'Our House'

Day 59

 

Maida Vale - Manor House - Mansion House

 

Hi, I'm back! Did you miss me.....?

Suit yourselves...

After a scorching two weeks in the sun, taking in the delights of Valencia and its environs, I'm back and on the Wombling road again - and what a day to start on! Today is the hottest day of the year so far - with temperatures set to reach the mid thirties - so I'm feeling pretty good as I set off this morning to walk down to the station.

Naturally, it won't be quite the same as lying next to a pool in Spain, but I can't deny that a good dose of vitamin D always does me the world of good wherever I happen to be. The downside here, of course, will be the stuffiness of the underground trains - but I'll keep that to a minimum and spend as much time as possible at street level.

*** 

My first stop, and the first of a new letter of the alphabet, is Maida Vale.

Maida Vale

As anyone who's been following this blog closely will be aware, the classic ox-blood red tile design found on the outer walls of many a London tube station was the brainchild of the designer Leslie Green. Already I've encountered his work at such diverse places as Edgware Road, Elephant & Castle, Caledonian Road, Holborn, Covent Garden, Chalk Farm and Belsize Park.

How fitting then that the district in which he was born, back in 1875, should have a station featuring his own design.

Or at least, it would be if he had designed it. But this station wasn't actually the work of Leslie Green at all, but is credited to a man called Stanley Heaps.

Heaps was assistant to Green, and following the latter's early death at the age of 33, Heaps took over the job. He clearly followed Green's original designs very closely in his own work here, and at Kilburn Park - though he departed from the red tiles at places like Brent Cross, Osterley and St. John's Wood.

The station also has the distinction of being the first one to be entirely staffed by women when it opened in 1915. Sadly this had rather less to do with equal rights and positive discrimination and more to do with the fact that all the men were off fighting in the first World War. When the men returned, the women were pretty much out on their ears.

Named after a public house ('The Hero Of Maida' - which was in turn named after the town in southern Italy where British forces under the leadership of Major-General John Stuart fought a successful campaign against Napoleon's French army in 1806), Maida Vale these days is an affluent area to the north of central London. It has row upon row of the sort of grand town houses the doyens of Downton Abbey would come to for the 'Season'. Many of the houses feature ornate designs in the plasterwork, and busts of (presumably) important figures look down on me as I pass.

Grand Designs

I head first to a road called Lauderdale Road, in search of the birthplace of one of our late great actors - Sir Alec Guinness.

Birthplace of Sir Alec
Guinness

He was born here in 1914 at number 155 Lauderdale Mansions, and I fully expect to see the traditional Blue Plaque commemorating this fact outside the building. But when I get there, there's nothing at all.

This is all the more surprising as I have just walked past a Blue Plaque on the other side of the road, informing me that Tony Meehan, one of the founder members of Cliff Richards' backing group The Shadows, lived there.

Now, I have nothing against the Shadows, or Tony Meehan personally, but surely Alec Guinness is at least as worthy of a Blue Plaque as they are?



Tony Meehan Blue Plaque

I was sufficiently surprised by the omission to look up whether or not he'd merited a plaque anywhere else - perhaps he grew up in another part of town, or possibly the digs he first rented as a young understudy in the West End would be adorned with the little blue disc.

Apparently not.

The only plaque he merits - admittedly in an appropriately theatrical location - is on the wall of the actor's union Equity, on St Martin's Lane. It's in the shape of a film strip, and is "In recognition of his unique contribution to British Cinema". It hardly seems enough to me - but who am I to judge?

Maida Vale's other main connection to broadcasting - primarily radio rather than film or TV - can be found some distance from the station, in Delaware Road.

The BBC's Maida Vale Studios play host not only to the BBC Symphony Orchestra, various dramas for Radio 4, and the Live Lounge programme, but it was also formerly the home of the John Peel Sessions and the Radiophonic Workshop - the famous sound effects and music production department. The sound of Doctor Who's Tardis dematerialising, the electronic clicks and whistles as the voice of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy prepares to tell us about Vogon Constructor Fleets, the gurgles of Major Bloodnok's stomach in the Goon Show - all came into being in the studios here.

I move on, eventually finding my way along the section of the A5 that shares the name of the district.



A5 / Maida Vale

It's the same road that begins life as the Edgware Road at Marble Arch, and which (after Maida Vale) becomes Kilburn High Road, then Shoot-Up Hill, then Cricklewood Broadway before returning once again to the Edgware Road, having a brief dalliance with being West Hendon Broadway, deciding that, after all, it prefers being the Edgware Road, then having another change of heart and becoming Burnt Oak Broadway, before heading off into the sunset towards St Albans. Very confusing.

In any case, I leave the A5 and head west again, back to the station.

It's been a relatively short visit - but nice though I'm sure the area is, the grand houses can only hold my interest for so long.

So it's on to the next stop - and another on named after a pub.

***

Manor House

The pub that gave Maida Vale its name is sadly long gone, whereas the watering hole that gave Manor House its name still (technically) stands at the crossroads above the station entrance - although it's no longer a working pub and now houses an organic food shop and café.

The Manor House

The pub was first built in 1810, then demolished and rebuilt in its current form in 1930, and went on to become a popular live music venue, hosting gigs by bands such as Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Fleetwood Mac.

