06-Nov-26
diamond geezer [ 6-Nov-26 7:00am ]
Tea in, tea out [ 06-Nov-26 7:00am ]
Do you ever think about where the things in your life come from and where they go?
Take this cup of tea, for example.
I know the tea has come from the Nilgiri hills of South India because it says so on the packet. Yes it's Earl Grey what of it? The bergamot is only flavouring, not from genuine Italian oranges, so we can ignore that. I like to imagine the tea bushes being hand-trimmed by ladies in saris on hilltop terraces beneath a beating sun, but that's probably an opinion I got from a Ladybird book decades ago. A more realistic illustration would still involve fields but probably more automation, maybe shear harvesting, maybe full-on mechanical harvesting, I'm not buying top-tier tea here. Also it'll have rained a lot, ultimately retaining water from the Indian Ocean in my tea leaves, not to mention nutrients from the soil, all transported over 5000 miles from there to here.
Then the leaves get processed, I guess on site or nearby because it makes sense to trim the unwanted parts before transporting the tea any distance. The process starts with withering with warm air to dry the leaves, then rolling to release their juices, then oxidation to develop flavour, then drying with hot air to seal the deal. My tea will then have been sorted and graded so I got the medium quality leaves, not the very best, not the value dregs, and at some point chopped into small granules because we're only making teabags here. It's the sort of thing Play School would once have shown through the square window, had four year-olds been interested in tea, and which you can now watch on YouTube if you're not too busy laughing at kittens.
The back of my teabag box says 'Tea from India. Packed in the UK', so stage two happened closer to home. They could have flown it over because it's only light, but I bet it came by ship because that's much cheaper, also these are not rapidly perishable goods. These container ships depart from ports like Cochin or Nhava Sheva and take weeks to travel thousands of nautical miles from there to here, tucked away in boxes in the hold or stacked on deck. Likely they came via the Suez Canal because it's relatively safe through the Gulf of Aden at present, but given the time lag they might have rounded the Cape of Good Hope instead. The tea that I drink is ridiculously better travelled than I am, perhaps having crossed the equator twice or cruised the Mediterranean which is more than I have.
It'll have arrived here at a huge coastal terminal like Tilbury, Felixstowe or maybe Thames Gateway Port. Somewhere inside a huge stack of containers, amid the fridges and lawnmowers and Temu hoodies, was the stash of tea that ultimately brewed my mug of tea. I suspect it was transported next by road, not rail, perhaps thundering down the A12 or A13 on the back of a great big articulated lorry. Most UK supermarket retailers don't do their own packing, they use external suppliers, so maybe the raw materials went to Tetley at Eaglescliffe, Typhoo in Gloucester or PG Tips in Trafford. It's quite possible these tea leaves came round the M25 a dozen miles from where I'd eventually drink them before whizzing far away for manufacture.
The bagging process is another mechanised wonder worthy of Play School, inserting precisely the right amount of tea leaves (about 2g) inside a permeable pouch of something resembling paper. These days it's all plant-based and biodegradable, usually polylactic acid but also potentially woodpulp or cotton, replacing the former plastic evils of polypropylene or nylon. Then the right number of bags has to be placed in the right sized box and a stash is dispatched to the distribution centre, which could again be a considerable distance away. My tea likely spent hours or days in huge sheds at Waltham Cross, Rainham or Purfleet, these being the three Tesco distribution centres closest to where I live. At some point a delivery will have been made to the supermarket at Bromley-by-Bow, then one of those gentlemen I regularly see wheeling pallets will have stacked a shelf in aisle 7 where I eventually picked it up. Of the incredibly long journey these tea leaves made to my home, I was only responsible for the supply chain's last half mile.
Then there's the milk. Who's to say precisely where this came from but it'll be from one or more dairies, each of which supplied a blend from dozens or hundreds of cows. The dash of milk that finished off my cuppa will thus have originated as blades of grass in an unknown number of fields, could be six, could be sixty, and been responsible for a finite amount of methane entering the atmosphere. I might even have walked through one of those fields, if not for this particular brew then for one I've drunk in the past. Thankfully I don't have sugar in my tea else that'd be another lengthy global story, so I think I've dodged at least three more paragraphs there. And of course the vast majority of what's in the mug is water, all heated by my kettle, so I could at this point launch into a lengthy retrospective on where water and electricity come from but let's not go there.
After brewing I dispose of the tea bag via the usual route. We don't have food waste collections here in Tower Hamlets, not yet, although they are finally on the brink of introducing them. I also don't have a compost heap because I live in a flat, so all my used teabags end up in general waste and are carted away by the municipal dustcart. If I lived in a neighbouring borough I might have a food caddy and my used leaves would end their lives in a recycling facility where they'd be turned into fertiliser or biogas used to power homes - apparently 6 teabags can create enough electricity to boil a kettle. Instead they end up on some landfill site somewhere, likely down the estuary, meaning the tea leaves that started out in the beautiful hills of Kerala end their days under a stinking heap in Thurrock.
As for the tea itself, I'll have urinated most of that out. From my toilet it'll have made its way under the streets of Bow and down the Northern Outfall Sewer, ultimately finding its way to Beckton Treatment works (or, if I go to the toilet elsewhere, some similar facility). But some of my mugful of tea will have been absorbed into my body instead, not just the water but stimulants and nutrients from the tea leaves and the milk. A lot of these molecules don't hang around but some will have been converted into energy or broken down into something else my body needs, meaning there are cells in my body that contain compounds that originated on the Indian subcontinent. At an atomic level I am part tea, but also part milk, apple, tuna, Club biscuit, Riesling, aspirin, grass pollen, diesel and microplastic.
It's amazing how all these compounds originate in such diverse locations across the globe and ultimately end up in our homes, in our food and in our bodies. We barely notice where it comes from, we never stop to think, and yet an enormous supply chain operation is required to bring these things to us and every day it does, such is humanity's economic excellence. Of course not everyone is so fortunate as those of us with a supermarket around the corner, but hurrah for global logistics and its impressive ability to bring nourishment from across the planet. Every mug of tea is a freight distribution triumph, at least so long as fragile international systems permit, and how we'd miss them if disruption ever intervened. We are all made of where we live, but also half a world away.
05-Nov-26
Take this cup of tea, for example.
I know the tea has come from the Nilgiri hills of South India because it says so on the packet. Yes it's Earl Grey what of it? The bergamot is only flavouring, not from genuine Italian oranges, so we can ignore that. I like to imagine the tea bushes being hand-trimmed by ladies in saris on hilltop terraces beneath a beating sun, but that's probably an opinion I got from a Ladybird book decades ago. A more realistic illustration would still involve fields but probably more automation, maybe shear harvesting, maybe full-on mechanical harvesting, I'm not buying top-tier tea here. Also it'll have rained a lot, ultimately retaining water from the Indian Ocean in my tea leaves, not to mention nutrients from the soil, all transported over 5000 miles from there to here.
Then the leaves get processed, I guess on site or nearby because it makes sense to trim the unwanted parts before transporting the tea any distance. The process starts with withering with warm air to dry the leaves, then rolling to release their juices, then oxidation to develop flavour, then drying with hot air to seal the deal. My tea will then have been sorted and graded so I got the medium quality leaves, not the very best, not the value dregs, and at some point chopped into small granules because we're only making teabags here. It's the sort of thing Play School would once have shown through the square window, had four year-olds been interested in tea, and which you can now watch on YouTube if you're not too busy laughing at kittens.
The back of my teabag box says 'Tea from India. Packed in the UK', so stage two happened closer to home. They could have flown it over because it's only light, but I bet it came by ship because that's much cheaper, also these are not rapidly perishable goods. These container ships depart from ports like Cochin or Nhava Sheva and take weeks to travel thousands of nautical miles from there to here, tucked away in boxes in the hold or stacked on deck. Likely they came via the Suez Canal because it's relatively safe through the Gulf of Aden at present, but given the time lag they might have rounded the Cape of Good Hope instead. The tea that I drink is ridiculously better travelled than I am, perhaps having crossed the equator twice or cruised the Mediterranean which is more than I have.
It'll have arrived here at a huge coastal terminal like Tilbury, Felixstowe or maybe Thames Gateway Port. Somewhere inside a huge stack of containers, amid the fridges and lawnmowers and Temu hoodies, was the stash of tea that ultimately brewed my mug of tea. I suspect it was transported next by road, not rail, perhaps thundering down the A12 or A13 on the back of a great big articulated lorry. Most UK supermarket retailers don't do their own packing, they use external suppliers, so maybe the raw materials went to Tetley at Eaglescliffe, Typhoo in Gloucester or PG Tips in Trafford. It's quite possible these tea leaves came round the M25 a dozen miles from where I'd eventually drink them before whizzing far away for manufacture.
The bagging process is another mechanised wonder worthy of Play School, inserting precisely the right amount of tea leaves (about 2g) inside a permeable pouch of something resembling paper. These days it's all plant-based and biodegradable, usually polylactic acid but also potentially woodpulp or cotton, replacing the former plastic evils of polypropylene or nylon. Then the right number of bags has to be placed in the right sized box and a stash is dispatched to the distribution centre, which could again be a considerable distance away. My tea likely spent hours or days in huge sheds at Waltham Cross, Rainham or Purfleet, these being the three Tesco distribution centres closest to where I live. At some point a delivery will have been made to the supermarket at Bromley-by-Bow, then one of those gentlemen I regularly see wheeling pallets will have stacked a shelf in aisle 7 where I eventually picked it up. Of the incredibly long journey these tea leaves made to my home, I was only responsible for the supply chain's last half mile.
Then there's the milk. Who's to say precisely where this came from but it'll be from one or more dairies, each of which supplied a blend from dozens or hundreds of cows. The dash of milk that finished off my cuppa will thus have originated as blades of grass in an unknown number of fields, could be six, could be sixty, and been responsible for a finite amount of methane entering the atmosphere. I might even have walked through one of those fields, if not for this particular brew then for one I've drunk in the past. Thankfully I don't have sugar in my tea else that'd be another lengthy global story, so I think I've dodged at least three more paragraphs there. And of course the vast majority of what's in the mug is water, all heated by my kettle, so I could at this point launch into a lengthy retrospective on where water and electricity come from but let's not go there.
After brewing I dispose of the tea bag via the usual route. We don't have food waste collections here in Tower Hamlets, not yet, although they are finally on the brink of introducing them. I also don't have a compost heap because I live in a flat, so all my used teabags end up in general waste and are carted away by the municipal dustcart. If I lived in a neighbouring borough I might have a food caddy and my used leaves would end their lives in a recycling facility where they'd be turned into fertiliser or biogas used to power homes - apparently 6 teabags can create enough electricity to boil a kettle. Instead they end up on some landfill site somewhere, likely down the estuary, meaning the tea leaves that started out in the beautiful hills of Kerala end their days under a stinking heap in Thurrock.
As for the tea itself, I'll have urinated most of that out. From my toilet it'll have made its way under the streets of Bow and down the Northern Outfall Sewer, ultimately finding its way to Beckton Treatment works (or, if I go to the toilet elsewhere, some similar facility). But some of my mugful of tea will have been absorbed into my body instead, not just the water but stimulants and nutrients from the tea leaves and the milk. A lot of these molecules don't hang around but some will have been converted into energy or broken down into something else my body needs, meaning there are cells in my body that contain compounds that originated on the Indian subcontinent. At an atomic level I am part tea, but also part milk, apple, tuna, Club biscuit, Riesling, aspirin, grass pollen, diesel and microplastic.
It's amazing how all these compounds originate in such diverse locations across the globe and ultimately end up in our homes, in our food and in our bodies. We barely notice where it comes from, we never stop to think, and yet an enormous supply chain operation is required to bring these things to us and every day it does, such is humanity's economic excellence. Of course not everyone is so fortunate as those of us with a supermarket around the corner, but hurrah for global logistics and its impressive ability to bring nourishment from across the planet. Every mug of tea is a freight distribution triumph, at least so long as fragile international systems permit, and how we'd miss them if disruption ever intervened. We are all made of where we live, but also half a world away.
Bordabus [ 05-Nov-26 7:00am ]
A couple of days ago, while I was walking between listed buildings in Grange Hill and Chigwell Row, I spotted a old bus stop.
This is Lambourne Road, a road that no longer has any buses, so that immediately made me stop and look. But what really piqued my interest was the flag on the bus stop because that still had the symbol for the National Bus Company on it, and they disappeared about forty years ago.
Alongside was the name of the local bus company at the time, Eastern National, and they disappeared ages ago too. How on earth had this survived?
Looking closer another word had been stuck on top in red letters, worn down by the elements, and that said BORDABUS. I'd never heard of them, so how long had all this obsolete signage been lurking here?
And then I carried on with my life.
» As can you, unless you have a particular interest in this topic.
Here's where the bus stop is on a map. It's the blue cross.
» This is the last printed bus map from March 2016, which I've had to update because the route of the 462 was changed three months later.
» The orange tyre tracks mark the boundary of Greater London.
» I've also marked "the point in London furthest from a listed building" from yesterday's post. It's the pink dot.
No buses go along Lambourne Road because very few people live there, whereas thousands of people live on the Hainault estate just to the south so all the buses go there. The Essex village of Chigwell Row is very fortunate to have a regular bus service on route 150, but it enters past the country park and stops 200m beyond the Greater London boundary, entirely skipping Lambourne Road. So when did Lambourne Road last see a bus?
I started by checking the longevity of the National Bus Company. It was founded in 1969, absorbing London Transport's country area in 1970 and introducing the red and blue logo in 1972. Then in 1988 the Thatcher government dissolved it, selling off all bus services to private operators between 1986 and 1988. Eastern National was part of a management buyout in 1987, becoming FirstBus in 1995. We can thus date this Lambourne Road bus stop to somewhere between July 1972 and February 1987, so it's been here for at least 40 years.
» If it were 200m up the road it'd be in London and TfL would have removed it, but it's in Essex and nobody has.
» If National Bus Company branding interests you, this look at its corporate design will be of interest.
Researching BORDABUS is easy because it's a really unusual word, but also hard because not much comes up. This did, though, which again points to the 1980s.
It's an odd route because "Passengers are carried to or from Romford only". Also it only ran three days a week, suggesting it was a service for market day shoppers. It stopped at our bus stop at 1013, 1213 and 1513, if you were lucky.
I also found photographs of this bus, or should I say coach, because Men Who Like Buses were also taking photos of Bordabus vehicles in the 1980s. Here's a double decker number 8 in Romford in July 1990, here's a number 6 coach in Hainault in November 1981 (it even says Via Chigwell Row on the front) and here's a a Bordabus and a Bordacoach at Abridge in 1981. I know Bordabus 6 also stopped at our bus stop because I found this bus map dated 1986.
The road's green because the B6 was a very infrequent service at this time, according to the timetable just three trips a day between Abridge and Brentwood, schooldays only.
Jumping ahead to a 1996 bus map there were now three services along Lambourne Road, the 8†, the 206† and the 511†.
• The 8 was Bordacoach route 8, a Wednesdays only service between Cheshunt and Romford (1997 timetable here). A Thursday-only route 9 ran in the summer months between Cheshunt and Southend, apparently, but that's not recorded on the map.
• The 206 was a similarly infrequent route between Loughton and Chigwell Row, including a twiddle round the Limes Farm Estate. It's all that remained of a former London Transport service running every 20 minutes between Walthamstow and Chigwell (timetable here).
• The 511 was a market day service from Romford operated by London Transport (details here), but because it looped anti-clockwise it never stopped at our surviving bus stop so we can ignore that.
However by the 1999 bus map all three services had vanished and Lambourne Road was busless again. And it's been busless ever since.
» Technically Epping Forest Community Transport ran a minibus twice a week from Chigwell Row to Epping on behalf of Chigwell Parish Council as recently as March 2020, but you had to be a Chigwell resident to use it, also it was Hail and Ride so never used our bus stop so it doesn't count.
In conclusion, this bus stop on Lambourne Road was last served by a scheduled bus route somewhere between 1997 and 1999, almost 30 years ago, and yet it's still here displaying the logo of a company which last operated in 1987, almost 40 years ago. Would never happen in London.
04-Nov-26
This is Lambourne Road, a road that no longer has any buses, so that immediately made me stop and look. But what really piqued my interest was the flag on the bus stop because that still had the symbol for the National Bus Company on it, and they disappeared about forty years ago.
Alongside was the name of the local bus company at the time, Eastern National, and they disappeared ages ago too. How on earth had this survived?
Looking closer another word had been stuck on top in red letters, worn down by the elements, and that said BORDABUS. I'd never heard of them, so how long had all this obsolete signage been lurking here?
And then I carried on with my life.
» As can you, unless you have a particular interest in this topic.
Here's where the bus stop is on a map. It's the blue cross.
» This is the last printed bus map from March 2016, which I've had to update because the route of the 462 was changed three months later.
» The orange tyre tracks mark the boundary of Greater London.
» I've also marked "the point in London furthest from a listed building" from yesterday's post. It's the pink dot.
No buses go along Lambourne Road because very few people live there, whereas thousands of people live on the Hainault estate just to the south so all the buses go there. The Essex village of Chigwell Row is very fortunate to have a regular bus service on route 150, but it enters past the country park and stops 200m beyond the Greater London boundary, entirely skipping Lambourne Road. So when did Lambourne Road last see a bus?
I started by checking the longevity of the National Bus Company. It was founded in 1969, absorbing London Transport's country area in 1970 and introducing the red and blue logo in 1972. Then in 1988 the Thatcher government dissolved it, selling off all bus services to private operators between 1986 and 1988. Eastern National was part of a management buyout in 1987, becoming FirstBus in 1995. We can thus date this Lambourne Road bus stop to somewhere between July 1972 and February 1987, so it's been here for at least 40 years.
» If it were 200m up the road it'd be in London and TfL would have removed it, but it's in Essex and nobody has.
» If National Bus Company branding interests you, this look at its corporate design will be of interest.
Researching BORDABUS is easy because it's a really unusual word, but also hard because not much comes up. This did, though, which again points to the 1980s.
The local Upminster and Hornchurch routes (the Upminster & District part of the operation) continued somewhat intermittently for some years afterwards under a succession of different operators, including City Coach Lines in 1969, Blue Line Coaches in 1971, Coppins Coaches in 1974, Dorayme Travel in 1976 and finally Bordabus in 1981.I also found some bus timetables, because the internet is surprisingly excellent. This one's from April 1984.
It's an odd route because "Passengers are carried to or from Romford only". Also it only ran three days a week, suggesting it was a service for market day shoppers. It stopped at our bus stop at 1013, 1213 and 1513, if you were lucky.
I also found photographs of this bus, or should I say coach, because Men Who Like Buses were also taking photos of Bordabus vehicles in the 1980s. Here's a double decker number 8 in Romford in July 1990, here's a number 6 coach in Hainault in November 1981 (it even says Via Chigwell Row on the front) and here's a a Bordabus and a Bordacoach at Abridge in 1981. I know Bordabus 6 also stopped at our bus stop because I found this bus map dated 1986.
The road's green because the B6 was a very infrequent service at this time, according to the timetable just three trips a day between Abridge and Brentwood, schooldays only.
Jumping ahead to a 1996 bus map there were now three services along Lambourne Road, the 8†, the 206† and the 511†.
• The 8 was Bordacoach route 8, a Wednesdays only service between Cheshunt and Romford (1997 timetable here). A Thursday-only route 9 ran in the summer months between Cheshunt and Southend, apparently, but that's not recorded on the map.
• The 206 was a similarly infrequent route between Loughton and Chigwell Row, including a twiddle round the Limes Farm Estate. It's all that remained of a former London Transport service running every 20 minutes between Walthamstow and Chigwell (timetable here).
• The 511 was a market day service from Romford operated by London Transport (details here), but because it looped anti-clockwise it never stopped at our surviving bus stop so we can ignore that.
However by the 1999 bus map all three services had vanished and Lambourne Road was busless again. And it's been busless ever since.
» Technically Epping Forest Community Transport ran a minibus twice a week from Chigwell Row to Epping on behalf of Chigwell Parish Council as recently as March 2020, but you had to be a Chigwell resident to use it, also it was Hail and Ride so never used our bus stop so it doesn't count.
In conclusion, this bus stop on Lambourne Road was last served by a scheduled bus route somewhere between 1997 and 1999, almost 30 years ago, and yet it's still here displaying the logo of a company which last operated in 1987, almost 40 years ago. Would never happen in London.
Furthest from a listed building [ 04-Nov-26 7:00am ]
There are almost 20,000 listed buildings in London, from palaces to pubs and parish churches to phone kiosks. They're particularly prevalent in inner London because that's where most of the old stuff is, and somewhat sparser towards the outskirts. There are also a few larger gaps where nothing's been listed, these generally suburbs in former agricultural areas where nothing old was noteworthy and nothing newer has proved architecturally significant. Today's question is thus...
Where in London is furthest from a listed building?
Thankfully Historic England provide a scrollable map on which every listed building is pinpointed, so I started there. This is a snapshot from northeast London, where you can see lots of listed buildings in the lower left-hand corner in Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich, and rather fewer as you continue outwards. A lot of these can be found along main roads because that's where settlement and commerce began, leaving several listed voids inbetween. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that London's most heritage-non-adjacent location is on this map.
To find the largest gap I tried to identify the largest circle that could be drawn on the map without enclosing a listed building. To do this I took a roll of sellotape and moved it around my laptop screen until no blue pins were visible through the gap in the middle. I found five locations altogether, the only qualifying criterion being that the centre of of the circle had to be in London. Each centre turned out to be over a mile from any listed building, mainly because I got lucky with the size of my sellotape, and then it was just a case of measuring the radius of each circle as accurately as possible.
I can therefore confirm that the place in London furthest from a listed building is here, near enough.
This is the junction of Forest Road and Hainault Road in the London borough of Redbridge. The precise location is across the hedge in the middle of a large ploughed field about 100m south of the roundabout, but it's not public land and the entire boundary is shielded by a thickety hedge so that's the best photograph I managed to get. The nearest place you might know well is Fairlop Waters Country Park which is a ten minute walk to the west, alternatively Hainault Recreation Ground which is a large expanse across the road. The only nearby residents live on a caravan park, and although the 462 bus drives past it doesn't stop, there being no local need. Instead the land hereabouts is mostly open fields and the roads are super-useful ratruns for Essex-fringe drivers who pass through in great numbers.
So why is this the place in London furthest from a listed building? One reason is that centuries ago this was all Hainault Forest where nobody lived. Another reason is that after the forest was chopped down in the 1850s it all became agricultural land so the only buildings were three farms, none of them noteworthy. Another reason is that Fairlop Plain was acquired in the 1930s not for housing but for an airport, which when WW2 broke out became RAF Fairlop instead. Another reason is that the airfield was so comprehensively erased after 1946 that nothing of wartime significance survives. A final reason, possibly key, is that all the surrounding land then became either Green Belt or the huge Hainault council estate. That meant either you couldn't build on it or nobody built anything inspiring enough to be notable, and that's how this field became the only place in London to be over 1¼ miles from a listed building. [map] [map]
And here are the listed buildings it's just over 1¼ miles from.
» The alien-looking one is the very wonderful Fullwell Cross library, designed by Frederick Gibberd in 1959 and given Grade II status in 2007. It dominates the roundabout at the top of Barkingside High Street, and if its dramatic copper-topped drum bears some resemblance to Liverpool's Roman Catholic Cathedral that's because Gibberd designed them both. Events today include Chatty Cafe, Scrabble Club and Lego Club, or simply borrowing some books beneath the inspirational ring of clerestory windows.
» The terrace of weatherboarded cottages is 195-209 Manor Road, likely built in the early 19th century and Grade II listed in 1979. I'd never noticed them before because they're set back from the road and have since been screened behind a lot of trees and shrubbery. Their old-school construction puts them at odds with most of the surrounding suburban housing, but they are very close to Grange Hill station so make an excellent commuter bolthole.
» The first church is All Saints Chigwell Row, a fine Gothic pile built to serve the growing village in the 1860s. It was only listed in 2024, but even before that Chigwell Row had so many listed houses that my sellotape circle wouldn't have been any bigger.
» The second is the Church of St Peter, Aldborough Hatch, also from the 1860s but listed much earlier in 1979. Its building material included chunks of Portland Stone from the original Westminster Bridge which had just been demolished.
The fifth and final listed building on my circle's periphery is Furze House Farmhouse in Marks Gate. It's the oldest of all the listed buildings listed here but I don't have a photo because it can't be seen. The farmhouse is tucked away behind a locked gate at the end of a long driveway, all of which are encased so completely within a sheath of woodland that you'd think some previous owner really wanted to be invisible. Everything between here and the centre of my circle is arable farmland, hence no buildings, hence no listed buildings, indeed fewer listed buildings than anywhere else in London.
In second place is a landfill site on the Rainham Marshes.
You can't get inside the landfill site so my photo is of Coldharbour Lane alongside, a remote dead end lane that curls around the huge spoilheap to terminate alongside the estuary. Absolutely nobody lives here, indeed nobody even lives within a mile, let along in anything listed. All that's been built even vaguely nearby are industrial sites and warehouses, some of them across the river in Erith, and basically whenever you ask a "Where in London is furthest from...?" question these marshes inevitably pop up.
In third place is the 18th tee of Addington Court golf course, close to Selsdon Wood and the Forestdale estate. It won't surprise you that there are no listed buildings in New Addington, and that's mainly why these fairways are nowhere near any of them whatsoever.
In fourth place are Tolworth Court Farm Fields in the Hogsmill valley, specifically Finch Hoares, a former hay meadow alongside Jubilee Road. Nothing in Tolworth is listed, especially not that ugly tower block, and it's over a mile until you find one that is.
In fifth place, I think, is High Wood in the extremely rural hinterland beyond Orpington, beyond even the outpost of Pratt's Bottom. When I tried visiting every 1km grid square in London this is pretty much the last square I went to, so you won't have been either.
I hope I used my sellotape correctly to devise this ordering, confirmed by careful manipulation of online maps. But I do think I have the definitive answer to the question Where in London is furthest from a listed building?
It's in the borough of Redbridge in a ploughed field 100m south of the roundabout at the junction of Forest Road and Hainault Road, over a mile and a quarter from any listed building. And because it's all Green Belt round here that's very unlikely to change.
03-Nov-26
Where in London is furthest from a listed building?
Thankfully Historic England provide a scrollable map on which every listed building is pinpointed, so I started there. This is a snapshot from northeast London, where you can see lots of listed buildings in the lower left-hand corner in Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich, and rather fewer as you continue outwards. A lot of these can be found along main roads because that's where settlement and commerce began, leaving several listed voids inbetween. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that London's most heritage-non-adjacent location is on this map.
To find the largest gap I tried to identify the largest circle that could be drawn on the map without enclosing a listed building. To do this I took a roll of sellotape and moved it around my laptop screen until no blue pins were visible through the gap in the middle. I found five locations altogether, the only qualifying criterion being that the centre of of the circle had to be in London. Each centre turned out to be over a mile from any listed building, mainly because I got lucky with the size of my sellotape, and then it was just a case of measuring the radius of each circle as accurately as possible.
I can therefore confirm that the place in London furthest from a listed building is here, near enough.
This is the junction of Forest Road and Hainault Road in the London borough of Redbridge. The precise location is across the hedge in the middle of a large ploughed field about 100m south of the roundabout, but it's not public land and the entire boundary is shielded by a thickety hedge so that's the best photograph I managed to get. The nearest place you might know well is Fairlop Waters Country Park which is a ten minute walk to the west, alternatively Hainault Recreation Ground which is a large expanse across the road. The only nearby residents live on a caravan park, and although the 462 bus drives past it doesn't stop, there being no local need. Instead the land hereabouts is mostly open fields and the roads are super-useful ratruns for Essex-fringe drivers who pass through in great numbers.
So why is this the place in London furthest from a listed building? One reason is that centuries ago this was all Hainault Forest where nobody lived. Another reason is that after the forest was chopped down in the 1850s it all became agricultural land so the only buildings were three farms, none of them noteworthy. Another reason is that Fairlop Plain was acquired in the 1930s not for housing but for an airport, which when WW2 broke out became RAF Fairlop instead. Another reason is that the airfield was so comprehensively erased after 1946 that nothing of wartime significance survives. A final reason, possibly key, is that all the surrounding land then became either Green Belt or the huge Hainault council estate. That meant either you couldn't build on it or nobody built anything inspiring enough to be notable, and that's how this field became the only place in London to be over 1¼ miles from a listed building. [map] [map]
And here are the listed buildings it's just over 1¼ miles from.
» The alien-looking one is the very wonderful Fullwell Cross library, designed by Frederick Gibberd in 1959 and given Grade II status in 2007. It dominates the roundabout at the top of Barkingside High Street, and if its dramatic copper-topped drum bears some resemblance to Liverpool's Roman Catholic Cathedral that's because Gibberd designed them both. Events today include Chatty Cafe, Scrabble Club and Lego Club, or simply borrowing some books beneath the inspirational ring of clerestory windows.
» The terrace of weatherboarded cottages is 195-209 Manor Road, likely built in the early 19th century and Grade II listed in 1979. I'd never noticed them before because they're set back from the road and have since been screened behind a lot of trees and shrubbery. Their old-school construction puts them at odds with most of the surrounding suburban housing, but they are very close to Grange Hill station so make an excellent commuter bolthole.
» The first church is All Saints Chigwell Row, a fine Gothic pile built to serve the growing village in the 1860s. It was only listed in 2024, but even before that Chigwell Row had so many listed houses that my sellotape circle wouldn't have been any bigger.
» The second is the Church of St Peter, Aldborough Hatch, also from the 1860s but listed much earlier in 1979. Its building material included chunks of Portland Stone from the original Westminster Bridge which had just been demolished.
The fifth and final listed building on my circle's periphery is Furze House Farmhouse in Marks Gate. It's the oldest of all the listed buildings listed here but I don't have a photo because it can't be seen. The farmhouse is tucked away behind a locked gate at the end of a long driveway, all of which are encased so completely within a sheath of woodland that you'd think some previous owner really wanted to be invisible. Everything between here and the centre of my circle is arable farmland, hence no buildings, hence no listed buildings, indeed fewer listed buildings than anywhere else in London.
In second place is a landfill site on the Rainham Marshes.
You can't get inside the landfill site so my photo is of Coldharbour Lane alongside, a remote dead end lane that curls around the huge spoilheap to terminate alongside the estuary. Absolutely nobody lives here, indeed nobody even lives within a mile, let along in anything listed. All that's been built even vaguely nearby are industrial sites and warehouses, some of them across the river in Erith, and basically whenever you ask a "Where in London is furthest from...?" question these marshes inevitably pop up.
In third place is the 18th tee of Addington Court golf course, close to Selsdon Wood and the Forestdale estate. It won't surprise you that there are no listed buildings in New Addington, and that's mainly why these fairways are nowhere near any of them whatsoever.
In fourth place are Tolworth Court Farm Fields in the Hogsmill valley, specifically Finch Hoares, a former hay meadow alongside Jubilee Road. Nothing in Tolworth is listed, especially not that ugly tower block, and it's over a mile until you find one that is.
In fifth place, I think, is High Wood in the extremely rural hinterland beyond Orpington, beyond even the outpost of Pratt's Bottom. When I tried visiting every 1km grid square in London this is pretty much the last square I went to, so you won't have been either.
I hope I used my sellotape correctly to devise this ordering, confirmed by careful manipulation of online maps. But I do think I have the definitive answer to the question Where in London is furthest from a listed building?
It's in the borough of Redbridge in a ploughed field 100m south of the roundabout at the junction of Forest Road and Hainault Road, over a mile and a quarter from any listed building. And because it's all Green Belt round here that's very unlikely to change.
November Unblogged [ 03-Nov-26 7:00am ]
10 unblogged things I did in November
Sun 1: Took all my bats down.
Sun 1: At the end of today's Radio 4 Midnight News the headlines were followed by a trail and then the programme Take Four Books. Hang on, I thought, where did the weather go? The Midnight News has always been followed by a beefy weather forecast ever since I started listening in the 1990s. The same thing happened tonight - no weather presenter, no weather - so I checked the Radio Times and they have indeed killed it off.
Up until last night the listing always said News and Weather, but from today onwards it's only News. This cancellation wasn't announced, but it is plainly part of the latest round of BBC cost cutting, essentially forced by the last goverment enforcing a lengthy licence fee freeze. Other plans include scrapping the late-night weekday weather bulletin on BBC Two and using automated graphics for the overnight edition of Weather for the Week Ahead on BBC One. It's all so weather presenters don't need to do a late shift any more, saving cash and also helping the BBC to slim down their team of meteorologists by three. The Radio 4 Midnight News is also due to be cancelled before next spring so I shall be going to sleep less well informed on all fronts. Cold fronts, alas.
Sun 1: Today is the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the slogan 'See It. Say It. Sorted.' It's annoying, it's senseless and it gets played far more often than you'd like, but it is extraordinarily memorable and that's why it's still around ten years later. Apparently more than 200,000 texts are sent to 61016 every year, and since 2016 over 80,000 crimes have been recorded by the British Transport Police. Use of See it. Say it. Sorted. is mandated across every train operator and station in England, Scotland and Wales, so if you want to escape either take the bus, stay in your car or head to Northern Ireland instead.
Sun 1: This sign outside Meridian Water station intrigued me. It tells passengers which platform to use for various destinations, and it's not very good. Firstly the red lines are misleading because these lines branch rather than being sequential. No trains go direct from Stratford to Hackney Downs (p3), for example. But mainly I thought "hang on, can you really get a train from here to Cambridge?" because northbound trains from Meridian Water are exceptionally thin on the ground. So I checked the timetables and no you can't, ditto zero trains go direct to Stansted Mountfitchet. Also only the last train of the day goes to Liverpool Street, all the other southbound services go to Stratford, and only the midnight train goes to Hertford East. They really have made this much more complicated than it should be.
Sun 1: Oh come on, it's far too early for the supermarkets to be launching their Christmas TV ad campaigns. Sainsbury is repeating its BFG theme which wasn't very engaging last year, and Tesco has a sugary 'delivery driver goes the extra mile' storyline that I expect to be sick of by Bonfire Night. It's also much too early for Tesco to be screening an advert for turkey prices at Waterloo station, and FFS even the John Lewis Christmas ad is launching today (3.11.26).
Mon 2: If you're taking part in Movember, I'm pleased to say I've spotted A Mustache Barber in Whitton. That said this may just be a traditional barber shop, not a tache specialist, because the list of specialist trims in the window goes no further than a flat top or a beard trim. If only they had a website or some online presence beyond an Instagram account they gave up on three years ago we might know better.
Mon 2: What station is this?
You know Fulwell .
Mon 2: Today was the 90th anniversary of BBC Television commencing public broadcasting from Alexandra Palace, i.e. television was 90 years old today. There are many ways to commemorate the event, my favourite of which is always to watch Adele Dixon singing the opening song The Magic Rays of Light.
There's joy in store
The world is at your door -
It's here for everyone to view
Conjured up in sound and sight
By the magic rays of light
That bring Television to you
Alternatively you can download the very first Television Number of the Radio Times as a 100 page pdf here (or view the next week's issue with the first TV programmes here). Also BBC4 is screening one of those first night programmes on Wednesday evening at 11.45pm, making Television Comes to London the BBC repeat with the longest gap between first and second showings... 90 years and 2 days.
Mon 2: As usual poppies have appeared on the front of many tube trains, as here on the Waterloo & City line. But I wonder if they've stuck poppies on both ends? You can see this end as trains enter the platform at Waterloo and when they arrive at Bank. But the other end is invisible to passengers because it's always in the tunnel at Bank and beyond the platform at Waterloo. Technically you could see it if you were standing on the arrival platform at Waterloo when a train arrived, but nobody does this so I wonder if they bothered with two poppies or just one.
Mon 2: Tower Hamlets libraries are holding their Writeidea festival again on the weekend of 20th-21st November, a chance to hear two dozen authors talk about their books in the comfort of the Town Hall. Most talks last an hour and all are free, even if you're not a signed-up borrower or indeed live outside the borough. Authors include Deborah Frances-White, Tim Pope, Dan Cruikshank and Owen Hatherley, so for example on Saturday at 4pm you could be hearing about LGBTQ history in the suburbs, how football shirts reflect politics or how best to draw a pub. Website here, programme here.
I do love my local library. Today I returned one novel on the Booker Prize shortlist and left with two more, which hopefully makes me better read than most.
02-Nov-26
Sun 1: Took all my bats down.
Sun 1: At the end of today's Radio 4 Midnight News the headlines were followed by a trail and then the programme Take Four Books. Hang on, I thought, where did the weather go? The Midnight News has always been followed by a beefy weather forecast ever since I started listening in the 1990s. The same thing happened tonight - no weather presenter, no weather - so I checked the Radio Times and they have indeed killed it off.
Up until last night the listing always said News and Weather, but from today onwards it's only News. This cancellation wasn't announced, but it is plainly part of the latest round of BBC cost cutting, essentially forced by the last goverment enforcing a lengthy licence fee freeze. Other plans include scrapping the late-night weekday weather bulletin on BBC Two and using automated graphics for the overnight edition of Weather for the Week Ahead on BBC One. It's all so weather presenters don't need to do a late shift any more, saving cash and also helping the BBC to slim down their team of meteorologists by three. The Radio 4 Midnight News is also due to be cancelled before next spring so I shall be going to sleep less well informed on all fronts. Cold fronts, alas.
Sun 1: Today is the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the slogan 'See It. Say It. Sorted.' It's annoying, it's senseless and it gets played far more often than you'd like, but it is extraordinarily memorable and that's why it's still around ten years later. Apparently more than 200,000 texts are sent to 61016 every year, and since 2016 over 80,000 crimes have been recorded by the British Transport Police. Use of See it. Say it. Sorted. is mandated across every train operator and station in England, Scotland and Wales, so if you want to escape either take the bus, stay in your car or head to Northern Ireland instead.
Sun 1: This sign outside Meridian Water station intrigued me. It tells passengers which platform to use for various destinations, and it's not very good. Firstly the red lines are misleading because these lines branch rather than being sequential. No trains go direct from Stratford to Hackney Downs (p3), for example. But mainly I thought "hang on, can you really get a train from here to Cambridge?" because northbound trains from Meridian Water are exceptionally thin on the ground. So I checked the timetables and no you can't, ditto zero trains go direct to Stansted Mountfitchet. Also only the last train of the day goes to Liverpool Street, all the other southbound services go to Stratford, and only the midnight train goes to Hertford East. They really have made this much more complicated than it should be.
Southbound trains per weekdayIn total 316 trains depart Meridian Water station every week, 85% of which go south to Stratford, so most of the rest of what's on the poster is irrelevant most of the time. Or indeed wrong.
to Stratford: 41
to Liverpool Street: 1
Northbound trains per weekday
to Bishop's Stortford: 7
to Hertford East: 1
Sun 1: Oh come on, it's far too early for the supermarkets to be launching their Christmas TV ad campaigns. Sainsbury is repeating its BFG theme which wasn't very engaging last year, and Tesco has a sugary 'delivery driver goes the extra mile' storyline that I expect to be sick of by Bonfire Night. It's also much too early for Tesco to be screening an advert for turkey prices at Waterloo station, and FFS even the John Lewis Christmas ad is launching today (3.11.26).
