Category Archives: London Infrastructure

Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London 1957-60

Two new dates for my walks are now available on Eventbrite. Walks, dates, and link for details and booking, here:

Bankside to Pickle Herring Street – History between the Bridges – Sunday 29th September

Limehouse – A Sink of Iniquity and Degradation – Sunday 6th October

The Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, 1957-60 was a significant investigation into the governance of London, with a target of recommending whether any, and if so what, changes in the local government structure and distribution of local authority functions in the area, or in any part of it, would better secure effective and convenient local government.

The 1957-60 report, with some modifications led to the London Government Act 1963, which resulted in the creation of the Greater London Council in 1965, along with the formation of 32 London borough councils.

The report is an interesting read, not just for its recommendations, but also for the descriptions and statistics of London at the time of the report, the challenges facing London, how London, and the governance of the city had developed etc.

I find it fascinating how, when you explore much of London’s history, many of the themes are much the same today, and the following paragraphs from the introduction to the report could have been written today, rather than 64 years ago:

“Throughout its history London has had this astonishing quality of vitality which has shown itself in two main ways. London has constantly attracted people to itself from the outside, and it has also grown constantly from the centre outwards. These centripetal and centrifugal forces have worked at varying paces at various times; but viewed in perspective the two processes have been continuous. Both forces have been working with accelerating impetus since the year 1900 and they have never been more active than they are today.

At intervals attempts have been made to contain this growth. Sometimes the Court has tried to restrain the growing power of London. Sometimes social reformers have shaken their heads over the problems of size this growth has engendered. Nowadays restriction through planning and other controls is the order of the day. If London remains true to its historic character, it will continue to attract and to try to expand; to attract for business and residence, and to a lesser extent for industry, and to try to expand outwards as its population grows and as the demand for more spacious surroundings grows, a demand which a rising standard of living gives people the means to satisfy.

Already London is leaping over the green belt which as recently as twenty years ago was designed to contain it. Many of the problems with which we deal with in this our Report are direct reflections of the phenomena to which we have referred. The fundamental question is not ‘How can growth of London be stopped?’ but ‘How can London’s abounding vitality be guided and directed for the general good through the medium of self-government?’. The problems we have to consider are the problems of vigorous growth, the growth of a living organism which has earned a better title than the cold, ugly, and in this instance misleading term ‘conurbation’. Such a term would certainly have repelled visionaries such as William Blake whose poetry perhaps brings us nearer the truth than we should get by too exclusive adherence to the prosaic details of the machinery of government:

I behold London, a Human awful wonder of God!

He says: ‘Return, Albion, return! I give myself for thee.

My Streets are my Ideas of Imagination.

Awake Albion, awake! and let us awake up together.

My Houses are Thoughts: my Inhabitants, Affections,

The children of my thoughts walking through my blood-vessels

So spoke London, immortal Guardian! I heard in Lambeth’s shades.

In Felpham I heard and saw visions of Albion:

I write in South Moulton Street what I both see and hear

In regions of Humanity, in London’s opening streets.

The report is almost 400 pages of considerable detail, far more than I can explore in a weekly post, however one thing I can cover are the maps.

At the back of the 400 pages is a large pocket, and in the pocket are 12 maps which illustrate the report, and also provide us with a snapshot of London over 65 years ago, the proposals contained within the report, and how London had developed to the late 1950s.

Map 1 – The Review Area

The first map in the series shows, appropriately, the area covered within the review. This was the extreme boundary of what could be considered Greater London.

As will be seen in a future map, parts of the review area were excluded from the reports’ recommendations for the administrative boundaries of a Council for Greater London.

Map 2 – Proposals for Reorganisation

This map shows how the report proposed the reorganisation of London governance, with the outer boundary showing the “Area of Council for Greater London” (and with modifications, would become the Greater London Council), along with the proposed Greater London Boroughs and their population estimates in thousands:

The thick grey line from the original review area shows that the report concluded that parts to the north west, the north and a small area to the east, should not be included in a new Council for Greater London.

Map 3 – The Growth of London

This is a fascinating map as it shows how the city had grown since the year 1800, with the land area covered in the following 155 years identified by different colours to show expansion.

The map also identifies the outer boundary of the London green belt, major open spaces within the growing city, and the planned new towns, all orbiting the growing city:

Map 4 – Where Does London End?

There is no title to this map, so I have given it my own title – Where Does London End?

I suspect an often asked question, and one that is difficult to answer. London has far outgrown the original City. Over the centuries, it has expanded and consumed all the villages that once surrounded the original City of London.

Add to this complexity, there are different interpretations of London by the different authorities and service providers involved in many aspects of London governance and critical service provision, and this was the focus of the report.

The map shows these different boundaries as they were at the time of the report, and included the boundaries of, for example, the Registrar General’s Greater London Conurbation, the Metropolitan Water Board, Metropolitan Police District, London Transport Executive Area etc.:

Map 5 – Built-Up Areas 1958 and London Green Belt

This map shows “Built-up areas, which include the residential, industrial and business areas of towns, villages and other closely developed settlements, together with the educational institutions, allotments and smaller open spaces which they envelop. Large industrial and service establishments in rural areas are also included. Golf courses and most airfields are excluded. The Greenbelt is that shown in approved Development Plans at 1/1/60”:

There has been a conflict between the green belt and the need for development for as long as the green belt has existed. The 1960 report included the following in the introduction “Already London is leaping over the green belt” which demonstrates that over 60 years ago this was a problem.

The green belt featured again in the recent General Election with Labour’s proposals for more building and the possible inclusion of areas of the green belt in a building plan.

I suspect that the conflict between preserving green belt, and the need for new development and housing will be an ongoing issue for very many decades to come.

Map 6 – Population Density 1951

A colour coded map of population density as it was in 1961 is the next in the map series.

As could be expected, the map shows the highest density of people per square mile towards the centre of the city, with density reducing as you move further away from the centre.

The exception to this is with the City of London and the City of Westminster, where population density, particularly in the City of London has always been low.

Map 7 – Travel to Work into Central London

One of the impacts of the 19th century revolution in rail travel was the ability to live in the London suburbs and travel into the centre of London to work, and map 7 shows the percentage of “total occupied persons resident in each local authority area who worked in Central London in 1951”.

The definition of central London was The City of London, City of Westminster and Metropolitan Boroughs of Finsbury, Holborn and St. Marylebone.

The map shows that in 1951, the majority of travel into central London was from within the area under review, however there were significant areas to the north west (showing the impact of the Metropolitan line), and to east London, and an area to the east in south Essex from Brentwood to Southend:

Map 8 – Changes in Population and Employment

This map shows the changes in population and employment in a single decade, the 1950s.

This was an unusual decade as London was still in the process of recovering from the destruction of the Second World War, and both industry and populations were changing dramatically.

The map shows there was a decrease in population across the majority of London, but increasing population along the boundaries of Greater London.

The map also shows changes in employment, with decreasing employment in east London and to the north and south of the City, but increasing employment further out, and to the west.

The decrease in employment seems to have been more significant in the small area bounded by the City, Shoreditch, Islington and St. Pancras, with a decrease of 8,000 workers in just six years. By contrast, central London from the City of London to the City of Westminster increased employment by 136,000 workers in the same six year period.

There are large increases in employment in some of the surrounding new towns, as these start taking both jobs and people from London.

Map 9 – Classification of Service Centres

In the report, a Service Centre is a place where there is a concentration of services such as theatres, cinemas, banks and shops.

The location of these service centres was calculated using the concentration of these services as well as the analysis of bus services to identify where there were nodes that concentrated bus services as well as the banks, shops, etc. that people would want / need to travel to and use.

Map 10 – Educational Administration

The provision of education across London was a key part of the report, and the following map shows how education services were administered in 1960:

Throughout the report, there are themes and challenges which are the same now, as they were when the 1960 report was published.

The report talks about the importance of delegation of responsibility to heads of schools and teachers, the importance of Youth Services, including the Youth Employment Service and that these should be fully integrated with schools.

School Health Services were considered key, and again should be integrated with health services provided by local authorities and central government.

The report stated that “As standards of education have risen, both as to actual teaching and as to the quality and amenity of buildings, more and more subsidies from tax payers money have been needed and more and more money has had to come from the rates.”

It seems a recurring message with public services, that if you need good services you need to invest, and public services should be fully integrated to work efficiently and deliver an effective service.

Map 11 – Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

A topic which is much in the news today, but had very little commentary in the 1960 report. The report saw little further scope left for further centralisation, following the Report on Greater London Drainage in 1935, and in 1960 these services were provided by a mix of authorities, ranging from the London County Council, and various other boards within urban and rural districts, as shown by the following map:

There is no comment in the 1960 report on sewage discharges into rivers, so I have no idea whether this was a problem in the years between 1935 / 60, however today, it really is a serious problem, and for London, it happens all along the Thames.

I wrote about the London Data Store a couple of months ago, and within the vast amount of data on London available, there is an interactive map of Sewer Overflows across London.

Taking just a small section of central London, between Blackfriars and Tower Bridges, there are the following sewer overflows on the north bank of the Thames:

Fleet Main Line Sewer
Paul’s Pier
Goswell Street
London Bridge
Beer Lane
Iron Gate

When I check the map whilst writing this post, the Fleet Main Line Sewer, Paul’s Pier and Iron Gate were all recorded as “This storm overflow discharged in the last 48 hours. This means there could be sewage in this section of the watercourse.”

If you walk along the Thames foreshore, and want to touch anything, I would wear disposable gloves. If you want to check the map, it can be found here.

Map 12 – Central Areas

Map 12 shows the area that was defined as the central area of London, and the boundaries of various authorities who operated within this central area:

The report makes very little reference to infrastructure projects, which is understandable as it was a report on the governance of London, however are two specific projects which received some attention in the report.

The first was on the Narrow Street Bridge in Stepney. This was the swing bridge that carried Narrow Street over the entrance to the Regent’s Canal, now Limehouse Dock.

The bridge was 100 years old, and since the 1930s had suffered increasing amounts of damage from heavy traffic.

By 1952, the bridge was in such a bad state of repair, that it was closed to motor vehicles and horse drawn traffic. There were too many worn and rusted main girders that even after repair, it could not be operated safely without traffic limitations.

In 1955, the bridge was closed to all traffic, and during the period of closure, “vehicles carrying goods to and from the wharves and warehouses in the area, including the Regent’s Canal Dock, have had to make a detour of 2.5 miles, part of which is along a main road”.

The issue was money and who was responsible to pay for a new bridge. The bridge was owned by the British Transport Commission, but there had been discussion with the London County Council, the Ministry of Transport and Stepney Borough Council about sharing the costs of the bridge.

It seems that finally, the London County Council agreed to accept the whole liability for the additional costs of building a bridge as a special case, and at the end of 1959 approval for the work to go ahead was given.

I did not know that such a key bridge was closed for so long, when use of the docks, wharves and warehouses in the area was still considerable. Trade through the docks was still increasing in the 1950s.

The case of the Narrow Street Bridge is very similar with that today of Hammersmith Bridge, where a bridge in need of repair is closed, stays closed for a considerable period, with the issue being who covers the costs for the considerable repair work needed.

The second infrastructure project in the report was the “Cromwell Road Extension Scheme with particular reference to the Hammersmith Roundabout and Flyover”.

The report goes into some of the challenges with getting approval for the roundabout and flyover (restrictions on capital expenditure, objections by Hammersmith Borough Council etc). These were gradually overcome, with the roundabout opening in 1959 and the flyover in 1961.

Hammersmith flyover is now over 60 years old, and is the main route between central London and Heathrow, and to the west of the country via the M4, and carries around 90,000 vehicles a day.

There were concerns that it might have collapsed in 2011 due to corrosion and weakened support cables running through the structure. This required much repair work, with a second phase of repairs carried out which ended in 2015.

Around this time, there was talk of replacing the flyover with a tunnel, but this proposal does not seem to have made any progress, and would be hugely expensive and disruptive.

So the Hammersmith Flyover is gradually getting older, and at some point will become a major problem, with, no doubt, the same “what can be done” and “who pays” issues that have long been an issue with any infrastructure project across London.

The 1957-60 Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London paved the way for the creation of the Greater London Council, a body that would only last from 1965 to 1986.

The report highlights that whilst the way London is governed and administered changes over time, many of the issues and themes at the heart of London’s development, growth, provision of services, finance, and relationship with the areas of the south-east that border London, are the same today as they have always been – and I suspect, will continue to be the same for very many years to come.

alondoninheritance.com

King’s Road, St. Pancras Power Station

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Walk around London today, and for a major city, the air is generally good to breath. Much of this improvement has been down to the move away from coal as a fuel for heating homes. The change has also been due to the loss of industry from the city, much of which used coal as a fuel source, and some of the worst were electricity generators, which, in the days before any form of national grid, were located across the city, close to where electricity was needed.

My grandfather was the superintendent of two of these electricity power stations, both of which were in the area under the authority of the St. Pancras Vestry.

I have already written about the first of these in my post on the Regent’s Park Power Station and the First Electric Lighting in Tottenham Court Road, and for today’s post I am exploring the second of these, the much larger King’s Road Power Station, which my father photographed in 1951:

The photo was taken in Camden, at the junction of Royal College Street and Georgiana Street, just by where Lyme Street meets Georgiana Street.

The following photo shows the same view, 73 years later in 2024:

There is a new building in the final stages of construction on the site of the power station, although the view is now obscured by trees which were not there in 1951. The road layout is the same, although the streetlamp in the middle of the road, surrounded by bollards, has gone. The alignment of the footpath and kerb on the right, where Royal College Street meets Georgiana Street is exactly the same.

The 1951 photos shows something you could not do today, as a mother is pushing a pram with a child along what appears to be the middle of the street:

Given that the photo was taken 73 years ago, the child in the pram must now be around 75 years of age. I wonder if they still live in Camden?

I have marked the location from where my father’s 1951 photo and my 2024 photo were taken, with the red circle in the following map of the area today, with the red dotted rectangle showing the block of land occupied by the King’s Road power station (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The new building which occupies the site of the power station:

Before the construction of the building shown in the above photo, the site was occupied by small industrial units.

The St. Pancras Vestry was at the cutting edge in the generation and use of electricity in London, and wanted to provide electricity across St. Pancras, and show residents what could be done with this new form of power.

In March 1891, there was an “Electrical Exhibition” held in the Vestry Hall of St. Pancras, which was open to the public, and ran for several days. The London Daily News reported that:

“The display of electrical appliances was as beautiful as it was complete; it must have astonished more than nine-tenths of the people present, for the simple reason that comparatively few are aware of the rapid progress made since 1885 in electric lighting, decorative as well as merely utilitarian, and in the use of electricity as a mechanical force.”

The article mentioned that the 260,000 inhabitants of St. Pancras are not the only persons interested in electrical enterprises, but that every municipality will sooner or later be taking the same approach.

The Vestry had a plan to build four power stations to serve St. Pancras. The first power station was the Regent’s Park power station, explored in my earlier post, close to the Euston Road and bounded by Longford Street and Stanhope Street.

