The London borough of Walford, E20, first appeared on our TV screens 20 years ago today. The now-familiar EastEnders signature tune and swirly map were first broadcast on BBC1 at 7pm on Tuesday 19th February 1985 (although some of you may have been busy watching Whistle Test on BBC2 instead). Within months the show had become the BBC's most successful programme ever, and Albert Square, the Queen Vic, Ali's caff and Arthur's allotment were famous across the country. But where exactly is Walford? The show's creator Tony Holland provided the following clues in the launch week's edition of Radio Times.
Ask any EastEnder for directions to Albert Square, London Borough of Walford, E20, and they'll tell you "Straight down Turpin Road Market, turn right into Bridge Street, and there it is, with the Queen Vic pub on the corner.
Which isn't particularly helpful. There are no Turpin Roads listed anywhere in the London A-Z, whereas there are four Bridge Streets (all to the west of London). And there are no East End postcodes any higher than E17. Anybody would think that Walford was purely fictional.
The biggest clue to the soap's true location came when the local tube station first appeared on the show in 1996. You won't find Walford East on any published tube map, but a close look at the map outside the on-screen station reveals that WalfordEast is located on the District line between West Ham and Bow Road, taking the place of Bromley-by-Bow. Which is where I live, near enough. I am an EastEnder.
Bromley-by-Bow is one of the poorest council wards in the country. It has the highest unemployment rate in London. Nearly half of local residents are of Bangladeshi origin. Most of Bromley-by-Bow is covered by postwar apartment blocks. Nearly half of the housing is council owned. The area is hemmed in by a screaming dual carriageway, several railway viaducts and a polluted canal. Bromley-by-Bow does have its own shops, caffs, launderettes, pubs and allotments, but not in the way you've become accustomed to seeing on TV. There are no cosy Victorian squares surrounded by gentrified terraces. There are no nail bars where idle wives waste away their empty lives. There are no bigshot gangsters in trenchcoats on every street corner. In particular, nobody around here ever disappears off on a Caribbean holiday and returns six weeks later with an orange suntan.
So I thought I'd take a look at the real EastEnders in the real East End, in and around Bromley-by-Bow. My East End. Walford it ain't.
Kat: I'm going shopping up west. Gimme a ticket. Tube operative: Which zone do you want? Kat: I'm gonna buy me a little red dress and some tottery shoes. Tube operative: Single or return? Kat: And then I'm gonna get blind drunk. Tube operative: Do you have an Oystercard? Kat: I'm a Slater I am, and don't you forget it. Tube operative: Excuse me, but you need a ticket to pass through that gate. Kat: <squeezing through> You want a slap in the face, mate? Tube operative: You'll never make it down the stairs in those heels. Kat: Ooo-err <smash> Tannoy: "Due to passenger action at Bromley-by-Bow, all services on the District Line are suspended."
Bromley-by-Bow station was opened by the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway in 1858, although the Underground only reached here in 1902. There are four platforms, but the two alongside the Southend line are now derelict and overgrown. The ticket hall is rather more modern, but not modern enough to be attractive. Just inside the entrance is a newsagent's kiosk which is only open during the morning rush hour (and stocks rather more tabloids than broadsheets). At least, unlike the special effects used at Walford East, the trains running through this station are real and appear more often than once a year.
Angie: 'Ello me old mucker, what can I get you? Ismet: Can of Red Bull, please. Angie: Sorry luv, we don't sell anything with a recognisable brand name. Ismet: OK, a tall blue and silver metal tube of generic energy drink containing taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine, please. Angie: We ain't got that. We got lager. Ismet: I'm Muslim, I don't do alcohol. Angie: We got pork scratchings. Ismet: You're having a laugh, ain't ya? Angie: We got roast beef crisps. Ismet: Are they halal? Angie: How the heck would I know, I'm completely Brahms and Liszt. Ismet: I'll just go and sit in the corner with a glass of water and wait for the next slanging match to break out, then.
There really is a Queen Victoria pub opposite Bromley-by-Bow station. It stands completely isolated from any other building, cut off on the wrong side of the A102 Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. From the outside it's a traditional looking East End pub - with brightly painted frontage, chalkboard adverts for live music and a compact landlord's flat upstairs. A faded sign stuck behind a barred window announces that the pub is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Unfortunately it's also closed for the rest of the week, and has been since May 2003. This is a ghost pub, and the former regulars are probably now to be found across the dual carriageway at the downmarket Duke of Wellington (beneath the England bunting in "Frankys Bar" doing "Kareoke").
In common with much of the rest of the capital, if not the country, more than half of the pubs round here have been closed down during the last 20 years. RIP to the following Bromley-by-Bow locals: Bird In Hand (demolished), Bombay Grab (once the local Smith Garrett Brewery, now the Bow Muslim Cultural Centre - there's irony), Bromley Arms (converted to flats last year), Caledonian Arms (still being converted to flats), Imperial Crown (nearly finished being turned into flats), Moulders Arms (recently closed and boarded up), Pearly King (a pub existed on this site for more than 650 years - until the 1990s), Priory Tavern (converted to flats in 1997), Queen Victoria (see above), Rising Sun (demolished 1997), Ye Olde Three Tuns (would have been my local, turned into flats 1999).
Rupert: Excuse me old man, what are you doing on my land? Arthur: This is my allotment. I've come to be with the vegetables. Rupert: Sorry, I'm the new chairman of the Walford Allotment Society and I don't believe you've paid your £100 annual subscription. Arthur: A hundred quid? But that's four ponies! Rupert: Keeping animals on your allotment is forbidden under subsection 3a of the new membership rules that our lawyers ratified at last week's extraordinary general meeting. Arthur: You're just a load of bankers. Rupert: We accept direct debit, you know. Arthur: I'm not allowed credit, not after the Christmas Club embezzlement fiasco. Rupert: Look you oik, either you pay up or we'll turn over your plot to a local yuppie who really deserves it. Arthur: I suppose you posh newcomers want to hijack our ancestral lands to grow your own organic fruit and veg. Rupert: Heavens no. My Jocasta gets all our groceries delivered by Waitrose, online. This is for my hemp farm. Arthur: Fair enough. Got a light?
The Reeves Road Allotment Society owns a narrow strip of land beside the railway just to the west of Bromley-by-Bow station. February may be the fallow season but there's still plenty of evidence of horticultural endeavour along this 200 yard vegetable patch. Some carefully-tended plots boast freshly-tilled soil, cane-supported netting and ruler-straight edging. Other less-loved plots appear more successful at growing crops of straggly weeds and blue plastic bags. A few ramshackle wooden structures stand (for the time being) along the far side of the allotments beneath the embankment, but alas I saw nothing to compare to Arthur's beloved shed.
