Day 97
West Ruislip - West Silvertown - Whitechapel - White City
A warm, if muggy, day - not ideal for travelling on the tube - but at least my first journey is a fairly short one, and more importantly above ground, so I can get the occasional blast of fresh air.
My first station is West Ruislip, which - as far as I can tell - has no particular points of merit, other than the fact that it is the terminus of this branch of the Central Line.
This puts it at one end of the longest single journey (34.1 miles) you can make on the tube network without changing trains (the other end being Epping - as you may recall from my visit there some time ago).
Apart from this, however, the station and its environs are fairly unremarkable.
There are a few shops, as usual, along the High Road from the station, but the main feature of the area is the Ruislip Golf Course, to the north.
A public footpath cuts through the course and I walk up this for a short distance.
There are one or two keen golfers already out on the fairway (it's only just gone 9.30 in the morning) and contrary to the popular image of the terminally grumpy "Do-you-mind-you-can't-walk-through-here-this-is-for-golfers-only-we-don't-want-your-kind-here" Golf Club members, the couple I meet on the footpath offer me a cheery good morning as I pass by.
But after failing to find very much more of interest along the footpath I turn back after only 30 minutes in the area, and set off again back eastwards through town.
***
I may not be going the maximum 34 miles, and certainly not in a single journey, but my next destination definitely takes me to the opposite side of town and is, if not quite the end of the line, not far off it.
I'm visiting West Silvertown, which is on the DLR and just four stops from the terminus at Woolwich Arsenal.
The area around the station, like that around West Ruislip, is not really a place you would choose to visit for very long without a very good reason for doing so (or - in my case - a not-particularly-good reason for doing so). Being in the docklands area, and in particular the North Woolwich part of town, the architecture is more industrial than residential.
To the north is the Royal Victoria Dock, home of the Excel centre, to the north east is Galleons Point Marina and London City Airport. To the south is the river - with Silvertown forming an elongated peninsula between them.
The name of the area comes, I'm disappointed to report, not from any long-forgotten deposits of silver ore buried beneath the factories and warehouses, but from one Samuel Winkworth Silver, who had a rubber factory here in the 19th Century.
Today one of the major landmarks of the area is the Tate & Lyle Sugar Refinery, with a large model of its familiar Golden Syrup tin sticking out of the side of the building.
The company was formed when two former rival companies merged in 1921, though this was after the deaths of both Mr Tate and Mr Lyle - who remained bitter competitors up until their deaths.
The Golden Syrup tin, and its distinctive design, have been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as Britain's oldest brand, having remained pretty much unchanged since 1885. The somewhat surprising motif of the rotting carcass of a dead lion surrounded by a swarm of bees, is a reference (as is the quotation beneath, which reads 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness') to the biblical story of Samson.
Apparently, so the story goes, young Samson was out visiting the land of the Philistines looking for a wife (as you do) and on his way there (also as you do) he killed a savage lion by ripping it apart with his bare hands. Leaving the dead lion by the roadside, off he trotted, found the girl of his dreams, and they agreed to marry later in the year (again, as you do).
When the day of the wedding arrived he was on his way back to her place, when he noticed that the body of the lion was still lying by the road and that a swarm of bees had, for some reason, set up home in the carcass and were busy making honey among the rotting entrails. Feeling a bit peckish all of a sudden, he stuck his hand into the offal, scooped out a handful of honey, and slurped it off his fingers as he continued on his merry way (very much not as you, I - or anyone with even an iota of sanity - would do).
Having managed to get through the wedding without dying from Listeria, our wily Samson hit upon a way of using the lion to con some extra wedding presents out of his Philistine guests by telling them a 'riddle' he had just made up. If they could answer it within seven days (he promised, like the shifty old sly-boots he was) he would buy them each a brand new set of clothes - if not, they would each have to buy him a new outfit.
"Ok, you're on," said the guests; "Tell us the riddle".
To which Samson replied: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness".
The Philistines - not surprisingly stumped by this - went away none too happy at having to fork out for more presents, and a few days later went to the new Mrs Samson and basically threatened to burn her and her entire family to death if she didn't get her husband to tell her the answer.
Not wishing to die such a horrible death just because her new husband was a bit of a wide-boy with a peculiar penchant for meat-infused honey, she nagged and cajoled him until he finally gave in and told her the answer - which she promptly passed on to the guests.