The King’s Road Power Station was the next to be built, and in an interesting take on the costs of electricity provided by private or municipal organisations, it was reported at the time that with electricity generated by the St. Pancras Vestry, “the price is to be one-sixth lower than that charged by the private companies, of which there are now twelve or thirteen in London; but it is believed that the price many be considerably lowered by the time the four central stations which it is proposed to build in St. Pancras are in full working order”.

The Electrical Exhibition at the Vestry Hall was full of the household and industrial wonders that could be powered by electricity, including what was described as a new word, the “electrolier”, a new light that would hang from the ceiling and take the place of the gas chandelier.

The Vestry started to build the power station on a large site, which had been occupied by industrial buildings, in 1893, and the first electricity was generated two years later in 1895. It was designed to burn both coal along with commercial and industrial rubbish.

If you know the area, you may well be wondering why the power station was called the King’s Road Power Station?

The following map from 1895 should help explain. Firstly I have outlined the site of the power station using red dotted lines, and you will see that only part of the overall site was occupied by the power station, with terrace houses still running along Royal College Street. This was the first phase of the power station, and over the coming decades it would grow to take over the whole block as electricity demand increased.

Regarding the name, the red arrows point to what was King’s Road. This street was renamed in the early 20th century (I suspect to avoid a clash with King’s Road in Chelsea), and today is St Pancras Way (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

You will see that the first phase of the power station faced the Regents Canal and the large area of railway coal depots, and this was one of the reasons why the power station was located here – the easy access to supplies of coal, whether delivered to the power station via train to the depot opposite, or along the canal from Regents Canal Dock (now Limehouse Dock), brought in from the north east of the country using colliers.

St. Pancras were a large consumer of coal, and frequently invited tenders for the supply of coal. For example, a 1937 advert in the St. Pancras Gazette, the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras (as the old Vestry had evolved to through local government changes) invited “Tenders for the supply of Coal for the Electricity Generating Station, the Public Baths and other Departments”.

In the first decades of the 20th century, the use of electricity was growing rapidly, and in February 1914, at a meeting of St. Pancras Borough Council “The Electricity Committee recommended ‘That the proposals for extensions at the King’s-road electricity generating station be approved and adopted, and that authority be given for the preparation of the necessary specifications, and for the invitation by advertisement of tenders for the boilers and steel work.”

The recommendation was approved, and the power station was extended, now including the area once occupied by the terrace houses along Royal College Street.

The King’s Road power station eventually took on the final form as shown in the following extract from the 1951 OS map (the red circle shows the position from where the 1951 and 2024 photos were taken, the power station is now labeled St. Pancras Generating Station, as by 1951, King’s Road had been renamed St. Pancras Way (Map ‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Having a power station in the heart of the borough of St. Pancras was a wonderful innovation for residents in that they now had a regular supply of electricity to power all the innovative new appliances for use in the home, and to power the industry of the area, however there was one major problem – grit.

Before burning, coal was pulverised to turn it into a black dust that was blown into a combustion chamber where it rapidly burnt, thereby creating the heat for the boilers, where water was turned into steam to power the electricity generators.

Some of the pulverised coal, and the end results of burning coal were expelled via the chimneys of the power station, and being heavier than much of the gasses produced as a result of combustion, this fell as grit in the local area.

Newspapers were full of letters to the editor, campaigns, and reports of the problems that this grit caused to those living in the area. For example, in July, 1928:

“A LONDON GRIT COMPLAINT – The latest revolt against the dirt and discomfort arising from the use of pulverised fuel for the generation of electricity is at Camden Town, where residents near the St. Pancras Council’s generating station have decided to call a meeting of protest”.

This was following a letter written to the St. Pancras Gazette from Mr. H.R. Williams who was the Councilor for Ward 3. He wrote:

“Dear sir, For a long time past the residents of Ward 3 have suffered a great annoyance from the pollution of the air by the chimneys of the King’s-road generating station. Appeals and petitions have been in vain, and the nuisance from the smoke, grit, soot and ash continues.

A large number of my friends and neighbours – including many shopkeepers – have asked me to form a committee in order to enforce a consideration of their complaint. Will any of your readers who wish to associate themselves with this committee please communicate with me.”

This was a London wide problem, with complaints against nearly all the coal fired power station in the city (for example, see my post on Stepney Power Station, Limehouse, and on Bankside Power Station).

All these power stations were initially built with multiple, smaller chimneys (see the photo of King’s Road power station at the start of the post). The technology of the early 20th century required a chimney per boiler, and as these were relatively low in height, the pollution did not escape high enough into the atmosphere.

When Bankside was rebuilt, it was changed from coal to oil, with a single, much taller chimney. Stepney power station had a new, much taller chimney installed, which at the time was the tallest chimney in London, and the same approach was used with the King’s Road power station, where a much taller chimney was built, which my father photographed when in use:

As well as a single, tall chimney, other measures were introduced to try and restrict the amount of grit that would descend on the residents of St. Pancras.

One such measure was reported in the Holloway press in July 1932: “Grit arrestors and collectors, at a cost of £3,825, are to be fitted at the St. Pancras Generating Station in King’s Road”.

Whilst the tall chimney and the grit arrestors and collectors helped, it was impossible to get rid of all the pollution from a coal fired power station that would fall on the residents of the area.

When my father took these photos, he was working as a Draughtsman for the St. Pancras Borough Council Electricity and Public Lighting Department in nearby offices in Pratt Street. I wrote about these offices, and the work that took place in the building, along with photos from the roof of the building, in my post on the View from Pratt Street, Camden.

A photo I did not feature in the previous post was the following photo showing part of the power station and some of the original chimneys, along with the gantries at the corner of the power station, which were also marked on the OS map. The map also shows a “hopper” adjacent to the gantries so it may have been here that coal was fed into the power station:

The photo shows just how close this major generator of electricity was to the dense terrace houses of the surrounding area.

One of the buildings in the above photo has a set of adverts on the side, for National Savings and Oxo. I cannot identify the advert at top right:

Despite all the complaints about the pollution generated by the power stations, there were concerns that it might be forced to close down.

In 1928 Parliament had sanctioned electricity proposals which would split the country into electricity areas, and London was in the South-East England area, from the English Channel to the Wash.

Within this area, electricity undertakings were to be divided into three classes, generating stations, distribution centres only, and places to be closed down at once.

The St. Pancras, King’s Road Power Station was defined as a class two station, therefore to become a distribution centre, meaning that the power station would close, and the site used for distributing electricity generated from outside London.

These proposals would not come into effect for a further forty years, but they do define the way a nearby site is used today.

The King’s Road / St. Pancras Power Station was still working into the early 1960s and there seemed no immediate risk of closure, as on the 24th of April, 1963, the power station, which was now part of the Central Electricity Generating Board, was advertising for Boiler Operators.

The Power Station closed in 1968. By the late 1960s there was no need for power stations operating within cities. The national grid had been built to transport electricity across the country. Technology was such that large scale generation was possible within a single site, although city locations did not offer enough space, and power stations were now built out of towns to avoid local pollution.

By 1968, the first nuclear power stations were operating and in the year of the St. Pancras closure, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station opened in Nottinghamshire. Close to local coal fields and with many times the generating capacity of a small station in St. Pancras.

Coincidently, the power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar which opened in the same year as the King’s Road / St. Pancras Power Station closed, is due to close in four weeks time, by the end of September, almost at the end of the use of coal for electricity generation.

I suspect those working in the power station, would have left a shift rather thirsty, especially after working in what must have been a polluted atmosphere, and they would probably have frequented the three pubs that surrounded the power stations.

I covered the Golden Lion, on the corner of Pratt Street and Royal College Street in my previous post on the view from Pratt Street, and facing the north-west corner of the power station is the Prince Albert, hiding behind one of the trees that also now obscure the view from where my father took the 1951 photo:

Walking along Georgiana Street, along what was the northern edge of the power station, there is another pub and a bridge:

The pub is the Constitution:

The pub is alongside the bridge, which takes what was King’s Road, now St. Pancras Way, over the Regent’s Canal:

In the above photo, the coal depot shown in the two OS maps was to the left of the canal. Being so close to the coal depot, and the Regent’s Canal provided the King’s Road power station with access to large quantities of coal which could be delivered from coal mines via train or ship / barge.

As shown with an earlier advert, the power station owners would regularly go out to tender for supplies of coal, which could then be delivered by rail, or along the coal.

There was no direct rail line into the power station, if arriving in St. Pancras by train, coal would have been unloaded and transported the short distance by road to the power station.

I wonder if the bridge that carried King’s Road over the Regent’s Canal needed to be strengthened to support these deliveries of coal, as the bridge that now spans the canal was opened a couple of years after the power station started generating:

I did find an account of the opening of the bridge, and there is no mention of the power station, only that the old bridge needed to be replaced due to “increasing vehicular traffic”. The impact of the railways can also be seen on the area, as the Midland Railway Company contributed £6,000 to the construction of the bridge, and that money from the extension of the railway in the area would also contribute to the bridge, so there was no need for any financial contribution from the ratepayers of St. Pancras.

The account of the opening of the bridge is fascinating, as it brings to life the names written on the plaque that is still fixed to the bridge.

There was a marque erected in the bridge, lots of speeches, ceremonial trips over and under the bridge, and then a trip to Reggiori’s Restaurant in King’s Cross “to further commemorate the event”.

The King’s Road power station has left its mark on the area, despite closing in 1968.

Power stations were hubs for the cabling network that distributed electricity to the local area, so when the power station closed, the network was still in place, and the area around the power station became a hub for the distribution of electricity generated from across the country, and that continues to this day with this large brick building:

Which dates from 1936, and has the date on a stone plaque on the wall, as well as the initials of St. Pancras Borough Council:

St. Pancras Vestry, then St. Pancras Borough Council seem to have been one of the more innovative of the local London authorities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, certainly in the generation and use of electricity they clearly wanted the benefits this would bring to the borough.

The downside was the dirt and general pollution to the local area. My grandfather died relatively young, well before I was born, and I do wonder whether working in such an environment contributed to an early death.

alondoninheritance.com

Greater London 1937 Highway Development Survey

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Two tickets have just become free for my walk on Sunday, the 18th of August, exploring the Lost Landscape and Transformation of Puddle Dock and Thames Street, an area that could soon change dramatically. Click here for booking and details.

The 1937 Highway Development Survey of Greater London (published in 1938), was an attempt to address the rising level of road traffic and congestion in the Greater London area. It was commissioned by the Minister of Transport and was the work of Sir Charles Bressey with Sir Edwin Lutyens acting as a consultant.

In the decades at the end of the 19th century, and the first few decades of the 20th century, traffic on London’s roads had been rising rapidly. This was the result of a number of factors, including:

Increasing trade, both within the City and with the rapid growth of trade through London’s docks, along with expansion of the docks
Growth in Greater London’s population from 7.5 million in 1906 to 9.5 million in 1935 (with one fifth of the population of Great Britain and one quarter of the working population)
New modes of transport (underground, railways) along with growth in buses and trams and trolley-buses, as well as growth in petrol based vehicles
The growth of the suburbs around London and increasing travel into the centre of the city, from home to work (central London’s population had been in a slow decline due to the growth in industry, but the population of the wider suburbs had been growing rapidly)

The number of motor vehicles in the country was also expanding rapidly, as shown by the following graphs from the report:

Based on a 1922 start point, the number of motor vehicles had grown by 185%, from 1 million, to over 2.5 million, whilst the population had only grown by around 5%, and the number of vehicles by mile of road had risen from 5 in 1922 to 15 by 1936.

The above graphs covered the whole of the country. The report also included lots of London specific data, including the following numbers in a table headed “Millions of Passenger Journeys”:

The majority of the report was the work of Sir Charles Bressey, who was a civil engineer and surveyor with a broad experience of the design of road systems. He was already a surveyor, working in his father’s practice in the City of London, and during the First World War, he put his experience to the construction of military roads in France whilst in the Royal Engineers.

Sir Charles Bressey:

Attribution and source: GPO Film Unit, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Edwin Lutyens was known mainly as an architect, designing a wide range of public and office buildings, government offices, churches and private houses. he also designed a number of war memorials, including the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Their report was published in 1938, and contains a comprehensive number of recommendations to address the expected continual rise in the growth of road usage through to the 1960s.

The report first identifies places which were “Centre of Congestion”, including:

Oxford Circus – This is the focal point of Oxford Street; at times throughout the day, and particularly at morning and afternoon peak hours, congestion here is excessive, and saturation point is reached.
Gardiner’s Corner, Aldgate – This is probably the key point to the east end. A large proportion of the traffic from the east and the eastern suburbs to the City and vice versa pass this point. It is adjacent to the Docks, to Spitalfields Market and to the manufacturing and trading districts of Stepney, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Shoreditch, etc. Five roads converge on the point and there is a substantial proportion of turning traffic from and to all the thoroughfares involved.
Hammersmith Broadway – A complex and badly arranged six way junction in which four of the converging roads are so close together that, without the most extensive alterations, adequate weaving space for roundabout work could not be obtained.

As part of the data collection process to help form the recommendations of the report, four routes across London were selected, and a 16 H.P, Austin Light-Six Touring Car drove along each of the routes every day (excluding Sundays), from 8 am to 7pm (1pm on Saturdays).

The car was “driven by a steady and competent chauffeur, who had no inducement to attempt to break records or to take risk”, and an observer was also in the car armed with a stop-watch and clip board to record times of sections along each of the routes.

Of all routes and sections along the routes, the slowest were:

between Ludgate Circus and Commercial Road on the west – east route where the average was only 5.85 miles per hour, while of the slowest journey, the pace dropped to 3.6 miles per hour, and;
between Euston Road and Trafalgar Square, via Tottenham Court Road, on the north-west – south east route. here the average pace was 7.7 miles per hour, while on the slowest journey, the figure dropped to 6.3 miles per hour.

Road improvements included the greater use of roundabouts which were seen as a way of improving traffic flow where several roads met at a junction. The first roundabout in the country was in Letchworth Garden City in 1907, but they would not really proliferate until the 1960s,

The report included several suggested designs for roundabouts, including the following two:

Slow roads were not the only problem identified in the report, there were many other factors identified, including one which showed the expected increase in air travel.

In the 1930s, there were a large number of airfields surrounding London, as the following table from the report identifies:

The number of airfields was expected to increase, with the following table identifying possible new locations:

The recommendations of the report covered new roads, city loops, motorways, street widening, changing the configuration of junctions, including the use of roundabouts, and a comprehensive list of schemes was included in the report:

and:

The recommended schemes include lots of proposals within London, such as the Piccadilly Improvement, Mayfair – Soho route etc. and the report is one of the first I have read which recognises that travel to and from London is dependent on the wider network across the country, so we have proposed schemes such as the Cambridge Road Northern Extension past Ware, Improvement of London to Ongar Road (A.113) and Extension to Norwich, and the London – Birmingham Route.

London to Birmingham would later become either the M40 or the combination of M1 and M6.