Mon 2: If you're taking part in Movember, I'm pleased to say I've spotted A Mustache Barber in Whitton. That said this may just be a traditional barber shop, not a tache specialist, because the list of specialist trims in the window goes no further than a flat top or a beard trim. If only they had a website or some online presence beyond an Instagram account they gave up on three years ago we might know better.
Mon 2: What station is this?
You know Fulwell .
Mon 2: Today was the 90th anniversary of BBC Television commencing public broadcasting from Alexandra Palace, i.e. television was 90 years old today. There are many ways to commemorate the event, my favourite of which is always to watch Adele Dixon singing the opening song The Magic Rays of Light.
There's joy in store
The world is at your door -
It's here for everyone to view
Conjured up in sound and sight
By the magic rays of light
That bring Television to you
Alternatively you can download the very first Television Number of the Radio Times as a 100 page pdf here (or view the next week's issue with the first TV programmes here). Also BBC4 is screening one of those first night programmes on Wednesday evening at 11.45pm, making Television Comes to London the BBC repeat with the longest gap between first and second showings... 90 years and 2 days.
Mon 2: As usual poppies have appeared on the front of many tube trains, as here on the Waterloo & City line. But I wonder if they've stuck poppies on both ends? You can see this end as trains enter the platform at Waterloo and when they arrive at Bank. But the other end is invisible to passengers because it's always in the tunnel at Bank and beyond the platform at Waterloo. Technically you could see it if you were standing on the arrival platform at Waterloo when a train arrived, but nobody does this so I wonder if they bothered with two poppies or just one.
Mon 2: Tower Hamlets libraries are holding their Writeidea festival again on the weekend of 20th-21st November, a chance to hear two dozen authors talk about their books in the comfort of the Town Hall. Most talks last an hour and all are free, even if you're not a signed-up borrower or indeed live outside the borough. Authors include Deborah Frances-White, Tim Pope, Dan Cruikshank and Owen Hatherley, so for example on Saturday at 4pm you could be hearing about LGBTQ history in the suburbs, how football shirts reflect politics or how best to draw a pub. Website here, programme here.
I do love my local library. Today I returned one novel on the Booker Prize shortlist and left with two more, which hopefully makes me better read than most.
Unblogged October [ 02-Nov-26 7:00am ]
31 unblogged things I did in October
Thu 1: There comes a day when you look at an old pair of trainers, perhaps several, and think "I've loved you but you're worn beyond repair so you've got to go, now hop into this black binliner", something I did today alongside half a broken office chair.
Fri 2: The last time I saw my balconysquirrel this season.
Sat 3: Ooh I got a Beatrix Potter 50p in my change. Oh I've already got a Benjamin Bunny, they're nothing special. (I still haven't seen any of the new animals)
Sun 4: There always seem to be three number 72 buses on the stand just to the north of Hammersmith Bridge, the drivers twiddling their thumbs for over 20 minutes until their timetabled departure time, which does suggest somebody official contracted a much too generous vehicle allocation.
Mon 5: A sign on the door of Sapphire Court, a Stratford apartment block decanted in August last year, reads "Do not enter the building under any circumstances". It's amazing how many groundstaff in hi-vis it takes to stand around outside structurally deficient flats in case they collapse, but that's modern building standards for you.
Tue 6: Seen near Sutton station, this cobblers sign with inconsistently awful apostrophes. What made them write Repair's but also Repairs? What made them write Key's but not Fob's? (still, at least they dodged batterie's, trophie's and glas's)
Wed 7: Nextdoor's builders spent the day bashing a door-sized hole in their brick wall, so I'm glad I went out to Newbury Park and Abbey Wood, what a racket.
Thu 8: As my followers on Bluesky will already be aware, today I visited nine different postcode districts (E3 E15 E20 E10 IG2 IG3 RM6 RM8 RM7) whilst travelling on only two trains and no buses.
Fri 9: West Ham and Bromley-by-Bow stations have gained new digital advertising screens, and what grates isn't that they exist but the carousel of welcome messages suggesting we should all be excited/happy/grateful they've appeared.
Sat 10: A small child threw a prolonged tantrum because the front seats on the 307 bus were occupied, so I vacated mine because I was getting off two stops later, but what I wanted to say to her father was "you've got a spoilt precocious brat there and you need to learn to say no to her".
Sun 11: This is a photo of the Thames at Strand-on-the-Green at low tide. I also went to Plumstead but I won't subject you to that.
Mon 12: The Radio 4 quiz pilot 'Your Number's Up' must be coming back because they're seeking audience members again, which is excellent but I think it's someone else's turn to squeeze into a Bloomsbury pub cellar for two hours.
Tue 13: It's sad to see Gabriels Wharf sealed off and emptied out, kicking out all the independent traders, some of whom have been there over 30 years. Something fundamentally temporary will replace it because the not-for profit deeds insist, or in projectspeak (sigh) the site will be "entering a new chapter with a refreshed meanwhile use".
Wed 14: This spraypainted gate in Parish Lane, Penge, may be the best representation I've ever seen of "Beware of the dog".
Thu 15: Here's a truly excellent thing - Local Wikipedia, courtesy of Ed Jefferson. You enter a place or postcode and it presents a short list of locally-relevant Wikipedia pages (usually within 1-3 miles). Obviously I checked home first, then other homes... and yes, the possibilities for local research are multitudinous!
Fri 16: Got the new Richard Osman out of the library - normally they have no spare copies for months. We Chase Shadows is amusingly adequate.
Sat 17: Hall Place in Bexley probably has the best topiary in London, a fabulous line of heraldic beasts with assorted sculptured yews behind. Unless of course you know better.
Sun 18: Spotted a huge film crew in and around the block where Slough House is fictionally based, which must be for Slow Horses but could be for either series 7 or series 8, both of which are being filmed back to back.
Mon 19: Getting off the bus in my Dad's village was particularly awkward because there were two wheelchairs in the aisle and I had a suitcase. The driver rolled his eyes and smiled as I finally escaped, as if this kind of thing happens all the time.
Tue 20: For my Dad's birthday cake I brought out our longstanding collection of plastic numbers. Alas it wasn't possible to make 88, but in good news it would be possible to make every other age up to 100. I eventually compromised by using a silver '18' and hiding the 1 behind the 8.
Wed 21: In gossip over lunch, my niece's two-month old baby has already been to his first pumpkin patch and sat on his first tractor, but that's Norfolk for you.
Thu 22: I enjoyed (but was disturbed by) the Channel 4 documentary 'The Experiment', in which Nazi opinions on disabled people were dressed up as a cost-cutting residential home and visitors were asked what they thought. Lesson learned - it can be very hard to see through well-marketed cruelty.
Fri 23: Hurrah, I've discovered another super-traditional suburban baker selling old school cakes and pastries for next to nothing. It's Mr Bunns Bakery on Chadwell Heath Lane, not far from the Crossrail station, who do absolutely massive Belgian buns for £1.70 (see photo, pound coin for scale). The icing was super thick and I struggled to finish it in one sitting, and maybe next time an Eccles cake or a hunk of lemon sponge.
Sat 24: Ooh, the long-awaited letter is finally here! Oh, I wasn't expecting that choice! Obviously option 2 (except BestMate will persuade me probably option 1).
Sun 25: Seen in Harmondsworth churchyard, a freshly-filled grave topped with floral tributes in the shape of a white van and a chainsaw. Rest in peace Derek.
Mon 26: My neighbours have an extractor fan with an incredibly long time setting, and I only realise how low-level distracting it is when it turns off and suddenly my flat's properly quiet again.
Tue 27: An unnerving moment on the Jubilee line as the man next to me suddenly folded up his copy of Metro into a bowl shape so his wife could be sick into it.
Wed 28: Supermarket update: Tesco have changed the branding of their budget-priced thick-sliced Toastie loaf. Well it surprised me.
Thu 29: According to today's RAJAR data, the 10 most-listened-to programmes on BBC Sounds are The Archers, Whodunnits (R4E), Desert Island Discs, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Drama on 4, In Our Time, Just A Minute, Friday Night Comedy, Sounds of the 60s (R2) and Today. The most-listened to podcasts are Newscast, Limelight and Americast.
Fri 30: Croydon's Whitgift Centre is bleak these days isn't it? Now plainly much too large to support the number of stores who want to trade there. Still, at least they're trying with a few Christmas decorations.
Sat 31: If you enjoyed Hallowe'en being on a Saturday, either for maximum social potential or because it was easier to avoid, be aware it won't be happening again until 2037.
01-Nov-26
Thu 1: There comes a day when you look at an old pair of trainers, perhaps several, and think "I've loved you but you're worn beyond repair so you've got to go, now hop into this black binliner", something I did today alongside half a broken office chair.
Fri 2: The last time I saw my balconysquirrel this season.
Sat 3: Ooh I got a Beatrix Potter 50p in my change. Oh I've already got a Benjamin Bunny, they're nothing special. (I still haven't seen any of the new animals)
Sun 4: There always seem to be three number 72 buses on the stand just to the north of Hammersmith Bridge, the drivers twiddling their thumbs for over 20 minutes until their timetabled departure time, which does suggest somebody official contracted a much too generous vehicle allocation.
Mon 5: A sign on the door of Sapphire Court, a Stratford apartment block decanted in August last year, reads "Do not enter the building under any circumstances". It's amazing how many groundstaff in hi-vis it takes to stand around outside structurally deficient flats in case they collapse, but that's modern building standards for you.
Tue 6: Seen near Sutton station, this cobblers sign with inconsistently awful apostrophes. What made them write Repair's but also Repairs? What made them write Key's but not Fob's? (still, at least they dodged batterie's, trophie's and glas's)
Wed 7: Nextdoor's builders spent the day bashing a door-sized hole in their brick wall, so I'm glad I went out to Newbury Park and Abbey Wood, what a racket.
Thu 8: As my followers on Bluesky will already be aware, today I visited nine different postcode districts (E3 E15 E20 E10 IG2 IG3 RM6 RM8 RM7) whilst travelling on only two trains and no buses.
Fri 9: West Ham and Bromley-by-Bow stations have gained new digital advertising screens, and what grates isn't that they exist but the carousel of welcome messages suggesting we should all be excited/happy/grateful they've appeared.
Sat 10: A small child threw a prolonged tantrum because the front seats on the 307 bus were occupied, so I vacated mine because I was getting off two stops later, but what I wanted to say to her father was "you've got a spoilt precocious brat there and you need to learn to say no to her".
Sun 11: This is a photo of the Thames at Strand-on-the-Green at low tide. I also went to Plumstead but I won't subject you to that.
Mon 12: The Radio 4 quiz pilot 'Your Number's Up' must be coming back because they're seeking audience members again, which is excellent but I think it's someone else's turn to squeeze into a Bloomsbury pub cellar for two hours.
Tue 13: It's sad to see Gabriels Wharf sealed off and emptied out, kicking out all the independent traders, some of whom have been there over 30 years. Something fundamentally temporary will replace it because the not-for profit deeds insist, or in projectspeak (sigh) the site will be "entering a new chapter with a refreshed meanwhile use".
Wed 14: This spraypainted gate in Parish Lane, Penge, may be the best representation I've ever seen of "Beware of the dog".
Thu 15: Here's a truly excellent thing - Local Wikipedia, courtesy of Ed Jefferson. You enter a place or postcode and it presents a short list of locally-relevant Wikipedia pages (usually within 1-3 miles). Obviously I checked home first, then other homes... and yes, the possibilities for local research are multitudinous!
Fri 16: Got the new Richard Osman out of the library - normally they have no spare copies for months. We Chase Shadows is amusingly adequate.
Sat 17: Hall Place in Bexley probably has the best topiary in London, a fabulous line of heraldic beasts with assorted sculptured yews behind. Unless of course you know better.
Sun 18: Spotted a huge film crew in and around the block where Slough House is fictionally based, which must be for Slow Horses but could be for either series 7 or series 8, both of which are being filmed back to back.
Mon 19: Getting off the bus in my Dad's village was particularly awkward because there were two wheelchairs in the aisle and I had a suitcase. The driver rolled his eyes and smiled as I finally escaped, as if this kind of thing happens all the time.
Tue 20: For my Dad's birthday cake I brought out our longstanding collection of plastic numbers. Alas it wasn't possible to make 88, but in good news it would be possible to make every other age up to 100. I eventually compromised by using a silver '18' and hiding the 1 behind the 8.
Wed 21: In gossip over lunch, my niece's two-month old baby has already been to his first pumpkin patch and sat on his first tractor, but that's Norfolk for you.
Thu 22: I enjoyed (but was disturbed by) the Channel 4 documentary 'The Experiment', in which Nazi opinions on disabled people were dressed up as a cost-cutting residential home and visitors were asked what they thought. Lesson learned - it can be very hard to see through well-marketed cruelty.
Fri 23: Hurrah, I've discovered another super-traditional suburban baker selling old school cakes and pastries for next to nothing. It's Mr Bunns Bakery on Chadwell Heath Lane, not far from the Crossrail station, who do absolutely massive Belgian buns for £1.70 (see photo, pound coin for scale). The icing was super thick and I struggled to finish it in one sitting, and maybe next time an Eccles cake or a hunk of lemon sponge.
Sat 24: Ooh, the long-awaited letter is finally here! Oh, I wasn't expecting that choice! Obviously option 2 (except BestMate will persuade me probably option 1).
Sun 25: Seen in Harmondsworth churchyard, a freshly-filled grave topped with floral tributes in the shape of a white van and a chainsaw. Rest in peace Derek.
Mon 26: My neighbours have an extractor fan with an incredibly long time setting, and I only realise how low-level distracting it is when it turns off and suddenly my flat's properly quiet again.
Tue 27: An unnerving moment on the Jubilee line as the man next to me suddenly folded up his copy of Metro into a bowl shape so his wife could be sick into it.
Wed 28: Supermarket update: Tesco have changed the branding of their budget-priced thick-sliced Toastie loaf. Well it surprised me.
Thu 29: According to today's RAJAR data, the 10 most-listened-to programmes on BBC Sounds are The Archers, Whodunnits (R4E), Desert Island Discs, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Drama on 4, In Our Time, Just A Minute, Friday Night Comedy, Sounds of the 60s (R2) and Today. The most-listened to podcasts are Newscast, Limelight and Americast.
Fri 30: Croydon's Whitgift Centre is bleak these days isn't it? Now plainly much too large to support the number of stores who want to trade there. Still, at least they're trying with a few Christmas decorations.
Sat 31: If you enjoyed Hallowe'en being on a Saturday, either for maximum social potential or because it was easier to avoid, be aware it won't be happening again until 2037.
Birchington to Reculver [ 01-Nov-26 7:00am ]
Walking the England Coast Path
Birchington → Reculver (5 miles)
In my very long-term attempt to walk the coast of Kent, yesterday I plugged a five mile gap on the north coast. In 2014 I'd got no further east than Reculver and in 2019 no further west than Birchington so in 2026 I've connected them together. I actually walked all the way from Birchington to Herne Bay because the intervening miles are marshy nomansland with no stations, but today I'll just blog about the gap. Thankfully all the fog had cleared by the time my train reached Gravesend so it was a glorious coastal stroll. [10 photos]
Birchington is the westernmost suburb on the Isle of Thanet, three miles from Margate and the other side of Westgate-on-Sea. It's flats and bungalows, it's retirement-a-go-go, its small terriers with poppies hanging from their collars, also a pristine bowls club that shuts promptly on 1st October at the end of the season. My walk started at Beresford Gap, a cut in the chalk where housing makes way for cliff-edge greensward. They're hardly the highest of cliffs but sufficient for a panorama encompassing Margate tower blocks, distant ships and (because it was low tide) a vast wave-cut platform scattered with rockpools and seaweed. Several tile-topped shelters have been provided, each recently painted in that special shade of light blue only coastal local authorities use. Motor caravans must not be parked on Cliff Road between the hours of 6pm and 6am.
Where the chalk stops the streets dip back towards sea level, one astutely called Canute Road. This is Minnis Bay, a gently shelving rocky beach that morphs into an extensive sandy sweep, plus a semi-circular tide-lapped pool by the promenade for paddlers feeling brave. This is also dog-walking central, at least now September's passed and mutts are allowed on the beach again, also the regular recipient of an Environment Agency 'Excellent' award for bathing quality. Two dozen characterless beach huts provide minor shelter and two beachfront bars offer refreshment for the silver-haired and members of the local sailing club. The grassy embankment that leads to the town's beacon is lined by numerous benches, their backs all seemingly carved by the same carpenter, one of which commemorates a death just four months ago and another which remembers Audrey & Archie Love You Lots Like Jelly Tots.
Here begins the Northern Sea Wall, a three mile concrete sea defence built in the 1950s to protect the farmland behind from unwanted inundation. It wasn't quite finished when the great flood of 1953 hit, hence the tidal surge covered 5000 acres and spread inland beyond the railway line. The sea has every right to be here because this used to be the Wantsum Channel, a (very) broad band of water that once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent. The Romans used it as a shipping route and the Normans established what would now be inland ports up navigable creeks. But between the 12th and 15th centuries the channel gradually silted up, partly from slower flow and partly from an ecclesiastical landgrab, so by the reign of Elizabeth I Thanet was an island no more. A broad swathe of almost-uninhabited farmland now stretches from coast to coast, several miles wide, and the remainder of the walk is thus a straight hike across the mouth of the former marine channel.
You can tell it's about to get remote because dogwalkers choose to go no further, there being nowhere to head except straight back. The edge of solitude is a spot called Plum Pudding Island, formerly the site of a sewage treatment works but now thankfully more about horses and caravans. I had the entire wall seemingly to myself after I'd passed the last birdwatcher, his binoculars trained on a flock of white seabirds paddling beyond the next groyne. A shingly lagoon here has managed to attract avocets and ringed plovers since it was de-silted ten years ago, and although all I got to see was two swans they did swoop round for a noisy splashdown just for me.
The sea wall is only slightly raised and also had to be vehicle-width so is quite broad. A parallel footpath runs immediately behind for anyone who prefers to walk three miles without ever seeing the sea (or perhaps to escape the worst of the weather should it be stormy). The farmland here is flat ploughed fields interspersed with drainage channels, plus the occasional interconnecting track for farmers only. After a mile comes a channel a tad wider than the others which it turns out is what remains of the Wantsum, now draining south to meet the River Stour before flowing east towards Sandwich. A public footpath here is the only escape from the seafront for a good three miles, and equally remote as it heads inland across the floodplain so best not follow it in the hope of heading somewhere less lonely.
And so the wall ploughs on, shingle banks to the right and two tiny towers in the distance growing inexorably closer. I did pass three people out walking, also a tiny handful of joggers, but the majority of those passing were on bikes because this flat coastline is absolutely perfect for it. Often they were in pairs so I heard a brief snatch of conversation as they passed, one gabbling about nuclear power stations and another about a mystery man ("was that the wedding at Quex? ...the one whose wife was hanging from a lamppost? ...isn't he dead now?"). Otherwise my sole company was a robin on a bush, a cormorant on a groyne and scores of gulls at the water's edge as the tide quietly splashed back in.
Civilisation gradually re-encroaches, this because there's a car park at Reculver so visitors are slightly more willing to walk a short distance along the wall. Eventually the two Norman towers take centre stage, perched loftily on a sandstone outcrop at the most strategic point for miles. You can't climb up direct, you have to deviate via a sloping lawn where once a large square Roman fort overlooked the mouth of the Wantsum. Only a few foundations of that survive, the two enormous towers instead being all that remains of a Anglo-Saxon monastery's 12th century extension. The remainder of St Mary's church was destroyed by gunpowder in 1809, having been deemed unsafe, but Trinity House insisted on keeping the twin towers and hanging beacons from them as an aid to navigation. Feel free to wander down the nave, head out through what used to be the porch and onwards to the outline of a Roman bathhouse, reflecting on an amazing history far more varied than most.
It gets much Kentier on the far side - a pub, a visitor centre and an adventure playground. This is Reculver Country Park, the non-English Heritage zone, reached by driving up a long dead end lane and paying for parking beneath the towers. Perhaps grab a pint from The King Ethelbert Inn, alternatively a coffee from local baristas HatsHats, and if you do partake rest assured there are also public toilets, the sole conveniences for miles. Yesterday the team from Bird Wise had turned up in their van to celebrate all thing seabird, but mainly to educate visitors on how not to disturb them. And best not wait for the bus, it only comes twice a day, so if you've come on foot I'm afraid it's a hike of over an hour to the nearest station.
I continued west atop undulating cliffs, across the woody contours of Bishopstone Glen and inexorably passed rows of wind turbines far out in the estuary. The last half hour along a concrete promenade was less enchanting, before this finally deposited me on the seafront at the resort of Herne Bay, still lightly buzzing at the fag end at the summer season. Here Cabin FM played out on the stumpy pier, a charity singer prepared to entertain diners in the bandstand and ageing bikers sunned themselves by the clocktower while passers-by admired their gaudy steeds. This second half of my walk is part of the Oyster Bay Trail, an eight mile seafront connection linking Whitstable to Reculver, thus previously blogged. Just know that from whichever direction you choose to approach Reculver it's both impressive and impressively remote, and I'm very pleased to have finally plugged the gap.
Now walked...
✔ Whitstable → Herne Bay → Reculver → Margate → Broadstairs → Ramsgate → Pegwell Bay (27 miles)
(gap - 11 miles)
✔ Deal → Walmer → Dover → Folkestone → Sandgate (19 miles)
31-Oct-26
Birchington → Reculver (5 miles)
In my very long-term attempt to walk the coast of Kent, yesterday I plugged a five mile gap on the north coast. In 2014 I'd got no further east than Reculver and in 2019 no further west than Birchington so in 2026 I've connected them together. I actually walked all the way from Birchington to Herne Bay because the intervening miles are marshy nomansland with no stations, but today I'll just blog about the gap. Thankfully all the fog had cleared by the time my train reached Gravesend so it was a glorious coastal stroll. [10 photos]
Birchington is the westernmost suburb on the Isle of Thanet, three miles from Margate and the other side of Westgate-on-Sea. It's flats and bungalows, it's retirement-a-go-go, its small terriers with poppies hanging from their collars, also a pristine bowls club that shuts promptly on 1st October at the end of the season. My walk started at Beresford Gap, a cut in the chalk where housing makes way for cliff-edge greensward. They're hardly the highest of cliffs but sufficient for a panorama encompassing Margate tower blocks, distant ships and (because it was low tide) a vast wave-cut platform scattered with rockpools and seaweed. Several tile-topped shelters have been provided, each recently painted in that special shade of light blue only coastal local authorities use. Motor caravans must not be parked on Cliff Road between the hours of 6pm and 6am.
Where the chalk stops the streets dip back towards sea level, one astutely called Canute Road. This is Minnis Bay, a gently shelving rocky beach that morphs into an extensive sandy sweep, plus a semi-circular tide-lapped pool by the promenade for paddlers feeling brave. This is also dog-walking central, at least now September's passed and mutts are allowed on the beach again, also the regular recipient of an Environment Agency 'Excellent' award for bathing quality. Two dozen characterless beach huts provide minor shelter and two beachfront bars offer refreshment for the silver-haired and members of the local sailing club. The grassy embankment that leads to the town's beacon is lined by numerous benches, their backs all seemingly carved by the same carpenter, one of which commemorates a death just four months ago and another which remembers Audrey & Archie Love You Lots Like Jelly Tots.
Here begins the Northern Sea Wall, a three mile concrete sea defence built in the 1950s to protect the farmland behind from unwanted inundation. It wasn't quite finished when the great flood of 1953 hit, hence the tidal surge covered 5000 acres and spread inland beyond the railway line. The sea has every right to be here because this used to be the Wantsum Channel, a (very) broad band of water that once separated the Isle of Thanet from the rest of Kent. The Romans used it as a shipping route and the Normans established what would now be inland ports up navigable creeks. But between the 12th and 15th centuries the channel gradually silted up, partly from slower flow and partly from an ecclesiastical landgrab, so by the reign of Elizabeth I Thanet was an island no more. A broad swathe of almost-uninhabited farmland now stretches from coast to coast, several miles wide, and the remainder of the walk is thus a straight hike across the mouth of the former marine channel.
You can tell it's about to get remote because dogwalkers choose to go no further, there being nowhere to head except straight back. The edge of solitude is a spot called Plum Pudding Island, formerly the site of a sewage treatment works but now thankfully more about horses and caravans. I had the entire wall seemingly to myself after I'd passed the last birdwatcher, his binoculars trained on a flock of white seabirds paddling beyond the next groyne. A shingly lagoon here has managed to attract avocets and ringed plovers since it was de-silted ten years ago, and although all I got to see was two swans they did swoop round for a noisy splashdown just for me.
The sea wall is only slightly raised and also had to be vehicle-width so is quite broad. A parallel footpath runs immediately behind for anyone who prefers to walk three miles without ever seeing the sea (or perhaps to escape the worst of the weather should it be stormy). The farmland here is flat ploughed fields interspersed with drainage channels, plus the occasional interconnecting track for farmers only. After a mile comes a channel a tad wider than the others which it turns out is what remains of the Wantsum, now draining south to meet the River Stour before flowing east towards Sandwich. A public footpath here is the only escape from the seafront for a good three miles, and equally remote as it heads inland across the floodplain so best not follow it in the hope of heading somewhere less lonely.
And so the wall ploughs on, shingle banks to the right and two tiny towers in the distance growing inexorably closer. I did pass three people out walking, also a tiny handful of joggers, but the majority of those passing were on bikes because this flat coastline is absolutely perfect for it. Often they were in pairs so I heard a brief snatch of conversation as they passed, one gabbling about nuclear power stations and another about a mystery man ("was that the wedding at Quex? ...the one whose wife was hanging from a lamppost? ...isn't he dead now?"). Otherwise my sole company was a robin on a bush, a cormorant on a groyne and scores of gulls at the water's edge as the tide quietly splashed back in.
Civilisation gradually re-encroaches, this because there's a car park at Reculver so visitors are slightly more willing to walk a short distance along the wall. Eventually the two Norman towers take centre stage, perched loftily on a sandstone outcrop at the most strategic point for miles. You can't climb up direct, you have to deviate via a sloping lawn where once a large square Roman fort overlooked the mouth of the Wantsum. Only a few foundations of that survive, the two enormous towers instead being all that remains of a Anglo-Saxon monastery's 12th century extension. The remainder of St Mary's church was destroyed by gunpowder in 1809, having been deemed unsafe, but Trinity House insisted on keeping the twin towers and hanging beacons from them as an aid to navigation. Feel free to wander down the nave, head out through what used to be the porch and onwards to the outline of a Roman bathhouse, reflecting on an amazing history far more varied than most.
It gets much Kentier on the far side - a pub, a visitor centre and an adventure playground. This is Reculver Country Park, the non-English Heritage zone, reached by driving up a long dead end lane and paying for parking beneath the towers. Perhaps grab a pint from The King Ethelbert Inn, alternatively a coffee from local baristas HatsHats, and if you do partake rest assured there are also public toilets, the sole conveniences for miles. Yesterday the team from Bird Wise had turned up in their van to celebrate all thing seabird, but mainly to educate visitors on how not to disturb them. And best not wait for the bus, it only comes twice a day, so if you've come on foot I'm afraid it's a hike of over an hour to the nearest station.
I continued west atop undulating cliffs, across the woody contours of Bishopstone Glen and inexorably passed rows of wind turbines far out in the estuary. The last half hour along a concrete promenade was less enchanting, before this finally deposited me on the seafront at the resort of Herne Bay, still lightly buzzing at the fag end at the summer season. Here Cabin FM played out on the stumpy pier, a charity singer prepared to entertain diners in the bandstand and ageing bikers sunned themselves by the clocktower while passers-by admired their gaudy steeds. This second half of my walk is part of the Oyster Bay Trail, an eight mile seafront connection linking Whitstable to Reculver, thus previously blogged. Just know that from whichever direction you choose to approach Reculver it's both impressive and impressively remote, and I'm very pleased to have finally plugged the gap.
Now walked...
✔ Whitstable → Herne Bay → Reculver → Margate → Broadstairs → Ramsgate → Pegwell Bay (27 miles)
(gap - 11 miles)
✔ Deal → Walmer → Dover → Folkestone → Sandgate (19 miles)
Support for Office 2021 has ended [ 31-Oct-26 9:00am ]
I bought my laptop in August 2024 and it's worked absolutely fine ever since. I made sure it came with proper Microsoft Office, and I made sure I bought it via a one-time-purchase, not some online subscription version. That's all worked fine too, but yesterday a message popped up telling me that Microsoft have ended support for Office 2021 and I should strongly consider upgrading.
The alternative option they're plugging really heavily is a Microsoft 365 subscription starting at £8.49 a month. Only a fool pays monthly so the better option is an £84.99 annual subscription, but that's not a one-time payment and can really add up. After two years it's £170, after three years £255, and that's just screwing your audience long-term in the hope they don't notice.
Also Microsoft 365 is a suite of in-browser apps, not separate programs, and I would only switch to that impractical set-up if it became the sole available option.
I'm not upgrading, obviously, I'm carrying on using Office 2021 which I paid for barely two years ago. But the direction of travel is clear, not just here but with all kinds of products the world over, they'd rather you start a subscription than let you buy something outright because that's so much better for them and so much worse for you.
Support for Office 2021 ended on October 13, 2026 and there will be no extension and no extended security updates. All of your Office 2021 apps may continue to function. However, you could expose yourself to serious and potentially harmful security risks. We recommend you upgrade Office.Bugger that, I thought. How miserable to stop supporting something I bought only two years ago, how mercenary is Microsoft? I checked and Office 2024 was introduced five weeks after I bought my laptop, so I'm essentially being penalised for purchasing in August rather than October.
If you're using Office 2021 at home you may still be able to use it, but we recommend you upgrade to a newer version of Office so you can stay up to date with all the latest features, patches, and security updates."You may still be able to use it" for goodness sake, what kind of ridiculous pressure is that? Of course I can continue to use it, you haven't actually made it impossible, you're just greedy opportunists who've deliberately ended security support to drive further sales.
To upgrade you'll need to buy the latest version. To do this you can purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription like Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family, Premium or Pro, or the newest one-time purchase version.I checked the prices, and to buy a one-time copy of Office 2024 costs £119.99. I have no intention of rebuying something I already bought, so no thanks.
The alternative option they're plugging really heavily is a Microsoft 365 subscription starting at £8.49 a month. Only a fool pays monthly so the better option is an £84.99 annual subscription, but that's not a one-time payment and can really add up. After two years it's £170, after three years £255, and that's just screwing your audience long-term in the hope they don't notice.
Also Microsoft 365 is a suite of in-browser apps, not separate programs, and I would only switch to that impractical set-up if it became the sole available option.
I'm not upgrading, obviously, I'm carrying on using Office 2021 which I paid for barely two years ago. But the direction of travel is clear, not just here but with all kinds of products the world over, they'd rather you start a subscription than let you buy something outright because that's so much better for them and so much worse for you.
TfL FoI requests in October 2026 [ 31-Oct-26 7:00am ]
25 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in October 2026
1) Over 600 buses now have air-conditioning in the passenger saloon, with approximately 700 more on order.
2) The key unresolved issues with digital Oyster wallets are around the user experience to ensure that the right wallet is used by the reader. How this will work needs to be proven before TfL can progress with a digital Oyster proposition.
3) In the last financial year 2395 passengers made a DLR journey from Canary Wharf to West India Quay and 3132 made a journey from West India Quay to Canary Wharf (the UK's shortest rail journey)
4) If you've ever wondered how many times an Overground train passed Hackney Downs in the space of one week, it was 2140 times in June 2019, 2149 times in June 2021 and most recently 2069.
5) The word 'misbehaving' should not be part of an on-train Digital Voice Announcement script nor a pre-recorded station message. (if you're the reader who read my Unblogged September post and submitted this FoI request, next time perhaps hold back if you don't know all the details)
6) The 13 tube stations categorised as "close to impossible" with regard to step-free access are Arsenal, Barons Court, Cannon Street, Chalk Farm, Charing Cross, Clapham Common, Clapham North, Great Portland Street, Lambeth North, Mansion House, Mile End, Regent's Park and West Ruislip
7) TfL are the owners of 10 reinforced concrete half-joint structures, including Perivale Lane Footbridge, Bexley Golf Course Footbridge, Blackfriars Bridgehead and the Croydon flyover.
8) The bus shelter adjacent to Postal Close, Bexley, is owned by the London borough of Bexley.
9) Plans to boost frequency on the Overground include a) increasing the service between Crystal Palace and Highbury & Islington from 4tph to 6tph (expected May 2027) b) increasing the service between Liverpool Street and Enfield Town/Cheshunt from 2tph to 3tph (expected July 2028) c) increasing the service between Clapham Junction and Dalston Junction from 4tph to 6tph (not before May 2029).
10) TfL can't tell you if your Vauxhall Zafira 7 seater qualifies for Uber (obviously).
11) TfL own the bus garages at Ash Grove, Brixton Tramshed, Brixton Hill, Edgware, Henley Road, Twickenham, Uxbridge, Walworth and West Ham (leasing them to the relevant bus operator).
12) The current plan for introducing the new DLR fleet is that Stratford-Woolwich be 100% operated by new trains by 10th Jan 2027, Bank-Lewisham by 30th May 2027, Bank-Woolwich by 31st October 2027, Tower Gateway-Beckton by 5th March 2028, and Stratford-Lewisham by 16th April 2028. (fully blogged here)
13) Between 5th August and 9th September only seven passenger incidents were recorded on the Underground in the category "Faint/Illness due to heat condition" (at London Bridge, Knightsbridge, Camden Town, High Barnet, Parsons Green, Euston and Clapham South).
14) The cameras on buses are not used to enforce bus lane restrictions, therefore no bus lane Penalty Charge Notices have been issued from evidence recorded by these cameras
15) There are 19159 fire extinguishers on the Underground, 892 on the Overground and 835 on the Elizabeth line.
16) The upholstery on London Underground train seats is vacuumed every 28 days, swept nightly for dust and debris and given a yearly shampoo.
17) The last five special Oyster card issues were the Adidas Oyster collaboration card 2012, The Year of the Bus card 2014, Adidas Arsenal Collaboration card 2022, Elizabeth Line Opening card 2022 and Oyster 20th Anniversary card 2023.
18) Last year the cycle hire docking station that was most often full was Royal Avenue, Chelsea (1400 hours). Last month it was Exhibition Road, South Kensington (87 hours).
19) The TfL advertising estate includes 966 digital escalator panels, 30 escalator ribbons, 238 digital platform edge doors and 4 sites categorised as "Premium iconic". The projector units on tube platforms are in the process of being phased out. There are no digital screens on the tram network.
20) 89 London bus routes include a Hail & Ride section. The lowest numbered of these is the 138. Over half the Hail & Rides are lettered routes. Four of them are school buses.
21) Music is played in a passageway at King's Cross St Pancras station as part of 'Music on the Underground', a program where brands who purchase all the advertising space in the passageway can add music to enhance the customer experience. The music is restricted to Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm. For example Channel 5 chose Max Richter's The Four Seasons Recomposed.
22) Last year 93,256 holders of 60+ Oyster cards failed to renew their cards in time, 91,174 had their cards stopped, 67,231 reapplied and 59,835 were successful.
23) TfL sent out 4,983,464 emails alerting people that the Silvertown Tunnel would be opening on 7th April 2025, and a further 2,537,146 emails to say that it had opened.
24) Seven refurbished Central line trains have now re-entered service, the seventh of these yesterday. It comprises cars 91319, 92319, 93082, 92082, 93110, 92110, 91339 and 92339.
25) And finally confirmation that the FoI team sometimes go the extra mile...
Q: As a child in 1958, I used to take the bus from The Surrey Tavern, on Trinity Road Wandsworth, to Tooting Bec. How much was the 'half fare' at that time for this distance. The choice of two buses were the No. 19 and the No. 49.
A: Fares for London bus journeys around this period operated on a distance-based system, with children paying half-rate. Colleagues at the London Transport Museum have been able to check a 1960 fare chart for route 19 and the specific journey you cite was one fare stage (0.5 miles) and the child fare would have been 1½d.
30-Oct-26
1) Over 600 buses now have air-conditioning in the passenger saloon, with approximately 700 more on order.
2) The key unresolved issues with digital Oyster wallets are around the user experience to ensure that the right wallet is used by the reader. How this will work needs to be proven before TfL can progress with a digital Oyster proposition.
3) In the last financial year 2395 passengers made a DLR journey from Canary Wharf to West India Quay and 3132 made a journey from West India Quay to Canary Wharf (the UK's shortest rail journey)
4) If you've ever wondered how many times an Overground train passed Hackney Downs in the space of one week, it was 2140 times in June 2019, 2149 times in June 2021 and most recently 2069.
5) The word 'misbehaving' should not be part of an on-train Digital Voice Announcement script nor a pre-recorded station message. (if you're the reader who read my Unblogged September post and submitted this FoI request, next time perhaps hold back if you don't know all the details)
6) The 13 tube stations categorised as "close to impossible" with regard to step-free access are Arsenal, Barons Court, Cannon Street, Chalk Farm, Charing Cross, Clapham Common, Clapham North, Great Portland Street, Lambeth North, Mansion House, Mile End, Regent's Park and West Ruislip
7) TfL are the owners of 10 reinforced concrete half-joint structures, including Perivale Lane Footbridge, Bexley Golf Course Footbridge, Blackfriars Bridgehead and the Croydon flyover.
8) The bus shelter adjacent to Postal Close, Bexley, is owned by the London borough of Bexley.
9) Plans to boost frequency on the Overground include a) increasing the service between Crystal Palace and Highbury & Islington from 4tph to 6tph (expected May 2027) b) increasing the service between Liverpool Street and Enfield Town/Cheshunt from 2tph to 3tph (expected July 2028) c) increasing the service between Clapham Junction and Dalston Junction from 4tph to 6tph (not before May 2029).
10) TfL can't tell you if your Vauxhall Zafira 7 seater qualifies for Uber (obviously).
11) TfL own the bus garages at Ash Grove, Brixton Tramshed, Brixton Hill, Edgware, Henley Road, Twickenham, Uxbridge, Walworth and West Ham (leasing them to the relevant bus operator).
12) The current plan for introducing the new DLR fleet is that Stratford-Woolwich be 100% operated by new trains by 10th Jan 2027, Bank-Lewisham by 30th May 2027, Bank-Woolwich by 31st October 2027, Tower Gateway-Beckton by 5th March 2028, and Stratford-Lewisham by 16th April 2028. (fully blogged here)
13) Between 5th August and 9th September only seven passenger incidents were recorded on the Underground in the category "Faint/Illness due to heat condition" (at London Bridge, Knightsbridge, Camden Town, High Barnet, Parsons Green, Euston and Clapham South).
14) The cameras on buses are not used to enforce bus lane restrictions, therefore no bus lane Penalty Charge Notices have been issued from evidence recorded by these cameras
15) There are 19159 fire extinguishers on the Underground, 892 on the Overground and 835 on the Elizabeth line.