The pub is on the busy junction where the Seven Sisters Road crosses Green Lanes in Haringey and across the road from the pub is the eastern entrance to Finsbury Park.

I have, of course, already visited the park via its southern entrance when I visited Finsbury Park tube station, but that was in the middle of winter last year, and the sun is so hot by now that I feel a quick stroll among the trees is more than justified.

Finsbury Park

The sunbathers are out in force - as are the joggers (mad fools) and, at the park café, several 'yummy mummies'.

Lesser Spotted Sunbather

I pause for a while on one of the park benches and just enjoy the warmth, while I write up my notes on the journey so far. I could stay here all day, but looking at the map I notice a reservoir to the south, which seems to have some sort of activity centre attached to it. It looks like it might be worth a visit, so reluctantly, therefore, I drag myself away from the idle pleasures, and rejoin the noise and exhaust fumes of the main road.

It takes a good ten minutes to walk to the reservoir, and initially I'm glad that it's all downhill. This feeling is somewhat tempered by the realisation, when I get there, that there doesn't seem to be any way of getting to the waterside without entering the activity centre. All I want to do is take a couple of photos, but despite investigating various side-paths and car-parks, I can't see anything beyond the tall railings and trees which surround the reservoir.

Which means, of course, that the downhill walk I was so glad of a short while ago, now becomes an uphill trudge in the sweltering heat to get back to the station, where I buy a can of cold drink and head into the sauna-like interior to catch a train onwards.

***

And so on to my third and final destination of the day.

Mansion House station (not, this time, named after a pub, but after a... well, a mansion house - obviously) is in the City Of London, and takes it's name from the building which is the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London.

Mansion House station

That's the 'Lord Mayor of the City of London' - not the 'Mayor Of London'. The latter's current incumbent, Sadiq Khan, is only the third to hold the office since its inception in 2000. The Lord Mayor's office dates back to 1189 and has had several hundred incumbents including, perhaps most famously, Sir Richard ('Dick') Whittington.

The pantomime tale of the pauper Dick Whittington (and his resourceful and intelligent cat) rising to become Lord Mayor owes little to historical fact, as the real Whittington was a successful merchant and moneylender, who was already a councilman in the City when its lands were seized by Richard II because of alleged mismanagement in 1392. When the previous Lord Mayor died in 1397, the king ordered Whittington to take the job - and it was in his first days as Lord Mayor that he managed to persuade the king to sell back the land to the City for £10,000 (about £4m today) - and it's probably this which led to his reputation as a folk hero.

All of which is, however, largely irrelevant, since the Mansion House building wasn't erected until the mid 18th Century - so neither Whittington, nor his mythical feline friend would ever have set foot inside it.



The Mansion House

It's also, confusingly, nowhere near the station that shares its name. Well, ok, it's only ten minutes walk away, but still - if you want to visit the Mansion House, you actually need to go to Bank, not Mansion House.

 

Prior to its construction, the Lord Mayors of London did their entertaining in their own homes, with larger gatherings taking place in Guildhalls. In the early 18th Century, however, it was decided to construct a vast Mansion House for the use of the Lord Mayor, and it was completed in 1752.

 

Every Lord Mayor since has occupied the house and entertained state occasions here, the most well known of which is probably the 'Mansion House Speech' given annually by the Chancellor Of The Exchequer on the state of the economy.

 

I've rather fortuitously timed my arrival within half an hour of a guided tour, and on the one day of the week when the public are allowed access to the interior of the building, so I wander around outside for a bit before joining the queue to get in.

 

This area, being so close to Bank station, is one I've already visited of course, so I stick fairly closely to the immediate surroundings of the Mansion House.

 

On one wall to the south I notice another variant of the Blue Plaque - this time the City Of London's own version:

 

Good

The 'St Stephen' in question is a church just south of the Mansion House, and Chad Varah was a vicar who had previously taken the funeral of a fourteen year old girl who had committed suicide because she thought she had contracted an STD, whereas in fact she was simply menstruating. Although starting life in this church (and despite its name, which came from a newspaper headline - 'Telephone Good Samaritans'), the organisation is secular and apolitical, and currently has 201 branches across the UK and ROI and is contacted every six seconds by those needing to talk - without fear of judgement.

 

Back at Mansion House I stand in the queue of about 8 people outside the west door - which, despite paling into insignificance against the grandeur of the north portico, is now the main entrance to the building.

 

 

Mansion House - west door

 

The north portico was in fact only used for a brief period of time, since the roads around the Bank of England proved too busy to allow regular comings and goings of the horse-drawn carriages and (later) motor vehicles of the great and good who came to visit.

 

Similarly, the west door originally led into the stables, situated on the ground floor beneath the living and dining quarters on the floors above. This too didn't last long, as the realisation (and the smell) soon hit the occupants above that eating and sleeping over a stable full of horses wasn't going to be all that pleasant.

 

Eventually, however, these 'teething troubles' were dealt with, and after a bit of judicious remodelling, the building has been in roughly its present form for several decades.

 

The interior, as you'd expect is grand, luxurious and opulent. We're only being shown the ground and first floors, as the rest are private, but this is more than enough to get a feel for the place.

