Day 64
North Acton - North Ealing - Northfields - North Greenwich
It was with some little trepidation that I began planning my journey today - expecting that Sod's' Law would dictate that, despite them all beginning with the same seemingly innocuous epithet ('North'), the stations I'm due to visit would end up being located in such far-flung places as to be, quite frankly, a pain in the posterior.
My one major (and, I accept, oft repeated) gripe with the Underground network is the naming convention they have adopted with regards to those stations which require a geographical indicator (North, South, East, West) to be added to their titles. While other indictors ('Park', 'Broadway', 'Common', and so on) all come, quite sensibly, after the name of the place in which they're situated, the powers that be have decided that a name like 'Ealing North' or 'Kensington South' would be too confusing for the poor befuddled passengers struggling to find their way about the tube system.
So - North Wembley, East Acton, West Ruislip (and so on) it is. Which means, of course that instead of being able to - sensibly and conveniently - visit all the locations in a given area (Ealing Broadway, Ealing Common, Ealing North, Ealing South, etc) on the same day, I have to keep coming back to these places repeatedly - often months, if not years, apart.
Admittedly, this is only true because of my self-imposed alphabetical restriction, and I may therefore be considered biased in my opinion - but you get the point.
Strangely - this rule doesn't seem to apply to the word 'Central' (as in 'Finchley Central') - though why this indicator gets such special treatment I have no idea...
I'm pleasantly surprised, therefore, to discover that the 'North' stations have, on the whole, been kind enough to gather themselves in relatively proximate little groupings. There's a bunch in the Harrow/Wembley area, another couple a little further out towards Watford, and - today - a trio of stations all in the Ealing area, which I'm able to explore in the space of less than a couple of hours. This will leave me plenty of time for visiting the slightly less conveniently placed North Greenwich.
But that's getting ahead of myself - one station at a time...
***
North Acton is a station familiar to anyone travelling westwards on the Central Line as the point at which the two western branches diverge - one going just two stops further to Ealing Broadway, the other continuing out as far as West Ruislip.
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| North Acton |
I imagine it's therefore one of those stations whose platforms see plenty of people (getting off and onto trains as they change branches), but whose ticket gates are rather quieter as not quite so many venture upwards and outwards into the local area.
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| 'Passengers should change here for...' |
Not that there's much to see beyond the station walls.
The area is largely populated by industrial and business complexes, taking advantage of its transport-friendly location right next to the A40 - a major route into and out of London.
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| Costume Store |
The BBC once had quite a big presence here, with various offices, rehearsal rooms, and their costume storage facility located within easy reach of their studios at nearby White City. But all that has long gone, and the Costume Store has since been converted into student accommodation for the University of the Arts, London (which is actually a collection of Colleges dotted right across London, just one of which - the Lime Grove Media and Communication department of the London College of Fashion - is actually anywhere near here).
Just as an aside - I once visited the Costume Store (when that was still what it was) in order to try on a suit we were hiring for an amateur production I was involved with. The jacket I donned had a slightly faded label in its collar, bearing the name of one of its previous occupants - P. Scofield (or it may possibly have been Schofield) and I never did work out whether it was Paul or Phillip...
Around the corner from the station is the local pub - The Castle - which was, of course, the watering-hole of choice for the actors and crew working here. It's still way too early in the day for it to be open this morning, but I believe there may be photos inside celebrating its past history. You'll have to be satisfied with an external shot, however...
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| The Castle |
I take a brief, and not altogether pleasant stroll down to the A40, breathing in the fumes of several hundred cars as I do so.
Along the way I pass The Perfume Factory - formerly the site of the Elizabeth Arden factory, currently used as offices and studios, and destined to become rented flats in a major redevelopment scheme.
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| The Perfume Factory |
In the car-park of the factory is a very brightly-coloured and incongruous hoarding featuring several images of the singer Elvis Costello.
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| 'It's a professional career...' |
It seems that he worked here as a computer clerk in the seventies - not much of a claim to fame, but one they're pushing for all it's worth.