16) The upholstery on London Underground train seats is vacuumed every 28 days, swept nightly for dust and debris and given a yearly shampoo.
17) The last five special Oyster card issues were the Adidas Oyster collaboration card 2012, The Year of the Bus card 2014, Adidas Arsenal Collaboration card 2022, Elizabeth Line Opening card 2022 and Oyster 20th Anniversary card 2023.
18) Last year the cycle hire docking station that was most often full was Royal Avenue, Chelsea (1400 hours). Last month it was Exhibition Road, South Kensington (87 hours).
19) The TfL advertising estate includes 966 digital escalator panels, 30 escalator ribbons, 238 digital platform edge doors and 4 sites categorised as "Premium iconic". The projector units on tube platforms are in the process of being phased out. There are no digital screens on the tram network.
20) 89 London bus routes include a Hail & Ride section. The lowest numbered of these is the 138. Over half the Hail & Rides are lettered routes. Four of them are school buses.
21) Music is played in a passageway at King's Cross St Pancras station as part of 'Music on the Underground', a program where brands who purchase all the advertising space in the passageway can add music to enhance the customer experience. The music is restricted to Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm. For example Channel 5 chose Max Richter's The Four Seasons Recomposed.
22) Last year 93,256 holders of 60+ Oyster cards failed to renew their cards in time, 91,174 had their cards stopped, 67,231 reapplied and 59,835 were successful.
23) TfL sent out 4,983,464 emails alerting people that the Silvertown Tunnel would be opening on 7th April 2025, and a further 2,537,146 emails to say that it had opened.
24) Seven refurbished Central line trains have now re-entered service, the seventh of these yesterday. It comprises cars 91319, 92319, 93082, 92082, 93110, 92110, 91339 and 92339.
25) And finally confirmation that the FoI team sometimes go the extra mile...
Q: As a child in 1958, I used to take the bus from The Surrey Tavern, on Trinity Road Wandsworth, to Tooting Bec. How much was the 'half fare' at that time for this distance. The choice of two buses were the No. 19 and the No. 49.
A: Fares for London bus journeys around this period operated on a distance-based system, with children paying half-rate. Colleagues at the London Transport Museum have been able to check a 1960 fare chart for route 19 and the specific journey you cite was one fare stage (0.5 miles) and the child fare would have been 1½d.
Ian Visits 20 [ 30-Oct-26 7:00am ]
On Wednesday the Ian Visits website celebrated its 20th birthday, an exceptional milestone. I say that having got there myself, but whereas I generally write one post a day Ian writes half a dozen, an exceptional output. His posts are generally "a mixture of transport, architecture, history, exhibitions and things to do around London", so he says, and his What's On list is a famously good digest of things actually worth visiting rather than overhyped brand opportunities. If you're reading this blog you probably ought to be reading his, not just for news on 5G tube rollout and HS2 updates but also gaslit streets, historical alleyways, upcoming lectures and new openings in zone 5. It is, in case you hadn't realised, a phenomenal amount of work.
To give you some idea of how much work it is I've been out to visit every story Ian Visits visited on Ian Visits' birthday. That's all six of Wednesday's articles and, because the day's first post was actually about the 20th birthday, also the first of Thursday's too. All in all it took me over three hours to get round the seven sites, during which time I rode six trains, caught five buses and walked five miles. I'm not saying Ian visited all of these places in a similar time, nor needed to, but imagine keeping up that level of content generation throughout the week.
Gulliver to be freed from behind fences on east London estate
An abstract sculpture of Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, created for children to play on, will be restored to its original use as a playground feature.
And here it is, a somewhat sad looking hunk of rock on the Locksley estate in Limehouse. It would have been fun to use when surrounded by sand and undamaged, whereas chunks of the 1958 stone have since broken off and the whole thing's been hemmed inside railings for health and safety reasons. That said the gate in the railings was unlocked so I was able to go inside anyway, watched by a mystified council operative taking a break from sweeping leaves. The cleverest part, I reckoned, was that the knees make a tiny slide. So hurrah that the Heritage of London Trust are helping to restore Trevor Tennant's sculpture, a reminder that play equipment can be inspiring rather just a few bland rocks and pipes. And hurrah to everyone concerned for firing out a press release about a clamberable Gulliver on the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver's Travels, all very Lilliputian.
» For more on the Gulliver sculpture, see the Ian Visits website
One month to go until London Museum opens its new Smithfield home
Only one month remains until the London Museum reopens, where visitors can touch a brick scorched in the Great Fire, see the entire Cheapside Hoard, and watch Thameslink trains rumble past the museum's basement.
The date for the reopening of the Museum of London under its new name on a new site is Saturday 28th November 2026, or one month from now (or four weeks given it's no longer Wednesday). The new building is the former Smithfield Market, or at least some of it, starting with the former Victorian General Market. It'll be packed with exhibits across three themes - Real Time, Our Time and Past Time - which Ian can tell you more about, while a separate paid-exhibition space will open in the former Poultry Market in 2028. Ian is right that the new museum now has a sign in place on its roof facing Farringdon Road. I spotted another LONDON MUSEUM sign up a sidestreet above what I presume will be the main entrance, covering what used to be West Poultry Avenue, and maybe don't put 28th November in your diary because I expect Day 1 to be ridiculously busy.
» For more on the new London Museum see the Ian Visits website
Tickets Alert: The Barbican's final free conservatory plants giveaway
If you've ever wanted to own a piece of the Barbican Conservatory, a final plant-cutting giveaway has been announced ahead of its closure for refurbishment.
The Barbican Conservatory is a fabulous green space, London's second largest glasshouse after Kew, and home to over 1500 species of tropical plants and trees. It's closing until 2030 so the interior can be refurbished and renewed, a mighty project which means a lot of the existing greenery will just get in the way. They're thus giving away thousands of cuttings to anyone who wants one and is successful in a ballot, details of which Ian can tell you. Walking past yesterday I saw lots and lots of cuttings on tables just inside a steamy window, all carefully labelled, so for example I can tell you they have 39 Tradescantia pallida ready to go. If alternatively you just want a look inside before closure, the next bookable slots are on Friday 13th and Sunday 15th November.
» For more on the Barbican Conservatory giveaway see the Ian Visits website
Affordable art from Renaissance Italy fills a free British Museum exhibition
Images pasted onto walls, carried in pockets, and used for playing cards fill a room as the British Museum looks back on Italian Renaissance woodcut prints.
If you can't get tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry why not jump ahead five centuries and see some Italian woodcuts. They're free to view and they're in Room 90, which is just behind Egypt and directly under Japan. Because woodcuts are inkprints a lot of them survive, unlike the wooden blocks they made them with (although apparently Francesco Denanto's Circumcision survives in Modena). These intricate images are invariably Biblical in nature, given pretty much no other book had captured the Renaissance zeitgeist, so expect a lot of pious Jesuses, angsty disciples, Old Testament setpieces and naked helldemons. Many of the black and white tableaux tell a good story, also it's refreshing to see what are essentially intricate cartoons, also how often do you get to see a caseful of Titians for nothing? Here until 21st March.
» For more on the Italian Renaissance woodcuts exhibition see the Ian Visits website
New public park proposed for Canary Wharf development
Canary Wharf could get a new park as part of plans for a major new JP Morgan office block next to Westferry Circus.
As painfully slow building projects go, JP Morgan's new Thamesside HQ is painfully slower than most. They bought the site by Canary Wharf Pier in 2008 and since then nothing whatsoever's gone up bar some foundations and a few metal poles. Now finally a planning application for a new tower's gone in, which includes news that they want to cover the ramp down from Westferry Circus with a park. It means bank employees could leave the building and walk to nearby stations with ease, but would also consign through traffic to the lower roundabout (and seemingly scupper the D8 bus). It's a novel eco-friendly idea but intrusive, and I suspect most drivers would be happier to see the JP Morgan site left empty for another 18 years.
» For more on the Westferry Circus planning application see the Ian Visits website
Bakerloo line extension gets Budget boost from local tax powers
The Bakerloo line extension got a boost in the Budget when the Chancellor announced that local regions can keep more local tax revenue to fund infrastructure projects.
I've lost count of the number of times someone's claimed a Bakerloo line extension might be closer to completion, the stumbling block invariably being money. Now the Mayor finally has some financial certainty, maybe, as a move in Wednesday's Budget promised that regional Mayors would be permitted to borrow funds balanced against future tax revenues. The Bakerloo line extension even got a namecheck in the Chancellor's speech as an example of a project that might benefit. The tax change would happen gradually from 2027, so don't expect brown trains rumbling under the Old Kent Road before 2040 at the earliest, but it never hurts to stand wistfully at the tunnel mouth at Elephant & Castle and imagine how simple it might be to get to Lewisham.
» For more on transport projects potentially now deliverable see the Ian Visits website
London's smallest museum has opened - next to The Monument
London has a new contender for its smallest museum — and it's inside an old public toilet next to the Monument.
The thing about the Ian Visits website is that he knows about new things nobody else has even noticed yet, like this micro-museum devoted to the Great Fire of London at the foot of the Monument. It really isn't huge, there's only capacity for 8 people, also as Ian points out it has a ridiculously extensive health and safety list by the entrance (the subheadings are Participate At Your Own Risk, Consult A Doctor, Epilepsy Warning and Claustrophobia Warning). Apparently what's inside is a five-minute animated film, also red walls, historic illustrations and an illuminated display of stylised flames, but you'll have to take Ian's word on that. Alas when I got there yesterday a workman was standing by the door while his colleague did some noisy maintenance inside, and his comment "it should be open again this afternoon" wasn't reassuring enough for me to come back. Hopefully your fiery visit will have better luck.
» For more on the Monument Micro Museum (and every other key London story going forward) see the Ian Visits website
29-Oct-26
To give you some idea of how much work it is I've been out to visit every story Ian Visits visited on Ian Visits' birthday. That's all six of Wednesday's articles and, because the day's first post was actually about the 20th birthday, also the first of Thursday's too. All in all it took me over three hours to get round the seven sites, during which time I rode six trains, caught five buses and walked five miles. I'm not saying Ian visited all of these places in a similar time, nor needed to, but imagine keeping up that level of content generation throughout the week.
Gulliver to be freed from behind fences on east London estate
An abstract sculpture of Gulliver from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, created for children to play on, will be restored to its original use as a playground feature.
And here it is, a somewhat sad looking hunk of rock on the Locksley estate in Limehouse. It would have been fun to use when surrounded by sand and undamaged, whereas chunks of the 1958 stone have since broken off and the whole thing's been hemmed inside railings for health and safety reasons. That said the gate in the railings was unlocked so I was able to go inside anyway, watched by a mystified council operative taking a break from sweeping leaves. The cleverest part, I reckoned, was that the knees make a tiny slide. So hurrah that the Heritage of London Trust are helping to restore Trevor Tennant's sculpture, a reminder that play equipment can be inspiring rather just a few bland rocks and pipes. And hurrah to everyone concerned for firing out a press release about a clamberable Gulliver on the 300th anniversary of the publication of Gulliver's Travels, all very Lilliputian.
» For more on the Gulliver sculpture, see the Ian Visits website
One month to go until London Museum opens its new Smithfield home
Only one month remains until the London Museum reopens, where visitors can touch a brick scorched in the Great Fire, see the entire Cheapside Hoard, and watch Thameslink trains rumble past the museum's basement.
The date for the reopening of the Museum of London under its new name on a new site is Saturday 28th November 2026, or one month from now (or four weeks given it's no longer Wednesday). The new building is the former Smithfield Market, or at least some of it, starting with the former Victorian General Market. It'll be packed with exhibits across three themes - Real Time, Our Time and Past Time - which Ian can tell you more about, while a separate paid-exhibition space will open in the former Poultry Market in 2028. Ian is right that the new museum now has a sign in place on its roof facing Farringdon Road. I spotted another LONDON MUSEUM sign up a sidestreet above what I presume will be the main entrance, covering what used to be West Poultry Avenue, and maybe don't put 28th November in your diary because I expect Day 1 to be ridiculously busy.
» For more on the new London Museum see the Ian Visits website
Tickets Alert: The Barbican's final free conservatory plants giveaway
If you've ever wanted to own a piece of the Barbican Conservatory, a final plant-cutting giveaway has been announced ahead of its closure for refurbishment.
The Barbican Conservatory is a fabulous green space, London's second largest glasshouse after Kew, and home to over 1500 species of tropical plants and trees. It's closing until 2030 so the interior can be refurbished and renewed, a mighty project which means a lot of the existing greenery will just get in the way. They're thus giving away thousands of cuttings to anyone who wants one and is successful in a ballot, details of which Ian can tell you. Walking past yesterday I saw lots and lots of cuttings on tables just inside a steamy window, all carefully labelled, so for example I can tell you they have 39 Tradescantia pallida ready to go. If alternatively you just want a look inside before closure, the next bookable slots are on Friday 13th and Sunday 15th November.
» For more on the Barbican Conservatory giveaway see the Ian Visits website
Affordable art from Renaissance Italy fills a free British Museum exhibition
Images pasted onto walls, carried in pockets, and used for playing cards fill a room as the British Museum looks back on Italian Renaissance woodcut prints.
If you can't get tickets for the Bayeux Tapestry why not jump ahead five centuries and see some Italian woodcuts. They're free to view and they're in Room 90, which is just behind Egypt and directly under Japan. Because woodcuts are inkprints a lot of them survive, unlike the wooden blocks they made them with (although apparently Francesco Denanto's Circumcision survives in Modena). These intricate images are invariably Biblical in nature, given pretty much no other book had captured the Renaissance zeitgeist, so expect a lot of pious Jesuses, angsty disciples, Old Testament setpieces and naked helldemons. Many of the black and white tableaux tell a good story, also it's refreshing to see what are essentially intricate cartoons, also how often do you get to see a caseful of Titians for nothing? Here until 21st March.
» For more on the Italian Renaissance woodcuts exhibition see the Ian Visits website
New public park proposed for Canary Wharf development
Canary Wharf could get a new park as part of plans for a major new JP Morgan office block next to Westferry Circus.
As painfully slow building projects go, JP Morgan's new Thamesside HQ is painfully slower than most. They bought the site by Canary Wharf Pier in 2008 and since then nothing whatsoever's gone up bar some foundations and a few metal poles. Now finally a planning application for a new tower's gone in, which includes news that they want to cover the ramp down from Westferry Circus with a park. It means bank employees could leave the building and walk to nearby stations with ease, but would also consign through traffic to the lower roundabout (and seemingly scupper the D8 bus). It's a novel eco-friendly idea but intrusive, and I suspect most drivers would be happier to see the JP Morgan site left empty for another 18 years.
» For more on the Westferry Circus planning application see the Ian Visits website
Bakerloo line extension gets Budget boost from local tax powers
The Bakerloo line extension got a boost in the Budget when the Chancellor announced that local regions can keep more local tax revenue to fund infrastructure projects.
I've lost count of the number of times someone's claimed a Bakerloo line extension might be closer to completion, the stumbling block invariably being money. Now the Mayor finally has some financial certainty, maybe, as a move in Wednesday's Budget promised that regional Mayors would be permitted to borrow funds balanced against future tax revenues. The Bakerloo line extension even got a namecheck in the Chancellor's speech as an example of a project that might benefit. The tax change would happen gradually from 2027, so don't expect brown trains rumbling under the Old Kent Road before 2040 at the earliest, but it never hurts to stand wistfully at the tunnel mouth at Elephant & Castle and imagine how simple it might be to get to Lewisham.
» For more on transport projects potentially now deliverable see the Ian Visits website
London's smallest museum has opened - next to The Monument
London has a new contender for its smallest museum — and it's inside an old public toilet next to the Monument.
The thing about the Ian Visits website is that he knows about new things nobody else has even noticed yet, like this micro-museum devoted to the Great Fire of London at the foot of the Monument. It really isn't huge, there's only capacity for 8 people, also as Ian points out it has a ridiculously extensive health and safety list by the entrance (the subheadings are Participate At Your Own Risk, Consult A Doctor, Epilepsy Warning and Claustrophobia Warning). Apparently what's inside is a five-minute animated film, also red walls, historic illustrations and an illuminated display of stylised flames, but you'll have to take Ian's word on that. Alas when I got there yesterday a workman was standing by the door while his colleague did some noisy maintenance inside, and his comment "it should be open again this afternoon" wasn't reassuring enough for me to come back. Hopefully your fiery visit will have better luck.
» For more on the Monument Micro Museum (and every other key London story going forward) see the Ian Visits website
V is for Vale of Health [ 29-Oct-26 7:00am ]
LONDON A-Z
V is for Vale of Health
We're now at the tough end of the alphabet for unsung suburbs. There's Victoria and Vauxhall but they're way too well known. There's Kingston Vale, Putney Vale and Streatham Vale, but that's stretching alphabetical licence too far. The only other V in the Ordnance Survey's 681-strong list is a small residential hollow at the top of Hampstead Heath, essentially just one street, but in the absence of anything better it'll have to do. Thankfully it's fascinating with links to DH Lawrence, fairgrounds and the Daily Mail, also extremely aspirational so well done if you live there.
The Vale of Health was once an insalubrious dip amid open heathland above Hampstead, so has undergone a sly nominal transformation over the years. As one of the sources of the River Fleet it's long been a bit damp, and was described by one Georgian gentlewoman as 'a stagnate bottom, a pit in the heath'. Its first inhabitant arrived in the 1710s, a harness maker called Samuel Hatch with a shop on the highway up by Jack Straw's Castle. He wanted a workshop to store his hides and was granted a small patch in the wasteland below where he added a cottage and cowshed, the area thus becoming known as Hatchett's Bottom. In 1777 the Hampstead Water Company enlarged the pond and drained the marshy ground, making it a tad less unappealing, but the area was still mostly used for tanning, then a varnish factory, later laundering clothes. As you can see the lakeside's changed a lot since then.
A few poorhouses were added in 1779, then a chimneysweep's cottage, then a builder spotted that a sheltered secluded spot might be the ideal spot for a handful of more middle classes houses. The name 'Vale of Health' was first recorded in 1801, presumably to attract sales, despite no evidence that living in a boggy bottom was truly good for you. Within decades the Vale became a hideaway for the well-to-do and the artistic set, also day trippers who enjoyed tea gardens, boats and a fairground (summer months only). Most of the 60-or-so houses we see today were tucked in during the 19th century, plus a hotel called the Vale of Health Tavern which was soon turned into flats. It's now a tightknit community of quaint and occasionally invisible villas, essentially one long curling cul-de-sac with a dead end coming off it, which unless you find the right way in goes happily unnoticed by the rest of the world.
The right way in, at least if you're driving, is a turn off from East Heath Road beside a sign (correctly) warning that the road is unsuitable for HGVs. One of the streetsigns here has been damaged so claims this is the Vale of Healt, but that's about the only misstep present. The road descends through a tunnel of foliage and is completely lined by parked cars, this because most residents live in close-packed houses built before the need for off-road space so vehicles need to be left here. You can also walk in across the heath, one particular woody track lit by facsimile oil lamps as you descend, quite sharply, into the secret world of Hatchett's Bottom.
The first row of houses is splendid in a very Hampstead way, all tall thin villas with Gothic gables and steps up to the front door, perhaps several. Everyone on the left has the benefit of a lake view, hence the third house is indeed called Lakeview, its neighbours including Heathhurst, Silverdale and (my favourite) Upfleet. At least two currently have the builders in, because if you can afford a pile here you can certainly stretch to extra shower rooms, bespoke stone worktops and micro-cement-style finishes. All the necessary services have been provided, by which I mean a red pillarbox and a noticeboard. Alongside is a beautiful street map seemingly created by some local graphic artist in the 1990s, ideally situated should your Ocado delivery need to stop off to work out where Blossom Villa or Lavender Cottage are.
One of the three blue plaques in the Vale is above the door of number 3 Villas on the Heath, this for the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore who stayed here briefly in 1912. The recipient of the second plaque did better by living here for six months, just round the corner at 1 Byron Villas. This was DH Lawrence, this his first London residence in 1915 before he and his wife moved down to Cornwall. Byron did indeed have connections here, he and Shelley often dropping in on the recipient of the third blue plaque, the poet James Leigh Hunt (whose speakeasy can be found halfway along a narrow alleyway).
Plaque number 4 is black and appears on the front of Rose Cottage where Alfred Harmsworth spent three years of his childhood. He grew up to become Lord Northcliffe, Fleet Street's greatest populist newspaper magnate who (amongst many other self-interested interventions) helped turn the Daily Mail into the outspoken organ it is today. I love that the letter box at Rose Cottage now has a sign outside saying No Junk Mail, probably not as a reference to newspaper deliveries but it'd be hilarious if it was.
One arm of the cul-de-sac bends round past chocolate box cottages, quirky bungalows and heathfront villas, also houses so secluded that I'd have seen nothing had the gate in the thick hedge not been open. Signs repeatedly warn that Neighbourhood Watch is keeping a close eye, but I think the bloke bemused by my presence was just a jobbing gardener. Gaps in the treeline provide access straight onto the upper Heath, seemingly a key exercising spot for dogs, so you could be up at the Jack Straw's Castle bus stop in a couple of minutes if you don't mind a climb. 20 years ago there was a near perfect view across the Vale from up top but alas encroaching woodland has all but put paid to that.
The other dead end slopes downwards past more of Heath Villas, pastel painted, its uncurtained windows revealing bookshelves, ceramics and other cultural furnishings. The property magic ends abruptly at the end of the terrace with Spencer House, the modern block of flats built on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. If it looks dull from the road that's because the building's fully focused on the lake beyond, an inspirational view that repeatedly lured painter Stanley Spencer to use a studio here.
But the really quirky thing hereabouts is the corral of caravans and trailers across the road, officially titled The Fairground Site. It's not for your entertainment, it's a base for a travelling community living their best caravan life, also somewhere to store a Friendly Falafels booth between events when its not being used. Here people sit on garden chairs and cook using gas canisters, while across the road a Sunday magazine's photographer could drop in at any moment, such are the contrasts of the Vale of Health.
It's easy to slip out here onto the Heath proper, perhaps to the Ice House, a conical-roofed building half-concealed in the trees which was originally built as an estatekeeper's hut. Alternatively head down to the pond for a look back at the rear of the buildings fortunate enough to be water-facing, also their fancy extensions and back gardens. I suspect the true joy of living here is having the whole of Hampstead Heath at your disposal just a few metres from your front door, such are the benefits of being some of the only housing ever to have been permitted on this huge urban open space. The Vale of Health may have been named in deceit but it's a lot easier to see the health benefits of living here today, should you have a couple of million to spare that is.
28-Oct-26
V is for Vale of Health
We're now at the tough end of the alphabet for unsung suburbs. There's Victoria and Vauxhall but they're way too well known. There's Kingston Vale, Putney Vale and Streatham Vale, but that's stretching alphabetical licence too far. The only other V in the Ordnance Survey's 681-strong list is a small residential hollow at the top of Hampstead Heath, essentially just one street, but in the absence of anything better it'll have to do. Thankfully it's fascinating with links to DH Lawrence, fairgrounds and the Daily Mail, also extremely aspirational so well done if you live there.
The Vale of Health was once an insalubrious dip amid open heathland above Hampstead, so has undergone a sly nominal transformation over the years. As one of the sources of the River Fleet it's long been a bit damp, and was described by one Georgian gentlewoman as 'a stagnate bottom, a pit in the heath'. Its first inhabitant arrived in the 1710s, a harness maker called Samuel Hatch with a shop on the highway up by Jack Straw's Castle. He wanted a workshop to store his hides and was granted a small patch in the wasteland below where he added a cottage and cowshed, the area thus becoming known as Hatchett's Bottom. In 1777 the Hampstead Water Company enlarged the pond and drained the marshy ground, making it a tad less unappealing, but the area was still mostly used for tanning, then a varnish factory, later laundering clothes. As you can see the lakeside's changed a lot since then.
A few poorhouses were added in 1779, then a chimneysweep's cottage, then a builder spotted that a sheltered secluded spot might be the ideal spot for a handful of more middle classes houses. The name 'Vale of Health' was first recorded in 1801, presumably to attract sales, despite no evidence that living in a boggy bottom was truly good for you. Within decades the Vale became a hideaway for the well-to-do and the artistic set, also day trippers who enjoyed tea gardens, boats and a fairground (summer months only). Most of the 60-or-so houses we see today were tucked in during the 19th century, plus a hotel called the Vale of Health Tavern which was soon turned into flats. It's now a tightknit community of quaint and occasionally invisible villas, essentially one long curling cul-de-sac with a dead end coming off it, which unless you find the right way in goes happily unnoticed by the rest of the world.
The right way in, at least if you're driving, is a turn off from East Heath Road beside a sign (correctly) warning that the road is unsuitable for HGVs. One of the streetsigns here has been damaged so claims this is the Vale of Healt, but that's about the only misstep present. The road descends through a tunnel of foliage and is completely lined by parked cars, this because most residents live in close-packed houses built before the need for off-road space so vehicles need to be left here. You can also walk in across the heath, one particular woody track lit by facsimile oil lamps as you descend, quite sharply, into the secret world of Hatchett's Bottom.
The first row of houses is splendid in a very Hampstead way, all tall thin villas with Gothic gables and steps up to the front door, perhaps several. Everyone on the left has the benefit of a lake view, hence the third house is indeed called Lakeview, its neighbours including Heathhurst, Silverdale and (my favourite) Upfleet. At least two currently have the builders in, because if you can afford a pile here you can certainly stretch to extra shower rooms, bespoke stone worktops and micro-cement-style finishes. All the necessary services have been provided, by which I mean a red pillarbox and a noticeboard. Alongside is a beautiful street map seemingly created by some local graphic artist in the 1990s, ideally situated should your Ocado delivery need to stop off to work out where Blossom Villa or Lavender Cottage are.
One of the three blue plaques in the Vale is above the door of number 3 Villas on the Heath, this for the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore who stayed here briefly in 1912. The recipient of the second plaque did better by living here for six months, just round the corner at 1 Byron Villas. This was DH Lawrence, this his first London residence in 1915 before he and his wife moved down to Cornwall. Byron did indeed have connections here, he and Shelley often dropping in on the recipient of the third blue plaque, the poet James Leigh Hunt (whose speakeasy can be found halfway along a narrow alleyway).
Plaque number 4 is black and appears on the front of Rose Cottage where Alfred Harmsworth spent three years of his childhood. He grew up to become Lord Northcliffe, Fleet Street's greatest populist newspaper magnate who (amongst many other self-interested interventions) helped turn the Daily Mail into the outspoken organ it is today. I love that the letter box at Rose Cottage now has a sign outside saying No Junk Mail, probably not as a reference to newspaper deliveries but it'd be hilarious if it was.
One arm of the cul-de-sac bends round past chocolate box cottages, quirky bungalows and heathfront villas, also houses so secluded that I'd have seen nothing had the gate in the thick hedge not been open. Signs repeatedly warn that Neighbourhood Watch is keeping a close eye, but I think the bloke bemused by my presence was just a jobbing gardener. Gaps in the treeline provide access straight onto the upper Heath, seemingly a key exercising spot for dogs, so you could be up at the Jack Straw's Castle bus stop in a couple of minutes if you don't mind a climb. 20 years ago there was a near perfect view across the Vale from up top but alas encroaching woodland has all but put paid to that.
The other dead end slopes downwards past more of Heath Villas, pastel painted, its uncurtained windows revealing bookshelves, ceramics and other cultural furnishings. The property magic ends abruptly at the end of the terrace with Spencer House, the modern block of flats built on the site of the Vale of Health Hotel. If it looks dull from the road that's because the building's fully focused on the lake beyond, an inspirational view that repeatedly lured painter Stanley Spencer to use a studio here.
But the really quirky thing hereabouts is the corral of caravans and trailers across the road, officially titled The Fairground Site. It's not for your entertainment, it's a base for a travelling community living their best caravan life, also somewhere to store a Friendly Falafels booth between events when its not being used. Here people sit on garden chairs and cook using gas canisters, while across the road a Sunday magazine's photographer could drop in at any moment, such are the contrasts of the Vale of Health.
It's easy to slip out here onto the Heath proper, perhaps to the Ice House, a conical-roofed building half-concealed in the trees which was originally built as an estatekeeper's hut. Alternatively head down to the pond for a look back at the rear of the buildings fortunate enough to be water-facing, also their fancy extensions and back gardens. I suspect the true joy of living here is having the whole of Hampstead Heath at your disposal just a few metres from your front door, such are the benefits of being some of the only housing ever to have been permitted on this huge urban open space. The Vale of Health may have been named in deceit but it's a lot easier to see the health benefits of living here today, should you have a couple of million to spare that is.
47 dull lists [ 28-Oct-26 7:00am ]
47 dull lists
5-letter national capitals: Abuja, Accra, Amman, Cairo, Dakar, Hanoi, Kabul, La Paz, Minsk, Paris, Praia, Quito, Rabat, Sana'a, Seoul, Sofia, Tokyo, Tunis, Vaduz
Chinese Zodiac animals in Japanese: 子, 丑, 寅, 卯, 辰, 巳, 午, 未, 申, 酉, 戌, 亥
Posh M&S crisp flavours: Aberdeen Angus Beef and Mustard, Butter Basted Roast Turkey, British Ham and Hot Mustard, Cornish Cruncher and Pickled Onion, Mature Cheddar and Spring Onion, Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar/Cracked Black Pepper, Roast Chicken and Garlic Butter, Extra Virgin Olive Oil Crisps with Lobster/Black Truffle/Mediterranean Sea Salt/Serrano Ham
Nightbuses in Harrow: N5 N18 N32 N83 N98 N118 N140
Anglican dioceses on the Greenwich Meridian: York, Lincoln, Ely, St Albans, Chelmsford, London, Southwark, Rochester, Chichester, Gibraltar, Alexandria, West Africa
Radio stations that launched in 1976: Radio 210, Downtown Radio, Beacon Radio, BBC Radio Highland
Middle names of the last seven Ballon d'Or winners: Edward, Ousmane, Hernández, Andrés, Mostafa, Andrés, Andrés
Frequency of the digits in the barcode for a Terry's Chocolate Orange: 6 four times, 4 thrice, 3 twice, 0 7 and 8 once, 1 2 5 and 9 never
4-letter words you can make out of FIASCO: coif, foci, ciao, oafs, soca, sofa
Cube-numbered Pokémon: Bulbasaur, Wartortle, Sandshrew, Kadabra, Electabuzz, Teddiursa, Baltoy, Simisage, Brionne, Gholdengo
Stations on the Central line without toilets: Northolt, North Acton, East Acton, every station from Shepherd's Bush to St Paul's, Bethnal Green, Mile End, Leyton, Wanstead, Gants Hill, South Woodford
Opening days at Bembridge Windmill in 2003: Jan-Feb closed, Mar-Jun not Saturdays, Jul-Aug daily, Sep-Oct not Saturdays, Nov-Dec closed
Born in the same week as Thora Hird: Vincent Price, VP Hubert Humphrey, James Marjoribanks, Vice Admiral Ian Hogg
10 things that won't be affected by today's Budget: Freddos, the colour yellow, HB pencils, pigeons, elastic bands, iced buns, VHS recorders, orchids, helipads, Jupiter
Commemorative 8½p stamps in 1976: Housewife (Telephones), Hewing coal (Social Reformers), Elizabeth of Glamis (National Rose Society), Archdruid (British Cultural Traditions), The Canterbury Tales (William Caxton), Virgin and Child (Christmas)
Goals Tottenham have scored in their Premiership matches so far this season: 00002132
How I get from here to Bow Road station: right, left, right, left, right, right, right, right, right, left, right, left, right, left
The last words of the chapters in the book I'm currently reading: him language who language show life Italy Sánchez again that man consciousness leave me of again thereafter secret now trap now shock there bin trying too family though talk call Sweden it hands talk is (...and that's as far as I've got so far)
Debuts: N J S M STGCARDR LMDNJMD MSDGB?DGT PA?C?GD LPJPM JDAPJ N SND SDPKGLGILATAJDCJ CWPIMDSI CSAGRAS PGG DDVJ SPJA A M
Icelandic coins I have in a small pot: 2×100kr, 5×10kr, 6×5kr, 4×1kr (=£1.75)
The longest-serving Coronation Street characters: Ken Barlow, Rita Tanner, Audrey Roberts, Kevin Webster, Sally Metcalfe, Steve McDonald
Overground colours in HTML: #0077AD, #5BBD72, #5D6061, #823A62, #ED1B00, #FAA61A
Farrow & Ball purples: Peignoir, Calluna, Brassica, Pelt, Paean Black, Brinjal, Sugared Almond, Imperial Purple, Titmouse Blue
Double-landlocked ceremonial counties: Bedfordshire, West Midlands
New entries into the Top 40 60 years ago this week: Beach Boys, Lee Dorsey, Spencer Davis Group, Creation, Easybeats
New entries into the Top 40 50 years ago this week: Neil Diamond, Leo Sayer, the Who, John Miles
New entries into the Top 40 40 years ago this week: Duran Duran, the Smiths, Letitia Dean & Paul Medford, Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush, Red Box, Bob Geldof, Swing Out Sister, Shakin' Stevens, Prince
New entries into the Top 40 30 years ago this week: East 17 & Gabrielle, Toni Braxton, Reef, Livin' Joy, Madonna, Space, Alisha's Attic, Lightning Seeds, REM, the Braids, Gene, Presidents of the USA, Huff & Puff, Alexander O'Neal, Mazzy Star
Kings whose reigns began in a year ending in 6: Edmund Ironside, Cnut, Harold II, William I, Henry III, Edward VIII, George VI
Letters ordered by their frequency in the numbers from one to ten: enitofhrsvguwx
Anagrams of Scottish airports: Brush Mug, Cop Newt Lamb, Denude, Hunger Bid, Nerviness, Retie, Sick Twerp, Sly AI, To Norways, Uncle Babe
X-Files episodes containing the letter X: Excelsis Dei, Max, Redux, Patient X, Folie à Deux, The Sixth Extinction, The Sixth Extinction II, X-Cops, Brand X, Existence, Rm9sbG93ZXJz
Years with purple car tax discs: 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013
UK's 10 biggest charities by expenditure: Wellcome Trust, Nuffield Health, Charities Aid Foundation, British Council, Save The Children, National Trust, United Learning, Arts Council, Cancer Research, Cardiff University
Extras at the Cross Road Fish Bar in Kingston: mushrooms in breadcrumbs, onion rings, mushy peas, curry sauce, buttered roll, gherkin, pickled onion, pickled egg, pineapple fritter
Mr Men characters whose bodies are formed of straight lines: Mr Cool, Mr Rush, Mr Christmas, Mr Grumpy, Mr Sneeze, Mr Birthday, Mr Strong
Toblerone variants: Dark chocolate, White chocolate, Mint crisp, Snowtop, Fruit & Nut, Honeycomb crisp, Crunchy Salted Almond
MPs with the lowest majorities: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby) 6, David Pinto-Duschinsky (Labour - Hendon) 15, Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole) 18, Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay) 20, Sam Carling (Labour - North West Cambridgeshire) 39, Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon) 61
Gants in Braintree: Bailey's Gant, Bird In Hand Gant, Hilly Gant, Leatherworkers Gant, Osborn's Gant, Pig's Head in the Pottage Pot Gant
Welsh stations with three Ls: Energlyn & Churchill Park, Heath Low Level, Lisvane & Thornhill, Llandeilo, Llansamlet, Llwyngwril, Wildmill
Cinemas in Watford: ABC, Carlton, Cineworld, Empire, Essoldo, Gaumont, Odeon, Plaza, Regal, Super, Vue
Saints Days on October 28th: Abraham, Africanus, Anastasia II, Anglinus, Eadsin, Faro, Ferrutius, Fidelis of Como, Godwin, Honoratus of Vercelli, Joachim Royo, John Dat, Jude Thaddaeus, Remigius, Rodrigo Aguilar Alemán, Salvius, Simon the Zealot
0.5 in trigonometric functions: cos(60°), sin(30°), tan(26.565°)
Trademarked apple names: Evelina®, Jazz™, Junami®, Kanzi®, Red Prince®, Rubens®, Worcester Pearmain®, Zari®
Centuries without a transit of Venus: 3rd, 9th, 15th, 20th, 26th, 32nd, 37th
The ten highest mountains on the Falkland Islands: Mount Usborne 705m, Mount Adam 700m, Mount Robinson 680m, Jack's Mountain 648m, Mount Philomel 600m, Mount Simon 600m, Mount Moody 554m, Muffler Jack Mountain 542m, The Onion 535m, Storm Mountain 521m
Words that can be written using just one Morse Code symbol: he, hi, hie, hies, his, hiss, hisses, is, mom, moo, moot, motto, sees, she, sheesh, shhh, shies, to, tom, tomtom, too, toot, tot
27-Oct-26
5-letter national capitals: Abuja, Accra, Amman, Cairo, Dakar, Hanoi, Kabul, La Paz, Minsk, Paris, Praia, Quito, Rabat, Sana'a, Seoul, Sofia, Tokyo, Tunis, Vaduz
Chinese Zodiac animals in Japanese: 子, 丑, 寅, 卯, 辰, 巳, 午, 未, 申, 酉, 戌, 亥
Posh M&S crisp flavours: Aberdeen Angus Beef and Mustard, Butter Basted Roast Turkey, British Ham and Hot Mustard, Cornish Cruncher and Pickled Onion, Mature Cheddar and Spring Onion, Sea Salt and Balsamic Vinegar/Cracked Black Pepper, Roast Chicken and Garlic Butter, Extra Virgin Olive Oil Crisps with Lobster/Black Truffle/Mediterranean Sea Salt/Serrano Ham
Nightbuses in Harrow: N5 N18 N32 N83 N98 N118 N140
Anglican dioceses on the Greenwich Meridian: York, Lincoln, Ely, St Albans, Chelmsford, London, Southwark, Rochester, Chichester, Gibraltar, Alexandria, West Africa
Radio stations that launched in 1976: Radio 210, Downtown Radio, Beacon Radio, BBC Radio Highland
Middle names of the last seven Ballon d'Or winners: Edward, Ousmane, Hernández, Andrés, Mostafa, Andrés, Andrés
Frequency of the digits in the barcode for a Terry's Chocolate Orange: 6 four times, 4 thrice, 3 twice, 0 7 and 8 once, 1 2 5 and 9 never
4-letter words you can make out of FIASCO: coif, foci, ciao, oafs, soca, sofa
Cube-numbered Pokémon: Bulbasaur, Wartortle, Sandshrew, Kadabra, Electabuzz, Teddiursa, Baltoy, Simisage, Brionne, Gholdengo
Stations on the Central line without toilets: Northolt, North Acton, East Acton, every station from Shepherd's Bush to St Paul's, Bethnal Green, Mile End, Leyton, Wanstead, Gants Hill, South Woodford
Opening days at Bembridge Windmill in 2003: Jan-Feb closed, Mar-Jun not Saturdays, Jul-Aug daily, Sep-Oct not Saturdays, Nov-Dec closed
Born in the same week as Thora Hird: Vincent Price, VP Hubert Humphrey, James Marjoribanks, Vice Admiral Ian Hogg
10 things that won't be affected by today's Budget: Freddos, the colour yellow, HB pencils, pigeons, elastic bands, iced buns, VHS recorders, orchids, helipads, Jupiter
Commemorative 8½p stamps in 1976: Housewife (Telephones), Hewing coal (Social Reformers), Elizabeth of Glamis (National Rose Society), Archdruid (British Cultural Traditions), The Canterbury Tales (William Caxton), Virgin and Child (Christmas)
Goals Tottenham have scored in their Premiership matches so far this season: 00002132
How I get from here to Bow Road station: right, left, right, left, right, right, right, right, right, left, right, left, right, left
The last words of the chapters in the book I'm currently reading: him language who language show life Italy Sánchez again that man consciousness leave me of again thereafter secret now trap now shock there bin trying too family though talk call Sweden it hands talk is (...and that's as far as I've got so far)
Debuts: N J S M STGCARDR LMDNJMD MSDGB?DGT PA?C?GD LPJPM JDAPJ N SND SDPKGLGILATAJDCJ CWPIMDSI CSAGRAS PGG DDVJ SPJA A M
Icelandic coins I have in a small pot: 2×100kr, 5×10kr, 6×5kr, 4×1kr (=£1.75)
The longest-serving Coronation Street characters: Ken Barlow, Rita Tanner, Audrey Roberts, Kevin Webster, Sally Metcalfe, Steve McDonald
Overground colours in HTML: #0077AD, #5BBD72, #5D6061, #823A62, #ED1B00, #FAA61A
Farrow & Ball purples: Peignoir, Calluna, Brassica, Pelt, Paean Black, Brinjal, Sugared Almond, Imperial Purple, Titmouse Blue
Double-landlocked ceremonial counties: Bedfordshire, West Midlands
New entries into the Top 40 60 years ago this week: Beach Boys, Lee Dorsey, Spencer Davis Group, Creation, Easybeats
New entries into the Top 40 50 years ago this week: Neil Diamond, Leo Sayer, the Who, John Miles
New entries into the Top 40 40 years ago this week: Duran Duran, the Smiths, Letitia Dean & Paul Medford, Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush, Red Box, Bob Geldof, Swing Out Sister, Shakin' Stevens, Prince
New entries into the Top 40 30 years ago this week: East 17 & Gabrielle, Toni Braxton, Reef, Livin' Joy, Madonna, Space, Alisha's Attic, Lightning Seeds, REM, the Braids, Gene, Presidents of the USA, Huff & Puff, Alexander O'Neal, Mazzy Star
Kings whose reigns began in a year ending in 6: Edmund Ironside, Cnut, Harold II, William I, Henry III, Edward VIII, George VI
Letters ordered by their frequency in the numbers from one to ten: enitofhrsvguwx
Anagrams of Scottish airports: Brush Mug, Cop Newt Lamb, Denude, Hunger Bid, Nerviness, Retie, Sick Twerp, Sly AI, To Norways, Uncle Babe
X-Files episodes containing the letter X: Excelsis Dei, Max, Redux, Patient X, Folie à Deux, The Sixth Extinction, The Sixth Extinction II, X-Cops, Brand X, Existence, Rm9sbG93ZXJz
Years with purple car tax discs: 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013
UK's 10 biggest charities by expenditure: Wellcome Trust, Nuffield Health, Charities Aid Foundation, British Council, Save The Children, National Trust, United Learning, Arts Council, Cancer Research, Cardiff University
Extras at the Cross Road Fish Bar in Kingston: mushrooms in breadcrumbs, onion rings, mushy peas, curry sauce, buttered roll, gherkin, pickled onion, pickled egg, pineapple fritter
Mr Men characters whose bodies are formed of straight lines: Mr Cool, Mr Rush, Mr Christmas, Mr Grumpy, Mr Sneeze, Mr Birthday, Mr Strong
Toblerone variants: Dark chocolate, White chocolate, Mint crisp, Snowtop, Fruit & Nut, Honeycomb crisp, Crunchy Salted Almond
MPs with the lowest majorities: Sarah Pochin (Reform UK - Runcorn and Helsby) 6, David Pinto-Duschinsky (Labour - Hendon) 15, Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole) 18, Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay) 20, Sam Carling (Labour - North West Cambridgeshire) 39, Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon) 61
Gants in Braintree: Bailey's Gant, Bird In Hand Gant, Hilly Gant, Leatherworkers Gant, Osborn's Gant, Pig's Head in the Pottage Pot Gant
Welsh stations with three Ls: Energlyn & Churchill Park, Heath Low Level, Lisvane & Thornhill, Llandeilo, Llansamlet, Llwyngwril, Wildmill
Cinemas in Watford: ABC, Carlton, Cineworld, Empire, Essoldo, Gaumont, Odeon, Plaza, Regal, Super, Vue
Saints Days on October 28th: Abraham, Africanus, Anastasia II, Anglinus, Eadsin, Faro, Ferrutius, Fidelis of Como, Godwin, Honoratus of Vercelli, Joachim Royo, John Dat, Jude Thaddaeus, Remigius, Rodrigo Aguilar Alemán, Salvius, Simon the Zealot
0.5 in trigonometric functions: cos(60°), sin(30°), tan(26.565°)
Trademarked apple names: Evelina®, Jazz™, Junami®, Kanzi®, Red Prince®, Rubens®, Worcester Pearmain®, Zari®
Centuries without a transit of Venus: 3rd, 9th, 15th, 20th, 26th, 32nd, 37th
The ten highest mountains on the Falkland Islands: Mount Usborne 705m, Mount Adam 700m, Mount Robinson 680m, Jack's Mountain 648m, Mount Philomel 600m, Mount Simon 600m, Mount Moody 554m, Muffler Jack Mountain 542m, The Onion 535m, Storm Mountain 521m
Words that can be written using just one Morse Code symbol: he, hi, hie, hies, his, hiss, hisses, is, mom, moo, moot, motto, sees, she, sheesh, shhh, shies, to, tom, tomtom, too, toot, tot
Oxford Street pedestrianisation [ 27-Oct-26 7:00am ]
They finally did it, they finally pedestrianised Oxford Street.