 

I take many photos as we walk round, but to be honest, this sort of 'stately home' interior does little for me - though you can judge for yourself from the following selection of views:



 



The 'Wooden Horse' - the riding of which
would naturally be a painful experience
for any male malefactor



Notice in the former stables (now Gents Loo) giving the rules of the house.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 



 



 

 

 



'Receiving Throne' in The Saloon



'The Saloon' - reception area, originally an open courtyard.



 



 



 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



The 'Egyptian Room' - location of the
Chancellor's Mansion House Speech

Ceiling of the Egyptian Room

 



 

Of more interest to me are the little titbits of information about the office and history of the Lord Mayor.

 

For example, the annual Lord Mayor's Show, which these days is an excuse for a bit pf pomp and pageantry, was originally a far more serious business. No mayor may serve more than one consecutive term in office, and in order to prove to the populace that no political chicanery had taken place, and that the new Lord Mayor was a different chap to the previous one, he was paraded round the town and put on 'show' to the people of London.

 

Lord Mayors receive no salary during their year in office, which on the face of it seems fair enough as they get to live in a grand house, with lots of servants and have banquets and go on diplomatic tours to exotic parts of the world.

 

However, in terms of the banquets at least, a large proportion of them have to be funded from the Lord Mayor's own pocket, which given the usual opulence of state occasions could amount to a fairly hefty bar tab.

 

The wife of a Lord Mayor is the 'Lady Mayoress', but a female Mayor (and there have been a couple) would still be known as 'Lord Mayor' - while her husband would have no title.

 

The first Lord Mayor to occupy the newly built Mansion House in 1752 was Sir Crisp Gascoyne - a direct ancestor of the broadcaster and erstwhile host of 'University Challenge', Bamber Gascoigne.

 

***

And that, I fear, is that for today - I'm off home to enjoy the rest of the sunshine in the comfort of my back garden, and will venture forth once more in the near future. Till then, toodle-pip!

'Easy'

Day 58

 

Liverpool Street - London Bridge - London City Airport - Loughton

 

So, today I finish the Ls, and what an easy letter of the alphabet it's been. Pretty much every journey has been straightforward, with the stations having been gathered together in handy bite-sized groups, dotted along the same stretches of the underground network, and generally having being organised seemingly for the benefit of anyone who might (for some bizarre reason) wish to visit them in alphabetical order.

 

Today is no exception (though the final L station does faintly let the side down by being way out on the eastern end of the Central Line - but I'll forgive it as it's then an easy ride home to Ealing) - and to cap it all the sun is shining hot and strong. It's true there are thunder-storms threatened for later in the afternoon, but I hope to be well on the way to being finished by then.

 

***

The first of today's stations is Liverpool Street - both a tube station and a busy mainline railway station. It's the terminus of trains from east England locations - Cambridge, Norwich and the like - and is one of the busiest stations in London.

 

Liverpool Street

The entrance to the tube is inside the main concourse, and just to the left of it is the first indication that this station has one or two surprises to offer.

 

You are probably aware of the practice of 'twinning' one town with another (or sometimes several) from a foreign land. Though the practice dates back many hundreds of years, most current 'twinnings' are 20th Century agreements, with many being an attempt to rebuild diplomatic bridges after World War II. Coventry and Dresden for instance, two heavily bombed cities on opposite sides of the conflict, are now twin towns, as are (a touch more light-heartedly) the towns of Dull in Perthshire and Boring, Oregon.

 

However, a slightly rusty, but otherwise very colourful plaque informs me that the practice is not confined to the larger-scale twinning of towns and cities, but can also be applied to individual buildings - such as the station in which I currently find myself.

 

Twin Stations

Yes, Liverpool Street Station is 'twinned' with Amsterdam Centraal Station in The Netherlands - the reason being that these are the two ends of the London to Amsterdam rail/ferry route (via Harwich and The Hook Of Holland). Whether this is the only such pairing of stations, I have no idea - I've certainly never come across such a thing before - but it seems to me to set a dangerous precedent. I mean, why not twin the termini of every route? And why stick at just train and ferry routes - why not include plane, coach, bus, taxi or even (heaven help us) the Boris Bike? In fact, if it comes to that, why restrict it solely to stations? Surely any designated Point A can be twinned with an equally arbitrary Point B?

 

'Welcome to Droitwich Working Men's Club - proudly twinned with Buckingham Palace, Sydney Opera House and the Great Wall Of China.'

 

***

Kindertransport Monument

Another reminder of the perils of wartime can be found a little further along from the aforementioned plaque. This is the first of two monuments (the other in a slightly more prestigious location outside the entrance to the station on Liverpool Street itself) commemorating the part the station played in the rescue of thousands of mainly Jewish child refugees during the run-up to WWII.



The Arrival - another
Kindertransport Monument



The Kindertransport policy - to take in and protect children from Germany and Austria - was agreed by the pre-war government following the horrific events of Kristallnacht (the Night Of Broken Glass) in 1938. In a desperate bid to protect their families, thousands of parents arranged to have their children taken to places of safety away from the Nazis.

 

Since the children had to leave their own parents behind, foster parents volunteered to take them in, and soon trains packed with refugees began arriving at Liverpool Street Station. Nearly 10,000 were eventually taken in and saved from the future horrors of the Holocaust - although for many of them it would mean never seeing their parents - who were not so lucky - again.

 

 

Plaque on the monument

The location's history goes back long before the 2nd World War of course, something the recent excavations as part of the Crossrail development have (literally) unearthed.

