The 'Old Lady' in the photograph is the Bank of England, sited close to the first two churches mentioned in the Oranges and Lemons rhyme. The bank was established in 1694, moving to its current site in Threadneedle Street in 1734. The present building is an austere fortress, as you might expect, with sheer windowless walls at ground level and just a couple of enormous wooden doors leading inside. There are no cashpoints, no big adverts for mortgages, and no long queues of punters standing around waiting and looking miserable every lunchtime. It's not that sort of bank, you see.
The Bank of England prints millions of banknotes each year, just out of town in Essex. Each of these banknotes is, essentially, a worthless scrap of paper, apart from the inscription "I promise to pay the bearer on demand..." which gives the note its value. This promise used to be backed up by gold reserves, so that for every banknote issued there was an equivalent amount of gold in the vaults. Not any more though, not since 1931, and now the Bank merely issues notional money. However, we're all still entitled to pop down and demand that they exchange our notes for the equivalent value in gold bullion, should we so wish. Current rates indicate that a £10 note would be exchanged for just under 1g of gold, £160 for 1cm³ and the average UK house for 20kg. Admittedly it would be difficult to buy our weekly groceries by paying with a gold ingot, but the principle is sound. Just so long as we don't all turn up at the Bank of England at the same time to ask for our money back, because it isn't all there. See you all down there tomorrow at noon then?
...say the bells of Old Bailey
Except that the Old Bailey is a court building, not a church, and has no bells. The church referred to in the nursery rhyme is the one just across the road, the oddly-named St Sepulchre without Newgate (don't worry, it's a Crusades thing). You wouldn't guess from looking but this is the largest parish church in the City of London, described by Sir John Betjeman as "high, wide and handsome", and the tower contains a peal of twelve bells. Henry Wood, founder of the Promenade concerts, learnt to play the organ here and his ashes now lie in the Musicians' Chapel. The church is also the last resting place of Captain JohnSmith, unpaid star of the Disney cartoon Pocohontas, and one-time Governor of Virginia.
A glass case inside the church contains the handbell which used to be rung to wake condemned prisoners at Newgate Prison on execution mornings. This prison held those awaiting trial at the neighbouring Old Bailey, which has been London's most important criminal court since medieval times. In 1834 the court's jurisdiction spread to cover the most serious cases from the whole of the South East, including Oscar Wilde's infamous sodomy trial. One hundred years ago Newgate Prison and the old Old Bailey were demolished to make way for the current Central Criminal Court, judging the fate of evildoers including Dr Crippen, the Kray twins and Jeffrey Archer.
An absolutely brilliant website charts the history of the Old Bailey, including full details of all the trials there between 1714 and 1799. For example, 250 years ago this month there were 62 trials, mostly for theft, with many of the convicted subsequently transported to America. I wonder if any of your forefathers appear in the records.
When I grow rich
The City of London must be the richest square mile on the planet. There's the Stock Exchange (home to thousands of sharp-suited gamblers), Lloyd's of London (home to thousands of sharp-suited gamblers), various non-high-street banks (ditto) and hordes of other esteemed financial institutions. Get the right job here and, providing you can stand the pace, you could soon be very rich indeed. Like the girl living in the room next to mine in my last year at university. She got a job in the City and, 18 months ago, received a £1.4 million payout through the courts because her company dared to insult her with a piddling £25000 bonus. Most Londoners would be thankful for a £25000 salary. There again, her male colleagues were getting bonuses of up to £650,000, so I can see her point. Different world, the City.
London may have wealth, but it's also a ridiculously expensive place to live. An average wage goes nowhere, unless you're willing to flatshare the best years of your life in a tumbledown apartment on the outskirts of some godforsaken borough. If you own property you're laughing - if you don't you're doomed. 40 years ago my parents bought a tiny terraced house in Watford (2 up, 2 down, outside toilet) for the princely sum of £3000. They've since climbed the property ladder far enough to reach a detached house in Norfolk, but that's 100 miles from town and the market in London has moved on. This month that old house in Watford is up for sale at 100 times the price my parents paid for it, and they could never afford to move back, not even to the bottom of the heap.
If the City were a nation state, it would be amongst the top 20 richest nation states in the world (just ahead of Belgium). However, London is also home to 13 of the poorest 20 local authorities in the UK. When those City workers go home at night, back to their overpriced terraced houses, an underclass of invisible workers move in from rundown council estates and clean for peanuts. Sure there's plenty of money to be made in the City but, it appears, there's not enough to share.
They say the streets of London are paved with gold. They're wrong. The streets of London are paved with cardboard boxes, inhabited by provincial dreamers lured to the capital to seek a fortune that isn't here. That's rich.
... say the bells of Shoreditch
1st century: The Romans build Ermine Street from London to Lincoln, passing through what will one day be Shoreditch.
12th century: The area is still mostly fields. St Leonard's church is founded.
16th century: A prosperous village. Richard Burbage opens "The Theatre" in Shoreditch (because performing has been banned inside the City). One of the actors in his company is a young William Shakespeare, and Romeo and Juliet is first performed here.
17th century: Burbage is buried in St Leonard's, known as "the actors' church".
18th century: St Leonard's church is rebuilt (see photo). The spire is an imitation of Wren's steeple on St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside.
19th century: Shoreditch descends into poverty, crime and prostitution.
1900: A huge area of slums to the east of the High Street is reborn as the magnificent Boundary Estate.
1940s: The area is heavily bombed in the Blitz, and later heavily redeveloped.
1990s: Artists move into Shoreditch seeking cheap studio space. The White Cube gallery opens in Hoxton Square, trendy bars, clubs and restaurants follow, and Shoreditch is suddenly the hip arty place to be and to be seen.