Another proposal in the list which would later become a new motorway is the Coulsdon – Crawley – Brighton route, which today is the M23 and A23.

The published report included a pocket at the back of the book in which there were a couple of very large maps.

The proposed new routes and changes were drawn on the maps, and I have reproduced these below.

It was difficult to photograph the maps due to their large size, and as they are almost 90 years old, I wanted to be very careful to avoid any tears or other damage, however I hope the following images provide a view of what was proposed back in 1937:

The above map shows the wider area surrounding London, and we are starting to get a map that is recognisable today, for example:

A new outer ring road for London, which for 1937 was a considerable way from the centre of the city. This outer ring road (with some changing of routing) is today the M25. Strange though that where the road crosses the Thames to the east, the north and southern routes do not meet at the location of what would become the Dartford Crossing.
The Motorway network spreading out from London. There are thick red lines running out from London across the wider country. These were the proposed major routes that would connect London with the rest of the country – an urgent need given the increasing number of motor vehicles of all types, both private and commercial.
The growth in the docks to the east of the city, with the thick red line to the right, leading north from the area around Tilbury, Corringham and Canvey Island.

The list of proposals shown on the map was included in the following key:

The following map shows the Great London proposals:

Along with the following key to the proposals:

Proposals included adding a second tunnel to the Blackwall Tunnel (which would not be completed until 1967), as well as the Rotherhithe Tunnel, which would not get its second tunnel, and would stay to this day as a tunnel with traffic running in both directions in a single bore.

The City Loop-Way was described in the report as follows:

“To relieve the almost intolerable pressure on the main routes which now traverse the heart of the City, converging upon the Mansion House and St. Paul’s Cathedral, the creation of the City Loop-Way is recommended, with a view to encouraging drivers to avoid the most congested central area.

The most important section of the Loop-Way would extend from Blackfriars to the Tower, thus forming a continuation of the Victoria Embankment eastwards to the Tower, thus forming a continuation of the Victoria Embankment Route, through a dingy part of the City, which stands urgently in need of renovation. From the Tower, the Loop-Way would follow approximately the general line – Crutched Friars – Duke Street – Camomile Street – London Wall to Wood Street; from here a new cut would be necessary to reach Aldersgate Street; Bartholomew Close is traversed and replanned, and a proper outlet formed into Farringdon Street, down which we turn to Blackfriars, thus completing the circuit.”

Whilst the Loop-Way did not get built, what is interesting about many of these proposals is how they, or variations of the proposals get included in future plans for London, so for example, parts of the Loop-Way can be seen in the 1944 City of London report covering Post-War Reconstruction of the City of London, where northern and southern routes around the City were proposed extending from Aldgate to Holborn via London Wall, and the Tower to Blackfriars along Lower and Upper Thames Street.

The following map from the 1944 report illustrates these routes as thick red lines to north and south:

Lower and Upper Thames Street did get considerably widened and now form a southern route to bypass the centre of the City of London, with the connection through to Blackfriars being completed in the late 1970s. All that got built of the northern route was the dual carriageway section along London Wall and part of Wormwood Street.

Some detail from the Greater London map shows some of the proposals. The following extract shows the area around the Victoria, Royal Albert and King George V Docks, and the Woolwich River Crossing:

These were the last docks to be built in the central London area, and their size enabled the largest of ships (at the time) to be accommodated in numbers, which resulted in a large amount of products and raw materials to be moved.

These docks were connected into the railway network, but their road connections were considered inadequate for the size of the docks. For example, the road between the Victoria and Royal Albert Docks was “the Connaught Road Swing Bridge which carries but one line of vehicles; its approaches are tortuous and interrupted by level crossings”.

To improve the roads to these docks, the North-South Lea Valley Road was proposed, although it was recognised that “considerable demolition would be required in West Ham and Leyton”.

The Woolwich ferry crossing was also a problem, and the report considered three options:

the construction of a high level bridge
the building of a barrage which might accommodate a road
the driving of a vehicular tunnel

The construction of a bridge in combination with a Thames barrage was the subject of a 1944 report which included the following illustration of what it could look like:

In the almost 90 years after the report was published, we still have the Woolwich Ferry.

One proposal that did get built, and in a far more comprehensive way than proposed in the 1937 plan, was the “Cromwell Road Extension to Great West Road” shown by the red lines in the following extract from the map:

This proposal would evolve into what is today the route from where Cromwell Road turns into West Cromwell Road (by the large Tesco at Warwick Road), and then runs along to the Hammersmith Flyover, down to the Hogarth Roundabout, then to the elevated section of the A4 through Brentford, then to the M4, which runs all the way to Pont Abraham in Carmarthenshire, south Wales.

Bressey wrote the conclusion to the report, as follows:

“The discussions that Sir Edwin Lutyens and I have had during the past three years with representatives of public bodies throughout Greater London have shown how widespread is the desire that the lines of new routes should be authoritatively laid down for rigorous observance as permanent governing features in the ceaseless development and transformation of the Metropolis, where, hitherto, so much uncertainty has prevailed as to the official status of various road schemes which are protected in one area and neglected in another.”

The 1937 report was published just before the start of the Second World War which put a hold on all such forms of development. Many of the proposals in the 1937 report were included in some form in the 1944 Reconstruction of the City of London report and the Greater London Plan by Abercrombie.

Post war lack of finance held up many projects, and it was not until the 1960s when some major projects were completed, such as the first Dartford Tunnel which opened in 1963.

Bressey and Lutyens could not have foreseen the closure of the London Docks and the impact that would have on transport requirements in that area of the City, where today, as well as roads, the Docklands Light Railway has been a considerable success in opening up the area.

As usual, in the context of a weekly bog post, I have only scratched the surface of the information contained within the report. The report contains lots of statistics and information on travel across London, and although getting on for 90 years old, many of the aspects of the report are just as relevant today.

Bressey’s comment in his conclusion about how his discussions had: “shown how widespread is the desire that the lines of new routes should be authoritatively laid down for rigorous observance as permanent governing features “, could I suspect. equally apply to today.

I suspect that there is still such a desire for “rigorous observance” today. As a country, we just do not seem very good at completing large scale infrastructure projects.

For example, the last government cancelled much of HS2 and there is still uncertainty on whether it will end at Old Oak Common or Euston, the current government has cancelled a range of infrastructure projects, including the Stonehenge Tunnel, and there is continuing uncertainty over whether Heathrow will ever get a third runway.

Whether you view these projects as good or bad, uncertainty, change or cancellation just costs and wastes yet more money.

I am sure you will be able to write the same thing in another 90 years time, but it would be really interesting to know what transport infrastructure would have been built across London by 2114.

Will HS2 terminate at Euston, will Crossrail 2 have been built, will there be a new Thames Barrier, and will the Bakerloo Line finally have new trains? Unfortunately, I will probably never know.

alondoninheritance.com

Stepney Power Station, Limehouse

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The banks of the Thames was not just full of docks and warehouses, but was also a place of industry, attracted by the easy transport of raw materials and goods along the river. Many of these industries were very dirty, polluting the local area and blighting the lives of those who lived nearby.

One of these was Stepney Power Station, a coal fired electricity generator, that can be seen in the following photo taken by my father in August 1948 on a boat trip from Westminster to Greenwich:

The same view in January 2024:

I have outlined the location of Stepney Power Station in red, in the following map of the area today (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

As can be seen, the power station is next to Limehouse Dock (originally Regent’s Canal Dock), and the name Stepney Power Station comes from the power station being in, and originally built, by the Borough of Stepney. It was occasionally referred to as Limehouse Power Station, which more accurately referred to its geographic location.

At the start of the electrification of London, lots of small electricity generating stations sprung up across the city, funded and built by a mix of private and public bodies.

These would supply their local area, with limited, if any, connection to other power generators.

London’s Boroughs were under pressure to develop and build electricity services to provide this new power source to homes, industry, the lighting of streets etc. and there were a large number of power stations built at the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century.

My grandfather worked in two power stations in Camden (see this post for one of these), and my father worked for the St. Pancras Borough Council Electricity and Public Lighting Department which then became part of the London Electricity Board.

Stepney Power Station formerly opened on the 27th of October, 1909, as recorded by a report in the Morning Leader on the following day;

“An extension of the Stepney electricity undertaking was opened yesterday by the Mayor and Mayoress (the Hon. H.L.W. and Mrs. Lawson).

The new generating station is situated at Blyth’s Wharf on the river, which gives the advantages of cheap sea-borne coal and an ample supply of condensing water.

Councilor Kay mentioned yesterday that the whole station had been erected by the council’s officials, so that it was in every respect a municipal undertaking.”

The 1909 power station was relatively small, but in the following years it would rapidly grow as demand for electricity increased and the cables needed to carry electricity across Stepney were installed and spread out across the Borough.

The version of the power station in my father’s 1948 photo shows the power station at its maximum size, with the tall chimney, which was added in 1937. There would be further upgrades in the following years, but from the river, this is how the station would have looked.

To help identify the location of the power station, features of the power station, and a comparison with the same view today, I have marked up the following two photos, starting with the view in August 1948:

And January 2024:

The following extract from the OS map shows the location of Stepney Power Station, labelled as “electricity works”. The conveyor transporting coal from the coaling pier to the power station can be seen, and between the coaling pier and Narrow Street, there is an open space. In the 1909 report of the opening, there is a reference that the “new generating station is situated at Blyth’s Wharf on the river”, and this open space was Blyth’s Wharf (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“):

Being right next to the river was a perfect location for the power station. It enabled supplies of coal to come from the north east of the country, via sea then along the Thames. The river also provided ample supplies of cooling water and water for steam generation in the boilers.

As the generation capacity increased, and therefore the demand for coal, the coaling jetty was built in 1923 to simplify the transport of coal from ship to where it would be burnt.

Newspapers in the 1920s were full of adverts by Stepney Borough Council advertising that their supply of electricity was the cheapest in London due to the prime location of their power station.

Whilst good for the price of electricity, the location was not good for those who lived, worked, and went to school near Stepney Power Station. There were many complaints about the dirt and pollution from the power station, and if you look at the above map, just to the top right of the power station, there are two buildings marked “school”. These are mentioned in the following newspaper article.

From the East End News and London Shipping Chronicle on the 2nd of December, 1949:

“COAL DUST COMPLAINT – Stepney Council is joining the L.C.C. in ‘strong representations’ to the British Electricity authority about nuisances caused by the Stepney power station.

It is said that coal dust dispersed by the movement of coal at the power station can penetrate into class rooms at the Cyril Jackson school even when the windows are closed and the schoolkeeper’s house – about six yards away from the station – cannot be occupied.

Another nuisance is caused by grit from the chimney of the station, the council was told last week. The council point out that when they were in control of the chimney as electrical supply undertakers in 1935 they improved conditions there.”

As the article highlights, it was not just pollution from the chimney, it was also the dust created by the use of coal.

Coal had to be unloaded from ships, transported across Narrow Street, stored, and then pulverised reading for burning. All these activities would have created coal dust, much of which would have contaminated the local area.

Another example can be found in the East End News and London Shipping Chronicle on the 6th of April 1950:

“GRIT AND COAL DUST, COMPLAINT ABOUT STEPNEY POWER STATION – The public health committee reported to the last meeting of Stepney boro council:

Representations have been made to the Minister of Fuel and Power and the British Electric Authority with a view to securing an abatement of the nuisance caused by the emission of grit from the chimney of the Stepney power station and by coal dust distributed as the result of the movement of coal.

The representations have been duly acknowledged by the Ministry and British Electric Authority, in a communication to the Minister dated January 24, 1950, deprecates the suggestion that the condition has worsened since this station vested in the Authority; state that the Authority is fully alive to the responsibility for ensuring that only the minimum interference is caused in the vicinity; and suggest that the chief engineering inspector of the Ministry should visit the site for the purpose of determining whether any further remedial measures are practicable.

We are fully alive to the fact that the operation of a generating station in a highly congested district must, to some extent, detract from the amenities of the persons residing therein but we are seriously concerned that the health of the children attending the Cyril Jackson school, which adjoins the station, may be prejudiced by the emission of grit and coal dust. We understand the extent of the coal dust nuisance varies with the climatic conditions and, it appears to us that since pulverised fuel is being used the coal storage bunkers should be effectively covered in. before making further representation, however, we have directed that inquiry be made of the Minister of Fuel and Power as to whether the Ministry’s chief inspector has visited the site, if so, what further remedial measures are considered necessary.”

I can only imagine what the long term impact on the health of the children attending the Cyril Jackson school would have been. The mention in the above article to the “British Electric Authority” is to the post-war nationalisation of the country’s electricity generating and distribution industries, which brought together all the private and public generating stations, and their distribution networks, into single bodies.

The British Electricity Generating Authority would late become the Central Electricity Generating Board, which would build the national transmission network (the pylons, or towers as they should be known), which allowed the small power stations in London to be closed, and electricity transported from much larger stations across the rest of the country.

When Stepney Power Station was first built, each of the boilers had it’s own chimney. This was standard construction in the first decades of the 20th century (see this post which includes a photo of the first Bankside power station with its rows of chimneys).

In this 1928 photo, we can see the power station as the white building, with a number of chimneys rising from the roof. Note that the chimneys are relatively low in height:

Photo from Britain from Above at this link.

The low height of the chimneys did not help with the dispersion of smoke, gases and grit from the chimney so by 1937 a much taller chimney had been built, which can be seen in the following 1949 photo and is the chimney seen in my father’s photo:

Photo from Britain from Above at this link.

There was a rather glowing report about the new chimney in the Evening Telegraph and Post on the 2nd of August 1937:;

“An Almost Invisible Chimney – There is nothing mars a city more than unsightly chimneys sprouting from factories and power stations. London’s East End must have hundreds of these chimneys, which are, of course, necessary to carry away dangerous smoke and fumes.

There is, however, one chimney in London, its 354 feet making it one of the highest in Britain, which cannot be called unsightly, for it cnnot be seen a mile away. It is situated in Limehouse, and is part of the Stepney Power Station.

The reason for its invisibility is that it is constructed of square bricks, some brown, some a light creamy colour. At close quarters it looks spotty, but from the distance it seems to have no real colour of its own, and is just a faint shadow on the sky.”

I know for certain that it could be seen from more than a mile away, as the chimney appears in other photos taken by my father, and the “light creamy colour” would have turned dark in a short time due to the level of pollution in the air in the industrial West End of London.

For example, this is my father’s photo of the view from the east of King Edward VII Memorial Park in Shadwell, and clearly shows a very visible chimney rising above Stepney Power Station:

Stepney Power Station would continue in operation until 1972 when it was decommissioned.

During the 1950s and 1960s large new coal and oil fired power stations had been build along the Thames, and a distribution network connected London up with the rest of the country, so there was no need for small power stations in congested areas of London.

All that remains today of Stepney Power Station is the coaling pier. The buildings and chimney were all demolished years ago, and the building that now occupies the majority of the site is the Watergarden complex of apartments.