 

It was on this site in the 13th Century that the first Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane was established.

 

Bethlehem Hospital

 

The term 'bedlam' - a corruption of Bethlehem - has long been a synonym for madness and for those who suffer from it, and indeed it crops up several times in the works of Shakespeare, for example:

 

"To Bedlam with him! is the man grown mad?" (Henry VI Part 2)

"The country gives me proof and precedent / Of Bedlam beggars..." (King Lear)

"Ha! art thou Bedlam?..." (Henry V)

 

The Crossrail excavations have recently uncovered a huge plague burial ground (from around the end of the 16th Century) and underneath that - going even further back in time - are the remains of a Roman burial ground, or possibly execution site - since many of the skulls found were separated from their bodies...

The Romans, as every schoolchild knows, called the city Londinium, and - as was their wont - built a big wall around it at the earliest opportunity. Succeeding generations maintained, rebuilt, and added gateways to the wall - the names of which have been getting etymologists' knickers in a twist ever since.

Bishop's Mitre

So we have among others: Ludgate (either from 'Flood', 'Fleet' or an old English word meaning 'Back'); Cripplegate (probably not related to the unfortunate people who begged there, more likely from the word 'crepel' - a covered passageway); Moorgate (leading to the moor to the north, called Moorfields); and Aldgate (possibly from 'East', 'All' or 'Ale' - take your pick!). Over time these names have been extended to refer to the relevant street or to the wider area.

Thus I find myself to the east of the station, on the busy thoroughfare known as Bishopsgate - whose name is one of the less contentious ones, being derived from the man who built it (or - let's be realistic - paid a pittance to have it built by peasants): Erkenwald, Bishop of London (c. 675).

It leads north to south and is part of the A10, which in turn used to be an old Roman road. The location of the actual gate (long gone) is still marked with a bishop's mitre, set into one of the buildings at the junction with Wormwood Street.



Natwest Tower

The Gherkin

I turn into Wormwood Street - noting some of the more modern architecture as I do so - the 'Gherkin' and the slightly older 'Tower 42' (formerly known as the 'Natwest Tower'), and walk west onto the road known as London Wall.

Sections of the original wall which used to surround the city of London still exist in some places, but here the only remnant of it is the name of this street - which heads west from Bishopsgate all the way to the Museum Of London just north of St Paul's.



The wall's extent can be seen on this map, from the Museum Of London's website:

Map of the London Wall

I turn right at the point marked '11' on the map - heading to Moorgate tube station to get a train to my next destination. As I turn the corner, I notice a plaque on the wall, also bearing the number 11 - and with a short description of the history of this part of the wall.

Point No.11 on the Wall Walk

Perhaps my next project should be to walk the route of the wall - collecting pictures of these tiles as I go...

***
From Moorgate I get the Northern Line down to London Bridge - my next stop - and another combined Tube and Mainline station, with trains this time heading south to E. Sussex and Kent.

London Bridge Station

I exit the station onto Tooley Street - the closest street to the river - which I feel should be my first destination, given that the station is named after possibly its most famous crossing point.

There has been a bridge here since Roman times, and possibly earlier, though the image that's always conjured up in my mind is this one from 1616:



Detail of 'Visscher's View Of London'

This is taken from a much wider panoramic view of the Thames, which you can find here, and the reason I always think of this particular image is that it clearly shows just how much life took place on the bridge. What now is just a mundane means of getting across the river, was once almost a town in miniature in its own right. Just look at the buildings that crowded on top of each other - shops, houses, public latrines, and at the gate-house (visible to the right of the engraving above) a lovely display of severed heads, just to welcome you.

A bit of info

The buildings hung out over the river, and inwards over the central roadway forming a sort of tunnel. It was crowded and smelly and crossing the bridge could sometimes take up to an hour, so I'm not saying it was a particularly pleasant place to be at times. Nevertheless, something in me rather likes the idea of this sort of 'bridge community'.

It certainly has to have been more interesting to look at than the current incarnation...

The Bridge today

Historically, London Bridge is famously known for either 'falling down' or for being sold to gullible Americans, who thought they were buying the more impressive Tower Bridge (which is actually the next bridge along).

View from London Bridge to Tower Bridge

While the first event may have happened - it's pretty certain that Mr Robert P. McCulloch of Missouri (a wealthy entrepreneur with, some might say, more money than sense) knew full well which bridge he was buying. He just happened to be on the look out for an attraction for the city he had just built in Arizona (Lake Havasu City), and the bridge just happened to come on the market at the same time (having begun to collapse into the Thames).

McCulloch paid well over the odds for it, and the cost of transportation and rebuilding must have been astronomical - but it still stands in Havasu City today, should you ever wish to pay it a visit.



The Shard

On the opposite side of the station to the River - but hardly unnoticeable for all that - is the towering edifice known as The Shard.

Now the UK's tallest building, at over 1000ft, it was completed in 2012 and opened officially in 2013, and like many iconic buildings it began life with a particularly dull and unimaginative name. In the same way that number 30 St Mary Axe has now all-but officially become known as 'The Gherkin', 20 Fenchurch Street as 'The Walkie-Talkie', and City Hall as 'The Armadillo' (or somewhat less salubriously; 'The Glass Testicle'), 'The Shard' was originally given the uninspiring name of 'London Bridge Tower' (they must have been up all night thinking that one up...)