21st century. It's all a bit passé now, darling.
This is St Dunstan's church, Stepney, one of of only a handful of medieval buildings remaining in the East End of London. Looks gorgeous doesn't it, and it is. An ancient church set on a village green at the heart of its community - this photo could have been taken in deepest Suffolk. Except what you can't see in the picture are the faceless council estates all around, and you can't smell the pigs grunting on the city farm over the road. Somehow this church has survived a millennium of change, while the surrounding neighbourhood has risen and fallen. Especially fallen, lately.
There can't be many churches in the UK named after the saint who built them, but St Dunstan built this one in 952, just before he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Stepney was the seat of the Bishop of London during medieval times, being the richest village to the east of the City at the time. By the 16th century this was a popular rural retreat for London's wealthy, but also increasingly attractive to ordinary people seeking work at the local docks. Stepney trebled in population in just 40 years as London expanded to the East. Some fine 17th century houses still exist on Stepney Green, an unfeasibly quiet thoroughfare close to the church, but prosperity in the area was soon replaced by poverty. The Blitz helped clear away the worst of the slums, but nothing very inspiring was built in their place. Stepney today is a mere shadow of its formerself - poor, bland and forgotten. Only the church hints that it was ever otherwise.
I do not know
1) Where is the 'Golf Sale'?
"I actually got offered a job doing that for five quid an hour. I was desperate but still turned it down."
"Near Argyll Street/ Carnaby Street."
"It's like a TARDIS. It moves."
2) Why doesn't the tube run throughout the night at weekends?
"Because the post-clubbing cleaning bill would bankrupt Transport for London."
"Because it's bad enough being mugged, raped and stabbed during the day."
"Because that would mean cutting back on the buses - and that is just simply not on: our current Mayor *loves* buses."
"To give North London something to moan endlessly about, and to ensure part-time drinkers are safely home by 1.30am."
"Because, to quote a driver moaning at a bloke on the platform a few years ago: "[they]'re not here for your convenience, you know!"."
"I understand their "maintenance" excuse on the deep tubes, but there's really no reason the Met and District couldn't go on all night."
3) Where is the true centre of London?
"Charing Cross. It has to be - a black cab driver told me so - and he must be right - because he has "the knowledge". He must be "the one"."
"Surely although Charing Cross may be the mid-point of London (from a driver's point of view) that's not the same as the "true centre"."
"London's notable for not really having a centre, or having several. Trafalgar Square-Westminster-Charing Cross has a shout as an area, so does the City."
"I'd go for London Bridge, because it really was the centre for so long: it was the only link between north (the City) and south (Southwark)."
"As for the 'town centre' type of centre, well, there isn't one. Or, conversely, there are lots."
"Surely the point at which you find the centre of London would be underneath Centrepoint Tower?"
4) Has anyone ever seen a Pearly King (or Queen)?
"Nope, 'cept on the TV, of course."
"I only ever saw them on a Saturday monrning TV show in early eighties called Swap Shop."
"Um, I think I may have done once or twice when I was a kid. At big events, you understand. Not just walking down the street or anything."
"Yes. Sure I have! And leprechauns and fairies too!"
"Lots of them go to the Lord Mayor's Show, which we were taken to lots as a kid."
5) Why doesn't London have a (paid-for) local morning newspaper?"
"It does! It's called the Evening Standard! (On sale every morning!)."
"The Standard hits the streets at 9.30am, that's bad enough."
"If you ask anyone outside of London, they'll tell you we have several."
"Why pay for it when the Metro's free?"
"Would someone in Hendon really care about local news from Lewisham, and vice versa?"
6) From where is the best view in London?
"It would have to be from the top of one of North London's hills. Especially on Hampstead Heath."
"In my experience: Alexandra Palace in N.London - or some hill in Southeast london near Blackheath. Or else the top floor of the NatWest tower (now called Tower 42). I've also always wanted to check out the view from that really high footbridge over the Archway Road sometime - could be nice from there too."
"The Point, Greenwich (a little bit of Blackheath which juts out over Greenwich). Runners-up: Greenwich Park, Alexandra Park, Primrose Hill, Parliament Hill, Nunhead rail station."
"On an eastbound small plane flight from London City airport."
"Definitely from Richmond Hill, with the Thames curling sinuously next to the (unproductive, just there to be pretty) cows in Petersham Meadows."
"Richmond Hill over Petersham Meadows, Richmond Park towards the BT Tower, Primrose Hill, Nunhead Station, the Wheel, the top of the pagoda in Kew Gardens (but I don't think you can get up there any more). And probably loads more."
"The opening credits of EastEnders."
"I'll go with the London Eye - particularly at night. I also liked the top floor of Canary Wharf. I like the view of St Pauls from the Tate Modern. And I bet, if I had seen it, that the view from the revolving restuarant in the Post Office Tower was fantastic."
"From the top deck of a Routemaster bus. Something you can't do on the 94 any more, as of about three hours ago."
...says the great bell at Bow
To be a true Cockney you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells. And, despite what most people think, Bow Bells aren't in Bow. They are in fact the bells of the church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, Cheapside, in the City of London. Recent research has suggested that, given the right atmospheric conditions and an absence of traffic noise, the sound of St. Mary-Le-Bow's bells could have been heard up to five miles away, even out as far as Bow itself. But no longer. Presumably there were a lot more genuine Cockneys around hundreds of years ago than there are now.
