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.
It's exactly 100 years ago today since the Northernline was connected at Kennington and extended to Morden.
Nobody was blogging at the time but imagine if I was.
Monday, 13 September, 1926
What a day it's been on the Underground Electric Railways! Two years ago the City & South London and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead linked their railways at Camden Town. Today they have linked them again but on the other side of the river at Kennington. Not only are the two railways now fully connected but they've also been extended five miles south from Clapham Common to Morden, with the hope of further to come. The new Morden–Edgware line, as it's called, is the Underground's deepest penetration into south London and I have no doubt that before long it will surely be rebranded as the Southern line.
I have of course been out on a first day journey to experience this massive subterranean expansion, riding all the way from Charing Cross to Morden. I did this mostly by tube but partly by tram, because you have to come up to the surface sometimes if you want to see all the new stuff. I also took one photograph at each point of interest with my Vest Pocket Kodak, which inexplicably appear to have been developed in colour. [7 photos]
Charing Cross on the District Railway has long been the southern terminus of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway. Well no more because it's been extended under the Thames and you can now continue to Waterloo and beyond! The loop of track has been sealed off and partly filled with rubble, then a new southbound tunnel driven beneath the river and it's amazing, you truly can't see the join. As yet it feels wholly unfamiliar seeing trains going 'the wrong way', not towards Edgware or Highgate but to strange destinations like Clapham and Morden. But what a complicated station this has now become! We already have District and Circle and Bakerloo lines and now also through trains on the C&SLR, plus of course SR trains steaming out upstairs. Personally I would rename this station Embankment and then rebrand Strand as Charing Cross and maybe merge it with Trafalgar Square, but I doubt anyone will act fast on my excellent idea.
In exciting news Waterloo now has a Morden-Edgware platform as well as a Bakerloo platform, so double the opportunity for Surrey commuters to change to the tube. It still amazes me when I see the lights on the front of a train emerging from a tunnel underneath Britain's greatest river. But this is nothing compared to the ridiculous kerfuffle that's been installed down the line at Kennington while the station's been closed for three years. The new tunnels from Waterloo sweep in so they arrive parallel to the existing platforms, then connect in a huge loop that allows trains to turn round. You must not ride the loop, they chuck you off, perhaps there are ghosts round there or something.
The next section of the line has obviously been here since 1900 thus is old hat, so I climbed the 79 steps up to street level and took the tram instead. Off we went down the Clapham Road past many taverns and a pickle factory, also stations at Oval, Stockwell and Clapham North, also the Temperance Billiard Hall (Moderate Charges). At one point the tram driver stopped for three minutes to even out the gaps in the service, something which would never happen on the trains below. Eventually we arrived at Clapham Common with its trademark dome which had been the end of the line for over 25 years but no more! It seems amazing that this narrow crowded platform is now just another stopping point rather than full-on buffered.
The first station on the extension is Clapham South, although they nearly called it Nightingale Lane because that's where it is. Wow it looks so different to what we've all been used to. The tiles are gorgeous, all shimmering emerald around the roundels, also that's a lot of electrical cupboards at the bottom of the escalator, also the uplighters dazzle, also the octagonal skylights are proper unusual, also the electrical chandelier at the entrance to the ticket hall is quite something. This new Charles Holden guy they've got designing the stations sure knows how to make an architectural statement!
Sadly the next station at Balham isn't yet ready. This is absolutely typical of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, yet another project mis-delivered with shoddy construction and poor planning. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't open until December, and in the meantime trains will whizz straight through to Trinity Road (Tooting Bec). It's not a catchy name and I bet they shorten it. The platform here has a gentle curve, also that's some gusty wind blowing newspapers down the escalators, also I like the way there are twostark buildings at street level facing different sides of the main crossroads. Is it too early to describe Holden's designs as Modernist?
Tooting Broadway station is a curved stone battlement with strip windows and three very strategically placed roundels. It dominates the crossroads at the top of Mitcham Road, a presence which might be diminished if anyone ever shifted the new statue of Edward VII off the traffic island and plonked it in front. A florist has already set up their stall outside the station and I was shocked to see them charging 5d for a bunch of irises, which is daylight robbery! But the station is busy even on Day One, and it seems almost natural to see a stream of gentlemen in bowler hats flocking towards the ticket collector, their cigarette smoke swirling up towards the octagonal skylights, before pouring downwards into the depths.