Dot: Hello gentlemen, what can I do for you? Dizzee: The Bow Massive is in the house, innit. Dot: Ooh I say! (lights up another fag) Dizzee: Can me put me Mercury Music award up here on the shelf next to the detergent? Dot: You'll all be wanting those baggy hooded tops machine-washed, ironed and folded, I bet. Dizzee: Nah grandma, grime is where it's at. Dot: Don't you dare stand on that spin drier young man. Mr Papadopolous will be furious! Dizzee: I'm just a rascal. Fix up, look sharp. Dot: You don't scare me with your clever words, you young rap scallion. Dizzee: We is taking over your launderette. We is gonna hang out in here all day and play well banging tunes. Dot: "Thou shalt not hang out all day and play well banging tunes in the house of the washerwomen" - Proverbs chapter 14 verse 11 Dizzee: Oh alright then. Just a service wash please.
As you might expect in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood, we're well blessed for launderettes round here. The one you can see in the photo is my local, a welcoming place despite the smell of detergent and the harsh strip lighting. It's run by Lil, a hassled lady in a pinny, not quite Dot's age but just as helpful. She gossips, she mops the floor and she'll iron your shirts if you fork out a little extra. Her launderette is a little palace. The tops of the washing machines are covered by a jungle of well-watered pot plants. Paintings of sheep (and other rural idylls) hang from a fake marble wall. And a row of old brown leather chairs by the door makes a cosy place to sit while you wait for the spin cycle to finish. As I remember.
All this is in sharp contrast to The Powder Room, the other launderette across the road on Bromley High Street. This is a much more utilitarian facility, just a white shell housing two rows of machines separated by an empty gangway. The building is open 24 hours a day, which probably explains why it's become the chosen hangout for gangs of hooded local youths. Not that they frighten me or anything, but I've noted the two security cameras pointing at the door and I've read the police warning notice stuck to the window, so I keep away.
Ethel: I'm after a treat for my Willie. Hussain: I hope he likes onions. We have a lot of onions. Ethel: Ooh no, I couldn't possibly forcefeed my Willie like that. Hussain: Sorry, we only sell a limited range of fruit and vegetables, especially onions. Ethel: I remember when Lou's Pete ran this stall. He had cauliflowers, melons and pineapples. Hussain: We do have a few small boxes of other fruit and veg down here on these palletts. Ethel: I can't bend over that far. Pete had a lovely barrow, everything at chest height. Hussain: We also have some bananas hanging up on this washing line. They're part of our accessible fruit range. Ethel: Hmm, are there really no other stalls in this market? Hussain: Sorry, we're the only one left now. The bric a brac man vanished, the cheap tea towel bloke disappeared and the fake wristwatch geezer scarpered. Ethel: Your mate doesn't say much, does he? Big Ron:
There are some great street markets in the East End. Petticoat Lane is world famous, Columbia Road should be world famous, and even Roman Road has its advocates. Unfortunately Bromley-by-Bow market isn't great at all. You'll find it in Stroudley Walk, once a thriving Victorian high street but now just a bleak parade of retail spaces battened down behind thick metal shutters. Post-war planners earmarked this area for economic regeneration, and a huge paved expanse was set aside with space for at least 100 market stalls. But today just one single stall remains, the ill-stocked fruit and veg stall you can see in my photograph. Here a couple of Bangladeshi gentlemen eke out a living selling limited produce to those who can't quite walk as far as the nearby Tesco superstore. Alas, it can't be long before a local market tradition vanishes for good.
IOC inspector: Hello madam. I wonder if I might come in and ask you a few questions about London's 2012 Olympic bid. Pauline: Yeah come in, but mind the piss-stained tramp lying comatose in the stairwell. IOC inspector: How long have you been living here on the 23rd floor? Pauline: Ever since the BBC axed my home due to falling ratings and redeveloped the area as these three bleak tower blocks. IOC inspector: Is that football pitch down there part of the council's new sporting facilities? Pauline: No, it's just a slab of concrete where the local kids ride supermarket trolleys, shoot drugs and shoot one another. IOC inspector: And is that an athlete in training for 2012? Pauline: No, that's my Martin running away from a mugger wielding a large knife. IOC inspector: And is that an Olympic flame bringing hope to a downtrodden neighbourhood? Pauline: No, that's just two bored teenagers setting fire to a stolen car. IOC inspector: And do you back the Olympic bid? Pauline: Oh yes. From up here I'll have a perfect view of the new stadium and all the other facilities? It'll be great. IOC inspector: Ah, sorry madam, but we're going to have to demolish your home for security reasons.
These tower blocks are the crumbling centrepiece of the Crossways Estate, a 1970s sink development with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. It's not somewhere you'd want to find yourself after dark (and maybe you'd feel safer giving it a miss during the day too). Not that I've found Bromley-by-Bow to be a particularly dangerous place. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've yet to see a murder, a shooting or a stabbing, or to be on the receiving end of violence, crime or prejudice. It's certainly not as bad as this newspaper article makes out (note to my parents: please don't read that link, please read this one instead). OK, so I did get home last Friday to find the pavement in front of my house sealed off by police tape, and I did have to be escorted to my front door by a very cautious policeman who told me there had just been a "serious incident", but that's a rarity round here. I hope.
Bianca: 'Ere mate, is my Vauxhall Nova ready yet? Lee: Still working on it luv. Just trying to make it roadworthy for round here. Bianca: Did you fit the blue neon lights to the windscreen washer jets? Lee: No, but I scraped my keys all along the paintwork on the passenger side. Bianca: Did you attach that huge wing-like spoiler to the back of the car? Lee: No, but I bent the wing mirror and smashed the headlamps. Bianca: Did you install the turbo woofer sound system? Lee: No, but I took your car for a joyride and wrecked the gearbox. Bianca: And did you attach those shiny alloy wheels? Lee: No, but I removed all four tyres and left the car standing on bricks. Bianca: Sounds perfect. Lee: Any time darlin'.
I don't think the local grease monkeys appreciated me taking photographs of their nefarious under-arch activities. I got some very pointed looks as I aimed my lens down this car-strewn backstreet, which made me wonder exactly what might be going on inside each of the nine brick caverns beneath the railway line. A radio blared out from the central arch as blokes in overalls busied themselves spraying paint and peering under bonnets. It looked legal enough, but I could only guess how all these semi-repaired cars had been acquired. As I rounded the bottom of the road I realised that I was being followed, so I made a hasty exit before someone fed my camera to the crusher and tinkered with my bodywork.
Lofty: I'd like a Full English please. Mam: One Full English kebab coming up. Hang on while I stand in the window and scrape some reconstituted meat off the big swirling stick. Lofty: No, a Full English breakfast, please. Mam: Two pieces of unrecognisable chicken coated in artificial breadcrumbs and deep fried in greasy fat coming up. Lofty: No, I want bacon and egg with tomatoes and mushrooms please. Mam: The only vegetables I serve are chips. I can do you a salty burger though, or a rather dodgy looking saveloy. Lofty: Maybe not. Can you brew me a cuppa instead? Mam: I've got the complete range of Panda Pops. Will cherryade do? Lofty: You're not a real caff at all, are you? You're just a glorified falafel shop. Mam: Sorry, but nobody eats traditional English food any more. The ethnic takeaway is king around here now. Lofty: I suppose I'd better have a Pukka curry pie then. Mam: Would you like your heart attack wrapped, or open?