Back in the 14th century the bells of St Mary-le-Bow rang out a curfew across central London at 9 o'clock to warn the locals that it was time for bed. These are the bells that Dick Whittington heard in 1392 that made him 'turn again' (he was real, by the way). The bells were (you won't be surprised to hear) amongst the many destroyed in the Great Fire, but were also (you will be surprised to hear) silenced for two years in 1856 by an eccentric local woman who believed that the noise of their clanging might otherwise kill her. The BBC used the peal of Bow Bells at the start of every one of their broadcasts to occupied Europe during World War II, but that didn't stop the bells being destroyed yet again in the Blitz of 1941. A new peal of 12 bells was installed in 1956, each inscribed with a verse from a psalm, and the initial letters of those 12 psalms spell out the name 'D WHITTINGTON'. Ahhh, sweet.
As for the church, it's yet another of Sir Christopher Wren's, and one of his very finest. The classical steeple is topped by a golden ball on which sits a nine foot dragon, turning with the wind. The arched crypt dates from Norman times and is occupied in part now by a renowned vegetarian café. The church adjoins narrow cobbled alleyways to the south, but hideous seventies offices to east and west. And those bells they still ring out - every quarter hour, for the Lord Mayor's Show, and for four-hour peals several times a year.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
[Oranges and Lemons trivia: The City of London is divided into 25 wards for electoral and ceremonial purposes (map here). Both St Clements and St Martins lie inside the tiny ward of Candlewick (old map here, new map here, number of residents on the electoral roll - two). The ward is named after Candlewick Street, now much better known as Cannon Street.]
It's hard to imagine modern life without electric light. Flick a switch or walk out onto the street nowadays and the sun never sets. Go back just 200 years, however, and London was still lit only by candles and oil lamps. Richer folk lit their homes with candles made from beeswax or whale oil, whilst poorer folk had to make do with smelly, smoky tallow candles made from animal fat. In 1807 Pall Mall became the first street in the capital to be lit by gas, spreading to 213 streets by 1823, but indoors candlesticks and candelabra still ruled. In 1859 the Houses of Parliament were lit by gas for the first time and only then did gas lighting start to become fashionable inside the homes of London's wealthy. Electric light arrived on the streets in 1878, starting on Holborn Viaduct, but its use was not widespread indoors until after the First World War.
Today, London belches light out into the night sky. Street lamps, spotlights, illuminations, adverts, security lighting and three million houses, all contribute to the most severe light pollution in the UK, beaming light upwards where it isn't needed. This satellite photo (hi-res version here) taken from the International Space Station shows London lit up like a giant, luminous amoeba, with a dazzling central nucleus. The night sky over the capital has a dull orange glow and only a few of the brightest stars are ever visible - in fact the only star some London children will ever have seen is the Sun. And it's getting worse across the rest of the country too (check your region here) where sight of the Milky Way has become merely a distant memory. Join the campaign for better-designed street lighting and darker skies here. Maybe there was a lot to be said for candle-power after all.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Just to the northwest of Marble Arch, where the Edgware Road meets the end of Oxford Street, stands a cobbled triangular traffic island. It's all barriered off, and pretty difficult to reach without getting yourself mown down by passing vehicles. Nobody gives it a second look, but for centuries this was the site of the most watched entertainment in town. This is Tyburn, for six centuries home to London's public executions.
The River Tyburn ran (indeed still runs, somewhere underground) from Hampstead to the Thames, and the first public hangings took place from tree branches along its banks. In 1220 the first gallows was built, and in 1571 the infamous Tyburn Tree was constructed. This was a huge wooden tripod, 18 feet high with crossbeams 9 feet long. Prisoners suffered a slow agonising death from asphyxiation, which gave the waiting crowds a real spectacle to watch. If you liked that sort of thing, which tens of thousands of did.
Condemned prisoners started their last day at Newgate Prison, two miles away from Tyburn, just outside the old city walls. At noon they set off on a horse-drawn cart through the prison gates, with the bells of neighbouring St Sepulchre's church ringing out to mourn their passing. That's the bells of Old Bailey from the nursery rhyme - you knew there'd be a connection eventually. The procession stopped outside the church, where the prisoners received a nosegay of flowers, and stopped at a tavern or two later along the route so they could enjoy a final pint of ale. The phrase 'on the wagon' is reputed to derive from these pub stops - when the prisoners climbed back on the cart they would definitely never drink again.
Huge crowds lined Holborn and what-would-be Oxford Street, cheering and jeering the condemned. You can read more about the journey here, or perhaps relive most of the experience on board a modern number 8 bus. At Tyburn itself a grandstand was built and there was a real festival atmosphere - for all but a few present, that is. The prisoners' last speeches were drowned by the roar of the mob, then they were finally blindfolded and strung up. The cart beneath the prisoners was pulled away, and they were left to die. This could take nearly an hour. The crowd listened for their screams, and watched for the tell tale dribble of urine dripping from one leg that meant death had finally arrived.
The last public hanging at Tyburn took place in 1783, Executions then moved to a site immediately outside Newgate Prison, where crowd control was easier, with the last public hanging in the UK held here as late as 1868. The closure of Tyburn finally allowed respectable London to grow rapidly to the northwest. A convent (with flash webpage) was founded close by the site of the old gallows, and a small group of snooker-playing nuns still pray for the souls of the dead. Most Londoners may drive past Tyburn without noticing, but the capital's punishment has not been forgotten by everyone.
It's time for diamond geezer to spend a week exploring London, by bus.
London's a huge place, far bigger then the central zone most tourists see. I thought I'd get out and view some more of the capital from the best vantage point of all, the top deck of a London bus. And then I'd come back and write about what I saw. (Trust me, you can do this sort of thing when you're single. Nobody looks at you with a withering stare when you walk out of the house clutching your bus pass, as if to say "But you can't do that, it's pointless... and anyway, we have a bathroom that needs redecorating.")