Not all of it, just the middle half from Selfridges to Great Portland Street, but wow, the Mayor finally pushed it through.
The big change happened at 8pm on Sunday evening as the last buses barrelled through, barriers emerged and traffic ceased. Ian Visits was there for a final ride, Darryl was watching when the road was sealed off and London Centric took photos all through the night as transformation continued apace. You should be able to access at least one of those.
I waited until Monday morning for a good look around, also to enjoy the new sense of freedom, also to ride on some buses. Unfortunately it was raining throughout, bringing a less than celebratory vibe to all the intended publicity and good feeling. But hundreds of people had come out for a look, hundreds more were here to go shopping anyway and hundreds more were discovering how their journeys would now have to change. [14 photos]
First things first, this is very much work in progress. The Mayor can't introduce everything overnight, particularly when a lot of it needs to be painted, unpainted or bolted in. The intention is to watch how things develop over the next few months before a more permanent settled state is reached in a year's time. But they were able to add temporary bollards, hang additional signs and remove unwanted bus stops, so they did, also coned off sidestreets, covered over defunct traffic lights and stuck down a whopping green carpet with photo opportunities in mind. A queue of people were waiting to stand in the sweet spot to grab either a selfie or a longshot, and had it been drier I might not have had the patience to wait for mine.
Monday morning's main work task seemed to be to replace the plastic barriers laid out hastily overnight. Several fluorescent-jacketed crews were out installing what looked like giant green shark's teeth, each carefully branded with the Oxford Street logo. These all have to be spaced out carefully so cars and motorbikes can't get through but pedestrians and wheelchairs can, not just to deter ordinary traffic but also as hostile vehicle mitigation. Every entrance to the newly pedestrianised space is getting toothed, bollarded or combed, the net effect of which is that it's not quite so appealing an accessible space as it would otherwise have been.
One casualty is the famous X-shaped crossing at Oxford Circus. Formerly you could cross in all directions, but now there's no need so it's morphed into a single east-west rush. The classic X was introduced in November 2009 so lasted 17 years, if you were planning to write its obituary. I whipped out my stopwatch because I wondered if they'd changed the phasing but no, the Oxford Circus lights still cycle every 1 minute 35 seconds. What's more pedestrians still get exactly the same amount of time to cross with the countdown timer ticking down from '20'. The big beneficiaries here are thus northbound and southbound traffic who are now getting much longer to flow through the junction, and maybe that'll change after all the defunct signals have been removed but for now it's no victory for the pedestrian.
There are four other places where traffic cuts across the pedestrianised stripe - at Duke Street, Davies Street, New Bond Street and Holles Street. This is fewer crossings than before but still an intrusion, not least because they too are growing teeth. And inbetween, where traffic has been evacuated, were pedestrians yet walking in the street? Not yet, most of them were still happily walking on the pavement, but expect that to change as familiarity grows and further changes take place.
I think what most stood out was suddenly seeing signs at each end of the street saying PEDESTRIAN ZONE with a red 'No vehicles' sign underneath. We don't see these empty red circles very often and I wonder how many people know precisely what they mean. I checked the Highway Code and the official meaning is "No vehicles except pedal cycles being pushed by hand", so yes, you are supposed to get off your bike and walk. Obviously some cyclists won't and yesterday a few didn't, although a heavy official presence meant they didn't get very far before being approached.
I saw a lot of moaning online yesterday about bloody cyclists terrorising pedestrians on Oxford Street, almost all of it suppositional or based on a single example, drawing angry conclusions as blinkered grousers are prone to do. The reality, if you can be arsed to climb off your angry soapbox, is that it's barely an issue at all, as you'd know if you'd actually been there rather than amplifying hate from a distance.
Another overnight change was that all the Legible London vertical pillars had been covered over with new maps. They'd used thick board rather than stickers because it's more durable, but also much cheaper than ripping everything out and making new ones. The typeface used isn't the usual TfL one, it's the one branding company Koto have devised for everything to do with the updated Oxford Street and still feels unfamiliar. The pillars also include a local bus map, but alas that's a total TfL balls-up as I'll explain later, indeed it's probably time to start talking about some of the bus changes.
Four bus stops down Oxford Street will never see another bus, and all their flags were swiftly removed overnight. The remaining shelters join at least half a dozen others left over from previous bus stop rationalisations, all merrily scrolling electronic adverts and making TfL a nice wodge of cash. According to planning notices attached to lampposts, the intention is to retain the "internally illuminated sequential advertisement display capable of displaying static and dynamic content with automatic rotation of images" when a shelter is removed.
Also if you check government tenders you'll see the Mayor intends to introduce a heck of a lot more adverts going forward, all under the umbrella of 'Oxford Street Opportunity Advertising'. This is "expected to form a significant revenue stream within the Oxford Street pedestrianisation programme and will be considered as part of the overall commercial strategy for the corridor. To maximise both the commercial returns and the placemaking outcomes, the advertising opportunity will be considered as an integral component of the urban realm design rather than a subsequent overlay." They may be taking away the traffic but they intend to add a lot more commercial distraction, alas.
Four new bus stops have been added, all virgin and new, but 200m further north on Wigmore Street and Henrietta Place. They don't all have shelters, which on a day like yesterday was a serious mis-step. They also don't all have timetables, but it's a start. The really important thing is how to find the new bus stops if you've been shopping on Oxford Street, given there are umpteen sideroads you might choose to walk up. To solve this TfL have done one excellent thing which is to create big red boards with arrows and attach them to street furniture along the road. You have to know which bus you want but they are accurate and they do work... which is more than can be said for the maps.
On Day 1 each defunct bus stop had a pink-jacketed ambassador ready with advice and also a pad of tear-off colour maps to dish out. Giving out paper maps on a day it's pissing down with rain isn't exactly ideal, but you can't plan for that. One side of the sheet has a local street map, perfectly decent, but with no bus stops marked. The other side is called "Where to catch your bus" and has all the local bus stops, all 21 of them, even though several of them are irrelevant. The route list underneath only includes buses that used to travel down the pedestrianised section, not 20 other routes you might want to catch which stop nearby. But the utterly incompetent thing is that the list of bus stops is missing all the new stops and only mentions the old.
According to the map route 139 to Golders Green only stops at stop RC on Regent Street, whereas it also now stops at RE, HB. and WB. According to the map route 390 to Victoria only stops at O and OP either side of the interruption, whereas it also now stops at BA, WA and CA. In total five routes have three of their stops missing, so if you used the map and believed it you could end up walking half a mile out of your way rather than heading to a stop just round the corner. It's a balls-up anyone competent could have spotted if they'd proofread the map properly. Instead it's been printed out thousands of times as a handout, also slapped up on Legible London signs everywhere, also it's been on the BBC news website for a week so presumably nobody noticed there either.
As for the newly diverted bus routes, TfL's Commissioner went on the lunchtime news yesterday and assured Londoners there'd be "no material change to journey time". I've given it a try and I beg to differ. I made eight journeys a couple of weeks ago to establish a baseline, you may remember, and decided it took 7-8 minutes to travel down Oxford Street. Yesterday I went out again, between the same endpoints, and rode the 98 west and the 390 east.
98westM&S → Marble ArchTHEN10m 10s(8 red lights) 98westM&S → Marble ArchNOW14m 10s(10 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&STHEN7m 40s(5 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&SNOW21m 00s(18 red lights!)
The 98 took four minutes longer, or seven minutes longer if you compare it to the previous average. The 98 saved time by not having to go through the Oxford Circus junction, but wasted far more time while deviating north round Henrietta Place and Wigmore Street. And that was the quicker journey.
The 390 was a nightmare trip taking 14 minutes more than previously, or if you prefer THREE TIMES LONGER. We reached Wigmore Street fairly quickly then progressed very slowly east in a jam that couldn't quite get through the next set of traffic lights before they changed, These signals have a lengthy cycle so each delay really added up, especially those that took two attempts to pass through and one that took three. Great Portland Street was a particular pinchpoint, a most frustrating finale trying to turn the corner back into Oxford Street. And I was only going a few stops, so imagine the crushing effect on anyone trying to ride route 390 from Victoria to Euston, because in central London taking the bus can be a disastrous choice.
It could just have been a day 1 snarl-up, alternatively this was the start of half term so traffic was likely lighter than usual. You can't draw too many conclusions from only two journeys so I will come back in November and do this properly, several times, once things have bedded in. At present though, all the signs are that "no material change to journey time" is bolx.
For the vast majority of pedestrians and shoppers though, come on, this is great. Sorry to the taxis and sorry to those with accessibility needs and sorry to all the bus passengers who've just been sent all around the houses, but one day we'll wonder why it took so long to turn the nation's shopping street into somewhere you can simply walk along. [14 photos]
26-Oct-26
Not all of it, just the middle half from Selfridges to Great Portland Street, but wow, the Mayor finally pushed it through.
The big change happened at 8pm on Sunday evening as the last buses barrelled through, barriers emerged and traffic ceased. Ian Visits was there for a final ride, Darryl was watching when the road was sealed off and London Centric took photos all through the night as transformation continued apace. You should be able to access at least one of those.
I waited until Monday morning for a good look around, also to enjoy the new sense of freedom, also to ride on some buses. Unfortunately it was raining throughout, bringing a less than celebratory vibe to all the intended publicity and good feeling. But hundreds of people had come out for a look, hundreds more were here to go shopping anyway and hundreds more were discovering how their journeys would now have to change. [14 photos]
First things first, this is very much work in progress. The Mayor can't introduce everything overnight, particularly when a lot of it needs to be painted, unpainted or bolted in. The intention is to watch how things develop over the next few months before a more permanent settled state is reached in a year's time. But they were able to add temporary bollards, hang additional signs and remove unwanted bus stops, so they did, also coned off sidestreets, covered over defunct traffic lights and stuck down a whopping green carpet with photo opportunities in mind. A queue of people were waiting to stand in the sweet spot to grab either a selfie or a longshot, and had it been drier I might not have had the patience to wait for mine.
Monday morning's main work task seemed to be to replace the plastic barriers laid out hastily overnight. Several fluorescent-jacketed crews were out installing what looked like giant green shark's teeth, each carefully branded with the Oxford Street logo. These all have to be spaced out carefully so cars and motorbikes can't get through but pedestrians and wheelchairs can, not just to deter ordinary traffic but also as hostile vehicle mitigation. Every entrance to the newly pedestrianised space is getting toothed, bollarded or combed, the net effect of which is that it's not quite so appealing an accessible space as it would otherwise have been.
One casualty is the famous X-shaped crossing at Oxford Circus. Formerly you could cross in all directions, but now there's no need so it's morphed into a single east-west rush. The classic X was introduced in November 2009 so lasted 17 years, if you were planning to write its obituary. I whipped out my stopwatch because I wondered if they'd changed the phasing but no, the Oxford Circus lights still cycle every 1 minute 35 seconds. What's more pedestrians still get exactly the same amount of time to cross with the countdown timer ticking down from '20'. The big beneficiaries here are thus northbound and southbound traffic who are now getting much longer to flow through the junction, and maybe that'll change after all the defunct signals have been removed but for now it's no victory for the pedestrian.
There are four other places where traffic cuts across the pedestrianised stripe - at Duke Street, Davies Street, New Bond Street and Holles Street. This is fewer crossings than before but still an intrusion, not least because they too are growing teeth. And inbetween, where traffic has been evacuated, were pedestrians yet walking in the street? Not yet, most of them were still happily walking on the pavement, but expect that to change as familiarity grows and further changes take place.
I think what most stood out was suddenly seeing signs at each end of the street saying PEDESTRIAN ZONE with a red 'No vehicles' sign underneath. We don't see these empty red circles very often and I wonder how many people know precisely what they mean. I checked the Highway Code and the official meaning is "No vehicles except pedal cycles being pushed by hand", so yes, you are supposed to get off your bike and walk. Obviously some cyclists won't and yesterday a few didn't, although a heavy official presence meant they didn't get very far before being approached.
I saw a lot of moaning online yesterday about bloody cyclists terrorising pedestrians on Oxford Street, almost all of it suppositional or based on a single example, drawing angry conclusions as blinkered grousers are prone to do. The reality, if you can be arsed to climb off your angry soapbox, is that it's barely an issue at all, as you'd know if you'd actually been there rather than amplifying hate from a distance.
Another overnight change was that all the Legible London vertical pillars had been covered over with new maps. They'd used thick board rather than stickers because it's more durable, but also much cheaper than ripping everything out and making new ones. The typeface used isn't the usual TfL one, it's the one branding company Koto have devised for everything to do with the updated Oxford Street and still feels unfamiliar. The pillars also include a local bus map, but alas that's a total TfL balls-up as I'll explain later, indeed it's probably time to start talking about some of the bus changes.
Four bus stops down Oxford Street will never see another bus, and all their flags were swiftly removed overnight. The remaining shelters join at least half a dozen others left over from previous bus stop rationalisations, all merrily scrolling electronic adverts and making TfL a nice wodge of cash. According to planning notices attached to lampposts, the intention is to retain the "internally illuminated sequential advertisement display capable of displaying static and dynamic content with automatic rotation of images" when a shelter is removed.
Also if you check government tenders you'll see the Mayor intends to introduce a heck of a lot more adverts going forward, all under the umbrella of 'Oxford Street Opportunity Advertising'. This is "expected to form a significant revenue stream within the Oxford Street pedestrianisation programme and will be considered as part of the overall commercial strategy for the corridor. To maximise both the commercial returns and the placemaking outcomes, the advertising opportunity will be considered as an integral component of the urban realm design rather than a subsequent overlay." They may be taking away the traffic but they intend to add a lot more commercial distraction, alas.
Four new bus stops have been added, all virgin and new, but 200m further north on Wigmore Street and Henrietta Place. They don't all have shelters, which on a day like yesterday was a serious mis-step. They also don't all have timetables, but it's a start. The really important thing is how to find the new bus stops if you've been shopping on Oxford Street, given there are umpteen sideroads you might choose to walk up. To solve this TfL have done one excellent thing which is to create big red boards with arrows and attach them to street furniture along the road. You have to know which bus you want but they are accurate and they do work... which is more than can be said for the maps.
On Day 1 each defunct bus stop had a pink-jacketed ambassador ready with advice and also a pad of tear-off colour maps to dish out. Giving out paper maps on a day it's pissing down with rain isn't exactly ideal, but you can't plan for that. One side of the sheet has a local street map, perfectly decent, but with no bus stops marked. The other side is called "Where to catch your bus" and has all the local bus stops, all 21 of them, even though several of them are irrelevant. The route list underneath only includes buses that used to travel down the pedestrianised section, not 20 other routes you might want to catch which stop nearby. But the utterly incompetent thing is that the list of bus stops is missing all the new stops and only mentions the old.
According to the map route 139 to Golders Green only stops at stop RC on Regent Street, whereas it also now stops at RE, HB. and WB. According to the map route 390 to Victoria only stops at O and OP either side of the interruption, whereas it also now stops at BA, WA and CA. In total five routes have three of their stops missing, so if you used the map and believed it you could end up walking half a mile out of your way rather than heading to a stop just round the corner. It's a balls-up anyone competent could have spotted if they'd proofread the map properly. Instead it's been printed out thousands of times as a handout, also slapped up on Legible London signs everywhere, also it's been on the BBC news website for a week so presumably nobody noticed there either.
As for the newly diverted bus routes, TfL's Commissioner went on the lunchtime news yesterday and assured Londoners there'd be "no material change to journey time". I've given it a try and I beg to differ. I made eight journeys a couple of weeks ago to establish a baseline, you may remember, and decided it took 7-8 minutes to travel down Oxford Street. Yesterday I went out again, between the same endpoints, and rode the 98 west and the 390 east.
98westM&S → Marble ArchTHEN10m 10s(8 red lights) 98westM&S → Marble ArchNOW14m 10s(10 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&STHEN7m 40s(5 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&SNOW21m 00s(18 red lights!)
The 98 took four minutes longer, or seven minutes longer if you compare it to the previous average. The 98 saved time by not having to go through the Oxford Circus junction, but wasted far more time while deviating north round Henrietta Place and Wigmore Street. And that was the quicker journey.
The 390 was a nightmare trip taking 14 minutes more than previously, or if you prefer THREE TIMES LONGER. We reached Wigmore Street fairly quickly then progressed very slowly east in a jam that couldn't quite get through the next set of traffic lights before they changed, These signals have a lengthy cycle so each delay really added up, especially those that took two attempts to pass through and one that took three. Great Portland Street was a particular pinchpoint, a most frustrating finale trying to turn the corner back into Oxford Street. And I was only going a few stops, so imagine the crushing effect on anyone trying to ride route 390 from Victoria to Euston, because in central London taking the bus can be a disastrous choice.
It could just have been a day 1 snarl-up, alternatively this was the start of half term so traffic was likely lighter than usual. You can't draw too many conclusions from only two journeys so I will come back in November and do this properly, several times, once things have bedded in. At present though, all the signs are that "no material change to journey time" is bolx.
For the vast majority of pedestrians and shoppers though, come on, this is great. Sorry to the taxis and sorry to those with accessibility needs and sorry to all the bus passengers who've just been sent all around the houses, but one day we'll wonder why it took so long to turn the nation's shopping street into somewhere you can simply walk along. [14 photos]
Harmondsworth Great Barn [ 26-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Every time the end of October comes round I realise that several attractions are about to close until next Spring, so if I want to visit I need to go now. This is great for me but bad for you as I end up blogging about somewhere you can no longer go. I've done this before with Camber Castle, the Chiltern Open Air Museum and 575 Wandsworth Road, so apologies but I'm doing it again. Harmondsworth Great Barn only opens on the second and fourth Sundays of the month from April to October, so I went yesterday but you won't be able to visit until 2027, sorry. Stick April 11th in your calendar now.
ENGLISH HERITAGE: Harmondsworth Great Barn
Location: Manor Court, Harmondsworth UB7 0AQ [map]
Open: 11am-4pm (2nd & 4th Sundays) (April-October)
Admission: free (donation welcomed)
Website: english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/harmondsworth-barn
Four word summary: The cathedral of Middlesex
Time to allow: up to an hour
What's extraordinary about Harmondsworth Great Barn isn't just how big it is - the largest timber-framed building in England - but also that it's still here. When the barn was built in 1426 these were open fields in the Colne Valley but it now finds itself half a mile from the M25, quarter of a mile from the M4 and, if Heathrow's expansion ever gets the go-ahead, 150 yards from the new Third Runway. It was built at the behest of the Bishop of Winchester to store sheaves of wheat and barley from local farms before threshing, ultimately to help fund Winchester College. And it's massive, a full 58 metres long with an exhilarating interior that once led Sir John Betjeman to describe it as the cathedral of Middlesex.
We know it was planned in 1425 because documents confirm two men called John att Oke and William Kyppyng travelled to Kingston to inspect trees before replacing the previous barn on the site. We know the oaks were cut down in spring 1426 because when they dated the timbers, that was that outer ring of growth. We know the work was complete by September 1427 because the tilers were paid a bonus for completing the roof so quickly. And we know it's 600 years old because a slew of events have been arranged to celebrate the sexcentenary including an architectural conference, a Birds of Prey Day and a visit by Gardeners' Question Time.
You'll find the Great Barn in the centre of the village of Harmondsworth, up a short dead end where the Manor used to be. Hop off the bus at the top of the High Street and aim for the village green, all part of the conservation area that's due to be ultra-marginally retained should the Airport's expansion plans prove successful. Keep both pubs to the left, perhaps wondering how they'd both stay in business should bulldozers eliminate their clientele. Admire St Mary's church, parts of which are very early Norman and whose front railings are currently festooned with 40 plastic poppies, twice as many as bedeck the green. And if you've come on the right day the gate at the end of the drive will be unlocked and you can come in.
The barn complex is a bit weird because when the old farm and its outbuildings were sold off in 1978 (sale price £67,000) the purchaser decided to create a mini trading estate on the site. Businesses formerly trading here include Ballast PLC and a herbal importer, their buildings boarded up and partially scaffolded, while a luxury car hire company continues to park up their sleek black Heathrow-bound minibuses opposite. And there beyond the car park is a very very long tiled barn, sleek but in a different way, hopefully with all three of its barn doors wide open. If so then volunteers will be waiting to welcome you at a trestle table, dishing out a brief information sheet (and also maybe a Quality Street if you're young enough).
"People normally say wow at this point," said the volunteer in charge of welcoming me, and she wasn't wrong. The barn is twelve bays long, 11½m wide and also 11½m high. It only becomes more incredible when you realise all the beams and timbers have been here since the days of Henry VI, all supported by foot-thick aisle posts standing on squared blocks of Reigate stone. We know from the original paperwork that the carpenters used 250 spykenalls, 350 fyfestrokenaylls and six woodcobbleeze to secure the main structure, also from modern counting that they needed 2800 nails to attach the outer boards and 40,000 tacks to fix the tiles. Each truss was numbered before being raised into position and you can still see four scratches on the fourth one along, or you can should a volunteer point it out which they probably will because they clearly love this place.
The Friends of Harmondsworth Barn were formed in 2005 after local MP John McDonnell convened a meeting to try to help save the building. English Heritage eventually took on both ownership and upkeep but the Friends do the day to day work, turning up to open the doors, organising the events and curating the interior. They have 24 bays to fill and each gets its own theme, so one has old maps, one has archaic agricultural tools and one's devoted to owls (because they have one in the roof called Ollie). Elsewhere you can listen in on eyewitness conversations, admire old tools, watch a short video, buy souvenir 600th birthday mugs or learn the name of today's horse, depending. One corner has a kettle, but I think that's just for the volunteers rather than general refreshments. Also fire extinguishers are prevalent, as might be expected, indeed the southern end of the barn burned partially in 1972 so the tiles and oak panels here are not the originals.
Last time I visited in 2014 the barn was packed full of scaffolding as part of English Heritage's full-on £½m restoration project. It looks so much better now, a testament both to them and to the medieval carpenters who built this place to last. It is an extraordinary survivor, and perhaps underappreciated by the wider population, hemmed in as it is in a dead end village on the edge of Hillingdon. Not all the amazing buildings in London are in the middle, some are right on the periphery... and opening up again after Easter, sorry.
25-Oct-26
ENGLISH HERITAGE: Harmondsworth Great Barn
Location: Manor Court, Harmondsworth UB7 0AQ [map]
Open: 11am-4pm (2nd & 4th Sundays) (April-October)
Admission: free (donation welcomed)
Website: english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/harmondsworth-barn
Four word summary: The cathedral of Middlesex
Time to allow: up to an hour
What's extraordinary about Harmondsworth Great Barn isn't just how big it is - the largest timber-framed building in England - but also that it's still here. When the barn was built in 1426 these were open fields in the Colne Valley but it now finds itself half a mile from the M25, quarter of a mile from the M4 and, if Heathrow's expansion ever gets the go-ahead, 150 yards from the new Third Runway. It was built at the behest of the Bishop of Winchester to store sheaves of wheat and barley from local farms before threshing, ultimately to help fund Winchester College. And it's massive, a full 58 metres long with an exhilarating interior that once led Sir John Betjeman to describe it as the cathedral of Middlesex.
We know it was planned in 1425 because documents confirm two men called John att Oke and William Kyppyng travelled to Kingston to inspect trees before replacing the previous barn on the site. We know the oaks were cut down in spring 1426 because when they dated the timbers, that was that outer ring of growth. We know the work was complete by September 1427 because the tilers were paid a bonus for completing the roof so quickly. And we know it's 600 years old because a slew of events have been arranged to celebrate the sexcentenary including an architectural conference, a Birds of Prey Day and a visit by Gardeners' Question Time.
You'll find the Great Barn in the centre of the village of Harmondsworth, up a short dead end where the Manor used to be. Hop off the bus at the top of the High Street and aim for the village green, all part of the conservation area that's due to be ultra-marginally retained should the Airport's expansion plans prove successful. Keep both pubs to the left, perhaps wondering how they'd both stay in business should bulldozers eliminate their clientele. Admire St Mary's church, parts of which are very early Norman and whose front railings are currently festooned with 40 plastic poppies, twice as many as bedeck the green. And if you've come on the right day the gate at the end of the drive will be unlocked and you can come in.
The barn complex is a bit weird because when the old farm and its outbuildings were sold off in 1978 (sale price £67,000) the purchaser decided to create a mini trading estate on the site. Businesses formerly trading here include Ballast PLC and a herbal importer, their buildings boarded up and partially scaffolded, while a luxury car hire company continues to park up their sleek black Heathrow-bound minibuses opposite. And there beyond the car park is a very very long tiled barn, sleek but in a different way, hopefully with all three of its barn doors wide open. If so then volunteers will be waiting to welcome you at a trestle table, dishing out a brief information sheet (and also maybe a Quality Street if you're young enough).
"People normally say wow at this point," said the volunteer in charge of welcoming me, and she wasn't wrong. The barn is twelve bays long, 11½m wide and also 11½m high. It only becomes more incredible when you realise all the beams and timbers have been here since the days of Henry VI, all supported by foot-thick aisle posts standing on squared blocks of Reigate stone. We know from the original paperwork that the carpenters used 250 spykenalls, 350 fyfestrokenaylls and six woodcobbleeze to secure the main structure, also from modern counting that they needed 2800 nails to attach the outer boards and 40,000 tacks to fix the tiles. Each truss was numbered before being raised into position and you can still see four scratches on the fourth one along, or you can should a volunteer point it out which they probably will because they clearly love this place.
The Friends of Harmondsworth Barn were formed in 2005 after local MP John McDonnell convened a meeting to try to help save the building. English Heritage eventually took on both ownership and upkeep but the Friends do the day to day work, turning up to open the doors, organising the events and curating the interior. They have 24 bays to fill and each gets its own theme, so one has old maps, one has archaic agricultural tools and one's devoted to owls (because they have one in the roof called Ollie). Elsewhere you can listen in on eyewitness conversations, admire old tools, watch a short video, buy souvenir 600th birthday mugs or learn the name of today's horse, depending. One corner has a kettle, but I think that's just for the volunteers rather than general refreshments. Also fire extinguishers are prevalent, as might be expected, indeed the southern end of the barn burned partially in 1972 so the tiles and oak panels here are not the originals.
Last time I visited in 2014 the barn was packed full of scaffolding as part of English Heritage's full-on £½m restoration project. It looks so much better now, a testament both to them and to the medieval carpenters who built this place to last. It is an extraordinary survivor, and perhaps underappreciated by the wider population, hemmed in as it is in a dead end village on the edge of Hillingdon. Not all the amazing buildings in London are in the middle, some are right on the periphery... and opening up again after Easter, sorry.
Clocksback [ 25-Oct-26 2:00am ]
When do the clocks go back?
The clocks go back today, the last Sunday in October.
25th October is the earliest possible date the clocks can go back, ushering in darker evenings at the earliest opportunity.
When did the clocks go back?
before 1916: they didn't
1916-1924: various dates in late Sept/early Oct
1925-1938: the day after the first Saturday in October
1939-1947: it's complicated (thanks to Double Summer Time)
1948-1949: the day after the last Saturday in October
1950-1952: the day after the third Saturday in October
1953-1960: the day after the first Saturday in October
1961-1967: the day after the third Saturday in October
1968-1970: they didn't (thanks to Double Summer Time)
1971-today: the last Sunday in October
» For a full history of British Summer Time dates see my 2025 clocksback blogpost
When do the clocks go back?
At 2am BST, reverting to 1am GMT.
It's been 2am ever since 1916.
2am on Sunday was chosen because it was the quietest time of the week, after trains had stopped running but before shift workers and churchgoers set out.
This means there are two half-past ones, indeed an entire hour repeats.
It means you could have two twins, the elder born at 1.55 and the younger at 1.05.
It also means October is the longest month of the year, one hour longer than January, May, July, August and December (and two hours longer than March).
» For much more about British Summer Time see Wikipedia
Why do the clocks go back?
Essentially it's to provide more daylight in the evenings from April to October.
The initial trigger in 1916 was to support the war effort by increasing daylight during the working day and reducing energy consumption for lighting.
In the UK the man with the original idea was Chislehurst builder William Willett.
» For more on William Willett see my 2007 clocksback blogposts (also my 2015 clocksfoward blogpost)
» For more on daylight changes see my 2021 clocksback blogpost
How long do the clocks go back?
There are always either 21 or 22 weeks of Greenwich Mean Time before the clocks go forward.
This year it's 22, sorry.
There are 22 weeks of GMT most of the time (17 years out of every 28, i.e. 61% of the time)
It's 21 next year, hurrah.
» For the longest periods of British Summer Time see my 2022 clocksback blogpost
Why do the clocks go back asymmetrically?
Clocks go back two months before the winter solstice but go forward three months afterwards.
This means they go back when sunset is around 5pm GMT, but don't go forward until sunset is around 6pm GMT. This is neither balanced nor ideal.
If things were better balanced we'd put our clocks forward at the end of February rather than the end of March.
This would avoid a slew of March evenings that are darker than they need to be.
I understand the reason for the imbalance is that October evenings are mild (so it's still worth going out), whereas March evenings are cool (so there's less incentive to head outdoors), but I suspect farming comes into it somewhere too.
» For more asymmetry see my 2011 February Forward blogpost
Where do the clocks go back?
They go back today all across the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Also across the EU (including Ireland and Portugal, whose Summer Time is the same as ours).
Also in many other European countries (including Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Balkans and the Baltics).
Also Israel and Lebanon (Palestine switched last night and Egypt jumps back on Thursday).
Meanwhile the USA, the eastern half of Canada and most of the Caribbean go back next weekend.
Their clocks always go back one week after us (whereas their clocks go forward two or three weeks before us).
» For more national detail see my Wikipedia's dedicated page
Where don't the clocks go back?
All of Asia (except Israel, Palestine and Lebanon).
All of Africa (except Egypt).
Equatorial countries (because Daylight Saving isn't useful where sunset times don't vary much).
Also the whole of the southern hemisphere (except New Zealand, southeast Australia and northern Chile).
What happens when the clocks go back?
Essentially the time of sunset suddenly jumps an hour earlier. People hate that.
It's only been a week since the last day London had a sunset after 6pm.
Now suddenly sunset is before 5pm, and it all feels terribly premature.
But make the most of tonight's 4.45pm sunset.
It may feel miserable but it'll be 31st January before we get a sunset later than that.
Sunrises work completely differently.
This morning's sunrise is at 6.40am, which we last had on 19th September.
We next get a 6.40am sunrise on March 3rd, and then again on March 30th.
This all feels counterintuitive, but we pay far less attention to sunrise than sunset.
» For more on sunrise/sunset changes see my 2021 equinox post
Why don't we modify when the clocks go back?
So much debate, so many arguments.
Daylight saving has always been controversial ever since it started.
Why should we do it, why don't we stop doing it, why don't we delay it, why don't we do it twice?
There have been numerous parliamentary debates about altering it, also EU directives suggesting it ceases, also drives to introduce Double Summertime instead, all backed up by arguments that work for some people and not for others.
Here's a comments box especially for people who want to discuss changing our daylight saving rules. I'll delete it later. comments
» For shallow BST commentary see my 2002 clocksback blogpost
» For more on Double Summertime see my 2011 DST blogpost
» For more on the EU termination proposal see my 2019 EU blogpost
Whither do the clocks go back?
They went back an hour at 2am, which was simultaneously 1am, and won't go forward again for 154 days. Get used to it.
24-Oct-26
The clocks go back today, the last Sunday in October.
25th October is the earliest possible date the clocks can go back, ushering in darker evenings at the earliest opportunity.
When did the clocks go back?
before 1916: they didn't
1916-1924: various dates in late Sept/early Oct
1925-1938: the day after the first Saturday in October
1939-1947: it's complicated (thanks to Double Summer Time)
1948-1949: the day after the last Saturday in October
1950-1952: the day after the third Saturday in October
1953-1960: the day after the first Saturday in October
1961-1967: the day after the third Saturday in October
1968-1970: they didn't (thanks to Double Summer Time)
1971-today: the last Sunday in October
» For a full history of British Summer Time dates see my 2025 clocksback blogpost
When do the clocks go back?
At 2am BST, reverting to 1am GMT.
It's been 2am ever since 1916.
2am on Sunday was chosen because it was the quietest time of the week, after trains had stopped running but before shift workers and churchgoers set out.
This means there are two half-past ones, indeed an entire hour repeats.
It means you could have two twins, the elder born at 1.55 and the younger at 1.05.
It also means October is the longest month of the year, one hour longer than January, May, July, August and December (and two hours longer than March).
» For much more about British Summer Time see Wikipedia
Why do the clocks go back?
Essentially it's to provide more daylight in the evenings from April to October.
The initial trigger in 1916 was to support the war effort by increasing daylight during the working day and reducing energy consumption for lighting.
In the UK the man with the original idea was Chislehurst builder William Willett.
» For more on William Willett see my 2007 clocksback blogposts (also my 2015 clocksfoward blogpost)
» For more on daylight changes see my 2021 clocksback blogpost
How long do the clocks go back?
There are always either 21 or 22 weeks of Greenwich Mean Time before the clocks go forward.
This year it's 22, sorry.
There are 22 weeks of GMT most of the time (17 years out of every 28, i.e. 61% of the time)
It's 21 next year, hurrah.