They, of course, were then able to give Samson the solution to the riddle, which left him extremely miffed. Accusing them of cheating (which was a bit rich, given the stunt he'd originally been trying to pull) he promptly went off in a strop to another village, killed a load of innocent villagers, nicked their clothes and used these to settle the bet he'd made with the original guests. His wife, who was no doubt more than happy to get away from such an obviously raving lunatic, was 'given' to one of the guests, as a 'booby' prize.
So now you know...
Another of Silvertown's landmarks is on the dockside and is something I was, I'm afraid, fairly dismissive of when I saw it from across the water on my visit to Prince Regent station.
The derelict buildings are not - as I first suspected - erstwhile office blocks, but are actually the former Millennium Mills - a set of flour mills which operated in the early 20th Century. This is more obvious here than it was from the opposite side of the dock, as there is a huge mill chimney standing in the middle of a roundabout as you approach the mills from the station to the south.
The buildings have been empty since the docks closed in the 1980s, but are occasionally used for film and TV locations, including the time-travel drama Ashes To Ashes.
The Mill is next door to the now empty site of the former Brunner Mond munitions factory, which was the epicentre (in 1917) of what became known as the Silvertown Explosion - an accident which killed 73 people and injured 400 others, when approximately 50 tonnes of TNT were set off by a fire which had broken out in the factory.
On my way back from the mill I pass the local fire station, outside which is a collection of plaques dedicated (among others) to those who lost their lives in the explosion.
The explosion destroyed not only the munitions factory but many buildings surrounding it, including the original local Fire Station. Thousands were rendered homeless and damage was caused to buildings and vehicles as far away as The Strand and Pall Mall, with the blast apparently being heard many miles away in places like Maidstone and Guildford.
***
Next up is Whitechapel, where again the main points of interest are historical rather than contemporary.
Whitechapel's bloody history of murder, serial killers, violence, prostitution, gangsters, and crime in all its myriad forms, means that it could pretty much be said to be London's equivalent of Mos Eisley Spaceport. I can just imagine a bearded Alec Guinness warning me that I'll "never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" as I emerge from the station and take my first look at the place.
I must be cautious...
Not that there seems to be much of menace on the main Whitechapel Road, which shows more evidence of the area's booming immigrant community, than of any past criminal history.
The market stalls which line the street are almost a permanent fixture here. They sell everything you'd normally expect - bric-a-brac, clothing, fruit & veg, etc. - but spiced with a distinctly Asian flavour, which mirrors the area's largely Bangladeshi community.
But the area's past history still lingers in places.
There are two main criminal 'cases', which have given Whitechapel its reputation as a place of violence - one from the Victorian age, and the second from the 20th Century.
The former is the series of prostitute killings between 1888 and 1891 that became known as the 'Whitechapel Murders' - and which gave the world the now legendary figure of 'Jack The Ripper'.
Most people are familiar with the facts and folklore surrounding the Ripper murders, so I won't regurgitate the gory details here. Suffice to say that enough remains of the Victorian architecture and narrow old cobbled streets to be able to picture the murder scenes without too much difficulty.
One of the murders took place in the road which runs immediately behind the station - Durward Street, or (as it was known at the time) Buck's Row - and several others are within easy walking distance, should you be interested.
Walking along Whitechapel Road I come to the scene of another murder - this time from 1966.
The innocuous looking 'Blind Beggar' pub is famously linked to another criminal figure whose name (together with that of his twin brother) has become almost as legendary as Jack The Ripper's - Ronnie Kray. It was in this pub that Ronnie Kray calmly walked up to the bar, at which sat a member of a rival gang - George Cornell - pulled out a Luger pistol and shot him in the head. Despite doing so in front of several witnesses, none of them would testify against him and it took three years for him to finally be convicted of the murder.
Leaving such violent crimes behind us, though returning once again to the Victorian era, I should mention the Royal London Hospital which sits across the road from the tube station.
A celebrated surgeon named Frederick Treves working at the hospital (coincidentally at about the same time as the Ripper murders) became aware of a 'penny gaff' freak-show being staged in a shop across the road, and in particular one 'exhibit' - a severely deformed man by the name of Joseph Merrick, whose 'stage name' was 'The Elephant Man'.