Seven days, seven different buses. But which seven, there being more than 500 to choose from? I decided to follow a mathematical pattern (did you really think otherwise?) and selected all the buses whose route numbers were cube numbers. Cube routes. (You remember cube numbers... 1x1x1, 2x2x2 and so on. They're one of those bits of maths you learnt at school that are of absolutely no use whatsoever when you're older. Until today of course.)
So, seven routes, sort of picked at random, and covering the capital. I made all seven bus journeys during the last month, I took my camera with me, and this map shows where I went. Outer and inner, suburbia and urbia, north and south, east and west, upmarket and downmarket, rich and poor, day and night, but all 'London'. Hold very tight please, the first bus is about to depart.
Cube Routes: Day 1 x 1 x 1 Bus 1: Centre Point - Canada Water
Location: London southeast, inner
Length of journey: 6 miles, 35 minutes
The first bus in London begins its journey, appropriately enough, at Centre Point. It's London's 20th tallest building (well, it was last time I checked), a 35-floor concrete tower dominating the eastern end of Oxford Street. At its foot, up an obscure sideroad, a queue of number 1 buses wait to begin their journey from the middle of everywhere to the middle of nowhere.
I boarded the first bus outside Argos on a busy Saturday afternoon, clambering up to the top deck where there was the unnerving smell of fish. We headed east along mostly-deserted roads straight through Holborn and south towards Aldwych. A bespectacled librarian came and sat behind me, commentating on the view throughout the journey for the benefit of his Japanese lady visitor. He was keen to tell her that London's buses are amongst the most successful in the world, with passenger numbers back up at 1969 levels thanks to Mayor Ken Livingstone's ambititious Transport Strategy. I could have hugged him for making such a pertinent comment just two paragraphs into my week-long exposé of the capital's bus network, but he was an ugly old git so I thought better of it. He went on later to point out a market stall full of plaintains, or "crooked nanas" as he called them, so I think I made the right choice.
We crossed into South London over Waterloo Bridge, with one of the best views of the Thames spread out to either side (so long as you don't look too hard at the concrete mess on the South Bank). Passenger numbers picked up outside the ghastly Elephant and Castle shopping centre (pink, what were they thinking? and the range of shops inside is poorer than poor), and then it was on towards the Old Kent Road (rightly the cheapest property on the Monopoly board). At the Bricklayers Arms (a giant traffic square-about) we headed off into deepest Bermondsey (also poorer than poor), skirting the edge of the Congestion Charge zone.
There was the sound of shouting, nay yelling, from downstairs. The driver had forgotten to stop at the last stop, or maybe these two women hadn't pressed the button in time, but clearly the whole thing was now 'the other person's fault'. The driver inched the bus forward on a go-slow as the haranguing continued, before finally letting the harpies disembark and carry their Safeway carrier bags grudgingly back up the road.
It's not a long journey this one, so just a few more railway viaducts, street markets and one-way systems for the bus to negotiate. Straight past the new Surrey Quays shopping nirvana and on to our final destination at the new CanadaWater transport 'hub'. An oval glass atrium sits beside a new bus station, and atop a new tube interchange between the Jubilee and East London lines. Where once were the old Surrey Docks, this new bus station/station has made Rotherhithe an area where people actually want to live. So I'm told. And just a short bus/tube ride from where the real action is.
1 links • Route 1: anorak-level bus information
• Route 1: anorak-level route information
• Route 1: timetable
Cube Routes: Day 2 x 2 x 2 Bus 8: Bow Church - Victoria
Location: London east, inner
Length of journey: 9 miles, 80 minutes
Out of all the seven buses I'm riding on this week, this one's different. It's a Routemaster for a start, that much-loved old London workhorse, the bus with a conductor. These purring beauties have plied the streets of the capital since the sixties, although they're all now under threat from Mayor Ken who wants to ban pollution-guzzlers over 10 years old in Central London from 2006 onwards. The number 8 route is therefore due to be converted to dull boring one-person-operated buses sometime next year, boo hiss.
And the number 8 is also my local bus, the one that starts pretty much outside my house and heads through the East End, through the City, through the West End, through Mayfair and stops pretty much outside where I work. So, just to be different, I decided to take the bus to work one weekday morning, rather than speed there via my usual tube journey. Would it be a rush hour, or a slow coach?
I left home at the normal time and waited outside the fried grease shop for one of the number 8s that drip drip out of Bow Garage every six minutes. Hop onto the platform, climb the winding staircase and prepare for a cut-price sightseeing tour of London. We skirted the Bow Flyover, spent a minute chugging up the busy A12 dual carriageway and then threaded our way through the demolishable estates of Old Ford. By the time we reached Roman Road, only half a mile as the crow flies from our starting point, the bus was jam-packed full and sailing past the waiting queues. The conductor had no chance to check our tickets, spending all his time on the platform counting them all off and counting them all on.
London was busy waking up - kids heading to school, street markets setting up their stalls, fry-up breakfasts being wolfed down in tiny cafés, shop shutters being raised, and a bus full of EastEnders off to work. Lots of people alighted at Bethnal Green and transferred to the tube, and I could have saved a good half an hour if I'd joined them. Approaching Shoreditch we paused beside the newly-demolished Bishopsgate Goods Yard, now just a sea of rubble awaiting the northern extension of the East London Line. Our conductor was busy rushing around the bus like a restaurant waiter, guiding people to their seats and trying to find time to take their money.