» For the longest periods of British Summer Time see my 2022 clocksback blogpost
Why do the clocks go back asymmetrically?
Clocks go back two months before the winter solstice but go forward three months afterwards.
This means they go back when sunset is around 5pm GMT, but don't go forward until sunset is around 6pm GMT. This is neither balanced nor ideal.
If things were better balanced we'd put our clocks forward at the end of February rather than the end of March.
This would avoid a slew of March evenings that are darker than they need to be.
I understand the reason for the imbalance is that October evenings are mild (so it's still worth going out), whereas March evenings are cool (so there's less incentive to head outdoors), but I suspect farming comes into it somewhere too.
» For more asymmetry see my 2011 February Forward blogpost
Where do the clocks go back?
They go back today all across the UK, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.
Also across the EU (including Ireland and Portugal, whose Summer Time is the same as ours).
Also in many other European countries (including Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Balkans and the Baltics).
Also Israel and Lebanon (Palestine switched last night and Egypt jumps back on Thursday).
Meanwhile the USA, the eastern half of Canada and most of the Caribbean go back next weekend.
Their clocks always go back one week after us (whereas their clocks go forward two or three weeks before us).
» For more national detail see my Wikipedia's dedicated page
Where don't the clocks go back?
All of Asia (except Israel, Palestine and Lebanon).
All of Africa (except Egypt).
Equatorial countries (because Daylight Saving isn't useful where sunset times don't vary much).
Also the whole of the southern hemisphere (except New Zealand, southeast Australia and northern Chile).
What happens when the clocks go back?
Essentially the time of sunset suddenly jumps an hour earlier. People hate that.
It's only been a week since the last day London had a sunset after 6pm.
Now suddenly sunset is before 5pm, and it all feels terribly premature.
But make the most of tonight's 4.45pm sunset.
It may feel miserable but it'll be 31st January before we get a sunset later than that.
Sunrises work completely differently.
This morning's sunrise is at 6.40am, which we last had on 19th September.
We next get a 6.40am sunrise on March 3rd, and then again on March 30th.
This all feels counterintuitive, but we pay far less attention to sunrise than sunset.
» For more on sunrise/sunset changes see my 2021 equinox post
Why don't we modify when the clocks go back?
So much debate, so many arguments.
Daylight saving has always been controversial ever since it started.
Why should we do it, why don't we stop doing it, why don't we delay it, why don't we do it twice?
There have been numerous parliamentary debates about altering it, also EU directives suggesting it ceases, also drives to introduce Double Summertime instead, all backed up by arguments that work for some people and not for others.
Here's a comments box especially for people who want to discuss changing our daylight saving rules. I'll delete it later. comments
» For shallow BST commentary see my 2002 clocksback blogpost
» For more on Double Summertime see my 2011 DST blogpost
» For more on the EU termination proposal see my 2019 EU blogpost
Whither do the clocks go back?
They went back an hour at 2am, which was simultaneously 1am, and won't go forward again for 154 days. Get used to it.
Be Ready [ 24-Oct-26 7:00am ]
The government is keen that we Be Ready.
They're not 100% definitive on what to be ready for, but it includes severe weather, national emergencies and prolonged periods without water and/or electricity and/or gas and/or internet. Flooding is one of the most serious weather-related events and you probably know if you might be susceptible to that, but the entire nation could be at risk from cyber-related power failure, the Russians cutting our undersea cables, a solar radiation event, a nuclear accident, water infrastructure failure, food supply contamination, another pandemic, AI overthrow, nearby war, mass rioting or whatever. You might not be top of the list for rescue, merely left to cope as best you can, so it pays to be prepared.
In particular they've come up with a Be Ready Checklist packed with things you might like to have ready just in case. They've said to build it up gradually, as and when, not to rush out and buy the lot now. They've said you should do this 'if you can', because not everyone has the spare money, the storage space or the stability to comply. And they've provided a handy printable checklist on which to tally things, which does kind of assume you have a printer but it's the individual items that are important, not the ticks.
Use the checklist below to review the steps you have already taken, and what you might still need to do.
Water
● Bottled water for 3 days. 3 litres per person per day for drinking. More would be needed for other tasks such as cooking and washing.
That's a lot of bottled water, or at least it is if you're a household that doesn't normally buy the stuff. I'm perfectly happy with what comes out of the tap but if that tap went dry for a prolonged period of time I'd be stuffed. I had one dry evening a few months ago and that was awkward enough (how do I brew a cuppa? how do I clean my teeth? how long do I leave this to flush?) so three days would be purgatory, not least because I couldn't expect Thames Water to turn up and dish out bottles from a street corner.
The guidance urges you to "set a reminder every six months to check expiry dates and swap out items that need replacing", which could be expensive and/or annoying with something like bottled water. I checked some bottles in the supermarket yesterday and the best before dates were anything from 8 months to two years away, suggesting a stash could need regular replacement (or consumption). Do I really want to keep buying water I won't drink in case it's needed, but how stupid would I feel if a true emergency came along and I hadn't bought any?
I do have a 2 litre bottle stashed away for just such circumstances but it wouldn't go far. However it's been there a long time, indeed I checked the best before date and it's March 2007, so is it safe to drink? You'd think not but I Googled and it said "sealed bottles kept cool and dark stay safe long past their printed date", "water itself does not expire: the best-before date on UK bottled water marks packaging quality, not safety." My 20 year-old water is thus likely full of microplastics and tastes bad, but in case of dire emergency shouldn't kill me. You can't search for this important information if the networks have gone down, so it's worth knowing in advance.
Food
● Non-perishable food for 3 days. Food with a long shelf life that doesn't need refrigeration or cooking e.g. tinned meat, fish or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts. It's best to buy food you'd usually eat.
This is about stocking up your food cupboards with packets, cartons and tins, indeed anything nutritious that'll last and doesn't need cooking. Forget boiling water for rice or wokking up a stirfry if the power goes down, unless you're fortunate enough to use gas and that still works. Everything you rely on in your fridge or freezer could be unsafe within days so it makes sense to have an alternative calorific supply to hand. You might still have leftovers from the early pandemic you never got round to eating, and almost by definition they should still be edible now, just maybe not enough.
I have an emergency can of corned beef, also tinned soup and baked beans and sweetcorn and peach slices and mandarin orange segments and really rather a lot of Christmas puddings, also a Fray Bentos pie in a tin that might or might not be OK without cooking. If I started by eating what was in my switched-off fridge I could make it to three days no trouble, perhaps a week, after which the country might be in such a parlous state that lack of food was the least of my problems.
Hygiene
● Hand sanitiser, wet wipes, hygiene and bathroom products.
The lack of water could be terrible for personal hygiene, especially if it's July rather than October. Hand sanitiser is much better-known since the pandemic so maybe you already have an industrial-sized bottle somewhere, and if not maybe you should because imagine Day Seven without water otherwise.
Light and warmth
● Torch (and spare batteries).
● Blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothing.
They're quite insistent on having a torch rather than candles, this because candles have the occasional tendency to set your home alight and because a raging inferno during a civilian shutdown could cause untold damage. I promise to watch over my IKEA tea lights like a hawk and not let that happen. I do have two torches but also insufficient batteries to maintain them over a long period, plus I couldn't just nip down to Stratford to buy more, so that's something I probably do need to stock up on.
Communication and information
● FM radio (battery/wind-up).
● Charged power bank.
So many of us have switched to digital that the absence of electricity, 4G or wi-fi could completely cut us off from the world. How are you supposed to know what's going on if your screen doesn't work and your phone doesn't connect, and more importantly how is the government going to advise us all what to do? Is this some localised outage or is the world barrelling towards Armageddon... you won't know unless you have old-school technology tuned to a frequency the BBC hasn't turned off yet. Thankfully I do have a wind-up radio, I am genuinely prepared, but I know from experience that keeping it powered for more than 10 minutes is difficult so even my smug state as one of the informed might be difficult to maintain.
Money and documents
● Cash (mix of coins and notes) and cards.
● Copies of IDs/documents
● Important phone numbers and information (e.g. regular medication and doses).
You may love swanning around town flashing your phone at things, paying as you go, but a mass power cut or cyber outage could suddenly leave you with zero access to your money and no chance of buying anything at all. Even a plastic card is useless in a world without connections. It could even happen tomorrow, you never know, so maybe dash down to the cashpoint soon just in case. Similarly if you were unable to fire up your phone or laptop how much critical information would be instantly lost, so maybe write down the important stuff while you can.
Medical and health
● First aid kit / first aid items.
● Essential medication and medical supplies.
I'm lucky in that if I stopped taking my prescribed tablets it wouldn't immediately damage my health, but you may not be so fortunate. Also what would you do if you received an injury that normally required a trip to A&E, might a first aid kit buy you extra time, and would you curse yourself if you didn't have one? Imagine some mildly terrifying scenario and how easily you could either mitigate it now or watch it spiral out of control later.
Baby products
Pet products
Not my problem, might be your problem.
The Be Ready website also reminds us that we are not alone, we have a community around us. Should the worst happen there is strength in numbers, so maybe create some local connections together now rather than asking later if they want to be your Disaster Friends. Also there may well be neighbours who'd be relying on you for help, so think about that now rather than only realising later when it's too late.
The worst may of course never happen and you'll have wasted time and money on resources you'll never use. My emergency can of corned beef may never be opened. But if disaster does entirely disrupt your life you'll wish you'd prepared for it, so either take the risk or Be Ready.
23-Oct-26
They're not 100% definitive on what to be ready for, but it includes severe weather, national emergencies and prolonged periods without water and/or electricity and/or gas and/or internet. Flooding is one of the most serious weather-related events and you probably know if you might be susceptible to that, but the entire nation could be at risk from cyber-related power failure, the Russians cutting our undersea cables, a solar radiation event, a nuclear accident, water infrastructure failure, food supply contamination, another pandemic, AI overthrow, nearby war, mass rioting or whatever. You might not be top of the list for rescue, merely left to cope as best you can, so it pays to be prepared.
In particular they've come up with a Be Ready Checklist packed with things you might like to have ready just in case. They've said to build it up gradually, as and when, not to rush out and buy the lot now. They've said you should do this 'if you can', because not everyone has the spare money, the storage space or the stability to comply. And they've provided a handy printable checklist on which to tally things, which does kind of assume you have a printer but it's the individual items that are important, not the ticks.
Use the checklist below to review the steps you have already taken, and what you might still need to do.
Water
● Bottled water for 3 days. 3 litres per person per day for drinking. More would be needed for other tasks such as cooking and washing.
That's a lot of bottled water, or at least it is if you're a household that doesn't normally buy the stuff. I'm perfectly happy with what comes out of the tap but if that tap went dry for a prolonged period of time I'd be stuffed. I had one dry evening a few months ago and that was awkward enough (how do I brew a cuppa? how do I clean my teeth? how long do I leave this to flush?) so three days would be purgatory, not least because I couldn't expect Thames Water to turn up and dish out bottles from a street corner.
The guidance urges you to "set a reminder every six months to check expiry dates and swap out items that need replacing", which could be expensive and/or annoying with something like bottled water. I checked some bottles in the supermarket yesterday and the best before dates were anything from 8 months to two years away, suggesting a stash could need regular replacement (or consumption). Do I really want to keep buying water I won't drink in case it's needed, but how stupid would I feel if a true emergency came along and I hadn't bought any?
I do have a 2 litre bottle stashed away for just such circumstances but it wouldn't go far. However it's been there a long time, indeed I checked the best before date and it's March 2007, so is it safe to drink? You'd think not but I Googled and it said "sealed bottles kept cool and dark stay safe long past their printed date", "water itself does not expire: the best-before date on UK bottled water marks packaging quality, not safety." My 20 year-old water is thus likely full of microplastics and tastes bad, but in case of dire emergency shouldn't kill me. You can't search for this important information if the networks have gone down, so it's worth knowing in advance.
Food
● Non-perishable food for 3 days. Food with a long shelf life that doesn't need refrigeration or cooking e.g. tinned meat, fish or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts. It's best to buy food you'd usually eat.
This is about stocking up your food cupboards with packets, cartons and tins, indeed anything nutritious that'll last and doesn't need cooking. Forget boiling water for rice or wokking up a stirfry if the power goes down, unless you're fortunate enough to use gas and that still works. Everything you rely on in your fridge or freezer could be unsafe within days so it makes sense to have an alternative calorific supply to hand. You might still have leftovers from the early pandemic you never got round to eating, and almost by definition they should still be edible now, just maybe not enough.
I have an emergency can of corned beef, also tinned soup and baked beans and sweetcorn and peach slices and mandarin orange segments and really rather a lot of Christmas puddings, also a Fray Bentos pie in a tin that might or might not be OK without cooking. If I started by eating what was in my switched-off fridge I could make it to three days no trouble, perhaps a week, after which the country might be in such a parlous state that lack of food was the least of my problems.
Hygiene
● Hand sanitiser, wet wipes, hygiene and bathroom products.
The lack of water could be terrible for personal hygiene, especially if it's July rather than October. Hand sanitiser is much better-known since the pandemic so maybe you already have an industrial-sized bottle somewhere, and if not maybe you should because imagine Day Seven without water otherwise.
Light and warmth
● Torch (and spare batteries).
● Blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothing.
They're quite insistent on having a torch rather than candles, this because candles have the occasional tendency to set your home alight and because a raging inferno during a civilian shutdown could cause untold damage. I promise to watch over my IKEA tea lights like a hawk and not let that happen. I do have two torches but also insufficient batteries to maintain them over a long period, plus I couldn't just nip down to Stratford to buy more, so that's something I probably do need to stock up on.
Communication and information
● FM radio (battery/wind-up).
● Charged power bank.
So many of us have switched to digital that the absence of electricity, 4G or wi-fi could completely cut us off from the world. How are you supposed to know what's going on if your screen doesn't work and your phone doesn't connect, and more importantly how is the government going to advise us all what to do? Is this some localised outage or is the world barrelling towards Armageddon... you won't know unless you have old-school technology tuned to a frequency the BBC hasn't turned off yet. Thankfully I do have a wind-up radio, I am genuinely prepared, but I know from experience that keeping it powered for more than 10 minutes is difficult so even my smug state as one of the informed might be difficult to maintain.
Money and documents
● Cash (mix of coins and notes) and cards.
● Copies of IDs/documents
● Important phone numbers and information (e.g. regular medication and doses).
You may love swanning around town flashing your phone at things, paying as you go, but a mass power cut or cyber outage could suddenly leave you with zero access to your money and no chance of buying anything at all. Even a plastic card is useless in a world without connections. It could even happen tomorrow, you never know, so maybe dash down to the cashpoint soon just in case. Similarly if you were unable to fire up your phone or laptop how much critical information would be instantly lost, so maybe write down the important stuff while you can.
Medical and health
● First aid kit / first aid items.
● Essential medication and medical supplies.
I'm lucky in that if I stopped taking my prescribed tablets it wouldn't immediately damage my health, but you may not be so fortunate. Also what would you do if you received an injury that normally required a trip to A&E, might a first aid kit buy you extra time, and would you curse yourself if you didn't have one? Imagine some mildly terrifying scenario and how easily you could either mitigate it now or watch it spiral out of control later.
Baby products
Pet products
Not my problem, might be your problem.
The Be Ready website also reminds us that we are not alone, we have a community around us. Should the worst happen there is strength in numbers, so maybe create some local connections together now rather than asking later if they want to be your Disaster Friends. Also there may well be neighbours who'd be relying on you for help, so think about that now rather than only realising later when it's too late.
The worst may of course never happen and you'll have wasted time and money on resources you'll never use. My emergency can of corned beef may never be opened. But if disaster does entirely disrupt your life you'll wish you'd prepared for it, so either take the risk or Be Ready.
Hillingdon Museum [ 23-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Hillingdon has a new museum. They kept that quiet.
Obviously they didn't keep it that quiet, they even wrote MUSEUM in large illuminated letters outside the entrance to the new library in the Civic Centre. They also announced the opening last December in the borough newsletter and the Hillingdon Times ran a news story, but I guess I live far enough away to have completely missed that.
It's part of a cost-cutting project to co-locate as many council services as possible in the Civic Centre including the Register Office, the adult education centre and a family hub. The library also shifted from larger premises in the High Street, annoying many, and the local archives service shifted here too. Most of these services have been squeezed into the former Middlesex Suite, an underused wing of the council offices which opened in 1978, all cost-efficiently co-located behind a single reception desk. Just appallingly signed.
I walked in... Study Centre to the left, some kind of council service queue to the right and a bookish opening straight ahead. I carried on into the new library, now just the one floor where there used to be six, but still plenty of books surrounding several busy study tables. I checked all the corners but found nothing more museumy than a Hillingdon Heritage Notice Board advertising nothing upcoming. So I went back to reception and asked, and was directed instead to walk through the Study Centre on the left and on through the corridor beyond. "So it's behind the door that isn't labelled Museum," I said, perhaps expressing my incredulity with insufficient exasperation.
It's not signposted in the Study Centre either, you have to know to continue on towards the toilets, but the third set of electric doors does have an A4-sized sheet of paper saying Welcome to Hillingdon Museum and Archives. This brings you to a corridor with a nearby door into the bright and welcoming Archives room, complete with trails and postcards and old maps by the desk. The museum is down the end of the corridor, still not labelled but by now obvious by default, and what I'm saying is that the signage is inept to the point of invisibility.
The museum is a single gallery divided into three areas which someone at the design stage might have optimistically described as rooms. One corner's Hillingdon Treasures, one corner's Shopping in Hillingdon and the other corner's a generic Victorian parlour with no Hillingdon-specific elements whatsoever. You might expect me to say it's far worse than the previous museum but no it's hugely better, this because there was no previous museum, not this century anyway, so even this semi-empty space is cause for celebration. There definitely once was an Uxbridge Museum because one of the items on display, a massive multi-bladed stack of three dozen knives, was donated there in 1955, but this is not its genuine successor.
Hillingdon Treasures is an eclectic collection of artefacts in four cases. One of these is only small but does contain several coins from 55AD unearthed by HS2 diggers, the largest contemporary discovery of 'potins' anywhere in the UK. Another case is dominated by a 2023 quilt from Ickenham, this above a woolly mammoth's tooth and a Poor Law accounts book, that's how eclectic this is. I have no idea why a 1950s electric heater was included, and the label fails to explain the local relevance too. Elsewhere are Roman tesserae, a medieval vase and a tin of stock cubes, this because OXO funded the 1908 Olympic marathon which crossed the borough. The two dozen treasures have to cover the centuries and the length of Hillingdon so are pretty disparate, alternatively thin, and the history of the borough around the walls gets pretty generic too...
» Although there is evidence of Roman villas in Hertfordshire and the Chilterns, there is no evidence of Roman Roads or villas in Hillingdon.
» The English Civil Wars, fought between 1642 and 1651, also had a profound effect on the local area during the Early Modern period.
» Democratic and egalitarian ideas from the French Revolution undoubtedly influenced ordinary people.
Not all the text is that empty, but I don't expect any history classes would consider coming here on a school trip.
Then there's the shopping corner. This time it's photos and objects, including a pig-sticking spear, a metal sweet scoop and a model delivery van. Older visitors may go 'ah yes I remember', and may also already know a lot of the history in the panels round the walls. Bits of Randalls department store are particularly prominent, and rightly so, also the massive inn sign from the King's Arms and a painted sign from a local butchers in which a pig with a quill is writing 'The critics say there's nothing like Bonny's Camberwell pork sausages'. Object-wise it's mostly all Uxbridge, so shops from the rest of the borough have been shoehorned into the outer narrative, perhaps alongside a photo. The whole thing screams "well, we've got this interesting artefact" rather than telling any kind of overall tale about Hillingdon.
As for the Victorian parlour it's basically filler. It might be more convincing were it a room rather than a partitioned space wallpapered on two sides, and filled with more than a fireplace, a dresser and a writing desk. Some curator probably had high hopes that visiting children might play Snakes and Ladders or read an old book or think to open the spice cabinet, even design their own coat of arms at the table, but they'd have got more mileage from the space by making it in some way Hillingdonny. The only other exhibit is "Hillingdon at 60" where residents reminisce over the phone (but when I lifted the receiver it was dead), also a digital map (that so far only 10 people have worked out how to add something to).
According to Hillingdon council's magazine "there are more than 2,500 objects on display" which is very much incorrect, I barely spotted 50 in the two proper galleries. What's here is just a small selection from the borough's collection, interesting but sparse, a mere scratch of the surface. This alas is what a borough museum looks like in the age of austerity, a few objects shoved into the corner of a council building that's always open anyway, much like Enfield and Southwark's attempts. I liked it as far as it went but it didn't go very far, so is more somewhere to drop into should you be in Uxbridge... assuming you can find it at the end of a ludicrously unmarked corridor.
22-Oct-26
Obviously they didn't keep it that quiet, they even wrote MUSEUM in large illuminated letters outside the entrance to the new library in the Civic Centre. They also announced the opening last December in the borough newsletter and the Hillingdon Times ran a news story, but I guess I live far enough away to have completely missed that.
It's part of a cost-cutting project to co-locate as many council services as possible in the Civic Centre including the Register Office, the adult education centre and a family hub. The library also shifted from larger premises in the High Street, annoying many, and the local archives service shifted here too. Most of these services have been squeezed into the former Middlesex Suite, an underused wing of the council offices which opened in 1978, all cost-efficiently co-located behind a single reception desk. Just appallingly signed.
I walked in... Study Centre to the left, some kind of council service queue to the right and a bookish opening straight ahead. I carried on into the new library, now just the one floor where there used to be six, but still plenty of books surrounding several busy study tables. I checked all the corners but found nothing more museumy than a Hillingdon Heritage Notice Board advertising nothing upcoming. So I went back to reception and asked, and was directed instead to walk through the Study Centre on the left and on through the corridor beyond. "So it's behind the door that isn't labelled Museum," I said, perhaps expressing my incredulity with insufficient exasperation.
It's not signposted in the Study Centre either, you have to know to continue on towards the toilets, but the third set of electric doors does have an A4-sized sheet of paper saying Welcome to Hillingdon Museum and Archives. This brings you to a corridor with a nearby door into the bright and welcoming Archives room, complete with trails and postcards and old maps by the desk. The museum is down the end of the corridor, still not labelled but by now obvious by default, and what I'm saying is that the signage is inept to the point of invisibility.
The museum is a single gallery divided into three areas which someone at the design stage might have optimistically described as rooms. One corner's Hillingdon Treasures, one corner's Shopping in Hillingdon and the other corner's a generic Victorian parlour with no Hillingdon-specific elements whatsoever. You might expect me to say it's far worse than the previous museum but no it's hugely better, this because there was no previous museum, not this century anyway, so even this semi-empty space is cause for celebration. There definitely once was an Uxbridge Museum because one of the items on display, a massive multi-bladed stack of three dozen knives, was donated there in 1955, but this is not its genuine successor.
Hillingdon Treasures is an eclectic collection of artefacts in four cases. One of these is only small but does contain several coins from 55AD unearthed by HS2 diggers, the largest contemporary discovery of 'potins' anywhere in the UK. Another case is dominated by a 2023 quilt from Ickenham, this above a woolly mammoth's tooth and a Poor Law accounts book, that's how eclectic this is. I have no idea why a 1950s electric heater was included, and the label fails to explain the local relevance too. Elsewhere are Roman tesserae, a medieval vase and a tin of stock cubes, this because OXO funded the 1908 Olympic marathon which crossed the borough. The two dozen treasures have to cover the centuries and the length of Hillingdon so are pretty disparate, alternatively thin, and the history of the borough around the walls gets pretty generic too...
» Although there is evidence of Roman villas in Hertfordshire and the Chilterns, there is no evidence of Roman Roads or villas in Hillingdon.
» The English Civil Wars, fought between 1642 and 1651, also had a profound effect on the local area during the Early Modern period.
» Democratic and egalitarian ideas from the French Revolution undoubtedly influenced ordinary people.
Not all the text is that empty, but I don't expect any history classes would consider coming here on a school trip.
Then there's the shopping corner. This time it's photos and objects, including a pig-sticking spear, a metal sweet scoop and a model delivery van. Older visitors may go 'ah yes I remember', and may also already know a lot of the history in the panels round the walls. Bits of Randalls department store are particularly prominent, and rightly so, also the massive inn sign from the King's Arms and a painted sign from a local butchers in which a pig with a quill is writing 'The critics say there's nothing like Bonny's Camberwell pork sausages'. Object-wise it's mostly all Uxbridge, so shops from the rest of the borough have been shoehorned into the outer narrative, perhaps alongside a photo. The whole thing screams "well, we've got this interesting artefact" rather than telling any kind of overall tale about Hillingdon.
As for the Victorian parlour it's basically filler. It might be more convincing were it a room rather than a partitioned space wallpapered on two sides, and filled with more than a fireplace, a dresser and a writing desk. Some curator probably had high hopes that visiting children might play Snakes and Ladders or read an old book or think to open the spice cabinet, even design their own coat of arms at the table, but they'd have got more mileage from the space by making it in some way Hillingdonny. The only other exhibit is "Hillingdon at 60" where residents reminisce over the phone (but when I lifted the receiver it was dead), also a digital map (that so far only 10 people have worked out how to add something to).
According to Hillingdon council's magazine "there are more than 2,500 objects on display" which is very much incorrect, I barely spotted 50 in the two proper galleries. What's here is just a small selection from the borough's collection, interesting but sparse, a mere scratch of the surface. This alas is what a borough museum looks like in the age of austerity, a few objects shoved into the corner of a council building that's always open anyway, much like Enfield and Southwark's attempts. I liked it as far as it went but it didn't go very far, so is more somewhere to drop into should you be in Uxbridge... assuming you can find it at the end of a ludicrously unmarked corridor.
Streetwords [ 22-Oct-26 7:00am ]
One-word street names are unusual but not entirely uncommon.
Two-word street names are definitely the norm.
Three-word street names are all over the place.
But four-word street names are rare.
Here are a few: SCOTLAND GREEN ROAD NORTH, ADAM AND EVE COURT, DUKE OF YORK STREET, HAUNCH OF VENISON YARD, HYDE PARK GARDENS MEWS, LITTLE ST JAMES'S STREET, STOKE NEWINGTON CHURCH STREET, SAINT MARTIN-THE-FIELDS CHURCH PATH
And five-word street names, or longer, are even rarer.
(no photo)
I wondered how rare.
Specifically I wondered what proportion of street names have 1/2/3/4+ words.
You can probably guess that two-word street names are most common, but are they 60%, 70%, 80% or whatever?
You might want to have a guess before I bash some stats.
I started with my local postcode area, E3.
It has 461 streets, according to an online list.
None of them have one word. [0%]
414 of them have two words. [89.8%]
45 of them have three words. [9.8%]
2 of them have four words. [0.4%]
The two four-letter street names are BLACKWALL TUNNEL SOUTHERN APPROACH and MARY LE BOW WAY.
One is an arterial road and the other is a path through a private play area near the Limehouse Cut.
They're both in the National Street Gazetteer so they're both officially-named streets.
But they are very much in the minority.
I moved on to the London borough of Haringey.
That felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 1400 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
3 of them have one word. [0.1%]
1254 of them have two words. [91.7%]
107 of them have three words. [7.8%]
3 of them have four words. [0.2%]
Haringey's four-letter street names: HEART OF HALE LANE, THE GROVE LYNTON ROAD, TOWN HALL APPROACH ROAD
I moved on to the London borough of Greenwich.
That also felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 2000 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
28 of them have one word. [1.4%]
1761 of them have two words. [89.4%]
166 of them have three words. [8.4%]
11 of them have four words. [0.4%]
2 of them have five words. [0.1%]
1 of them has six words. [<0.1%]
Greenwich's four letter street names: BLACKWALL TUNNEL SOUTHERN APPROACH, BLEAK HILL KINGS HIGHWAY, DUKE OF WELLINGTON AVENUE, OLD POST OFFICE LANE, PRINCE OF ORANGE LANE, PRINCE OF WALES ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY RELIEF ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY SERVICE ROAD, ST MARY MAGDALENE CRESCENT, VANBRUGH PARK ROAD WEST
Greenwich's five letter street names: SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD EASTBOUND, SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD WESTBOUND
Greenwich's six letter street name: ACADEMY ROAD WOOLWICH COMMON SLIP ROAD
The two 5-letter names are very much a technicality, and residents on that stretch of the A2 just call it Sidcup Road. And the 6-letter name is a 20m slip road on the edge of Woolwich Common with no houses and no street signs. Effectively the maximum name length here is four letters.
As a summary...
LONDON E3 Two word names 90%
HARINGEY Two word names 92%
GREENWICH Two word names 89%
In the three areas I've investigated, about 90% of street names have two words.
And about 8% of street names have three words.
One-word and four-word street names are very uncommon (maybe more ones than fours).
Nationally I suspect about 90% of street names have two words.
Just under 10% of street names have three words (a lot are named after people or saints).
And there are probably more one-worders than four-worders, but still less than 1%.
I remain interested in identifying any London street names of five words or more.
Even across the wider country.
n.b. Streets with addresses and/or streetsigns preferred.
n.b. Hyphens don't make separate words.
Five word street names:
Six word street names:
Seven word street names:
21-Oct-26
Two-word street names are definitely the norm.
Three-word street names are all over the place.
But four-word street names are rare.
Here are a few: SCOTLAND GREEN ROAD NORTH, ADAM AND EVE COURT, DUKE OF YORK STREET, HAUNCH OF VENISON YARD, HYDE PARK GARDENS MEWS, LITTLE ST JAMES'S STREET, STOKE NEWINGTON CHURCH STREET, SAINT MARTIN-THE-FIELDS CHURCH PATH
And five-word street names, or longer, are even rarer.
(no photo)
I wondered how rare.
Specifically I wondered what proportion of street names have 1/2/3/4+ words.
You can probably guess that two-word street names are most common, but are they 60%, 70%, 80% or whatever?
You might want to have a guess before I bash some stats.
I started with my local postcode area, E3.
It has 461 streets, according to an online list.
None of them have one word. [0%]
414 of them have two words. [89.8%]
45 of them have three words. [9.8%]
2 of them have four words. [0.4%]
The two four-letter street names are BLACKWALL TUNNEL SOUTHERN APPROACH and MARY LE BOW WAY.
One is an arterial road and the other is a path through a private play area near the Limehouse Cut.
They're both in the National Street Gazetteer so they're both officially-named streets.
But they are very much in the minority.
I moved on to the London borough of Haringey.
That felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 1400 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
3 of them have one word. [0.1%]
1254 of them have two words. [91.7%]
107 of them have three words. [7.8%]
3 of them have four words. [0.2%]
Haringey's four-letter street names: HEART OF HALE LANE, THE GROVE LYNTON ROAD, TOWN HALL APPROACH ROAD
I moved on to the London borough of Greenwich.
That also felt fairly representative.
It has approximately 2000 streets, according to the Gazetteer.
28 of them have one word. [1.4%]
1761 of them have two words. [89.4%]
166 of them have three words. [8.4%]
11 of them have four words. [0.4%]
2 of them have five words. [0.1%]
1 of them has six words. [<0.1%]
Greenwich's four letter street names: BLACKWALL TUNNEL SOUTHERN APPROACH, BLEAK HILL KINGS HIGHWAY, DUKE OF WELLINGTON AVENUE, OLD POST OFFICE LANE, PRINCE OF ORANGE LANE, PRINCE OF WALES ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY RELIEF ROAD, ROCHESTER WAY SERVICE ROAD, ST MARY MAGDALENE CRESCENT, VANBRUGH PARK ROAD WEST
Greenwich's five letter street names: SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD EASTBOUND, SIDCUP ROAD SERVICE ROAD WESTBOUND
Greenwich's six letter street name: ACADEMY ROAD WOOLWICH COMMON SLIP ROAD
The two 5-letter names are very much a technicality, and residents on that stretch of the A2 just call it Sidcup Road. And the 6-letter name is a 20m slip road on the edge of Woolwich Common with no houses and no street signs. Effectively the maximum name length here is four letters.
As a summary...
LONDON E3 Two word names 90%
HARINGEY Two word names 92%
GREENWICH Two word names 89%
In the three areas I've investigated, about 90% of street names have two words.
And about 8% of street names have three words.
One-word and four-word street names are very uncommon (maybe more ones than fours).
Nationally I suspect about 90% of street names have two words.
Just under 10% of street names have three words (a lot are named after people or saints).
And there are probably more one-worders than four-worders, but still less than 1%.
I remain interested in identifying any London street names of five words or more.
Even across the wider country.
n.b. Streets with addresses and/or streetsigns preferred.
n.b. Hyphens don't make separate words.
Five word street names:
Six word street names:
Seven word street names:
Advertwatch [ 21-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Advertwatch
Well this is depressing.
The invasion of previously pristine real estate at Elizabeth line stations has begun.
This is the directional signage at Farringdon station, formerly just a route diagram on a plain white background. Alas it now has an advert squished into the gap at the bottom, spreading up almost as far as the bottom of the 'g' in Reading. Arguably it doesn't get in the way of anything important, or arguably it's an unhelpful distraction.
It's part of a new campaign at several zone 1 purple stations, edging into spaces not previously used for ads. The strapline is Find a Gap See Where It Takes You, which may be a clever reference to the advert filling a gap at the bottom of the sign or it may not. The only people who've found a gap here are the marketing team, keen to make some dosh out of it, so it's all a bit meta and up itself.
And it gets worse, much worse. This is the new seatback on the platform where previously there were just stripy outlines.
This is just two-thirds of the advert, it continues for two more columns to the left. It's a generic office diary with entries including Project Kick-off, Creative Review and Dinner With Mates, all written on a grid of moquette colours. The real screamer is the aeroplane silhouette splashed across the lot, again urging you to find a gap in your busy schedule for a getaway. You could of course spend that getaway anywhere but, based on zero evidence, they really hope you'll want to go to Turkey.
And the worst thing is that it's going to be in situ for a year.
All of TfL's most nauseating commercial content is on Linkedin, and that's where I found this upbeat zinger.
I don't know how much cash this year-long invasion will raise, but don't get your hopes up that it'll be transformative. Even Chase Bank's £2.5m deal to slap their logo on every Oyster pad is only enough to fund London's busiest bus route for seven weeks.
Personally I'd have gone for Find The Gap rather than Find A Gap because that'd be a much cleverer reference to an iconic TfL phrase. Although in truth I'd really have firebombed the entire concept and left our Crossrail stations unblemished, and I despair at whatever horror they might introduce next.
Well this is odd.
There are adverts all over the tube for the Falkland Islands Tourist Board, all featuring a cute rockhopper penguin, and the first thing I thought is "hang on, is this a wind up?"
It's not, it's part of a genuine campaign encouraging travel to the South Atlantic islands, which are admittedly extraordinary but hardly somewhere most people can visit. Flights are weekly, I understand, also you have to go via Chile rather than closer airstrips in Argentina, for obvious reasons.
Questions I immediately asked myself included "what are the dining options on an archipelago with a population of 3500?", "what's the accommodation like?" and "but what would I actually do there?". Birdwatching and walking are the obvious answers to the latter, also touring military sites with due reverence if that's your preferred focus. I love that the tourist board have produced 19 downloadable walking leaflets offering anything from a 45 minutes circuit to a 7 hour hike (also available from the Jetty Office).
As for accommodation seven nights at the Malvina House hotel can be had next month for £1568, whereas 'camp life' at Port Howard Lodge is considerably cheaper. During the day several basic cafes offer fairly basic refreshment (potentially fish-based), then Groovy's has the nightlife you crave and Street Fighter is tonight's film at the 55-seater Harbour Lights Cinema. It would certainly be the holiday of a lifetime, but I do wonder how many people will see these adverts on the tube and choose to go.
You could perhaps choose to visit on Peat Cutting Day, an annual public holiday on the islands, but that's the first Monday in October so you've just missed it (or have eleven months to make plans).
Well this is stupid.
These adverts are all over tube and train carriages at present, perhaps because winter is approaching and people are thinking about their health. It's for a Vitamin D supplement, this being the time of year when sunlight levels aren't necessarily enough to provide your daily dose. But a spray?
Tablets are normally the way to go, if you bother, or perhaps gummies or some multivitamin supplement. A spray does nothing clever except get absorbed direct, which is irrelevant, also it costs you more. But the advert chooses to show happy people spraying inside their cheeks like it's the cool thing to do, in the hope others will choose this more expensive route.
According to the project blurb (not here, online) the spray is "scientifically developed for superior absorption directly into the bloodstream", which is unnecessary. It's also a "convenient alternative to tablets and capsules", where instead of 'convenient' they could have written 'dearer'. Being more effective is effectively irrelevant, because as long you get the basic dose there's no benefit to getting more.
There is an increasing wellness trend to flog unnecessary extras to folk with disposable income, encouraging them to think they might be missing something the product could provide without ever directly saying that. And if that means people end up taking something daily, weekly or whatever for months, or even for life, that's a nice little earner for the company concerned.
You don't need to spray Vitamin D into your cheek, just as you don't have to eat oily fish and egg yolks to make up for missing daylight. Consider the cheaper just-as-effective alternatives, and think before you squirt.
20-Oct-26
Well this is depressing.
The invasion of previously pristine real estate at Elizabeth line stations has begun.
This is the directional signage at Farringdon station, formerly just a route diagram on a plain white background. Alas it now has an advert squished into the gap at the bottom, spreading up almost as far as the bottom of the 'g' in Reading. Arguably it doesn't get in the way of anything important, or arguably it's an unhelpful distraction.
It's part of a new campaign at several zone 1 purple stations, edging into spaces not previously used for ads. The strapline is Find a Gap See Where It Takes You, which may be a clever reference to the advert filling a gap at the bottom of the sign or it may not. The only people who've found a gap here are the marketing team, keen to make some dosh out of it, so it's all a bit meta and up itself.
And it gets worse, much worse. This is the new seatback on the platform where previously there were just stripy outlines.
This is just two-thirds of the advert, it continues for two more columns to the left. It's a generic office diary with entries including Project Kick-off, Creative Review and Dinner With Mates, all written on a grid of moquette colours. The real screamer is the aeroplane silhouette splashed across the lot, again urging you to find a gap in your busy schedule for a getaway. You could of course spend that getaway anywhere but, based on zero evidence, they really hope you'll want to go to Turkey.
And the worst thing is that it's going to be in situ for a year.
All of TfL's most nauseating commercial content is on Linkedin, and that's where I found this upbeat zinger.
We're delighted to be launching our new year-long partnership with Turkish Airlines on the Elizabeth line!It's someone's job at TfL to write this guff, just as there's a team that revels in doing deals with brands to distract us as we travel. Fair enough, it is their actual job, but the jolly zealotry they exude as they invade our eyeballs really grates. These are the same people, you may remember, who intend to introduce vast corridor wraps in Elizabeth line passageways just so long as the research says the moving images don't trigger too many customers' disabilities.
Inspired by the line's distinctive moquette, the campaign reimagines a familiar part of customers' journeys, reflecting the packed diaries, busy schedules and constant movement that define life in London. At its heart is a simple idea: even in the busiest days, there are opportunities to discover somewhere new.