It was actually a criticism from the English Heritage organisation, that the tower would be 'a shard of glass through the heart of historic London', which first gave rise to the nickname it has now adopted as its official title.



When I'm cleaning
windows...

There's a restaurant, a hotel, viewing areas and of course many floors of offices. I'm sure it's worth a visit, though that'll have to wait for another time for me, since there's a lot more to see in this part of town.

Before I head off though, I take a moment to look up at the Shard to take a photo. It's then that I notice the miniscule figures of two window cleaners hanging precariously onto the side of the building. Their cradle is suspended from a kind of crane sticking out of the building several floors above - it reminds me of the sort of thing Inspector Gadget would have secreted inside his trench-coat, and hardly something I'd trust my life to.

Returning my gaze to ground level, I move on.

If the area around Liverpool Street could be said to have had a bit of history about it, the area around London Bridge could easily fill half a dozen A-Level textbooks.



Southwark Cathedral

There's the bridge itself, of course, which we've already looked at - and just around the corner (and right next to Borough Market) is Southwark Cathedral, the latest incarnation of various places of worship which have been located here since before the Norman Conquest. The cathedral's website delicately hints at some of the 'colourful' members of historical congregations from Shakespeare's time - 'not only... merchants and minor courtiers, but also actors, foreign craftsmen, and the ladies from the bankside brothels.'

Borough Market - which has become a sort of Mecca for foodie-types, with its various stalls offering free samples of pretty much anything you could want to try - celebrated its 1000th birthday in 2014.

It's a great place to wander around - selling everything from basic meat and fish, to some of the more exotic foods and ingredients from around the world. Just make sure your wallet is well-stocked if you pay it a visit, as you'll want to buy pretty much everything you see.

Both Southwark Cathedral and Borough Market lie to the west of London Bridge station, some distance inland from the river. Closer to the Thames, and continuing along towards Southwark Bridge, is the walkway known as Bankside - and this is where I head next, stopping first to look at Sir Francis Drake's ship - the Golden Hinde.

The Golden Hinde II

Or rather, its replica - the Golden Hinde II.

This was built in the 1970s as the original ship, in which Drake circumnavigated the globe at the request of Elizabeth I, had long since rotted away and been dismantled.

The original was itself maintained for public display for the best part of 100 years (a novelty in those days) before its demise, after which timbers from it are supposed to have been used to make pieces of furniture that now sit in various locations, including a long table in Middle Temple Hall - the place where Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was first performed.

Now, to digress for a moment, a few years ago I was in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in this hall, in which an actor (who shall remain nameless) was larking about with a broom - one of his props. He accidentally launched it roof-wards, and watched in horror as - seemingly in slow-motion - it arced towards this ancient and venerable table, before narrowly missing both it, and the portrait of Elizabeth I which hung nearby. A cautionary tale - never let an actor near anything valuable!

Unfortunately the replica ship is closed when I get to it - otherwise I'd have had a look round. Instead, I continue westwards towards Bankside, via the narrow Clink Street.

The first thing I pass on Clink Street are the remains of the former Winchester Palace - a 13th Century palace, which was destroyed by fire in 1814, leaving just the West wall of the Great Hall, with its rose window, still standing.

Winchester Palace

Information from English Heritage

Just as Lambeth Palace is the London home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Winchester Palace was for many years the London home of the Bishop(s) of Winchester. The original bishops acted as treasurer to the king of England, and so needed to be in London regularly. Since it would be some time before Premier Inns would gain the foothold they now have in the country, the then bishop - Henry of Blois - built himself a palace instead. Fair dos.

A little further along is the 'Clink Prison Museum'. The Clink prison (possibly named after the sound of the manacles being fitted to prisoners) was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester and became so notorious that the phrase 'being thrown in The Clink' became synonymous with being sent to prison, wherever you happened to be.

The museum is supposed to replicate the experience of being in the original prison - though I hardly think the modern tourist-friendly version can come close to the horrors of medieval prison life.

From Clink Street I find myself on Bankside itself - and within a few minutes I'm outside another replica, and what must now be the area's most famous landmark - Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Shakespeare's Globe

The brainchild of American actor Sam Wanamaker, the Globe is a historically accurate replica of the original theatre of the same name, which stood a few hundred yards from the current site.

The company of which Shakespeare was a member (as actor as well as writer) decamped here from north of the river following a dispute over the lease of the land on which their theatre (called - imaginatively - 'The Theatre') stood. Rather drastically, they decided to dismantle the entire theatre and bring it with them - rebuilding and renaming it in time for its inaugural production: Henry V.

This is the original 'wooden O' of that play's prologue, although the call for a 'muse of fire' a few lines earlier was possibly ill-judged, as in 1613 on June 29th (coincidentally, dear readers, my own birthday) a piece of wadding from a cannon used in Henry VIII set the thatched roof of the theatre alight, and the entire place burnt to the ground.

The current replica opened in 1997, again with a production of Henry V, though the original idea to rebuild it was mooted as early as the 1970s. It took a lot of hard work and years of fund-raising, but they got there in the end - and to my mind it's one of the best theatre experiences in London.

It also has a special place in my heart - though not for any theatrical reason (at least, not directly).