By Colliers Wood the similarity of these new stations is plainly evident, always Portland stone frontage, always bold silver uplighters on the escalators and always emerald tiles on the platforms. And yet each has an inner individuality, here embodied in exterior folds, a tripartite clerestory and saturnine capitals. The gold-rimmed clocks on the platforms are a similar treat, almost a Victorian touch in a station that feels anything but. So deftly has Charles Holden weaved his magic that he could even replace Admiral Lord Nelson as the local hero hereabouts, at least sufficiently to see The Victory pub renamed after him.
There have been many debates about the name of the next station, with the somewhat-vague South Wimbledon eventually ousting the much more sensible Merton Grove. There already are plans to add the word 'Merton' to the roundels, although I think they already look appealingly chunky with South Wimbledon spread across two lines. The News Counter in the ticket hall hedges its bets by advertising both the Wimbledon News at one end of its fascia and the Merton & Morden News at the other. If you like twiddly arrows check out the finial flourish on the Way Out signs, also the quadruple fletchings in the cross passage.
Just before Morden the incredibly long tunnel - potentially record breaking - finally breaks out into a lengthy cutting. It's possible local NIMBYs will demand the last quarter mile be covered by a linear park to limit suburban disruption, but come on guys, these electric trains are neither noisy nor do they belch steam. The end of the line is marked by a sprawl of open-air platforms and stairs to street level through one last glorious Holdenesque gateway. Push through the wooden doors and you emerge into as yet nothing much, but imagine the potential. Even the station entrance has space behind it to build some pig-ugly office block should the need arise.
This new terminus has announced its intention to become a suburban bridgehead with a significant bus service departing from outside, also a car park for those commuters who prefer to leave their Morris Oxfords here. Imagine the streets and avenues that might spread across the fields of Surrey now that London's underground railway has pierced its rustic rim. Imagine the ease with which you could now live in Morden Park and work in the City, then on Saturday head up west to the Shaftesbury Theatre to see Charles Crawford in Just a Kiss. And imagine how different life in south London could be in 100 years time, simply because entrepreneurs had the foresight to build an electric railway that everyone in 2026 will take totally for granted.
Once again TfL have silently published their annual spreadsheet listing the number of passengers using every London bus route and how many kilometres those buses travelled. Data is for April 2025 - March 2026. Comparisons are with the previous year.
London's ten busiest bus routes (2025/26) 1) -- 18 Euston - Sudbury (12.5m) 2) -- 149 London Bridge - Edmonton Green (11.6m) 3) -- 29 Trafalgar Square - Wood Green (11.2m) 4) ↑2 5 Canning Town - Romford (10.6m) 5) ↓1 207 White City - Southall (10.22m) 6) ↓1 86 Stratford - Romford (10.21m) 7) -- 243 Waterloo - Wood Green (9.8m) 8) ↑3 35 Shoreditch - Clapham Junction (9.7m) 9) ↑3 25 Holborn - Ilford (9.5m) 10) ↓1 36 Queens Park - New Cross Gate (9.2m)
The next ten: 279, 109, 53, 38, 43, 141, 65, 21, 158, 140
For the seventh year running London's busiest bus is the 18, long-term plier of the Harrow Road. The runners-up remain two northern workhorses, the 149 and 29. The 149 may tumble next year given TfL now have plans to divert it. Three east London radial routes find a place in the top 10 (5, 86, 25). The 207 is the all-stops version of Superloop service SL8 (which is in 21st place). Within the top 10 only three routes go south of the Thames (243, 35, 36), none exclusively so.
n.b. Only six bus routes conveyed more than ten million passengers, down from thirteen before the pandemic.