Treves asked Merrick whether he would be willing to be examined at the hospital, to which Merrick agreed, and the two met several times after that.
In time Merrick became rather fed up of being measured and photographed, and went back on the road with a travelling fair, though eventually he would return to London, and to the hospital, when he was abandoned by his 'manager'.
He remained at the hospital until his death, at the age of just 27, from asphyxia thanks to the weight of his head pressing down on his throat as he slept. Apparently he was so desperate to live 'like other people' that - contrary to his normal habit - he attempted to sleep lying down rather than sitting upright as he had done for most of his life.
On which sad note I return to the station.
There's one last curiosity to mention here though, before I go.
The station is a junction not only of the Underground (District and Hammersmith & City Lines) but also of the Overground Line.
However, by some perverse accident of construction, the Overground Line's tracks are not over, but under, those of the Underground Line.
It's not perhaps very easy to make out from the picture above, but the tracks at the bottom of the frame (running left to right) are those of the Overground Line, while overhead - crossing front to back - you can see the girders which support the Underground Line.
This is usually a lot more clearly visible than it is at the moment, both from below and above, but thanks to the works involved in the Crossrail development, visibility around the ventilation shafts is somewhat restricted.
***
And so on to the last stop of the day - White City.
The station, and its surrounding area, get their name from an exhibition held here in 1908 - the Franco-British Exhibition.
This was a public fair designed to celebrate the entente cordiale between France and Britain that had been signed in 1904, and featured well over 100 exhibition buildings and pavilions, all of which were either painted white or covered in white plaster, as this postcard from the exhibition shows:
The Great White City was to the west of the current station, and included, as a last minute addition, a sports stadium to the north. This late addition was the result of London stepping in to also host the 1908 Olympics later that year. The original host city - Rome - was forced to pull out following a devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906, which destroyed much of Naples and swallowed up all the available funds.
It was at this Olympics that the standard distance for the marathon race was first established.
Most people know that the marathon race gets its name from the legend of the Greek messenger Philippedes who ran all the way back to Athens from the Battle of Marathon, announced that the Greeks had won, and promptly dropped dead.
While the distance between the site of the battle and Athens is roughly the same as the modern marathon race (it's between 22 and 25 miles, depending on which way round Mount Penteli you choose to go) it wasn't until the 1908 London Olympics that the modern standard distance of 26 miles and 385 yards was set - as this was the distance between the starting line at Windsor Castle, and the finishing line at the White City Stadium.
The exhibition buildings and the stadium have long gone (though the latter lasted until 1985 and was a former home of Queen's Park Rangers FC). Most of the area was redeveloped with residential properties but the site across the road from the station found new fame as the home (until fairly recently) of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The BBC's Television Centre opened in 1960 and was the centre of operations for the BBC until it officially closed in 2013. It contained several studios, of varying size, and itself featured as the backdrop of many moments of TV history. The programmes made here are far too numerous to mention, but for many of my generation this building - or rather its address - will forever be associated with Saturday morning kids TV.
Even now, without looking it up, I can reel off the full postal address of the place to which all competition entries, letters, art-work and other hopeful correspondence was sent by thousands of kids every year - in response to the familiar phrase: "Answers, on a postcard, to..."
(All together now.......
"BBC Television Centre,
Wood Lane,
London,
W12 8QT"
......well done!)
Another familiar feature of the building is its distinctive shape.
The story goes that the architect (one Graham Dawbarn CBE), who was struggling to decide what shape of building would most conveniently encompass all the studios, offices and storage space required by the BBC, got so frustrated that he simply drew a great big question mark on the back of an envelope.
About to screw this up into a ball and chuck it into the nearest waste paper bin, he suddenly realised he'd inadvertently come up with the ideal shape for the building. So, after tidying it up a bit, copying it onto a fresh bit of paper, and adding a few measurements here and there, he submitted his plans and the building's shape was decided.
***
Now, that all sounds very whimsical and lovely, and may of course be perfectly true.
On the other hand, one or two things don't quite - to my mind - add up.
Firstly - though I accept I'm not an architect - I would assume that most people, given a map of an empty plot of land would orientate it with North positioned at the top of the page. This would mean that the question mark shape would have its curve at the top (north) and its tail at the bottom (south).
However, if you look at a satellite image of the area, which places (as is usual) North at the top, then the supposed question mark shape is pretty much upside down.