Mam cuts a strange figure standing beside her deep fat fryer. It's not her height you notice first, although she's certainly on the tall side. It's not her smile either, although that's always warm and genuine. No, the first thing you spot when you pop in for a takeaway is Mam's unfeasible shock of red wiry hair, swept back and piled high on top of her head. But it was Mam's siren smile that first drew me inside the door of her deep fat emporium. I used to buy all my fish and chips here, grunting my assent as she ran through all the possible condiment options. And then one afternoon I came home with a piece of undercooked cod and spent most of the following night rushing to the toilet with diarrhoea. The two events may not have been linked, but I've never been back to visit Mam since. She still remembers me though, and usually smiles through her window whenever I walk past. I got a particularly wistful stare as I stood in the middle of Bow Road taking today's photograph. I just haven't the heart to tell her that I've defected to the fish shop in Bromley High Street instead. Mam's had her chips.
Den: Doctor Doctor, I only have six hours to live. Dr Legg: I'll get the bodybag ready.
Before we leave Bromley-by-Bow there's just time to drop in on a local success story (I thought we ought to, before you all got the wrong idea about the place). The Bromley-by-Bow Centre is a pioneering community regeneration project, its chosen aim to bring about social change through 'collective enterprise'. Twenty years ago this was a new project housed in a couple of rooms in the local church hall, but now there's a health centre, youth club, nursery, cafe, 'skills hub' and 'ideas exchange' on the site, employing more than 100 people. It all sounds desperately worthy but it works, and this building has been the model for more than 150 other Healthy Living Centres across the country. However, I wish I'd been warned before I signed up here that the GPs like to prescribe "gardening, exercise in a gym, homoeopathy, counselling, aromatherapy, acupuncture or employment training" in addition to traditional medication. I'm now making an extra special effort to stay healthy in order to avoid all of the above - which shows just how well the place works.
Estate agent: As you can see madam, this is a very desirable terraced property close to all local amenities. Sonia: Oooh very nice. It's perfect for me and my Martin. Estate agent: There are two bedrooms, a small garden and a knocked-through lounge. Sonia: Great, we can spend all our weekends down at B&Q and IKEA. Estate agent: And there's a fitted kitchen complete with washing machine. Sonia: Excellent, I won't need to use that bloody launderette ever again. Estate agent: And the whole house is fully double glazed. Sonia: Brilliant, that means the neighbours won't hear me practising the trumpet. Estate agent: And it's perfect for the first time buyer, just so long as they're a big City hotshot earning at least 60K. Sonia: I'm training to be a nurse, and my Martin sells vegetables. Estate agent: Sorry dear, East London is way outside your price range. Sonia: Bugger. Looks like we'll have to commute from Weatherfield.
There really is an Albert Square in East London, and it's in Stratford. Sorry, you're probably pig sick of hearing about Stratford this week, but rest assured that this particular street is located on the non-Olympic side of town. Albert Square E15 isn't so much a square as two sides of a rectangle. It's a dead ordinary street landlocked into the residential jigsaw to the east of Maryland station. The Victorian terraces are owned and rented by a cross section of London's multicultural population. Their not-quite-identical houses have tiny front gardens full of wheelie bins, bushes and pieces of old carpet. Some of the front windows have well-scrubbed leaded lights, while others are covered by faded sheets of old newspaper. A big red skip halfway up the road is filling up with broken masonry as the street slowly evolves. And, down on the corner where the Albert House once served beer, a new 'exclusive selection of luxury 1 & 2 bedroom apartments' is being erected. This new development is playing heavily on the Albert Square name, pretending to potential buyers that the pub here has always been called the Queen Victoria. Somehow I doubt that Alfie, Frank or Peggy would ever want to live in something quite so characterless.
In honour of the fact that the country's first five arterial roads all start in central London, I've decided to take a walk along the first mile of each of them...
Great British Roads - A1: London - Edinburgh The first mile: Barbican - Islington
Road begins: Aldersgate (Museum of London) Britain's most important trunk road starts somewhere rather unimportant. This wasn't always the case. The A1 used to begin outside St Paul's Cathedral, following an old coaching road north up St Martin's-le-Grand, past Little Britain and past the site of the magnificent Victorian General Post Office. That was before the IRA came along, causing City authorities to erect 'the ringof steel' in the mid 1990s. The A1 now starts a few yards past an unstaffed security checkpoint at a shadowy characterless roundabout. A circular brick island rises up in the centre of the roundabout - this the well-hidden entrance to the Museum of London (which is well worth a visit, by the way). And the A1 heads north from this lonely spot, unlabelled, unsigned, unnoticed.
This is Aldersgate, a medieval street once the site of one of the seven gates into the old city of London. There's nothing medieval about the road today, however. Here lies the Barbican estate, a sprawling monument to 60s architecture complete with arts centre, lake, tall towers and a baffling labyrinth of concrete walkways. I looked into renting one of the two thousand posh flats here when I moved down to London, but a quick check of my bank balance soon put an end to my dreams. Those with deeper pockets might appreciate the huge residents' car park beneath the Barbican, from where it's easy to slip one's BMW or Bentley out onto the deserted A1. A little further up the road lies the rather less affluent Golden Lane Estate, the northernmost outpost of the City of London. Weekly rents here are only in double figures, and rows of grimy net curtains betray the fact that the residents here are more likely to be cleaning under a desk in some financial institution rather than sitting at one.
A griffin on a pedestal near the junction with Old Street marks the shift from the Square Mile to the London borough of Islington. There's an obvious change as Aldersgate becomes the Goswell Road - lower wealth, lower status but not quite lower class. The Hat & Feathers pub (Victorian, yellow and ornate) has long closed down through lack of business, and there's a gaping scar behind which has been taken over as a makeshift NCP car park. For a few hundred yards the A1 is lined by small shops and services, including Dennis Motor Accessories, Nicola Jane (mastectomy wear) and Spunkies Imaging (they look quite legit, don't worry). But after Kings Square Garden (think dog waste bins, patchy grass and pigeons) the A1 opens out and heads rapidly downmarket, bordered by boxy modern tenements and one very ordinary tower block. You wouldn't imagine such social housing to exist so close to the financial centre of town, but a lot can change in a mile.
Mile ends: The Angel, Islington At the Angel the A1 climbs gently to meet London's Inner Ring Road, the A501, and the road number is signposted for the first time. All of a sudden there is proper traffic, and a bustling busyness that hasn't been present along the road before. Cars whizz round the one-way system, trapping pedestrians on a small triangular island in the middle of the flow. A well-kept clock stands here on a square green pillar in the middle of a pristine flowerbed. On each side is written in gold leaf the name of J Smith& Sons, once eminent local clockmakers, along with their long defunct telephone number - Clerkenwell 1277. Just around the corner Upper Street beckons, and thence the long journey to part of Britain that only really exists on road signs - The NORTH. There are still 408 miles to go until the A1 reaches Edinburgh's Waverley station, but I suspect the finalmile is rather more impressive than the first.