This is the view of the Watergarden apartments facing onto Narrow Street:

Stepney Power Station was instrumental in providing electricity to the factories, warehouses, docks and homes of the borough, and in 1917, Stepney had entered into an agreement with Bethnal Green Council, under the London Electricity Supply Act of 1908, to help develop and supply electricity in Bethnal Green.

The growing dependence on electricity can be seen by the impact that failures in supply had on the local area.

On the 8th of May, 1926 it was reported that:

“LIGHT CUT OFF, London Hospitals Have To Stop X-Ray Work: Three important London hospitals are still without electric current owing to the Stepney power station cutting off the supply. They are the London Hospital, the Whitechapel Infirmary, and the Whitechapel Dispensary for the Prevention of Consumption.

The work of these hospitals becomes more and more hampered by the loss of electrical power, and all X-ray has had to be stopped.”

And on the 27th if July, 1955, the Daily Herald reported that:

“POWER FAULT BLACKS OUT HOSPITALS: Three East London hospitals and the whole borough of Stepney were blacked out last night by a four-hour power failure.

It was the third in a week, and the third time cinema audiences get their money back. Police were sent in vans to all major crossings because traffic lights failed.

And while engineers sweated at Stepney power station, hospitals, homes and public houses switched to candles.

At the London Jewish Hospital the water supply failed too. It is kept up to pressure by electric pumps.”

From the London Daily Chronicle on the 22nd of August, 1922:

“STEPNEY IN DARKNESS – Two Men Injured at the Electricity Works: Two workmen named as Tindall and Armstroong were injured last evening in a mishap at Stepney Borough Council’s electricity generating station in Narrow-street, Limehouse.

The switchboard burst into flames, and the two men sustained burns in trying to put out the fire. Their injuries, however, were not serious, and after treatment at Poplar Hospital they were allowed to go home.

For a time part of the district was deprived of Light and Power.”

The view today, looking into the Watergarden complex from Narrow Street, into what was the core of the power station:

The view from the west – no coal dust, dirt, smoke or grit covering Limehouse today:

To the west of the power station site was Shoulder of Mutton Alley, which can still be found today, as can be seen in the following photo where the power station would have been on the right, and a paperboard mill on the left, with the power station chimney being at the far end of the street:

Walking along Narrow Street today, it is hard to imagine just how much industry there was along these now quiet streets, along with the noise and dirt which these industries generated. In just the above photo there was the power station and a paper mill on opposite sides of the street.

Stepney Power Station does help tell the story of how electricity came to London, and became an essential part in the ability of the city to operate in the modern world.

The Cyril Jackson school is still in Limehouse, however it has moved slightly east to a site along Limehouse Causeway, where today the children breath much cleaner air than their predecessors.

alondoninheritance.com

Euston Station and HS2 – A 2023 Update

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In 2017, I photographed the area to the west of Euston Station, with a focus on St. James’s Gardens, as this area was about to become the construction site for the expanded Euston Station, for the London terminus of HS2, a high speed railway that would run to Birmingham with branches to Manchester and the east Midlands.

Each year since 2017, I have made a return visit to the area around Euston Station, intending to photograph what was there before demolition, then the construction phase and finally the new Euston Station.

In recent years, the future of HS2 has been in doubt, and a couple of months ago, the Government announced that the northern sections would be dropped and that the London section between Old Oak Common and Euston Station would be paused.

In the latest HS2 6-monthly report to Parliament – November 2023, it was stated that delivery remains on track for “Old Oak Common in west London and Birmingham Curzon Street by 2029 to 2033”. There was no date given for completion of the section from Old Oak Common to Euston.

There is a list of all my previous HS2 posts at the end of this post, and after anticipating seeing a new station as the final post in this series, I now wonder whether I will ever get to see a new HS2 station at a redeveloped Euston.

The following map from the Media section of the HS2 website shows the route as it was still planned in 2022:

HS2_print_Infrastructure map_post IRP_220607_jpg

As well as pausing construction of the section from Old Oak Common to Euston, the November report to Parliament stats that “we will not proceed with Phase 2a, 2b or HS2 East”.

Much of the construction area is hidden behind panels, many of which have artwork and advertising that tells the story of what HS2 will bring to Euston, and the wider benefits of the project. Much of this now looks rather hollow and out of date, and includes the new Euston Station:

And as well as “building you a better Euston”, the following poster still states that HS2 will be “Connecting eight out of ten of Britain’s largest cities”, and will “More than double the number of train seats out of Euston in peak hours”:

And that improvements to the existing station will provide a “Bigger, better concourse, 100s of new seats, wider platform ramps”.

Extension of HS2 from Old Oak Common to Euston has been “paused”, and the November report to Parliament states that:

“We are going to scale back the project at Euston and adopt a new development led approach to the Euston Quarter which will deliver a station that works, is affordable and can be open and running trains as soon as possible. We will not provide design features we do not need and will instead deliver a 6-platform station which can accommodate the trains we will run to Birmingham and onwards and which best supports regeneration of the local area. In this way we will attract private funding and unlock the wider land development opportunities the new station offers, while radically reducing its costs to the taxpayer.”

But the most scary part of the new plans for Euston is this sentence in the November report:

“At Euston, we will appoint a development company, separate from HS2 Ltd, to manage the delivery of this project. We will also take on the lessons of success stories such as Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms, which secured £9 billion of private sector investment and thousands of homes.”

Whilst economically, Nine Elms has been considered a success in bringing in considerable (mainly overseas) investment to develop the area, the Nine Elms development seems to have resulted in the random placement of individually designed tower blocks, without any apparent cohesive design for the area. The towers look as if they have been randomly dropped from the sky, with a height and density to maximise profit rather than to add character and improve a key part of London.

Is this the future for Euston? A station hiding underneath another vision of Nine Elms, delivering enough cash from developers to complete the section from Old Oak Common to Euston along with the new station, but with a focus on the needs of developers, rather than a new the design and build of a new station that could have served as the London terminus of a growing railway to the north of the country.

In the following map, I have added a red line to show the area which had been cleared for the new station, and the tracks leaving the station to head to Old Oak Common (Map © OpenStreetMap contributors):

HS2 have a couple of photos in the Media section of their website which shows the scale of the site. The following is looking at the site from the north:

An aerial still of the HS2 Euston Station site, August 2022

And the following view is looking north, with Euston Station to the right:

An aerial still of the HS2 Euston Station site, August 2022

Both of the above photos are available to download from the Construction section of the HS2 media Gallery at this link.

I suspect that the main problem that HS2 has had is the name – High Speed 2.

The slightly shorter journey time from London cannot really justify the expense of the project, and the additional speed will only really benefit journeys much further north than Birmingham.

The main benefit that HS2 provides is extra capacity on existing rail lines, such as the West Coast Main Line (WCML).

Transferring high speed trains from the existing WCML onto HS2 would have released a significant amount of extra capacity which could have been used for freight, additional passenger train services between many of the places on the WCML route, as well as increasing the number of high speed trains.

However, calling the project Extra Capacity 1, or EC1 does not sound as exciting as HS2, although it would have been a better description of the real benefits.

I started my 2023 walk on a weekday, when hopefully it would be clear how much work was still underway. My route started in Clarkson Row, just to the west of Mornington Crescent, as here you can just about see over the wall, across the existing tracks, to where new tracks will be run as the railway heads from Euston to Old Oak Common:

Heading along Hampstead Road, and this is the view along the street, back towards Mornington Crescent. The main entrance to the site to the west of Hampstead Road is here:

There was still work underway, however according to HS2 press releases, what is happening now around Euston is “enabling work” rather than construction works, and there were utility works on the street, so I assume this means minor, low cost works which may make the project easier to get underway if and when it restarts.

One of the entrances to the main Euston site:

Look back along the Hampstead Road:

This is the main entrance from Hampstead Road to the main site around Euston Station:

There appeared to be very little happening, and the only vehicle that was running through the site was a road sweeper.

There is no sign of any elements of a new station, and the appearance of the site was much the same as last year. Parts of the site which were open last year have now been fenced off, so the site appears more enclosed than a year ago, but again, not much happening within the site.

There are three places where there is a change to last year, the first is the National Temperance Garden, described as “a temporary green space for all to enjoy”. It has been built on the site of the old National Temperance Hospital, and this is the view of the garden from Hampstead Road:

The large structure behind the gardens are offices and have been there for the last few years. The fencing between the gardens and Hampstead Road are standard HS2 Euston green security fencing and surround places on the site where there are no large panels.

Inside the gardens, which apparently has been “specially designed to be moved and re-used in the local area when the site closes”:

These buildings were home to the Maria Fidelis School:

To free up the school site, HS2 have built a new school between Drummond Crescent and Phoenix Road, and the site in Starcross Street is now closed.

The school and a large new building behind the school are a new “Euston Skills Centre”, set-up to provide training to local people and thereby providing the number of trained workers that such a large project requires.

The Euston Skills Centre was handed over to Camden Council on the 20th of November, however given that work within Camden has now been paused it will be interesting to see what Camden Council does with the facility. Hopefully there are still plenty of training opportunities for Camden locals to work on the project from Old Oak Common northwards.

Between the skills centre and Starcross Street is the second of the places where there has been a tangible change, compared to last year.

This is another temporary open space, in the form of Starcross Yard:

The theme for Starcross Yard is “echoes of place”, and within the space there are physical reminders of places from a surprisingly wide area, not just the HS2 construction site, or Euston.

To highlight these, there are information panels along the railings which tell of the “uncommon histories of people and space”.

The first is the Temperance Hospital, which was demolished as part of the clearance of the HS2 construction site:

The second covers the St. James’s Burial Ground, which again was cleared as part of HS2 site clearances. The panel highlights the boxer Bill Richmond who was buried at St. James’s Burial Ground, and a number of others buried are also named, as well as many from the workhouse:

Railings from the old burial ground now form part of Starcross Yard.

The above two panels refer to places that have become part of the HS2 construction site. The rest of the panels cover people and places that are further away, and not part of HS2.

The first of these is the German Gymnasium which today can be found by the southern entrance to Pancras Square, between St. Pancras and King’s Cross Stations:

Poles from the German Gymnasium can now be found at Starcross Yard.

Next up is Cumberland Market:

Cumberland Market was a short distance to the west of Euston Station, at the southern end of the Regents Park Basin, a small dock area off the Regents Canal.

My father grew up next to the Regents Park Basin, and I wrote about the area in this post. Starcross Yard has cobbles from Cumberland Market.

Next is St. Aloysius, a Somers Town Catholic Church:

The church is still functioning, although a mid 1960s rebuild, rather than the buildings shown on the panel. The church can be found to the east of Euston station, in Eversholt Street.

And the final panel covers the local schools, including the Maria Fidelis school, which is the large brick building beside Starcross Yard:

I rather like what they have done with Starcross Yard. Too often when large areas of London are redeveloped, there is nothing left to indicate anything about the people and places that once had a connection to the place.

Starcross Yard is temporary, and I hope whatever comes next retains this approach to the areas history.

Meanwhile, at the end of Starcross Street, the Exmouth Arms are still open:

Next to the Exmouth Arms is another of the site entrances, guarded by a rather bored security person:

At the end of Starcross Street is Cobourg Street, although the road element of the street is now boarded off, with only the footpath remaining.

Cobourg Street crosses Drummond Street, and last year you could walk along this far stretch of Cobourg Street, but during my 2023 visit, the footpath was being fenced off:

It seems to be a result of the “pause” in work of HS2 into Euston, that the whole site seems to be getting more enclosed and secure. I assume if you have a large area of open land sitting idle, you do not want the risk of anyone getting in.

This is the view back along Cobourg Street from Drummond Street towards the Exmouth Arms:

Where Drummond Street once ran all the way to the edge of Euston Station, it now stops at the junction with Cobourg Street, and continues on as a walkway, with the HS2 construction site on either side.

This is the view along the walkway, looking up towards Drummond Street:

And from the same location, looking towards Euston Station:

And back towards Drummond Street:

At the corner of where Drummond Street once met Melton Street is the original Euston station of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (I wrote about a visit to the station and tunnels in this post):

To the left of the underground station is another large area of cleared space, this was the area once bounded by Melton Street, Drummond Street, Euston Street and Cobourg Street, and was where the Bree Louise pub was to be found:

The following view is from the same position as the above photo, and is looking along where Melton Street ran into Cardington Street. It was a short distance along Cardington Street that St. James’s Gardens could be found. The tree is the only reminder of the trees that once lined part of the street and across the gardens.

The view along what was Melton Street, with a walkway into Euston Station up the ramp to the left:

The walkway along what was Melton Street:

There is a small stub of Melton Street left, where it meets Euston Road, and again has a very quiet entrance to the HS2 construction site:

I then walked along Euston Road to find the third place where there is any tangible sign of a change. At the eastern side of the station is Eversholt Street, and in front of the station, and the bus stops, between Eversholt Street and Euston Road, one of the open spaces alongside Euston Road has been redeveloped:

The area is still secured by standard HS2 Euston green mesh fencing, but through it there appears to be a new taxi drop of point. It all looks finished, but no indication of when it will be opening:

Then a walk to the open space in front of the station:

With a view in the opposite direction showing the office blocks between Euston Station and Euston Road:

Returning to Melton Street, where there is a ramp leading to a walkway into Euston Station, this is the view, with a large open construction site behind the panels on the right:

If you walk into Euston Station, up to the first floor area where there is a pub and food outlets, at the western end of this space there are stairs back down to ground level, and from here there is a view over the construction space in front of the station, with Melton Street to the right, and taxi ranks alongside Euston Road:

Not much happening in this large area:

The station concourse:

That was the HS2 Euston construction site in 2023. Very little change compared to a year ago, with only two small gardens and a taxi drop off point the only external signs of change.

There were not that many construction workers around, and the perimeter of the site seems to be getting more secure, as if it is closing up for a long period.

HS2 seems to be a love / hate project, and whatever your individual views on the project, it does not give a good impression of the country when we seem unable to build major infrastructure projects such as HS2.

There is an interesting article on the London reconnections website, comparing the costs of infrastructure projects in the UK and other, comparable countries, and it is remarkable just how much extra, projects in this country are to build compared to others.

There are many complex reasons for this. Planning processes, funding complexity, objections to projects, long decision making, changes to decisions etc. all add to cost.

Although the Old Oak Common to Euston section has been paused, there will still be cost, at the very minimum the construction sites will need security, and I suspect it will take very many years before sufficient private finance is found to complete the project.

London Mayors and Government Ministers of all parties seem to like the phrase that “London is open for business”, a phrase which I find rather meaningless, but seems to translate as the city is open for anyone to purchase London’s assets, and this will probably be the way for Euston with offshore investment building up a new Nine Elms above a very slimmed down station.

Apart from the Silvertown Tunnel, HS2 is the only other major public transport infrastructure project in London.

Crossrail 2 has been “paused” since October 2020, and I doubt there will be anything for some decades to come.

Sorry to be so depressing on your Sunday morning.