The next ten: 146, 209, 464, 467, W14, 359, 404, R2, 379, 485
These are all the usual suspects, topped off by a pair of brief turns in Barnet connecting daytime residents to the shops. The 399 to Hadley Wood has 21% fewer passengers this year, so is even less used than usual. The R5 and R10 operate the same route in rural Bromley but in opposite directions, and would be in 7th place if their totals were combined. Only fifteen passengers separated the R10 and H3. Six of the top 10 are circular routes. Route 18 is busier than the forty-four least used buses put together.
n.b. Routes 549 and 347 and were both withdrawn during the prevous year, leaving space for the routes below them to shuffle up a couple of places. The 549 was merged into the W14 which still only manages 15th place. The 347 was merged into the 346 which doesn't even appear in the bottom 50, so could be described as a great success.
London's ten most travelled bus routes (2025/26) 1) -- SL7 Croydon - Heathrow (2,140,000 km) 2) ↑1 111 Kingston - Heathrow (1,890,000 km) 3) ↓1 18 Euston - Sudbury (1,889,000 km) 4) -- 5 Canning Town - Romford (1,878,000 km) 5) ↑2 102 Brent Cross - Edmonton (1,780,000 km) 6) ↓1 86 Stratford - Romford (1,740,000 km) 7) ↑4 96 Woolwich - Bluewater (1,730,000 km) 8) ↑2 53 Lambeth North - Plumstead (1,700,000 km) 9) -- SL8 White City - Uxbridge (1,690,000 km) 10) ↑470 129 Lewisham - Gallions Reach (1,680,000 km)
The next ten: 466, 182, 38, 113, 207, 25, 174, 229, 221, SL3
This is a list of the routes whose vehicles travelled the greatest distance in one year. Long distance buses (like the SL7 and 111) and high frequency buses (like the 18 and 86) tend to travel the furthest. Superloop route SL7, which traverses 24 miles across southwest London, remains top by a considerable distance. Expect the SL8 to climb to second place next year as its frequency was recently increased from every ten minutes to every eight.
n.b. The 129 really has climbed 470 places to reach the Top 10. It was previously a runty Lewisham-Greenwich route but was extended through the Royal Docks when the Silvertown Tunnel opened and boosted to run every eight minutes (a frequency which ridership would suggest is unjustified).
n.b. The 389 remains London's least travelled bus route, covering just over 8000km per year.
London's ten most crowded bus routes (2025/26) 1) -- W7 Finsbury Park - Muswell Hill (9.0 passengers per km) 2) ↑2 35 Shoreditch - Clapham Junction (8.2) 3) ↓1 149 London Bridge - Edmonton (8.0) 4) ↑4 238 Stratford - Barking (8.0) 5) ↑1 109 Brixton - Croydon (7.9) 6) ↓1 29 Trafalgar Square - Wood Green (7.8) 7) ↓4 98 Holborn - Willesden (7.7) 8) ↓1 9 Aldwych - Hammersmith (7.6) 9) ↑1 41 Archway - Tottenham Hale (7.2) 10) ↓1 104 Stratford - Beckton (7.1)
This Top 10 is determined by dividing the number of passengers by the number of km travelled to get a 'number of passengers per km'. The higher the number, the less likely it is you'll be able to find a seat. By this measure the most crowded bus is the W7 which, along with the 41, delivers residents of Muswell Hill and Crouch End to nearby tube stations. Haringey is scoring highly here. The 195 is the most crowded single decker (5.1 passengers per km) so is arguably more crowded than some of these double deckers. Most London bus routes carry 2-5 passengers per km.
The next ten: 205, 243, 120, 58, 14, 207, 69, 18, 94, 220
Six of these buses serve the rural fringes of Bromley, London's emptiest outlier. Other buses which failed to carry 1 passenger per kilometre include the 246, 434, R3 and R7.
The ten routes with the biggest increase in passengers: 129, 310, 45, W12, W9, 298, 108, 14, W13, B14
Five of these aren't the same route they were last year (129, 45, W12, W13, B14). The 310 is new and now has its first full year of data. The W9 and 298 have recovered their reliability under a new operator. The 108 and 129 were free all year, so obviously popular. The two routes with the biggest increases that aren't explained by operational changes are the SL2 and SL3, up 21% and 17% respectively.