It's all change as you enter the City of London. Shops become offices, poverty becomes wealth, cafés become sandwich shops, and everyone walks around with a laptop bag in one hand and a latté in the other. From one of the poorest council wards in the country to Threadneedle Street in just a couple of minutes, it's a sobering journey. At Bank Station I saw something I thought I'd never see again - a perfectly behaved queue of 20 commuters all waiting patiently to board the bus and not rushing forward in a free-for-all when it arrived. Elsewhere crowds of commuters swarmed the streets, more of them female the further west we travelled, out of the City and into Holborn.
We reached Oxford Street just before 9am, to find this one particular street still asleep. No trainers or stilettos on sale yet, not quite, so the pavements were half empty and so was the bus. Another red traffic light, and another, and another - I could have been at work so much quicker underground. We turned south into Mayfair, an area so exclusive that it merits just one bus route, which of course none of the locals would ever use. With all eight tickets on board now easily checked, our conductor finally had the chance to put his feet up. The last few passengers swung out onto Piccadilly, heading for Hyde Park Corner and Victoria. Me, I was late for work. I've learnt my lesson - buses are for short hops, not for end-to-end epic journeys. Next time, I'm tubing it.
Cube Routes: Day 3 x 3 x 3 Bus 27: Chalk Farm - Turnham Green
Location: London northwest, inner
Length of journey: 9 miles, 70 minutes
London loves to go shopping. Chalk Farm residents go shopping at the big Safeway superstore, a non-descript brick warehouse tucked in beside the main railway line to Euston. It's Saturday morning and the supermarket is busy, the car park is full and the air smells of hot cross buns. The infrequently-departing number 27 bus, however, is empty, bar me and the driver. Just round the corner we pass Camden Market, a hypermarket of henna and hemp, where the pavements are packed and there's a rather different sickly sweet smell in the air. On past Camden's boxy terraces, past the legendary MorningtonCrescent tube station, down to the busy Euston Road. It starts to drizzle, and the top deck view blurs.
We head west, and it gets touristier. An Italian couple sit next to me, following the journey on a map, trying repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to pronounce the word 'Marylebone'. There are queues of bored-looking tourists outside Madame Tussauds, and scores of plain-looking hotels on the approach to Paddington where all the shops sell food, postcards or currency. The bus slows to a crawl, attempting to negotiate narrow streets, taxis and endless traffic lights. Suddenly, round the corner from Whiteleys shopping centre, our driver flashes the bus's internal lights. We're not even halfway to the end of the route, but this is the signal that our bus is stopping early and we all have to get off. The Italian couple look bemused, and everyone else merely pissed off. It's a long long 20 minute wait beside a rainswept parade of shops before the following bus catches up and we can continue.
Next stop PortobelloMarket, at which point the packed bus nearly empties, such is the attraction of this weekly antiques-fest. Everyone's here to buy some hideous bric-a-brac and objets d'art, or to be seen doing so. It's not far to Notting Hill, where slightly posh twenty-something women are leading their reluctant boyfriends round an endless succession of boutiques. The road south to Kensington is lined by snooty antique shops, over-priced and under-patronised, but who cares when one sale pays the assistant's wages for a week. Shops, shops and more shops, right down the slightly more mainstream Kensington High Street into Hammersmith and yet another cluster of chain stores. There are more reputable places to spend money within this one square mile of West London than there are within the whole of East London.
Chiswick High Road beckons, every billboard along the way advertising the latest manufactured pop album due out just in time for Christmas. The bus speeds up, mainly because no car dare use the weekday-only bus lane, just in case they've guessed the date wrong. The futon showrooms and bistros pass by, the last few bag-laden locals climb off, and we pull up at Turnham Green in the pouring rain. The shopperbus has reached its destination, a respectable and varied high street I wouldn't mind living close to myself. But now, having watched everyone else spending their money all along the route, I sidle off home having spent nothing but my time.
27 links • Route 27: anorak-level route information
• Route 27: old map of the route
• Route 27: timetable
Cube Routes: Day 4 x 4 x 4 Bus 64: Thornton Heath - New Addington
Location: London south, outer
Length of journey: 8 miles, 30 minutes
There are two ways to get from Croydon to New Addington by public transport. Not that I'm quite sure why anyone would ever want to. New Addington is a giant council estate, more the sort of place you'd want to get away from. You can take the bus, as the locals used to do until 2000, or you can take the new tram. The tram is now by far the more popular route, and rightly so. Me, the rules said I had to take the bus instead.
My 64 journey started at Thornton Heath Pond, just north of Croydon. I didn't spot the pond anywhere, just a giant bus garage and a lot of big 1930s houses, but no doubt they all suffer from waterlogged foundations. It's only a few minutes down the London Road (one of 21 roads in the capital with that name), past the worryingly named Mayday Hospital, into the bustling centre of Croydon. We stopped off at the bus station so that I could be tempted into catching the tram instead (must... resist...), then skirted the enormous retail nirvana that is the Whitgift Centre. Armies of Christmas shoppers emerged, blinking, into the daylight with an armful of carrier bags and a still-warm credit card.
Outside East Croydon station the bus and the tram lined up as if for a race, competing for passengers. We lost. The tram scuttled off down what used to be a main road, heading for New Addington via the direct scenic route, while we headed for the hills. It's a bit of a shock to an East End resident like me to realise that London has contours, but the Croham Valley has them in abundance. Hills, tree-lined avenues, views, vistas, lovingly-tended rugby pitches... and above all money. Huge detached mock tudor mansions lined the roads, like little suburban empires, with the majority of front gardens paved over to accommodate the family's collection of gleaming cars. Might explain why nobody at all got on the bus, or got off for that matter.