Great British Roads - A2: London - Dover The first mile: Borough - South Bermondsey
The A2 is the road to Europe, and has been for almost two thousand years. The modern road follows the alignment of WatlingStreet, along which Roman soldiers would have trooped on their way from London to Dover and beyond. The section between London and Canterbury was almost arrow-straight, and Chaucer's pilgrims (of whom more tomorrow) would have journeyed along what was left of this ancient road more than a thousand years later. Watling Street was still visible across south London back in the 18th century, but nothing remains today except a line on a map.
Road begins: Borough, SE1 The A2 is the only one of London's five major trunk routes to begin south of the river. It starts innocuously at a junction with the A3 outside Borough tube station, then heads southeast down the major intercontinental highway quiet residential street you can see in the photo. Great Dover Street has a real mix of housing along its half mile length. At the top there's the Dover Castle, a pub that's also a cut-price backpackers' hostel, and further down there are student halls of residence for freshers attending Kings College. There are plenty of council flats in long blocks, some old and some new but almost all with satellite dishes pointing southwards. Visible to the southeast is the Trinity Estate, a well-preserved collection of 18th century terraced houses and the only part of the area where you might actually aspire to live.
Next comes the Bricklayers Arms roundabout (more a squareabout really), a giant road junction carved out of what were once residential streets. The roadway is five lanes wide, with a concrete flyover sweeping across from Elephant & Castle carrying traffic towards the coast. In the centre there's a large grassy patch with benches that you can reach by subway or pelican crossing, though goodness knows why anyone would want to sit here breathing in swirling exhaust fumes. A railway terminus was established here in 1844, but closed down within a decade when passengers from Kent realised they'd much rather travel closer to London and arrive at London Bridge instead.
Mile ends: Old Kent Road The A2 then turns into the cheapest property on the Monopoly board. Personally I reckon the Whitechapel Road is more downmarket these days, but the OldKentRoad definitely deserves its place in the inexpensive light brown corner. This disadvantaged thoroughfare has resisted all attempts at gentrification and remains stubbornly inexpensive. At the northern end there's a giant Lidl supermarket (say no more), while the nightclub over the road advertises Wacky Wednesday Karaoke ("Hats are not to be worn at any time. Anyone found wearing a hat or cap will be asked to leave"). Further down come numerous small shops of the non-chainstore type, perfect should you ever want to eat fried chicken, order a minicab, have your hair braided, get your nails buffed, stock up on bottles of rum, buy a sandwich or pick your way through trays of Jamaican vegetables. It's built-up, it's busy and it's bustling, but I still reckon £250 for renting a little red hotel round here is a bit steep.
Road continues: New Cross Road, Blackheath Hill, Shooters Hill Road, Rochester Way, Bexley, Dartford, Gravesend, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Canterbury, Dover.
Great British Roads - A3: London - Portsmouth The first mile: London Bridge (north) - Elephant & Castle
Road begins: Monument The A3 starts where London nearly finished - at the Monument. The GreatFire of London was kindled just around the corner in Pudding Lane, killing only six people but destroying four fifths of the City. The Monument was built by Sir Christoper Wren to commemorate the conflagration, and is exactly as far away from the bakery where the fire began as it is tall. At 202ft it remains (I believe) the world's tallest free-standing stone column and became one of London's first tourist attractions with its stunning panorama over the rebuilt city. The view from the upper platform now includes rather more office blocks and rooftop ventilation units than would have been the case in the 17th century, but in my experience it's still well worth making the 311 step ascent to the top. To be truly accurate, the A3 really begins in front of the House of Fraser department store on King William Street, but somehow that's not quite so interesting.
The A3 spends only a few hundred metres north of the river before reaching the capital's oldest permanent river crossing - London Bridge. The current bridge is at least the tenth on the site, the original built by the Romans in AD80. Several timber bridges followed before construction of the first stone bridge was completed in 1209. The 200ft span was supported by 20 arches, and featured a drawbridge, traitors' heads on spikes, numerous houses and a big chapel in the middle. The bridge survived the Great Fire because it had only been partially rebuilt following an earlier fire and the flames couldn't jump the gap, and this medieval structure went on to provide more than 600 years of service. A granite replacement was opened by King William IV in 1831, only to be sold off in the 1960s to an American businessman who shipped it across the Atlantic to span LakeHavasu in Arizona. The latest London Bridge (opened 1971) with its six lane highway is more able to cope with modern traffic but definitely lacks the architectural charm of its predecessors. At least the view downstream towards Tower Bridge is still spectacular.
Southwark Cathedral guards the southern end of the bridge (although this is soon to be dominated by the 310 metre tall LondonBridgeTower). Underneath the railway arches lurks Borough Market, famed foodie nirvana where you can buy squidgy cheese, fruit juice with bits in, organic scallops, wild boar meat, spicy chutneys and (allegedly) some produce which actually tastes nice. To the south stretches Borough High Street, an important bridgehead thoroughfare in medieval times when it was packed with all the bawdy revelry and lewdness that wasn't permitted north of the river. Only one of the old coaching inns now survives - The George. It may be cunningly hidden up an alley just off the High Street but all the tourists and real ale drinkers still seem to find it, and rightly so. Up a neighbouring alley, where Copyprints now does business, stood The Tabard Inn from whence Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims supposedly set off in 1386.
A little further on, where the local library now stands, is the site of the infamous Marshalsea Prison (opened 1373). When Charles Dickens was 12 his father was imprisoned here as a convicted debtor, leaving the young boy to face six months working in a nearby bootblack factory. The experience traumatised impressionable Charles who later based much of LittleDorritt ("a child of the Marshalsea") in the local area. Borough High Street wends its way southwards, becoming less historic and more lacklustre as it goes. The A2 begins at a junction outside Borough station (we took that route earlier) while the A3 heads on towards the now-less-pink Elephant & Castle. Thankfully my first mile concluded just beforehand, outside a huge white mansion that serves as the Crown Court for half of London. Not somewhere you'd want to end up, but thankfully I was free to walk away. Mile ends: Inner London Crown Court, Borough High Street
Road continues: Elephant & Castle, Kennington Park Road, Clapham High Street, Battersea Rise, Wimbledon Common (west), Kingston bypass, Chessington, Cobham, Guildford, Hindhead, Petersfield, Waterlooville, Portsmouth.
