'Too Long At The Fair'

Day 35

 

Fairlop - Farringdon - Finchley Central

 

Happy New Year!

Although I suppose it's hardly 'new' any more, is it, since it's in its third week, and is already slightly scuffed around the edges and has one or two grubby fingermarks marring its once bright and shiny new surface. Let's just hope we can avoid dropping and breaking it altogether, as I don't think we can take it back and ask for a new one.

 

You'll notice a new look to the blog as well - please let me know whether you think it's better / worse / utterly irrelevant to your existence.

Shockingly, it's been over two months since I last went travelling - and although obviously the festive season took up a lot of my time (I hope yours was as fun as mine), I've also had several minor but irritating bouts of cold to deal with, so it's only today that I've felt fit enough to tackle the first (and very long) journey of the F section.

However, I set out this morning with a pleasurable anticipation (despite the frosty nip in the air) and was rewarded almost immediately by bumping into an old acting friend of mine, whom I haven't seen for some ten years or so (the fact that she now has two kids, one of whom has just turned nine helped us work that bit out!)

Naturally she asked where I was off to, and on hearing the purpose of my journey her face moulded itself into that familiar combination of amused bewilderment and mild apprehension that I've become very used to. People don't know whether to be amused or slightly scared that someone would be deranged enough to set themselves such a ridiculous challenge.

She also asked one question, which perhaps surprisingly, I don't think I've yet been asked by anyone else - 'Where's the most interesting place you've visited?'

I actually feel that question is probably best left to the end (assuming I make it that far), but it did get me thinking. Obviously my adventures in Bounds Green count as 'interesting', but of the places themselves...? I find it difficult to pick just one place out of the many I've visited, because nearly all of them have had odd little things that make them interesting - and it's the 'odd little things' rather than the usual landmarks or tourist attractions that have made this journey such an pleasurable one.

***

So off we go once again...

 



Fairlop - " Doin' the Fairlop Loop... Oy!"



 

I emerge into the bitterly cold East London air at Fairlop, after a long and mainly dull journey on the Central Line. Fairlop is another of those stations on that little loop at the eastern end of the Central Line currently called the Hainault Loop, although before the Central Line joined everything up, the section of the Great Eastern Railway between Woodford and Ilford actually used to be known as the Fairlop Loop.

 

The station stands a little way back from the main road - Forest Road - which stretches out both east and west ahead of me with very little, other than a few scattered houses by the station, to interrupt the view. If only the view were more interesting... It's basically tarmac, pavement and hedgerow as far as the eye can see, especially to the east. To the west, you can just about make out some signs of life, in the distance, and I know from an earlier visit I made to Barkingside, that this is the Fullwell Cross Roundabout.

 

When I visited the roundabout all those letters ago, I mentioned the fact that the oak tree that stands on it, and the pub that stands next to it - both called the New Fairlop Oak - were replacements for the original Fairlop Oak which legend has it gave the place its name.

 

The story goes something like this...

 

When the surrounding area was all fields, forestry and open land, a huge oak dating from "halfway up the Christian era" and therefore over 700 years old, stood somewhere in Hainault Forest. Its trunk was approximately 30 feet around and the midday sun apparently cast a shadow of some 300 feet in circumference - covering about an acre of earth below it.

 

And, not being ones to squander the opportunity provided by this natural marquee, the locals set up an annual summer fair under the tree throughout most of the 1700s.

 

According to one account the name Fairlop comes from a branch which either fell, or was chopped (or 'lopped') off the tree and which was witnessed by Queen Anne, who visited the area in about 1704. This version of events was immortalised in a song, "Come, come my boys":

 

As over Hainault Forest Queen Anne did ride,

She beheld a beautiful oak by her side,

And after viewing it from bottom to top,

She said to her courtiers it was a fair lop.

 

Another story relates to the founder of the summer fair, one Daniel Day, who began the tradition of taking a day off to eat bacon and beans with his chums (in other words a 'bean feast') under the tree, and was gradually joined by more and more people until the gathering grew into the popular summer fair of later years.

 

One day, a branch fell off the tree (spotting the pattern here?) and Day was convinced that it was an omen of his own impending death. He therefore had the branch made into a coffin, and sure enough only a few years later, he died. I know - spooky...

 

The tree eventually blew down in 1820, but its timber was used for many things including, appropriately enough, the pulpit of St Pancras Church - which I visited on my last jaunt, when I went to Euston.

 

Having visited its replacement at Fullwell Cross roundabout last time I was out this way, I decide instead to head East from the station and go to what the internet tells me is the original location of the Fairlop Oak - a golf course cum nature reserve cum boating lake called Fairlop Waters.

 

There doesn't seem to be anything to indicate where the oak stood, and the few hardy souls I see playing golf or jogging round the boating lake in the bitter cold would probably not appreciate being interrupted for information.

 

Fairlop Waters was also once the home to an RAF base and POW camp during WWII, and a monument to the former stands by the car-park and clubhouse. Funnily enough there's no mention of the POW camp.

 

RAF Memorial - Fairlop Waters

 



RAF Memorial



It shouldn't be surprising that the Brits imprisoned German soldiers, in exactly the same way the Germans did ours - but somehow it is. Those, like me, brought up on repeated showings of 'The Great Escape' every bank holiday, have a very clear image of POW camps - and they're most definitely an invention of the nasty Bosch, not the jolly old English, don't you know. They usually involve evil Camp Kommandants with fencing-scars on their cheeks, being thoroughly bested by stiff-upper-lip British Officers - 'Yah-boo, sucks to you Fritzy!'