When Mrs Nowhere Man and I got married in 2004, one of the venues we considered (given our theatrical connections) for the ceremony, was the Globe. Unfortunately, it turned out that although it was licenced for weddings, the space in which the ceremony would take place was the exhibition space underneath the theatre, rather than the stage area.

The artistic director at the time - Mark Rylance - wrote a very nice letter regretting that we couldn't use the stage - but offering us instead the option (eagerly taken up by us) of being welcomed onto the stage at the end of the performance the day after our wedding, and being cheered by the actors and audience. The performance was Romeo And Juliet, (which sounds very romantic, until you remember that they both end up dead at the end... hey-ho...) and I'll never forget the wall of noise that came from the crowd as they gave us three cheers.

Thanks a million Mark!

***
I'm in danger of coming within the range of Southwark tube station if I keep heading west, so instead I retrace my steps and head on to the next place on my list - London City Airport.

London City Airport - Outside

I'm looking forward to getting lots of fun pictures of planes landing and taking off from the airport, and imagine that, since I'm on the DLR, I'll get some excellent views from the elevated train and platforms.

London City Airport - Inside

However, the planners have obviously decided that they don't want to distract commuters from their morning Facebook-ing or Twitter-ing, and have all but masked the airport from the platforms. Even when I've left the train I can find nowhere from which to get a decent view, and am left with no option but to get back on a train and try to grab a shot as I speed back the way I came.

And this is the best I can do, I'm afraid...

London City Airport - back end of a plane...

The airport opened in 1987 and is primarily used - not surprisingly perhaps - for business trips, although there are now a few departures to holiday destinations as well.

I've flown from it just once, and from what I remember it's a very pleasant little airport. Not very big - so not very much to entertain you as you wait for your flight - but nice enough, as airports go.

I can't show you any of that of course - as I'd have to be flying somewhere to get beyond the main entrance, so after a very short visit, I'm on my way again...

***
And this is it - the last of the Ls.

Loughton is another one of those stations way out East beyond the loopy bit of the Central Line.

Loughton

It's one stop along from Debden, which I visited some time ago, and together both stations effectively form the bottom two points of a triangle whose pinnacle is the centre of Loughton.

From Debden station I went north-westwards up Rectory Lane - today, from Loughton station, I head north-eastwards along the High Road. And a very pleasant High Road it is too, with all the usual establishments, and several local independents too.

It's in Essex - in the Epping Forest District - and you do feel like you've left the hustle and bustle of London far behind you as you stroll along. I stop for a coffee and a look at the map, and in doing so I notice a little curiosity.

It's a street marked on Google Maps as 'The Dr'.

I assume they mean 'The Drive' - a sensible enough name for a road. But a lifetime of doing cryptic crosswords means I can't help considering some of the alternatives for which those two letters are an abbreviation: Doctor, Driver, Drummer, Debtor, Dry Riser, Drachma...

Of course - it could just be that the road naming committee ran out of ink, or the person writing it down suffered a fatal heart-attack half-way through......

I set off to have a look for myself, but unfortunately the thunder and lightning, which have been threatening all day long, finally arrive with a vengeance and I get quite a soaking as I dash back to the tube station, never having made it as far as the mysterious 'Dr'.

***
And there we have it - another letter crossed off the list.

Now I'm about to go off on my hols to sunnier climes, so won't be Wombling for a week or two. Hope you can all cope without me for a while.

But rest assured, I'll be back soon - bringing you the delights of the letter 'M'. Till then - toodle-pip!

'If I Could Turn Back Time'

Day 57

 

Leyton - Leyton Midland Road - Leytonstone - Leytonstone High Road - Limehouse

 

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!!

I open today with the shock announcement of a major scientific breakthrough!

It seems that one of the stalwart plot devices usually confined to the realms of science fiction has at long last become a reality and that someone somewhere has invented an honest-to-goodness real-life time-machine! Yes! I know! Sucks to you Einstein!

And the confirmation of this ground-breaking development comes from what is, at first glance, an unlikely source... Who would have thought that the two rather chavvy employees of an East London temp recruitment agency sitting opposite me on the tube this morning would be the ones to reveal that time-travel is no longer a wildly far-fetched bit of theoretical mumbo-jumbo, but has now actually been achieved.

Nevertheless, it was while having an ostensibly innocuous discussion about one of the more obnoxious and irritating colleagues of theirs, that one of them inadvertently let slip that the said colleague was (and I quote):

"...literally stuck in the Dark Ages..." (my italics).

Quite how this courageous pioneer of time-travel ended up being marooned so far in the past was not explained, nor indeed, how they got there in the first place. But now that the knowledge is out there, surely it won't be too long before the world's media takes up the unfortunate time-traveller's plight and we have search and rescue missions, telethon appeals and excessively Bono-based benefit gigs...

Well, it amused me anyway...... but now back to the blog.

***
Really, the 'L's do seem to want to make my life easier than some of the previous letters have...

 

Alright, so today's selection are (all bar one) at the opposite end of the Central Line to my home in Ealing, but once I get there they're all within walking distance of one another (again, all bar the last one). And what's more it's a fairly pleasant walk at that - following a roughly circular route along some quiet, leafy, residential streets, which in many ways remind me of the Ealing thoroughfares I've just left.

 

You'll also notice a certain similarity in the names of today's first two locales - Leyton and Leytonstone - and they are of course closely related, as you'll see.