Great British Roads - A4: London - Bristol The first mile: Holborn - Charing Cross
The A4 used to start in the same place as the A3, at the Monument. Ten years ago walking the first mile along the A4 would have taken me west along Cannon Street, round St Paul's Cathedral, down Ludgate Hill and up Fleet Street. Writing about this journey could easily have filled a blogging week all by itself. But that's not the first mile any more. Terrorist paranoia in the City of London has beheaded this particular mile from the route, forcing the A4 to retreat to the edge of the City beyond a miserable security checkpoint cordon. And now the Great West Road starts somewhere rather less glamorous.
Road begins: Holborn Circus Six roads meet at Holborn Circus, which is now little more than a glorified roundabout surrounding a statue of Prince Albert trapped in the middle. The new route chosen for the A4 follows the most insignificant of these roads, that tiny street in the centre of the photo squeezed inbetween a branch of Lloyds Bank to the left and the glass-fronted Sainsbury's head office to the right. This is New Fetter Lane, which leads before very long to the similarly quiet and narrow Fetter Lane. At the junction of the two stands London's only cross-eyed statue, a memorial to 18th century libertarian John Wilkes. Here too are magnificent Gothic buildings which once formed the Public RecordsOffice but now house the King's College library. If you own a copy of Peter Ackroyd's London - the Biography (especially if you've always been meaning to get around to reading it) then you might enjoy the centuries-old story of this historic backstreet in Chapter 22.
At the foot of Fetter Lane the A4 turns finally turns right to join its original path along the western end of Fleet Street. Still world-renowned as London's journalistic heart, the press have long since moved out and the only papers you'll find in Fleet Street nowadays are sold in a tiny newsagents. This end of the street, however, has always found more favour with financial and legal practices. Here you'll find Child's (Britain's oldest bank, 1661), Hoare's (London's only remaining independent bank) and a branch of Coutts (the Queen's bank), none of which (inexplicably) has a cashpoint outside. A magic timbered portal on the south side leads through to the Temple, where the country's top legal minds scurry round a maze of ancient passages and courtyards in search of the perfect argument. And opposite the entrance, standing guard in the middle of the road, stands the dragon that acts as a replacement for Temple Bar (about which I've already written far toomuch). It may not look as impressive as its arched predecessor, but at least traffic can get past it.
After Temple Bar Fleet Street metamorphoses into the Strand, named after the foreshore of the River Thames which once lapped closer than it does today. Benjamin Disraeli described the Strand's heady mix of palaces, hotels and playhouses as 'perhaps the finest street in Europe', although much of the gloss has been lost since then. At the top end of the road is the coffee house where Thomas Twining established his firstteashop, and also the Strand's most famous theatre - the Royal Courts of Justice. Next, alongside Aldwych, the A4 passes three famous houses - Australia House (your portal to Down Under), BushHouse (BBC global HQ) and the monumental Somerset House (once home to the General Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages but now more well known for its winter ice rink - closes Sunday).
Strand's most well-known stretch leads from Aldwych down to TrafalgarSquare along a bustling boulevard packed by theatre-goers and tourists. There's a raised cobbled strip down the centre of the road that most pedestrians use as an elongated traffic island, but I took this path to complete my journey. This kept me away from the restaurants, the red phone boxes and the hotel foyers, and a safe distance from the mobile phone shops, the bewildered foreigners and the Starbucks clones. I avoided the demonstrations outside the Zimbabwean embassy, resisted the charms of Stanley Gibbons the stamp dealer and bypassed the Savoy Hotel at the end of a tiny cul-de-sac (the only road in the UK where traffic drives on the right). But most of all I mourned the passing of the magnificent mansions that once lined this historic street.
Mile ends: Charing Cross The end of my journey was also the final resting place of Queen Eleanor of Castile. She died while on royal walkabout in Lincolnshire in 1290, and a grieving Edward I had a cross erected at each of the 12 places where his wife's coffin rested on the long journey home to London. Seven centuries later just threeEleanorCrosses remain but alas the monument at Charing Cross is not quite one of them, being merely a stone replica erected in 1863.
OK, so the first mile of the new A4 does appear to be at least as fascinating as the original. And the second mile's even better, continuing from Trafalgar Square to pass along Pall Mall and Piccadilly (which I've already spent an entire month writing about). Of all the capital's major trunk roads, it's the A4 that gets off to the best start.
Great British Roads - A5: London - Holyhead The first mile: Edgware Road
Road begins: Marble Arch The A5 begins in the dead centre of town. Not the middle, you understand, but at the TyburnTree - site of London's public executions for more than six centuries. More than fifty thousand criminals were hung here, originally from the branches of a tree beside the Tyburn river but later from a purpose-built wooden tripod of death. A memorial to these notorious gallows is paved into a traffic island at the very bottom of the Edgware Road, just to the left of the white van in the photo (and if you want to know more, I wrote all about the gruesome goings on here last year). The most famous landmark in the vicinity today is MarbleArch, originally designed by John Nash as a triumphant entrance to Buckingham Palace but moved to its existing location when the palace was extended in 1851. Of greater personal significance, however, are the hallowed seats of the OdeonMarble Arch on the corner with Oxford Street, the first London cinema I ever visited (to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks when I was an awestruck child of six).
Like the A2, the A5 follows the Roman road of Watling Street, of which this is the start of the northern section. The road from Marble Arch to the edge of the suburbs is the longest straight line in London, never once deviating to left or right for a full twenty miles. The first mile is a cosmopolitan shopping street, although probably not one you'd go out of your way to visit. Unless you were Lebanese, that is. There's a distinctly Arabian flavour to the very bottom of the A5 - perfect for stocking up on pomegranates, using your Bank of Kuwait cashpoint card or smoking aromatic tobacco out of some mysterious piped bottle. It'll be a handy local high street for Middle Eastern electioneer Tony Blair when he eventually retires and moves into his new townhouse just round the corner in Connaught Square. The local school is the architecturally innovative HampdenGurneyPrimary, a six-storey circular glass and brick tower with the hall in the basement and a sheltered playground on the roof. A few hundred yards further along, beside the hotel with possibly the worst view in London, the Marylebone Flyover cuts across the Edgware Road like a concrete wound. The elevated multi-lane A40Westway is a reminder of the twisted nightmare that the old Roman A5 could have become, but thankfully hasn't.
Directly north of the flyover is Paddington Green police station, the secure strongbox where Britain's most dangerous criminals and suspectedterrorists are locked away. Paddington Grey would be a more appropriate name. The shopping street continues, but it's now more markets and poundstores than Marks & Spencers. Here you'll find Church Street Market, Westminster's largest collection of stalls and traders, selling all the useful everyday stuff that Portobello doesn't. I watched one shopper in a dirty black anorak emerge from the market wielding a bottle of cheap perfume. She stood in full public view on the pavement and sprayed herself from top to bottom with the fake scent, masking one unpleasant smell with another, then shuffled off in the general direction of the tube station. I proceeded up the gentle hill until the shops ran out.