The ten routes with the biggest decrease in passengers: W14, 283, 30, 472, 399, 452, 56, 138, 352, 242
These ten routes all lost more than 15% of their passengers last year. The W14 is what the minor 549 morphed into. The 283 and 472 were withdrawn so don't have a full year of data. The 30 and 452 have both been shortened. The 56 and 138 had their frequencies reduced. The 399, 352 and 242 are just less popular than they used to be.
London's ten busiest nightbuses: N15, N25, N18, N207, N29, N9, N279, N8, N98, N140 London's ten least busy nightbuses: 486, 213, 365, N33, 85, N72, 321, 474, 24, 381
Passengerwise the N15 is 40% ahead of its nearest competitor, the N25.
London's ten busiest single deckers: 235, 195, C10, 316, 108, 170, 112, 214, W15, 366 London's ten least busy double deckers: 467, SL6, 481, 412, 317, 298, 498, 215, 492, 428
All those single deckers are busier than all those double deckers.
Reading has been on the tube map since 2019 despite being 20 miles outside London, thus is an easy place to get to for a rather good day out. However you should never take the Elizabeth line because that takes almost an hour from Paddington whereas a fast GWR train gets you here in just over 20 minutes (and for the same fare). Reading is a significant historic town that's since evolved into a major commercial centre, also one of the largest English towns never to have been made a city despite several attempts. Also they really want you visit, so grab all the leaflets you can from the tourist cart by the station gateline and head off to explore. [Visit Reading][14 photos]
1) Reading Museum
The museum is housed across three floors of Reading's Gothic town hall, a very short walk from the station. Its finest exhibit is a full-sized fully-stitched replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, as blogged yesterday, which stretches around the entire mezzanine. But it has several other interesting galleries, indeed sufficient to keep me within the building for over an hour what with 1066 and all that. The ground floor focuses not unexpectedly on the history of the town, a significant portion given over to Reading's royally significant Norman abbey. After that was pulled down it was Reading's strategic location on the rivers Thames and Kennet that lured people in, also companies like Gillette (who developed the first twin-blade razor here). Apparently Victorians couldn't get enough of Cook's Reading Sauce, a spicy condiment containing mushroom, capers, chutney and anchovy essence, and sooner them than me.
Huntley and Palmers were such a significant employer that they merit an entire gallery on the top floor, crammed with every kind of decorated tin that once flew out of the world's largest biscuit factory. If that feels very much like an art gallery there is also a proper one, also a windowed room bedecked with sculptures and another with splendid Roman-inspired ceramics. Not far from Reading was the major Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, now known as Silchester, whose story is told in a large artefact-packed gallery on the second floor. Archaeologists hit the jackpot here because the site was never built on after the Empire fell, so even though only the walls remain standing the complete street pattern is known and a full history can be told. Throw in a stag donated to the collection by George V from his Windsor herd and Reading Museum feels like it has several important stories to tell, not just a collection of randomly old things.
2) Reading Abbey
In a further connection to the Bayeux Tapestry, Reading's magnificent Abbey was founded by King Henry I, longest-reigning of the sons of William the Conqueror. He built it to gain salvation for himself and his family, and selected a gravel spur between the rivers Kennet and Thames as the best site for accessibility to other towns and cities. Henry died before it was finished, leaving instructions that he be buried in front of the high altar (which almost all of him was, although his heart and intestines ended up in Rouen). Alas his tomb didn't survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the approximate site now marked with a plaque given nobody's quite sure where it is or if he's even still there.
The most substantial of the abbey's remains are now the high walls of the chapter house and refectory, which remain pretty impressive. You wander in from the park with the big lion, past the remnants of Civil War earthworks and a plaque pointing out where the west end of the abbey used to be. Close by is the Abbey Gateway where Jane Austen went to school, which would be more of an astonishing coup for Reading had the standalone building not collapsed in a storm and been rebuilt by the Victorians in artificially Gothic style. Another building erected withing the abbey grounds is Reading Jail, a New Model Prison whose car park overlaps the footprint of the lady chapel. Its most famous prisoner was Oscar Wilde who spent two miserable years in cell C.3.3, and who might just be the prisoner Banksy depicted clambering over the wall opposite the roundabout (now safely secured behind a sheet of perspex).