***

So, let's kick off with Leyton.

 

The name 'Leyton' comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for a settlement ('tun') and the name of the river on which it is situated - the river Lea, which flows from Luton down to the Thames. The settlement dates back at least as far as the Domesday book, and probably to prehistoric times.

 

The later settlement which grew up nearby (slightly to the east), and which was the location of a Roman marker stone along the old road from Epping to London, was unimaginatively called "Leyton at the Stone" (or, to be more historically accurate, "Leyton atte stone"). In due time this became simply "Leytonstone" and the two developed side by side - but more of Leytonstone anon...

 

Leyton

Back to Leyton, and the station itself is not really much to write home about, being simply a grey box stuck on a railway bridge. However, turning through 180 degrees (and trying to ignore the retail park in the foreground) you get a reasonable view of the velodrome in the Olympic Park, and of the London skyline beyond.

 

Olympic Park Velodrome

 

Heading north from the station things become a little more colourful as I cross over the busy A12, which pretty much cuts Leyton in half, and walk along the brightly painted Leyton High Road.

Leyton High Road

I do wish more places would slop a bit of coloured paint about - rather than sticking to plain old whites and greys. There's something very refreshing and Summery about it - almost as if we were in one of those picturesque continental coastal towns perched impossibly on the side of a cliff.

One shop has taken it a step further and gone to the extent of painting individual bricks different colours. Now that's how to liven up a shop-front! (Pity it's selling such a mundane collection of goods, but hey-ho...)

Carnival! Yes indeed!
(I can just imagine the parades of scantily clad Rio de Janeirans blowing their
party whistles and shimmying their ostrich feather head-dresses ecstatically, as
they pop in for a roll of bin-liners and a Vileda Supermop...)

Coronation Gardens
Fountain

A little further up Leyton High Road are the Coronation Gardens - a park built to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII.

They contain a fountain, a war memorial, a bandstand and a children's maze, and in the sunshine it's all rather pleasant. I stroll the length of the park and spot a number of joggers, and mums with toddlers, and also one or two cider-swigging loafers, though they don't seem to be doing anyone any harm.



 Children's Maze

Immediately to the north of Coronation Gardens is the 'Matchroom Stadium' - home to Leyton Orient Football Club.

Leyton Orient Football Club

As someone who knows (and cares) little about football, there are only one or two club names (other than the obvious ones such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and their ilk) which have entered my consciousness. But Leyton Orient is, surprisingly, one of them. And it's all the fault of schoolboy peer-pressure.

Not being a sporty type, I often felt left out of the intense childhood discussions about which club/player/kit/mascot was best, or who was going to win which cup. But there was one thing I could join in with, and that was the more leisurely pursuit of completing the Panini Football Sticker Album.

Like many of my generation, the lunchtime ritual of flicking through stacks of duplicate stickers looking for the elusive one or two you wanted to swap with your school-chums was one I regularly engaged in. And for some reason the name Leyton Orient (and one or two others such as Notts Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers) is one that has stuck in my mind from those days. Perhaps it's because you always seemed to get loads of players from these lower echelon clubs in your packets of stickers, rather than the (at the time) more glamorous Glenn Hoddles and Kevin Keegans you were still missing...

***
As I continue north I become aware of some of the more outré names on the establishments I pass.

We have the "Peculiar Unisex Hair Studio" (though it's unclear whether it's the Hair Studio that is considered peculiar, or the unisexuality of its clientele. They do also proclaim on their hoarding that 'our god reigns' - though again, which particular god is not made clear. The possessive insistence of it seems suggestive of a minor cult of some kind.)

Further on we have the "Smart Barber Box" (I shudder to think), the "Chicken Runn" [sic] fried chicken shop, the "Bee Sovereignty" dry cleaners (another - this time insect worshipping - cult?), and finally - as I reach Leyton Midland Road overground station - the "Good News Shop". I initially think this is a newsagents that has taken to only stocking newspapers which print positive news-stories within their pages, and is therefore likely to be bereft of any stock whatsoever, but on closer examination it turns out to be a book-shop selling religious texts.

The blurb on their website has the usual potted history - the owners originally ran a bog-standard, if financially struggling, newsagents until a beneficent, pious, and - some might say - more financially canny nearby bookseller came along and suggested that since (for reasons unspecified) he had to move away from the area, they might 'pray to God about becoming a Christian Bookshop'. Apparently both they and God must have thought it a good plan, because 21 years later it's still here, employing (in a phrase that has me spluttering my morning tea all over my laptop) a number of "full-time people" (as opposed to what - those who are only people some of the time???).

***
Be that as it may, I'm now at my second destination - Leyton Midland Road.

Leyton Midland Road

It's not much to look at - being tucked away down the side of some railway arches - and I'm not actually taking a train from here anyway, since I plan to walk to the next station.

But just round the corner is somewhere a tad more interesting (from my admittedly biased point of view at least).

Number 14, Wesley Road is the birthplace of none other than Harry Beck - creator of the modern-day tube map which I'm so pointlessly travelling around.



 Harry Beck's Birthplace

He was born here in 1902 and the house now has an English Heritage blue plaque to commemorate him. It was in 1933 that his revolutionary non-geographical representation of the underground network was first published, though in subsequent years his name was conveniently forgotten by London Transport and alterations were made without his approval, despite a long-running legal dispute. He eventually gave up the case and died, embittered, in 1974. It wasn't until the 1990s that he was once more posthumously credited with designing the map, and now the words 'This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck' are printed at the bottom of every one.