Keep an eye out for the campaign as it rolls out across the line from this month until October 2027.
I don't know how much cash this year-long invasion will raise, but don't get your hopes up that it'll be transformative. Even Chase Bank's £2.5m deal to slap their logo on every Oyster pad is only enough to fund London's busiest bus route for seven weeks.
Personally I'd have gone for Find The Gap rather than Find A Gap because that'd be a much cleverer reference to an iconic TfL phrase. Although in truth I'd really have firebombed the entire concept and left our Crossrail stations unblemished, and I despair at whatever horror they might introduce next.
Well this is odd.
There are adverts all over the tube for the Falkland Islands Tourist Board, all featuring a cute rockhopper penguin, and the first thing I thought is "hang on, is this a wind up?"
It's not, it's part of a genuine campaign encouraging travel to the South Atlantic islands, which are admittedly extraordinary but hardly somewhere most people can visit. Flights are weekly, I understand, also you have to go via Chile rather than closer airstrips in Argentina, for obvious reasons.
Questions I immediately asked myself included "what are the dining options on an archipelago with a population of 3500?", "what's the accommodation like?" and "but what would I actually do there?". Birdwatching and walking are the obvious answers to the latter, also touring military sites with due reverence if that's your preferred focus. I love that the tourist board have produced 19 downloadable walking leaflets offering anything from a 45 minutes circuit to a 7 hour hike (also available from the Jetty Office).
As for accommodation seven nights at the Malvina House hotel can be had next month for £1568, whereas 'camp life' at Port Howard Lodge is considerably cheaper. During the day several basic cafes offer fairly basic refreshment (potentially fish-based), then Groovy's has the nightlife you crave and Street Fighter is tonight's film at the 55-seater Harbour Lights Cinema. It would certainly be the holiday of a lifetime, but I do wonder how many people will see these adverts on the tube and choose to go.
You could perhaps choose to visit on Peat Cutting Day, an annual public holiday on the islands, but that's the first Monday in October so you've just missed it (or have eleven months to make plans).
Well this is stupid.
These adverts are all over tube and train carriages at present, perhaps because winter is approaching and people are thinking about their health. It's for a Vitamin D supplement, this being the time of year when sunlight levels aren't necessarily enough to provide your daily dose. But a spray?
Tablets are normally the way to go, if you bother, or perhaps gummies or some multivitamin supplement. A spray does nothing clever except get absorbed direct, which is irrelevant, also it costs you more. But the advert chooses to show happy people spraying inside their cheeks like it's the cool thing to do, in the hope others will choose this more expensive route.
According to the project blurb (not here, online) the spray is "scientifically developed for superior absorption directly into the bloodstream", which is unnecessary. It's also a "convenient alternative to tablets and capsules", where instead of 'convenient' they could have written 'dearer'. Being more effective is effectively irrelevant, because as long you get the basic dose there's no benefit to getting more.
There is an increasing wellness trend to flog unnecessary extras to folk with disposable income, encouraging them to think they might be missing something the product could provide without ever directly saying that. And if that means people end up taking something daily, weekly or whatever for months, or even for life, that's a nice little earner for the company concerned.
You don't need to spray Vitamin D into your cheek, just as you don't have to eat oily fish and egg yolks to make up for missing daylight. Consider the cheaper just-as-effective alternatives, and think before you squirt.
50 October 20th birthdays [ 20-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Today is my Dad's 88th birthday, and I wondered what he and I had been up to on birthdays past. I have 50 years of diaries so I looked back and checked. The
19-Oct-26
News from Bus Stop M (part 2) [ 19-Oct-26 8:00am ]
News from Bus Stop M (part 2)
Disability campaigners are seeking to close Bus Stop M because it's too dangerous. And not just Bus Stop M but all floating bus stops, that's those with a cycle lane between the main pavement and the kerb.
At Bus Stop M a segregated blue lane bends round the rear of the bus stop, keeping hundreds of cyclists daily out of the path of passing traffic. It took two months to create, and presumably would take a similar time to remove. Four years after it was built TfL realised the step-free access was insufficiently signposted so came back and painted zebra stripes on the crossing and also substantially increased the amount of tactile paving leading to it. This was deemed sufficient in 2019, but today's campaigners still aren't happy mainly because the crossings are piddly and cyclists don't always stop.
This is a different kind of floating bus stop, officially called a "cycle track with bus boarding island", as seen on Lea Bridge Road. Here the cycle track runs between the bus stop and the road, with a very thin supposedly-safe boarding area on the nearside. A third type of floating bus stop is the "shared use bus boarder" where the cycle track goes right up to the kerb, thus getting in or out of a bus requires standing directly in a cycle lane. These are the most dangerous of all, not just for the disabled but for anyone stepping off a bus who could walk straight in front of a bicycle without either party realising, and it's these the government has paused.
Which type of floating bus stop gets built depends on circumstance and location. Bus Stop M, for example, had sufficient spare pavement to carve out a separate cycle lane behind but not every street is wide enough to accommodate this. Also some boroughs are keener on the cheaper "stepping into a cycle lane" option, notably Camden, Greenwich and Waltham Forest, whereas TfL only ever build proper bus stop bypasses on their roads. Bus Stop M, like all 32 floating bus stops in Tower Hamlets, is on a red route and goes round the back.
One intractable is that when a cycle lane meets a bus stop, either it has to interfere with bus passengers or cyclists have to pull out into traffic. Both are dangerous, but the number of recorded collisions between cyclists and pedestrians is much smaller than collisions where cyclists are hit by vehicles. TfL say they recorded just five pedestrian casualties involving cyclists at floating bus stops over a three-year period. That doesn't help the visually-impaired with an understandable reticence to use floating bus stops for fear of an accident, but it does seem an over-reaction to demand their widespread withdrawal endangering many more cyclists instead.
The real issue is that many cyclists don't stop at piddly zebras, and the design of floating bus stops throws them into the path of pedestrians who may not see them coming. But not everyone on two wheels is a fearsome hurtling menace. Alas a lot of people rant about cyclists, over-generalising wildly, when the true issue is confined to a small minority. In an ideal world everyone would look out for everyone else, but not everyone does and not everyone can.
By all means get rid of the so-called shared use bus boarders, because waiting for a bus in a cycle lane always seemed ridiculous. But a bus stop innovation that makes cycling massively safer shouldn't be outweighed by the fact some cyclists don't deserve to use it. The priority should be to improve behaviours and minimise the risk, not to rip out floating bus stops that help far more than they hinder.
» Updated government guidance
» London Travelwatch statement
» Written evidence submitted by the FBUK
Disability campaigners are seeking to close Bus Stop M because it's too dangerous. And not just Bus Stop M but all floating bus stops, that's those with a cycle lane between the main pavement and the kerb.
A leading charity has demanded that floating bus stops be scrapped in London - and that it is only a matter of time until someone is killed. The National Federation of the Blind of the UK have been campaigning against the schemes for years, claiming that they are massively impacting people's lives and criticising the "cruel" politicians for their lack of action.The government sort-of listened last year, announcing that construction of the most dangerous type of floating bus stop should be paused and no more built, then in January released updated design guidance. But last week's petitioners still weren't content, instead demanding that all bus stops changed to accommodate cycle lanes should be changed back to ensure direct access to the bus stop for all passengers. It's a big ask.
Campaigners are concerned that floating bus stops can create significant safety risks for blind people, who may be required to cross active cycle lanes to access bus services.
Sarah Gayton, who helped coordinate the protest, said people with visual or hearing impairments cannot see or hear approaching cyclists. "Some have been injured, while others feel it has taken away their sense of independence," Gayton told BBC Radio London. She said over 290 organisations representing blind, deaf, disabled, partially sighted, and elderly people had written to the prime minister demanding a reversal of government proposals on floating bus stops and their removal from road infrastructure.
At Bus Stop M a segregated blue lane bends round the rear of the bus stop, keeping hundreds of cyclists daily out of the path of passing traffic. It took two months to create, and presumably would take a similar time to remove. Four years after it was built TfL realised the step-free access was insufficiently signposted so came back and painted zebra stripes on the crossing and also substantially increased the amount of tactile paving leading to it. This was deemed sufficient in 2019, but today's campaigners still aren't happy mainly because the crossings are piddly and cyclists don't always stop.
This is a different kind of floating bus stop, officially called a "cycle track with bus boarding island", as seen on Lea Bridge Road. Here the cycle track runs between the bus stop and the road, with a very thin supposedly-safe boarding area on the nearside. A third type of floating bus stop is the "shared use bus boarder" where the cycle track goes right up to the kerb, thus getting in or out of a bus requires standing directly in a cycle lane. These are the most dangerous of all, not just for the disabled but for anyone stepping off a bus who could walk straight in front of a bicycle without either party realising, and it's these the government has paused.
Which type of floating bus stop gets built depends on circumstance and location. Bus Stop M, for example, had sufficient spare pavement to carve out a separate cycle lane behind but not every street is wide enough to accommodate this. Also some boroughs are keener on the cheaper "stepping into a cycle lane" option, notably Camden, Greenwich and Waltham Forest, whereas TfL only ever build proper bus stop bypasses on their roads. Bus Stop M, like all 32 floating bus stops in Tower Hamlets, is on a red route and goes round the back.
One intractable is that when a cycle lane meets a bus stop, either it has to interfere with bus passengers or cyclists have to pull out into traffic. Both are dangerous, but the number of recorded collisions between cyclists and pedestrians is much smaller than collisions where cyclists are hit by vehicles. TfL say they recorded just five pedestrian casualties involving cyclists at floating bus stops over a three-year period. That doesn't help the visually-impaired with an understandable reticence to use floating bus stops for fear of an accident, but it does seem an over-reaction to demand their widespread withdrawal endangering many more cyclists instead.
The real issue is that many cyclists don't stop at piddly zebras, and the design of floating bus stops throws them into the path of pedestrians who may not see them coming. But not everyone on two wheels is a fearsome hurtling menace. Alas a lot of people rant about cyclists, over-generalising wildly, when the true issue is confined to a small minority. In an ideal world everyone would look out for everyone else, but not everyone does and not everyone can.
By all means get rid of the so-called shared use bus boarders, because waiting for a bus in a cycle lane always seemed ridiculous. But a bus stop innovation that makes cycling massively safer shouldn't be outweighed by the fact some cyclists don't deserve to use it. The priority should be to improve behaviours and minimise the risk, not to rip out floating bus stops that help far more than they hinder.
» Updated government guidance
» London Travelwatch statement
» Written evidence submitted by the FBUK
News from Bus Stop M (part 1) [ 19-Oct-26 1:00am ]
News from Bus Stop M (part 1)
I've noticed something odd at Bus Stop M over the last week or two. Buses on route 205 have started stopping here. I don't know precisely when or why, but this is excellent news for a very small number of people who live here or who change buses in Bow.
Route 205 was introduced in 2002 in preparation for the launch of the Congestion Charge zone. Originally it ran between Paddington and Whitechapel, then in 2007 was extended to Mile End and in 2009 to Bow Church. But not this Bow Church, the other Bow Church because the bus stops round here are complicated. If nothing else the ongoing saga of Bus Stop M should have taught you that.
Route 205 begins its westbound run at a bus stand on the south side of Bow Church, picking up its first passengers at Bus Stop J (Bow Church) before continuing to Bus Stop B (Bow Church Station). But in the opposite direction 205s have always terminated at Bus Stop A (Bow Church Station), never reaching Bus Stop M (Bow Church).
I always assumed this was because route 205 was based at Bow Bus Garage, so it would be silly for terminating buses to overshoot the turn off. But it did mean that route 205 was asymmetrical hereabouts, terminating at the DLR station but starting at the church.
Now suddenly after 17 years, without fanfare, eastbound 205s are going the extra stop and terminating by the church. I've seen no publicity, no change in timetables nor updated tiles, but the announcement "this bus terminates here" no longer plays by the station, it plays when the bus pulls up at Bus Stop M.
It hasn't required a change on the bus's blind because the destination has always been 'Bow Church', formerly referring to the station, now referring to the church. It only really shows up if you use digital services and check the map or route diagram, and yes they have indeed extended the route from Bus Stop A to Bus Stop M.
I assume the change occured at the end of August because that's when the the contract changed and new electric vehicles were introduced. It's also when the timetable changed and the frequency of the route reduced from every 10 minutes to every 12. But blimey they've been quiet about doing it, not even a new tile saying '205 Alighting point only', hence it's taken so long for me to notice.
It's a good thing for anyone living near Bus Stop M because we no longer have to get off a 205 by the station and walk, we can ride it all the way home. It's also good news for anyone changing buses at Bow Church because it's now possible to interchange direct between the 205 and 276 or 488 which it never was before.
This allows me to update an 80 year-old list.
A brief history of the buses which stopped at 'Bus Stop M', Bow Church
1946: 10 25B 25C 86A 96 208 298 661 663 695
1950: 10 25 86A 96 208 298 661 663 695
1958: 10 25 86A 208 298 661 663 695
1959: 10 25 26 32 86 169A 208 298
1960: 10 25 26 32 86 169A 208 N98
1964: 10 25 26 86 169A 208 N98
1966: 10 25 86 169A 208 N98
1968: 10 25 86 208 N98
1970: 10 25 86 S2 N98
1982: 10 25 S2 N98
1984: 8 10 25 S2 N98
1988: 8 25 S2 N8 N98
1991: 8 25 D8 S2 N8 N98
1995: 8 25 D8 S2 N8 N25
1996: 8 25 D8 S2 N25
2004: 8 25 D8 S2
2008: 8 25 276 425 488 D8
2013: 8 25 276 425 488 D8 N205
2016: 8 25 108 276 425 488 N205
2026: 8 25 108 205 276 425 488 N205
It also means that Bus Stop M is now the last stop on route 205 as well as the first stop on route 8. That means you could, if you wanted, catch an 8 from Bus Stop M to one end of Oxford Street, walk to the other end and then catch a 205 all the way back to Bus Stop M. I'm almost tempted, but I promise not to expose you to round robin reportage if I ever succumb.
18-Oct-26
I've noticed something odd at Bus Stop M over the last week or two. Buses on route 205 have started stopping here. I don't know precisely when or why, but this is excellent news for a very small number of people who live here or who change buses in Bow.
Route 205 was introduced in 2002 in preparation for the launch of the Congestion Charge zone. Originally it ran between Paddington and Whitechapel, then in 2007 was extended to Mile End and in 2009 to Bow Church. But not this Bow Church, the other Bow Church because the bus stops round here are complicated. If nothing else the ongoing saga of Bus Stop M should have taught you that.
Route 205 begins its westbound run at a bus stand on the south side of Bow Church, picking up its first passengers at Bus Stop J (Bow Church) before continuing to Bus Stop B (Bow Church Station). But in the opposite direction 205s have always terminated at Bus Stop A (Bow Church Station), never reaching Bus Stop M (Bow Church).
I always assumed this was because route 205 was based at Bow Bus Garage, so it would be silly for terminating buses to overshoot the turn off. But it did mean that route 205 was asymmetrical hereabouts, terminating at the DLR station but starting at the church.
Now suddenly after 17 years, without fanfare, eastbound 205s are going the extra stop and terminating by the church. I've seen no publicity, no change in timetables nor updated tiles, but the announcement "this bus terminates here" no longer plays by the station, it plays when the bus pulls up at Bus Stop M.
It hasn't required a change on the bus's blind because the destination has always been 'Bow Church', formerly referring to the station, now referring to the church. It only really shows up if you use digital services and check the map or route diagram, and yes they have indeed extended the route from Bus Stop A to Bus Stop M.
I assume the change occured at the end of August because that's when the the contract changed and new electric vehicles were introduced. It's also when the timetable changed and the frequency of the route reduced from every 10 minutes to every 12. But blimey they've been quiet about doing it, not even a new tile saying '205 Alighting point only', hence it's taken so long for me to notice.
It's a good thing for anyone living near Bus Stop M because we no longer have to get off a 205 by the station and walk, we can ride it all the way home. It's also good news for anyone changing buses at Bow Church because it's now possible to interchange direct between the 205 and 276 or 488 which it never was before.
This allows me to update an 80 year-old list.
A brief history of the buses which stopped at 'Bus Stop M', Bow Church
1946: 10 25B 25C 86A 96 208 298 661 663 695
1950: 10 25 86A 96 208 298 661 663 695
1958: 10 25 86A 208 298 661 663 695
1959: 10 25 26 32 86 169A 208 298
1960: 10 25 26 32 86 169A 208 N98
1964: 10 25 26 86 169A 208 N98
1966: 10 25 86 169A 208 N98
1968: 10 25 86 208 N98
1970: 10 25 86 S2 N98
1982: 10 25 S2 N98
1984: 8 10 25 S2 N98
1988: 8 25 S2 N8 N98
1991: 8 25 D8 S2 N8 N98
1995: 8 25 D8 S2 N8 N25
1996: 8 25 D8 S2 N25
2004: 8 25 D8 S2
2008: 8 25 276 425 488 D8
2013: 8 25 276 425 488 D8 N205
2016: 8 25 108 276 425 488 N205
2026: 8 25 108 205 276 425 488 N205
It also means that Bus Stop M is now the last stop on route 205 as well as the first stop on route 8. That means you could, if you wanted, catch an 8 from Bus Stop M to one end of Oxford Street, walk to the other end and then catch a 205 all the way back to Bus Stop M. I'm almost tempted, but I promise not to expose you to round robin reportage if I ever succumb.
Braeburn Park [ 18-Oct-26 7:00am ]
A while back I suggested none of my readers had ever been to Folkes Lane Woodland, a nature reserve beside the M25 in outer Havering. Alas three of you said you had, the most convincing of whom said it was on one of his occasional jogging routes. So I'm going to try again with another London location I don't think any of you have ever been to... unless you live there. Again it's peripheral, again it's a scrubby nature reserve but this time it's in Bexley, not far from Crayford station.
Somewhere you've never been: Braeburn Park
Where the Dartford-bound railway meets the A2 Rochester Way, a large dead-end wedge of land has recently become Braeburn Park. During the 20th century it was a gravel pit then landfill, so neither an attractive nor accessible spot, thus the built-up edge of Crayford ended high on Heathfield Avenue. In 1999 Taylor Wimpey submitted a planning application to build 200 houses here instead, a mighty task involving full remediation of the contaminated land, starting with the half where all the new houses were. It took until 2016 for the remaining half to be deemed safe and animal-friendly, opening up as a nature reserve overseen by the Land Trust and the London Wildlife Trust. The housing estate is Braeburn Park and the adjacent recreational SSSI is also Braeburn Park, and I'm hoping you've been to neither.
Braeburn Park - The estate
There's only one road into Braeburn Park and it starts bang on the London/Kent border at the top of Station Road. You might have been here, perhaps ratrunning through or hopping off the 492 bus, but that doesn't count. Here anachronistic pillars mark the entrance to Galloway Drive, also ULEZ cameras because no way is Sadiq letting off this dead-end enclave scot-free. The access road sweeps down in a gentle curve, so temptingly that they've had to add two chicanes to slow the traffic down. The rooftops of the estate are initially down below whereas you should perhaps be more interested in the scarp to either side because this is one of London's officially designated Geological Sites - Wansunt Pit. Here a rare exposure of gravel "has been the subject of considerable controversy since the turn of the (20th) century", so yes you might just have been here if rocks are your thing.
The estate is very provincial millennial, all cosy detacheds and bricky semis, also minimal gardens to cram in as much housing as possible. Garages are commonplace because this is car country, while the road network consists of one wiggly loop off which poke a dozen desirable cul-de-sacs. Street names reference lesser-known types of apple including Woolbrook Road, Saltcote Close and Bascombe Grove. I had a good wander round and found zero facilities, not a corner shop nor hall, not even a postbox, so tightfisted were the developers, so residents have to do everything of community importance elsewhere. That invariably means driving out up the access road, although there is a single alleyway which acts as a convenient cut-through to the station and Crayford's shops. Oh and there's a coal tax post.
Over 200 of these survive in situ marking the former boundary across which the Metropolitan Board of Works levied imports of coal. One is at the top of Galloway Drive on the county boundary and another once stood at the entrance to the quarry. This now finds itself on the pavement outside 28 Melrose Avenue, marginally shifted a few metres north as a result of all the building works. It also once straddled the Kent boundary but in 1991 the Boundary Commission made a change, choosing to combine the entire quarry site within Bexley to aid future redevelopment. Their report says only one letter of objection was received, this from the waste company overseeing the landfill works who said they had strong objections and that detailed objections would follow, But Dougal Bros never wrote back so the change went ahead anyway, thus all the residents of Braeburn Park now find themselves marginally in Bexley rather than Kent, perhaps with apathy to thank.
Braeburn Park - The nature reserve
Now for the bit I'm really hoping you haven't been to. The nature reserve covers 20 hectares, that's 50 acres, and fills the farthest wedge as well as flanking two sides of the estate. It's all reclaimed quarry/landfill so hardly gorgeous, but also fully rewilded and extensive so a fine site to explore. From the main body of the estate there's just one entrance at the foot of Falstaff Close, securely gated from motorbikes and quadbikes else local speed demons would have a field day. Initially it looks quite tame with a little playground and a long clearing, but don't let that deceive you. I liked the look of a sharp slope beyond, very very nearly in Kent, so clambered up past piles of fox poo to a bench with an excellent view of nearby rooftops and cranes on the Dartford skyline. I am particularly confident that none of you have ever sat on this bench.
The main path continues into a former cutting with exposed sandy cliffs, admittedly shallow but an ideal environment for certain nesting birds. Beyond that it enters a thickly wooded stripe, a very different environment, suddenly tumbling down the side of a ridge packed with spindly sycamores. It's hardly rained over the summer yet this descent was already borderline muddy, so best wear sensible footwear if you come much later in the year. And don't worry about getting lost, a circular path is well waymarked on posts throughout. Each also includes a QR code which I hoped would take me to an informative page about Braeburn Park and maybe a map, but instead it led to a brief landing page hoping I'd donate to the London Wildlife Trust, ideally optimised for mobile payment.
The far end of the park is large, low and scrubby with set paths through otherwise impenetrable blocks of undergrowth. It was also gloriously empty, or so I hoped because this is precisely the kind of place I dread meeting an overexcitable dog. It ticked all the boxes - unfamiliar location, limited lines of sight, very restricted exits, far from human presence - precisely the kind of place you'd bring a bouncy hound because you'd almost certainly bump into nobody. Thankfully I really did have the place to myself, even on a Saturday morning, but that just reinforced the thought that you definitely haven't been here. Admittedly London Loop section 1 gets very close where it doubles back over the railway, but if you doglegged up to the A2 as intended you still haven't been to Braeburn Park and I now have.
Here then is a special comments box for readers who have been to Braeburn Park, either the estate or the nature reserve or ideally both. If you've nearly been, know someone there or have driven past please join everyone else in the main comments box below. been to Braeburn Park
17-Oct-26
Somewhere you've never been: Braeburn Park
Where the Dartford-bound railway meets the A2 Rochester Way, a large dead-end wedge of land has recently become Braeburn Park. During the 20th century it was a gravel pit then landfill, so neither an attractive nor accessible spot, thus the built-up edge of Crayford ended high on Heathfield Avenue. In 1999 Taylor Wimpey submitted a planning application to build 200 houses here instead, a mighty task involving full remediation of the contaminated land, starting with the half where all the new houses were. It took until 2016 for the remaining half to be deemed safe and animal-friendly, opening up as a nature reserve overseen by the Land Trust and the London Wildlife Trust. The housing estate is Braeburn Park and the adjacent recreational SSSI is also Braeburn Park, and I'm hoping you've been to neither.
Braeburn Park - The estate
There's only one road into Braeburn Park and it starts bang on the London/Kent border at the top of Station Road. You might have been here, perhaps ratrunning through or hopping off the 492 bus, but that doesn't count. Here anachronistic pillars mark the entrance to Galloway Drive, also ULEZ cameras because no way is Sadiq letting off this dead-end enclave scot-free. The access road sweeps down in a gentle curve, so temptingly that they've had to add two chicanes to slow the traffic down. The rooftops of the estate are initially down below whereas you should perhaps be more interested in the scarp to either side because this is one of London's officially designated Geological Sites - Wansunt Pit. Here a rare exposure of gravel "has been the subject of considerable controversy since the turn of the (20th) century", so yes you might just have been here if rocks are your thing.
"The question of whether or not the Dartford Heath gravel is equivalent to any part of the Swanscombe sequence, and what its relationship is to the Thames Terraces, is one of the more burning issues in the Thames Pleistocene studies, and therefore the exposures here are of considerable importance."
The estate is very provincial millennial, all cosy detacheds and bricky semis, also minimal gardens to cram in as much housing as possible. Garages are commonplace because this is car country, while the road network consists of one wiggly loop off which poke a dozen desirable cul-de-sacs. Street names reference lesser-known types of apple including Woolbrook Road, Saltcote Close and Bascombe Grove. I had a good wander round and found zero facilities, not a corner shop nor hall, not even a postbox, so tightfisted were the developers, so residents have to do everything of community importance elsewhere. That invariably means driving out up the access road, although there is a single alleyway which acts as a convenient cut-through to the station and Crayford's shops. Oh and there's a coal tax post.
Over 200 of these survive in situ marking the former boundary across which the Metropolitan Board of Works levied imports of coal. One is at the top of Galloway Drive on the county boundary and another once stood at the entrance to the quarry. This now finds itself on the pavement outside 28 Melrose Avenue, marginally shifted a few metres north as a result of all the building works. It also once straddled the Kent boundary but in 1991 the Boundary Commission made a change, choosing to combine the entire quarry site within Bexley to aid future redevelopment. Their report says only one letter of objection was received, this from the waste company overseeing the landfill works who said they had strong objections and that detailed objections would follow, But Dougal Bros never wrote back so the change went ahead anyway, thus all the residents of Braeburn Park now find themselves marginally in Bexley rather than Kent, perhaps with apathy to thank.
Braeburn Park - The nature reserve
Now for the bit I'm really hoping you haven't been to. The nature reserve covers 20 hectares, that's 50 acres, and fills the farthest wedge as well as flanking two sides of the estate. It's all reclaimed quarry/landfill so hardly gorgeous, but also fully rewilded and extensive so a fine site to explore. From the main body of the estate there's just one entrance at the foot of Falstaff Close, securely gated from motorbikes and quadbikes else local speed demons would have a field day. Initially it looks quite tame with a little playground and a long clearing, but don't let that deceive you. I liked the look of a sharp slope beyond, very very nearly in Kent, so clambered up past piles of fox poo to a bench with an excellent view of nearby rooftops and cranes on the Dartford skyline. I am particularly confident that none of you have ever sat on this bench.
The main path continues into a former cutting with exposed sandy cliffs, admittedly shallow but an ideal environment for certain nesting birds. Beyond that it enters a thickly wooded stripe, a very different environment, suddenly tumbling down the side of a ridge packed with spindly sycamores. It's hardly rained over the summer yet this descent was already borderline muddy, so best wear sensible footwear if you come much later in the year. And don't worry about getting lost, a circular path is well waymarked on posts throughout. Each also includes a QR code which I hoped would take me to an informative page about Braeburn Park and maybe a map, but instead it led to a brief landing page hoping I'd donate to the London Wildlife Trust, ideally optimised for mobile payment.
The far end of the park is large, low and scrubby with set paths through otherwise impenetrable blocks of undergrowth. It was also gloriously empty, or so I hoped because this is precisely the kind of place I dread meeting an overexcitable dog. It ticked all the boxes - unfamiliar location, limited lines of sight, very restricted exits, far from human presence - precisely the kind of place you'd bring a bouncy hound because you'd almost certainly bump into nobody. Thankfully I really did have the place to myself, even on a Saturday morning, but that just reinforced the thought that you definitely haven't been here. Admittedly London Loop section 1 gets very close where it doubles back over the railway, but if you doglegged up to the A2 as intended you still haven't been to Braeburn Park and I now have.
Here then is a special comments box for readers who have been to Braeburn Park, either the estate or the nature reserve or ideally both. If you've nearly been, know someone there or have driven past please join everyone else in the main comments box below. been to Braeburn Park
Lion Green Road [ 17-Oct-26 8:00am ]
This year's Stirling Prize for architecture has just been awarded to a project in London, way down south in Coulsdon off Lion Green Road. Previously the site was a large car park, but housing needs are tight so they've shrunk that to a really small car park and replaced the rest with mixed housing. It's understatedly impressive. [RIBA video]
This is a well connected site, close to the shops and the station, but also a challenging site being on a noticeable slope. The original plan was to include 80-odd flats but they actually managed 157, which is one contributary reason why the project got shortlisted. Also it's a mixed development that's mostly affordable housing, which is another, also it's not surrounded by a miserable fence it all merges seamlessly into the surrounding area.
This high density mash-up was designed by Mary Duggan Architects who must be very pleased this week. They created five squat towers, all brick-faced and multi-faceted, like a jagged update of a set of gasometers. Every resident gets a dual-facing flat with a potentially twinkly balcony, all the blocks are separated out between lawns and congregational areas, while scattered around are a little playground, a few raised planters, also steps and ramps and the odd bench.
I liked the open nature of the place, also that they're not just the usual boxy cuboids, also the fact that grass and paths have trumped cars, also the fact it's only five storeys high (it'd totally dominate the skyline from the town centre if it were seven), also that you can walk through without feeling you're intruding, also that it's not just private housing, indeed the last time social housing won the Stirling Prize was way back in 2019 with a Norwich street. A London project's won the prize four years out of the last five and perhaps they should share it around a bit more.
What's truly strange here is that the arms-length body who commissioned the project have already been wound up. They were Brick by Brick, Croydon's attempt to build savvy housing on council land, but who failed to fix finances in advance and whose liquidation problems were fundamental in bankrupting the council in 2020. The planned deal on this site promptly fell through losing millions, then the new administration sold it off on the cheap, and it's frankly amazing that such an omnishambles should have won so prestigious a prize.
What you might like if you turned up, over and above the architecture, are the information boards for the Surrey Iron Railway. This was arguably the world's first public railway and, amazingly, part of its embankment forms the rear of the site. I found three information boards, each highlighting a different part of the nine mile route, strangely with the Wandsworth board in prime position up front and the Coulsdon board tucked away higher up and further back.
Turn up on the day after awards night and the estate's not exactly normal. I tried hard to keep out of the way of the film crew wandering round, also dodged the four serious-looking folk waiting for a chat to discuss how they built it. I guess there isn't always a scale model of the development on the terrace outside the uppermost block, it was brought in purely for publicity purposes, but it was fun to see small- and full-size simultaneously.
And in amongst the mild fuss actual residents of Lion Green Road continued their lives unabated, one walking home with shopping, one sitting in the window and one exiting in a pushchair. The proof of the design is in the living.
This is a well connected site, close to the shops and the station, but also a challenging site being on a noticeable slope. The original plan was to include 80-odd flats but they actually managed 157, which is one contributary reason why the project got shortlisted. Also it's a mixed development that's mostly affordable housing, which is another, also it's not surrounded by a miserable fence it all merges seamlessly into the surrounding area.
This high density mash-up was designed by Mary Duggan Architects who must be very pleased this week. They created five squat towers, all brick-faced and multi-faceted, like a jagged update of a set of gasometers. Every resident gets a dual-facing flat with a potentially twinkly balcony, all the blocks are separated out between lawns and congregational areas, while scattered around are a little playground, a few raised planters, also steps and ramps and the odd bench.
I liked the open nature of the place, also that they're not just the usual boxy cuboids, also the fact that grass and paths have trumped cars, also the fact it's only five storeys high (it'd totally dominate the skyline from the town centre if it were seven), also that you can walk through without feeling you're intruding, also that it's not just private housing, indeed the last time social housing won the Stirling Prize was way back in 2019 with a Norwich street. A London project's won the prize four years out of the last five and perhaps they should share it around a bit more.
What's truly strange here is that the arms-length body who commissioned the project have already been wound up. They were Brick by Brick, Croydon's attempt to build savvy housing on council land, but who failed to fix finances in advance and whose liquidation problems were fundamental in bankrupting the council in 2020. The planned deal on this site promptly fell through losing millions, then the new administration sold it off on the cheap, and it's frankly amazing that such an omnishambles should have won so prestigious a prize.
What you might like if you turned up, over and above the architecture, are the information boards for the Surrey Iron Railway. This was arguably the world's first public railway and, amazingly, part of its embankment forms the rear of the site. I found three information boards, each highlighting a different part of the nine mile route, strangely with the Wandsworth board in prime position up front and the Coulsdon board tucked away higher up and further back.
Turn up on the day after awards night and the estate's not exactly normal. I tried hard to keep out of the way of the film crew wandering round, also dodged the four serious-looking folk waiting for a chat to discuss how they built it. I guess there isn't always a scale model of the development on the terrace outside the uppermost block, it was brought in purely for publicity purposes, but it was fun to see small- and full-size simultaneously.
And in amongst the mild fuss actual residents of Lion Green Road continued their lives unabated, one walking home with shopping, one sitting in the window and one exiting in a pushchair. The proof of the design is in the living.
Latchmere Stream [ 17-Oct-26 1:00am ]
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Latchmere Stream
Kingston → Ham (1¼ miles)
[Latchmere Stream → Sudbrook → Thames]
This barely counts as an unlost river, given all but 50m has been buried, but let's attempt to follow it all the same. Its source was close to Kingston station, not by the shops but across Richmond Road a short distance up Canbury Park Road, initially more a set of drainage ditches than a proper spring. You can't see anything rivery hereabouts, not even any telltale contours, but the stream's early course is patently obvious from any street map - it followed the long thin slice of former fields between Acre Road and Elm Road.
Elm Road is lined by a gorgeous sequence of late Victorian detached cottages, most individually named, which would once have faced the brook and now face a recreation ground at best. But new residents didn't like living near a smelly stream so it was culverted early, allowing development of a splendid suburb to proceed undisturbed.
Local notes: The local bus is the occasional K5. The Wych Elm pub plays a very strong hanging basket game, even in October. The Cross Road Fish Bar is a true old school chippie, still offering jumbo saveloys, pickled eggs and buttered rolls. The local supermarket is Kingston's Co-op. Elm Road Rec's AGM is next Wednesday. St Agatha's RC church is Italianate and Grade II listed. In case I haven't over-emphasised this enough, what a lovely off-piste neighbourhood this is.
The river then turned due north through the grounds of what are now two schools. It formed the eastern boundary of a trio of fields that are now Latchmere Rec, a green quadrilateral well looked after by its Friends. The pond in the corner is not original, neither is it full because it's currently experiencing water retention issues due to a compromised liner. Also the cafe closed in July, sorry, and you just missed last night's Bat Walk demonstrating how to use a bat detector.
Further downstream were long ponds where the allotments now are, just off Latchmere Lane because what else would you call a lane that runs parallel to the Latchmere Stream. The boundary between the boroughs of Kingston and Richmond follows the buried stream here, just for 250m but it's nice to be remembered.
Ahead is Ham Common, this eastern half now thick mixed oak woodland as a consequence of grazing ceasing. The Latchmere Stream was culverted early here to make way for Parkgate House, a Georgian mansion so smart and secluded that the ruler of Abu Dhabi bought it in the 1980s. They couldn't tame it completely, however, thus a group of local volunteers still form a toad patrol each spring to help migrating amphibians cross Church Road to reach their spawning grounds.
Sit on Roger & Hilda's bench, your back against two carved toads, and you may spot the stream emerging below and flowing free towards Richmond Park. Needless to say you'll see nothing at present, neither just before the park wall nor just after, just an overgrown reedy channel. Also like I said the Latchmere Stream only manages 50m in the open air before, in this case, merging into the Sudbrook and losing its name. If you want to follow a proper unlost river, better to have followed that instead.
16-Oct-26
Latchmere Stream
Kingston → Ham (1¼ miles)
[Latchmere Stream → Sudbrook → Thames]
This barely counts as an unlost river, given all but 50m has been buried, but let's attempt to follow it all the same. Its source was close to Kingston station, not by the shops but across Richmond Road a short distance up Canbury Park Road, initially more a set of drainage ditches than a proper spring. You can't see anything rivery hereabouts, not even any telltale contours, but the stream's early course is patently obvious from any street map - it followed the long thin slice of former fields between Acre Road and Elm Road.
Elm Road is lined by a gorgeous sequence of late Victorian detached cottages, most individually named, which would once have faced the brook and now face a recreation ground at best. But new residents didn't like living near a smelly stream so it was culverted early, allowing development of a splendid suburb to proceed undisturbed.
Local notes: The local bus is the occasional K5. The Wych Elm pub plays a very strong hanging basket game, even in October. The Cross Road Fish Bar is a true old school chippie, still offering jumbo saveloys, pickled eggs and buttered rolls. The local supermarket is Kingston's Co-op. Elm Road Rec's AGM is next Wednesday. St Agatha's RC church is Italianate and Grade II listed. In case I haven't over-emphasised this enough, what a lovely off-piste neighbourhood this is.
The river then turned due north through the grounds of what are now two schools. It formed the eastern boundary of a trio of fields that are now Latchmere Rec, a green quadrilateral well looked after by its Friends. The pond in the corner is not original, neither is it full because it's currently experiencing water retention issues due to a compromised liner. Also the cafe closed in July, sorry, and you just missed last night's Bat Walk demonstrating how to use a bat detector.
Further downstream were long ponds where the allotments now are, just off Latchmere Lane because what else would you call a lane that runs parallel to the Latchmere Stream. The boundary between the boroughs of Kingston and Richmond follows the buried stream here, just for 250m but it's nice to be remembered.
Ahead is Ham Common, this eastern half now thick mixed oak woodland as a consequence of grazing ceasing. The Latchmere Stream was culverted early here to make way for Parkgate House, a Georgian mansion so smart and secluded that the ruler of Abu Dhabi bought it in the 1980s. They couldn't tame it completely, however, thus a group of local volunteers still form a toad patrol each spring to help migrating amphibians cross Church Road to reach their spawning grounds.
Sit on Roger & Hilda's bench, your back against two carved toads, and you may spot the stream emerging below and flowing free towards Richmond Park. Needless to say you'll see nothing at present, neither just before the park wall nor just after, just an overgrown reedy channel. Also like I said the Latchmere Stream only manages 50m in the open air before, in this case, merging into the Sudbrook and losing its name. If you want to follow a proper unlost river, better to have followed that instead.
Sudbrook [ 16-Oct-26 7:00am ]
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON
Sudbrook
Richmond Park → Ham → Petersham (2 miles)
[Sudbrook → Thames]
Most of Richmond Park drains to the east towards the Beverley Brook. The watery channels in the Isabella Plantation and the Pen Ponds, for example, all end up flowing that way. But the corner of the park closest to Kingston instead drains north, direct into the Thames, along channels you can initially see if you know where to look. At Ham Gate they're joined by a suburban tributary we'll get to later, then everything hides within a golf course before flowing through culverts to reach the Thames alongside Petersham Meadows. This is the Sudbrook, an ancient but generally unknown unlost river, and alas not at much of a watercourse if you go exploring during a prolonged drought.
