Baker Street(11) → Finchley Road(12) → West Hampstead(13)
It's easily done in less than 30 minutes, not that I recommend you give it a go.
If you allow the challenge to extend to any stations on the tube map, you can add one more to the chain by switching to the Overground.
Pimlico(7) → Victoria(8) → Green Park(9) → Bond Street(10) → Baker Street(11) → Finchley Road(12) → West Hampstead(13) → Finchley Road & Frognal(20)
That's eight stations in a row, each with a longer name than the station before, which I believe is the maximum possible.
It ought to be possible to check this with some cunning coding, because fundamentally this is a directional network problem. But to the best of my old-school knowledge, the longest chain of lengthening tube stations is 7 and the longest chain on the tube map is 8.
This blue plaque appears on a house in Lymington Road, West Hampstead. For 10 years this was the home of Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a journalist and crime author who introduced the world to a much-loved literary form, a bit like a limerick. It's called the clerihew, and here's the first one Edmund wrote at the age of 16.
Sir Humphry Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
Clerihews are short four-line poems about a famous person. Their name must form the first line, the pairs of lines must rhyme and there has to be something amusingly biographical about the whole. Lines don't have to scan. Here are my attempts at clerihews about two other West Hampstead residents...
Joan Armatrading
Was musically crusading.
She sang to perfection
Of love and affection.
Evelyn Waugh
Made Brideshead top drawer.
His first name was Arthur
But he chose something smarter.
This inscription appears on the west side of Kingston Bridge. There's been a Thames crossing here since Anglo-Saxon times, indeed there were no other bridges between Staines and London Bridge until 1729 when Putney Bridge was added. This made Kingston Bridge really important, not just to the local economy but to trade in southeast England generally. A succession of wooden bridges was followed by the building of the current stone bridge in 1825, its first stone laid by the Prime Minister exactly 200 years and one week ago. A toll was imposed to help repay the construction costs of £40,000, and the wardens promptly demolished the old timber crossing so nobody could cross for free.
This Bridge Made Free March 12 1870
It took over 40 years for the unpopular toll to be removed. An act of Parliament was required, the snappily-titled Kew and Other Bridges Act 1869, which also applied to the crossings at Kew, Hampton Court, Walton-upon Thames and Staines. This redirected the levies from London's wine and coal duties to pay off the remainder of the bridges' debts, with Kingston paid off first. Residents of the town celebrated with a fireworks show and by burning the toll gates on Hampton Green.
The dates other Thames Bridges were made toll-free 1782: London 1785: Blackfriars 1859: Richmond 1864: Southwark 1873: Kew 1876: Hampton Court 1878: Waterloo 1879: Albert, Battersea, Chelsea, Lambeth, Vauxhall 1880: Hammersmith, Putney, Wandsworth
This is Border Road in Sydenham. You can tell it's on a boundary because the street sign on the left has a green background and the street sign on the right has a light blue background. Border Road (green) is in the borough of Bromley and Lawrie Park Road (light blue) is in the borough of Lewisham. The historic boundary between Kent and Surrey once passed very close to here but Border Road doesn't match that particular border, instead referring to the historic division between the Hundred of Blackheath and the Hundred of Bromley and Beckenham. The large houses hereabouts were all built in the 1850s, and this would have been the relevant boundary at the time.
There are two other 'Border' roads in London...
• Border Crescent, SE26 - essentially a continuation of the aforementioned Border Road
• Border Gardens, CR0 - a modern cul-de-sac in Spring Park, a few metres from the historic boundary between Surrey and Kent (now Croydon and Bromley)
...and several 'Boundary' roads, of which I think the following fourteen are related to administrative boundaries.
This is the festive abomination I saw yesterday in Castle Green.
Christmas tree, inflatable Santa, holly wreath, dangly decorations and 'Merry Christmas' banners. There are 6 weeks to go until Christmas, it's not even the second half of November, it is too early.
What really broke me was the banner in the window wishing passers by a 'Happy New Year'. There are 7 weeks to go until 2026, it is much much too early. Even if the householder is being ironic, this is punishably premature.