Of course, our architect friend might, without noticing, have somehow managed to get the paper the wrong way round, before he started drawing, but that's not all...
A question mark has a dot, or full stop, beneath its tail - ? - see?
But there's no 'dot' at TV centre. There's a sort of rounded roof terrace above the main reception area that might, at a push, be considered 'dot-like' but that would make it part of the 'tail' - whereas most people would draw a question mark with the dot as a clearly separate entity.
Finally, the story goes that this was the result of a man on his own, doodling on the back of an envelope, because he couldn't think of an idea.
Now, without wishing to be too crude, and putting this as delicately as possible, there's one particular 'motif' that most men have, at one time or another, selected as their doodle of choice - and it certainly isn't a question mark.
The depictions of the (if you'll pardon the expression) 'meat and two veg' can vary of course, but they all, not surprisingly, share certain similarities of form.
There's the spheroid conglomeration at the bottom, and adjoining this - and extending from it - is the 'shaft'. In effect, something similar to - or a variation on - a great big number '6'.
Which, if you have another look at that satellite image........
***
Anyway, leaving such fruitless speculation aside...
The BBC decided to sell up and move out of the building a few years ago and it's now being redeveloped as apartments and associated leisure amenities.
White City Station is - as the address of TV Centre shows - on the road called Wood Lane, as is (not surprisingly) Wood Lane Station, to which I'll be paying a visit in the not too distant future. Behind them both, and between here and Shepherd's Bush Station, is the massive Westfield Shopping Centre.
It's not quite the 'Great White City' of 1908 (more of a great grey city sadly) but I suppose it's the modern day equivalent: lots of different things to see, lots of places trying to take your money, and lots of people willing to have their money taken off them.
In any case, I visited the centre a while back when I came to Shepherd's Bush, so there's not much I can add here. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I'll do when I come back here yet again to visit Wood Lane in a few weeks' time.
The only other site of any note within spitting distance of the station is Loftus Road - the current home of QPR football club - and if you've been following this blog with any regularity, you'll know that football really isn't my cup of tea...
Hey-ho, we shall see. Perhaps they'll build someone else's doodle before I return. Answers on a postcard........
My first station is West Ruislip, which - as far as I can tell - has no particular points of merit, other than the fact that it is the terminus of this branch of the Central Line.
 |
| West Ruislip |
This puts it at one end of the longest single journey (34.1 miles) you can make on the tube network without changing trains (the other end being Epping - as you may recall from my visit there some time ago).
Apart from this, however, the station and its environs are fairly unremarkable.
 |
| High Road |
There are a few shops, as usual, along the High Road from the station, but the main feature of the area is the Ruislip Golf Course, to the north.
A public footpath cuts through the course and I walk up this for a short distance.
 |
| Ruislip Golf Course |
There are one or two keen golfers already out on the fairway (it's only just gone 9.30 in the morning) and contrary to the popular image of the terminally grumpy "Do-you-mind-you-can't-walk-through-here-this-is-for-golfers-only-we-don't-want-your-kind-here" Golf Club members, the couple I meet on the footpath offer me a cheery good morning as I pass by.
 |
| A rare sighting of a pair of Lesser-Spotted Friendly Golfers |
But after failing to find very much more of interest along the footpath I turn back after only 30 minutes in the area, and set off again back eastwards through town.
***
I may not be going the maximum 34 miles, and certainly not in a single journey, but my next destination definitely takes me to the opposite side of town and is, if not quite the end of the line, not far off it.
I'm visiting West Silvertown, which is on the DLR and just four stops from the terminus at Woolwich Arsenal.
 |
| West Silvertown |
The area around the station, like that around West Ruislip, is not really a place you would choose to visit for very long without a very good reason for doing so (or - in my case - a not-particularly-good reason for doing so). Being in the docklands area, and in particular the North Woolwich part of town, the architecture is more industrial than residential.
To the north is the Royal Victoria Dock, home of the Excel centre, to the north east is Galleons Point Marina and London City Airport. To the south is the river - with Silvertown forming an elongated peninsula between them.
The name of the area comes, I'm disappointed to report, not from any long-forgotten deposits of silver ore buried beneath the factories and warehouses, but from one Samuel Winkworth Silver, who had a rubber factory here in the 19th Century.