We skimmed through Selsdon with its traditional parade of shops (one florist, no kebab shops), then on past contrasting estates of pebbledash and redbrick. Ahead of us was historic Addington Palace, which in the 19th century was home to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I once spent a day singing there, back when I was more a cherub than a geezer, so I was most disappointed to discover that this great house is now a sports club and 'perfect wedding venue'. At last the bus met up with those telltale parallel tracks again, and traffic lights suddenly switched to let the next tram glide ahead of us. A big bus/tram interchange has been built here in a field in the middle of nowhere, where local estate residents are supposed to transfer onto feeder buses. They don't, they stay on the tram and then walk home, so an army of unwanted bus drivers stands around beside the portakabin waiting for custom.
The 64 ascends its final hill before grinding to a halt beside a non-descript parade of shops, just beside the tram terminus. New Addington's not a bad council estate, as overspill estates go, but it is enormous and somewhat lacking in character. And lacking in railway stations, the nearest being a three mile drive away, which is why they brought Tramlink here in the first place. It's revitalised the area, bringing commutability to these former fields on the very outskirts of London. And yes, I returned to Croydon by tram. Faster service, comfier seats, more legroom, and a scenic switchback ride back through a rich swathe of forest. No wonder nobody takes the bus.
64 links • Route 64: anorak-level bus information
• Route 64: anorak-level route information
• Route 64: timetable
Cube Routes: Day 5 x 5 x 5 Bus 125: Finchley Central - Winchmore Hill
Location: London north, outer
Length of journey: 8 miles, 40 minutes
From Thatcher to Portillo, this is a red bus journey through a true blue world. The 125 winds its way through the lesser-known parts of Barnet and Enfield, from the constituency of the former Prime Minister to the former constituency of the man who never quite was. Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked that anyone over the age of 30 who was still using buses was a failure. I was here to prove her wrong. This whole area of North London looks like it was built in one go in the 1930s. It's comfortable suburbia, and the very essence of Betjeman's Metroland (except that the Metropolitan line is miles away). As a result all the houses are at least twice the size of the average shoebox that passes for a new home elsewhere these days, and all the better for it. They just don't build proper affluence any more.
I set off on this particular bus journey as dusk was approaching, little realising that I was about to take my life in my hands. The first bus stop looked so safe, so inviting, nestling between a nice Jewish school and a low-rise Catholic church. I took my grandstand seat at the front of the top deck - not difficult to arrange when there were only two of us on board. As we pulled away I heard the sudden sound of rapid gunfire to my left, although this turned out to be merely a low-hanging branch thwacking repeatedly down the side of the bus. A dented green Primera pulled out unexpectedly in front of the bus forcing our driver to slam hard on the brakes to avoid a collision. Dulcet tones could be heard yelling at the culprit from the driver's cabin downstairs, but alas I suspect the incompetent Nissan driver heard none of it. It was an inauspicious start to our journey.
Through North Finchley countless shoppers darted across the high street, risking their lives weaving between the semi-stationary traffic. At Tally Ho Corner two passengers boarded the bus wielding oversized curtain rods. In Whetstone a white van overtook us with both rear doors gaping open, a cargo of what looked like oil drums on show to the world, but a few honks from our driver prompted white van man to nip out at the next set of lights to slam everything shut again. In Oakleigh Park a selfish car driver parked illegally at a bus stop outside a carpet shop with her hazard lights flashing, then walked straight out into the path of our oncoming bus. We ventured deeper into suburban traffic-calmed streets, our driver now battling against countless road humps, traffic islands and mini-roundabouts, each originally designed to slow down vehicles considerably smaller than our own. Do they sell travel insurance for bus journeys? I'd gladly have signed up.
Finally we reached Winchmore Hill, somehow still in one piece. There was only me left on board by this time, which didn't seem entirely surprising given the circuitous and risk-packed route we'd taken to get here, and the fact there wasn't much to see when we finally did arrive. Our driver faced one final moment of danger when some idiot took a flash photograph of his resting bus, no doubt temporarily blinding the poor bloke. Sorry mate. It seemed safer to escape the area by rail rather than by bus. I tracked down the local overground station, only to find that this part of London merits merely two trains an hour, and so sat freezing on the platform until my deliverer arrived. Public transport's not what it was, you know. Me, I blame the local MP. Well, the old Finchley one, anyway - the residents of Enfield Southgate appear to have already Twigg-ed.
125 links • Route 125: anorak-level bus information
• Route 125: anorak-level route information
• Route 125: timetable
Cube Routes: Day 6 x 6 x 6 Bus 216: Kingston - Staines
Location: London west, outer; Surrey
Length of journey: 13 miles, 55 minutes
"Get out of the road you dozy fuckin' idiot!"
We were still attempting to leave Kingston bus station when our driver let rip at a bemused-looking bloke trying to board our bus after the doors had closed. He was a charmer was our driver. Thirty seconds down the road we attempted a sharp turn into the main shoppingstreet. A mother was trying to cross the road with her three children, each of whom had been transformed into a jungle beast by some nearby council-sponsored face-painting scheme. She blundered into the path of the bus, then hurriedly dragged her little animals quickly back onto the pavement out of harm's way. Our driver burst forth again with another warcry like a big game hunter.
"Get out of the road you bleedin' dozy twats!"
Delightful. I was on safari aboard the 216, tracking the wild waters of the River Thames to the west of London. It's a long journey, and one of the few London bus routes to venture outside the boundaries of the capital, in this case penetrating deepest Surrey. Or is it Middlesex? Of all the seven bus routes I'm sampling this week, this was the only single-decker, which appeared to mean virtually no legroom for anybody over five foot six. I should have sued for possible deep vein thrombosis.