3) Camino Inglés
Reading Abbey was dedicated to St James and for this reason has been selected as the start of England's only official section of the Camino de Santiago. Officially it begins outside St James's church, a much later Roman Catholic addition, but then weaves off through the Abbey ruins and off down the Kennet. It's so official that a "mouteira" (or stone milestone marker,) was gifted to the town last year and installed down by the river. Galicia may be 690 miles as the crow flies but the Camino Inglés is only 68 miles long, wending its way south through Winchester to Southampton past occasional scallop shell markers. The idea is that you walk this and can then get away with a shorter walk in Spain (from A Coruña) and still be eligible for a certificate. Reading's taking this honour very seriously, thus in the Museum you can pick up an official pilgrim's passport (£6) and get it stamped, and also buy the official A-Z guide to the St James's Way with all the maps you need. Explanatory leaflet here.
4) Riverside Museum
From April to September Reading Museum has an additional outpost half a mile down the river Kennet in former industrial buildings adjacent to Blake's Lock. You get there through the Abbey Gardens, along Oscar Wilde Walk and past the site of the former Huntley & Palmers factory (now inevitably flats). But it's not big, nor indeed generally staffed. One half of the 'museum' is inside the Screen House, most of which is occupied by a brightly painted gypsy caravan, the shelves opposite displaying objects including a medieval millwheel and a copy of Fly Fishing by JR Hartley. The Turbine House overlooks the weir and all you'll normally see there is old machinery, plus during certain summer months a display of local paintings. The artist was on the phone during my entire visit, which was convenient because she never got the chance to ask "do you like them?" and I never had to lie.
5) The Museum of English Rural Life
Otherwise known as MERL, this outpost of the University of Reading is a fifteen minute walk from the town centre and also brilliant. It was founded in 1951 as part of the university's association with agriculture and most recently expanded into ten new galleries that truly display the collection to best effect. The entrance merely looks like a nice cafe but then you set off on a lengthy weaving route to the far end and back, the opening displays all thematically linked to the seasons. Yes that is a sheep wearing a white Arran jumper. It's all very much object-led and wisely displayed against gleaming white walls with just enough information, plus a few well-chosen video interactives (I proved woefully incapable of birthing lambs).
You might thus see horse brasses, ploughs, milk bottle advertising, a case of toy tractors, butter churns, a bowl-turning wood lathe, a waxed jacket, a display of Suttons seed packets, two dozen mouse traps, a recipe book published by the Cheese Information Service, a rural fire engine and an ITV poster announcing the return of Emmerdale Farm. I lingered long. One of the highlights is a massive textile panel originally displayed in in the Country Pavilion at the Festival of Britain, this one depicting the fields of Cheshire (but sometimes they swap it for Kent). Wagon Walk is a 50m-long array of wagons and carts grouped geographically so that you can see how different geologies and farming types affected vehicle design.
But I was perhaps most excited by the promise of heading upstairs to visit The Ladybird Gallery, "the only permanent exhibition space in the world dedicated to the art of the iconic Ladybird Books". However what I actually found at the end of the corridor was a small landing with just two display cases, one a temporary exhibition (now hamster-related) and the other a selection of favourite titles. "I had that!" I said at least ten times, then wandered over to see if I could find it in the reading corner. The archive collection comprises 20,000 original artworks, for example "Here is the draper's shop" and "Carried to the Moon by Swans" and it's a real shame they didn't make room to show more of them. Nevertheless MERL is a real treasure, and I'd never have spotted it was here were it not for the Bayeux Tapestry down the road.
Also the Kennet and Avon Canal (heavily transformed hereabouts into to a restaurant heavy leisure park), also The Hexagon (a concrete bunker formerly full of snooker), also Reading Library (which has just moved to the council offices), also the HQ of Thames Water (somewhere to boo and hiss), also the River Thames (with scenic bridges and waterside meadows), also a heck of a lot of top shops (which is all most people come for), and basically what I'm saying is that Reading is a day trip screaming to be made.