Today one of the major landmarks of the area is the Tate & Lyle Sugar Refinery, with a large model of its familiar Golden Syrup tin sticking out of the side of the building.
 |
| Tate & Lyle Sugar Refinery |
The company was formed when two former rival companies merged in 1921, though this was after the deaths of both Mr Tate and Mr Lyle - who remained bitter competitors up until their deaths.
The Golden Syrup tin, and its distinctive design, have been recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as Britain's oldest brand, having remained pretty much unchanged since 1885. The somewhat surprising motif of the rotting carcass of a dead lion surrounded by a swarm of bees, is a reference (as is the quotation beneath, which reads 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness') to the biblical story of Samson.
 |
| Lyle's Golden Syrup |
Apparently, so the story goes, young Samson was out visiting the land of the Philistines looking for a wife (as you do) and on his way there (also as you do) he killed a savage lion by ripping it apart with his bare hands. Leaving the dead lion by the roadside, off he trotted, found the girl of his dreams, and they agreed to marry later in the year (again, as you do).
When the day of the wedding arrived he was on his way back to her place, when he noticed that the body of the lion was still lying by the road and that a swarm of bees had, for some reason, set up home in the carcass and were busy making honey among the rotting entrails. Feeling a bit peckish all of a sudden, he stuck his hand into the offal, scooped out a handful of honey, and slurped it off his fingers as he continued on his merry way (very much not as you, I - or anyone with even an iota of sanity - would do).
Having managed to get through the wedding without dying from Listeria, our wily Samson hit upon a way of using the lion to con some extra wedding presents out of his Philistine guests by telling them a 'riddle' he had just made up. If they could answer it within seven days (he promised, like the shifty old sly-boots he was) he would buy them each a brand new set of clothes - if not, they would each have to buy him a new outfit.
"Ok, you're on," said the guests; "Tell us the riddle".
To which Samson replied: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness".
The Philistines - not surprisingly stumped by this - went away none too happy at having to fork out for more presents, and a few days later went to the new Mrs Samson and basically threatened to burn her and her entire family to death if she didn't get her husband to tell her the answer.
Not wishing to die such a horrible death just because her new husband was a bit of a wide-boy with a peculiar penchant for meat-infused honey, she nagged and cajoled him until he finally gave in and told her the answer - which she promptly passed on to the guests.
They, of course, were then able to give Samson the solution to the riddle, which left him extremely miffed. Accusing them of cheating (which was a bit rich, given the stunt he'd originally been trying to pull) he promptly went off in a strop to another village, killed a load of innocent villagers, nicked their clothes and used these to settle the bet he'd made with the original guests. His wife, who was no doubt more than happy to get away from such an obviously raving lunatic, was 'given' to one of the guests, as a 'booby' prize.
So now you know...
Another of Silvertown's landmarks is on the dockside and is something I was, I'm afraid, fairly dismissive of when I saw it from across the water on my visit to Prince Regent station.
 |
| Millennium Mills |
 |
| Mill Chimney |
The buildings have been empty since the docks closed in the 1980s, but are occasionally used for film and TV locations, including the time-travel drama Ashes To Ashes.
The Mill is next door to the now empty site of the former Brunner Mond munitions factory, which was the epicentre (in 1917) of what became known as the Silvertown Explosion - an accident which killed 73 people and injured 400 others, when approximately 50 tonnes of TNT were set off by a fire which had broken out in the factory.
On my way back from the mill I pass the local fire station, outside which is a collection of plaques dedicated (among others) to those who lost their lives in the explosion.
 |
| Plaques to locals who lost their lives |
The explosion destroyed not only the munitions factory but many buildings surrounding it, including the original local Fire Station. Thousands were rendered homeless and damage was caused to buildings and vehicles as far away as The Strand and Pall Mall, with the blast apparently being heard many miles away in places like Maidstone and Guildford.
***
Next up is Whitechapel, where again the main points of interest are historical rather than contemporary.
 |
| Whitechapel |
Whitechapel's bloody history of murder, serial killers, violence, prostitution, gangsters, and crime in all its myriad forms, means that it could pretty much be said to be London's equivalent of Mos Eisley Spaceport. I can just imagine a bearded Alec Guinness warning me that I'll "never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy" as I emerge from the station and take my first look at the place.
I must be cautious...