We crossed Kingston Bridge, the sun shining up from the sparkling river below, and sped through royal parkland to HamptonCourt. The riverside terraced house where ChristopherWren used to live is now neighbour to the Cardinal Wolsey pub (book your Christmas party here) and a traffic-clogged roundabout. A man with a smelly dog got on board and sat rather too close to my nostrils. We drove on into Surrey, upriver and upmarket - sailing clubs, exclusive residential islands, Kempton Park racecourse and Mail-reading couples out walking labradors. Sunbury Village with its narrow lanes and arty hotchpotch of cottages could easily have been in deepest Suffolk, except that there were three buses queued in the main street.
The view shifted as we reached the giant roundabout at the start of the M3, back into featureless semi-commercial suburbia. The bus detoured off the arterial road to visit a huge new Tesco superstore, picking up a doddery old man who shuffled slowly to the nearest seat. He was carrying two barely-filled plastic carrier bags, either all he could afford or all he could carry. The bus dropped him off two stops later - I guess he's forced to travel little and often.
We sped on through deepest Ashford, all diamond-lattice windows and nail bars, before sailing past the reservoirs of West London and inching into Staines. Just before our destination (at this week's umpteenth shopping mall) we halted unexpectedly on a bleak estate. Here we were treated to a new driver, a fountain of dreadlocks sprouting from the top of her head, who took five minutes to adjust everything just the way she wanted it. Meanwhile our old driver escaped into a waiting white van and pulled out into the traffic... directly in front of a honking car - the bleedin' dozy twat.
Cube Routes: Day 7 x 7 x 7 Bus N343: Victoria - New Cross Gate
Location: London southeast, inner
Length of journey: 11 miles, 60 minutes
London is one of the few cities in the country where you can get home by public transport any time of the day or night. The tube may stop running just after midnight, but a red army of buses trundles on through the night, jam-packed heading out of town and virtually empty heading in. Over the last two years Mayor Ken has increased the number of nightbuses in London by 25%, and one of those new routes is the N343 running half-hourly through Southwark and Lewisham. Glamorous it ain't, but at least Peckham looks nicer in the dark.
There's a brand new bus station outside Victoria station, all gleaming perspex and streamlined lanes. Alas it's rather exclusive so the N343 has to start round the corner instead, outside the Apollo Theatre (home to West End smash Bombay Dreams). Appropriately the bus first heads East. Far too many different nightbuses travel the route between Victoria and Trafalgar Square, so I found myself the only passenger on board as we sped past Westminster Abbey and an illuminated Big Ben. Below Nelson's Column there were again lengthy queues for all the other nightbuses, but not for the N343. The only nightlife heading for Peckham was one bloke carrying a steaming hot pizza.
At last, at Aldwych, the route came into its own and several sarf-londoners herded on board. We crossed Waterloo Bridge with the Oxo Tower shining to the left and the new Golden Jubilee Bridges twinkling to the right. Pure pitch black magic. We headed along Bankside towards London Bridge, lonely security guards sitting illuminated in giant glass buildings along the way. Still not one drunkard nor one kebab nor one loaded weapon was on board. The nightbus got much busier at Elephant & Castle, at which point the average salary of the passengers on board suddenly halved. The backroads of Walworth were lined by long tall council cuboids, shoeboxes for filing away the London underclass. Several windows were still brightly lit, at least one waiting for the arrival of that now-luke-warm pizza.
The most annoying public announcement cut in every time somone pressed the button to request the bus to stop. "Bus stopping at next bus stop. Please stand well clear of doors." It was impossible to fall asleep with this female nasal whine repeating every two minutes, and I'd gladly murder the engineers who installed this un-sound system.
We passed through Burgess Park, the only place in Central London (zones 1 & 2) to be more than a mile away from any form of railway station. Round here the 343 bus route is the only local lifeline, at least until 2011 when a brand new tram service is due to pass through, linking Peckham and Brixton to Waterloo and Camden. I wonder if they'll bother to run a service at night. Peckham had pulled down the shutters before we arrived, just the odd club and takeaway still open down an iron-fronted high street. Late-night revellers were queueing at the bus stop, but it was very hard to spot where they might be coming from.
By now five different people had sat in the seat next to me, all of them heavily sober. Slowly the bus emptied as we plied the well-kept terraces of Brockley and Telegraph Hill, until New Cross came into view. The driver couldn't believe there was anyone still on the bus as we reached the end of the road, but at least I got off without having to press that dreaded whining button. End of journey number seven, my Cube Routes finally completed, and so I departed into the night. Bybus, of course.
So, what have I learnt from a week spent aboard seven of London's buses?
Buses are better than tubes: They go everywhere, there are more of them, they cost less, they're multi-storey, the view's better, they can drop you off at your front door, they stop more often, they can climb hills, they go to the shops, they go south of the river, they run through the night, they have numbers rather than names, you can start up a new route without a public enquiry and a 10-year delay, they're a London icon.
Tubes are better than buses: They go faster, they go more often, they go faster, they go further, they go faster, they avoid traffic jams, they go faster, there's more legroom, they go faster, they hold more passengers, they go faster, they're silver, they go faster, the passengers are younger, they go faster, the network is less complicated, they go faster, the map is a design classic, they go faster, they're a London icon.
NDWhen will you pay me?
The 'Old Lady' in the photograph is the Bank of England, sited close to the first two churches mentioned in the Oranges and Lemons rhyme. The bank was established in 1694, moving to its current site in Threadneedle Street in 1734. The present building is an austere fortress, as you might expect, with sheer windowless walls at ground level and just a couple of enormous wooden doors leading inside. There are no cashpoints, no big adverts for mortgages, and no long queues of punters standing around waiting and looking miserable every lunchtime. It's not that sort of bank, you see.