The A40 is - as you'd expect - busy, dirty and noisy, and I don't stay for any longer than it takes to grab a not-very-exciting photo.
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| My god - it's full of cars... |
***
Getting to the next station involves a quick trip back one stop on the Central Line (to West Acton) and then a ten minute walk to end up at North Ealing.
Like the Central Line, the Piccadilly Line splits into two branches around about this part of town, and North Ealing station is on the more northerly of the two, heading towards Uxbridge.
Along the walk there from West Acton I feel like I've been mysteriously transported back in time to the era of King Henry VIII...
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| Is that Cardinal Wolsey trimming his privet? |
Except of course I don't - not really. The mock Tudor frontages on all the houses along this street have their emphasis very much on the 'mock' part of the description.
Not that I have anything against it per se, it's attractive in its own way, and - as this is a 'garden suburb' - it's all very well tended and presented. I just don't quite understand the motivation for trying to make something so obviously built in the 20th Century look somewhat, but not all that much, like something built 400 years previously.
This particular area is also - for some reason - densely populated by the Japanese community. Whether the style of housing is particularly attractive to the Japanese, or there is another reason for their choice of location, I don't know.
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Ah, the twisted logic of
the self-important...
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Just as I reach the little side street which houses North Ealing station, I spot this sign on the gate post of an unassuming block of flats.
It seems peculiar to me that, in order to prevent Estate Agents putting up signs which - by their very nature - are temporary blots on the inhabitants' landscape, some jobsworth has decided to erect a permanent one telling them they're not allowed to.
Makes complete sense obviously...
Finally I reach North Ealing station.
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| North Ealing |
And it's a bit of an oddity on the Piccadilly Line - as it doesn't, for once, feature the familiar geometric design of Mr Charles Holden (unlike the next station, Northfields, as you'll see in just a short while).
It's tucked away down a little street (in what is technically more east Ealing than north) and was originally part of the District Line, which is one possible explanation for it's individual appearance. It has the air of the sort of 1950s village railway station that used to get all flustered if it had to cope with more than two trains a day.
Like North Acton, North Ealing is located fairly close to a major thoroughfare - in this case the North Circular.
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| North Circular - no more exciting than the A40 really... |
Across the North Circular from the station - and easily missed as you drive past - is a private, gated community called Ealing Village.
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| Ealing Village |
This Grade II Listed, art deco estate - complete with swimming pool, tennis courts and a clubhouse - was built in the mid-1930s and was originally conceived with the intention of attracting movie stars working at the local Ealing Studios.
The hope was that it would become a sort of 'mini-Hollywood' - though this seems to have been rather an ambitious hope as it turned out.
Amazingly, most of the film stars of the day preferred to stay in luxury West End hotels and be driven to and from the studios, rather than live in a glorified block of flats on the North Circular (well, who would have thought it...) And so, rather than the stars of the silver screen, it was the slightly less glamorous back-stage crew who ended up living here.
Not that this seems to have done the place any harm in terms of property-prices, and it has managed to give itself an air of exclusivity reminiscent of my recent visit to
Moor Park.
I can't get beyond the gates to get a look at the flats, but there is a rather twee looking cottage-type affair near this end of the private road.
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| One of the Ealing Village properties. |
I can't say it screams 'Hollywood' at me - unless of course you're talking about one of the sets for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang...
***
Next on my list is Northfields, which despite also being in Ealing, requires a diversion via Acton Town in order to change to the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly Line.
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| Northfields |
Northfields Station, and the road on which it stands - Northfields Avenue - both get their names, not surprisingly, from the fact that until the late 19th Century most of this area was arable land.
Now the street is a busy link between Uxbridge Road to the north and (ultimately) the A4 to the south. It has many shops, a library, some offices, and a former cinema - now a Christian centre.
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| Blondin Avenue |
As I walk south, a couple of the street-names leading off Northfields Avenue give a clue to the first of the area's two famous historic inhabitants.