Not that there seems to be much of menace on the main Whitechapel Road, which shows more evidence of the area's booming immigrant community, than of any past criminal history.
 |
| Whitechapel Road Market |
The market stalls which line the street are almost a permanent fixture here. They sell everything you'd normally expect - bric-a-brac, clothing, fruit & veg, etc. - but spiced with a distinctly Asian flavour, which mirrors the area's largely Bangladeshi community.
But the area's past history still lingers in places.
There are two main criminal 'cases', which have given Whitechapel its reputation as a place of violence - one from the Victorian age, and the second from the 20th Century.
The former is the series of prostitute killings between 1888 and 1891 that became known as the 'Whitechapel Murders' - and which gave the world the now legendary figure of 'Jack The Ripper'.
Most people are familiar with the facts and folklore surrounding the Ripper murders, so I won't regurgitate the gory details here. Suffice to say that enough remains of the Victorian architecture and narrow old cobbled streets to be able to picture the murder scenes without too much difficulty.
One of the murders took place in the road which runs immediately behind the station - Durward Street, or (as it was known at the time) Buck's Row - and several others are within easy walking distance, should you be interested.
Walking along Whitechapel Road I come to the scene of another murder - this time from 1966.
 |
| The Blind Beggar |
The innocuous looking 'Blind Beggar' pub is famously linked to another criminal figure whose name (together with that of his twin brother) has become almost as legendary as Jack The Ripper's - Ronnie Kray. It was in this pub that Ronnie Kray calmly walked up to the bar, at which sat a member of a rival gang - George Cornell - pulled out a Luger pistol and shot him in the head. Despite doing so in front of several witnesses, none of them would testify against him and it took three years for him to finally be convicted of the murder.
Leaving such violent crimes behind us, though returning once again to the Victorian era, I should mention the Royal London Hospital which sits across the road from the tube station.
 |
| Royal London Hospital |
A celebrated surgeon named Frederick Treves working at the hospital (coincidentally at about the same time as the Ripper murders) became aware of a 'penny gaff' freak-show being staged in a shop across the road, and in particular one 'exhibit' - a severely deformed man by the name of Joseph Merrick, whose 'stage name' was 'The Elephant Man'.
Treves asked Merrick whether he would be willing to be examined at the hospital, to which Merrick agreed, and the two met several times after that.
In time Merrick became rather fed up of being measured and photographed, and went back on the road with a travelling fair, though eventually he would return to London, and to the hospital, when he was abandoned by his 'manager'.
He remained at the hospital until his death, at the age of just 27, from asphyxia thanks to the weight of his head pressing down on his throat as he slept. Apparently he was so desperate to live 'like other people' that - contrary to his normal habit - he attempted to sleep lying down rather than sitting upright as he had done for most of his life.
On which sad note I return to the station.
There's one last curiosity to mention here though, before I go.
The station is a junction not only of the Underground (District and Hammersmith & City Lines) but also of the Overground Line.
However, by some perverse accident of construction, the Overground Line's tracks are not over, but under, those of the Underground Line.
 |
| Overgound Tracks - with Underground Tracks overhead |
This is usually a lot more clearly visible than it is at the moment, both from below and above, but thanks to the works involved in the Crossrail development, visibility around the ventilation shafts is somewhat restricted.
***
And so on to the last stop of the day - White City.
 |
| White City |
The station, and its surrounding area, get their name from an exhibition held here in 1908 - the Franco-British Exhibition.
This was a public fair designed to celebrate the entente cordiale between France and Britain that had been signed in 1904, and featured well over 100 exhibition buildings and pavilions, all of which were either painted white or covered in white plaster, as this postcard from the exhibition shows:
 |
| Postcard from 1908 |
The Great White City was to the west of the current station, and included, as a last minute addition, a sports stadium to the north. This late addition was the result of London stepping in to also host the 1908 Olympics later that year. The original host city - Rome - was forced to pull out following a devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906, which destroyed much of Naples and swallowed up all the available funds.
It was at this Olympics that the standard distance for the marathon race was first established.
Most people know that the marathon race gets its name from the legend of the Greek messenger Philippedes who ran all the way back to Athens from the Battle of Marathon, announced that the Greeks had won, and promptly dropped dead.