The hottest ticket in town is for the Bayeux Tapestry, which goes on display to the public today at the British Museum. It's so hot that the rest of 2026 is fully sold out and January-March 2027 is expected to go the same way when bookings reopen next month.
But if you can't wait, or if you baulk at paying £33 for a once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster, an alternative opportunity to view the tapestry exists. It's a full-size full-colour fully-embroidered copy of the original and entirely free to view. To view it all you need to do is go to Reading, make your way to Reading Museum and head upstairs.
Most local museums feature local stuff like clay pots, agricultural tools and something that used to hang outside a pub. Reading Museum has all of this just inside the entrance, also a painting normally held in storage and a table where a nice lady will invite you to handle a fossil. But take the back stairs (or alternatively the lift, assuming they've got it working again) and the most famous Anglo-French strip cartoon awaits your perusal.
It's 70 metres long and stretches all around the first floor mezzanine as part of a specially-designed Bayeux Gallery opened in 1992. It's been divided into three sections, the first of which curls around a square landing above the museum entrance. This follows the story as far as Edward the Confessor's funeral, then restarts across the landing above the Story of Reading Gallery. Take your time, there's no queue of paid visitors shuffling behind you here, you're free to enjoy this at your own pace.
The reason why Reading has a replica Bayeux Tapestry is all thanks to Elizabeth Wardle, a Staffordshire sewer who in 1885 travelled to see the original in Normandy. On returning she cajoled 35 members of the Leek Embroidery Society into stitching a full-size copy, having got her husband to dye threads to match the original eight colours. The replica was complete by Whitsun 1886, after which it was toured round England and also shown in Germany and the USA. It happened to be in Reading in 1895 when the Society decided to sell it, thus an alderman bought it for £300 and gave it to the town. It's still here.
Just as you'd currently see in Bloomsbury, the first panel depicts Edward the Confessor despatching Earl Harold to France. The colours are rather brighter in Reading and the background fabric isn't stained, but this particular copy hasn't been stashed in a cathedral storeroom, transported on a cattle truck or hidden from the Nazis. What you also get at both places is a simple explanation of the story unfolding scene by scene - here it's text on a green panel below, at the British Museum it's silent video narration on a screen behind.
In an early example of apposite marketing the green panel is sponsored by Norman Insurance, a local company who in 1992 were headquartered by the river. Alas their sponsorship has lasted far longer than the company as they were soon absorbed into a larger company who have themselves been rebranded. Meanwhile the display cases are courtesy of pharmaceutical giant Bayer who are still a significant player in the town, and excellently all the glass is slightly slanted which means every photo comes out with no annoying reflections.
The tapestry takes its time to tell the early part of the story. Harold sets off on a lengthy trek to Bosham and thence across the Channel to land near Beauvais. In lengthy shenanigans he gets captured, gains William's favour by assisting with a battle in Brittany and everyone carries a lot of hawks. Only after Harold has sworn an oath to William is he allowed back across the Channel, and I'm sorry if any of this is spoilers for those of you with British Museum tickets but you should have paid more attention in history lessons.
The narrative plays out impressively clearly, such was the skill of those who originally composed it. The central strip has key tableaux which often merge at the edges, say with soldiers marching from one event to the next. Only a few words are used, and you don't always have to have learned Latin to get the gist. Separate borders top and bottom feature supporting characters, often animals in the early stages but piled high with bloodied corpses by the finale.
One of the strangest scenes depicts a sexual scandal seemingly with no connection to the main plot, well known in the 11th century but which historians can no longer identify. One man in the lower border appears full frontal, contributing to a total of almost 100 willies (human and equine) depicted in the original tapestry. The ladies who stitched this Victorian facsimile chose to give him a pair of shorts to avoid scandalising their audience, but rest assured the explanatory panel underneath shows the original design with everything hanging out.