***
Just around the corner is another example of Leyton's eccentric approach to business signage.

What about Eccles Cakes, eh?
It's the Wars Of The Roses all over again...

This is either an incomprehensible and completely unreasonable prohibition of the sticky, gingery, baked Yorkshire food-stuff, or else a transcription by a very literal-minded sign-writer of the owner's East London dialect.

***
And with that, I leave Leyton, and enter Leytonstone.

A street or two further along, and I reach the birthplace of yet another 'celebrity' of yesteryear - Fanny Cradock.

Birthplace of Fanny Cradock

I have no memory of the eccentric (by today's standards) fore-runner of today's celebrity TV chefs, though she was still going strong well into the 70s when I was growing up. While she might have looked more like a drag queen than a cookery expert, anyone who can set up an oven in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall and put on a cookery demonstration to a packed auditorium must have been doing something right.

Leytonstone has a number of famous residents - past and present - among them singer Damon Albarn, photographer David Bailey, footballer David Beckham, cricketer Graham Gooch, presenter Jonathan Ross and actor Derek Jacobi.

The tube station, however, has a selection of mosaic murals depicting scenes from various films, all directed by the area's most famous past resident - Alfred Hitchcock.

Leytonstone

He was born here in 1899 - son of a greengrocer (who apparently once sent him round to the local police station with a note requesting he be locked up for five minutes for misbehaving).

Psycho

He began his working life as a draftsman for a Telegraph Cable company, and was a prolific contributor to their in-house magazine - writing short stories and articles.

He then got a job designing the title-cards for silent movies at a studio in Islington, gradually becoming more and more involved in all the other aspects of film-making - turning his hand to screen-writing, art-directing and directing.

Though his first few films apparently met with little success, he obviously managed to get it right in the end and went on to become one of the most successful film directors of all time.

***

The High Stone

Before heading south towards the next station, I take a slight detour north along the vibrant and bustling high street, towards the bottom tip of Epping Forest and the junction of Hollybush Hill and New Wanstead.

Here stands the marker stone I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, from which Leytonstone takes its name.

Known as 'The High Stone', the various incarnations of the marker have stood at this point since Roman times, although as the nearby informative sign tells me, the current version only dates from the 1930s.

Info about The High Stone

Having had a good look at it - which let's face it was never going to take very long - and there being nothing very much else to see here other than the busy lanes of traffic approaching the Green Man Roundabout over the A12, I head south again, and onto my final destination of this quartet - Leytonstone High Road.

 

Here the jolly buzz of the bustling high street gradually gives way to a more down-at-heel sort of feeling, with one or two dilapidated looking shops and cafés and not much else going on.

 

Leytonstone High Road

The station - another overground one set down a side street - is next to railway arches now used as pop-up 'pound shops' selling unbranded fizzy drinks and crisps for knock-down prices. A shame, as the High Road further north has such a nice feel about it.

 

But that's all for this part of town - now it's time to head south and onto the DLR for my final station of the day - Limehouse.

 

***

Limehouse

Having, by this stage of my seemingly unending travels, repeatedly criss-crossed the length and breadth of London on its various tube lines, I have passed by (or rather above) the Limehouse Basin marina many times, and have always liked the look of it as I gazed out of the DLR train window.

 

The DLR network itself, as I have probably mentioned before, was created as part of a much more wide-ranging re-development of the whole docklands area, and Limehouse is a very good example of the transformation and gentrification of what was once a rather squalid part of town.

 

Limehouse Basin

Where now stand luxury flats and apartments, next to a marina filled with brightly painted narrow-boats and expensive looking yachts, there once huddled seedy opium dens and sordid slums, and the docks where full of immigrants from China and other Asian countries.

 

This was the original 'Chinatown' in London - the home of the fictional super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu, and the scene of many an opium-fuelled adventure for Sherlock Homes. The current Chinatown in Soho (which grew up after most of the Limehouse area was destroyed in the blitz) seems rather like the 'Disney' version by comparison.

 

The area gets its name from the lime kilns which operated here as early as the 14th Century and has a long history as a busy river port.

 

Given its gentrification, the area has attracted one or two celebrities - including the actor Ian McKellan, who is also the part-owner of a pub on Narrow Street called 'The Grapes'.

 

This pub - under the pseudonym 'The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters' - appears in the Charles Dickens novel 'Our Mutual Friend' and I think it's worth re-iterating the description of it here as I contemplate the modern security-gated apartment blocks and neatly-cultivated flower-baskets of the current Limehouse inhabitants...

 



The Grapes

"The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.

 

This description applies to the river-frontage of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The back of the establishment, though the chief entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented in its connexion with the front, the handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end. This handle stood at the bottom of a wilderness of court and alley: which wilderness pressed so hard and close upon the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters as to leave the hostelry not an inch of ground beyond its door. For this reason, in combination with the fact that the house was all but afloat at high water, when the Porters had a family wash the linen subjected to that operation might usually be seen drying on lines stretched across the reception-rooms and bed-chambers."

 

And so we cross off another few stations, and are once again within sight of the end of another section of the alphabet. Just four more 'Ls' to go!