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| Niagara Avenue |
Charles Blondin was a French acrobat, most famous for crossing the Niagara Gorge (though not actually over the Falls, as is often erroneously stated) on a tightrope.
He lived in Britain from the early 1860s until his death, here in Ealing at the building known as 'Niagara House' (now flats), in 1897 aged 73. He had been performing up until the previous year.
Opposite Niagara House is The Plough (a pub which has apparently been here in one form or another since at least 1722) and round the corner from both - along Windmill Road - is the erstwhile home of Northfields' second famous former resident.
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| The Plough |
Not that you'd know it particularly...
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| Little Boston House, Ealing |
Unlike the aforementioned M. Blondin, the man who lived at number 236 Windmill Road (otherwise known as Little Boston House) gets no commemoration at all. No blue plaque, no streets named after him, nothing. Which is a little surprising, as he went on to become the 6th President of the United States.
John Quincy Adams (President 1825-1828) was the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1817, and lived in this house during that time with his wife and family. He describes the house in his diaries:
"The house we have taken is not large but neat and elegant and fitted up with all that minute attention to comfort which is so characteristic of English domestic life. We have a coach house and stable, dairy, fruit and kitchen garden."
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| Not quite the White House... |
He and his family became active members of the community - sending their younger children to a local school and going for long walks around the area - and they certainly seem to have enjoyed their (albeit brief) time in Ealing, as another diary entry - written on the day they left the house - records:
"I have seldom, perhaps never, in the course of my life resided more comfortably than at the house which we now quit and which I shall probably never see again."
And speaking of quitting - it's high time I was on my way to my final stop of the day.
***
I exit North Greenwich station and am initially a little confused as I turn around to take a photo of the station's name sign.
It doesn't seem to have one.
Thinking it might be on the opposite side of the building - as there are two entrances to this station - I walk back into the ticket hall and am about to cross to the other side when I happen to glance upwards and see the sign I've been looking for.
Ah...... It's
inside the station.
Not outside, where it might be useful - no. You need to come into the station just to find out whether it's the one you want.
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| North Greenwich |
Just to confirm that this isn't one of those "Yes, the builders made a frightful boob and put this entrance sign on the inside - silly asses - but we thought it would be a bit of a curiosity so we left it like that..." type mistakes - I continue to the opposite entrance to see if the builders got it right over there.
Nope.
So clearly, not a mistake but a deliberate choice. Interesting...
Not that there'd be many people looking for this station who haven't already seen the inside of it when they arrived. This isn't an area you might casually stroll through and decide to catch the tube into town from - you come here for a reason, and then you go away again.
And the reason is, of course, The O2 - or as it was formerly known, the Millennium Dome - but we'll come to that shortly.
We're on the little spit of land poking up from Greenwich to the east of the Isle Of Dogs. It's known as the Greenwich Peninsula these days, though originally - and perhaps worryingly, given the amount of building work continually going on here - it was the Greenwich Marshes.
North Greenwich station is also slightly mis-named, as the actual North Greenwich area is across the river at the southern tip of the Isle Of Dogs.
Until the massive redevelopment towards the end of the 20th Century, the area was initially dominated by a huge gas-works, and - after this closed - was rather a wasteland. It was home to the southern end of the Blackwall Tunnel - which meant that thousands of people drove
through it - but no-one would have wanted to actually stop for any length of time here.
That all changed when it was decided to celebrate the coming of the new Millennium by redeveloping the area and building a huge dome to house exhibitions and events.
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| Millennium Dome - now the O2 |
The Millennium Dome, as it then was, was designed by architect Richard Rogers, who also worked on the French Pompidou Centre and the Lloyds Building in the city of London - both very futuristic looking buildings.
The dome is fairly plain in comparison, though it makes up for that in sheer scale. It's impossible to get a photograph of the whole thing from this close up and in fact your best bet is to stand across the river at Blackwall if you want a decent shot.