Still, at least it wasn't as out of date as the nearby garden bedecked with VE Day flags.
Following a recent trip to the library I've been reading Peter Apps' new book Homesick, subtitled "How Housing Broke London And How To Fix It". It's very good, as you'd expect from an Orwell Prize winner, and also forensic in picking through cause and effect alongside numerous real life examples of housing misery.
Focusing on the first half of the book, i.e. residential breakage, here's my summary of the historical reasons leading to where we are today. Think of it as bulletpoint notes, were you ever planning to write a (shorter) essay on the subject.
1980s
• Depopulation as families relocate outside London
• Average house costs 3-4 times average annual wage
• 35% of Londoners in social housing, only 15% renting privately
• Margaret Thatcher leads drive to boost home ownership
• Significant 'Right to Buy' discounts for council tenants
• GLC scrapped, reducing oversight
• Regeneration of post-industrial sites, e.g. Docklands
• Social housing to be provided by private bodies
• Introduction of 'assured shorthold tenancies'
• Deregulation allows banks to offer larger mortgages
1990s
• London's population rising again
• Interest rates soar, many default, house prices fall
• Cuts to council housing and maintenance budgets
• Institutional ownership in steep decline
• 'Buy-to-let' mortgages introduced
• Shared ownership offers a step onto the housing ladder
• Housing becomes a safe profitable investment for private landlords
• Social housing increasingly only for the marginalised
• Interest rates fall, house prices rise again
• Poorer tenants replaced by those who can pay more
2000s
• Drive to build tall residential towers
• Wholesale transfer of housing stock to housing associations
• PFI contractors carry out maintenance on the cheap
• Estate regeneration often means a reduction in social housing
• Houses in Multiple Occupation allow landlords to make more profit
• Mortgage debt increases unsustainably
• Inadequate maintenance of social housing
• Fewer family-sized homes built
• More Londoners renting than in social housing
• Average house costs 8-9 times average annual wage
2010s
• Austerity sees huge cuts to inner London council budgets
• Sales of new flats opened up to foreign investors
• Move towards "affordable rents" and "affordable housing"
• 'Help To Buy' assists well-off housebuyers and raises house prices
• Housing benefit capped, then frozen
• Poor construction blights many new homes
• Estate regeneration falters for lack of funds
• Developers cynically reduce proportion of affordable housing
• Largest council houses sold off to raise funds
• Inadequate cladding kills 72, then makes thousands of private flats unsaleable
Since then there's been a nasty spike in rent increases, a hike to mortgage rates from historic lows, a rapid increase in households in temporary accommodation, the inexorable rise of for-profit investment companies, the hollowing out of central London, an intense focus on student accommodation and a wider collapse in house-building, all making it increasingly awkward and expensive to live in London if you didn't get on the housing ladder decades ago. But that's all in the second half of the book, along with looming future issues and potential solutions.
£20 is quite a lot for a book, however good, but about half the price of subscribing to Peter's Substack and a mere drop in the ocean compared to your next rent/mortgage payment. Good luck out there.
A couple of weeks ago diamond geezer had its third best day in terms of numbers of visitors to the blog, all thanks to a post I wrote about asbestosis. Yesterday it happened again, this time the fourth best day ever, all thanks to my post 'Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall'. Again the visitors arrived from American quirkportal Hacker News, a lot of whom were duly surprised that European cities have Roman remnants lying around in inauspicious locations.
My original post only got 9 comments but the forum delivered over 90, mostly from people unfamiliar with London and this blog. Here are some of the rabbit holes people fell down.
> I had only just thought about how weird it is that there is wall at Tower Hill, and wall at Barbican - they can't be the same run of wall as it was built, can they? That'd be immense...
>> There is a London Wall Walk which follows the original line of the wall from the Tower of London to the Museum of London.
> In a locked room off that car park is a bit more of that fortification.
>> From that car park it's only a short walk to London's Roman amphitheatre. It doesn't seem to be very well known but is quite impressive.
>>> One more strange place: the barbershop in Leadenhall Market. You can see the wall right in the barbershop. In fact, this wall drove their rent higher and eventually they closed. (Forgive the sob story but the barber was amazing, and I have not been able to track him down since!)