I stayed taking a few more photos as it got dark, and as I left the station, the new information board in the outside concourse mirrored my thoughts at the time about the future of Euston’s development, with almost every train being delayed:

My visits to the Euston HS2 construction site for the past six years are covered in the following posts:

My first post was back in 2017 and covered St James Gardens, just before they were closed for excavation.

My second post in 2018 walked around the streets to the west of the station, as buildings began to close, and the extent of the works could be seen.

I then went back in 2019 as demolition started.

In 2020, demolition was well underway and St James Gardens had disappeared, and the associated archaeological excavation had finished

And in June 2021 I went back for another walk around the edge of the construction site.

Last year’s 2022 walk around the site is here.

I suspect the site will be much the same when I visit again later in 2024.

alondoninheritance.com

The Impact of the M25

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The Impact of the M25 was the title of a 1982 report from the Standing Conference on London and South East Regional Planning.

I am sure that drivers have long had a love / hate relationship with the M25. When it is flowing well, it is a fast and efficient way around London, to reach different entry points to the city, or main roads and motorways spreading away from the city. At other times, it can be a car park, with a lane closure or accident quickly leading to miles of slow moving and stationary traffic.

The M25 is the latest in a series of attempts at moving traffic around the city. From plans in the 1940s by the City of London to circle the City with dual carriageways that became Upper and Lower Thames Street and London Wall, to the north and south circular, to the M25.

There is also a perception that London begins at the M25, and indeed with the recent expansion of the ULEZ zone, in some places such as near Waltham Abbey to the north, the ULEZ zone is up against the M25, as it is in the east, where to the east of Upminster the zone crosses the M25 to cover a small area of land around North Ockenden.

The M25 is closer to the centre of London in the north and extends further away around the southern stretch of the motorway. The following map shows the M25 as a complete ring around London ( © OpenStreetMap contributors):

The M25 is only there because of London. It was built to provide a route around the city without having to travel through built up and congested areas, and to offer a way for lorries and cars traveling from, for example, the midlands to the channel port at Dover, a fast route between the motorways that spread out from London.

However the M25, as indeed with any new road, has an impact far beyond the original intentions of improving traffic flow.

It will result in developments that aim to take advantage of the new road, it will open up areas for regeneration, it will generate new levels of traffic, and it will have an impact on the natural environment of the places through which the road is built.

Investigating the potential impact of the M25 was the aim of the 1982 report, to see what impact on the south-east this major new infrastructure project would have in the years ahead.

At the time of the report, the M25 was under construction, and the following map shows the expected completion dates of individual sections of the motorway from 1982 to 1986:

For nearly all post-war planning, the car and lorry were central to transport planning. This had started in the 1930s, and planning for post-war reconstruction in the 1940s expected a significant increase in personal car ownership and use for both work and pleasure purposes.

The cost of car travel would also gradually reduce compared to other forms of transport, and the report included the following graph, which shows that between 1971 and 1981, the costs of London Transport bus fares (1) and underground fares (2) had risen far more than both average earnings (5) and motoring costs (6):

The report identified five major development implications that the M25 would result in:

warehousing serving national and regional markets, for which the areas around Dagenham, Dartford, Grays and Redbridge are likely to be attractive;
high-technology growth industries; which are likely to be attracted to towns just beyond the Green belt;
offices which do not require a central London location. Increased demand in Romford, Croydon, Orpington, Hounslow, Uxbridge and Barnet is envisaged;
hypermarket and superstore developments for which locations close to M25 junctions would be most attractive, but would also conflict with Green Belt policy;
discount shopping stores, for which locations on major cross London routes such as the North Circular Road are likely to be attractive.

Much of the route of the M25 was through Green Belt, and the use of land close to the new motorway, would result in planning problems, and increase the value of land where development was permitted.

The route of the M25 through the Green Belt is shown in the following map:

Although there were a few very small exceptions, the M25 did not pass through Grade 1 and 2 agricultural land, although the report identified large areas of the highest quality land in east Hertfordshire, Essex, and north-west Kent, as shown in the following map:

Being close to the M25 could result in development pressures to these areas of high grade agricultural land, and these, along with the Green Belt were considered landscape constraints on where additional development could take place, and where proposals for development would threaten the natural environment and the production of food.

As well as agricultural land, a trip around the M25 provides an insight into the underlying geology of the land surrounding London. From the heathlands as you exit the M25 onto the M3, the flat, open lands of Essex as you exit onto the A13 and A127, and the chalk hills around the south of the M25.

Green Belt and agricultural land added to the policy constraints for land development around the M25, with Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Special Landscape Areas also needing to be considered. The scope of these are shown in the following map from the report:

As well as natural and agricultural areas that were protected, there were also what the report classified as “Damaged Landscapes” which was land that had, or was being used as mineral workings, refuse tips, sewage works, electricity transmission installations and industrial development.

The report identified that some of these damaged landscapes, such as gravel working could be used for other purpose, such as recreational uses, but cautioned that areas used for refuse tips, mineral workings and sewage works would require very expensive restoration works.

The report also included “landscape under threat” which included deteriorating agricultural and woodland, as well as under-used open land close to urban areas (it is interesting that land always needs to be “used” and cannot just be left).

The areas of land included in these two categories are shown in the following map:

I well remember some of these “damaged landscapes”. As a child, an outing to Kent required a drive through the Dartford Tunnel, (which was built before the M25). On the approach to the tunnel from Essex, there were chalk quarries and cement factories on either side of the road.

These places were always coated in a thick grey dust, and I found a couple of photos on the excellent Geograph site showing the cement industry in West Thurrock:

West Thurrock cement industry — **West Thurrock Cement Industry, 1974**
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Pierre Terre – geograph.org.uk/p/134125

The nearby Dartford Tunnels (now the Dartford Crossing with the addition of the bridge), is a major part of the M25, although not being officially part of it as the crossing still carries the designation of A282.

The first Dartford Tunnel was planned in the 1930s, and construction work did start, but was soon halted by the outbreak of the Second World War.

Work recommenced in 1959, and the first tunnel opened four years later in 1963. This was a single tunnel with two carriageways to carry traffic in both directions under the river. Crossing through the tunnel required the payment of a toll.

Traffic through the tunnel increased significantly and a second tunnel was planned, a key upgrade given that the M25 was also bang planned.

Money to fund the project was in short supply in the early 1970s, however funding was granted from the European Economic Community, allowing construction of the second tunnel to start in 1974, opening to traffic in 1980, with one tunnel being used for traffic from north to south, and the other tunnel used for south to north traffic.

Entrance to one of the Dartford Tunnels:

Even the two tunnels were insufficient for the increasing volumes of traffic once the M25 had opened, and starting in the late 1980s, construction started on the Queen Elizabeth II bridge, which opened in 1991.

The bridge now takes traffic running from north to south, with the two tunnels carrying traffic from south to north.

View of the Queen Elizabeth II bridge from near the Swanscombe Peninsula:

A journey across the Dartford Crossing, whether through the tunnels or across the bridge has always attracted a toll, which was originally used to cover the costs of construction. Toll booths once collected payment, however there have now been replaced by automatic number plate recognition, and online payment.

I found some figures for the tolls dating from the financial year 2016 – 2017, when the crossing generated almost £205 million, with £92 million coming from fines for unpaid fees, with a further £42 million of unpaid fines being written off as being unenforceable.

The latest traffic figures from National Highways shows that the Dartford Crossing carries more than 180,000 on its busiest days, with the highest amount recorded of 206,713 vehicles, on the 20th of February 2018.

The report tried to identify areas where there were a major development commitment. This data was dependent on local authorities, who provided data from different time periods and different classifications of development, but the plan attempted to identify the main sites and types of proposed developments:

Taking one area as an example, to the east, around the river crossing, large circles are shown to north and south of the river for industry and warehousing, with no identification of any planned shopping developments (shown as a small triangle in the above map).

This would change very quickly, with the Lakeside Shopping Centre being built in an old chalk quarry in the second half of the 1980s, in West Thurrock on the north side of the river, and the Bluewater Shopping Centre being built in the second half of the 1990s, again in a former chalk quarry, on the south side of the river.

The M25 provided a wide catchment area for these two shopping centres.

The area around the Dartford Crossing continues to be developed. The old oil and coal fired Littlebrook Power Station complex on the south side of the river next to the Dartford Cross has been demolished in recent years, and the area is now subject to major redevelopment with large numbers of warehouses which take advantage of easy access to the M25.

The M25 has also helped with the expansion of passenger numbers to London’s main airports, with both the M25, and motorways radiating out such as the M23 and M1 opening up large catchment areas for Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports.

Whilst the M25 has helped these airports attract passengers, the M25 has caused problems with any possible expansion of Heathrow, with the motorway being in the way of a number of possible options for an additional runway.

At the time of the report, there was an inquiry into the proposal to site London’s third airport at Stansted, and the report was sure that the M25 would have a positive impact on the development of Stansted, but would lead to greater pressures for development in the surrounding areas.

The report identified that the impact of the M25 would be major development pressures on many areas bordering the M25, whether retail, such as at Lakeside and Bluewater, warehousing and offices and residential developments.

As well as providing a simplified route around London, and between the major routes heading out of, and into London, the report highlighted the expected significant time savings.

The diagram below shows expected time savings based on a 1980 GLC Department of Planning and Transportation paper:

As an example, the diagram shows an expected time saving of 25 minutes between Brentwood in Essex and Heathrow, making flights from the airport a much easier option for those living in Essex. It would be interesting to see if these time savings were still achievable.

The extent of the impact of the M25 is shown in the following map, The M25 is the dark line circling the city. The inner and outer lines show the area within 10 minutes of the M25:

The report mentions that 10 minutes was an arbitrary figure, but was chosen to illustrate just how much of the wider area surrounding London was within a very short time of travel to and from the motorway.

The overall view on Development Pressures and Opportunities was summarised in the following diagram:

The diagram highlighted that the impact of the M25 would result in development pressures to places such as Chelmsford in Essex, as well as places much closer to the M25.

These pressures were despite limited development opportunities in many areas, with the Greater London Development Plan identifying that there were “no preferred industrial locations” in outer north-west London.

There was one area where development was encouraged, and it was expected that the M25 would help with opening up the area and attracting developers. This was the area to the east of the City, starting in the Docklands and spanning both sides of the river out to Basildon on the north and Medway on the south side of the river, as shown in the following diagram:

It was hoped that this area to the east of the City would ease the development pressures in the area from Watford in the north, down to near Gatwick, with the arrows on either side of the motorway in the diagram both pointing away from the area in the west, to the Docklands / Basildon / Medway area in the east.

Following completion of the M25, use of the motorway has expanded rapidly.

The Department for Transport has a number of automatic traffic counters located around the M25, and on many other major routes.

I took one of the counters which is located just east of the Holmsdale Tunnel on the M25, just by Waltham Cross as an example, and on an average day in the year 2000, there were 108,038 vehicles of all types travelling on both sides of the M25.

In 2022, this had grown to 142,242, over a 31% increase in traffic, and the 2022 average was still slightly below the pre-pandemic 2019 average of 146,475.

The 2022 number consisted of 298 two wheeled motor vehicles, 54 buses and coaches, 86,334 cars and taxis, 35,561 light goods vehicles and 19,995 heavy goods vehicles.

Whether this rate of increase continues remains to be seen. If it does, the M25 will resemble a car park with long queues more frequently than it does now.

The M25 is the busiest motorway in the country, and carries a large percentage of the country’s road traffic. The Department for Transport also provide traffic volumes for the five busiest road sections in the UK motorway network. Four of these are on the M25:

The table shows that the section between the M3 and the M40, which includes the sections running west of Heathrow, is the busiest part of the M25, and has four out of the five most heavily used sections of motorway in the country.

The fourth most congested section in the country is a section of the M60, to the south west of Manchester.

The 1982 report identified many of the development pressures that the M25 would bring to the areas surrounding the new motorway. Almost 40 years after completion, the M25 is a key part of south east England’s transport infrastructure, and the volume of traffic using the motorway continues to increase.

The M25 did reduce traffic volumes on London’s roads, and roads of the surrounding towns and villages, as traffic now had a more direct route to travel around, into or out of the city, however I suspect that with the general increase in traffic volumes, any initial reduction has probably been replaced by an increase.

Whether this continues to increase, whether the transition to electric vehicles will result in a change to traffic volumes, whether changing working patterns will have an impact, and how the M25 will continue to impact the surrounding areas remains to be seen.

What is certain is that the M25 is another example of how London impacts a much wider area than the central city.

And for another example of the impact of London, if you travel south on the M25, look to the left a short distance along from Junction 17 (providing you are not driving), and you will see the large construction site for HS2, at the point where the tunnels start as the railway heads north under the Chilterns.

It will be interesting to see how HS2 is viewed in 40 years time – and whether it has finally reached Euston.

alondoninheritance.com

Euston Station and HS2 – A 2022 Update

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For the past five years, I have written an annual post on the work around Euston to create the extension to the station for HS2, recording the area from before work started to some point in the future, when the new station will be operational.

My first post was back in 2017 and covered St James Gardens, just before they were closed for excavation.

My second post in 2018 walked around the streets to the west of the station, as buildings began to close, and the extent of the works could be seen.

I then went back in 2019 as demolition started.

In 2020, demolition was well underway and St James Gardens had disappeared, and the associated archaeological excavation had finished

And in June 2021 I went back for another walk around the edge of the construction site.

It has been on my list to revisit for a 2022 update, but it always seemed a lower priority to other places, and with the end of the year approaching, I really wanted to walk the edge of the site again. After a morning in Fitzrovia in early December, the afternoon left time to visit Euston.

It was a lovely sunny, but cold, December day. Whilst the clear sky was welcome, the resulting low sun produced deep shadows which do not work very well with photographing scenes in a built area, but it was my last chance for 2022.

The size of the construction site is remarkable. In front off, and to the west of Euston Station, along Hampstead Road, up to the point where the rail tracks from Euston cross under Hampstead Road. The construction site then extends west alongside the rail tracks.

There continues to be background rumblings about the cost of HS2 and that it should be cancelled. Walking around the Euston site demonstrates what has been put into the site so far, and the sheer size. If it was cancelled what would happen to the space – another place of random towers as with Vauxhall?

The name HS2 I suspect is part of the project’s problem. Whilst it will offer a faster journey, the main benefit seems to be the extra capacity released on the existing lines by moving fast trains to the HS2 route. This extra capacity allowing services to improve to the places along the route – assuming there is the money and political will to do so.

Whilst the scale of the project at Euston is remarkable, this is only the London terminus of the route. There is a considerable amount of work along the whole of the route, and if you have driven along the M25, just north of the M40 junction, the massive work site can be glimpsed where tunneling starts on the 10 mile tunnel under the Chilterns.

Back to Euston, and the following map shows the area where work is underway, which I have outlined in red. There are two circled places which I will come to later in the post(Map © OpenStreetMap contributors).