Mile ends: Regent's Canal, Maida Vale The shops run out exactly one mile up the A5, at which point a miraculous transformation takes place. In the space of just a few yards, across a short bridge, the road suddenly becomes an extremely desirable place to live. Here the Edgware Road renames itself as upmarket residential Maida Vale and there isn't another shop to be seen. This is one of the few areas of London to be named after a pub - in this case "The Hero of Maida Vale" (in turn named after an 1806 Napoleonic battle). The border into respectability is marked by the Regent'sCanal, seen in this photo heading off towards LittleVenice (although I thought that there was more than a hint of Amsterdam here instead). Houseboats and expensive terraced villas line the waterway, while well-heeled ladies (wearing expensive perfume) take yappy canine triplets for walkies along the towpath. I reckon there's a whole new series of posts to be written about the canals of London but, for the time being, my trunk road trip ended here.
Road continues: Maida Vale, Kilburn High Road, Shoot Up Hill, Cricklewood Broadway, Hendon, Edgware, [15 mile gap past Watford], Harpenden, Dunstable, Milton Keynes, Towcester, [Watford Gap], Nuneaton, Tamworth, Telford, Oswestry, Llangollen, Betws-y-coed, Bangor, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Holyhead.
1) Bring a torch: It's always foggy in London. Every single day the capital is clouded in thick peasouper fog (except between noon and 1pm which is when they take all the official tourist photographs). Over the last few centuries all Londoners have developed chimneysweep eyes which enable them to see in the pitch black streets. This endless murk is also the reason why London's trains run underground - it's lighter there. Visitors are advised to buy a fluorescent white iTorch from the Apple Store on Regent Street.
2) Bring an umbrella: It always rains in London, which is why Londoners carry umbrellas at all times. The umbrella evolved from an ancient jousting weapon used by knights in medieval times (that's before the invention of history). Londoners also all wear bowler hats, each with a rim specially designed to act like guttering and keep the rain off. If you want to keep dry and blend in properly while you're in London, make sure you never leave your hotel without a bowler and brolly.
3) Stay in the suburbs: Hotels in central London are extremely noisy places to stay because the sound of Big Ben wakes everyone up every fifteen minutes during the night. Take our advice and stay slightly further out in quaint market towns like Nuneaton, Swindon or Calais. These towns are cheap and convenient, each located less than 100 miles away from the centre of the capital as well as being international tourist magnets of their own.
4) Don't drink the tea: Tea is the devil's drink, an unnatural blend of chopped leaves which defies all attempts at vending machine palatability. Londoners are brought up drinking this acidic brown drink from an early age which is the reason why all their teeth are stained and rotten. But don't worry - there are plenty of coffee shops everywhere in London, maybe even more than there are at home.
5) Don't bother learning the language: The English don't speak proper English like Hollywood actors do, they speak Cockney which is an ancient street slang invented by William Shakespeare. Those wishing to brush up on their Cockney should watch Dick Van Dyke's performance in Mary Poppins several times prior to their visit, Alternatively, should you be unwilling to waste your time learning an alien language, just shout loudly until the locals eventually understand and bring you a root beer.
6) See the sights from the back of a taxi: There's nowhere better to view the sights of London than from the back seat of a black cab (except perhaps from the top deck of a Routemaster, but that would mean sharing seats with the locals and would clearly be unhygienic). Ask your friendly cabbie to take you on "the scenic route", and prepare to enjoy your extended journey at a very special price.
7) Be vigilant: London is always jam-packed full of foreigners so be sure to keep a watchful eye open for potential terrorist activity. Look out in particular for people with oversized rucksacks talking in strange accents standing around outside major tourist attractions taking an unnatural interest in their surroundings. You may even be one of them.
8) Order double portions: London cuisine is world-renowned for being bland, uninspiring and undersized. Restaurants always serve up stingy portions, sometimes just a slice of roast beef on a few leaves squirted artistically with watery sauce. Should your waiter forget to serve up a huge side portion of french fries with your meal then remember that negative tipping operates in the UK, and that there's almost certainly a McDonalds down the road where you can pig out properly.
9) Pop in to see the Queen: Arrive at 11am in time to watch the Changing of the Guard. You may even be lucky enough to be chosen to join the voting panel that decides which guard should be changed. Her Majesty loves to welcomes visitors, especially those in fancy dress. If the policeman at the front gate won't let you in, bring a ladder and try shimmying up over the side wall instead. However, whatever you do don't let Her Majesty offer you a cup of tea - just look at her teeth...
10) Take Nigel's advice: Be sure to check out the steeple outside Charing Cross station, all that remains of the subterranean cathedral designed by renowned architect Eleanor Rigby, and which was demolished to make way for a bigger ticket hall.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Voyage of the dawn treader: Very occasionally my job takes me somewhere different. Yesterday it took me on a 20 mile train journey to a small town in Thurrock (that's the arse end of Essex). I set off in darkness, travelled eastwards up the Thames estuary (via Barking, Dagenham, Grays and Tilbury) and arrived at my destination just after sunrise. It was a journey into dawn, and here are some of the sights I saw.
Dawn minus 50: early truckers tucking into drive thru breakfasts, a tiny cloudburst of blue fire dawning in the eastern sky
Dawn minus 40: discarded copies of Metro in an empty carriage, compressed commuters rattling past in the opposite direction, gasholders silhouetted against approaching morning
Dawn minus 30: redbrick valleys and concrete cuttings, litter-strewn back yards cloaked in shadow, bleary car workers lined up on platform 7 with tabloids in hand
Dawn minus 20: motor city, tarmac fields blanketed by identical saloon cars, industrial deserts where nobody lives, whirling wind farms driving away the darkness, a busy trunk road on concrete stilts
Dawn minus 10: unspoilt expanses of gloomy marshland, the dawn chorus sung by waves of waterfowl, le nouveau chemin de fer exprès vers Paris, distant chimneys belching smoke into daybreak, affordable housing in blocks and boxes, jammed traffic suspended in midair across the QE2 bridge
Dawn: delivery lorries at the Poundstretcher hypermarket, long lines of containers stacked tall by the dockside, warehouse after warehouse after warehouse after warehouse, ocean-going ships revealing the river's hidden path, towering pylons stalking the landscape, water towers reflecting the first glints of sunlight
Dawn plus 10: power stations that Londoners never see, local traffic queued at level crossings, a flock of gulls alighting on a silent lake, medieval churches perched on tiny hillocks in a muddy patchwork of brown and green, a load of bullocks on Mucking Flats, far-flung communities under threat of tidal flooding, an orange globe peeking over the lowland horizon, a new day rises in the east
NDEastEnders
The London borough of Walford, E20, first appeared on our TV screens 20 years ago today. The now-familiar EastEnders signature tune and swirly map were first broadcast on BBC1 at 7pm on Tuesday 19th February 1985 (although some of you may have been busy watching Whistle Test on BBC2 instead). Within months the show had become the BBC's most successful programme ever, and Albert Square, the Queen Vic, Ali's caff and Arthur's allotment were famous across the country. But where exactly is Walford? The show's creator Tony Holland provided the following clues in the launch week's edition of Radio Times.
