'MMMBop'

Day 62

Moor Park - Morden - Mornington Crescent - Mudchute

Well, I don't quite know how it happened - I certainly didn't notice it - but I seem once again to have gone for over a month without donning my Wombling boots and giving you another fascinating snapshot of the London Underground system!

This project has most definitely not been the 'walk in the park' I (foolishly I now realise) assumed it would be when I started. How laughable it now seems to have imagined, as I did back then, that I would be done in 'a few months probably... maybe a year at the outside...'

Ha!

Ah well - I just have to keep reminding myself that the point is not to finish as quickly as possible, but to visit parts of London I would otherwise never see, and to give you - dear reader - a potted travel guide to the many and varied locales of the metropolis...

***

And you don't get much more varied than today's bunch, not least in terms of location. I'm heading way out north-west on the Metropolitan Line, followed by the most southerly point on the Northern Line, then a (hopefully) quick nip northwards to another Northern Line stop, and finally a trek out to the Isle of Dogs on the DLR.

Phew!

We start this morning with Moor Park.

Moor Park

Now, at first glance you might not think there's anything very remarkable about Moor Park. Certainly as you emerge from the station there's the usual taxi rank, bus stop, car park, hairdressing salon, and cigarette smoking teenager you can expect to see at most of the suburban tube station entrances.

It's one of the most northerly stations on the Metropolitan Line - just before it starts branching off towards Watford, Amersham and Chesham - and sits at the bottom of a gently sloping tree-lined road called Main Avenue.

It's when you start to walk up this road and notice firstly the sorts of houses they have here, and secondly the lack of anything remotely suggestive of any community interaction, that you begin to get a sense that Moor Park isn't... well, it isn't like other places.

A further clue to the mystery can be found by looking at the area on Google Maps. Go on, have a quick shuftie - we've got plenty of time. I'll put the kettle on while your gone.

Back already? Ok.

So - you see what I mean? It's surrounded by golf courses. I mean surrounded.

There's a course to the east of the station (Sandy Lodge Golf Course) and no less than four to the west of it. If you also count the two courses to the south (near Northwood Station) that's a grand total of seven golf courses within a radius of roughly a kilometre in most directions from the station.

This is Golf City! Golf-ville! Planet Golf!

And nestled among the various fairways and bunkers are the houses.

The rather large, and dare I say it, lavish houses...

Bedroom Tax, Schmedroom Tax...

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who enjoys a game of golf must by definition be enormously wealthy. But a lot of enormously wealthy people do, let's face it, play golf. (A certain peculiarly coiffured presidential hopeful - or rather, hopefully not - springs reluctantly to mind.)

And Moor Park, seemingly, is where they all live.

It's as if the whole area, from the golf courses, to the multi-million pound properties, to the tube station at the end of the road, has all been 'built to order'.

"Just pop the station at the bottom there would you sweetie? And shove a couple of trees in front of it so it doesn't spoil the vista - I mean, of course Harvey Nicks and Fortnum's... but let's not go overboard on the whole 'inner city atmos'..."

You may think I'm being unfair, but there's something distinctly unwelcoming about this area. I like places with a 'buzz' to them. Somewhere you can see people chatting in the street as they pop to the greengrocer's or gather in the local coffee shop.

Ok, I get the message

Here the streets are empty. Huge signs warn you that this is all very much a 'private' estate and that security cameras watch your every move. There are no shops other than the usual handful near the station. No traffic to speak of. Only one other person in sight - a woman walking her immaculately groomed pedigree dog. I'm sure the residents are all safely barricaded into their luxury homes enjoying the latest entertainment systems, or - of course - enjoying the privacy of the private members only golf clubs...

I think I've seen enough.

Can't see what all the fuss is about to be honest...

***

Literally, and metaphorically, Morden is the opposite extreme to the pristine luxury of Moor Park.

Literally - because it's physically almost as far south from there as you can go on the network. Metaphorically, because there's very little evidence of wealth to be seen as you emerge from the station onto the main road.