A glass case inside the church contains the handbell which used to be rung to wake condemned prisoners at Newgate Prison on execution mornings. This prison held those awaiting trial at the neighbouring Old Bailey, which has been London's most important criminal court since medieval times. In 1834 the court's jurisdiction spread to cover the most serious cases from the whole of the South East, including Oscar Wilde's infamous sodomy trial. One hundred years ago Newgate Prison and the old Old Bailey were demolished to make way for the current Central Criminal Court, judging the fate of evildoers including Dr Crippen, the Kray twins and Jeffrey Archer.
Just to the northwest of Marble Arch, where the Edgware Road meets the end of Oxford Street, stands a cobbled triangular traffic island. It's all barriered off, and pretty difficult to reach without getting yourself mown down by passing vehicles. Nobody gives it a second look, but for centuries this was the site of the most watched entertainment in town. This is Tyburn, for six centuries home to London's public executions.
Cube Routes - December 2003
It's time for diamond geezer to spend a week exploring London, by bus.
The first bus in London begins its journey, appropriately enough, at Centre Point. It's London's 20th tallest building (well, it was last time I checked), a 35-floor concrete tower dominating the eastern end of Oxford Street. At its foot, up an obscure sideroad, a queue of number 1 buses wait to begin their journey from the middle of everywhere to the middle of nowhere.
It's not a long journey this one, so just a few more railway viaducts, street markets and one-way systems for the bus to negotiate. Straight past the new Surrey Quays shopping nirvana and on to our final destination at the new Canada Water transport 'hub'. An oval glass atrium sits beside a new bus station, and atop a new tube interchange between the Jubilee and East London lines. Where once were the old Surrey Docks, this new bus station/station has made Rotherhithe an area where people actually want to live. So I'm told. And just a short bus/tube ride from where the real action is.
Out of all the seven buses I'm riding on this week, this one's different. It's a Routemaster for a start, that much-loved old London workhorse, the bus with a conductor. These purring beauties have plied the streets of the capital since the sixties, although they're all now under threat from Mayor Ken who wants to ban pollution-guzzlers over 10 years old in Central London from 2006 onwards. The number 8 route is therefore due to be converted to dull boring one-person-operated buses sometime next year, boo hiss.
We reached Oxford Street just before 9am, to find this one particular street still asleep. No trainers or stilettos on sale yet, not quite, so the pavements were half empty and so was the bus. Another red traffic light, and another, and another - I could have been at work so much quicker underground. We turned south into Mayfair, an area so exclusive that it merits just one bus route, which of course none of the locals would ever use. With all eight tickets on board now easily checked, our conductor finally had the chance to put his feet up. The last few passengers swung out onto Piccadilly, heading for Hyde Park Corner and Victoria. Me, I was late for work. I've learnt my lesson - buses are for short hops, not for end-to-end epic journeys. Next time, I'm tubing it.
The 64 ascends its final hill before grinding to a halt beside a non-descript parade of shops, just beside the tram terminus. New Addington's not a bad council estate, as overspill estates go, but it is enormous and somewhat lacking in character. And lacking in railway stations, the nearest being a three mile drive away, which is why they brought Tramlink here in the first place. It's revitalised the area, bringing commutability to these former fields on the very outskirts of London. And yes, I returned to Croydon by tram. Faster service, comfier seats, more legroom, and a scenic switchback ride back through a rich swathe of forest. No wonder nobody takes the bus.
Finally we reached Winchmore Hill, somehow still in one piece. There was only me left on board by this time, which didn't seem entirely surprising given the circuitous and risk-packed route we'd taken to get here, and the fact there wasn't much to see when we finally did arrive. Our driver faced one final moment of danger when some idiot took a flash photograph of his resting bus, no doubt temporarily blinding the poor bloke. Sorry mate. It seemed safer to escape the area by rail rather than by bus. I tracked down the local overground station, only to find that this part of London merits merely two trains an hour, and so sat freezing on the platform until my deliverer arrived. Public transport's not what it was, you know. Me, I blame the local MP. Well, the old Finchley one, anyway - the residents of Enfield Southgate appear to have already Twigg-ed.
"Get out of the road you dozy fuckin' idiot!"
We sped on through deepest Ashford, all diamond-lattice windows and nail bars, before sailing past the reservoirs of West London and inching into Staines. Just before our destination (at this week's umpteenth shopping mall) we halted unexpectedly on a bleak estate. Here we were treated to a new driver, a fountain of dreadlocks sprouting from the top of her head, who took five minutes to adjust everything just the way she wanted it. Meanwhile our old driver escaped into a waiting white van and pulled out into the traffic... directly in front of a honking car - the bleedin' dozy twat.
London is one of the few cities in the country where you can get home by public transport any time of the day or night. The tube may stop running just after midnight, but a red army of buses trundles on through the night, jam-packed heading out of town and virtually empty heading in. Over the last two years Mayor Ken has increased the number of nightbuses in London by 25%, and one of those new routes is the N343 running half-hourly through Southwark and Lewisham. Glamorous it ain't, but at least Peckham looks nicer in the dark.
We passed through Burgess Park, the only place in Central London (zones 1 & 2) to be more than a mile away from any form of railway station. Round here the 343 bus route is the only local lifeline, at least until 2011 when a brand new tram service is due to pass through, linking Peckham and Brixton to Waterloo and Camden. I wonder if they'll bother to run a service at night. Peckham had pulled down the shutters before we arrived, just the odd club and takeaway still open down an iron-fronted high street. Late-night revellers were queueing at the bus stop, but it was very hard to spot where they might be coming from.
