Oakwood - Old Street - Osterley
Happy New Year to you all!
Today we kick off with the 'O's - of which there are just five to visit. However, the first and third of these - while both being on the Piccadilly Line - are miles apart at opposite ends of the line, so I suspect the chances of me completing all five stations today are (unlike my post-Christmas figure) very slim indeed.
***
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| Oakwood |
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| Art Deco Bench |
But let's start the ball rolling with Oakwood. This is the penultimate stop before Cockfosters, heading east (or north, depending on how you look at it) on the Piccadilly Line and you'll immediately recognise the traditional geometric simplicity of the Charles Holden design. Like Acton Town, which I visited on my very first day of Wombling, it's basically a big rectangular block of red brick and large windows across the front and back.
The car park in front of the station features a slightly unusual circular bench, topped with the London Underground Roundel.
Oakwood is a quiet little suburb up in Enfield, and although named after a park to the south, in which the titular Oak Trees were to be found, the station itself sits at the southerly tip of the huge expanse of open land called Trent Country Park - part of which I saw when I visited Cockfosters.
Trent Country Park is vast - 413 acres in fact - and the two stations adjoining it only touch the southern edge of the park which stretches a good couple of kilometres further north. Nevertheless, I like to wander into the greener areas of London whenever I can, so I stroll along Snakes Lane (should I be worried?) for a few hundred feet before venturing into the trees and fields of the park.
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| Trent Country Park |
It's as if a sound-proof curtain has dropped behind me. Though the station lies on quite a busy main road, the trees towering above me seem to baffle the sound so all I can hear is some occasional birdsong.
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| Up where the air is clear... |
Then I'm out of the trees and into the open space and looking at the rest of the park stretching out in front of me as far as I can see. For a capital city we don't do too badly for open spaces do we?
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| Is there anybody out there? |
Back to the main road - which is rather less inspiring, being just the typical collection of shops found on many such parades on the approach to the city's stations.
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| The usual collection... |
Heading west though, after ten minutes, I come to something of a ground-breaking establishment.
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| Chickenshed Theatre |
The Chickenshed Theatre was founded in 1974 by Jo Collins and Mary Ward - quite literally in a chicken shed. The idea was to create a theatre company that was open to anyone, whatever their apparent 'difficulties' or 'disabilities' - since every one of us has some creativity within us, given the right environment in which to flourish.
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| What's on... |
Since its early days in the original shed, the company has become a world-wide name, and as well as now having the purpose built theatre here in North London, has set up smaller inclusive theatre 'sheds' across the UK.
***
On to my next stop - so it's back along the Piccadilly Line to King's Cross, and then a quick hop down to Old Street on the Northern Line.
Old Street is, as the name suggests, old.
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| Old Street |
There has been a street of this name (albeit with various spellings) since at least the beginning of the 13th Century. The station itself is actually underneath the junction of Old Street (which runs west to east) and City Road (running north to south) - two of the major thoroughfares of this part of town.
Despite its venerable history, the area surrounding the station, and in particular the roundabout under which it lies, have seen much modernisation and have become the home to many I.T. and Tech firms in recent years, giving rise to the nickname ' Silicon Roundabout'.
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| Silicon Roundabout |
I walk to the north, up the City Road, towards one of London's better known hospitals - the Moorfields Eye Hospital.
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| No - it really does look like that... |
Along the way I encounter a building clearly designed to generate more work for the hospital as the weird proportions of the architecture are really bad for the eyes...
The Hospital , as the name suggests, is a specialist ophthalmic hospital and covers all aspects of eye treatment, from cataracts to contact lenses, glaucomas to glass eyes.
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| Moorfields Eye Hospital |
I do think they've missed a trick however. Surely they could have had a bit more fun with the sign on the front of the building and given us something a little more like this:
MOOR
FIELDS
EYEHO
SPITAL
No? Oh well, suit yourselves...
***
The City Road is also immortalised in the lines of the Nursery Rhyme 'Pop Goes The Weasel'.
Most of us are familiar with the first verse from our school days:
Half a pound of tupenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel,
But that's probably all we learnt. A second verse (or third, depending on which version you find) has the following lyrics:
Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle,
That's the way the money goes,
Pop goes the weasel.
The meaning of the lyrics has given rise to much varied interpretation, though one I particularly like the sound of is that it's a warning about the consequences of spending all your money and having to end up pawning your clothes ('pop' being slang for 'pawn' and 'weasel' being rhyming slang - 'weasel and stoat' = 'coat'). The Eagle is a pub that still exists on the City Road, some way up from the Eye Hospital.
***
And so on to my final stop of the day (no - I'm not going to manage all five 'O's today I'm afraid).
Osterley is on the Heathrow branch of the Piccadilly Line, so it's another long journey from King's Cross to get there.
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| Osterley |
This is another station with a geometric blockiness to it, though in this case the architect wasn't Charles Holden, but Stanley Heaps - who emulated his designs.
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| Tower & Obelisk |
On top of the station is a tower, and on top of that is a concrete obelisk, the point of which I'm afraid rather escapes me.
It sits on the main A4 heading out of central London to the west, and indeed this stretch of the A4 is known as The Great West Road, though it has been largely displaced by the bigger M4 motorway.
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| Great West Road |
The station is named after nearby Osterley Park - another of those surprisingly large open spaces dotted around the capital.
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| Entrance to Osterley Park |
The park was built around Osterley House (now a National Trust property) which was originally built in the Elizabethan era an Elizabeth I herself actually visited it at one time. It was also used as a training school for the Home Guard during WWII and such techniques as hand-to-hand combat, explosives, and camouflage were taught here.
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| Osterley House |
I take an enjoyable - if slightly mud-encrusted - stroll around the lake in front of the house, and pass an idle few minutes watching various wild-fowl splashing around in the water.
Being early January, it's rather cold, so I don't linger too long - but I do enjoy the afternoon sun setting through the haze as it drops behind the grand country house.
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| A hazy shade of winter |
Not a bad way to kick off the New Year really...
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