Before we leave the station however, I should point out a couple of its curiosities.

Firstly, there's the octagonal roof light in the ticket hall - reminiscent of the heptagonal one at Ealing Common, and of course by the same architect - our old friend Charles Holden.

Octagons were all the rage in 1926...

The stations along this stretch of the Northern Line - the Morden extension - were the first he designed for London Underground, and what an introduction they were to his work. As Frank Pick, the person who chose Holden to do the work, wrote at the time:

"I may say that we are going to build our stations upon the Morden extension railway to the most modern pattern. We are going to discard entirely all ornament. We are going to build in reinforced concrete. The station will be simply a hole in the wall, everything being sacrificed to the doorway and some notice above to tell you to what the doorway leads. We are going to represent the DIA [Design and Industries Association] gone mad, and in order that I may go mad in good company I have got Holden to see that we do it properly."

Morden Station

We've already seen the stations at Balham, Clapham and Colliers Wood so the rigid geometry of the façade here comes as no surprise. Also familiar is the large glass frontage, with its oversized 'roundel' flanked by two columns, each topped (as you'll see if you look carefully) with a 3D version of the same roundel. Not quite the ornament-free 'hole in the wall' Pick envisioned perhaps, but very much Holden's style.

The second curiosity about this station, as I've already alluded to, is its 'southerlyness'.

It is in fact the most southerly station on the whole underground network. (And yes, I know that, technically, West Croydon station is further south - but that's on the Overground network, so don't get picky.)

Being the terminus of the line, the platforms are not built in tunnels but are above ground in a cutting. The tunnel entrances are a little way to the north of the station and mark the start of the longest tunnel on the underground - 17.3 miles - to East Finchley, via the Bank branch of the line.

***
On to Morden itself then.

And the area outside this station is a far remove from the manicured lawns and vastly expansive (and expensive) properties found at Moor Park.

Whereas there it was all golf courses and security cameras, in Morden it's cash converters and kebab shops which proliferate (though to be fair it does have it's fair share of cameras watching over proceedings - but where doesn't these days?).

There are plenty of people milling about - which at least gives it that 'buzz' I was missing in Moor Park - but many of them seem rather fed up with their lot. It isn't the most salubrious of places, I'll admit - only a smattering of the usual high street chains can be seen, and instead there are various independent take-aways, pound shops, grocers and the aforementioned cash converters.

What it does have however, is a large park, owned by the National Trust, which contains Morden Hall and an old Snuff Mill.

Water-Wheel at the
Snuff Mill

Since it's lunchtime, I pick up a sandwich and a drink and make my way into Morden Hall Park in search of a bench to sit on. I cross several of the parks numerous bridges which span the River Wandle as it meanders its way through the park, and finally settle on a bench near the old snuff mill, and its impressive looking water-wheel.

The mill itself is less so - having been converted into a 'Learning & Community Centre', essentially a room with a few posters and a couple of display cases.







There's a (very) brief rundown of the snuff making process in one of these display cases, and - if you're interested - here it is in all its glory...


The entire history of snuff making. Sort of.

Outside the mill I find what are, presumably, the original millstones, which ground the tobacco leaves into the powdered snuff, so popular in the 18th and early 19th Centuries. But since they, like the water-wheel, are very much static, I don't linger long and decide to make my way back to the station.








I wend my way, wandering round the waterfalls of the Wandle (sorry) and leave the peace and quiet of the park to find myself once again outside the take-aways and pound shops of the main road.

The River Wandle.

They seem strangely at odds with each other - but I suppose that's London all over. The old and the new, the neat and the grubby, the rich and the poor - side by side or just around the corner from each other. Cosmopolitan in other words.

***
Mornington Crescent...

Mornington Crescent

I WIN!!!

......And if you have absolutely no idea what on earth I'm talking about then I'm afraid this is one of those cultural references - much like Star Wars, obscure board games, and the music of The Beatles - which serve as a kind of litmus paper to determine whether or not we're going to be friends.