While the distance between the site of the battle and Athens is roughly the same as the modern marathon race (it's between 22 and 25 miles, depending on which way round Mount Penteli you choose to go) it wasn't until the 1908 London Olympics that the modern standard distance of 26 miles and 385 yards was set - as this was the distance between the starting line at Windsor Castle, and the finishing line at the White City Stadium.
The exhibition buildings and the stadium have long gone (though the latter lasted until 1985 and was a former home of Queen's Park Rangers FC). Most of the area was redeveloped with residential properties but the site across the road from the station found new fame as the home (until fairly recently) of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
 |
| BBC Television Centre |
The BBC's Television Centre opened in 1960 and was the centre of operations for the BBC until it officially closed in 2013. It contained several studios, of varying size, and itself featured as the backdrop of many moments of TV history. The programmes made here are far too numerous to mention, but for many of my generation this building - or rather its address - will forever be associated with Saturday morning kids TV.
Even now, without looking it up, I can reel off the full postal address of the place to which all competition entries, letters, art-work and other hopeful correspondence was sent by thousands of kids every year - in response to the familiar phrase: "Answers, on a postcard, to..."
(All together now.......
"BBC Television Centre,
Wood Lane,
London,
W12 8QT"
......well done!)
Another familiar feature of the building is its distinctive shape.
The story goes that the architect (one Graham Dawbarn CBE), who was struggling to decide what shape of building would most conveniently encompass all the studios, offices and storage space required by the BBC, got so frustrated that he simply drew a great big question mark on the back of an envelope.
About to screw this up into a ball and chuck it into the nearest waste paper bin, he suddenly realised he'd inadvertently come up with the ideal shape for the building. So, after tidying it up a bit, copying it onto a fresh bit of paper, and adding a few measurements here and there, he submitted his plans and the building's shape was decided.
***
Now, that all sounds very whimsical and lovely, and may of course be perfectly true.
On the other hand, one or two things don't quite - to my mind - add up.
Firstly - though I accept I'm not an architect - I would assume that most people, given a map of an empty plot of land would orientate it with North positioned at the top of the page. This would mean that the question mark shape would have its curve at the top (north) and its tail at the bottom (south).
However, if you look at a satellite image of the area, which places (as is usual) North at the top, then the supposed question mark shape is pretty much upside down.
Of course, our architect friend might, without noticing, have somehow managed to get the paper the wrong way round, before he started drawing, but that's not all...
A question mark has a dot, or full stop, beneath its tail - ? - see?
But there's no 'dot' at TV centre. There's a sort of rounded roof terrace above the main reception area that might, at a push, be considered 'dot-like' but that would make it part of the 'tail' - whereas most people would draw a question mark with the dot as a clearly separate entity.
Finally, the story goes that this was the result of a man on his own, doodling on the back of an envelope, because he couldn't think of an idea.
Now, without wishing to be too crude, and putting this as delicately as possible, there's one particular 'motif' that most men have, at one time or another, selected as their doodle of choice - and it certainly isn't a question mark.
The depictions of the (if you'll pardon the expression) 'meat and two veg' can vary of course, but they all, not surprisingly, share certain similarities of form.
There's the spheroid conglomeration at the bottom, and adjoining this - and extending from it - is the 'shaft'. In effect, something similar to - or a variation on - a great big number '6'.
Which, if you have another look at that satellite image........
***
Anyway, leaving such fruitless speculation aside...
The BBC decided to sell up and move out of the building a few years ago and it's now being redeveloped as apartments and associated leisure amenities.
White City Station is - as the address of TV Centre shows - on the road called Wood Lane, as is (not surprisingly) Wood Lane Station, to which I'll be paying a visit in the not too distant future. Behind them both, and between here and Shepherd's Bush Station, is the massive Westfield Shopping Centre.
It's not quite the 'Great White City' of 1908 (more of a great grey city sadly) but I suppose it's the modern day equivalent: lots of different things to see, lots of places trying to take your money, and lots of people willing to have their money taken off them.
In any case, I visited the centre a while back when I came to Shepherd's Bush, so there's not much I can add here. In fact, I'm not quite sure what I'll do when I come back here yet again to visit Wood Lane in a few weeks' time.
The only other site of any note within spitting distance of the station is Loftus Road - the current home of QPR football club - and if you've been following this blog with any regularity, you'll know that football really isn't my cup of tea...
Hey-ho, we shall see. Perhaps they'll build someone else's doodle before I return. Answers on a postcard........