This year, I started in Euston Station:

Then headed outside to see the front of the station, here the western side:

And the eastern side of the station:

In the forecourt of the station, is a statue to one of those buried in the cemetery at St James Gardens. An area where the graves have been excavated and the gardens now part of the overall construction site. See the 2017 post for a walk through St James Gardens. The statue is of Matthew Flinders:

Matthew Flinders was born in Lincolnshire on the 16th of March 1774. He joined the Royal Navy and in the early years of the 19th century he mapped much of the coast of Australia, and was the first to demonstrate that Australia was one single continent.

His chart of Australia, or Terra Australis, was published in 1814. Although the name Australia had been in use, Flinders use of the name for his chart, was the first to apply the name to the overall land mass of the country.

He had a lengthy return to London, however after his return his health deteriorated rapidly, His life at sea had taken a considerable toll on him, and he died at the age of 40 on the 19th of July 1814.

A brief announcement of his death in the London Evening Mail gives a hint of the challenges he had faced: “On Tuesday last, Captain Matthew Flinders, of the Royal Navy, greatly lamented by his family and friends. This Gentleman’s fate has been as hard as it has been eventful. Under the direction of the Admiralty, he sailed in 1801, on a voyage of discovery to Terra Australis; where, after successfully prosecuting the purposes of his voyage, he had the misfortune to run upon a coral rock and lose his ship: out of the wreck he constructed a small vessel that carried him to Mauritius, where, shocking to relate, instead of being received with kindness, as is the practice of a civilised nation to nautical discoverers, he was put in prison by the Governor and confined for six years and a half, which brought upon him maladies that have hastened his death. Fortunately for mankind and his own name, he survived a few days for finishing of the printing of the account of his voyage.”

His account of the voyage was published on the 5th of December 1814 as two volumes and “one very large volume, folio of Charts, Headlands and Botanical subjects”.

He died in a street roughly where the BT Tower is today and was buried in the burial ground for the parish of St. James Piccadilly, which was in use between 1790 and 1853, and which became St James Gardens until becoming part of the Euston HS2 construction site.

Matthew Flinders grave was discovered during the excavations to recover the bodies buried in the gardens, and his remains are due to be reburied at St Mary and the Holy Rood church in Donington, the village of his birth.

The statue, by sculptor Mark Richards, was initially unveiled at Australia House in 2014, before being moved to the forecourt of Euston Station.

Office block at the eastern edge of the forecourt:

Directly in front of Euston Station is an open space, where the Flinders statue is located. There is then a row of office blocks, under which is a bus station:

And a pub, the Doric Arch, part of which can just be seen in the above photo, and the following photo is one I took a while ago, after dark;

The entrance to the pub, and toilets, occupy the ground floor, with the main pub on the first floor, which is surprisingly good, given its location and modern construction in the base of an office block. Despite the appearance in the above photo, it can also get very busy.

The Doric Arch was originally called the Head of Steam, but changed name to the arch that once stood in front of Euston Station when the pub was taken over by Fullers around 2008.

The Doric Arch is still run by Fullers, and according to the pub’s website, one of the stones from the original Euston Arch after which the pub is named, is on display behind the bar. I have no idea how I have missed this, but it is a good excuse for a return visit.

The pub sign is now an image of the Euston arch:

Buses queue to leave their stops, underneath the office block in front of Euston Station:

In front of the office block is the London and North Western Railway War Memorial. Designed by the railways’ architect, Reginald Wynn Owen, to commemorate the railway company’s workers who died in the first world war:

The following photo shows the memorial in the same position, prior to the demolition of the original Euston Station and hotel:

Entrance to Euston Station, after removal of Doric Arch cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Ben Brooksbank – geograph.org.uk/p/2991077

On the right of the above photo is one of the gatehouses that are still on either side of the entrance to Euston Station. The gatehouse can still be seen today, although the gardens that were behind the gatehouse, running alongside Euston Road, are now fenced off and are part of the considerable area of works surrounding the station.

Walking to the west of the station, and this is the view along Melton Street, which is now closed off, apart from being a construction site access gate:

To the right of the above photo is the taxi drop off and pick up point for Euston Station:

There is still a walking route to the west of the station, along Melton Street, however this is lined by hoardings on either side:

The western walking route into the station:

Continuing on along Melton Street, with the station on the right:

Another construction access gate:

Where on the corner of what was Melton Street and Drummond Street is the original Euston station of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway. The station is one of Leslie Green’s distinctive station designs, and whilst all the buildings surrounding the station have been demolished, it still survives, probably due to all the infrastructure within and below the station (I visited the tunnels below in this post):

From alongside the station, we can look down what was Cardington Street. It was along here on the left that St James Gardens were located:

To exit the overall Euston site, the walker heads west through a corridor lined with hoardings (a theme of the entire site), towards Drummond Street:

Looking back, and the route is signposted to Euston Station:

A glimpse between the hoardings shows the size of the construction site running north from Euston Station:

This is the view to what was the corner of Cobourg Street and Euston Street. The Bree Louise pub was just on the left of the photo:

Looking north along Cobourg Street which is now fenced off, apart from the footpath to the left:

At the end of Cobourg Street is another gate to the main construction site:

And on the corner of Cobourg Street and Starcross Street, the Exmouth Arms is still there, and still open (small circle in the map at the start of the post):

Just behind, and to the west of the Exmouth Arms is a new building:

At the end of Starcross Street are these school buildings (large circle in the map at the start of the post):

The buildings were home to the Maria Fidelis School.

To free up the school site, HS2 have built a new school between Drummond Crescent and Phoenix Road, and the site in Starcross Street is now closed.

HS2’s plans for the school, also reveal the use of the new building between the school and the Exmouth Arms. From the HS2 website, the school and new building will “include welfare accommodation for HS2 site and management staff, and a Construction Skills Centre, including training rooms, workshops and interview rooms”.

The following view is the best I could get of the front of the old Maria Fidelis School, which shows a typical early 20th century brick school, with central curved section, and the playground area on the roof which is surrounded by metal fencing:

We have now reached the Hampstead Road, and the following view is looking north. Hoardings continue to screen off the construction site, and as well as the standard information panels, they are covered in site and health and safety information:

Looking down what was the northern end of Cardington Street, where it joined Hampstead Road:

Where to the right of the above photo there is a large temporary office complex:

Looking north from the old junction with Cardington Street, and construction works continue on both sides of the street. To give an idea of how far these works run, Mornington Crescent underground station is not that far after the tower blocks in the photo:

This is looking across Hampstead Road to where construction continues heading west, parallel to the existing railway tracks that run into and out off Euston Station.

Where there is another access gate:

The photo above and the photo below give an indication of the scale of HS2 construction works around Euston. In the above photo, work s continue for some distance from Hampstead Road west, parallel to the existing rail tracks.

At some point, a new bridge will be needed to take Hampstead Road across the extra railway tracks into Euston Station.

The works heading west of Hampstead Road in the above photos lead to the wonderfully named “Euston Cavern”, which is described in the HS2 Euston Approaches FAQ as “a very large, underground structure at the Parkway end of the worksite, to enable one tunnel to split into two, so that trains can access the tunnels from the necessary range of platforms at Euston”. This tunnel takes the tracks away from Euston and heads towards a new station at Old Oak Common.

In the photo below, I am looking south along Hampstead Road, with the hoardings fencing off the construction site disappearing into the distance. Although it cannot be seen, Euston Station is to the left, some considerable distance across the construction site.

The HS2 construction works around Euston are considerable, and construction on the line is continuing all the way to Birmingham.

My last walk round the site was in June 2021, eighteen months ago. From alongside the construction site, not too much appears to have changed. The fenced off area has expanded slightly, but looking in from the outside, it is still a massive ground level construction site.

According to the HS2 website, phase one of the route from Euston to Birmingham is scheduled to open between 2029 and 2033 – it will be fascinating to have watched the site evolve from the original streets, gardens and pubs to the latest iteration of Euston Station.

alondoninheritance.com

London to Portsmouth Semaphore – Chatley Heath

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the route that the body of Eleanor of Castile took to reach London, and the crosses that were built to mark the route. For today’s post I am tracing another of the historic routes that link London with the rest of the country.

Back in the 18th century, the speed of communication was mainly dependent on how long it took a horse and rider to travel between the source and destination of a message. Routine mail would be carried by stage coach and urgent messages would travel via a horse and rider who could travel much faster, but would still be limited by the speed of the horse, conditions of the roads, weather need to change and rest horses etc.

In 1770, the average time taken between London and Portsmouth was around 17 hours, but with improvements to road surfaces and coach building, by around 1820 this had improved to 9 hours for the fastest coaches.

The very best horse and rider could cover the route in just under 5 hours.

It seems remarkable when today we can make an instantaneous mobile phone call from almost anywhere in the country to the other side of the world, that just two hundred years ago it would take a day to get a message and answer between London and Portsmouth.

Portsmouth was important as it was the site of a major naval dockyard, and with the frequent wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries there was need to devise a system which could rapidly send messages between the Admiralty in London, and the naval dockyards.

The Napoleonic Wars of the later 18th century resulted in the Admiralty building a telegraph system that copied a system already set up by the French. This used a method where signaling stations were based at high points along the route between London and Portsmouth. At each station, there was a wooden shed with a shutter frame built above. The frame held six shutters in two columns, and each shutter could be opened or closed to send a message to the next station along the route.

It was claimed that a message could be sent between London and Portsmouth in just under 8 minutes.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars the system was dismantled, with Napoleon being held on the Isle of Elba.

Not long after, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, and the state of war between England and France resumed. The Admiralty needed another, and more permanent line of communication between London and Portsmouth, rather than the temporary wooden sheds set up for the shutter system.

The Admiralty created a new signaling line comprised of stations using a semaphore system, where the positions of two moveable arms would signify a message to be sent along the chain.

The following print shows the Admiralty building in Whitehall. On the roof at the rear of the building, a tall post can be seen with two arms. This was the London end of the chain of stations between London and Portsmouth (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

Signaling stations were needed at high points on the route between London and Portsmouth. Each station was equipped with a post and signaling arms, and had an observer with a telescope to keep an eye on the adjacent stations in the chain for any message that needed to be sent onwards.

The following map shows the chain of stations from the Admiralty at top right down to the dockyard in Portsmouth at lower left (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The system was opened two hundred years ago, in 1822, and an article in Bell’s Weekly Messenger in September 1822 listed the stations as;

The Admiralty, Chelsea, Putney Heath, Kingston Hill, Cooper’s Hill, Chatley Hill, Pewley Hill, Bannicle Hill, Haste Hill, Holner Hill, Beacon Hill, Compton Down, Portsdown, Lumps Fort (Southsea) and Portsmouth naval dockyard.

In 1822 it was claimed that a message could be conveyed between the Admiralty in London to Portsmouth in one minute and a few seconds. This seems remarkable and must have been in ideal conditions, perfect visibility, and the staff at the stations were ready for the receipt and forwarding of a very short message. Reports of normal transmission times state that around 15 minutes was the time taken to send a message from one end of the chain to the other – still a remarkably short time.

There is one remaining, complete, semaphore tower on the line between London and Portsmouth, at Chatley Heath in Surrey. Indeed it is the only remaining complete semaphore tower in the country. It has recently been restored by the Landmark Trust who held an open day in the summer. so I went along to see this remaining example of two hundred year old communications technology that linked London with the south coast.

In the above map of the whole chain of stations, I have marked Chatley Heath with a red circle around the red dot.

The following map shows the exact location of the Chatley Heath semaphore tower, a very short distance from the M25 and slightly to the east of the A3 (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

Chatley Heath is part of a wider area of 800 acres of commons and rare heathland that is managed by the Surrey Wildlife Trust. There are paths across the heath, some of which are signposted to show the route to the semaphore tower:

The open day was on one of the hot days of summer, where the land was so dry following weeks with no rain, a big contrast as I type this, as it is cold, cloudy and there has been much rain over the last few weeks.

Following the path to the semaphore tower:

The following photo shows the first glimpse of the semaphore arms at the very top of the tower, just showing above the tree line in the distance in the centre of the photo:

Finally reaching the Chatley Heath semaphore tower. The one remaining, fully restored tower, and the tallest on the line between the Admiralty in London, and Portsmouth.

Each semaphore station was manned by a retired navy lieutenant and an observer, usually a retired sailor of the lieutenants choosing. The lieutenant would be in charge of the station, and the observer was responsible for using a telescope to keep an eye on adjacent stations to check for messages to be forwarded.

The very first officer at the Chatley Heath tower when it opened in 1822 was Lieutenant Edward Harris.

The Chatley Heath tower included accommodation with a small house built onto the base of the tower. The blocked up windows in the tower were probably done to save the cost of building and installing windows. The navy was exempt from window tax, so this would not have been the reason. The shape of the tower was also more cost effective than the complexity of building a circular tower.

The semaphore system used a code devised by Rear Admiral Sir Home Riggs Popham.

It was Popham who created the code using flags, allowing messages to be sent between ships at sea, and it was his code that sent the message from Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar that “England expects that every man will do his duty”. He was involved in a number of naval actions, and assaults on enemy land forces across the world, but must have spent some time at home as his wife had at least ten children.

Popham’s semaphore code used two arms on a wooden post. Each arm could assume any position on either side of the post, so could be either horizontal, vertical, or at an angle of 45 degrees, pointing up or down the post.

This arrangement created enough positions using the two arms that every letter of the alphabet, along with the numbers 0 to 9, could all be transmitted.

The two arms and vertical post:

From 1963 until 1988 the tower was left empty. It was vandalised and had suffered a major fire. It was restored in 1988 by Surrey County Council and then passed to the Surrey Wildlife Trust.

The age and very exposed position of the tower resulted in further, gradual deterioration, with water being a problem, getting into the tower around the base of the post, and around the windows.

The Landmark Trust then took on the tower and commenced a full restoration project in 2020. The Landmark Trust has restored and runs some remarkable buildings across the country, and following a restoration, they rent out the buildings for short stays, and this is now the future of the Chatley Heath semaphore tower.

The restoration including fitting out the tower so that it would include accommodation, so today, walking up the tower to the roof includes a walk through a number of rooms, which include a lounge:

Kitchen:

And bedroom:

There is a second bedroom (the tower now sleeps 4) and a bathroom.

In the kitchen, the restored mechanism used to control the position of the arms can be seen:

Once on the roof, it is easy to see why this was the chosen location for the station. It is one of the highest points in the local area at 59 meters above sea level, with the land dropping by 10 to 20 meters in the area surrounding the station.

This is the view looking towards London:

Zooming in from the roof of the tower, we can see the towers of London in the far distance, the Shard to the right is just over 31km from the Chatley Heath semaphore tower.

The semaphore post and arms seen from the top of the tower:

Operating the semaphore was not without its dangers. The Hampshire and Southampton County Newspaper reported on the 15th of August 1825 that: “During the thunder storm on Wednesday last, E. Oke, the signal man belonging to the semaphore in Portsmouth, was knocked down and remained insensible for several minutes. The semaphore was at work at the time, and the man had his hand on the wheel, which turns the arms to communicate intelligence to the next station. The whole apparatus is composed of metal, which, of course, attracted the lightning. The Lieutenant, who was standing close by, did not experience the slightest inconvenience, neither was any serious injury sustained by the man or the buildings”.