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| The poles are 100m tall |
The building's dimensions are not simply a matter of impressive scale - there's a specific connection between the design of the dome and Greenwich's history as the centre of world time-keeping.
Not only does the Prime Meridian pass just by the western edge of the dome, but time is also celebrated here in other ways.
The dome is supported by 12 yellow poles - symbolising the 12 months of the year. It is 365m in diameter - a meter for every day of the year. And finally it is 52m high at the centre - the same as the number of weeks in the year.
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| Peninsula Spire |
In front of the dome is a twisting spire made of stainless steel. This is the tallest steel sculpture of its kind in the UK, and at 45m high is taller than the Royal Albert Hall. It starts at 2.5m wide at the base and tapers to just 10mm at the top.
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| 'Up at the O2' |
Approaching the dome itself I see a group of tourists 'enjoying' the experience known as 'Up At The O2'.
For the princely sum of £28 you can take a stroll over the top of the dome, pausing at the summit to take in the views from the central observation platform.
The walkway is made of fabric and (according to the website)
"...has a slight bounce to it to mirror the surface of the tent." Now there's a recipe for inducing panic attacks if ever I heard one...
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| Bouncy bouncy... |
And so I enter the dome itself.
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| In Xanadu... |
During the Millennium year, the dome was divided into several distinct areas each with a different event or exhibition. There was a 'Body' zone, a 'Work' zone, as well as the 'Millennium Dome Show' (with 160 acrobats performing to the music of Peter Gabriel) and even a specially commissioned episode of the sitcom
Blackadder.
Unfortunately the various entertainments on offer failed to attract the huge crowds that had been hoped for. Some blamed the lacklustre content of some of the zones, while others put it down to the relatively remote location.
These days all that has gone, of course - to be replaced at the centre by the O2 Arena, and around the circumference by an 'avenue' of restaurants and bars.
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The base of one of the
supporting poles. |
Despite its name, the O2 Arena (and indeed The O2 dome itself) is actually owned by another company: AEG. Not to be confused with the German electrical goods company, this AEG is the 'Anschutz Entertainment Group' and is an American company which owns many venues and sports team around the world.
The telecom company O2 only own the
naming rights to the building, which they purchased from AEG in 2005.
As I wander into the entrance foyer - which is very quiet at this time of day - and along 'The Avenue' past the restaurants, I realise that I can only explore a relatively small section of the circumference.
This is because only about two-thirds of the ground floor area have actually been developed since the original Millennium Experience closed its doors. The owners, AEG, initially hoped to be able to build a Super-Casino' in the dome, but no licence was granted for this. A cruise ship terminal has also been mooted as a possible alternative use for some of the dome's space, but nothing definite has been decided.
It only takes me ten or fifteen minutes to walk along The Avenue and back to the foyer, and other than a smattering of people having lunch in a few of the restaurants, there's not much to catch my eye.
Only one thing really stirs my interest, and it's a section of wall decorated with what is effectively a visual history of recorded music.
Everything in the display is a real item - LP covers, cassette and CD cases, Video tapes, amps, TVs, and so on. In these days of streaming and MP3s, it's nice to see (and touch) these reminders of my youth, although I'm fully aware that no-one under twenty will have the faintest idea what any of it is of course...
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| Wall of sound |
Outside the dome again, I take a brief look around, but there's not much to see. The Emirates cable car terminal is just across the road of course, but I did that particular trip some time ago, and other than that it all seems to be offices and car-parks...
And so I head back home - ready to venture forth into another batch of 'Norths' next time.
See you then.
***
STOP PRESS
Just a quick update - two days after my visit to North Greenwich, a suspect package was found on a Jubilee Line train at the station.
According to news reports, a Met Police spokesman said that it 'looked real enough' to warrant a controlled detonation to be carried out, and the station was evacuated and closed for most of the day.
Though it isn't yet confirmed that the package was dangerous, and while it wouldn't (nor shouldn't) stop me from continuing my travels around the tube network, it is a somewhat sobering thought that I missed the event by such a short period of time.