The Sudbrook begins near the Ladderstile Gate, one of a dozen entrances to Richmond Park and the closest to the Isabella Plantation. Walk straight ahead for a couple of minutes and you come to a ferny patch ringed by brambles, within which the headwaters of the river ostensibly rise. They don't at present, it's bone dry, but they must sometimes because four planks have been laid down to lead the adjacent footpath across a shallow channel. A more reliable opener is Dann's Pond, a longstanding pool named after a Victorian gamekeeper called Alfred Dann and apparently a refuge for the great crested newt. It is however surrounded by thick trees and an electric fence so hard to see at the best of times, which these are not, so I didn't.
But below the pond even the temporary stream has left its mark upon the landscape. As the heath slopes gently downwards a broad notch is plainly visible, and continues downhill for almost half a mile. Most people hereabouts are following the sandy bridleway that runs between an avenue of trees, so oblivious of the parallel Sudbrook. But I stepped off into the dip, beneath beeches shedding mast and oaks not yet dispensing acorns, and tracked a river that wasn't there. I did at one point find a broad boggy patch damp enough to have standing water, also a minor trackway suggesting I was by no means the first to walk beside the Sudbrook, but mainly I found a carpet of ferns with a thread of dried mud.
Further down is the first crosspath that needs a little bridge, a three metre pipe beneath, then more impenetrable ferns as the slow descent continues, Just before Queen's Road a small pond intervenes, its edges all dark mud and fallen branches, as the Sudbrook queues to follow a grating beneath the roadway. Watch for cars and speeding bikes if you choose to follow, and maybe look down if you're ever the one speeding by up top. This is Ham Dip, a blatant depression created by the Sudbrook beside the four-way junction known as Ham Cross. Alongside Ham Gate Avenue is a larger permanent pool called Ham Dip Pond where lilies float, not quite idyllic but the best we've seen so far, just before another sluice leads under another road.
The water reemerges in Ham Gate Pond, by far the largest pool so far, but this is a nature reserve so has been firmly locked behind a perimeter fence. It's there to keep deer and dogs out, this to decrease turbidity, boost nutrient levels and increase invertebrate diversity, so I read. It's also the last place you're going to see any water, so make the most. In damper conditions the Sudbrook flows out and, just thirty metres later, its tributary ducks underneath the park wall and merges in. It's come all the way from Kingston and has had a much more eventful journey than just ferns, mud and ferns. Cue an interlude...
Beyond the wall is Richmond Golf Course, formerly Sudbrook Park, the premier 18-holer in TW10. They've been based here since 1891 and their clubhouse is an utterly splendid Palladian mansion in the centre of the course called Sudbrook House. As an outsider all you can see is occasional chimneys through the double fence, but members can stroke their trophies in its central Cube Room before hopping off in a buggy to play a round. The Sudbrook was once diverted off-course to look ornamental, but after golf took over from the Duke of Buccleuch it was unceremoniously buried in a pipe along the drive. This emerges on the far side after half a mile, initially beneath a white arch, then underneath a road that could only be called Sudbrook Lane. For a river you can't see, it sure does get a lot of mentions.
Sudbrook Lane is impressively exclusive, lined by large 18th century houses that money almost can't buy. Cameras watch as you pass, old brick walls keep out prying eyes and the whole thing's illuminated at night by posh lampposts masquerading as gaslights. I did feel a tad out of place. At the north end the lane joins the unnervingly narrow Petersham Road, not far from The Fox and Duck, a fine pub which once doubled up as the clubhouse when the golf course was bedding in. It's hard to imagine the stream once threading beside the road between the most enormous mansions, but it must have done because on the next bend another street name gives the game away.
River Lane could of course be so named because it ends at the Thames, but I like to thinks it's because the Sudbrook once flowed this way for its last quarter mile. It's long been culverted just to the east of this prestigious lane, a dead end where £9m might buy you a Terry Farrell six-bedder, or you could choose to live in an expensive house instead. The pipe then passes under the edge of Petersham Meadow where cattle still graze, before emerging from a concrete block beside a muddy slipway and terminating in the Thames. The Sudbrook's hardly the most unlost of rivers but at least it gets its mile of freedom inside Richmond Park, even if in our present climate it's just four ponds joined by a dry ferny groove.
15-Oct-26
Sudbrook
Richmond Park → Ham → Petersham (2 miles)
[Sudbrook → Thames]
Most of Richmond Park drains to the east towards the Beverley Brook. The watery channels in the Isabella Plantation and the Pen Ponds, for example, all end up flowing that way. But the corner of the park closest to Kingston instead drains north, direct into the Thames, along channels you can initially see if you know where to look. At Ham Gate they're joined by a suburban tributary we'll get to later, then everything hides within a golf course before flowing through culverts to reach the Thames alongside Petersham Meadows. This is the Sudbrook, an ancient but generally unknown unlost river, and alas not at much of a watercourse if you go exploring during a prolonged drought.
The Sudbrook begins near the Ladderstile Gate, one of a dozen entrances to Richmond Park and the closest to the Isabella Plantation. Walk straight ahead for a couple of minutes and you come to a ferny patch ringed by brambles, within which the headwaters of the river ostensibly rise. They don't at present, it's bone dry, but they must sometimes because four planks have been laid down to lead the adjacent footpath across a shallow channel. A more reliable opener is Dann's Pond, a longstanding pool named after a Victorian gamekeeper called Alfred Dann and apparently a refuge for the great crested newt. It is however surrounded by thick trees and an electric fence so hard to see at the best of times, which these are not, so I didn't.
But below the pond even the temporary stream has left its mark upon the landscape. As the heath slopes gently downwards a broad notch is plainly visible, and continues downhill for almost half a mile. Most people hereabouts are following the sandy bridleway that runs between an avenue of trees, so oblivious of the parallel Sudbrook. But I stepped off into the dip, beneath beeches shedding mast and oaks not yet dispensing acorns, and tracked a river that wasn't there. I did at one point find a broad boggy patch damp enough to have standing water, also a minor trackway suggesting I was by no means the first to walk beside the Sudbrook, but mainly I found a carpet of ferns with a thread of dried mud.
Further down is the first crosspath that needs a little bridge, a three metre pipe beneath, then more impenetrable ferns as the slow descent continues, Just before Queen's Road a small pond intervenes, its edges all dark mud and fallen branches, as the Sudbrook queues to follow a grating beneath the roadway. Watch for cars and speeding bikes if you choose to follow, and maybe look down if you're ever the one speeding by up top. This is Ham Dip, a blatant depression created by the Sudbrook beside the four-way junction known as Ham Cross. Alongside Ham Gate Avenue is a larger permanent pool called Ham Dip Pond where lilies float, not quite idyllic but the best we've seen so far, just before another sluice leads under another road.
The water reemerges in Ham Gate Pond, by far the largest pool so far, but this is a nature reserve so has been firmly locked behind a perimeter fence. It's there to keep deer and dogs out, this to decrease turbidity, boost nutrient levels and increase invertebrate diversity, so I read. It's also the last place you're going to see any water, so make the most. In damper conditions the Sudbrook flows out and, just thirty metres later, its tributary ducks underneath the park wall and merges in. It's come all the way from Kingston and has had a much more eventful journey than just ferns, mud and ferns. Cue an interlude...
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDONThe conjoined stream is still the Sudbrook, now snaking openly along the western edge of Richmond Park. This green wedge is known as Ham Bottom, funniest of all the hammy names hereabouts, so named because it lies below the gentle climb that forms the (very) long southern flank of Richmond Hill. Hardly anyone comes this far over, let alone crosses the little bridge to walk on the far side of the stream, because it's not leading anywhere useful. A shallow channel meanders between occasional trees, maybe a foot deep with nothing in it but a few shrivelled oak leaves. Be sure to take the last bridge back otherwise it's a dead end, the Sudbrook passing through a vertical grille in the wall to exit the park into a very private space.
Latchmere Stream
Kingston → Ham (1¼ miles)
[Latchmere Stream → Sudbrook → Thames]
(coming later)
Beyond the wall is Richmond Golf Course, formerly Sudbrook Park, the premier 18-holer in TW10. They've been based here since 1891 and their clubhouse is an utterly splendid Palladian mansion in the centre of the course called Sudbrook House. As an outsider all you can see is occasional chimneys through the double fence, but members can stroke their trophies in its central Cube Room before hopping off in a buggy to play a round. The Sudbrook was once diverted off-course to look ornamental, but after golf took over from the Duke of Buccleuch it was unceremoniously buried in a pipe along the drive. This emerges on the far side after half a mile, initially beneath a white arch, then underneath a road that could only be called Sudbrook Lane. For a river you can't see, it sure does get a lot of mentions.
Sudbrook Lane is impressively exclusive, lined by large 18th century houses that money almost can't buy. Cameras watch as you pass, old brick walls keep out prying eyes and the whole thing's illuminated at night by posh lampposts masquerading as gaslights. I did feel a tad out of place. At the north end the lane joins the unnervingly narrow Petersham Road, not far from The Fox and Duck, a fine pub which once doubled up as the clubhouse when the golf course was bedding in. It's hard to imagine the stream once threading beside the road between the most enormous mansions, but it must have done because on the next bend another street name gives the game away.
River Lane could of course be so named because it ends at the Thames, but I like to thinks it's because the Sudbrook once flowed this way for its last quarter mile. It's long been culverted just to the east of this prestigious lane, a dead end where £9m might buy you a Terry Farrell six-bedder, or you could choose to live in an expensive house instead. The pipe then passes under the edge of Petersham Meadow where cattle still graze, before emerging from a concrete block beside a muddy slipway and terminating in the Thames. The Sudbrook's hardly the most unlost of rivers but at least it gets its mile of freedom inside Richmond Park, even if in our present climate it's just four ponds joined by a dry ferny groove.
Seven Rickmansworth shops [ 15-Oct-26 7:00am ]
I went back to Rickmansworth yesterday and remembered several old High Street shops.
Mac Fisheries
I remember Mac Fisheries, it smelt of fish, all these fish laid out on slabs at the front of the store open to the street, a regular high street staple in the 1970s, I imagine jolly fishmongers in blue and white striped aprons doling out bright yellow haddock to housewives wearing hats, my Mum never wore a hat to go shopping, we'd get the bus down from Croxley and it'd drop us off right outside Mac Fisheries, maybe that's why I remember it, the sign for Mac Fisheries was a blue circle divided by a white cross with a fish in every quadrant, it always reminded me of a road sign, obviously you wouldn't have a road sign for fish, we never bought fish after getting off the bus obviously we bought it just before we caught the bus home, we didn't buy it often, my brother wasn't a fan, alas Mac Fisheries went bust in 1979, I'm not sure how long the Rickmansworth branch held out, you just don't get fishmongers in high streets any more, not mainstream like this was, the town has nothing similar now, I tried to work out what's being sold in the same unit today, maybe Boots Opticians, maybe Kawaii Nails, maybe The Meat Like It Used To Be Company, so I checked an old photo in a newspaper nostalgia article and apparently Mac Fisheries was further up the High Street where Prezzo used to be, I guess it must have moved since 1963, it definitely used to be beside the bus stop, there's no bus stop any more, and no fish.
Bejam
Across the street was Bejam, the freezer store, it felt so futuristic in the 1970s, a shop devoted to all things frozen, we didn't have a freezer until 1974, only a tiny box at the top of the fridge, then we moved to a new house so there was room for a freezer at the back of the garage, not a chest freezer because the Renault 5 would have hit that, this had lots of shelves and the shop you'd visit to fill those shelves was Bejam, the so-called freezer centre, I think back then the ice cream excited me most, especially when it was a tub of raspberry ripple, also nothing has ever topped a Bird's Eye Supermousse, then there were frozen pies and fish fingers, a lot of this stuff was made by Findus, we'd go to Bejam and walk up and down the aisles of chest freezers, sometimes daring to lift the lid and look in, they had big cards with prices on to tempt you to open up, inside might be frozen vegetables or an iced-up pile of roasting chickens, and not usually much on the shelves above the freezers because Bejam was seriously spartan by modern standards, and what do you know the store on the corner of Northway is still a freezer store, it's now Iceland, they bought out the business in 1989 and are rather snazzier, they have glass on the front of the cabinets now, but I remember when it was Bejam, for me it always will be.
WH Smith
There's been a WH Smith here for decades, a true High Street staple, somewhere to buy staplers and felt pens and the Watford Observer, you can tell it's been here ages because it still has beautiful tiles out front proclaiming they sell Maps & Guides and Childrens Books, I loved coming in here, I'd check the paperbacks and also the stationery, might even have bought my Record Mirror, it wasn't a huge store, not like the Watford branch, but it was a wonderland of small desirables at pocket money prices, also Quink cartridges I might need for school, maybe eye up a new calculator, they rebranded it TG Jones last year, a ridiculous idea, clearly asset-stripping, and hey presto the Rickmansworth branch closes on Saturday, the front is smothered with yellow notices, also as the end draws nigh everything's now 70% off, not that much is left, the back half of the store is nigh empty and the stationery selection up front is pretty sparse too, some highlighter pens, 2026 diary Filofax inserts, mini geometry sets, map pins, Dymo labels, loose pencil sharpeners, chalk, a laminator, shelves of non-bestselling paperbacks, amusingly they still have all this week's TV listings magazines because they expect to sell those but the rest is just the dregs, "everything's out" said the man behind the till, they're running the store into the ground, four more days then the doors shut, I bet they take those lovely tiles down, era closed.
Woolworths
Now McDonalds, enough said.
Tames
Every High Street has its independents, some dear old shop run by a local, all the prices stuck on with little paper labels, back in the day those prices all ended with p rather than starting with £, this was Tames, this was Rickmansworth's stationers, it even said The Rickmansworth Stationers on the awning, they sold the more specialist stuff like 24 fibre tips in assorted widths or account books interleaved with carbon paper, also all that ink we somehow got through in those days, they knew which hole punch fitted which ring binder, I'd come in here mainly for a browse but if they had a red Berol pen I was smitten, they also sold office supplies when there were still offices in Rickmansworth, also colour prints before we could do those ourselves before we didn't bother, it says a lot that Ryman never opened a branch in the town, I love how the shop is named after the owners using the full initials, M.F.N. was Michael Frank Norman Tame, he died in 2006 so it's amazing this place lasted as long as it did, the shutters very recently down, the interior dark and frozen awaiting repurchase and rebirth, "Prominently positioned retail premises", "high footfall location", "new lease to be granted for a term to be agreed", I bet it'll be a food outlet or something wellness-related, not a vape shop because there's one of those nextdoor, people don't want stuff any more, thus stationery is stuffed.
Tesco
These days Tesco has a massive supermarket down by the canal where Frogmore Wharf used to be, they moved there in 1992 from the Penn Place precinct, a smaller store with inadequate parking, but until the early 1970s they were here in the High Street near the bottom of Station Road, a smaller store still, but that's the one I remember, a very sharp memory of the first aisle with its high shelves, I was only small, a sparser supermarket than today, for some reason I see washing powder boxes but that's probably not what was here, also cards with prices and slogans hanging from the ceiling, also big baskets rather than trolleys, Tesco totally isn't like this today, they completely reinvented themselves soon after, but because I'm just about old enough I still remember the old ways, the drab units supermarkets used to be, we didn't come here often, we did a lot of food shopping in Budgens down the road, also Sainsbury and Caters in Watford, it was always an event but that's because Mum didn't take me every time, maybe there'd be chocolate mint eclairs to take home, these days the former Tesco store is long demolished, I think it's where the charity shop now is, while anyone wanting spaghetti loops or potato rosti goes to M&S Food a few doors down or Waitrose up by the station because Rickmansworth's been socially climbing since the 70s, but some of us remember how it used to be.
Strawberry Fields
This record shop came to Penn Place in October 1968, Tony Blackburn came to open it and apparently traffic in the town centre seized up, they'd just built a new link road called Northway to bypass the narrow High Street and alongside was Penn Place, this new precinct of lowrise concrete parades, very of its time, so the ideal place for a hip and cool purveyor of vinyl, I was much too young to be impressed at the time, even later when the Wombles first appealed I probably went to Watford for that, but I remember Strawberry Fields with its funky typeface and two red stripes, a burst of glamour across a grey precinct, far more interesting to a child than the dry cleaners or the Rediffusion showroom, they moved to the High Street eventually, meanwhile Penn Place became superfluous to the town's needs, the last business moved out in 1996 and then they demolished the entire futuristic precinct, it's now flats because obviously it's now flats, then Strawberry Fields closed pre-millennium, just as Mac Fisheries and Bejam and the old Tesco went, just as Woolworths and Tames went more recently, now WH Smiths has four days left before it joins the ranks of shops in Rickmansworth I merely remember, the curse of the older person being to know what everything was before it became what it is now, you can't change the past but you can remember it, best embrace the new retail selection, such as it is, even if you'd prefer Strawberry Fields to a smashed avo on toasted sourdough.
14-Oct-26
Mac Fisheries
I remember Mac Fisheries, it smelt of fish, all these fish laid out on slabs at the front of the store open to the street, a regular high street staple in the 1970s, I imagine jolly fishmongers in blue and white striped aprons doling out bright yellow haddock to housewives wearing hats, my Mum never wore a hat to go shopping, we'd get the bus down from Croxley and it'd drop us off right outside Mac Fisheries, maybe that's why I remember it, the sign for Mac Fisheries was a blue circle divided by a white cross with a fish in every quadrant, it always reminded me of a road sign, obviously you wouldn't have a road sign for fish, we never bought fish after getting off the bus obviously we bought it just before we caught the bus home, we didn't buy it often, my brother wasn't a fan, alas Mac Fisheries went bust in 1979, I'm not sure how long the Rickmansworth branch held out, you just don't get fishmongers in high streets any more, not mainstream like this was, the town has nothing similar now, I tried to work out what's being sold in the same unit today, maybe Boots Opticians, maybe Kawaii Nails, maybe The Meat Like It Used To Be Company, so I checked an old photo in a newspaper nostalgia article and apparently Mac Fisheries was further up the High Street where Prezzo used to be, I guess it must have moved since 1963, it definitely used to be beside the bus stop, there's no bus stop any more, and no fish.
Bejam
Across the street was Bejam, the freezer store, it felt so futuristic in the 1970s, a shop devoted to all things frozen, we didn't have a freezer until 1974, only a tiny box at the top of the fridge, then we moved to a new house so there was room for a freezer at the back of the garage, not a chest freezer because the Renault 5 would have hit that, this had lots of shelves and the shop you'd visit to fill those shelves was Bejam, the so-called freezer centre, I think back then the ice cream excited me most, especially when it was a tub of raspberry ripple, also nothing has ever topped a Bird's Eye Supermousse, then there were frozen pies and fish fingers, a lot of this stuff was made by Findus, we'd go to Bejam and walk up and down the aisles of chest freezers, sometimes daring to lift the lid and look in, they had big cards with prices on to tempt you to open up, inside might be frozen vegetables or an iced-up pile of roasting chickens, and not usually much on the shelves above the freezers because Bejam was seriously spartan by modern standards, and what do you know the store on the corner of Northway is still a freezer store, it's now Iceland, they bought out the business in 1989 and are rather snazzier, they have glass on the front of the cabinets now, but I remember when it was Bejam, for me it always will be.
WH Smith
There's been a WH Smith here for decades, a true High Street staple, somewhere to buy staplers and felt pens and the Watford Observer, you can tell it's been here ages because it still has beautiful tiles out front proclaiming they sell Maps & Guides and Childrens Books, I loved coming in here, I'd check the paperbacks and also the stationery, might even have bought my Record Mirror, it wasn't a huge store, not like the Watford branch, but it was a wonderland of small desirables at pocket money prices, also Quink cartridges I might need for school, maybe eye up a new calculator, they rebranded it TG Jones last year, a ridiculous idea, clearly asset-stripping, and hey presto the Rickmansworth branch closes on Saturday, the front is smothered with yellow notices, also as the end draws nigh everything's now 70% off, not that much is left, the back half of the store is nigh empty and the stationery selection up front is pretty sparse too, some highlighter pens, 2026 diary Filofax inserts, mini geometry sets, map pins, Dymo labels, loose pencil sharpeners, chalk, a laminator, shelves of non-bestselling paperbacks, amusingly they still have all this week's TV listings magazines because they expect to sell those but the rest is just the dregs, "everything's out" said the man behind the till, they're running the store into the ground, four more days then the doors shut, I bet they take those lovely tiles down, era closed.
Woolworths
Now McDonalds, enough said.
Tames
Every High Street has its independents, some dear old shop run by a local, all the prices stuck on with little paper labels, back in the day those prices all ended with p rather than starting with £, this was Tames, this was Rickmansworth's stationers, it even said The Rickmansworth Stationers on the awning, they sold the more specialist stuff like 24 fibre tips in assorted widths or account books interleaved with carbon paper, also all that ink we somehow got through in those days, they knew which hole punch fitted which ring binder, I'd come in here mainly for a browse but if they had a red Berol pen I was smitten, they also sold office supplies when there were still offices in Rickmansworth, also colour prints before we could do those ourselves before we didn't bother, it says a lot that Ryman never opened a branch in the town, I love how the shop is named after the owners using the full initials, M.F.N. was Michael Frank Norman Tame, he died in 2006 so it's amazing this place lasted as long as it did, the shutters very recently down, the interior dark and frozen awaiting repurchase and rebirth, "Prominently positioned retail premises", "high footfall location", "new lease to be granted for a term to be agreed", I bet it'll be a food outlet or something wellness-related, not a vape shop because there's one of those nextdoor, people don't want stuff any more, thus stationery is stuffed.
Tesco
These days Tesco has a massive supermarket down by the canal where Frogmore Wharf used to be, they moved there in 1992 from the Penn Place precinct, a smaller store with inadequate parking, but until the early 1970s they were here in the High Street near the bottom of Station Road, a smaller store still, but that's the one I remember, a very sharp memory of the first aisle with its high shelves, I was only small, a sparser supermarket than today, for some reason I see washing powder boxes but that's probably not what was here, also cards with prices and slogans hanging from the ceiling, also big baskets rather than trolleys, Tesco totally isn't like this today, they completely reinvented themselves soon after, but because I'm just about old enough I still remember the old ways, the drab units supermarkets used to be, we didn't come here often, we did a lot of food shopping in Budgens down the road, also Sainsbury and Caters in Watford, it was always an event but that's because Mum didn't take me every time, maybe there'd be chocolate mint eclairs to take home, these days the former Tesco store is long demolished, I think it's where the charity shop now is, while anyone wanting spaghetti loops or potato rosti goes to M&S Food a few doors down or Waitrose up by the station because Rickmansworth's been socially climbing since the 70s, but some of us remember how it used to be.
Strawberry Fields
This record shop came to Penn Place in October 1968, Tony Blackburn came to open it and apparently traffic in the town centre seized up, they'd just built a new link road called Northway to bypass the narrow High Street and alongside was Penn Place, this new precinct of lowrise concrete parades, very of its time, so the ideal place for a hip and cool purveyor of vinyl, I was much too young to be impressed at the time, even later when the Wombles first appealed I probably went to Watford for that, but I remember Strawberry Fields with its funky typeface and two red stripes, a burst of glamour across a grey precinct, far more interesting to a child than the dry cleaners or the Rediffusion showroom, they moved to the High Street eventually, meanwhile Penn Place became superfluous to the town's needs, the last business moved out in 1996 and then they demolished the entire futuristic precinct, it's now flats because obviously it's now flats, then Strawberry Fields closed pre-millennium, just as Mac Fisheries and Bejam and the old Tesco went, just as Woolworths and Tames went more recently, now WH Smiths has four days left before it joins the ranks of shops in Rickmansworth I merely remember, the curse of the older person being to know what everything was before it became what it is now, you can't change the past but you can remember it, best embrace the new retail selection, such as it is, even if you'd prefer Strawberry Fields to a smashed avo on toasted sourdough.
1066 London Road [ 14-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Today is the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.
To celebrate I've been out in search of every London property numbered 1066.
And I've found four, maybe two more, maybe forty-seven.
You might be surprised to see that some London streets have over 1000 houses. But they do, as you can see, in a few key locations. What you need is a long road, generally arterial, all of which has been numbered consecutively without being renamed midway. Often these are old and important, possibly even ancient, but some are interwar bypasses lined by suburban housing. Let's start with the house with the red door...
1066 Green Lane, Becontree RM8 1BT
Borough: Barking and Dagenham
Highest numbered property: 1148
This 1066 can be found on the massive council estate at Becontree, up in the northeastern corner near the fiveway junction by the leisure centre. It's a lowly pebbledash home erected circa 1930, no frills, bunched together with seven neighbours in a long dour terrace. Minimal windows, limited love. Entrance is through an arch into a porch shared with number 1068, with electricity meters out front and a front garden that's long been crazy-paved. Here the owners park a Ford car and a silver van with ladders on the roof, so likely self-employed, and also a have a skylight in the roof suggesting there are now more than the two original bedrooms. I checked back and the last time this property sold it was bought for just £85,000, now a ridiculously tiny sum but that's what ex-council houses went for in Barking & Dagenham in 2001.
Until the 1920s Green Lane was one of a handful of country lanes that ran through the estate, three quiet miles from Ilford to Becontree Heath. This section was once just past the end of the heath, close to where a footpath from Valence House cut across the fields, but since transformed into very little natural at all. Across the street are a Christian Fellowship that used to be a Pentecostal Church, a car wash that used to be a garage and a pub that now sells more meals than beer. The final house on the other side of Green Lane is immediately opposite but is only number 945, so if the Battle of Hastings had happened in 1065 or 1067 I wouldn't be here.
1066 High Road, Chadwell Heath RM6 4BB
Borough: Redbridge
Highest numbered property: 1211
Just a mile away, round the corner from a Crossrail station, is a road that already existed by 1066. It's the Roman road that originally connected London and Colchester, here passing straight through Chadwell Heath. It's called High Road all the way from Ilford to the edge of Havering, and it turns out three miles is quite enough to get house numbers up into four figures. Only the Redbridge segment is numbered sequentially, indeed just up the road B&D starts and High Road starts again from 1, so we've been extremely fortunate it gets just far enough to enter the Norman era. In fact 1066 High Road used to be 47 Belstone Terrace, but around fifty years ago a lengthy renumbering exercise was undertaken extending east from the original 863 in Goodmayes. There's always a reason for a 1066.
This 1066 is immediately alongside the Wangey Road bus shelter, so close that the owners probably curse every time someone sits on their front wall. It's near the end of a long row of interwar houses, much like semis but bunched together in fours, just before it breaks for what used to be the Gaumont cinema. The front garden includes a trunky conifer that's shot up fast, some dangly fibre optics that look like they came from a garden centre and a stack of recycling tubs, from which I know they buy their milk at Sainsbury's. The house went up for sale in 2022 so it's possible to peer inside, confirming that the owners put a heck of a lot of effort into glitzy internal decor but didn't really give a damn about their back garden. And I thank them for replacing the pane above the front porch about ten years ago because that's where the number 1066 now glitters, prior to which you could only really work it out by sequencing the neighbours.
1066 Eastern Avenue, Newbury Park IG2 7SF
Borough: Redbridge
Highest numbered property: 1228
Another mile away, this time on the far side of King George Hospital, this 1066 is on the A12. Eastern Avenue is a key Essex-bound arterial, built in the 1920s as a bypass for the main road the previous 1066 was on. Back in those days they believed in ribbon development, a line of housing facing both sides of the dual carriageway, although at least here they added a parallel access lane for parking cars. Architecturally it's a hybrid, bottom half redbrick top half pebbledash, and just for a change it's one of a line of maisonettes. Annoyingly 1066 is on the top floor, annoying for them because they get the pebbles and annoying for Battle of Hastings purposes because access is at the side, not the front. If there is a 1066 on the door it's not visible from the road, although I'm sure delivery drivers cope by counting out the neighbours. And in news to depress anyone currently seeking a 2-bedder it last sold for £50,000, this way back in 1995, London's housing ladder now a battle very much lost.
It's likely no coincidence that the only three houses in London numbered 1066 are all in outer east London and all on important parallel 'A' roads. Only here was development late enough for residential roads to run to great length, also there's not much in the way of rivers and contours to get in the way. Bad luck to Forest Road in Walthamstow which only gets to 1051 and to Romford Road in Ilford which only gets to 1043.
1066 London Road, Thornton Heath CR7 7ND
Borough: Croydon
Highest numbered property: 1597
The only 1066 south of the river is, just for a change, a shop. It was formerly a unisex salon and a yoga centre but since the pandemic it's been Gujrati Barber. It trades at the centre of a parade of a dozen shops on another main road, this time halfway between Streatham and Croydon. Yet again it dates from the late 1920s, as if this was the proper peak for four-figure roads (or else an intriguing coincidence). Inside is a pristine white room with mirrors, sinks and product along one side and slouchable chairs on the other, also a TV on the back wall so the Gujrati barber doesn't get bored. I don't know what you pay round your way but a haircut here is just £10, a skinfade only £12 and if you're under 10 or over 65 merely £8. Also this establishment is in direct competition with Bulley's Barbers across the road, a longerstanding groomer and also lowlier, its row of customer chairs not somewhere you'd want to wait for long.
It's not usually the case that both sides of a very long street are numbered in tandem but here the two barbers are 1063 and 1066 so it's all worked out perfectly. Also London Road's numbering starts by West Croydon station and manages to reach an amazing 1597 by the time it reaches the borough boundary in Norbury, so you could also come back here for the anniversaries of Agincourt, Bannockburn and Bosworth Field.
And finally two 1066s that don't work so well.
1064-1068 Harrow Road Harlesden NW10 5NL
Borough: Brent
Highest numbered property: 1108
Just our luck, an extended run of shops and houses breaks here for a garage, and has done since Victorian times. Originally the garage was numbered 1066 but then it got knocked through to create a larger property that faces the road, currently occupied by the Autocare MOT Centre. Bring in your motor for service or repairs and it'll be seen to in the big blue shed, which as you can see is alas numbered 1064-1068. Technically Hastings, but invisibly bookended and thus invisible.
1060-1072 High Road Whetstone N20 0FS
Borough: Barnet
Highest numbered property: 1258
Another High Road but this time between Finchley and Barnet as part of the former Great North Road. Until 2012 there were sparse commercial premises here but someone saw the redevelopment potential and now wham, 46 luxury flats. These were marketed as Whetstone Square, a concierged community "with views over North Middlesex Golf Club", now with a carved rock plonked out front displaying a somewhat contrived shield. The house numbers above the entrance clearly state that this is 1060-1072 but each individual flat has a 1066 High Road address, because obviously if you were in the marketing department that's the number you'd pick. Potentially there are 46 Battles of Hastings here, but you can't see any of that from the street so that's one in the eye for Whetstone.
13-Oct-26
To celebrate I've been out in search of every London property numbered 1066.
And I've found four, maybe two more, maybe forty-seven.
You might be surprised to see that some London streets have over 1000 houses. But they do, as you can see, in a few key locations. What you need is a long road, generally arterial, all of which has been numbered consecutively without being renamed midway. Often these are old and important, possibly even ancient, but some are interwar bypasses lined by suburban housing. Let's start with the house with the red door...
1066 Green Lane, Becontree RM8 1BT
Borough: Barking and Dagenham
Highest numbered property: 1148
This 1066 can be found on the massive council estate at Becontree, up in the northeastern corner near the fiveway junction by the leisure centre. It's a lowly pebbledash home erected circa 1930, no frills, bunched together with seven neighbours in a long dour terrace. Minimal windows, limited love. Entrance is through an arch into a porch shared with number 1068, with electricity meters out front and a front garden that's long been crazy-paved. Here the owners park a Ford car and a silver van with ladders on the roof, so likely self-employed, and also a have a skylight in the roof suggesting there are now more than the two original bedrooms. I checked back and the last time this property sold it was bought for just £85,000, now a ridiculously tiny sum but that's what ex-council houses went for in Barking & Dagenham in 2001.
Until the 1920s Green Lane was one of a handful of country lanes that ran through the estate, three quiet miles from Ilford to Becontree Heath. This section was once just past the end of the heath, close to where a footpath from Valence House cut across the fields, but since transformed into very little natural at all. Across the street are a Christian Fellowship that used to be a Pentecostal Church, a car wash that used to be a garage and a pub that now sells more meals than beer. The final house on the other side of Green Lane is immediately opposite but is only number 945, so if the Battle of Hastings had happened in 1065 or 1067 I wouldn't be here.
1066 High Road, Chadwell Heath RM6 4BB
Borough: Redbridge
Highest numbered property: 1211
Just a mile away, round the corner from a Crossrail station, is a road that already existed by 1066. It's the Roman road that originally connected London and Colchester, here passing straight through Chadwell Heath. It's called High Road all the way from Ilford to the edge of Havering, and it turns out three miles is quite enough to get house numbers up into four figures. Only the Redbridge segment is numbered sequentially, indeed just up the road B&D starts and High Road starts again from 1, so we've been extremely fortunate it gets just far enough to enter the Norman era. In fact 1066 High Road used to be 47 Belstone Terrace, but around fifty years ago a lengthy renumbering exercise was undertaken extending east from the original 863 in Goodmayes. There's always a reason for a 1066.
This 1066 is immediately alongside the Wangey Road bus shelter, so close that the owners probably curse every time someone sits on their front wall. It's near the end of a long row of interwar houses, much like semis but bunched together in fours, just before it breaks for what used to be the Gaumont cinema. The front garden includes a trunky conifer that's shot up fast, some dangly fibre optics that look like they came from a garden centre and a stack of recycling tubs, from which I know they buy their milk at Sainsbury's. The house went up for sale in 2022 so it's possible to peer inside, confirming that the owners put a heck of a lot of effort into glitzy internal decor but didn't really give a damn about their back garden. And I thank them for replacing the pane above the front porch about ten years ago because that's where the number 1066 now glitters, prior to which you could only really work it out by sequencing the neighbours.
1066 Eastern Avenue, Newbury Park IG2 7SF
Borough: Redbridge
Highest numbered property: 1228
Another mile away, this time on the far side of King George Hospital, this 1066 is on the A12. Eastern Avenue is a key Essex-bound arterial, built in the 1920s as a bypass for the main road the previous 1066 was on. Back in those days they believed in ribbon development, a line of housing facing both sides of the dual carriageway, although at least here they added a parallel access lane for parking cars. Architecturally it's a hybrid, bottom half redbrick top half pebbledash, and just for a change it's one of a line of maisonettes. Annoyingly 1066 is on the top floor, annoying for them because they get the pebbles and annoying for Battle of Hastings purposes because access is at the side, not the front. If there is a 1066 on the door it's not visible from the road, although I'm sure delivery drivers cope by counting out the neighbours. And in news to depress anyone currently seeking a 2-bedder it last sold for £50,000, this way back in 1995, London's housing ladder now a battle very much lost.
It's likely no coincidence that the only three houses in London numbered 1066 are all in outer east London and all on important parallel 'A' roads. Only here was development late enough for residential roads to run to great length, also there's not much in the way of rivers and contours to get in the way. Bad luck to Forest Road in Walthamstow which only gets to 1051 and to Romford Road in Ilford which only gets to 1043.
1066 London Road, Thornton Heath CR7 7ND
Borough: Croydon
Highest numbered property: 1597
The only 1066 south of the river is, just for a change, a shop. It was formerly a unisex salon and a yoga centre but since the pandemic it's been Gujrati Barber. It trades at the centre of a parade of a dozen shops on another main road, this time halfway between Streatham and Croydon. Yet again it dates from the late 1920s, as if this was the proper peak for four-figure roads (or else an intriguing coincidence). Inside is a pristine white room with mirrors, sinks and product along one side and slouchable chairs on the other, also a TV on the back wall so the Gujrati barber doesn't get bored. I don't know what you pay round your way but a haircut here is just £10, a skinfade only £12 and if you're under 10 or over 65 merely £8. Also this establishment is in direct competition with Bulley's Barbers across the road, a longerstanding groomer and also lowlier, its row of customer chairs not somewhere you'd want to wait for long.
It's not usually the case that both sides of a very long street are numbered in tandem but here the two barbers are 1063 and 1066 so it's all worked out perfectly. Also London Road's numbering starts by West Croydon station and manages to reach an amazing 1597 by the time it reaches the borough boundary in Norbury, so you could also come back here for the anniversaries of Agincourt, Bannockburn and Bosworth Field.
And finally two 1066s that don't work so well.
1064-1068 Harrow Road Harlesden NW10 5NL
Borough: Brent
Highest numbered property: 1108
Just our luck, an extended run of shops and houses breaks here for a garage, and has done since Victorian times. Originally the garage was numbered 1066 but then it got knocked through to create a larger property that faces the road, currently occupied by the Autocare MOT Centre. Bring in your motor for service or repairs and it'll be seen to in the big blue shed, which as you can see is alas numbered 1064-1068. Technically Hastings, but invisibly bookended and thus invisible.
1060-1072 High Road Whetstone N20 0FS
Borough: Barnet
Highest numbered property: 1258
Another High Road but this time between Finchley and Barnet as part of the former Great North Road. Until 2012 there were sparse commercial premises here but someone saw the redevelopment potential and now wham, 46 luxury flats. These were marketed as Whetstone Square, a concierged community "with views over North Middlesex Golf Club", now with a carved rock plonked out front displaying a somewhat contrived shield. The house numbers above the entrance clearly state that this is 1060-1072 but each individual flat has a 1066 High Road address, because obviously if you were in the marketing department that's the number you'd pick. Potentially there are 46 Battles of Hastings here, but you can't see any of that from the street so that's one in the eye for Whetstone.
Turbine Hall 2026 [ 13-Oct-26 8:00am ]
If it's the second week in October then something new must have appeared in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. And as ever the question is "has someone finally done something decent?"
Probably.
This is Hold by Tarek Atoui, a musical artwork comprising umpteen specially-constructed instruments. There are pipes and drums and mouthorgans and what look like bells but I think are actually horns, also mechanised mallets that occasionally hit things. There are also a lot of cables and loudspeakers because the instrumental music plays, very variedly, interspersed with wheezy strings and electronic sounds. It is, according to the Lebanese artist, a transformation of the Turbine Hall into "a sonic landscape connecting earth and sky".
There's something 1920s Heath Robinson about it, in that you almost expect some ball will come rolling down the pipework and strike some percussive membrane before landing in a metal bowl. Alas it's rather more static than that, other than the mallets, all powered by electronic signals, long cables and a row of laptops on a table at the back. The eclectic orchestra includes Korean drums, Uzbek horns and Chinese polyphonic reed instruments, also apparently the dangly textile strips generate and transmit sound although that may just be artbolx. Other noises include ambient sound reworked through the loudspeakers, and yesterday I heard something bleepy, something double bassy and a lot that was whooshy.
Officially it opens today but the good thing about an enormous intervention in a public space is that you can easily see it the day before. Even better I got to see the artist himself wandering around adding some finishing touches, or perhaps engaged in a desperate race against time to get everything switched on. Some folk were also wiring up a drum kit because one of the performative aspects here is that musicians will sometimes be invited to play along. Tarek himself is participating this weekend alongside Emptyset, Mazen Kerbaj, Kenichi Iwasa and Aya Metwalli.