View looking towards the south, the next station at Pewley Hill was somewhere in the distance:

Chatley Heath was to be the branching point for another chain of semaphore stations, which would have run all the way to Plymouth, however this chain was only completed a short distance after Winchester.

The London to Portsmouth semaphore system ran from 1822 until 1847 when it was made redundant by the coming of the railways and the electric telegraph. The London & South Western Railway connected London to the south coast at Southampton, Gosport and Portsmouth and the new electric telegraph was laid alongside the railway. This provided a far more reliable and cost effective means of sending messages between the Admiralty and the naval dockyard at Portsmouth.

The semaphore line was closed at the end of 1847, and the staff made redundant, which must have been a blow to them as the staff were usually at the end of their naval careers and other opportunities for employment would have been limited.

The views from the tops of the semaphore tower show what a high location this is relative to the surrounding land. As well as the towers of the city shown in an earlier photo, from the top of the tower we can just about see the arch over the Wembley stadium in the distance:

The location of the semaphore stations can often be found in local naming, with Telegraph Hill being used at a couple of the old station locations. there is a Telegraph pub in Putney named after the original shutter telegraph on Putney Heath. There are a number of Telegraph Roads and Telegraph Houses along the route.

The London to Portsmouth semaphore / telegraph route was one of many that were built during the early decades of the 19th century. The admiralty built a number of chains to enable communication with key dockyards.

There were also commercial telegraph chains set-up. One, by a Lieutenant Watson was created between Holyhead and Liverpool and reported the names of ships passing Holyhead on their way to the docks at Liverpool. This would enable ship owners to have advance information of when their ships would be arriving in port.

Lieutenant Watson devised his own code for the telegraph system. He may have also been responsible for creating another system from London to the coast. The following print shows Watson’s Telegraph, near Tooley Street (© The Trustees of the British Museum).

This has a similar arrangement to the semaphore route between London and Portsmouth, however it uses two rather than one post, and it appears that one of the posts had two arms at the top. Presumably this arrangement was to allow more complex messages to be sent at a faster rate.

The Chatley Heath semaphore tower is a wonderful reminder of a time, only 200 years ago, when it took hours to send a message the distance from London to Portsmouth, and the technological change that started to speed up communication.

If you fancy a stay in an early 19th century semaphore tower, the page on the Landmark Trust site with information and booking is here.

alondoninheritance.com

Campden Hill Water Tower, an Observatory and Sir James South

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Before heading to Campden Hill, a quick reminder that if you are interested in discovering the history of the New River, New River Head, the Oak Room and Devil’s Conduit, there are a few tickets remaining for a walk by Islington Guides starting this coming week. I will be guiding on a couple of these walks and they can be booked at this link.

For this week’s post, I am in the area between Kensington Gardens and Holland Park, in Campden Hill Road, looking up the street towards the now demolished water tower as seen in this photo by my father, and dating from 1951:

The same view in August 2022:

The view nearest the camera has hardly changed. The buildings on either side of Campden Hill Road are the same. What has changed is the view in the distance where the water tower once stood is now a development of flats.

The Campden Hill water tower was built as part of the 19th century roll out of water supplies across an expanding London.

The Grand Junction Water Works Company purchased the land at the top of the road in 1843, and built a reservoir. This was followed by a pumping station and the water tower. (I have also read reports that the water works opened in the 1820s on land purchased from the Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne, and that the water tower was built in 1847).

The water tower is unusual in that it did not hold a water tank. Instead, large pipes ran up the tower, and these would hold water, with the height of the pipes adding to the pressure of water supplied from the location.

I have shown the location of the water tower, and the associated water supply infrastructure, within the red rectangle in the following map:

The map shows that the water tower was just over half way up Campden Hill Road, but we need to look at another type of map to understand why it was located at this point in Campden Hill Road.

The following map (from the excellent topographic-map.com) shows land height as different colours, with blue as the lowest height, up through green, orange, red and pink as the highest. I have placed a black star symbol at the location of the water tower, and as can be seen by the surrounding colours, this is the highest point in the area, and the natural height of the land would have given a pressure advantage to water from the site, to which the water tower would have added.

The name of the road – Campden Hill Road – also highlights that the road runs both up and down a hill. Next to the original location of the water tower, we can see the road descending in both directions. Looking north:

And looking south:

There was a local myth that involved the height of the land where the water tower was located. Almost opposite the location of the water tower is a pub called the Windsor Castle, and the myth was that before the water tower was built, a keen eyed observer could see the real Windsor Castle from this high point, hence the name of the local pub.

This myth was certainly still going into the 1950s when a letter in the Kensington Post disputed that you could have seen the castle from this point, and it was even doubtful that you could see the castle from the top of the tower.

This source of the name is not mentioned on the pub’s website, which does though claim the 1820s as the age of the pub, so it does pre-date the water tower.

The water tower and associated infrastructure became part of the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904 when the MWB took over the assets of the many water companies operating in London, and brought these under the control of a single, London wide, water supplier.

The water tower was last used for the storage of water within it’s pipe in 1943, and was then redundant for a number of years. Plans to demolish the tower started in the early 1050s and in the 28th of March 1952 edition of the Kensington News and West London Times, there was an article with the headline “Goodbye to the Great Grey Tower”. The newspaper had asked local residents how they felt about the loss of the tower and reported that their general reply was that they would “Miss it dreadfully”.

The tower would though remain for many years, and during the 1960s it was leased to Associated Rediffusion who had equipment to relay television signals mounted on the tower.

There were a number of proposals for what would replace the tower throughout the 1960s, many reported in the Kensington Post, who also sent a photographer to take some photos of the view from the top of the tower.

It would finally be demolished in the first months of 1970, and the site of the water tower and associated works is now occupied by the housing seen in the following photo:

As well as being part of London’s water supply, and a local landmark, the Campden Hill water tower is also unique as it is (as far as I know) the only water tower to feature in, and on the cover of a work of literature:

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesteron is a rather unusual book. Published in 1904, it tells of the story an alternative reality, where the country is ruled over by a randomly selected head of state, one Auberon Quinn who had been a clerk. Quinn decides to turn London into a form of medieval city. One man, Adam Wayne, takes this very seriously, and uses it as a means to support local pride. Wayne even went to the length of setting up a Notting Hill army to fight invaders from other neighbourhoods – hence the title of the Napoleon of Notting Hill.

Theoretically set in a London of the future, the book describes technology and the city as it was when the book was written.

The water tower features many times in the book, including in Chapter Three —The Great Army of South Kensington, where the various forces of different streets and local areas assemble and where battle takes place, for example:

“Morning winked a little wearily at me over the curt edge of Campden Hill and its houses with their sharp shadows. Under the abrupt black cardboard of the outline, it took some little time to detect colours; but at length I saw a brownish yellow shifting in the obscurity, and I knew that it was the guard of Swindon’s West Kensington army. They are being held as a reserve, and lining the whole ridge above the Bayswater Road. Their camp and their main force is under the great Waterworks Tower on Campden Hill.”

and:

“In the event of your surrendering your arms and dispersing under the superintendence of our forces, these local rights of yours shall be carefully observed. In the event of your not doing so, the Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires to announce that he has just captured the Waterworks Tower, just above you, on Campden Hill, and that within ten minutes from now, that is, on the reception through me of your refusal, he will open the great reservoir and flood the whole valley where you stand in thirty feet of water. God save King Auberon!”

The reason why Chesterton set his book in the area, and uses the water tower as a key feature must be that he was born in Campden Hill on the 29th of May, 1874, so he knew the area very well, and the water tower would have been a very familiar feature.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a really strange book, but good to have the Campden Hill water tower recorded in a work of literature.

Walking south, down the hill from the location of the water tower is this terrace of large residential buildings:

One of which has a blue plaque recording that the photographer Bill Brandt lived here:

I felt rather guilty taking the photo of Bill Brandt’s plaque on a modern digital camera, when I should have been using my father’s old Leica film camera.

Brandt was a master of film photography. Born in Germany in 1904, he moved to London in 1933, and would spend the rest of his life in the city until his death in 1983.

I have no idea when, and for how long he lived in Campden Hill Road, however a number of his photographs were taken inside the building, many of which date around the 1940s, so he was there for some of that decade.

Brandt took a series of photos of London during the war, and his photos of the Underground being used as air raid shelters have become representative of that period in London’s history. Many of his wartime photos of London are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum:

Christ Church, Spitalfields: Man sleeping in a stone sarcophagus in Christ Church:

Continuing on down Campden Hill Road, and the area around the road is full of interesting architecture and plenty of history and interesting characters. I cannot cover everything I would like to in the space of a weekly post, so I will pick one small street which has plenty of interesting stories to tell.

In the map below, I have put a blue oval around Observatory Gardens, a small street that leads from Campden Hill Road to Hornton Street:

I will come on to the origin of the name Observatory Gardens, however lets have a look at the buildings first.

Along the northern side of Observatory Gardens is a continuous terrace of brick houses with white painted detailing.

By 1870, the land now occupied by Observatory Gardens had been purchased by Thomas Cawley, a local south Kensington builder. He subcontracted the construction of the street, however his subcontractors went bankrupt, so Cawley completed the work himself, and the street was finished in 1883.

The street suffered some severe damage during the last war when a German bomber crashed into Campden Hill Road, having taken off a large roof in Observatory Gardens, and the crater in the street causing additional damage. A report in the West London Observer on Friday the 18th of April 1941 tells the story:

“London experienced one of the heaviest raids of the War during Wednesday night and early Thursday morning and numerous heavy, high-explosive missiles as well as thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped. Damage was on a large scale and many people were killed.

The German radio yesterday (Thursday) declared that the raid was the heaviest ever on London and the biggest raid of the War, and that 100,000 fire bombs were showered down.

On Thursday morning thousand of Londoners made their way to work over hose-pipes and broken glass, while firemen, begrimed and exhausted, still dealt with the smoldering ruins. Many had to make extensive detours to reach their place of business and thousands found their offices and shops bombed out when they got there.

Altogether five Nazi planes were brought down, one of which crashed in Campden Hill Road, a turning off Kensington High street. Actually the plane hit the roof of a large house in Observatory Gardens before crashing into the roadway about 50-feet away. Bombs from the plane must have crashed into the road in front of this house as there is a very large crater.

The German plane finally came to rest by the side of a large Hostel, part of the University of London.

At the controls was a dead pilot. No traces of other members of the crew could be found, so it is assumed that they had jumped. Later the bodies of two Nazi airmen were discovered in the locality, badly mutilated.

Residents at Campden Hill Road heard the whistle of the approaching aircraft before it crashed. There was no engine noise. Wardens say that it was not on fire.

The bomber touched chimney pots and then disintegrated in small pieces. Its heavier parts, one of the engines and two propellers, landed on the top of a block of flats where some Maltese evacuees were billeted.

An oil tank burst at the same time, and two rooms of the top floors of the flats, which were being used for bedding and linen, caught fire.

During the day, thousands of people passed the spot to see the scattered remains of the bomber. By the afternoon there was little to see as army lorries had conveyed the debris to one of the various scrap bases set aside for this purpose.”

Observatory Gardens was left badly damaged by the crash of the bomber, and as with so many streets across London, the street would not recover for a couple of decades.

In the years after the war, Observatory Gardens became very run down, and it was not until the 1990s that the street we see today emerged. Whilst the exterior of the buildings were restored, much of the interior of the buildings appears to have been considerably rebuilt.

Before Thomas Cawley purchased the land and developed Observatory Gardens, the land was owned by Sir James South, a fascinating character who made astronomical discoveries and also appears to have spent a fair amount of time in the courts.

Sir James South purchased a house and land in 1827 from the Phillimore family, and set about building an astronomical observatory in the grounds.

He started a career as a surgeon in Southwark, and there established an observatory in Blackman Street. He worked with the astronomer John Herschel on the observation of double stars, but he was often difficult to work with, and was frequently drunk.

Despite this, he became President of the Astronomical Society in 1829, but after arguments with a number of Fellows, his involvement with what would become the Royal Astronomical Society faded.

He continued his observations from his house on the land that is now Observatory Gardens, and got involved in a number of disputes with the council who were proposing to extend Camden Hill Road. He believed that the vibrations from traffic on the extended road would impact his telescopes and his observations.

His legal disputes were not just about issues that threatened his observations, he would take legal action on many issues that he daily encountered. One was in 1855 when he took a conductor of a Paddington omnibus to court for deceiving him.

South had apparently hailed the omnibus near King’s Cross and had asked the conductor if it was the Royal Oak omnibus. The conductor confirmed that it was, so South boarded.

The bus continued to Chapel Street by when all the passengers had left the bus, with the exception of South. The conductor stated that the bus would not be going any further than the next stop, and South got into an argument with the conductor regarding the destination of the bus, and that the conductor had informed South that it would go to Royal Oak.

At court, the conductor denied that he had told South the omnibus was going to Royal Oak, stated that South had got on the bus without speaking. Despite this, the court sided with Sir James South and convicted the conductor with a penalty of 20 shillings plus costs.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the case of Sir James South and the conductor of an Omnibus shows that South would take an issue to court no matter how trivial it was, and with the unequal resources and reputation of an omnibus conductor and Sir James South.

Sir James South:

The Illustrated Times published an obituary for Sir James South on the 26th October, 1867:

“We have to announce the death of Sir James South, F.R.S. at an advanced age. He was the son of a dispensing druggist, who towards the close of the last century carried on in business in Blackman-street, Borough; but James South entered upon a higher branch of the medical profession, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. For some years he practiced his profession in Southwark, and in the intervals in business pursued the study of astronomy, in connection with which he made some extremely valuable observations. In 1822 and 1823, in conjunction with Sir John Herschel, he compiled a catalogue of 380 double stars.

After this he removed to Campden-hill, Kensington, where he constructed an observatory, to which he devoted the closest attention during the remainder of his life, and which has achieved European fame. He was one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was for a time its president. In 1830, on the recommendation of the Duke of Wellington, who was then prime Minister, he received the honour of knighthood, and for several years past he has enjoyed a pension of £300 a year on the Civil List for his contributions to astronomical science.

The account of Sir James South’s astronomical observations during his residence in Southwark is published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1825, and is accompanied by a description of the 5 foot and 7 foot equatorials with which they were made. one of these instruments is still mounted and in excellent condition at the Campden-hill Observatory. There are also in the observatory a 7 foot transit instrument, and a 4 foot transit circle. Sir James South was born in 1785.”

The street name Observatory Gardens is therefore named after Sir James South’s observatory that once occupied the land. The following photos shows the end of Observatory Gardens, where the street meets Hornton Street:

One of the newspaper reports I read about the water tower is that the arrival of the Grand Junction Water Works Company, and the resulting reliable supply of water, was one of the reasons why the area developed rapidly during the first half of the 19th century, and that much of that development was of large, ornate, houses.