> The juxtaposition of a mundane parking garage built directly on top of ancient Roman ruins is incredible.
>> Meh. Let me introduce you to Colchester, the oldest recorded town in the UK. The wall behind the carpark you see here is the original Roman wall (circa 65 AD) with modern brick on top.
>>> I can only imagine how many similar places to see ancient ruins in everyday context are in Rome. Or Athens.
>>>> For another interesting mix of new and ancient, check out Serdica metro station in Sofia, Bulgaria. It's fully inside an excavated Roman-era ruin. Very cool!
> Note this is about the City of London, an entity much smaller and older than the modern city known as London.
>> For even further confusion "London" actually contains two cities: London and Westminster.
>>> What about Southwark? That has a cathedral too.
>>>> A cathedral is neither necessary nor sufficient for city status.
> "ground level then was a few metres lower than now." What?! That's huge. What happened?
>> If you leave ground alone all sort of things grow on it or lay on it. Dirt, mud, leaves etc. Soil grows at about 1 mm per year. 1 meter in 1000 years.
>>> Before industrial demolition was common, old buildings would be torn down and material repurposed for new constructions, built on top of existing foundations and rubble. Do this enough over the centuries and your city will slowly rise in height.
> Nevermind the wall, this person's blog dates back to 2002...
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There are manyplaces around the City of London to see its old Roman Wall, notably alongside Noble Street, in Barber Surgeons' Meadow, through the Barbican, in St Alphage Garden and just outside the entrance to Tower Hill station. Here are four of the odder spots.
Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall
1) From platform 1 at Tower Hill station
If you're ever waiting for a westbound train at Tower Hill station, take a walk to the rear of the platform and take a look across the tracks, roughly where the penultimate carriage would stop. High on the far wall is a square recess lined by black tiles, and at the back of that is a dimly-lit surface of chunky irregular blocks. Unlike every single other thing on the Underground, the Romans built that.
London's original wall was 2 miles long, 6 metres high and almost 3 metres thick at its base, all the better to keep out uncivilised marauders. It was built around 200 AD, then left to decay and rebuilt in the medieval era, again for defensive purposes. This is one of the original bits, not that you can easily tell by squinting across the tracks. A small metal lamp points inwards but is no longer switched on because heritage illumination is not a TfL priority. There is however a rather nice silver plaque on the pillar opposite, should you step back far enough to notice it.
The plaque confirms that the stones here are a continuation of the wall seen (much more clearly) outside. What it doesn't mention is the unavoidable truth that the wall must once have continued across the tracks and platforms but is no longer here. That's because when the Circle line was constructed in 1882 the railway companies had permission to demolish 22 metres of London's wall and duly did, the Victorians never being afraid to destroy ancient heritage. Ian Visits has a photo of navvies standing atop the offending stonework just before they bashed it through. The square hole is no recompense, plus you can't see anything if a train's in the platform, but it is a brilliantly quirky thing to find on the Underground.
2) Round the back of the Leonardo Royal Hotel
The short walk from Tower Hill station to the rear entrance of Fenchurch Street passes two hotels. The second is the Leonardo Royal, formerly the Grange, whose car port looks like it leads to a cocktail terrace and maybe some parking. Nothing's signed from the street, indeed I'd never thought to duck through before, but at the far end past the umbrellas of Leo's bar is a significant chunk of Roman wall.
The upper section has arched windows built for archers and square holes which once supported a timber platform. It's impressive of course merely medieval, part of the rebuild that occurred along much of the wall as the city grew and spread beyond its former border. To see the Roman section stand closer to the rail and look down, this because ground level then was a few metres lower than now. The telltale signs are several distinctive bands of thin red bricks, these added to strengthen and bond the structure, and which look like layers of jam in a particularly lumpy sponge. The entire segment behind the hotel is over 20m long, thus longer than the better-known chunk outside the station.