For, as well as being a tube station on the Charing Cross Branch of the Northern Line, and of course the street after which the station was named, Mornington Crescent is also the name of a game - a very old and mysterious game. A game which  has both baffled and enthralled its devotees for the best part of forty years. A game of striking simplicity, yet fiendish complexity in the hands of an expert player.

It first made its appearance on the Radio 4 panel game 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' in 1978 and has been a regular feature ever since. If you haven't heard the show, I urge you to do so at the earliest opportunity, and if you can, to get hold of some of the archive episodes available on CD or the internet. The current host is the comedian Jack Dee, but for many the only real host will always be the much missed Humphrey Lyttelton, who sat in the chairman's seat from the very first episode in 1972, until his death in 2008.

There's an unwritten rule in the world of theatre that one doesn't disclose the identity of the murderer in the Agatha Christie play 'The Mousetrap'. A similar secrecy surrounds the rules of the game of Mornington Crescent. Many people are fully aware of the secret, but everyone plays along and refuses to divulge it to the uninitiated - and rightly so.

It would be wrong of me to do any differently therefore, so I'll restrict myself to a brief introduction to the aim of the game and its basic mechanics.

Each player in turn names - or 'plays' - a station on the London Underground network. In choosing which station to play, you must of course adhere to the rules of the game, and any special restrictions or variations imposed by the chairman, such as no Huffing on the Diagonals, or Mainline Stations all being wild. Illegal moves will be disallowed and the offending player must either play a different station, or miss a turn.

The aim of the game, naturally, is to be the first player to reach Mornington Crescent.

As I said - a simple enough game on the face of it.

***

The station here has - not unnaturally - been something of a tourist attraction for fans of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (or ISIHAC, as it's commonly abbreviated) - not least because it was actually closed for six years in the 1990s and was reopened by regular cast members Humphrey Lyttelton, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer.

The fourth original cast member - Willie Rushton - had sadly died in 1996 so never saw the station reopened. However he is commemorated with a plaque in the ticket hall.

The late great Willie Rushton - expert player of Mornington Crescent.

Outside the station I find myself on Hampstead Road at the southern end of Camden High Street. Opposite the station is a pub - previously The Crescent but now named The Lyttelton Arms in honour of the late chairman of ISIHAC.

The road called Mornington Crescent is to the west, and I take a quick stroll along it. However, other than a blue plaque to the artist Walter Sickert who once lived there, there's very little of interest.

The Street.

Back on the main road I head north past the impressive 'Greater London House' - an art deco building which once housed the 'Carreras Cigarette Factory' - manufacturers of the famous 'Craven A' brand of cigarettes.

Carreras Cigarette Factory

It is, as you can see, very much in the 'Egyptian Revival' style made popular by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the early 1920s, and the huge black cats either side of the entrance also featured as the motif of the Craven A brand.

These days it houses various companies including the British Heart Foundation.

I walk north up Camden High Street - which of course I visited back during the 'C's - and head to Camden Town station, where I can change to the other branch of the Northern Line and get a train to Bank, and the DLR to my final destination today.

***

Well, it's not looking up to much - but it is the final station of the 'M's so I try and give Mudchute a fair shot.



Mudchute

The name at least has an oddity about it which has always intrigued me. It comes from the fact that the nearby Millwall Docks had to be regularly dredged to prevent the mud and silt building up. The mud removed had of course to be dumped somewhere - and this was the lucky location. The 'chute' part of the name refers to the pipe which carried the mud from the docks, over the main road, to the dumping ground.

These days the 32 acre site has been converted to a city farm and park. I find my way in via a gate off the main road, and follow what looks to be the main pathway. After several minutes, however, the only animal-life I've seen is a lone squirrel by the side of the path.

Mudchute Park

There doesn't seem to be any clear signpost pointing the way to the farm, or to the other main attraction here - an original WWII Ack-Ack anti-aircraft gun (this was an important gun emplacement during the war). So, rather anti-climactically, I end up simply retracing my steps back to the station and ending the day - and my trip through the letter M - 'not with a bang, but a whimper...'