It's always nice when a Turbine Hall installation is interactive but here the best on offer is sit to on a stone slab, some of which have embedded speakers, and feel the vibrations. I didn't get to try this because downstairs was all sealed off, this the downside of going before it's all properly open. But I did get a good view of the assemblage from the upper mezzanine, also a chance to stand under the sugar/bamboo horns hanging alone up the other end of the hall, also sound carries so you can hear it anywhere.
The Turbine Hall is a tough space to fill and many former contributors have fallen flat. What Atoui gets right is to use the height, just as those floating aerobes did in 2021, and also to flood the space with sound, just as 2003's golden sun once flooded it with light. It's not quite a must-see, it's been years since we had one of them, but it does trounce the recent reindeer bones, manky skins, bottletops and Andean knots. And it's here until April so you've got ages to remember it's here, drop by and have a listen.
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026
* *** **** * *** **** * ** *** ** ***
Probably.
This is Hold by Tarek Atoui, a musical artwork comprising umpteen specially-constructed instruments. There are pipes and drums and mouthorgans and what look like bells but I think are actually horns, also mechanised mallets that occasionally hit things. There are also a lot of cables and loudspeakers because the instrumental music plays, very variedly, interspersed with wheezy strings and electronic sounds. It is, according to the Lebanese artist, a transformation of the Turbine Hall into "a sonic landscape connecting earth and sky".
There's something 1920s Heath Robinson about it, in that you almost expect some ball will come rolling down the pipework and strike some percussive membrane before landing in a metal bowl. Alas it's rather more static than that, other than the mallets, all powered by electronic signals, long cables and a row of laptops on a table at the back. The eclectic orchestra includes Korean drums, Uzbek horns and Chinese polyphonic reed instruments, also apparently the dangly textile strips generate and transmit sound although that may just be artbolx. Other noises include ambient sound reworked through the loudspeakers, and yesterday I heard something bleepy, something double bassy and a lot that was whooshy.
Officially it opens today but the good thing about an enormous intervention in a public space is that you can easily see it the day before. Even better I got to see the artist himself wandering around adding some finishing touches, or perhaps engaged in a desperate race against time to get everything switched on. Some folk were also wiring up a drum kit because one of the performative aspects here is that musicians will sometimes be invited to play along. Tarek himself is participating this weekend alongside Emptyset, Mazen Kerbaj, Kenichi Iwasa and Aya Metwalli.
It's always nice when a Turbine Hall installation is interactive but here the best on offer is sit to on a stone slab, some of which have embedded speakers, and feel the vibrations. I didn't get to try this because downstairs was all sealed off, this the downside of going before it's all properly open. But I did get a good view of the assemblage from the upper mezzanine, also a chance to stand under the sugar/bamboo horns hanging alone up the other end of the hall, also sound carries so you can hear it anywhere.
The Turbine Hall is a tough space to fill and many former contributors have fallen flat. What Atoui gets right is to use the height, just as those floating aerobes did in 2021, and also to flood the space with sound, just as 2003's golden sun once flooded it with light. It's not quite a must-see, it's been years since we had one of them, but it does trounce the recent reindeer bones, manky skins, bottletops and Andean knots. And it's here until April so you've got ages to remember it's here, drop by and have a listen.
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026
* *** **** * *** **** * ** *** ** ***
Barely transport news [ 13-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Barely transport news
Some transport stories are barely newsworthy, but still usefully fill space.
12-Oct-26
Some transport stories are barely newsworthy, but still usefully fill space.
bathnumber [ 12-Oct-26 7:00am ]
While lying back in the bath recently, luxuriating, I wondered "I wonder how many more of these I'll have".
b = bathnumber
b = number of baths yet to come
We all have a bathnumber. We don't know what it is, nor can we measure it with any degree of certainty, but it is a precisely defined value. The number of baths you'll have in the future is not yet a set value but one day will be, thus it's possible to muse on what that final total might be.
Your bathnumber could be 2, 863 or 9701, indeed it could be any of a number of values, and you might have some idea which of those is closest to yours. But you can't be 100% sure what it is, except in certain unpleasantly fatalistic situations, because the future is not yet set. Your bathnumber can only be calculated retrospectively, counting backwards to today, but can still be estimated which is what today's post is about.
My initial estimate for my own bathnumber is that b = 4000.
I checked my life expectancy via the government's calculator and factored in how often I have a bath, then multiplied "number of years remaining" by "number of baths per year". I've rounded it off because writing the precise number would be ridiculous, and also rounded it down because I'll probably end up having fewer baths than that. But it's potentially a huge underestimate if I live longer than my allotted years, or a huge overestimate if I fall ill, move house or simply change my habits.
One of the main reasons I have a lot of baths is that I don't have a shower. My landlord never installed one so for the last 25 years baths have been the only viable option. I used to have a shower in my previous flat and under those circumstances I took a shower maybe three times more often than running a bath. Given the choice, my showernumber would probably be higher than my bathnumber. But when I have the time I totally prefer a bath over a shower, and given I don't have the latter it's just as well I have the time.
What I don't know is how much longer I'll be living in this flat. My landlord could decide to kick me out in a few months or could let me stay forever, I have no current idea. Who knows where I'd end up next, but if it had a shower I might end up taking far more of them, and if it didn't have a bath my bathnumber would drop dramatically. My landlord might also suddenly decide to install a shower in my current flat, which seems unlikely given he's had 25 years and never has, but it can't be completely ruled out.
What I also don't know is whether my bathing habits will change. I used to run a bath every morning before I went to work and now I don't, so that's nudged my bathnumber down. If energy bills tripled I might decide that taking fewer baths was a good economy measure. If the climate changes I might choose to have more baths, or I might choose to take fewer, depending. And crucially I might one day move in with someone else, either because I want to or because I have to, at which point their bathing habits would start to significantly affect my own.
What I really don't know is how my health might change. At the moment hopping in and out of the bathtub is easy but that may not always be the case which could limit my bathnumber pretty sharpish. There may come a day when I simply can't get in any more, or when nobody else is willing to lower me in instead. That might not end bathtimes completely, because who's to say I won't end up with one of those special accessible baths they advertise in Sunday supplements and in the commercial breaks on Countdown? But a huge variety of medical events could well take away my bathing choices, either over a declining period or suddenly, abruptly, bringing about The Last Bath I Will Ever Take far sooner than I'd like.
I can't take these factors in isolation, I should expect them to combine. I might move to a house with a shower AND find I can't I can't get into a bath like I could, in which case my bathnumber would plummet. Or I might enter a new relationship AND decide to bathe more often in their snazzy tub with jets, which would significantly elevate my bathnumber instead. The options and combinations are far too complex to predict, however likely I might think a certain total now is.
Thinking more generally about this, your bathnumber is most strongly influenced by two factors...
...whether you want to have a bath and whether you can.
want
If you're a shower person rather than a bath person your bathnumber will be lower.
If you feel the need to wash more frequently your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
can
If you can't get into a bath any more your bathnumber will be lower.
If you don't have a shower in your house your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
Your bathnumber is also very closely associated with 'the last bath you will ever have'.
It might still be decades away, in which case you could rack up thousands of baths before the final soak. Or it might come early, it might come unexpectedly, indeed it might come tomorrow (although let's hope that it doesn't). And just because it might be close doesn't necessarily mean your future total is low. A tub lover with failing health, for example, might still have a much higher bathnumber than a shower fanatic with decades to live.
Also bear in mind the possibility of an unexpected bath here and there, even in an unpromising future. Who's to say you won't find yourself in a hotel one day with the most appealing bathroom ceramics, or that a nurse won't one day lower you into a warm bath when you thought you might never have one again. The future is unwritten and there are all kinds of scenarios in which one-off baths still happen, or indeed entire changes of bathtub circumstance.
Conversely an uncertain future could always terminate your ablutions in an entirely unexpected nmanner, reducing your bathnumber overnight. What if in 2027 power cuts knock out your boiler, or in 2028 droughts get critical, or in 2029 the successor body to Thames Water outlaws baths entirely, or in 2030 bubblebath is found to cause cancer, or in 2031 your home burns down, or in 2032 you win the lottery, or in 2033 weather conditions dramatically deteriorate, or in 2034 the American President drops an atomic bomb on Manchester, or in 2035 AI takes over and reduces humanity to slaves, or in 2026 aliens arrive and turn us all to grey goo?
Obviously that won't happen, probably, but it's the wider uncertainty of external events that makes bathnumbers so potentially volatile. The chance of your personal circumstances being identical in 10 years' time is low, in 20 years even lower, and generally that means a lower bathnumber than otherwise anticipated. For example my own bathnumber is likely lower than the 4000 I originally estimated, perhaps markedly so, dammit.
In summary, then...
• Not everybody likes baths and not everyone can have them
• Your bathnumber is all about how many baths you fit in before The Last Bath You Ever Have
• Your bathnumber is proportional to the variability of your future
• Your bathnumber almost certainly won't be what you expect it to be
I'm not suggesting that on your deathbed you'll think "oh, so it was 2167 after all", only that it's a theoretical possibility. I'm certainly not proposing that you count all your future baths, merely to confirm what today's total really was.
But I am suggesting that estimating your bathnumber is an intriguing way to consider your habits, your circumstances, your health, your mortality and the the unpredictability of your future. There are no certainties here.
Also be aware that your bathnumber is a decreasing function, so every time you climb into a nice warm bath it drops by one.
You have a finite number of baths in your future. And one day that bathnumber will be fixed.
11-Oct-26
b = bathnumber
b = number of baths yet to come
We all have a bathnumber. We don't know what it is, nor can we measure it with any degree of certainty, but it is a precisely defined value. The number of baths you'll have in the future is not yet a set value but one day will be, thus it's possible to muse on what that final total might be.
Your bathnumber could be 2, 863 or 9701, indeed it could be any of a number of values, and you might have some idea which of those is closest to yours. But you can't be 100% sure what it is, except in certain unpleasantly fatalistic situations, because the future is not yet set. Your bathnumber can only be calculated retrospectively, counting backwards to today, but can still be estimated which is what today's post is about.
My initial estimate for my own bathnumber is that b = 4000.
I checked my life expectancy via the government's calculator and factored in how often I have a bath, then multiplied "number of years remaining" by "number of baths per year". I've rounded it off because writing the precise number would be ridiculous, and also rounded it down because I'll probably end up having fewer baths than that. But it's potentially a huge underestimate if I live longer than my allotted years, or a huge overestimate if I fall ill, move house or simply change my habits.
One of the main reasons I have a lot of baths is that I don't have a shower. My landlord never installed one so for the last 25 years baths have been the only viable option. I used to have a shower in my previous flat and under those circumstances I took a shower maybe three times more often than running a bath. Given the choice, my showernumber would probably be higher than my bathnumber. But when I have the time I totally prefer a bath over a shower, and given I don't have the latter it's just as well I have the time.
What I don't know is how much longer I'll be living in this flat. My landlord could decide to kick me out in a few months or could let me stay forever, I have no current idea. Who knows where I'd end up next, but if it had a shower I might end up taking far more of them, and if it didn't have a bath my bathnumber would drop dramatically. My landlord might also suddenly decide to install a shower in my current flat, which seems unlikely given he's had 25 years and never has, but it can't be completely ruled out.
What I also don't know is whether my bathing habits will change. I used to run a bath every morning before I went to work and now I don't, so that's nudged my bathnumber down. If energy bills tripled I might decide that taking fewer baths was a good economy measure. If the climate changes I might choose to have more baths, or I might choose to take fewer, depending. And crucially I might one day move in with someone else, either because I want to or because I have to, at which point their bathing habits would start to significantly affect my own.
What I really don't know is how my health might change. At the moment hopping in and out of the bathtub is easy but that may not always be the case which could limit my bathnumber pretty sharpish. There may come a day when I simply can't get in any more, or when nobody else is willing to lower me in instead. That might not end bathtimes completely, because who's to say I won't end up with one of those special accessible baths they advertise in Sunday supplements and in the commercial breaks on Countdown? But a huge variety of medical events could well take away my bathing choices, either over a declining period or suddenly, abruptly, bringing about The Last Bath I Will Ever Take far sooner than I'd like.
I can't take these factors in isolation, I should expect them to combine. I might move to a house with a shower AND find I can't I can't get into a bath like I could, in which case my bathnumber would plummet. Or I might enter a new relationship AND decide to bathe more often in their snazzy tub with jets, which would significantly elevate my bathnumber instead. The options and combinations are far too complex to predict, however likely I might think a certain total now is.
Thinking more generally about this, your bathnumber is most strongly influenced by two factors...
...whether you want to have a bath and whether you can.
want
If you're a shower person rather than a bath person your bathnumber will be lower.
If you feel the need to wash more frequently your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
can
If you can't get into a bath any more your bathnumber will be lower.
If you don't have a shower in your house your bathnumber will be higher.
etc
Your bathnumber is also very closely associated with 'the last bath you will ever have'.
It might still be decades away, in which case you could rack up thousands of baths before the final soak. Or it might come early, it might come unexpectedly, indeed it might come tomorrow (although let's hope that it doesn't). And just because it might be close doesn't necessarily mean your future total is low. A tub lover with failing health, for example, might still have a much higher bathnumber than a shower fanatic with decades to live.
Also bear in mind the possibility of an unexpected bath here and there, even in an unpromising future. Who's to say you won't find yourself in a hotel one day with the most appealing bathroom ceramics, or that a nurse won't one day lower you into a warm bath when you thought you might never have one again. The future is unwritten and there are all kinds of scenarios in which one-off baths still happen, or indeed entire changes of bathtub circumstance.
Conversely an uncertain future could always terminate your ablutions in an entirely unexpected nmanner, reducing your bathnumber overnight. What if in 2027 power cuts knock out your boiler, or in 2028 droughts get critical, or in 2029 the successor body to Thames Water outlaws baths entirely, or in 2030 bubblebath is found to cause cancer, or in 2031 your home burns down, or in 2032 you win the lottery, or in 2033 weather conditions dramatically deteriorate, or in 2034 the American President drops an atomic bomb on Manchester, or in 2035 AI takes over and reduces humanity to slaves, or in 2026 aliens arrive and turn us all to grey goo?
Obviously that won't happen, probably, but it's the wider uncertainty of external events that makes bathnumbers so potentially volatile. The chance of your personal circumstances being identical in 10 years' time is low, in 20 years even lower, and generally that means a lower bathnumber than otherwise anticipated. For example my own bathnumber is likely lower than the 4000 I originally estimated, perhaps markedly so, dammit.
In summary, then...
• Not everybody likes baths and not everyone can have them
• Your bathnumber is all about how many baths you fit in before The Last Bath You Ever Have
• Your bathnumber is proportional to the variability of your future
• Your bathnumber almost certainly won't be what you expect it to be
I'm not suggesting that on your deathbed you'll think "oh, so it was 2167 after all", only that it's a theoretical possibility. I'm certainly not proposing that you count all your future baths, merely to confirm what today's total really was.
But I am suggesting that estimating your bathnumber is an intriguing way to consider your habits, your circumstances, your health, your mortality and the the unpredictability of your future. There are no certainties here.
Also be aware that your bathnumber is a decreasing function, so every time you climb into a nice warm bath it drops by one.
You have a finite number of baths in your future. And one day that bathnumber will be fixed.
U is for Underhill [ 11-Oct-26 7:00am ]
LONDON A-Z
U is for Underhill
As we head towards the awkward end of the alphabet London's suburban pickings get slimmer. I discounted Upney as too well known, Upper Belvedere as too focused and Uxendon as too obscure, instead plumping for a decent-sized U with an ultra-prosaic name. This Barnet neighbourhood is so named for the exceptionally obvious reason that it's under a hill, this hill, hence Underhill.
In the stagecoach era Barnet Hill was one of the first major obstacles on the Great North Road, thus a number of coaching inns were established up top as an ideal place to change the horses. In the 1720s another was built at the bottom, this the Old Red Lion, where additional horses known as the 'Hercules Pair' could be hired to assist with the challenging ascent. In 1823 Thomas Telford was charged with making improvements, his solution to bypass the steepest climb by digging up a huge amount of adjacent soil to create the gentler embankment we see today. A small hamlet grew up around the pub, this called Underhill, until eventually cars replaced carriages and houses replaced fields. Suburbanisation was kickstarted by the arrival of a railway terminus across the street in 1872, now the top end of the Northern line. The station served the town above so was called High Barnet, but in terms of contours it'd more appropriately be called Underhill because it is.
In the 1930s the Red Lion was repurposed and rebuilt as an estate pub, and remained a tenable business until 2015 when the owners gave nine days notice of closure. It was pretty soon replaced by a terrace of six modern brick townhouses, which took ages to sell, and alas even the inn sign was swiftly uprooted so no evidence of the historic watering hole remains. What killed pub viability was the local football team moving out, this being Barnet FC who were established just round the corner in 1907. Underhill Stadium was always a lowly affair, the kind of place where black and gold souvenirs were sold from a portakabin and the grandstands were made from corrugated metal. Facilities became increasingly inadequate when the team found themselves in Division Two, so when negotiations over the lease became fractious the chairman decided to move the club to a fresh site in the borough of Harrow instead. The council then gifted the Underhill site to the Ark Pioneer Academy, thus headteacher Su now oversees 1100 pupils where The Bees once thrashed Burton Albion ten nil.
The alleyway down the side of the stadium remains, that's Priory Grove. It leads to a St John Ambulance depot and a former scout hut/community centre where you can now practice grappling, fighting and self-defence three nights a week. At the far end the path opens out into the top end of Barnet Playing Fields, immediately alongside the huge chunk the academy nicked for their sports pitches. Ridiculously Barnet FC now want to occupy most of the remainder to build a New Underhill stadium, having tired of The Hive in Canons Park in favour of returning to the town they're actually named after. If the mercurial chairman gets his way nine acres of green space would be replaced a 7000 seater, plus car park, plus coach park, leaving just a top wedge that's already part-sealed off due to an infestation of oak processionary moths. Thankfully the council refused planning permission last year, but the intention remains and we're only one decision away from a football reinfestation instead.
For now the playing fields are mostly used for kickabouts, playgrounds, sports practice and walking your dog round the perimeter paths. The Barnet Table Tennis Centre is also here, in case you'd ever wondered where that is. The grass stretches down to a meandering tree-line boundary within which flows the Dollis Brook. It's relatively minor here, no more than about two metres wide, but its waters were still capable of scouring the incredibly obvious valley on whose slopes Underhill rests. One thin stripe of suburbia was squeezed between the playing fields and railway in 1933, including an arc of 16 brick almshouses overlooking the greensward. The estate is an isolated dead end so TfL kindly send an hourly bus to the bottom and back, this the 389, London's shortest route and 2nd-least used service. I can confirm it now uses electric vehicles (a real step-up from the muck they used to send out), also the driver has to negotiate some very closely parked vehicles at the foot of the hill, also the loop had at least six passengers yesterday.
All of this area is classic Underhill, and the wording on a modern Ordnance Survey map would agree. But over the last century the name has also crept west along the only road to precede development which is Mays Lane. This once tracked all the way to Arkley at a safe distance from the river, serving a sparse handful of cottages and a couple of farms. Some of the fields near Underhill once hosted the biannual Barnet Fair, a livestock jamboree established in 1588 which by the mid 19th-century was said to be England's largest cattle market. Later horse racing became the priority but that ended when High Barnet station swallowed up the site, and these days the event is probably best known as rhyming slang for hair, even with the 'Fair' left unsaid. The other pre-suburban intrusion, this time south of Mays Lane, was a sewage farm established in 1874 to help remove High Barnet's effluent. This survived until 1957, for many years supporting the fertilisation of plots of oats and vegetables, after which the Dollis Valley housing estate was built across the site and oh my word.
They built 600 homes here in the 1960s, the most appealing being the lowrise three-bedders closest to the river. These were arranged to take full advantage of the green setting with front gardens opening onto the meadow, hiding all the ugly garages and road access round the back. The remainder of the accommodation was in long five-storey blocks of flats, these having aged far less well to the extent that the council is sequentially replacing them with something modern. There are now eight streets of sleek brick townhouses, desirable as anything, one of which has the impossible name of Unicorn View. But once you get halfway down the estate the last phase of concrete flats remains, decanted and decaying, because council and developer fell out over affordability quotas. Some inadequate understanding has been reached, but for now to walk down Dollis Brook Drive is to experience all aspects of postwar housing in one depressing sweep. The interface from whipsmart to derelict is particularly sharp, suddenly entering a world of dumped mattresses and damp curtains behind smashed glass, beyond which the secluded setting of the riverside homes is grimly diminished.
Hundreds of Underhill's older houses stretch down several steep avenues to the north of Mays Lane, these your more typical interwar semis. They run in parallel and are inadequately connected, in one case enclosing a long stripe of tennis courts accessible only from top and bottom. Manor Road came first and thus leads to Underhill's commercial heart, a row of six shops including Mays Lane's Co-op. The quirkiest is Coopers of Barnet, a true Aladdin's cave of hardware including garden tools, haberdashery, suitcases and every hue of plastic container strewn across the pavement. Almost as offbeat is May's Pet's, an infuriatingly-apostrophied grooming parlour and treat shop, where the traditional small ads in the window include a plug for Louise's Avon catalogue and an irresistible plea... Can You Offer A Home For A Few Stick Insects A Fascinating Low Maintenance Pet Come In The Shop And Meet Them. I can also confirm that at The Local Offey the lottery is working now, and this is why you should always shop local.
I did wonder if this could still be Underhill, being over half a mile from The Old Red Lion, but one of the other shops is the Underhill Barbers so yes it definitely can. Even more convincingly the neighbouring establishment is Underhill School and has been since 1932, where they fully embrace the letter U with a stated ethos of Understand · Uplift · Unite. It seems the Underhill name has spread far along the valley, this because it's still appropriate for thousands of residents who have to schlep up a steep-ish slope to reach the proper shops and services up top in High Barnet. But if you go too much further along Mays Lane the neighbourhood definitely become Ducks Island instead, a completely different suburb and very much non-U, so best stop here.
10-Oct-26
U is for Underhill
As we head towards the awkward end of the alphabet London's suburban pickings get slimmer. I discounted Upney as too well known, Upper Belvedere as too focused and Uxendon as too obscure, instead plumping for a decent-sized U with an ultra-prosaic name. This Barnet neighbourhood is so named for the exceptionally obvious reason that it's under a hill, this hill, hence Underhill.
In the stagecoach era Barnet Hill was one of the first major obstacles on the Great North Road, thus a number of coaching inns were established up top as an ideal place to change the horses. In the 1720s another was built at the bottom, this the Old Red Lion, where additional horses known as the 'Hercules Pair' could be hired to assist with the challenging ascent. In 1823 Thomas Telford was charged with making improvements, his solution to bypass the steepest climb by digging up a huge amount of adjacent soil to create the gentler embankment we see today. A small hamlet grew up around the pub, this called Underhill, until eventually cars replaced carriages and houses replaced fields. Suburbanisation was kickstarted by the arrival of a railway terminus across the street in 1872, now the top end of the Northern line. The station served the town above so was called High Barnet, but in terms of contours it'd more appropriately be called Underhill because it is.
In the 1930s the Red Lion was repurposed and rebuilt as an estate pub, and remained a tenable business until 2015 when the owners gave nine days notice of closure. It was pretty soon replaced by a terrace of six modern brick townhouses, which took ages to sell, and alas even the inn sign was swiftly uprooted so no evidence of the historic watering hole remains. What killed pub viability was the local football team moving out, this being Barnet FC who were established just round the corner in 1907. Underhill Stadium was always a lowly affair, the kind of place where black and gold souvenirs were sold from a portakabin and the grandstands were made from corrugated metal. Facilities became increasingly inadequate when the team found themselves in Division Two, so when negotiations over the lease became fractious the chairman decided to move the club to a fresh site in the borough of Harrow instead. The council then gifted the Underhill site to the Ark Pioneer Academy, thus headteacher Su now oversees 1100 pupils where The Bees once thrashed Burton Albion ten nil.
The alleyway down the side of the stadium remains, that's Priory Grove. It leads to a St John Ambulance depot and a former scout hut/community centre where you can now practice grappling, fighting and self-defence three nights a week. At the far end the path opens out into the top end of Barnet Playing Fields, immediately alongside the huge chunk the academy nicked for their sports pitches. Ridiculously Barnet FC now want to occupy most of the remainder to build a New Underhill stadium, having tired of The Hive in Canons Park in favour of returning to the town they're actually named after. If the mercurial chairman gets his way nine acres of green space would be replaced a 7000 seater, plus car park, plus coach park, leaving just a top wedge that's already part-sealed off due to an infestation of oak processionary moths. Thankfully the council refused planning permission last year, but the intention remains and we're only one decision away from a football reinfestation instead.
For now the playing fields are mostly used for kickabouts, playgrounds, sports practice and walking your dog round the perimeter paths. The Barnet Table Tennis Centre is also here, in case you'd ever wondered where that is. The grass stretches down to a meandering tree-line boundary within which flows the Dollis Brook. It's relatively minor here, no more than about two metres wide, but its waters were still capable of scouring the incredibly obvious valley on whose slopes Underhill rests. One thin stripe of suburbia was squeezed between the playing fields and railway in 1933, including an arc of 16 brick almshouses overlooking the greensward. The estate is an isolated dead end so TfL kindly send an hourly bus to the bottom and back, this the 389, London's shortest route and 2nd-least used service. I can confirm it now uses electric vehicles (a real step-up from the muck they used to send out), also the driver has to negotiate some very closely parked vehicles at the foot of the hill, also the loop had at least six passengers yesterday.
All of this area is classic Underhill, and the wording on a modern Ordnance Survey map would agree. But over the last century the name has also crept west along the only road to precede development which is Mays Lane. This once tracked all the way to Arkley at a safe distance from the river, serving a sparse handful of cottages and a couple of farms. Some of the fields near Underhill once hosted the biannual Barnet Fair, a livestock jamboree established in 1588 which by the mid 19th-century was said to be England's largest cattle market. Later horse racing became the priority but that ended when High Barnet station swallowed up the site, and these days the event is probably best known as rhyming slang for hair, even with the 'Fair' left unsaid. The other pre-suburban intrusion, this time south of Mays Lane, was a sewage farm established in 1874 to help remove High Barnet's effluent. This survived until 1957, for many years supporting the fertilisation of plots of oats and vegetables, after which the Dollis Valley housing estate was built across the site and oh my word.
They built 600 homes here in the 1960s, the most appealing being the lowrise three-bedders closest to the river. These were arranged to take full advantage of the green setting with front gardens opening onto the meadow, hiding all the ugly garages and road access round the back. The remainder of the accommodation was in long five-storey blocks of flats, these having aged far less well to the extent that the council is sequentially replacing them with something modern. There are now eight streets of sleek brick townhouses, desirable as anything, one of which has the impossible name of Unicorn View. But once you get halfway down the estate the last phase of concrete flats remains, decanted and decaying, because council and developer fell out over affordability quotas. Some inadequate understanding has been reached, but for now to walk down Dollis Brook Drive is to experience all aspects of postwar housing in one depressing sweep. The interface from whipsmart to derelict is particularly sharp, suddenly entering a world of dumped mattresses and damp curtains behind smashed glass, beyond which the secluded setting of the riverside homes is grimly diminished.
Hundreds of Underhill's older houses stretch down several steep avenues to the north of Mays Lane, these your more typical interwar semis. They run in parallel and are inadequately connected, in one case enclosing a long stripe of tennis courts accessible only from top and bottom. Manor Road came first and thus leads to Underhill's commercial heart, a row of six shops including Mays Lane's Co-op. The quirkiest is Coopers of Barnet, a true Aladdin's cave of hardware including garden tools, haberdashery, suitcases and every hue of plastic container strewn across the pavement. Almost as offbeat is May's Pet's, an infuriatingly-apostrophied grooming parlour and treat shop, where the traditional small ads in the window include a plug for Louise's Avon catalogue and an irresistible plea... Can You Offer A Home For A Few Stick Insects A Fascinating Low Maintenance Pet Come In The Shop And Meet Them. I can also confirm that at The Local Offey the lottery is working now, and this is why you should always shop local.
I did wonder if this could still be Underhill, being over half a mile from The Old Red Lion, but one of the other shops is the Underhill Barbers so yes it definitely can. Even more convincingly the neighbouring establishment is Underhill School and has been since 1932, where they fully embrace the letter U with a stated ethos of Understand · Uplift · Unite. It seems the Underhill name has spread far along the valley, this because it's still appropriate for thousands of residents who have to schlep up a steep-ish slope to reach the proper shops and services up top in High Barnet. But if you go too much further along Mays Lane the neighbourhood definitely become Ducks Island instead, a completely different suburb and very much non-U, so best stop here.
Oxford Street pedestrianisation - before [ 10-Oct-26 7:00am ]
Here's something you won't be able to do in a couple of weeks time.
Ride a bus down Oxford Street.
Pedestrianisation begins on Monday 26th October, with buses removed forever on the evening of Sunday 25th.
So I've been out to do it now, before I never can again.
Importantly it's not the whole of Oxford Street, only the middle half from Selfridges to Great Portland Street, but that is the key shopping bit and includes both sides of Oxford Circus.
n.b. I did a full analysis of the changes in November so won't repeat myself but you can read more detail there, or see the consultation here.
You can get a preview of the upcoming Mayoral tubthumping campaign by looking at the posters plastered over the corner of Oxford Circus station.
» One says Oxford Street. But Better.
» One says More Street. Less Road.
» One says Good News Speed Walkers.
» One says The Crowds Are Staying. The Traffic Isn't.
» And one says "Busy ol' street isn't it? Bag-laden shoppers flowing past stores with a dizzying choice of trainers. Caffeine-deficient commuters making beelines to chains that sound French but aren't. Tourists suddenly stopping to eye tiny souvenir models of Big Ben. Ever thought it'd be better with... more space? Space to stroll. Space to saunter, even. Space to avoid even the most stubborn of pigeons. Great idea! Let's do that. A new pedestrianised Oxford Street is on the way. Less traffic. More space. Still busy, just better." Sheesh.
It should be great for pedestrians and for businesses seeking better footfall, all arriving just in time for Christmas. But it won't be good for taxis, bicycles or buses, all of which will be prohibited from passing through and forced to find an alternative route.
I'm particularly interested in how bus timings are going to be affected.
And to measure that properly you need data from before the change as well as data after.
I have thus been out with a stopwatch to see how long buses currently take to drive down the affected stretch.
And I'll go back afterwards to see if it's a bit worse or a lot worse.
At present routes 7, 94, 98, 139 and 390 use central Oxford Stret, stopping outside John Lewis and Selfridges.
In future two routes are being cut back to Marble Arch to get them out of the way, and three will need to be diverted.
The diversions will go via five different streets rather than one, so you'd expect slower journeys in future.
What I did
• I went to Oxford Street late on a weekday morning.
• I rode the 94, 98, 139 and 390 in both directions, eight journeys in total.
• I rode from the stop before the closure to the stop after.
• I timed the journey and counted how many times a red light stopped us.
98eastMarble Arch → M&S1.3km7m 40s(5 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&S1.3km7m 00s(5 red lights) 98westM&S → Marble Arch1.2km10m 10s(8 red lights) 390westM&S → Marble Arch1.4km9m 50s(8 red lights)
These are the buses that stay on Oxford Street, not Regent Street.
On average it took 7 minutes to go east and 10 minutes to go west.
The difference is almost entirely explained by the queue to get through the traffic lights at Oxford Circus. Westbound traffic only gets 10 seconds to slip through, significantly less than other directions, then it's 1½ minutes before the lights go green again. On my journeys it took three attempts to get through these lights, then the experience was much the same in both directions. Without this snarl-up it would have been 7-8 minutes both ways.
94eastMarble Arch → Hamleys1.1km8m 10s(5 red lights) 139eastPortman Sq → Hamleys1.3km8m 30s(7 red lights) 94westHamleys → Marble Arch1.1km8m 10s(8 red lights) 139westHamleys → Portman Sq1.9km12m 20s(10 red lights)
These are the buses that turn into Regent Street at Oxford Circus.
On average, if we ignore the outlier, it took 8 minutes to make these journeys.
The outlier is the 139 heading west because its bus stops are stupid. For some reason the 139 doesn't stop by Oxford Circus, only halfway down Regent Street, so the stop before the imminent closure is a long way away. I suspect this made sense before TfL rationalised the bus stops on Oxford Street because you could get off just round the corner. Now you can't, and it's definitely annoying for passengers who ding the bell by the Apple Store but are unable to get off. It's going to be even more annoying when Oxford Street closes because there'll then be a 900m gap from Regent Street to Henrietta Place, and if that doesn't really piss off thousands of future tourists I'll be amazed.
I'm aware that this is not especially reliable data. It's all down to traffic conditions and passenger numbers, also the luck of the draw with a dozen traffic lights. For example one of my journeys was delayed by a passing fire engine, several by taxis picking up passengers and two had the wheelchair ramp deployed. That said one of the wheelchair rides was the shortest journey of the lot, so anomalies don't always muddy the timings. Also I only made eight journeys and for really reliable data you'd want to do a lot more, but I spent two hours of my life on this and quite frankly eight journeys was enough. Also I did end up with some relatively consistent results so I'm happy I did enough.
My conclusion then is that in decent traffic conditions it currently takes about 7-8 minutes to ride this part of Oxford Street. I can now use this fact later in the month to compare with timings after the closure and see what's happened, even if that means riding lots more buses on tortuous routes several more times.
Before then TfL have further roadworks to undertake, not to beautify the pedestrianised strip but just to make sure the traffic changes work. They have four new bus stops to add to replace the four being de-bussed. They have extra bus stands to add up several side streets. They have new signs to fix, roads to block and taxi ranks to shift, and the follow-up may take some time. Their Oxford Street works webpage says "disruption will be kept to a minimum, with limited works during the Christmas period", so don't expect to see the final results until well into next year.
But if you want to ride a bus to see the Christmas lights sorry, the road will be closing before they're switched on, so the best you can see is some dangling stars and you've only got two more weeks for the experience.
Ride a bus down Oxford Street.
Pedestrianisation begins on Monday 26th October, with buses removed forever on the evening of Sunday 25th.
So I've been out to do it now, before I never can again.
Importantly it's not the whole of Oxford Street, only the middle half from Selfridges to Great Portland Street, but that is the key shopping bit and includes both sides of Oxford Circus.
n.b. I did a full analysis of the changes in November so won't repeat myself but you can read more detail there, or see the consultation here.
You can get a preview of the upcoming Mayoral tubthumping campaign by looking at the posters plastered over the corner of Oxford Circus station.
» One says Oxford Street. But Better.
» One says More Street. Less Road.
» One says Good News Speed Walkers.
» One says The Crowds Are Staying. The Traffic Isn't.
» And one says "Busy ol' street isn't it? Bag-laden shoppers flowing past stores with a dizzying choice of trainers. Caffeine-deficient commuters making beelines to chains that sound French but aren't. Tourists suddenly stopping to eye tiny souvenir models of Big Ben. Ever thought it'd be better with... more space? Space to stroll. Space to saunter, even. Space to avoid even the most stubborn of pigeons. Great idea! Let's do that. A new pedestrianised Oxford Street is on the way. Less traffic. More space. Still busy, just better." Sheesh.
It should be great for pedestrians and for businesses seeking better footfall, all arriving just in time for Christmas. But it won't be good for taxis, bicycles or buses, all of which will be prohibited from passing through and forced to find an alternative route.
I'm particularly interested in how bus timings are going to be affected.
And to measure that properly you need data from before the change as well as data after.
I have thus been out with a stopwatch to see how long buses currently take to drive down the affected stretch.
And I'll go back afterwards to see if it's a bit worse or a lot worse.
At present routes 7, 94, 98, 139 and 390 use central Oxford Stret, stopping outside John Lewis and Selfridges.
In future two routes are being cut back to Marble Arch to get them out of the way, and three will need to be diverted.
The diversions will go via five different streets rather than one, so you'd expect slower journeys in future.
What I did
• I went to Oxford Street late on a weekday morning.
• I rode the 94, 98, 139 and 390 in both directions, eight journeys in total.
• I rode from the stop before the closure to the stop after.
• I timed the journey and counted how many times a red light stopped us.
98eastMarble Arch → M&S1.3km7m 40s(5 red lights) 390eastMarble Arch → M&S1.3km7m 00s(5 red lights) 98westM&S → Marble Arch1.2km10m 10s(8 red lights) 390westM&S → Marble Arch1.4km9m 50s(8 red lights)
These are the buses that stay on Oxford Street, not Regent Street.
On average it took 7 minutes to go east and 10 minutes to go west.
The difference is almost entirely explained by the queue to get through the traffic lights at Oxford Circus. Westbound traffic only gets 10 seconds to slip through, significantly less than other directions, then it's 1½ minutes before the lights go green again. On my journeys it took three attempts to get through these lights, then the experience was much the same in both directions. Without this snarl-up it would have been 7-8 minutes both ways.
94eastMarble Arch → Hamleys1.1km8m 10s(5 red lights) 139eastPortman Sq → Hamleys1.3km8m 30s(7 red lights) 94westHamleys → Marble Arch1.1km8m 10s(8 red lights) 139westHamleys → Portman Sq1.9km12m 20s(10 red lights)
These are the buses that turn into Regent Street at Oxford Circus.
On average, if we ignore the outlier, it took 8 minutes to make these journeys.
The outlier is the 139 heading west because its bus stops are stupid. For some reason the 139 doesn't stop by Oxford Circus, only halfway down Regent Street, so the stop before the imminent closure is a long way away. I suspect this made sense before TfL rationalised the bus stops on Oxford Street because you could get off just round the corner. Now you can't, and it's definitely annoying for passengers who ding the bell by the Apple Store but are unable to get off. It's going to be even more annoying when Oxford Street closes because there'll then be a 900m gap from Regent Street to Henrietta Place, and if that doesn't really piss off thousands of future tourists I'll be amazed.
I'm aware that this is not especially reliable data. It's all down to traffic conditions and passenger numbers, also the luck of the draw with a dozen traffic lights. For example one of my journeys was delayed by a passing fire engine, several by taxis picking up passengers and two had the wheelchair ramp deployed. That said one of the wheelchair rides was the shortest journey of the lot, so anomalies don't always muddy the timings. Also I only made eight journeys and for really reliable data you'd want to do a lot more, but I spent two hours of my life on this and quite frankly eight journeys was enough. Also I did end up with some relatively consistent results so I'm happy I did enough.
My conclusion then is that in decent traffic conditions it currently takes about 7-8 minutes to ride this part of Oxford Street. I can now use this fact later in the month to compare with timings after the closure and see what's happened, even if that means riding lots more buses on tortuous routes several more times.
Before then TfL have further roadworks to undertake, not to beautify the pedestrianised strip but just to make sure the traffic changes work. They have four new bus stops to add to replace the four being de-bussed. They have extra bus stands to add up several side streets. They have new signs to fix, roads to block and taxi ranks to shift, and the follow-up may take some time. Their Oxford Street works webpage says "disruption will be kept to a minimum, with limited works during the Christmas period", so don't expect to see the final results until well into next year.
But if you want to ride a bus to see the Christmas lights sorry, the road will be closing before they're switched on, so the best you can see is some dangling stars and you've only got two more weeks for the experience.