Perhaps the best thing about this bit of wall is that you can walk through it. A couple of steps have been added on each side allowing passage through a low medieval arch, all marked with anachronistic trip hazard markings. If steps aren't your thing you can also pass round the end of the wall on the flat. Round the other side are a glum alley and a staff back-entrance, also an exit into a separate backstreet past a sign that says PRIVATE No Public Right Of Way Beyond This Point Entry At Your Own Risk Absolutely No Liability Is Accepted For Any Reason Whatsoever. Stuff that, there's an actual Roman Wall back here.
3) From a cafe terrace
I've written about The City Wall at Vine Street before, a free attraction opened in 2023 beneath a block of student flats. Last time I had to battle the Procedural Curmudgeon to gain admittance but I'm pleased to say they've since loosened up and you can now simply gesture at the door, walk in and give your first name to a flunkey with a tablet. He rattled through the key information with all the practised enthusiasm of a call centre employee dictating terms and conditions, then sent me off down the stairs.
Two walls are filled with finds from the excavations, including an AD 70s coin and the bones of a 1760s cat. Nobody's quite sure how the ancient Greek tombstone ended up here, given it predates Londinium, but it has pride of place in a central glass case. The 5-minute historical animation is pretty good too, assuming you can read quite fast. But the main draw is the multi-layered towering remnant of wall which here has the benefit of being properly illuminated and protected from the elements. The protruding lower section (which looks much too clean to be so very old) is all that remains of an original postern, and is also unique because all the other towers elsewhere round the City are merely medieval.
What's weird is that this large basement space is overlooked by a balcony scattered with small tables at which sit students and businesspeople consuming coffee and all-day brunch. The baristas operate from the cafe upstairs but any food comes from a small kitchen down below, which has the unnerving side effect that while you're wandering around what looks like a museum it smells like an office canteen. If you choose to be tempted by a cappuccino and smashed avocado on your way out you can enjoy extra time with the Roman wall, or indeed skip the walkthrough altogether and focus only on refreshment with an absolutely unique view. I recommend a proper visit though... the visitors book awaits your praise.
4) At the rear of a car park
This is amazing on many levels, the main level being subterranean. After WW2 so much of the City was in ruins that planners drove a new dual carriageway through the Aldersgate area and called it London Wall. They believed cars were the future and to that end hid a linear car park directly underneath the new road. It's very narrow, very long and pretty grim, indeed precisely the kind of filming location you'd expect a throwback crime thriller to use for a shoot-out or kidnapping. Cars enter down a short spiral ramp and pedestrians through a grubby side door, and the numbered concrete catacombs stretch on and on for almost 400 metres. Keep walking past the white vans, Range Rovers and the attendant's cabin, trying not to attract too much attention, and almost at the far end is... blimey.
You can't park in bays 52 and 53 because they're full of Roman remains. A substantial chunk of wall slots in diagonally beneath the joists and pillars, tall enough to incorporate two separate bands of red bricks. It looks quite smooth up front but fairly rubbly round the back, also much thicker at the base than at the top. Obviously it's very risky to have a scheduled ancient monument in a car park so protective concrete blocks have been added to make sure nobody reverses into the stonework by mistake. More recently a glass screen has been added at one end, branded 'City of London' so you know who to thank, but the other end remains accessible for now (not that you should be stepping in or even touching it).
It's the contrasts that I found most incongruous. A relic from Roman times penned inbetween a speed hump and a futile pedestrian crossing. A fortification from the 3rd century beside an electric van built last year. A defensive structure that helped see off the Peasants Revolt beside a poster warning what to do in the event of fire. A boundary wall once an intrinsic part of the capital now underground illuminated by strip lights. And all this at the very far end of an oppressive bunker preserved for the benefit of hardly any eyes in a parking facility only a few know to use. Sure you can see chunks of Roman wall all around the City, even from a tube platform, hotel terrace or cafe. But the oddest spot may well be here in the London Wall car park, should you ever have the balls to take a look.
Following a recent trip to the library I've been reading Peter Apps' new book Homesick, subtitled "How Housing Broke London And How To Fix It". It's very good, as you'd expect from an Orwell Prize winner, and also forensic in picking through cause and effect alongside numerous real life examples of housing misery.