 

I suspect, however, that knowing the British track record when it comes to dealing with 'dirty foreigners', we were just as cruel and inhumane as the worst of them.

 

I take a little stroll further round the boating lake, but it really is too cold to stay out in the open for too long, so I decide to head on and make my way to Farringdon.

 

Fairlop Waters

***

The tube station at Farringdon (and the National Rail station opposite it) stand - or rather huddle - in the twisting narrow lanes just north of the City Of London. In fact, if your mind can strip away the neon signs and the gaudy window displays, you can just about imagine the sort of streets Charles Dickens used to write about with such relish.

 

Farringdon

 

However, the station's name and location are somewhat misleading. What most people now call Farringdon - being the area immediately around the station - is actually within the Ward of Clerkenwell. And the Farringdon Wards (for there are two of them, to which we will return later) are due south of here within the boundary of the City Of London. All of which signifies nothing except to reinforce how confusing and frustrating it can be to try and  work out where exactly you are in London.

 

The station was also once the terminus of the very first Underground line - the 1863 Metropolitan Railway from Paddington - and the lettering above the entrance still gives its original name of Farringdon & High Holborn.

 

South of the station is Smithfield Market - home of British livestock and meat trading since the 12th Century and original site of the famous Bartholomew Fair, immortalised by Ben Jonson.

 

Smithfield Market

 

The area - an open plain (or "smooth field") - just outside the City walls,  was originally the property of St Bartholomew's Priory (hence the name of the fair - and of St. Bartholomew's Hospital nearby). It's also seen its fair share of slaughter - and not just of livestock.

 

St Bartholomew's - or Bart's - Hospital
The inscription gives the original founding date of 1102.



 

William Wallace plaque

Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasant Revolt against the Poll Tax in 1381 was executed here, as was William Wallace - leader of the Scottish Nationalist Army in the Wars of Independence. Wallace gets a nice little memorial plaque, and I'm intrigued to see not just the obvious tartan and the blue and white of the Scottish Saltire, but also a flag of St George. Is this a sign of solidarity or of one-upmanship I wonder?

 

 

 

Further south, on Holborn Viaduct, I encounter a sign which informs me that I am now officially in Farringdon - or at least, in one of its two wards. I'm in the ward of Farringdon Without.

 

 

Farringdon Without

"Without what?" I hear you ask, and I admit it does sound a little odd, until you realise that they mean 'outside of' (without, as opposed to within). And the thing you are outside of is the original London Wall. The other ward is not surprisingly therefore called Farringdon Within - which must make local election results sound like someone doing the Hokey-Cokey.

 

Having looped southwards this far, and headed back north via Hatton Garden - home of the diamond and jewellery trade since the middle ages, and far too expensive an area for me to hang around in for too long - I make my way back Farringdon Station and catch a train to my final destination of the day - Finchley Central.

 

***

 

Finchley Central is one of those annoying stations in London which, lying between two roads as they do, have an entrance onto both of them, but choose - for reasons best known to themselves - to put the name of the station outside only one of the two entrances. In this case, ironically, the entrance utterly bereft of any name is the one on Station Road - well, it's a station, it's on Station Road, what more do you need...

 

Finchley Central... on this side at least.

 

Having done a quick circuit in order to find a sign I can photograph, I then walk up and down the desperately uninspiring Regents Park Road, with its standard collection of Dominos Pizzas, supermarkets, pubs, Job Centres, and Payday Loan shops, before deciding to head away from the main street in search of some of the more historical attractions of Finchley.

 

Unfortunately Finchley seems to be an almost entirely internet-free zone, and I'm therefore unable at first to load up Google maps to find any of these places.

 

I know that Harry Beck - designer of the now iconic London Tube Map, and thus, in a way, the guy responsible for getting me into this whole tube travelling malarkey in the first place - lived somewhere near here on Courthouse Road, but I'm buggered if I can get my phone to show me where it is.

 

Eventually I end up in a pretty decent coffee shop, which has very nice coffee and more importantly free wi-fi, and work out that Courthouse Road is actually closer to West Finchley station than Finchley Central, so decide to leave that visit till later.

Instead I head south to Avenue House Grounds - a little park surrounding what was once the home of an Ink Manufacturer called Henry Charles 'Inky' Stephens.

 

Avenue House Grounds

The park itself is pleasant enough but what I'm really here to see is a memorial statue of one of Britain's greatest comic talents, and former Finchley resident, Spike Milligan.

 

Spike Milligan



He lived in Holden Road - another location that is actually closer to a W station - Woodside Park - than it is to Finchley Central, but since he was a founding member and supporter of the local Finchley Society, they chose this park to erect a statue in his honour. It's a suitably bizarre piece - with elephant's heads, fairies and miniature renditions of his fellow Goons adorning the bench on which he sits, but most of all I'm struck by the air of wistful sadness in his face.

 

Spike Milligan... again

His battles with depression are well-documented, but I suppose I assumed the artist would have depicted him in one of his 'zany' poses rather than what must have been the more normal reality.

 

Harry Beck Plaque

Finally I head back to the station, and on the southbound platform I notice - beneath a sign for the waiting room and several cobwebs - a dusty plaque commemorating Harry Beck.

 

It seems a sad memorial to someone who effectively revolutionised the idea of maps forever. Imagine a world without the tube map as we know it. Imagine the spaghetti junction of criss-crossed lines. If you have a minute, do a Google search for 'Geographically Accurate Tube Map' - and wonder at the man who could tidy up that mess and produce something so elegant.

 

 

 

 

 

A classic indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Harry - you done good.