Ask any EastEnder for directions to Albert Square, London Borough of Walford, E20, and they'll tell you "Straight down Turpin Road Market, turn right into Bridge Street, and there it is, with the Queen Vic pub on the corner.Which isn't particularly helpful. There are no Turpin Roads listed anywhere in the London A-Z, whereas there are four Bridge Streets (all to the west of London). And there are no East End postcodes any higher than E17. Anybody would think that Walford was purely fictional.The biggest clue to the soap's true location came when the local tube station first appeared on the show in 1996. You won't find Walford East on any published tube map, but a close look at the map outside the on-screen station reveals that Walford East is located on the District line between West Ham and Bow Road, taking the place of Bromley-by-Bow. Which is where I live, near enough. I am an EastEnder.
Kat: I'm going shopping up west. Gimme a ticket.
Angie: 'Ello me old mucker, what can I get you?
There really is a Queen Victoria pub opposite Bromley-by-Bow station. It stands completely isolated from any other building, cut off on the wrong side of the A102 Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. From the outside it's a traditional looking East End pub - with brightly painted frontage, chalkboard adverts for live music and a compact landlord's flat upstairs. A faded sign stuck behind a barred window announces that the pub is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Unfortunately it's also closed for the rest of the week, and has been since May 2003. This is a ghost pub, and the former regulars are probably now to be found across the dual carriageway at the downmarket Duke of Wellington (beneath the England bunting in "Frankys Bar" doing "Kareoke").
Rupert: Excuse me old man, what are you doing on my land?
Dot: Hello gentlemen, what can I do for you?
Ethel: I'm after a treat for my Willie.
IOC inspector: Hello madam. I wonder if I might come in and ask you a few questions about London's 2012 Olympic bid.
Bianca: 'Ere mate, is my Vauxhall Nova ready yet?
Lofty: I'd like a Full English please.
Estate agent: As you can see madam, this is a very desirable terraced property close to all local amenities.
There really is an Albert Square in East London, and it's in Stratford. Sorry, you're probably pig sick of hearing about Stratford this week, but rest assured that this particular street is located on the non-Olympic side of town. Albert Square E15 isn't so much a square as two sides of a rectangle. It's a dead ordinary street landlocked into the residential jigsaw to the east of Maryland station. The Victorian terraces are owned and rented by a cross section of London's multicultural population. Their not-quite-identical houses have tiny front gardens full of wheelie bins, bushes and pieces of old carpet. Some of the front windows have well-scrubbed leaded lights, while others are covered by faded sheets of old newspaper. A big red skip halfway up the road is filling up with broken masonry as the street slowly evolves. And, down on the corner where the Albert House once served beer, a new 'exclusive selection of luxury 1 & 2 bedroom apartments' is being erected. This new development is playing heavily on the Albert Square name, pretending to potential buyers that the pub here has always been called the Queen Victoria. Somehow I doubt that Alfie, Frank or Peggy would ever want to live in something quite so characterless.
Great British Roads - January 2005
Road begins: Aldersgate (Museum of London)
This is Aldersgate, a medieval street once the site of one of the seven gates into the old city of London. There's nothing medieval about the road today, however. Here lies the Barbican estate, a sprawling monument to 60s architecture complete with arts centre, lake, tall towers and a baffling labyrinth of concrete walkways. I looked into renting one of the two thousand posh flats here when I moved down to London, but a quick check of my bank balance soon put an end to my dreams. Those with deeper pockets might appreciate the huge residents' car park beneath the Barbican, from where it's easy to slip one's BMW or Bentley out onto the deserted A1. A little further up the road lies the rather less affluent Golden Lane Estate, the northernmost outpost of the City of London. Weekly rents here are only in double figures, and rows of grimy net curtains betray the fact that the residents here are more likely to be cleaning under a desk in some financial institution rather than sitting at one.
A griffin on a pedestal near the junction with Old Street marks the shift from the Square Mile to the London borough of Islington. There's an obvious change as Aldersgate becomes the Goswell Road - lower wealth, lower status but not quite lower class. The Hat & Feathers pub (Victorian, yellow and ornate) has long closed down through lack of business, and there's a gaping scar behind which has been taken over as a makeshift NCP car park. For a few hundred yards the A1 is lined by small shops and services, including Dennis Motor Accessories, Nicola Jane (mastectomy wear) and Spunkies Imaging (they look quite legit, don't worry). But after Kings Square Garden (think dog waste bins, patchy grass and pigeons) the A1 opens out and heads rapidly downmarket, bordered by boxy modern tenements and one very ordinary tower block. You wouldn't imagine such social housing to exist so close to the financial centre of town, but a lot can change in a mile.
Mile ends: The Angel, Islington
The A2 is the road to Europe, and has been for almost two thousand years. The modern road follows the alignment of Watling Street, along which Roman soldiers would have trooped on their way from London to Dover and beyond. The section between London and Canterbury was almost arrow-straight, and Chaucer's pilgrims (of whom more tomorrow) would have journeyed along what was left of this ancient road more than a thousand years later. Watling Street was still visible across south London back in the 18th century, but nothing remains today except a line on a map.
The A2 is the only one of London's five major trunk routes to begin south of the river. It starts innocuously at a junction with the A3 outside Borough tube station, then heads southeast down the
Next comes the Bricklayers Arms roundabout (more a squareabout really), a giant road junction carved out of what were once residential streets. The roadway is five lanes wide, with a concrete flyover sweeping across from Elephant & Castle carrying traffic towards the coast. In the centre there's a large grassy patch with benches that you can reach by subway or pelican crossing, though goodness knows why anyone would want to sit here breathing in swirling exhaust fumes. A railway terminus was established here in 1844, but closed down within a decade when passengers from Kent realised they'd much rather travel closer to London and arrive at London Bridge instead.
Mile ends: Old Kent Road
The A3 starts where London nearly finished - at the Monument. The Great Fire of London was kindled just around the corner in Pudding Lane, killing only six people but destroying four fifths of the City. The Monument was built by Sir Christoper Wren to commemorate the conflagration, and is exactly as far away from the bakery where the fire began as it is tall. At 202ft it remains (I believe) the world's tallest free-standing stone column and became one of London's first tourist attractions with its stunning panorama over the rebuilt city. The view from the upper platform now includes rather more office blocks and rooftop ventilation units than would have been the case in the 17th century, but in my experience it's still well worth making the 311 step ascent to the top.
The A3 spends only a few hundred metres north of the river before reaching the capital's oldest permanent river crossing - London Bridge. The current bridge is at least the tenth on the site, the original built by the Romans in AD80. Several timber bridges followed before construction of the first stone bridge was completed in 1209. The 200ft span was supported by 20 arches, and featured a drawbridge, traitors' heads on spikes, numerous houses and a big chapel in the middle. The bridge survived the Great Fire because it had only been partially rebuilt following an earlier fire and the flames couldn't jump the gap, and this medieval structure went on to provide more than 600 years of service. A granite replacement was opened by King William IV in 1831, only to be sold off in the 1960s to an American businessman who shipped it across the Atlantic to span Lake Havasu in Arizona. The latest London Bridge (opened 1971) with its six lane highway is more able to cope with modern traffic but definitely lacks the architectural charm of its predecessors. At least the view downstream towards Tower Bridge is still spectacular.