A nice touch in the Reading tapestry is that each of the embroiderers has sewn their name underneath the panels they were responsible for. Thus the opening scene is "Elizabeth Wardle's work", right up to the point where it says "ends here", whereas Harold being seized in Normandy is by "Mabel Challoner, her work" and William riding into battle is "the work of Anne Smith". By contrast we know nothing of the original embroiderers from Canterbury, nor how many of them there were nor how long they took.
Part two kicks off with Harold taking the English throne, the none too subtle subtext being that he should instead have kowtowed to William. History is told by the victors so everything here is attempting to validate William's claims, indeed the entire 70 metres is essentially a massive piece of Norman propaganda. This is also famously where Halley's Comet appears in the sky, a blazing portent of doom and also quite possibly the best known example of 11th century graphic representation.
On we walk round the balcony as William slowly gathers an army and builds the boats to sail them in. The final scene before the battle includes the only child depicted in the tapestry, also one of just three women, both of whom are fleeing a burning building. And then it's all swords and arrows and shields and lances and knights on horseback, both sides charging towards each other and falling in great numbers, right up to the famous scene where someone gets an arrow in the eye. Hic Harold Rex Interfectus Est.
The final scene in the existing Bayeux Tapestry is of the remaining English troops fleeing the battlefield. We know there used to be a follow-up panel but it was lost centuries back and nobody knows for sure what it contained. The Reading version thus has one-up on the British Museum because it displays a potential finale in a separate frame at the top of the stairs. This was sewn by embroiderer Joy Messent in 2019 and depicts the surrender of the English nobles at Berkhamsted followed by William's coronation in Westminster Abbey. It's not a happy ending, not viewed from this side of the Channel, but it helped create the country that patriots now defend with pride.
If what you want is top needlework and a rollicking story, Reading's Bayeux Tapestry certainly delivers. Admittedly it's not got the 950-year-old frisson of the original which was sewn by ladies for whom this was recent blockbuster news rather than a mere reproductive exercise. But it was here in Reading on free display long before the genuine article arrived on these shores and will still be here long after it's gone. Authenticity aside, it really is almost as good as viewing the real thing.
» Reading Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm, admission free (but do check for gallery closures before you visit because they get a lot of school groups)
» Ian reviews the Reading version:"It may lack the miasma of history that comes from an authentic relic, but it’s so well made that you can almost forget it’s a replica and still bask in the monumental day that changed England forever."
» Ian reviews the genuine version:"If you have tickets, this once-in-a-lifetime moment will be a pure experience that hits in a way that I don’t think any exhibition I have ever been to could come close to."
If you fancy a meal at a Beefeater you've got two days left because they all close after tomorrow, every last one of them, because not enough people fancy a meal at a Beefeater any more.
Beefeater was founded by Whitbread in 1974, their first restaurant being The Halfway House in Enfield, followed in 1981 by the more-family-friendly Brewers Fayre. Prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gateau proliferated. Courage Breweries fought back in 1983 with their Harvester brand, their first restaurant being The George in Morden, as the salad bar became an integral part of a classy night out. In 1995 Beefeater absorbed the remnants of pioneering steakhouse Berni Inn, founded 40 years earlier, as the chain reached a peak of 256 outlets nationwide. In the same year Bass Charrington bought all 78 Harvesters and added them to a growing portfolio including Toby Carvery (debuting in Brentwood) and All Bar One (debuting in Sutton). In 2006 Bass-offshoot Mitchells & Butlers acquired 130 Harvester restaurants, also the 239 Beefeaters and Brewers Fayres that weren't part of a Premier Inn. What's closing this week are the remaining restaurants that are part of a Premier Inn, the Brewers Fayres on Monday and the Beefeaters after lunch tomorrow, as Whitbread sacrifices a 52 year-old brand to save its financial skin.
When I was younger we thought a Beefeater was an excellent venue for a special family meal. We were thus very excited when one opened in Croxley Green at Scotsbridge Mill, hence I celebrated my 25th birthday with soup, steak and profiteroles while the vicar watched on from a neighbouring table. We went back for my 26th where I enjoyed exactly the same meal and cunningly doubled up the whole thing as a Mothers Day treat. Two years later we celebrated my brother's 26th at a Beefeater in Norwich and my 28th a month later at the Priory Marina in Bedford, on both occasions upping my main course to a gluttonous mixed grill. We were back at Priory Marina for my 29th (pate, mixed grill, chocolate fudge dream), but after that we migrated to proper pubs and independent restaurants instead. Our Beefeater heyday was thus 1990-1994, which feels about right, and I think I've only been back once since.