At the eastern end of Observatory Gardens is Hornton Street, and this is the view looking north – of many of those large, ornate, houses:

And the view looking south, as the hill which gave the area its name continues to descend towards Kensington High Street. Lots more red brick and white decoration:

One thing I realised as I get towards the end of the post is that I have not explained the origin of the name Campden Hill. The Hill element obviously comes from the hill on which the area is built, and that resulted in the water tower being built here. Campden came from Campden House, a large house that was built here by Baptist Hicks, 1st Viscount Campden in the 17th century. The Camden in his title came from Chipping Campden in the County of Gloucester.

In the 19th century and much of the 20th century, there was a considerable amount of infrastructure supporting the provision of water, gas and electricity across London. As with the Campden Hill water tower, so much of this has disappeared, as the technologies used to distribute these services has changed.

Campden Hill is a fascinating area to explore, and I hope this post has provided an indication of what can be discovered across some of the streets.

alondoninheritance.com

New River Walk – Alexandra Palace to New River Head

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I have finally completed the post covering the last stage of the New River Walk, which covers from Alexandra Palace to New River Head in north Clerkenwell.

At the end of the previous stage, we had reached Bowes Park, where the New River disappeared in a tunnel, and for today’s post, we rejoin the New River where it exits the tunnel, opposite Alexandra Palace station.

This stage of the walk will follow the New River from Alexandra Palace to the east and west reservoirs, just south of the Seven Sisters Road, where it ends as a river. Then, the walk follows a Heritage Walk that follows the original route of the river to New River Head before the river was truncated at the reservoirs.

New River Walk Alexandra Palace to New River Head

Point S on the map: Alexandra Palace station is at the north west tip of a patch of open, green space, and at the south east corner of this space, the New River exits the tunnel through which it has flowed from Bowes Park:

There is nothing to see of the actual river between Bowes Park and Alexandra Palace, however there are a number of these New River Company pipe markers:

Point 1 on the map: Here, a rather over exposed Alexandra Palace can be seen on the high ground in the distance. Hornsey Water Treatment Works are behind the green metal fencing and the New River runs under the footbridge between the fencing:

The route through Hornsey is an example of where the New River has been straightened and does not follow the original early 17th century route.

The following map from 1861 shows the original early 17th century route (dark blue), along with the proposed new straightened route (light blue):

Hornsey Water Treatment Works are to the left, and the New River runs at the bottom of these works, and heads to Hornsey High Street which it crosses, before turning and crossing Middle Lane. It then heads towards the church and crosses the High Street again, heading up to the junction with Tottenham Lane.

Towards the top of the map, the Great Northern Railway runs from left to right, and below the railway can be seen the proposed new route of the New River, which is straight, and cuts of the large loop around Hornsey.

Roughly the same area as the above map, is shown in the following map of the area today, which includes the new route of the river just below the railway, and streets and buildings now covering the original route of the river around Hornsey (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

There are a number of similar examples on the New River Walk where the route follows where the river has been straightened rather than the original route. It would be an interesting exercise to follow the early 17th century route, however I think I will put that walk on the long list of London walks.

Point 2 on the map: There were very few places on the entire route where it was not possible to follow the New River walk, however one place on this final stretch was also in Hornsey where the path had been closed off as Thames Water are carrying out some repair works on the river:

Following photo is looking along the closed section of the walk. This is another straightened section of the New River:

Point 3 on the map: The New River then runs through a housing estate which was built around the New River. The following map extract shows the river running between terrace housing and under streets. There is no path alongside this section of the river, and walking to where the river crosses each street, then back, would add a considerable distance to the walk, so the Thames Water New River path runs along Wightman Road to the left (© OpenStreetMap contributors):

The view looking down one of the streets from Wightman Road, the New River crosses the street half way down:

In the above photo, the streets is dropping in height towards the point where the river crosses about half way down. This stretch of the New River demonstrates how the river follows the contours of the land, from the source in Ware to New River Head. A considerable distance which needed some careful planning, and is remarkable given the survey technologies available in the early 17th century.

The following map shows land height by colour, with blue being lower land, then increasing in height through green, yellow and red (from the excellent topographic-map.com):

I have marked the route of the New River which is following the boundary between the higher land on the left (around Crouch Hill station), and the lower land on the right (south Tottenham and Seven Sisters station).

At one point in the map, an area of higher ground (yellow) juts out, and the New River has been tunneled under this, before emerging and running through the streets to the east of Wightman Road.

Point 4 on the map: After weaving through the streets of terrace housing, the New River emerges into the north east corner of Finsbury Park:

Where there is a plaque recording the origins and purpose of the river:

The New River stays in just the north east corner of Finsbury Park, before crossing under Green Lanes, and reaching:

Point 5 on the map: where the river runs along a narrow green space between an industrial area to the north, school and housing to the south:

In the height map above, the New River is heading towards the reservoirs and is skirting around some higher land to the south, and this is visible as we walk alongside the river, with a downward slope from right to left requiring the river to be banked on the northern side:

North of the M25, between Cheshunt and Ware, there were a number of points where water was being extracted from boreholes and pumped into the New River. There were no examples of this south of the M25, except for one point along this stretch of the walk where four pipes were pumping water into the river, although it was not clear from where this was being extracted.

There is a brick building visible just to the left of where the water is pouring into the river. This is on Eade Road. It houses infrastructure of some sort, and has a 2003 plaque on the outside, but no indication of its function.

The British Geological Survey borehole map lists a borehole under this building, however it is marked as “Confidential” with no data available.

I assume the water running into the New River is from this borehole, however it is strange as to why the record is confidential.

This section of the walk was incredibly muddy, with some sections rather difficult to pass.

At the end, the path runs up to meet Seven Sisters Road, with an information panel covered in graffiti:

For a short distance, the New River Path has joined with another walking route, the Capital Ring:

And one final loop through housing, with a rather muddy path:

Point 6 on the map: The New River now reaches the reservoirs, with what must have been a gauge house, some means of regulating or measuring the flow of the river, straddling the New River just before the reservoirs:

The New River was truncated at the reservoirs at Stoke Newington in 1946, and now feeds water into the reservoirs, as well as running to their north, through the Woodberry Wetlands, an area surrounding the reservoirs that is now managed as a wildlife haven:

Between the east and the west reservoirs is a building that was once part of the New River infrastructure and has now been refurbished as the Coal House Café. The area outside the café was full of families, so I will not include a photo online, however at the side of the building is a record of the creation of the reservoirs by the New River Company:

Also on the side of the building is a wall tie with the initials of the Metropolitan Water Board, the organisation that took over the running of the New River Company’s assets:

View across the east reservoir:

View across the west reservoir:

And a short walk from the west reservoir, we reach the very end of the remaining route of the New River. The last point in the walk from Ware in Hertfordshire, where the river can be seen above ground. It ends in a rather sad dead end:

Just to the left of the above photo is the wonderful 19th century pumping station built by the New River Company:

The Metropolis Water Act of 1852 required that water companies supplying water to London, filter the water prior to distribution, and that any subsequent reservoirs after filtering be covered. The aim was to improve the quality of water and prevent much of the pollution from an industrial city from entering the water supply.

Prior to the act, the New River Company was supplying water directly from the reservoirs, however the act now required filter beds to be constructed, along with infrastructure such as a pumping station, and the building in the above photo was built between 1852 and 1856 by William Chadwell Mylne, the Surveyor for the New River Company.

The building housed steam engines and boilers until 1936 when these were replaced by diesel engines.

By 1971, the pumping station was rather dated and too small, and the design of the building did not support an upgrade, so the Metropolitan Water Board applied for permission to demolish the building.

There was considerable local support to retain the building as it was such a local landmark, resembling an industrial castle alongside Green Lanes.

This campaign resulted in the building being given a Grade II* listing in 1972, however it would continue to stay empty, and under threat.

The Historic England listing record provides a perfect description of the old pumping station, and why it is known as the Castle (Historic England source here):

“Large building designed to resemble a mediaeval fortress with keep and bailey. 1854-6 by Chadwell Mylne. Stock brick with stone dressings. Battlements and large stepped buttresses all around. The “keep” is of 2 storeys with a tall basement plinth. 6 windows on main south-west front. At north-east and south-west corners round towers with square bartizans the former with a tall conical roof and both having battlements crow-stepped up towards them. Continuous quasi-entablature, with cable moulding, running right around towers. Taller octagonal chimney tower to east. 8 steps (the top one with bootscraper!) to entrance in forebuilding running along north wall and into “bailey” building, which is lower with segmental arcading and 2 slit windows in each bay. Important picturesque landmark.”

The building was empty until 1994 when it was converted into a climbing centre. The large internal spaces perfectly suited for such a use. If you walk past, it is worthwhile having a quick look inside, as the building is still the Castle Climbing Centre.

Leaving the pumping station, we are now following the heritage section of the New River Walk. This section of the route has not seen the New River as a stream of water for many years, as the river was buried in pipes during the 19th century, and since 1946, New River water has ended at the reservoirs.

Point 7 on the map: Here we turn off from Green Lanes and into Clissold Park.

The park retains a couple of stretches of the New River, however these are for decorative purposes only, and start and end within the park.

There is a bridge across one of these decorative runs of the river, which has the arms and motto of the New River Company on the side. “ET PLUI SUPER UNAM CIVITATEM” or “And I caused it to rain upon one city” indicated by the hand reaching down from a cloud, and showering rain drops on the city below.

Part of the decorative New River feature running up to Clissold House:

Leaving Clissold Park, and walking along Stoke Newington Church Street, there is another reminder of the New River with the New River Café on the corner with Clissold Crescent:

Walk a short distance along Clissold Crescent, and there is a reminder of the New River:

The plaque reads “The Park Lane bridge was demolished and the road widened June 1881”.

Park Lane was the original name of Clissold Crescent, and the bridge carried Park Lane over the New River.

A version of the Ordnance Survey map from the 1890s shows the Park Lane bridge and the New River, although by this time, the New River should have been carried underground in pipes, and as the plaque reads, the bridge was demolished in 1881 and the road widened, so I suspect the OS map was not updated at this point (‘Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland“).

In the above map, the New River heads south between houses, and the route has been preserved and now forms a series of allotments running along the old course of the river:

The path between the allotments ends at Green Lanes (again, almost a constant companion on the southern section of the walk). We cross over Green Lanes to reach;

Point 8 on the map: this is Petherton Road where the New River once ran down the centre of the street, and is now a walkway with trees and grass on either side:

A rather nice ghost sign for Barnes Motors along Petherton Road:

At the end of Petherton Road, the green space gives way to a street which still follows the route of the New River, past Canonbury Station and cross over St Paul’s Road into another section of the New River route that has been transformed into a long green space, with a decorative water feature running the length of the space:

Towards the end of this green space is:

Point 9 on the map: where there is a round brick building alongside the original route of the New River:

The building appears to be a late 18th century watch hut. To protect the New River, the New River Company had a watchman or linesman stationed at points along the route of the river to keep the river clear of debris and also to prevent fishing and swimming in the water, or anything that could pollute the supply.

The brick hut is an example of where such a person would have been stationed to keep watch over the river.

The final stretch of the ornamental water that follows the original route of the New River:

Where the above green space ends, we then walk south along Essex Road, and turn off just before reaching Islington Green, to find Colebrooke Row.

This is another street where the houses were built facing on to the New River, and the space occupied by the river is now a green space running the length of the street.

In the following photo, the houses on the right once looked onto the New River where the grass and trees now run, with the street being on the left:

The white house on the right in the above photo was occupied by the poet and essayist Charles Lamb in the 1820s. The following print shows the house as it was, with the New River running directly in front of the house:

I have written a detailed post about Colebrooke Row and Charles Lambs which can be found here.

Leaving Colebrooke Row, we cross over City Road and Goswell Road, and cut through to St John Street. Then down to Owen’s Row (which is on the alignment of the New River, I wrote about Owen’s Row within this post).

Crossing over St John Street into Rosebery Avenue, and this is the view along the old route of the New River, with Sadlers Wells on the right (a post on Sadlers Wells and the New River is here):

At the end of Sadlers Wells, turn right into Arlington Way, then left into Myddelton Passage, where we come to the official end of the New River Walk, at the viewing platform looking over what was New River Head:

The route is marked on the ground of the viewing platform:

And that completed the New River Walk, over four days / two weekends, from Ware in Hertfordshire to New River Head, Clerkenwell.

It was a fascinating journey, and whilst the route has been straightened at a number of points and does not fully trace the original early 17th century route, it did leave me with considerable admiration for those in the early 17th century who surveyed and built the route, following the contours of the land so it would only fall by roughly 20 feet along the entire route ( 5.5m in total or 5 inches per mile). This enabled the water to flow naturally without the need for any pumping.

You can find my posts covering the first two stages of the walk at the following links:

I have also written about the history of New River Head and London’s Water Industry, which you can find at this link.

In the following panorama from the viewing platform at New River Head, I have labeled some of the key features. On the right are the engine and pump house which will soon become the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, a wonderful new use for these historic buildings.

David Fletcher creates remarkable 3D photogrammetry captures of heritage sites and has one for the historic buildings at New River Head. Hopefully this will work as I have embedded the model in the post (if you do not see this in the e-mail, click here for the post on the website).

You can walk through the site, both inside and out to see this remarkable, historic site in detail:

New River Head by artfletch on Sketchfab

And finally, if you have not had enough about the New River, I purchased the following book, the Mercenary River by Nick Higham a few weeks ago.

It really is a fascinating history of London’s water supply, including, off course, the New River, and is highly recommended.

alondoninheritance.com

A London Inheritance

A Private History of a Public City

Category Archives: London Infrastructure

Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London 1957-60

Map 1 – The Review Area

Map 2 – Proposals for Reorganisation

Map 3 – The Growth of London

Map 4 – Where Does London End?

Map 5 – Built-Up Areas 1958 and London Green Belt

Map 6 – Population Density 1951

Map 7 – Travel to Work into Central London

Map 8 – Changes in Population and Employment

Map 9 – Classification of Service Centres

Map 10 – Educational Administration

Map 11 – Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

Map 12 – Central Areas

King’s Road, St. Pancras Power Station

Greater London 1937 Highway Development Survey

Stepney Power Station, Limehouse

Euston Station and HS2 – A 2023 Update

The Impact of the M25

Euston Station and HS2 – A 2022 Update

London to Portsmouth Semaphore – Chatley Heath

Campden Hill Water Tower, an Observatory and Sir James South

New River Walk – Alexandra Palace to New River Head

Map 1 – The Review Area

Map 2 – Proposals for Reorganisation

Map 3 – The Growth of London

Map 4 – Where Does London End?

Map 5 – Built-Up Areas 1958 and London Green Belt

Map 6 – Population Density 1951

Map 7 – Travel to Work into Central London

Map 8 – Changes in Population and Employment

Map 9 – Classification of Service Centres

Map 10 – Educational Administration

Map 11 – Sewerage and Sewage Disposal

Map 12 – Central Areas

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