Southwark Cathedral guards the southern end of the bridge (although this is soon to be dominated by the 310 metre tall London Bridge Tower). Underneath the railway arches lurks Borough Market, famed foodie nirvana where you can buy squidgy cheese, fruit juice with bits in, organic scallops, wild boar meat, spicy chutneys and (allegedly) some produce which actually tastes nice. To the south stretches Borough High Street, an important bridgehead thoroughfare in medieval times when it was packed with all the bawdy revelry and lewdness that wasn't permitted north of the river. Only one of the old coaching inns now survives - The George. It may be cunningly hidden up an alley just off the High Street but all the tourists and real ale drinkers still seem to find it, and rightly so. Up a neighbouring alley, where Copyprints now does business, stood The Tabard Inn from whence Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims supposedly set off in 1386.
"Byfel that in that sesoun on a day,A little further on, where the local library now stands, is the site of the infamous Marshalsea Prison (opened 1373). When Charles Dickens was 12 his father was imprisoned here as a convicted debtor, leaving the young boy to face six months working in a nearby bootblack factory. The experience traumatised impressionable Charles who later based much of Little Dorritt ("a child of the Marshalsea") in the local area. Borough High Street wends its way southwards, becoming less historic and more lacklustre as it goes. The A2 begins at a junction outside Borough station (we took that route earlier) while the A3 heads on towards the now-less-pink Elephant & Castle. Thankfully my first mile concluded just beforehand, outside a huge white mansion that serves as the Crown Court for half of London. Not somewhere you'd want to end up, but thankfully I was free to walk away.
Six roads meet at Holborn Circus, which is now little more than a glorified roundabout surrounding a statue of Prince Albert trapped in the middle. The new route chosen for the A4 follows the most insignificant of these roads, that tiny street in the centre of the photo squeezed inbetween a branch of Lloyds Bank to the left and the glass-fronted Sainsbury's head office to the right. This is New Fetter Lane, which leads before very long to the similarly quiet and narrow Fetter Lane. At the junction of the two stands London's only cross-eyed statue, a memorial to 18th century libertarian John Wilkes. Here too are magnificent Gothic buildings which once formed the Public Records Office but now house the King's College library. If you own a copy of Peter Ackroyd's London - the Biography (especially if you've always been meaning to get around to reading it) then you might enjoy the centuries-old story of this historic backstreet in Chapter 22.
At the foot of Fetter Lane the A4 turns finally turns right to join its original path along the western end of Fleet Street. Still world-renowned as London's journalistic heart, the press have long since moved out and the only papers you'll find in Fleet Street nowadays are sold in a tiny newsagents. This end of the street, however, has always found more favour with financial and legal practices. Here you'll find Child's (Britain's oldest bank, 1661), Hoare's (London's only remaining independent bank) and a branch of Coutts (the Queen's bank), none of which (inexplicably) has a cashpoint outside. A magic timbered portal on the south side leads through to the Temple, where the country's top legal minds scurry round a maze of ancient passages and courtyards in search of the perfect argument. And opposite the entrance, standing guard in the middle of the road, stands the dragon that acts as a replacement for Temple Bar (about which I've already written far too much). It may not look as impressive as its arched predecessor, but at least traffic can get past it.
Strand's most well-known stretch leads from Aldwych down to Trafalgar Square along a bustling boulevard packed by theatre-goers and tourists. There's a raised cobbled strip down the centre of the road that most pedestrians use as an elongated traffic island, but I took this path to complete my journey. This kept me away from the restaurants, the red phone boxes and the hotel foyers, and a safe distance from the mobile phone shops, the bewildered foreigners and the Starbucks clones. I avoided the demonstrations outside the Zimbabwean embassy, resisted the charms of Stanley Gibbons the stamp dealer and bypassed the Savoy Hotel at the end of a tiny cul-de-sac (the only road in the UK where traffic drives on the right). But most of all I mourned the passing of the magnificent mansions that once lined this historic street.
The A5 begins in the dead centre of town. Not the middle, you understand, but at the Tyburn Tree - site of London's public executions for more than six centuries. More than fifty thousand criminals were hung here, originally from the branches of a tree beside the Tyburn river but later from a purpose-built wooden tripod of death. A memorial to these notorious gallows is paved into a traffic island at the very bottom of the Edgware Road, just to the left of the white van in the photo (and if you want to know more, I wrote all about the gruesome goings on here last year). The most famous landmark in the vicinity today is Marble Arch, originally designed by John Nash as a triumphant entrance to Buckingham Palace but moved to its existing location when the palace was extended in 1851. Of greater personal significance, however, are the hallowed seats of the Odeon Marble Arch on the corner with Oxford Street, the first London cinema I ever visited (to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks when I was an awestruck child of six).
Like the A2, the A5 follows the Roman road of Watling Street, of which this is the start of the northern section. The road from Marble Arch to the edge of the suburbs is the longest straight line in London, never once deviating to left or right for a full twenty miles. The first mile is a cosmopolitan shopping street, although probably not one you'd go out of your way to visit. Unless you were Lebanese, that is. There's a distinctly Arabian flavour to the very bottom of the A5 - perfect for stocking up on pomegranates, using your Bank of Kuwait cashpoint card or smoking aromatic tobacco out of some mysterious piped bottle. It'll be a handy local high street for Middle Eastern electioneer Tony Blair when he eventually retires and moves into his new townhouse just round the corner in Connaught Square. The local school is the architecturally innovative Hampden Gurney Primary, a six-storey circular glass and brick tower with the hall in the basement and a sheltered playground on the roof. A few hundred yards further along, beside the hotel with possibly the worst view in London, the Marylebone Flyover cuts across the Edgware Road like a concrete wound. The elevated multi-lane A40 Westway is a reminder of the twisted nightmare that the old Roman A5 could have become, but thankfully hasn't.
Directly north of the flyover is Paddington Green police station, the secure strongbox where Britain's most dangerous criminals and suspected terrorists are locked away. Paddington Grey would be a more appropriate name. The shopping street continues, but it's now more markets and poundstores than Marks & Spencers. Here you'll find Church Street Market, Westminster's largest collection of stalls and traders, selling all the useful everyday stuff that Portobello doesn't. I watched one shopper in a dirty black anorak emerge from the market wielding a bottle of cheap perfume. She stood in full public view on the pavement and sprayed herself from top to bottom with the fake scent, masking one unpleasant smell with another, then shuffled off in the general direction of the tube station. I proceeded up the gentle hill until the shops ran out.
Mile ends: Regent's Canal, Maida Vale