Brewers Fayre in Greater London (closed 7th September)
• Winsor House, Beckton E6
• Chequers Corner, Dagenham RM9
But diners' tastes change, and a suburban roadhouse serving traditionalfavourites no longer cuts the mustard in these spicier times. This week's shutdown comes as the UK's hospitality sector faces tough financial headwinds, what with rising energy prices, higher employment costs and less frequent eating out because of the rising cost of living. With operating costs outpacing revenue Whitbread can no longer afford to maintain so many physical sites so have pulled the plug on the lot, instantly dooming the Chargrilled 5oz Gammon Steak, Smothered Chicken Melt and Caramel Apple Betty to history.
The unfussy end of the market still has Wetherspoons, Sizzling Pubs, Ember Inns and Hungry Horse, even Harvesters, should you fancy an unchallenging meal not far from home with onion rings. And rest assured that the very first Beefeater in Enfield will remain open, even after this week's restaurant Armageddon, because following all the machinations in paragraph two it's somehow ended up as a Toby Carvery.
Knitting The Air (4-20 September 2026) Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ
The latest exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery is a striking display of data, visualising something you can't see but might kill you. It's a calendar of knitted squares representing a year of air quality in east London, hardly the Bayeux Tapestry but an important historical record all the same.
It covers three walls of the gallery, almost like it was designed to be exhibited here, and was knitted by a team of 132 volunteers over a two year period. It's amazing what you can get a community group to do if you inspire them.
The top two rows represent data taken from a sensor by the A12 in Poplar and the bottom two data from a nearby street outside Culloden Primary School. The pinks are the PM2.5 count while the blues underneath represent nitrogen dioxide. In each case there are three shades, the lightest for 'below WHO guidelines', the darkest for 'over UK legal target' and the medium for the fuzzy zone inbetween. The panel below shows that NO₂ exceeded legal levels on 1st, 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th September 2023 (coinciding with a particular hot spell) and only properly fell below WHO guidelines on 18th September (a cooler day with high winds).
n.b. ULEZ expanded to cover all of London a couple of days before September 2023 started, but this won't have had much impact here because Poplar was well inside the previous zone.
What you want to see if you live round here is a lot of light pink and a lot of light blue, and whilst maybe half the pink stripes are indeed good, light blue stripes are worryingly thin on the ground. I do indeed live around here so it's chastening to be presented with a knitted record of how much air pollution my lungs are inhaling. The Aberfeldy estate has it particularly bad, being cut off by urban dual carriageways on two sides, and maybe that's why so many people were willing to give up their time to contribute to this project.
Fran: I've lived here along the A12 for forty years, and I've just noticed the air getting worse and worse. I was on inhalers for a long time for asthma. Gul: I'd heard of air quality but I didn't pay it much attention until I started knitting and then understood what the lines and colours meant. Sadia: The knitting was therapeutic in itself, but the community around knitting and what the project created, I think I enjoyed that the most. Freddie: As an educational tool it's been amazing. I was at an event at a GP surgery on the Aberfeldy Estate and there was a small display of knitting panels there and some kids from the local school came in and the questions they were asking were just amazing.
As well as the knitted panels (and explanatory detail out back), associated events include a photographic walk this afternoon, a curator's tour on Saturday and the chance to knit your own panels next Thursday. But the exhibition's only open until 20th September so you don't have long to get here (head to Bus Stop M, you can't miss it). In good news the London Transport Museum has agreed to take the artwork afterwards, rather than it clogging up the organiser's house, but given its size I expect it'll end up in storage rather than on occasional display. I hope the Mayor finds time to pop in before it goes and perhaps takes the opportunity for a photoshoot, the three walls of the gallery making clear the invisible fight he's made a cornerstone of his administration, and which those of us who live round here face daily.
